Balkh, empty but for barking dogs
Editorial contextTravelling by night after crossing the Amu Darya on the way to Chinggis's camp, the party passed Balkh, a very large city whose people had recently revolted and fled, and all they heard inside was the barking of dogs. Bretschneider's note adds, from Rashid al-Din, that Balkh fell to Chinggis in 1221 and most of its people were massacred.
travelling during the night, we passed Ban-li a very large city, the inhabitants of which had revolted not long ago, and fled. We heard the barking of the dogs in the city.
About Inhabitants of Balkh under Mongol rule
Keep in mind
The diarist's 'revolted and fled' and Rashid al-Din's massacre are two versions of the city's fate; the travellers only passed by in the dark.
Almaliq: a Muslim ruler beside a Mongol governor
Editorial contextAt Almaliq in the Ili valley the local Muslim ruler and the Mongol governor (darughachi, Bretschneider explains) rode out together to greet the sage, a glimpse of how the Mongols ruled a town through its old prince. The city was named for its apples (alma in Turkic). The travellers bought cloth woven from 'vegetable wool', cotton, then little known in China, saw people carrying water in jars on their heads, and heard the locals praise the Chinese as 'very able men' when they saw a Chinese well-bucket (pp.70-71).
The ruler of the realm of P'u-su-man came out of the city, together with the Mongol ta-lu-hua-chi, to meet the master. We stopped at a fruit orchard west (of the city). The people here call a fruit a-li-ma; and as the place is famed for its fruits, the city received the above name.
About Muslim ruler of the P'u-su-man; Mongol darughachi
Keep in mind
P'u-su-man (Muslims) and darughachi are Bretschneider's readings of the Chinese transcriptions; he places Almaliq near modern Kuldja.
Black carts and white tents
Editorial contextA few days beyond the fishing lake of Yu-rh-li, the travellers entered true nomad country, where every dwelling was a black cart or a white tent and the people moved with the water and grass. Bretschneider's note takes the carts to be the felt-covered 'tents on wheels' described by Marco Polo and Rubruck, a practice he says had died out in Mongolia by his own day. Farther on, beside the Kerulun, the diarist adds that the Mongols used the tall riverside willows 'for making their tents' (p.51).
All around we saw habitations, consisting of black carts and white tents. The people here are nomades, and change their abode according to the prevalence of water and pasture. No tree could be seen, and we met only yellow clouds (of dust) and decayed grass.
About Mongol herders
Keep in mind
The diarist does not say the tents stood on the carts; that reading is Bretschneider's.
A ruined Khitan city with lettered tiles
Editorial contextAfter crossing a river into a grassy plain ringed by mountains, the travellers found the ruins of an old city on both sides, where the line of the streets could still be traced, and were told it had been built (the sentence runs over from p.53) by the Khitan. They picked up a tile inscribed in Khitan script, and the diarist guessed the town was founded by Khitan warriors who had moved north rather than submit to the Jin. In the Mongol heartland, then, the ruin was credited to an earlier, known people, not to the Mongols. Bretschneider quotes Palladius that Khitan forts and towns lay in ruins on the Tuul, the Kerulun and in Manchuria.
by the K'i-tan. We found, indeed, on the soil a tile with letters of the K'i-tan. This was probably a city founded by those K'i-tan warriors who emigrated, unwilling to submit to the new dynasty.
About Khitan (Liao dynasty) builders, in Mongol-ruled land
Keep in mind
The exact site is disputed (Tuul, Orkhon or Kharukha river). The 'new dynasty' is the Jin, who overthrew the Liao in 1125.
OCR normalized; the sentence begins on the previous page (n70): 'There is a tradition that this city was built'.
Forty-eight bridges built by Chagatai
Editorial contextBelow the mountain lake that Changchun named the Lake of Heaven (Sayram Lake), the road ran down a gorge of birch and pine, and the diarist credits Chinggis's second son Chagatai with cutting it through the rocks and building forty-eight timber bridges wide enough for two carts abreast. Earlier the cart road over the Altai had likewise been 'planned and constructed' by the third son, Ogedei, where the escort hauled the carts up with ropes and dragged the wheels going down (p.62). Here the Mongols appear as builders of roads and wooden bridges for their armies.
The second prince, who was with the emperor at the time he went to the west (in 1219), first made a way through these mountains, cut through the rocks, and built forty-eight bridges with the wood cut on the mountains. The bridges are so wide that two carts can pass side by side.
About Mongol army under Chagatai, Chinggis Khan's second son
Keep in mind
'(in 1219)' is Bretschneider's insertion. The diarist saw the bridges but was told who built them, and he does not say whose labour the prince used.
A city of red stone and mounds like the Big Dipper
Editorial contextRiding west along the mountains beyond the old Karakhitai lands, the travellers saw a city built of red stone and the traces of an ancient military camp. To the west stood great grave mounds arranged like the stars of the Big Dipper, and they went on over a stone bridge. The diarist names no builders and does not say whether the city was lived in.
After seven or eight days' journey, the mountains suddenly turned to the south. We saw a city built of red stones, and there were the traces of an ancient military encampment. To the west we saw great grave-mounds, which resembled the tou sing (the constellation of Ursa major).
About Unknown builders, on the Mongol road west
Keep in mind
The site is uncertain: Schuyler took the red city for Talas (Taraz), but Bretschneider rejects his evidence. The diarist does not say who built the city or raised the mounds.
Furs, milk and the tall bark headdress
Editorial contextWest of the Kerulun bend the country was crowded with carts and tents, and the people raised cattle, hunted, wore furs and skins and lived on milk and meat. Married women wore a two-foot headdress of tree bark covered in wool or, among the rich, red silk, with a long 'tail' called yu-yu that looked like a goose or duck, and they entered tents backwards with heads bent so as not to knock it (next page). Bretschneider matches it with the tall headdress described by Carpini and by Rubruck, who calls it bocca. On the same page, Mongols who had waited a year for the sage brought him millet and were amazed by the jujubes he gave them, a fruit they had never seen.
They dress in furs and skins, and live upon milk and flesh-meat. The men and unmarried young women plait their hair so that it hangs down over their ears. The married women put on their heads a thing made of the bark of trees, two feet high, which they sometimes cover with woollen cloth, or, as the rich used to do, with red silk stuff.
About Mongols
No writing, notched sticks and a kept word
Editorial contextThe diarist was struck that the Mongols he met used no writing: they settled business by word of mouth and recorded contracts by cutting marks on wood. He praises them as never disobeying orders and never breaking their word, people who had 'preserved the customs of the early ages'. The first sentence finishes his description of the married women's tall headdress.
Therefore, when entering a tent, they are accustomed to go backward, inclining their heads. These people (the Mongols) have no writing. They settle their matters by verbal convention, and when they enter into contracts they cut certain marks on wood. They are never disobedient to orders, and never break their word. They have preserved the customs of the early ages.
About Mongols
Keep in mind
'(the Mongols)' is Bretschneider's insertion. His note (after Palladius) says the Uighur script reached the Mongols a few years later, but most modern historians date its adoption at Chinggis's court to about 1204, so the diarist is describing ordinary herders rather than the Khan's chancery.
'Have you a medicine of immortality?'
Editorial contextAt his first audience, in the Khan's camp south of the Hindu Kush, Chinggis welcomed the sage, fed him and asked outright for an elixir of immortality; Changchun answered that there were ways to preserve life but no medicine for immortality, and the Khan praised his honesty. At a later audience the sage firmly refused to drink the tung lo set before him, which Bretschneider explains as kumiss or other fermented milk (p.94). His teaching was translated into Mongol by the councillor A-hai and written down in both Chinese and Mongol (p.95).
After this he asked: "Sainted man, you have come from a great distance. Have you a medicine of immortality?" The master replied: "There are means for preserving life, but no medicines for immortality." Chinghiz lauded him for his sincerity and candour. By imperial order two tents were pitched for the master east of the emperor's tents.
About Chinggis Khan
Chinggis Khan's self-portrait: one coat, one food
Editorial contextBretschneider prints the Khan's letter inviting Changchun, dated 15 May 1219 and preserved in the fourteenth-century Chinese miscellany Cho keng lu. In it Chinggis sets himself against luxurious China: he lives in the 'northern wilderness', eats what his herdsmen eat and wears the same rags. Bretschneider stresses that the Khan could not write, so the polished classical Chinese was put down by a secretary, very likely Yelu Chucai.
Heaven has abandoned China owing to its haughtiness and extravagant luxury. But I, living in the northern wilderness, have not inordinate passions. I hate luxury and exercise moderation. I have only one coat and one food. I eat the same food and am dressed in the same tatters as my humble herdsmen.
About Chinggis Khan
Keep in mind
A self-portrait in a formal letter meant to persuade; the frugal ruler is also a Chinese ideal, and the wording is a secretary's. The letter is not part of Li Zhichang's diary.
'Since our shan yu': the Mongols and the Xiongnu past
Editorial contextIn the same letter Chinggis lists the peoples who have acknowledged him (the Song, the Hui-ho, the Tangut Xia and 'the barbarians in the west') and says no empire so vast has been seen 'since the remote time of our shan yu'. Bretschneider explains that shan yu was the title of the khans of the ancient Xiongnu of Mongolia from the second century BC, so the letter sets the Mongols in a line of steppe rulers reaching back to Han times. The diarist makes the same comparison at the Empress's ordo, whose carts and tents outshone anything the ancient shan yu had (p.58).
The Sung to the south, the Hui-ho to the north, the Hia … to the east, and the barbarians in the west, all together have acknowledged my supremacy. It seems to me that since the remote time of our shan yü such a vast empire has not been seen.
About Mongols (Chinggis Khan's empire)
Keep in mind
A boast: the Song never submitted to Chinggis, and Bretschneider notes the directions are muddled. 'Our shan yu' may be the Chinese secretary's classical vocabulary rather than Mongol tradition.
The Field of White Bones
Editorial contextSouth of the Altai, Chen-hai warned that the road crossed the 'field of white bones', a plain strewn with black stones where a whole army had once died of exhaustion and where the Naiman army had lately been destroyed (by Chinggis, Bretschneider notes). Anyone who crossed by day in the sun would die with his horse, so the party marched all night, past more than a hundred great sand hills that 'seemed to swim like big ships in the midst of the waves', and reached a small Hui-ho (Muslim) town the next morning.
Chen-hai replied: "That is an old battlefield … a field of death. At one time a whole army perished there by exhaustion; no one escaped. A short time ago, at the same place, the army of the Nai-man was destroyed. Whoever crosses the desert in the daytime and in clear weather (i.e., exposed to the sun) will die from fatigue, and his horse also."
About Naiman army; the travellers' Mongol escort
Keep in mind
The story of the older lost army is Chen-hai's hearsay; the diarist saw only the desert.
OCR normalized; a dash in the printed text shown as ….
Goblins of the Altai
Editorial contextAs the party headed for the Altai, one of Chen-hai's servants said these mountains were notorious for goblins and that one had pulled him by the hair, and Chen-hai added that a Naiman khan passing through had been bewitched and forced to offer the goblin a sacrifice. Changchun said nothing. Crossing the desert beyond, the escort rubbed blood on their horses' heads against goblins, and the sage smiled that goblins flee from a good man (p.64); earlier the diarist had seen traces of sacrifices to mountain spirits on a peak, and many grave mounds below (p.58).
One of the servants of Chen-hai reported that these mountains had a bad fame for their goblins, and that once a goblin pulled him by the hair. Chen-hai narrated further, that once it occurred also to the Khan of the Naiman … to be charmed by a goblin, and that he was obliged to offer a sacrifice to him. The master did not make any remark on these tales.
About Chen-hai's men; the Naiman khan
Keep in mind
Hearsay told to the diarist, reported without comment, as his master received it.
A total eclipse on the Kerulun
Editorial contextAt noon on 23 May 1221, on the south bank of the Kerulun, the sun went dark enough for the stars to show. Bretschneider notes that the astronomer Alexander Wylie calculated a solar eclipse on exactly that day and that Chinese astronomical annals record it on the same date, 'a stamp of authenticity to the whole narrative'. In Samarkand that winter a local astronomer told Changchun it had reached six-tenths there, and the sage concluded that the same eclipse looks different from place to place (p.79).
On the 1st of the fifth month (May 23), at noon, an eclipse of the sun happened, while we were on the southern bank of the river. It was so dark that the stars could be seen, but soon it brightened up again.
About Changchun's party among the Mongols