The Mongols' own 13th-century chronicle of Chinggis Khan's family and rise, preserved only in a Ming Chinese transcription.
Full title Secret History of the Yuan Dynasty (Chinese phonetic transcription of the Secret History of the Mongols with interlinear glosses and Chinese summary)
元朝秘史
Anonymous Mongolian author(s); Ming Hanlin transcribers (c.1382-1408)
An anonymous Mongol author, writing in the 13th century (the colophon's Year of the Rat is usually read as 1228, though 1240 and 1252 are argued), told the story of Chinggis Khan's ancestors, his rise to power and the reign of his son Ogedei. The Mongolian original is lost. It survives only because Ming court translators, around the 1380s, wrote it out in Chinese characters with word glosses and a running Chinese summary. This corpus holds poor scans of a Peking University Library copy and of Li Wentian's 1896 commentary, the Kanseki Repository text of the Chinese summary, and Igor de Rachewiltz's open-access English translation from the Mongolian (2015 abridged edition), which is quoted here.
How they knew
Part eyewitness
Who “Tartar” means here
In the Mongolian text 'Tatar' is one particular rival steppe people east of the Mongols (the Ca'an, Alci, Duta'ut and Aruqai Tatar), hereditary enemies whom Chinggis destroyed in 1202. The Ming Chinese summary, however, calls the Mongols themselves Dada (逹逹, 'Tatars'), and writes the Tatar tribe separately as 塔塔児.
Why read it
It is the only long narrative of the early Mongols written by Mongols, full of tents, carts, feuds and oaths, and it shows the moment when the word Tatar passed from one enemy tribe to the Mongols as a whole in Chinese usage.
Watch out
It is epic and partisan, written to glorify Chinggis's line, and its dating is disputed. The English quoted is de Rachewiltz's translation from the reconstructed Mongolian; the Chinese summary is a Ming paraphrase, not a word-for-word version.
Editorial contextWhen Chinggis fell from his horse on his last campaign against the Tangut kingdom, a commander advised going home to recover, arguing that the Tanguts, unlike steppe people, were tied to their pounded-earth towns and fixed camps and would still be there later. Chinggis refused to withdraw. The passage shows how the Mongols saw walled towns: as something that cannot run away.
The Tang’ut people Are ones who have towns with pounded-earth walls, Are ones who live in permanent camps. They won’t leave, carrying off their towns with pounded-earth walls; They won’t leave, abandoning their permanent camps. Let us withdraw.
Anonymous author of the Secret History, words given to Tolun Cerbi (translated by Igor de Rachewiltz, 2015)
Editorial contextWhen Chinggis made his adopted brother Sigi Qutuqu chief judge, he told him to divide the whole population into those living in felt-walled tents and those living in dwellings with wooden doors, that is nomads and settled folk. Sigi Qutuqu then asked as his reward for people from the towns with walls of pounded earth. The Mongols thus sorted their world by house type, and counted walled-town people as a separate prize.
Splitting up those that live in felt-walled tents, Separating those that live in dwellings with wooden doors. … let him decide in favour of granting me the people from the towns that have walls of pounded earth.
Anonymous author of the Secret History, words given to Chinggis Qa'an and Sigi Qutuqu (translated by Igor de Rachewiltz, 2015)
Editorial contextAfter defeating the Tatar tribes at Dalan Nemurges, Chinggis and his kinsmen met in a single tent and decided the fate of the prisoners. Every Tatar male taller than the linchpin of a cart was to be killed and the rest enslaved and shared out, as revenge for Tatar killings of Chinggis's forefathers (including, in the chronicle's story, the poisoning of his father Yesugei). The chronicle goes on to say the plan leaked, the Tatars barricaded themselves in and fought with knives hidden in their sleeves.
From olden days the Tatar people Have destroyed our fathers and forefathers; To avenge our fathers and forefathers, And requite the wrong, for them We shall measure the Tatars against the linchpin of a cart, And kill them to the last one, We shall utterly slay them. The rest we shall enslave: Some here, some there, dividing them among ourselves!
Anonymous author of the Secret History (translated by Igor de Rachewiltz, 2015)
'Those Tatars smell bad': how Chinese turned Mongols into Tatars
Editorial contextThe Naiman ruler Tayang plans to attack the upstart people to his east, and his mother Gurbesu sneers that they stink and wear dirty dark clothes, so only their good-looking women are worth fetching to milk the Naiman herds. In the Mongolian original these people are the Mongols; the Ming Chinese summary calls them Dada, the Chinese word for Tatars, while it keeps a different spelling for the actual Tatar tribe. The same summary has To'oril ask 'how can you Dada be without an emperor?' of Chinggis's people.
Tayang said: 'Over here in the east there are some Dada (Tatars)... Let us go now and take those Dada.' His mother Gurbesu said: 'Those Dada people have a bad smell and their clothes are dark and grimy. What would we do bringing them here? Let them stay far away.'
About Mongols, called Dada (Tatars) by the Ming translators; Naiman
Keep in mind
The Mongolian text (de Rachewiltz p.105) says 'the Mongol people have always smelt bad'; 'Dada' is the Ming translators' word, not the Mongol author's.
The fine print
How we know
compilation Assembled from earlier sources. The author did not observe it directly.
retrospective dynastic history / epic chronicle composed within decades of the events (13th c.); survives only through the early Ming Chinese transcription
Research notes
The Mongolian original is lost; the transcription reflects Ming-era Chinese phonology and the Hanlin glossators' understanding. Edition of the Peking University copy is not identified in the catalogue (candidates: Ye Dehui 1908 print or an earlier manuscript); check the title page before citing. Companion: Li Wentian's 1896 commentary 元秘史注 (IA 02078742.cn ff.).
See separate records for de Rachewiltz 2015 (open access), Cleaves 1982 and Pelliot 1949.
Resolves L001 with the surviving primary form of the Secret History: the Chinese-transcribed Mongolian text is the base of every modern reconstruction (Haenisch, Pelliot, Cleaves, de Rachewiltz). It gives the Mongols' own 13th-century names for peoples, rivers and polities across the steppe.