Zhao Hong's Full Record of the Mong-Tatars

In 1221 a Southern Song envoy went to meet the Mongol commander Muqali at Yanjing (Beijing) and wrote up what he saw and was told about Mongol origins, customs and rule. The card names the author as Zhao Hong, though older catalogues say Meng Gong, and calls it the earliest surviving outside description of the Mongols, earlier than Carpini. The copy is Wang Guowei's annotated edition, first issued in 1926, in Chinese. The atlas holds only a poor-quality machine reading (OCR) of this scan, and no passages were selected or read for this guide.

How they knew

Part eyewitness

Who “Tartar” means here

Da-da (Tatar) as Chinese writers of 1221 used it for the Mongols and their neighbours. The card says the work divides the Tatars into Black, White and Wild Tatars and explains the name as the Chinese used it.

Why read it

It is the earliest outside eyewitness look at the Mongols, and it shows the Chinese meaning of Tatar before European travellers arrived. That makes it central to the question of where the name Tartary comes from.

Watch out

The author was long given as Meng Gong, but Wang Guowei showed it was Zhao Hong, and the catalogue creator field still repeats the old name. The text passed through the Shuofu anthology, and the Chinese commentary is Wang's, not the envoy's.