NOTES

Preface: Genghis Khan, Thomas Jefferson, and God

1. Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. III, chap. XXXV.

2. Ibid., vol. VI, chap. LXIV. The correct modern spelling of Genghis Khan’s title in Mongolian is Chinggis Khaan, but outside of Mongolia, his name has been spelled in many different ways: Chingiz in Arabic and Persian, Chingischam Imperator in the first Latin references in Europe, Cambyuskan in the earliest English writings of Geoffrey Chaucer. There are several systems of Romanization for the Mongolian language and a variety of spellings are used in this book according to what seems easiest for the reader to pronounce or easiest to use for further research. Similarly, Chinese and Arabic names and words are usually presented according to the spelling of the English-language sources, without forcing all of them into one system. Alternative spellings and forms of Romanization are presented in notes as deemed helpful to the reader.

3. A facsimile reproduction of the manuscript has been published as The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina dated July 21, 1669 drafted under the supervision of John Locke, foreword by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, (Charleston: Charleston Library Society, 2012).

4. Books in the Mount Vernon library: http://librarycatalog.mountvernon.org/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=4983&shelfbrowse_itemnumber=5995#shelfbrowser. Zingis, historie tartarie appeared simultaneously in two English translations issued by separate London printers as Taxila or Love prefer’d before Duty and Zingis a Tartarian History. For more information on the author’s life, see Alexander Calame, Anne de La Roche-Guilhen: Romancière huguenote (1644–1707) (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1972).

5. Jefferson inscribed his French copy of Genghizcan to his granddaughter Cornelia Jefferson Randolph (1799–1871) for her seventeenth birthday (July 1816). This copy later was given to the University of Virginia. Kevin J. Hayes, The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 426, 689.

6. Thomas Jefferson, 1783 Catalog of Books (circa 1775–1812), 32, Thomas Jefferson Papers, electronic ed. (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 2003). www.thomasjeffersonpapers.org; http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/toc/becites/main/jefferson/88607928.toc.html. As late as May 26, 1795: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 28, 1 January 1794–29 February 1796, ed. John Catanzariti (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 357–59.

7. Pétis de la Croix, Histoire du grand Genghizcan: premier empereur des anciens mogols et Tartares, published in 1710, 78–90. Jefferson bought several copies in French.

Introduction: The Anger of the Gods

1. Minhāj Sirāj Jūzjānī, abakāt-i-Nāirī: A General History of the Muhammadan Dynasties of Asia, vol. 2, trans. H. G. Raverty (London: Gilbert & Rivington, 1881), 1078–79.

2. Kirakoz Gandzaket’i’s History of the Armenians, trans. Robert Bedrosian (New York: Sources of the Armenian tradition, 1986), 234.

3. Peter Olbricht and Elisabeth Pinks, 69.

4. Injannasi, 59.

5. Hend Gilli-Elewy, 353–71.

6. “They put to death the Caliph, and sacked Bagdad, just as they sacked the cities of Russia and Hungary,” wrote President Theodore Roosevelt at the start of the American imperial century. “They destroyed the Turkish tribes which ventured to resist them with the thoroughness which they showed in dealing with any resistance in Europe. . . . They conquered China and set on the throne a Mongol dynasty. India also their descendants conquered, and there likewise erected a great Mongol empire. Persia in the same way fell into their hands. . . . They struck down Russians at a blow and trampled the land into blood mire beneath their horses’ feet. They crushed the Magyars in a single battle and drew a broad red furrow straight across Hungary, driving the Hungarian King in panic flight from his realm. They overran Poland and destroyed the banded knighthood of North Germany in Silesia.” Theodore Roosevelt, “Foreword,” in Jeremiah Curtin, The Mongols (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1908).

7. Eric Voegelin, “Mongol Orders of Submission to European Powers,” Byzantion 15, 1940–1941. In The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. 5; Published Essays: 1940–1952 (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 133.

8. Ibid., 96–98.

9. “Sweet and venerable” seems to refer to the Manichaean notion that Jesus was sweet, which can be found in one of the Manichaean Psalms. “Taste and Know that the Lord is sweet. Christ is the word of Truth; he that hears it shall live. I tasted a sweet taste, I found nothing sweeter than the word of Truth. Taste and Know that the Lord is sweet.” The Gnostic Society Library: Manichaean Writings; http://www.gnosis.org/library/manis.htm.

10. Voegelin, “Mongol Orders of Submission to European Powers,” 95–96.

11. Juvaini, 105.

12. Pétis de la Croix, 214.

13. Bar Hebraeus, 355.

Chapter 1: The Teeth That Eat Men

1. The oldest known copy of the Secret History consisted of 281 numbered sections; most translations into most languages use this same system, making it easier to use the § (section) rather than page number. Editions by Arthur Waley and Paul Kahn are easier to read and are also listed in the bibliography.

2. The Pearl Rosary (Subud Erike), trans. Johan Elverskog (Bloomington, IN: The Mongolia Society, 2007), 36–37, 43–45.

3. “Olqonud kemekü ulus-un ciletü mergen-ü gergei öelüng ekener-i buliyan abuγad qatun bolγabai . . . γurban sar-a-tai daγaburi kuu arban sar-a güicejü. . . . törögsen temüjin.” Quoted from manuscript, “History of Four Parts” (Dörben jüil-ün teüke 15/96: 10, 1094/96: 10). Explained in Kápolinás Olivér, “The Identity of Chinggis Khan’s Father According to Written Mongolian Accounts,” Mongolica, vol. XIV, St. Petersburg, Russia, 2015, 62–66.

4. “Nidürmegchi mergen Jarchigudai,” Injannasi quote from Walther Heissig, Geschichte der Mongolischen Literature, 285.

5. Het’um the Historian’s History of the Tartars: The Flower of Histories of the East, trans. Robert Bedrosian (Long Branch, NJ: Sources of the Armenian Tradition, 2004), bk. 3, § 16. Author was also known as Hetum and as Hayton of Corycus. https://archive.org/stream/HetumTheHistoriansFlowerOfHistoriesOfTheEast/Hetum_djvu.txt.

6. Secret History, § 149.

7. Ibid., § 66.

8. Ibid., § 71.

9. Igor de Rachewiltz, Secret History, § 72.

10. Lubsang-Danzin, § 23.

11. Secret History, § 72.

12. Igor de Rachewiltz, Secret History, § 101.

13. Š. Čojmaa, “Die Persönlichkeitsmerkmale Čingis Chaans,” in Čingis Chaan und Sein Erbe, ed. U. B. Barkmann (Ulaanbaatar: National University of Mongolia, 2007), 216–32, 229. Max идэх шvд aманд aюу (баймуй). Xvн идэх шvд cэтгэлд aюу. “Чингис Хaaны бие xvний онцлог,” Ш. Чоймаа, in Чuнгис Хaaн xийдээг Тvvий Ѳв, 27.

14. Burgi: Bürgi.

15. Secret History, § 97. Some translations identify the item as bellows for ironworking rather than a drum. For an explanation of the meaning, see T. D. Skyrnnikova, “Sülde—The Basic Idea of the Chinggis-Khan Cult,” Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, vol. XLVI, 1992/93, 54.

16. Old woman: Qo’aqchin or Qo’aγchin, Secret History, § 103.

17. Volker Rybatzki, “Die Personnennamen und Titel der Mittelmongolischen Dokumente,” 10, 317, 716. The name is related to Modern Mongolian words such as zasag, the principle of government administration; zasakh, to improve; and zarchimlakh, to establish or follow a principle.

18. Universal Mother: G. Mend-Oyo, Altan Ovoo, trans. Simon Wickham-Smith (Ulaanbaatar: Mongolian Academy of Culture and Poetry, 2012), 173–76.

19. “The Orkhon Inscriptions: Being a Translation of Professor Vilhelm Thomsen’s Final Danish Rendering,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, University of London, vol. 5, 1930, 864. For more information, see Talât Tekin, A Grammar of Orkhon Turkic, Indiana University Uralic and Altaic Series, vol. 69 (Bloomington, IN: Mouton, 1968).

20. Rashid al-Din quoted in John Andrew Boyle, “Turkish and Mongol Shamanism in the Middle Ages,” Folklore, vol. 83 (1972): 177–93, 182.

21. “It was from a naked prophet, who could ascend to heaven on a white horse, that he accepted the title of Zingis, the Most Great, and a divine right to the conquest and dominion of the earth.” Edward Gibbon, vol. III, chap. XXXVI.

22. Nora K. Chadwick, “The Spiritual Ideas and Experiences of the Tatars of Central Asia,” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. 66 (1936): 291–329.

23. Earth also known as Mother Umay.

24. Juvaini, 56.

25. Secret History, § 254.

26. Ibid., § 204.

27. Ibid., § 149.

28. A person’s power, strength, and humanity were symbolized by the belt or sash they wore. To remove one’s belt was to stand powerless before another person or a sacred spirit. Ibid., § 103.

Chapter 2: The Golden Whip of Heaven

1. Secret History, § 79.

2. Ibid., § 80.

3. Ibid., §§ 79–81.

4. Sulde: cлд sülde.

5. Hend Gilli-Elewy, 364.

6. Knowledge learned while growing up becomes like the morning sun: Ѳсѳхѳд сурсан эрдэм Ѳглѳѳний нар мэт. Janice Raymond, Mongolian Proverbs (San Diego: Alethinos Books, 2010), 214.

7. Injannasi, 41–42.

8. Secret History, § 103.

9. Ibid., § 104.

10. Abui Babui: The Secret History of the Mongols, § 174; also see Igor de Rachewiltz, 630.

11. Secret History, § 104.

12. Jūzjānī, trans. Raverty, 1078–79, quoted in George Lane, Genghis Khan and Mongol Rule (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004), 37.

13. Juvaini, 38–39.

14. Igor de Rachewiltz, Secret History, § 97.

15. Secret History, § 110.

16. Ibid., § 112.

17. Igor de Rachewiltz, Secret History, § 113.

Chapter 3: Wisdom of the Steppe

1. “Mao-tun’s title ‘T’ang-li ku-t’u Shan Yü’ means, literally translated, Shan Yü with the charimsma (kut) of the Heaven”—Later “during the reign of Lao-shan, the Hsiung-Nu sovereign was called ‘the Great Hsiung-Nu Emperor installed Heaven and Earth and born of the Sun and Moon.’” Elçin Kürsat-Ahlers, “The Role and Contents of Ideology in the Early Nomadic Empires of the Eurasian Steppes,” Ideology and the Formation of Early States, ed. Henri J. M. Claessen and Jarich G. Oosten (Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1966), 141.

2. Sophia-Karin Psarras, “Han and Xiongnu: A Reexamination of Cultural and Political Relations (II),” Monumenta Serica, vol. 52 (2004): 56.

3. Kürsat-Ahlers, “The Role and Contents of Ideology,” 141.

4. Sima Qian, “The Account of the Xiongnu,” The History of Mongolia, ed. David Sneath and Christopher Kaplonski (Folkestone, Kent, UK: Global Oriental, 2010), 48.

5. Joseph P. Yap, Wars with the Xiongnu: A Translation from Zizhi tongjian (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2009), 170.

6. Ammianus Marcellinus, The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus, trans. C. D. Yonge (London: George Bell & Sons, 1894), 572–82.

7. Seers: μάντεις read omens and predicted the future; shamans, referred to as ’ερεις or priests. Names of high-ranking officials such as Ataqam, Άταχάμ meaning Father of Shamans, or Eskam, Έσχάμ who was the father of one of Attila’s favorite wives, further indicates the importance of shamans in Hun culture. Otto Maenchen-Helfen, The World of the Huns: Studies in Their History and Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), 268–69.

8. Powerful women: They were not old women stirring a pot in a ger; they were active in the centers of power and seem to have been younger and more beautiful women. In the early sixth century the Rouran (Нирун in Mongolian; also known as Juan-Juan) leader Chounu Khan fell in love with a beautiful female shaman, but his affair so disrupted the plans of his mother that she had him killed in the year 520 and replaced by another of her sons. Denis Sinor, Studies in Medieval Inner Asia (Brookfield, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 1997), I-294.

9. Attila: Aττίλας, Atala, Atalum, possibly meant Father Ocean.

10. According to Jordanes’s Getica, a summary of the otherwise lost work of Cassiodorus on the Goths. Hunnorum omnium dominus et paene totius Schthiae gentium solus in mundo regnator. Latin quote from Theodor Mommsen, ed., Jordanes (Jordanis Romana et Getica) (Berlin, 1882), 178, also quoted in Omeljan Pritsak, “The Hunnic Language of the Attila Clan,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies, vol. 6 (1982): 444. Also Maenchen-Helfen, The World of the Huns, 277.

11. The name Tengis is variously transcribed by Greek and Romans as Dengizich, Denzig, and Tengizich, Δεγγίχ, Δεζίχιρος, Δεζίριχος, Δεγιρζίγ. Pritsak, “The Hunnic Language of the Attila Clan,” 446.

12. Kharbalgas in Mongolian, but also known as Karabalghasun, Mubalik, the Bad City, and Ordu-Baliq, City of the Court or Capital City.

13. For the most extensive collection of these Turkic inscriptions transcribed, transliterated, and translated, see this Kyrgyz Web site: http://bitig.org/?lang=e.

14. Nwm snk: inscribed on the Bugut Stele, Volker Rybatzki, “Titles of Türk and Uigur Rulers in the Old Turkic Inscriptions,” Central Asiatic Journal, vol. 44 (2000). Some scholars incorrectly translated snk as Sanskrit samgha, referring to the Buddhist religion, but its meaning has been clarified by two Japanese researchers, T. Moriyasu and Y. Yoshida, “A Preliminary Report on the Recent Survey of Archaeological Sites and Inscriptions from the Turkic and Uighur Period in Mongolia,” Studies of the Inner Asian Languages, vol. 13 (1998): 129–70.

15. Jonathan Karam Skaff, Sui-Tang China and Its Turko-Mongol Neighbors: Culture, Power, and Connections, 580–880 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 120. Also see Huis Tolgoy Memorial Complex inscription: http://irq.kaznpu.kz/?lang=e&mod=1&tid=1&oid=3.

16. “The Orkhon Inscriptions: Being a Translation of Professor Vilhelm Thomsen’s Final Danish Rendering,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, University of London, vol. 5 (1930): 862, 867. Also see Peter B. Golden, “The Türk Imperial Tradition in the Pre-Chinggisid Era,” The History of Mongolia, ed. David Sneath and Christopher Kaplonski (Folkestone, Kent, UK: Global Oriental, 2010), 79, note 67, 87. Talât Tekin, A Grammar of Orkhon Turkic (Bloomington: Indiana University Publications, Uralic and Altaic Series, vol. 69, 1968), 261–73.

17. Öze Kök : Teŋiri : asïra : yaγïz : Jer : qïlïntaquda : ekin ara : kisi : oγulï : qïlïnmïs : kisi : oγulïnta : öze : ečüm apam : Bumïn qaγan : Estemi qaγan : olurmïš : olurupan : Türük : budunïγ : Elin : törüsün : tuta : bermis : iti : bermis : http://irq.kaznpu.kz/?lang=e&mod=1&tid=1&oid=15&m=1.

18. Juvaini, 54–55.

19. Sinor, Studies in Medieval Inner Asia, I-306.

20. Ibid., I-312–15.

21. Tekin, A Grammar of Orkhon Turkic, 283–90.

22. “When the sword gets rusty the warrior’s condition suffers, when a Turk assumes the morals of a Persian his flesh begins to stink.” Robert Dankoff, “Inner Asian Wisdom Traditions in the Pre-Mongol Period,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 101 (1981): 87–95, 90–91.

23. From Kashgari’s Diwan Lugat at-Turk (c. 1075), quoted in Robert Dankoff, “Kāšġarī on the Beliefs and Superstitions of the Turks,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 95 (1975): 70. Spelled Tängri in original.

24. Tenger in Modern Mongolian, Tenggeri in Classical Mongolian.

25. E. Denison Ross and Vilhelm Thomsen, “Being a Translation of Professor Vilhelm Thomsen’s Final Danish Rendering,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, vol. 6 (1930): 37–43.

26. “The Orkhon Inscriptions: Being a Translation of Professor Vilhelm Thomsen’s Final Danish Rendering,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, vol. 5 (1930): 870.

Chapter 4: Conflicting Selves

1. Secret History, § 116.

2. Sülde, Secret History, § 201.

3. Ibid., § 118.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid., § 123.

6. Thomas T. Allsen, “Mongolian Princes and Their Merchant Partners, 1200–1260,” Asia Major, vol. 2 (1989): 86.

7. Secret History, § 123–25.

8. Ibid., § 126.

9. Ibid., § 127.

10. Ibid., § 129.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid., § 204.

13. Leland Liu Rogers, 75

14. Peter Olbricht and Elisabeth Pinks, 12, 60.

15. Jautau: For the etymology and meaning of this term see Secret History, § 134.

16. Secret History, § 53.

17. Igor de Rachewiltz, Secret History, 302. Also see Denis C. Twitchett, Herbert Franke, and John King Fairbank, The Cambridge History of China: Vol. 6, Alien Regimes and Border States, 332.

18. J. Kroll, “The Term yi-piao and ‘Associative’ Thinking,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 93 (1973): 359.

19. Ibid., 46.

20. Arga: apгa, Secret History, § 166.

21. Pétis de la Croix, 44.

22. Secret History, § 150.

23. Bar Hebraeus, 352.

24. Lev Gumilev, Searches for an Imaginary Kingdom: The Legend of the Kingdom of Prester John, trans. R. E. F. Smith (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

25. Igor de Rachewiltz, Secret History, § 189.

26. Secret History, § 195.

27. Ibid., § 242.

28. Rashid al-Din clearly states that Genghis Khan executed his uncle. The Secret History also states clearly that Genghis Khan condemned him to death, but then adds that before the sentence could be carried out, he relented and spared the uncle. In either case, whether dead or alive, the uncle disappeared from history at that moment, and no further mention of him was made. For the conflicting accounts, see Secret History, § 255, and Igor de Rachewiltz’s discussion of the issue in Secret History, 652.

Chapter 5: Messenger of Light

1. Michael R. Drompp, Tang China and the Collapse of the Uighur Empire (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2005), 226.

2. The Greek words coming into Turkic and Mongolian were mostly (κοινή) Hellenistic words. Volker Rybatzki, 2006, 633.

3. Kutadgu Bilig, quoted in İsenbike Togan, Flexibility and Limitation in Steppe Formations: The Kerait Khanate and Chinggis Khan (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1998), 53.

4. T’ang hui-yao quote from “Shiruku rōdo to songudojin” (“Silk Road and the Sogdians,” Tōyō gakujutsu kenkyū 18, 1979, 30, quoted in Mariko Namba Walter, “Sogdians and Buddhism,” Sino-Platonic Papers, vol. 174 (2006): 11.

5. Togan, Flexibility and Limitation in Steppe Formations, 53.

6. Heuser and Klimkeit, Studies in Manichaean Literature and Art, 158.

7. Cyril Glassé, The New Encyclopedia of Islam (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), 63.

8. Quoted in Sinor, Studies in Medieval Inner Asia, V-10.

9. Manichaean Texts from the Roman Empire, ed. Iain Gardner and Samuel N. C. Lieu (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 118.

10. Samuel N. C. Lieu, Manichaeism in the Later Roman Empire and Medieval China (Tübingen, Germany: J. C. B. Mohr; 2nd ed., rev. and expanded edition, 1992), 282.

11. Colin Mackerras, “The Uighurs,” in The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, ed. Denis Sinor (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 335.

12. Hans-J. Klimkeit, “Buddhism in Turkish Central Asia,” Numen, vol. 37, Fasc. 1 (1990): 57.

13. Tsui Chi, “Mo Ni Chiao Hsia Pu Tsan, ‘The Lower (Second?) Section of the Manichæan Hymns,’” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, vol. 11 (1943): 174–219, verse 238.

14. Hans-Joachim Klimkeit, in Gnosis on the Silk Road: Gnostic Texts from Central Asia (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993), 216.

15. Johann Jako, Philip Herzon, Albert Schaff, et al., The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1910), 153–62.

16. Klimkeit, in Gnosis on the Silk Road, 178–81.

17. Manfred Heuser and Hans-Joachim Klimkeit, Studies in Manichaean Literature and Art (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1998), 193.

18. Richard Foltz, Religions of the Silk Road, 2nd ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 78.

19. Cologne Manichaean Codex; http://essenes.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=649&Itemid=926.

20. Secret History, § 217.

21. Tasaka Kōdō, “Kaikotsu ni okeru Manikyōhankugai undō,” Tōhō gakuhō, vol. 11, no. 1 (1940): 223–32. Quoted in The Uighur Empire: According to the Tang Dynastic Histories, ed. and trans. Colin Makerras (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1972), 9, 152.

22. Hans-Joachim Klimkeit, “Manichaean Kingship,” Numen, vol. 29 (1982): 17–32, 23.

23. Wen Jian Lu quoted in A. G. Maliavkin, Materialy po istorii Uigurov v IX–XII vv: Materials on the History of the Uighurs IX–XII Centuries (Novosibirsk: Izdatel’stvo “Nauka” Sibirskoe Otdelenie, 1974), 92.

24. Anatoly M. Khazanov, Nomads and the Outside World, 258.

25. Quoted in Resat Baris Unlu, “The Genealogy of a World-Empire: The Ottomans in World History,” Ph.D. diss. (Department of Sociology, State University of New York, Binghamton, 2008), 65.

26. Peter Olbricht and Elisabeth Pinks, 16.

27. Tatar Tonga also spelled as Tatar-Tong’a, Tatatungga.

28. Juvaini, 7.

29. Mongolian words: Болор, caxap, чихэр apxи, болд, титим, чинжал, саван, aнap, тоть, шатар, алмааз, маргад, инжир эрдэнэ. Борчууд in Modern Mongolian. Bells (tsan from Persian chang), notebook (depter from Persian defter from Greek δίπτυχα—related to English diptych). Similarly the Uighur word for sweat began to be used for wages. The Mongols also eventually used their word for sweat хѳлc similarly to signify pay, wages, hire, and concepts that had not previously existed.

30. Mongol division of people into good and bad: People were either el, peaceful allies and subjects who kept their eyes, or they were bulqa (Modern Mongolian булга) or dayijiju (dayijiju qarchu odu’at, those who have gone out or departed); Igor de Rachewiltz, Secret History, § 188.

31. Klimkeit, “Manichaean Kingship,” 26.

32. Mary Boyce, The Manichaean Hymn-Cycles in Parthian (London: Oxford University Press, 1954), 101. See also Mary Boyce, A Reader in Manichaean Middle Persian and Parthian (Leiden, Netherlands: Acta Iranica 9, 1975), 165. Other translation in Klimkeit, “Manichaean Kingship,” 17.

33. Secret History, § 21. In another Manichaean influence on the Secret History and the tale of Alan Goa, a Parthian fable attributed to Mani described a man on his deathbed who called his sons together and told them the tale of the bundle of sticks. Available in German translation: “Der Apostel erzählte dem Turan-Schach ein Gleichnis: Es war ein Mann, und es waren sieben Söhne. Als die Stunde des Todes gekommen war, rief er seine Söhne. Sieben—uranfängliche—und—Treibstock—gebunden. Er sprach: ‘[Alle] zugleich zerbrecht!’ Keiner war dazu [imst]ande. Darauf öffnete er [das Band—].” In turn this Manichaean story possibly was taken from (or shared a common source with) the Greek tales of Aesop. R. Merkelbach, “Eine Fabel Manis,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, vol. 75 (1988): 93–94.

34. Mongols incorporated many of the stories about Alexander the Great into the history of Genghis Khan. In 1246, at the time of the visit of the first European envoy to the Mongols, Friar Giovanni di Plano Carpini heard stories from the Romance of Alexander, but the stories had been adapted to Mongolia and were associated with Mongol khans. He reported that in a battle against India, the leader of the Indian forces had dummy warriors made of brass propelled by a fire inside. When they approached the steppe warriors, the brass dummies shot out fire that burned the horses and routed the invaders. The Romance of Alexander reported precisely the same story regarding Alexander’s attempt to invade India. Behind the dramatic, and mostly fictitious, folk tales and myths about Alexander was a sophisticated ideology with a complex view of the relationship between politics and religion. It was at heart a version of Greek philosophy, principally that of Alexander’s teacher Aristotle, but filtered through the lens of Mani’s teachings.

35. Plato, The Republic, trans. Benjamin Jowett (New York: Anchor Books, 1973), 211.

36. Ibid., 42–50.

37. Klimkeit, in Gnosis on the Silk Road, 356–62.

38. Ibid., 356. For further explanation of ichtin nom, tashtin il, the religion within and the state without: Heuser and Klimkeit, Studies in Manichaean Literature and Art, 286.

39. Ibid., 225.

40. Klimkeit, in Gnosis on the Silk Road, 22, 274.

41. One of Mani’s scriptures, known as the Book of the Two Principles, remained largely unknown in the West. It may not have been translated into a European language, but it was translated from Syriac into Chinese and Turkic to become the most influential of Mani’s scriptures in the East. The doctrine of two principles became so popular in Asia that the Taoists included it as one of their sacred scriptures for more than a century, from 1016 until the doctrine was banned by Sung authorities as foreign and false. Book of Two Principles: ibid., 372–73. Original title: Šâbuhragân (Sutra of the Two Principles), the book of advice for his patron Shāpūr I. Chinese version (Erh-tsung ching), Turkic version (Iki yiltiz nom) translated into Il-tirgügk of the Qarluq Turks, one of the Uighur subordinate tribes. Samuel N. C. Lieu, Manichaeism in Central Asia and China (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1998), 148.

42. Nomos: Sogdians adopted the word from Manichaeism, and Sogdian Buddhists used it as a translation for the Sanskrit dharma. Volker Rybatzki, 633.

43. King of the whole law: Nom qutï kadilmiš and qamaγ nom iligi, refers to all law, religious and secular. Klimkeit, “Manichaean Kingship,” 17–32, 26.

44. Tsui Chi, “Mo Ni Chiao Hsia Pu Tsan, ‘The Lower (Second?) Section of the Manichæan Hymns,’” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, vol. 11 (1943): 174–219, verses 76, 84.

45. Klimkeit, “Manichaean Kingship,” 17–32, 29.

46. Golden cord: altan argamj, Secret History, § 254.

47. “The term Sog was an abbreviated ethnonym for Sogdians (Sog dag) during the imperial period and became an ethnonym for Mongols (Sog po) after their rise to power in the thirteenth century. Hor, or Hor pa, a Tibetan ethnonym originally associated with the Uighurs during the imperial period, was later used to identify Mongols in general beginning from the thirteenth century. Later still the term was used to designate specific Mongol tribes that underwent varying degrees of Tibetanization and settled in the regions east and northeast of central Tibet” (Rolf Alfred Stein, Tibetan Civilization, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972, 34). Also see “Representations of Efficacy: The Ritual Expulsion of Mongol Armies in the Consolidation and Expansion of the Tsang (Gstang) Dynasty” by James Gentry, in Tibetan Ritual, José Ignacio Cabezón, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 158.

48. Dīn al-Majūsīya, referring to the fire-worshipping Magi of Persia. Dīn al-Nijashīya, religion of the auditors. Walter J. Fischel, “Ibn Khaldūn’s Sources for Jenghiz Khān,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 76 (1956): 99.

49. For examples of the use of Magi by Christians as the term for Auditors, see Johann Lorenz von Mosheim, Robert Studley Vidal, and James Murdock, Historical Commentaries on the State of Christianity during the First Three Hundred and Twenty-Five Years from the Christian Era (New York: S. Converse, 1853), 400.

50. An Etymological Dictionary of Pre-Thirteenth Century Turkish (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1972), 324. Also, Volker Rybatzki, “Die Personnennamen und Titel der Mittelmongolischen Dokumente,” 234.

51. Bar Hebraeus, 355.

52. Charles R. Bawden, Mongolian Literature Anthology (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 318.

53. Bayan Khan Mani’s tale is collected in Ordos but relates to a hunting trip of Temujin near the Bogd Khan Mountain on the Tuul River. Marie-Dominique Even, Chants de chamanes Mongols (Paris: Société d’ethnologie, Université de Paris, 1992), 307, 434.

Chapter 6: Jesus of the Steppe

1. Secret History, § 186.

2. Peter Olbricht and Elisabeth Pinks, 1980, 3, 31.

3. In my book The Secret History of the Mongol Queens, I attempted to recreate this lost history of the daughters of Genghis Khan, primarily through accounts of the marriages made for them. More detailed information can also be found in George Qingzhi Zhao, 2008.

4. Christian wife reported by Vincent of Beauvais in Speculum Historiale and Simon of Saint-Quentin. Quoted in Gregory G. Guzman, “Simon of Saint-Quentin,” Speculum, vol. 46 (1971): 233.

5. Book of the Tower, Mārī b. Sulaimāb, “The Karaits of Eastern Asia,” D. M. Dunlop, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, vol. 11 (1944): 276–89.

6. Nicholaus of Cusa, “On the Peace of Faith (De Pace Fidei),” trans. William F. Wertz, Toward a New Council of Florence (Schiller Institute, 1993), § XVI.

7. Gumilev, Searches for an Imaginary Kingdom, 368.

8. Secret History, § 143.

9. Ibid., § 181.

10. Bar Hebraeus, 353.

11. Secret History, § 208.

12. Comment made in reference to Guyuk Khan’s court. Juvaini, 259.

13. Thomas T. Allsen, Commodity and Exchange in the Mongol Empire: A Cultural History of Islamic Textiles (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 35.

14. Bar Hebraeus, 354. After the shattering of their illusion that the Mongols were the fabled Christian army of Prester John who would liberate the world from the Muslims, European observers decided that the Mongols were Jews. The generally well-informed chronicler Matthew Paris and many other intellectuals of the thirteenth century thought that the Mongols were one of the lost tribes of Israel. Part of the evidence rested on the fact that they wrote in what a Hungarian bishop reported as being the Hebrew script, literas Judaeorum. (Sophia Menache, “Tartars, Jews, Saracens and the Jewish–Mongol ‘Plot’ of 1241,” History, vol. 81, 1996: 333.) The Jews fared well under Mongol rule. According to Bar Hebraeus this was because “with the Mongols” there is “neither believer nor pagan; neither Christian nor Jew; but they regard all men as belonging to one and the same stock.” (Bar Hebraeus, 490.) Muslims and Jews both had nomadic roots, unlike the Chinese, whose civilization depended on agriculture. Genghis Khan found people of pastoral heritage much easier to understand. Some chroniclers referred to his law as the Torah, using the same word as for the Jewish law, recognizing that in addition to being a conqueror he was an important lawgiver, an act that they associated with prophets and saints. For Muslims, Muhammad was the last and final prophet, after whom there would be no more, but the Arab chronicler Ibn Wasil wrote in 1260 that the Mongols also considered Genghis Khan a prophet. (“Ibn Wāil war der Ansicht daβ Dschingis Khan bei den Mongolen den Rang eines Propheten habe. Abstammung war unter den Mongolen wesentliches and sichtbares Zeichen einer von Gott legitimierten Herrschaft.” Stefan Heidemann, Das Aleppiner Kalifat AD 1261, Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1994, 165.) Some Muslim writers referred to his teachings as The Torah of Genghis Khan, and the Torah-i-Chingizi is a body of law that continued to have philosophical and legal importance in Moghul India for centuries. The belief in a reputed Jewish connection was shared by many European Jews of the time, based on the evidence of the Mongols’ Semitic alphabet (their script was in fact derived from ancient Syriac). A letter written by a Jew in Sicily reported that the Mongols carried documents “written in Hebrew characters and . . . signed up and down with twelve golden seals.” The net result was that “the King of Spain, and the King of Germany, and the King of Hungary, and the King of France are in fear and shaking.” (Sophia Menache, Ibid., 334.) According to the Jewish calendar, the year 5000 was approaching (1240 in the Christian calendar), and many thought that the Mongols had been sent to defeat the forces of evil in preparation for the arrival of the long-awaited Messiah. Genghis Khan’s leniency toward Jews in his conquest of Khwarizm and the service of Jews in the Mongol army and government further strengthened this belief. The identification of Mongols with Jews grew stronger as the Mongols approached Jerusalem leading up to the Battle of Ayn Jalut in 1260. Jewish poet and scholar Meshullam da Piera was certain that they had come to restore the temple of Solomon. (Maurice Kriegel, “The Reckonings of Nahmanides and Arnold of Villanova: On the Early Contacts Between Christian Millenarianism and Jewish Messianism,” Jewish History, vol. 26, 2012, 25.)

15. Taken with slight edits from William of Rubruck, 52.

16. Ibid., 38.

17. Ibid., 56.

18. Secret History, § 208.

19. Considered a type of wild horse by the Mongols, the onager is classified by westerners as a wild ass, Equus hemionus.

20. Leland Liu Rogers 88; Lubsang-Danzin, § 28.

21. Lubsang-Danzin, §§ 30–32.

Chapter 7: The Making of the Mongol Nation

1. Évariste Régis Huc, Christianity in China, Tartary and Thibet, vol. 1 (London: Longman et al., 1857), 123.

2. Meng-Ta Pei-Lu und Hei-Ta Shih-Lüeh, 12.

3. The khan’s complete epithet consists of nineteen words—Kün Ay Tängritä Kut Bolmish Ulug Kut Omanmish Alpin Ärdämin El Tutmish Alp Arslan Kutlug Köl Bilgā Tängri Xan—Who Has Obtained Charisma from the Sun and the Moon God, Who Is Imbued with Great Charisma, Who Has Maintained the Realm with Toughness and Manly Virtue, Courageous Lion, Blessed Ocean of Wisdom, Divine Khan. Zsuzsanna Gulácsi, Mediaeval Manichaean Book Art: A Codicological Study of Iranian and Turkic Illuminated Book Fragments from the 8th–11th Century East Central Asia (Leiden, Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill, 2005), 55.

4. Secret History, § 74.

5. Grigor of Akner’s History of the Nation of Archers, trans. Robert Bedrosian (Long Branch, NJ: Sources of the Armenian Tradition, 2003), § 1; https://archive.org/details/GrigorAknertsisHistoryOfTheNationOfArchersmongols.

6. Het’um the Historian’s History of the Tartars: The Flower of Histories of the East, trans. Robert Bedrosian (Long Branch, NJ: Sources of the Armenian Tradition, 2004), bk. 3, § 16; https://archive.org/stream/HetumTheHistoriansFlowerOfHistoriesOfTheEast/Hetum_djvu.txt.

7. Alice Sárközi, “Mandate of Heaven: Heavenly Support of the Mongol Ruler,” Altaica Berolinensia: The Concept of Sovereignty in the Altaic World, ed. Barbara Kellner-Heinkele (Wiesbaden, Germany: Otto Harrassowitz, 1993), 220.

8. Juvaini, 39.

9. Kirakos Ganjaketsi’s History of the Armenian, § 32.

10. Secret History, § 202.

11. Unity creates success: Evlevel butne.

12. Sechen Jagchid and Paul Hyer, Mongolia’s Culture and Society, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1979), 255.

13. Secret History, § 63. The story of Dei-Sechen’s dream may well have been inserted into the Secret History at some later date in order to appease or flatter members of his clan who became very powerful through the many queens produced by his descendants. It seemed more symbolic than factual.

14. Maria Magdolna Tatar, “New Data About the Cult of Chinggis Qan’s Standard,” Altaica Osloensia, ed. Brent Brendemoen (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1990), 336.

15. Secret History, § 121. The Chinese summaries of the Secret History glossed törö as tao-li, which de Rachewiltz explains as “fundamental matters concerning governance,” 451. For the complicated explanation for the unusual term Nendü Khutukh see Igor de Rachewiltz, 784–85.

16. Juvaini, 38–39.

17. Put them into the right: shidurkhutkhaju, Secret History, § 202.

18. Ibid., § 234.

19. Ibid., § 154.

20. Hans-Joachim Klimkeit, “Manichaean Kingship,” Numen, vol. 29 (1982): 21.

21. Secret History, § 203.

22. Ibid., § 203.

23. P. Ratchnevsky, “Šigi Qutuqu,” in In the Service of the Khan: Eminent Personalities of the Early Mongol-Yüan Period, ed. Igor de Rachewiltz, Hok-lam Chan, Hsiao Ch’i-ch’ing, and Peter W. Geier (Wiesbaden, Germany: Otto Harrassowitz, 1993), 75–94.

24. Kokochu: Kököchü.

25. Secret History, § 204.

26. Caroline Humphrey with Urgunge Onon, Shamans and Elders (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1996), 324.

27. The worst of men become shamans: Хнийг муу бѳѳ болох.

28. бѳѳ (бѳѳδийн), to vomit (бѳѳлжих), to castrate (бѳѳрлѳх), an opportunistic person without scruples (бѳѳрѳний хн), and the basic term for lice, fleas, and bedbugs (бѳѳс). Хvлгийг муу жоро болох. A Modern Mongolian-English Dictionary, ed. Denis Sinor (Indiana University, Uralic and Altaic Series, vol. 150, 1997), 69.

29. Nine-tongued people: Yisün kelten iren, Secret History, § 245.

30. Minhāj Sirāj Jūzjānī, abakāt-i-Nāirī: A General History of the Muhammadan Dynasties of Asia, vol. 2, trans. H. G. Raverty (London: Gilbert & Rivington, 1881), 949.

31. Lubsang-Danzin, § 21.

32. Leland Liu Rogers, 75, 105.

33. Dragon snake: gürölgü manqus, Secret History, § 195.

34. Ibid., § 244.

35. Ibid., § 245.

36. Jūzjānī, abakāt-i-Nāirī, 949.

37. Secret History, § 246.

38. Ibid., § 216.

39. Ibid., § 217.

40. Original in vol. 27 of the encyclopedia of Shihab al-Din Ahmad b. ‘Abd al-Wahhab al-Nuwayri (died 733/1333): Nihdyat al-arab ftlfuniin al-adab (“The Highest Aspiration in the Varieties of Cultures”), quoted in Reuven Amitai, “Did Chinggis Khan Have a Jewish Teacher? An Examination of an Early Fourteenth-Century Arabic Text,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 124 (2004): 693. Also see Lyall Armstrong, “The Making of a Sufi: Al-Nuwayri’s Account of the Origin of Genghis Khan,” Mamluk Studies Review, vol. 10 (2006): 154–60.

41. Qur’an, 3:49, and Qur’an, 5:110.

42. Toriin Sulde: Töriin Sülde.

43. Christopher Atwood, Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire, 10–11.

44. Secret History, § 208, minu uruq bidan-u oro sa’uju ene metu tusa kiksen toro setkiju. See Igor de Rachewiltz, Index to the Secret History of the Mongols (Bloomington: Indiana University Publications, vol. 121, 1972), 119–20.

Chapter 8: Guardians of the Flame

1. Secret History, § 230.

2. Ibid., § 147.

3. Ibid., § 124.

4. Ibid., § 209.

5. Ibid., § 125.

6. Leland Liu Rogers, 70–74.

7. Secret History, § 125.

8. Igor de Rachewiltz, Secret History, § 211. Similarly, Borte was called qutuqtu and sutai, § 111. Also used in the name of Shigi-Khutukhu, § 239.

9. Secret History, §§ 230–31.

10. The word ordu became known in the West as horde, referring to the large and seemingly wild spirit of the Mongol army, but in India the same word became Urdu, the name of the courtly language and in modern times the official language of Pakistan.

11. “Die Personnennamen und Titel der Mittelmongolischen Dokumente,” 575.

12. Aldo Ricci and Luigi F. Benedetto, Travels of Marco Polo (Delhi: Asian Education Services, 1994), 129.

13. Peter Olbricht and Elisabeth Pinks, 141, 161.

14. Secret History, § 177.

15. Lubsang-Danzin, § 22.

16. Peter Olbricht and Elisabeth Pinks, 53.

17. Yusuf Khass Hajib, Wisdom of Royal Glory (Kutadgu Bilig): A Turko-Islamic Mirror for Princes, trans. Robert Dankoff (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), § 2091; § 2098, “Wine is an enemy.”

18. Secret History, § 195.

19. C. Ž. Žamcarano, Mongol Chronicles of the Seventeenth Century, trans. Rudolf Loewenthal (Wiesbaden, Germany: Otto Harrassowitz, 1955), 84.

20. If something bad happens, you can find a way out: Элдэв муу юм болсон бол аргалж болон! Alena Oberfalzerovám, Metaphors and Nomads (Prague: Triton, 2006), 32.

21. Secret History, § 208. Also see L. N. Gumilev, Searches for an Imaginary Kingdom, trans. R. E. F. Smith (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 206.

22. Plato, The Republic, trans. Benjamin Jowett (New York: Anchor Books, 1973), 234.

23. Ibid., 104.

24. Ibid., 59.

25. Ibid., 140.

26. Plato, The Republic (San Diego: ICON Classics, 2005), 93.

27. Secret History, § 195.

28. Plato, The Republic, trans. Jowett, 113.

29. Ibid., 85–88.

30. Ibid., 91.

31. “The Travels of John de Plano Carpini and other friars, sent about the year 1246, as ambassadors from Pope Innocent IV to the great Khan of the Moguls or Tartars,” A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, vol. 1, ed. Robert Kerr, 148.

32. Ibid., 132.

33. Kirakos Ganjakets’i’s History of the Armenian, § 32.

34. Friar Giovanni DiPlano Carpini, The Story of the Mongols Whom We Call the Tartars, trans. Erik Hildinger (Boston: Branden Publishing, 1996), 45.

35. Bar Hebraeus, 455.

36. Al-Nuwayrī quoted in Amitai, “Did Chinggis Khan Have a Jewish Teacher?,” 693.

37. “Histoire Genealogique des Tartares,” vol. I, 51, cited in Évariste Régis Huc, Christianity in China, Tartary and Thibet, vol. 1 (London: Longman et. al., 1857), 157.

38. Injannasi, 59. Injannasi was an eighth-generation descendant of Altan Khan and his son Senggedügüreng Khan.

39. Juvaini, 23–24.

40. Ibid., 25.

41. Ibid., 24.

42. Ibid., 23.

43. H. Desmond Martin, “The Mongol Army,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, no. 1 (1943): 60.

44. Injannasi, 44.

45. Virlana Tkacz, Sayan Zhambalov, Buryat Mongolians, and Wanda Phipps, “We Play on the Rays of the Sun,” Agni, no. 51 (2000): 160.

46. Secret History, § 100. Quoted from expanded edition of Paul Kahn (Boston: Cheng & Tsui, 1998), 35.

Chapter 9: Two Wings of One Bird

1. Igor de Rachewiltz, “Personnel and Personalities in North China in the Early Mongol Period,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 9 (1966): 98.

2. Quoted from a stone stele, Tao-Chung Yao, “Ch’iu Ch’u-chi and Chinggis Khan,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, vol. 46 (1986): 203.

3. René Grousset, The Empire of the Steppes: A History of Central Asia, trans. Naomi Walford (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1970), 225.

4. Thomas Allsen, The Royal Hunt in Eurasian History (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 26.

5. Peter Olbricht and Elisabeth Pinks, 61.

6. Minhāj Sirāj Jūzjānī, abakāt-i-Nāirī: A General History of the Muhammadan Dynasties of Asia, vol. 2, trans. H. G. Raverty (London: Gilbert & Rivington, 1881), 954.

7. Peter Olbricht and Elisabeth Pinks, 60.

8. Marco Polo and Rustichello, The Travels of Marco Polo: The Complete Yule-Cordier Edition in Two Volumes (New York: Dover Publications, 1993), vol. 1, 238.

9. Voltaire, The Orphan of China, trans. William F. Fleming (Start Publishing, 2012), act 1, scene 3.

10. Secret History, § 272.

11. Autumn of the Palace Han: Han Koong Tsu.

12. Igor de Rachewiltz, 36–37.

13. He supposedly sent messengers to the provinces of Tibet with a decree, reading: “Now, so that I, the Khan, can complete the great deeds of the state, I need to support and spread the Buddha’s religion by inviting lamas and [their] disciples to our Mongol lands.” The Pearl Rosary (Subud Erike), trans. Johan Elverskog (Bloomington, IN: The Mongolia Society, 2007), 43–45.

14. The good custom of the Chinese nom: Kitad-unb-nom-un sayin yosun-u sudur nigen-i jalaju abubai. Ibid., 14r5, 110.

15. When he had assembled . . . to protect and support living beings: Chasutu agula-yin engger-tür uchiragulju tör-yi tedkükü baruqu. Amitan-i asaraqu tedkükü yosun-i asagauju sayisisyan magtagad. Francis Woodman Cleaves, “Teb Tenggeri,” Ural-Altaische Jahrbücher, vol. 37 (Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz, 1967), 248–60, 254–55. Original Mongolian quotes appear in Altan Kürdün minggan kedesütü bichig 1739, II 4v6–10, and Chinggis ejen-ü altan urug-un teüke Gangga-yin urusqal neretü bichig orosiba (The Book Entitled the Glowing of the Gangaa [Ganges], a History of the Golden Lineage of Lord Chinggis), 54b10–11.

16. Secret History, § 263.

17. E. A. Wallis Budge, The Monks of Kublai Khan Emperor of China, or the History of the Life and Travels of Rabban Sawma (London: The Religious Tract Society, 1928), 124–35.

18. E. Bretschneider, Mediaeval Researches from Eastern Asiatic Sources (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1910), 37–39.

19. Y. H. Jan, “Hai-yün,” In the Service of the Khan: Eminent Personalities of the Early Mongol-Yüan Period, Igor de Rachewiltz, Hok-lam Chan, Hsiao Ch’i-ch’ing, and Peter W. Geier, eds. (Wiesbaden, Germany: Otto Harrassowitz, 1993), 226.

20. Li Chih-Ch’ang, The Travels of an Alchemist—The Journey of the Taoist Ch’ang-Ch’un from China to the Hindukush at the Summons of Chingiz Khan, trans. Arthur Waley (London: Broadway Travellers, 1931), 7.

21. Speakers to heaven: This phrase was recorded in the Chinese version. Maybe, тэнгэрийн итгэглч in Modern Mongolian—which would not be so much a speaker to heaven as of or from heaven. One who clarifies or elucidates—илтгэгч. Similar, but different word, itgel. In speaking to Muhali just before he died, Genghis Khan used the phrase “itegelten in’ut,” translated by de Rachewiltz in The Secret History as “trusted friends” (ina’ut being the plural of inaq) (page 972), “Now you two, Borc’orču and Muqali, are my trusted friends.” Secret History, § 266.

22. Arthur Waley, 8.

23. Y. H. Jan, “Hai-yün,” In the Service of the Khan: Eminent Personalities of the Early Mongol-Yüan Period, Igor de Rachewiltz, Hok-lam Chan, Hsiao Ch’i-ch’ing, and Peter W. Geier, eds. (Wiesbaden, Germany: Otto Harrassowitz, 1993), 227. Despite claims in Buddhist chronicles such as the Rosary of White Lotuses that Genghis Khan met with him and with various lamas from Tibet, Genghis Khan was not in the area at that time.

24. Haiyun served Mongke Khan and Khubilai Khan as an adviser.

25. Thomas Allsen, Culture and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 83.

26. Nom: Nâwm (Sogdian transcription), Bar Hebraeus, 355–56.

Chapter 10: God’s Omnipotence

1. Mirza Muhammad Haidar Dughlát, The Tarikh-i-Rashidi: A History of the Moghuls of Central Asia, trans. E. Denison Ross, ed. N. Elias (New York: Cosimo Classic, 2008, reprint of 1895 edition), 293.

2. Juvaini, 64.

3. Ibid., 65.

4. Mirza Muhammad Haidar Dughlát, Tarikh-i-Rashidi: A History of the Moghuls of Central Asia, trans. E. Denison Ross, ed. N. Elias (London: Curzon Press, 1898), 253–55.

5. Juvaini, 66.

6. Juvaini, 67.

7. Ibid.

8. Oration in Honor of Julian, Selected Orations, Volume I: Julianic Orations, Libanius, ed. and trans. A. F. Norman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; Loeb Library edition, 1969). The reign of Julian is discussed in considerable detail by Edward Gibbon in Volume II of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

9. Klaus Lech, Das Mongolische Weltreich, German translation of Masālik al-abār fī mamālik al-amār (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1968), 95, 193.

10. Penalty for killing a person (man tarqaraba bi-li-anān): ibid., 113.

11. Juvaini, 26.

12. Igor de Rachewiltz, 1962, 25, 37.

13. Juvaini, 68.

14. Minhāj Sirāj Jūzjānī, abakāt-i-Nāirī: A General History of the Muhammadan Dynasties of Asia, vol. 2, trans. H. G. Raverty (London: Gilbert & Rivington, 1881), 974–75.

15. Juvaini, 78.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid.

18. Ratchnevsky, 120.

19. Juvaini, 79.

20. Henry Hoyle Howorth, History of the Mongols, 74.

21. Juvaini, 79.

22. Secret History, § 253.

23. V. V. Barthold, Four Studies on the History of Central Asia (Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1956), 36.

24. Juvaini, 19–20.

25. Ibid., 80.

26. Golden Cord: altan argamj, Secret History, § 254.

27. Secret History, § 265.

28. Kolgen: Kölgen.

29. Igor de Rachewiltz et al., In the Service of the Khan, 47.

30. Igor de Rachewiltz, 1962, 19.

31. Igor de Rachewiltz et al., In the Service of the Khan, 48.

32. Igor de Rachewiltz, 1962, 19.

33. Ibid., 24.

34. Ibid., 46.

35. Ibid., 19.

36. E. Bretschneider, “Si Yu Lu (Ye-lu Ch’u Ts’ai),” Mediaeval Researches from Eastern Asiatic Sources (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1910), 17–21.

37. Igor de Rachewiltz, 1962, 58.

38. Juvaini, 84.

39. Shahnama: also known as Shahnameh, quoted by Juvaini, 86.

40. Juvaini, 99.

41. Ibid., 92.

42. Ibid., 396.

43. Ibid., 397.

44. Ibid., 398.

45. Ibid., 123.

46. Ibid., 124.

47. Ibid., 125–26.

48. A History of the Moghuls (Tarikh-i-Rashidi); http://persian.packhum.org/persian/main.

49. Muhammad b. Ali Shabankarah’i, Majma’ al-ansab, 1986, 227. Quoted in Michal Biran, Chinggis Khan (Oxford, UK: Oneworld Publications, 2007), 119.

50. Ghiyas al-din Muhammad Khwand Amir, Habīb al-siyār, vol. 1, trans. W. M. Thackston (Cambridge, MA: Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, 1994), 14. Cited in Richard Foltz, Religions of the Silk Road (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 106.

51. Jalālu-d-Dīn assan III, 1187–1221, imam from 1210 to 1221. Meeting between envoys: Juvaini, 703. Juvaini refers to the imam by the first part of his name, Jalal-al-Din, but he is not the same person as the shah with the same name.

52. Het’um the Historian’s History of the Tartars: The Flower of Histories of the East, trans. Robert Bedrosian (Long Branch, NJ: Sources of the Armenian Tradition, 2004), bk. 3, § 24; https://archive.org/stream/HetumTheHistoriansFlowerOfHistoriesOfTheEast/Hetum_djvu.txt. In addition to myths about the Nizari in Marco Polo, one of the most influential modern works on them was the novel Alamut. It was written by the Slovenian writer Vladimir Bartol (trans. Michael Biggins [Berkeley, California: North Atlantic Books, 2007]) as an allegory against the Fascist ideology of Benito Mussolini in 1930s Italy, and later used as a similar critique against subsequent dictators and totalitarian systems around the world. The novel was made into a dramatic opera by Slovenian composer Matjaž Jarc (Križnar, Franc, “On ‘Alamut,’ and Opera in Three Acts,” Fontes Artis Musicae 55.2 [2008]: 377–88). Bartol’s novel introduced the phrase, “nothing is absolute reality, all is permitted,” later made more famous by William Burroughs as “nothing is true, everything is permitted,” as a theme in his novel Naked Lunch (New York: Penguin, 2015).

53. Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Order of Assassins: The Struggle of the Early Nizari Isma’ilis Against the Islamic World (The Hague: Mouton, 1955), 87–88.

54. Juvaini, 725.

55. Juvaini, 703.

56. Timothy May, “A Mongol-Ismâ’îlî Alliance?: Thoughts on the Mongols and Assassins,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 3rd series, vol. 14 (2004): 231–39.

57. Ibid., 235.

58. Ibid., 239.

59. Devin DeWeese, “Stuck in the Throat of Chingīz Khān: Envisioning the Mongol Conquests in Some Sufi Accounts from the 14th to the 17th Centuries,” History and Historiography of Post-Mongol Central Asia and the Middle East, ed. Judith Pfeiffer and Sholeh Alysia Quinn (Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz, 2006), 39.

60. Ibid., 43.

61. Rashid al-Din, Jami’ al’Tavarikh, ed. Mohammad Roushan and Mustafah Musavi (Tehran: Nashr Albaraz, 1994), 516. Cited in George Lane, Daily Life in the Mongol Empire (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006), 182.

62. DeWeese, “Stuck in the Throat of Chingīz Khān,” 36.

63. Juvaini, 105.

64. Ibid., 104.

65. C. Ž. Žamcarano, Mongol Chronicles of the Seventeenth Century, trans. Rudolf Loewenthal (Wiesbaden, Germany: Otto Harrassowitz, 1955), 84.

66. Pétis de la Croix, 341–43.

67. L. N. Gumilev, Searches for an Imaginary Kingdom, trans. R. E. F. Smith (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 40.

68. DeWeese, “Stuck in the Throat of Chingīz Khān,” 29.

69. Lyall Armstrong, “The Making of a Sufi: Al-Nuwayrī’s Account of the Origin of Genghis Khan,” Mamluk Studies Review X-2 (2006): 154; Reuven Amitai, “Did Chinggis Khan Have a Jewish Teacher? An Examination of an Early Fourteenth-Century Arabic Text,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 124, 693.

70. The Travels of Ibn Battuta A.D. 1325–1354, vol. 3, trans. H. A. R. Gibb (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 583. Quoted in DeWeese, “Stuck in the Throat of Chingīz Khān,” 31.

71. The Chronicle of Novgorod, 1016–1471, Camden Third Series, trans. Robert Micheli and Nevili Forbes (London: Camden Society, vol. XXV, 1914), 66. Similar sentiments were expressed throughout Europe: “The Influence of the Mongols on the Religious Consciousness of Thirteenth Century Europe,” Devin DeWeese, Mongolian Studies, vol. 5, 1978 and 1979, 41–78.

Chapter 11: The Thumb of Fate

1. Secret History, § 33.

2. Ibid., § 255.

3. Ibid.

4. Kirakoz Gandzaket’i’s History of the Armenians, trans. Robert Bedrosian (New York: Sources of the Armenian Tradition, 1986), 195.

5. C. Ž. Žamcarano, Mongol Chronicles of the Seventeenth Century, trans. Rudolf Loewenthal (Wiesbaden, Germany: Otto Harrassowitz, 1955), 84.

6. Olan ulus-barisu

Beye inu quriyatala

Sedkil-in inu quriyagtunedkil-I quriyabasu

Beye inu qamig-a oduqu

Lubsang-Danzin, 28. See also Shagdaryn Bira, Mongolian Historical Writing from 1200 to 1700, trans. John R. Krueger, 2nd ed. (Bellingham, WA: Center for East Asian Studies, Western Washington University, 2002), 182. Bira/Krueger’s translation: “Strong in body, one conquers units; strong in soul one conquers a multitude.” The quote appears in different Mongolian chronicles and is attributed alternately to Genghis Khan and to Khubilai Khan (who may have been quoting his grandfather).

Ta uru ut minu mona qoyina

Ulus irgen-i quriyabasu gesü

Beyeyi anu quriyatala

Setgili anu quriyabasu setgili anu

Guriyaca beyas anu qa-a e’ütqun.

Entry 93, 123, Najm’al-Ajāib. Also quoted in L. Ligeti, “Monuments en ecriture ’Phags-pa,” Monumenta Linguae Mongolicae Collecta, vol. 3 (Budapest, 1972), 123. And in Sh. Bira, “Qubilai Qa’an and ’Phags-pa bLa-ma,” The Mongol Empire and Its Legacy, ed. Reuven Amitai-Preiss and David Morgan (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2001), 242.

7. Rashid al-Din, 137–38.

8. Ibid., 138.

9. Description of a Mongol hero adapted from G. Mend-Oyo, Altan Ovoo, trans. Simon Wickham-Smith (Ulaanbaatar: Mongolian Academy of Culture and Poetry, 2012), 58.

10. Mongolian proverb, Энэ морь ѳмнѳрээ тоос гаргаж зээгй.

11. Minhāj Sirāj Jūzjānī, abakāt-i-Nāirī: A General History of the Muhammadan Dynasties of Asia, vol. 2, trans. H. G. Raverty (London: Gilbert & Rivington, 1881), 1039–42.

12. Ibn Battuta, Travels in Asia and Africa, 1325–1354 (London: Routledge, 2004), 179.

13. Juvaini, 405.

14. P. Ratchnevsky, “Šigi Qutuqu,” In the Service of the Khan: Eminent Personalities of the Early Mongol-Yüan Period, ed. Igor de Rachewiltz, Hok-lam Chan, Hsiao Ch’i-ch’ing, and Peter W. Geier (Wiesbaden, Germany: Otto Harrassowitz, 1993), 75–94.

15. Juvaini, 407.

16. Ratchnevsky, 75–94.

17. Jonathan L. Lee, The Ancient Supremacy: Bukhara, Afghanistan and the Battle for Balkh, 1731–1901 (Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1996), 15.

18. Annemarie Schimmel, Rumi’s World: The Life and Work of the Great Sufi Poet (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1992), 158.

19. Juvaini, 132.

20. Pétis de la Croix, 310.

21. Voltaire, The Orphan of China, trans. William F. Fleming (Jersey City, NJ: Start Publishing, 2012), act 3, scene 2.

22. Juvaini, 151–52.

23. Ibid., 133. Matykan (Juvaini), Mwatwkan or Mö’etüken (Rashid al-Din); also written as Metiken and Mutukan. He is not included in the Secret History, probably because of the lingering prohibition by Genghis Khan against mentioning his death.

24. Kirakoz Gandzaket’i’s History of the Armenians, trans. Robert Bedrosian (New York: Sources of the Armenian tradition, 1986), 221.

25. Injannasi, xx.

26. Juvaini, 408.

27. Ibid., 409.

28. Ibid., 410.

29. Ibid.

30. Ibid.

Chapter 12: Wild Man from the Mountain

1. Arthur Waley, 111.

2. Igor de Rachewiltz, 48.

3. Paul D. Buell, “Yeh-lü A-hai (ca. 1151–1223), Yeh-lü T’u-hua (d. 1231),” In the Service of the Khan, ed. Igor de Rachewiltz, Hok-lam Chan, Hsiao Ch’i-ch’ing, and Peter W. Geier (Wiesbaden, Germany: Otto Harrassowitz, 1993), 112–21.

4. Qiu Chuji: also known as Ch’ang-Ch’un.

5. E. Bretschneider, Mediaeval Researches from Eastern Asiatic Sources (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1910), 37.

6. Arthur Waley, 23.

7. Ibid., 129.

8. Igor de Rachewiltz, Secret History, note to § 121, 451. Mongolian: apгa.

9. Kirakoz Gandzaket’i’s History of the Armenians, trans. Robert Bedrosian (New York: Sources of the Armenian Tradition, 1986), 234.

10. Xuanfeng qinghui lu. Changchun zhenren xiyou ji. Qiu Chuji’s companion Li Zhichang described the encounter in detail and published it as Accounts of Felicitous Meetings with the Mysterious School.

11. Travels to the West, Xiyou ji, .

12. Changchun zhenren xiyou ji, published in 1228. Igor de Rachewiltz, 1962, 1–128.

13. Igor de Rachewiltz, Hok-lam Chan, Hsiao Ch’i-ch’ing, and Peter W. Geier, 145.

14. Arthur Waley, 80.

15. Tao-Chung Yao, “Ch’iu Ch’u-chi and Chinggis Khan,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, vol. 46, no. 1 (June 1986): 204–5. The claim that Genghis Khan wanted a magical potion to guarantee immortality seemed to be a revision of the ancient Chinese myth that China’s first emperor, the founder of the Qin dynasty (221–209 BC), sought such an elixir in order to rule the world until the end of time. Almost the same story can be found in the Romance of Alexander about the Greek conqueror (“An Early Version of the Alexander Romance,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, vol. 22, 1959, English on p. 60; Mongolian on p. 44).

16. Tao-Chung Yao, “Ch’iu Ch’u-chi and Chinggis Khan,” 209.

17. Čingis Boγda olan öber-e yosutan-i erke-degen quiryaγsan, Francis Woodman Cleaves, “Teb Tenggeri,” Ural-Altaische Jahrbücher, vol. 39 (Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz, 1967), 254–55.

18. Arthur Waley, 1931, 111–12.

19. Tengri Mongke Ken: or Tenggeri Möngke kümün, ibid., 101.

20. Ibid., 102.

21. Ibid., 116.

22. Igor de Rachewiltz, 1962, 28.

23. Arthur Waley, 115.

24. Hsüan-feng Ch’ing Hui Lu, Wieger’s catalog of Taoist writings, No. 1410. Arthur Waley, 21.

25. Arthur Waley, 22.

26. Ibid., 25.

27. Ibid., 118.

28. Hsüan-feng, quoted in Tao-Chung Yao, “Ch’iu Ch’u-chi and Chinggis Khan,” 214.

29. Arthur Waley, 126. Li is a measure equal to about half a kilometer or one third of a mile.

30. In chapter three of Pien-wei-lu, quoted in Joseph Thiel, 18.

31. Igor de Rachewiltz, 1962, 25–30.

32. Ibid., 26.

33. Ibid., 29.

34. Atwood, 433.

35. Joseph Thiel, 20.

36. Arthur Waley, 112.

37. Minhāj Sirāj Jūzjānī, abakāt-i-Nāirī: A General History of the Muhammadan Dynasties of Asia, vol. 2, trans. H. G. Raverty (London: Gilbert & Rivington, 1881), 1078–79.

38. Arthur Waley, 152.

39. Ibid., 126.

40. Ibid., 130–31.

41. Joseph Thiel, 22.

42. Arthur Waley, 148.

Chapter 13: The Confucian and the Unicorn

1. Anna Contadini, “A Bestiary Tale: Text and Image of the Unicorn in the Kitāb nāt al-hayawān (British Library, or. 2784),” Muqarnas, vol. 20 (2003): 17–33.

2. The Romance of Alexander the Great by Pseudo-Callisthenes, trans. Albert Mugrdich Wolohojian (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), 126–27.

3. The Travels of Marco Polo: The Complete Yule-Cordier Edition, vol. I, chap. XXIX. The Romance of Alexander spread, and elements of Alexander’s life and fictional stories were adapted into various local oral traditions. In the Epic of King Gesar, the stories of Alexander and Genghis Khan blend. Combined with other real and mythical figures, the hero was sometimes identified as Gesar Genghis (“The Tuvan Legend of Genghis Khan,” by Sarangerel, Senri Ethnological Studies 86, 215–221).

4. Alice Sárközi, “Mandate of Heaven,” Altaica Berolinensia: The Concept of Sovereignty in the Altaic World, ed. Barbara Kellner-Heinkele (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1993), 216.

5. Lee Dian Rainey, Confucius and Confucianism (West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2010), 12–16.

6. Yellow History, Shira Tuguji, quoted in Shagdaryn Bira, Mongolian Historical Writing from 1200 to 1700, trans. John R. Krueger, 2nd ed. (Bellingham, WA: Center for East Asian Studies, Western Washington University, 2002), 188–89.

7. “An Early Version of the Alexander Romance,” English on p. 60; “dalai ötögen-i yeke tenggis-i tenggisün irug[ar-i] tu[gulju] irebe bi Sumur tag-un orai deger-e garba naran singgekü -in jug qaranggu-yi dagaba qoyar od yabuju gutugar on,” Mongolian on p. 44.

8. Ibid., 44–45.

9. Francis Woodman Cleaves, “An Early Mongolian Version of The Alexander Romance,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, vol. 22 (1959): 1–99.

10. “An Early Version of the Alexander Romance,” English on p. 61, “qan bolju aba ane ale gajar deger-e m[in]u metü jirgagsan qan es-e törejü bülege namayi ükübesü dalai-yi nigete bitügülüdkün angqa urida mingan narid ökidi mingyan kü,” p. 45.

11. Walther Heissig, A Lost Civilization: The Mongols Rediscovered, trans. D.J.S. Thomson (New York: Basic Books, 1996), 236–37.

12. Igor de Rachewiltz, Hok-lam Chan, Hsiao Ch’i-ch’ing, and Peter W. Geier, 164–65.

13. Igor de Rachewiltz, 1962, 46.

14. The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature, vol. 1, ed. Kang-i Sun Chang and Stephen Owen (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 594.

15. Igor de Rachewiltz, 1962, 17.

16. Ibid., 40.

17. Ibid., 41, 84.

18. Ibid., 28.

19. Yunag-Kang Wang, Harmony and War: Confucian Culture and Chinese Power Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011).

20. Peter Olbricht and Elisabeth Pinks, 210.

21. Illuminati: Also called a “steppe intelligentsia”; Paul D. Buell, “Činqai,” In the Service of the Khan: Eminent Personalities of the Early Mongol-Yüan Period, ed. Igor de Rachewiltz, Hok-lam Chan, Hsiao Ch’i-ch’ing, and Peter W. Geier, 95.

22. N. S. Trubetzkoy, The Legacy of Genghis Khan (Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications, 1991), 169.

23. Juvaini, 204.

24. Igor de Rachewiltz, 1962, 36.

25. Ibid., 37.

26. Ibid., 38.

27. Jan Yün-hua, “Chinese Buddhism in Ta-tu,” Yüan Thought: Chinese Thought and Religion Under the Mongols, ed. Hok-lam Chan and Wm. Theodore de Bary (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 384.

28. Igor de Rachewiltz, 1962, 35.

29. Jan Yün-hua, “Chinese Buddhism in Ta-tu,” 388.

30. Igor de Rachewiltz, 1962, 36.

31. Ma Juan, “The Conflict Between Islam and Confucianism,” Eurasian Influences on Yuan China, ed. Morris Rossabi (Singapore: ISEAS Publishing, 2013), 63.

32. Thomas T. Allsen, “Ögedei and Alcohol,” Mongolian Studies, vol. 29 (2007): 5.

33. Igor de Rachewiltz, 1962, 36–37.

34. http:://www.linguamongolia.com/Muhammad%20al-Samarqandi.pdf. For contrasting views of the poems, see these two articles: T. Gandjei, “Was Muhammad al-Samarqandi a Polyglot Poet?,” Istanbul Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakulteei Turk Dili ve Edebiyatî Dergisi (TDED), vol. XVIII (1970): 63–66; Igor de Rachewiltz, “The Mongolian Poem of Muhammad al Samarqandī,” Central Asiatic Journal, vol. 12 (1969): 280–85.

Chapter 14: The Last Campaign

1. Larry V. Clark, “From the Legendary Cycle of Činggis-qaγan: The Story of an Encounter with 300 Tayičiγud from the Altan Tobči (1655),” Mongolian Studies, vol. 5 (1978 and 1979), 25.

2. Yesüngge.

3. Injannasi, 84.

4. The right way: arqacha sayin anu.

5. Igor de Rachewiltz, Secret History, 780.

6. Ibid., § 205.

7. Nikolai Sergeevich Trubetzkoy, The Legacy of Genghis Khan, trans. Kenneth Brostrom (Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications, 1991), 173–74.

8. Pétis de la Croix, 364.

9. Secret History, § 265.

10. Reddish-gray horse: josotu boro.

11. Leland Liu Rogers, 108.

12. King of Heaven: Ssanang Ssetsen (Chungtaidischi), Erdeni-yin Tobci, Geschichte der Ost-Mongololen und ihres Fürstenhaues, trans. Isaac Jacob Schmidt (St. Petersburg: N. Gretsch, 1829), 101. Also see the Erdeni-yin Tobci adaptation, Paul Kahn (1998), 182–85.

13. Leland Liu Rogers, 104. See also Ssanang Ssetsen (Chungtaidischi), 97.

14. Evgenij I. Kychanov, “The State and the Buddhist Sangha: Xixia State (982–1227),” Journal of Oriental Studies, vol. 10 (2000): 119–28.

15. Weirong Shen, “A Preliminary Investigation into the Tangut Background of the Mongol Adoption of the Tibetan Tantric Buddhism,” Contributions to Tibetan Buddhist Literature, ed. Orna Almogi (Halle, Germany: International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies, 2008), 326–27.

16. Ibid., 315–44.

17. Secret History, § 267.

18. Ruth W. Dunnel, The Great State of White and High: Buddhism and State Formation in Eleventh-Century Xia (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1996), 124.

19. Secret History, § 268.

20. Lubsang-Danzin, §§ 44–45.

21. Ibid., §§ 47–48.

22. Ibid., 59–60, translation quoted in Shagdaryn Bira, Mongolian Historical Writing from 1200 to 1700, trans. John R. Krueger, 2nd ed. (Bellingham, WA: Center for East Asian Studies, Western Washington University, 2002), 180–83.

23. Erdeni tunumal neretü, trans. from Mongolian to German by Karénina Kollmar-Paulenz (Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2001), § 2. Also translated into English as Johan Elverskog, The Jewel Translucent Sūtra (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2003), 63.

24. Letter of Genghis Khan to Ch’ang-ch’un, Arthur Waley, 1931, 158. Genghis Khan wrote to the Taoist sage in the eleventh lunar month of 1223.

Chapter 15: War, Inside and Out

1. Juvaini, 189.

2. Ibid., 188.

3. Ibid., 184–85.

4. “A Mongol-Ismâ’îlî Alliance?: Thoughts on the Mongols and Assassins,” Timothy May, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 3rd series, vol. 14, 2004, 237.

5. Juvaini, 181, 256.

6. Eagle’s Nest: Ismaili Castles in Iran and Syria, Peter Willey (London: Tauris, 2005), 76–77.

7. Igor de Rachewiltz, 1962, 35.

8. Klaus Sagaster, “The History of Buddhism Among the Mongols,” The Spread of Buddhism, ed. Ann Heirman and Stephan Peter Humbacher (Keude, Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill, 2007), 379–432, 389.

9. Igor de Rachewiltz, 1962, 25.

10. Secret History, § 276.

11. Ibid., § 272.

12. Death of Subodei: “A la mort d’Ogodaï, il y eut une grande assemblée de tous les princes de la famille de Tchingkis. Batou ne voulait pas s’y rendre; mais Souboutaï lui représenta qu’étant l’aîné de tous ces princes, il lui était impossible de s’en dispenser. Batou partit donc pour l’assemblée qui se tint sur le bord de la rivière Yetchili. Après l’assemblée, Souboutaï revint à son campement sur le Tho-na (Danube), et il y mourut à l’âge de soixante-treize ans. Conformément à l’usage des Chinois, on lui donna un titre qui rappelait ses plus belles actions: ce fut le titre de roi du Ho-nan, à cause de la conquête de cette province qu’il avait enlevée aux Kin. L’épithète honorifique qui fut jointe à son nom fut celle de fidèle et invariable. Il laissa un fils nommé Ouriyangkhataï, qui, disent les Chinois, après avoir soumis toutes les tribus des Russes, des Polonais et des Allemands, fut envoyé pour conquérir le royaume d’Awa et le Tonquin.” Jean-Pierre Abel-Remusat, Nouveaus Mélanges Asiatiques, vol. II (Paris: Schubart et Heideloff, 1829), 96–97.

13. Rashid al-Din, The Successors of Genghis Khan, 187.

14. Juvaini, 258.

15. Carpini, Friar Giovanni DiPlano, The Story of the Mongols Whom We Call the Tartars, trans. Erik Hildinger (Boston: Branding Publishing, 1996), 109.

16. Ibid., 112–113.

17. Ibid., 116.

18. It took Carpini another year to return to Rome. Although Matthew Paris noted in his entry for 1247 that the pope’s envoy had returned, he did not mention Carpini by name. Instead he sniffed at the Khan’s claim of superior power when he reported the pope “received a mandate from the king of the Tartars ordering him to become his subject. This king, in daring and profane words, asserted in his letter that he was immortal.” Paris gives the impression that the Khan was quoting the Bible by claiming “he and his followers were those of whom it was written, ‘the Lord gave the earth to the children of men’” [Psalms 115:16]. In the confusion, and not knowing anything of the Mongol’s history, Paris and many others assumed that they were Jewish, one of the Lost Tribes of Israel. Chronicles of Matthew Paris: Monastic Life in the Thirteenth Century, ed. and trans. Richard Vaughan (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984), 94. After such a long and unprecedented trip, Carpini received an appointment as the archbishop of Antivari on the Dalmatian coast of modern Montenegro. He wrote up his observations about the Mongols and his recommendations for how to deal with them diplomatically as well as militarily in his Historia Mongalorum quos nos Tartaros Appellamus (The History of the Mongols Whom We Call the Tartars). The book provided an important ethnographic sketch of the Mongols and a short history, including an account of the life of Genghis Khan and his role in founding the Mongol people. Vatican librarians lost it amid their troves, and like many of the Mongol letters and documents sent to the Vatican, it was not to be seen or read again for several centuries.

19. Matthew Paris’s English History from the Year 1235 to 1273, trans. J. A. Giles (London: Henry G. Bohn; reproduced ed., New York: AMS Press, 1968), vol. I, 155.

20. Angel-faced is translated as peri-faced based on a Persian word for angel. Ibid., 188.

21. Official was Kuo Pao-yü: Igor de Rachewiltz, “Personnel and Personalities in North China in the Early Mongol Period,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 9 (1966), 126.

22. Minhaj al-Din Juzjani, Tabaqāt-i nāsirī, vol. 2, trans. H. G. Raverty (Osnabrück, Germany: Biblio Verlag, 1991; 1881 reprint), 1157–58. Cited in Richard Foltz, Religions of the Silk Road (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 111.

23. Eric Voegelin, “Mongol Orders of Submission to European Powers,” Byzantium, vol. 15 (1940–41), in The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. 5, Published Essays: 1940–1952 (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 133.

24. Juvaini, 265.

25. Ibid., 266.

26. Voegelin, Published Essays: 1940–1952, 79, 96.

27. Juvaini, 565.

28. Juvaini, 569.

29. Juvaini, 595.

30. Rashid al-Din, The Successors of Genghis Khan, 215.

31. William of Rubruck, 221–22.

32. Ibid., 222.

33. Secret History, § 203. For a discussion of Shigi-Khutkhu during this time, see commentary in Peter Olbricht and Elisabeth Pinks, 149.

34. Igor de Rachewiltz, Secret History, 832–834.

35. Rashid al-Din, The Successors of Genghis Khan, 186.

36. Ironically, six centuries later the Russian writer Alexander Puskhin described the Mongols as “Arabs without Aristotle or Algebra.”

37. Rashid al-Din, The Successors of Genghis Khan, 210.

38. Ibid., 211.

39. Juvaini, 51.

40. Rashid al-Din, The Successors of Genghis Khan, 210–13.

41. Ibid., 213.

42. Ibid.

43. Juvaini, 246.

44. Ibid., 247.

Chapter 16: Burning the Books

1. Elizabeth Endicott-West, “Notes on Shamans, Fortune-tellers and Yin-Yang Practitioners and Civil Administration in Yüan China,” The Mongol Empire and Its Legacy, ed. Reuven Amitai-Preiss and David Morgan (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1999), 224–39.

2. William of Rubruck, 108.

3. Comments on shamans made on William of Rubruck’s final audience with Mongke Khan, May 31, 1254.

4. William of Rubruck, 239.

5. William E. Henthorn, Korea: The Mongol Invasions (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1963), 75, 96.

6. Meir Shahar, The Shaolin Monastery (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008), 36.

7. Arthur Waley, “Introduction,” 30.

8. Joseph Thiel, 34.

9. Ibid.

10. Igor de Rachewiltz, “The Hsi-Yu Lu by Yeh-Lü Ch’u -Ts’Ai ,” Monumenta Serica, vol. 21 (1962): 81.

11. Juvaini, 607.

12. William of Rubruck, 228–30.

13. John Andrew Boyle, “Turkish and Mongol Shamanism in the Middle Ages,” Folklore, vol. 83 (1972): 177–93, 178.

14. Eric Voegelin, “Mongol Orders of Submission to European Powers” (Letter of Aldijigiddai to Saint Louis), The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. 10, Published Essays: 1940–1952 (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri, 2000), 93–94.

15. William Woodville Rockhill, The Journey of William of Rubruck to the Eastern Parts of the World, 1253–55 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1900), chap. XVI.

16. Arthur Waley, 20–33.

17. Joseph Thiel, 35.

18. Pien wei lou, chap. III, 68 r°, col. 12. Ed. Chavannes, “Inscriptions et pièces de chancellerie chinoises de l’époque mongole,” in T’oung Pao, vol. V (1904), 375.

19. Joseph Thiel, 37.

20. Arthur Waley, 30. Chinese sources identified Namo as a native of Kashmir, but he practiced Tibetan Buddhism. He recognized early the coming importance of the Mongols, or the “imperial feeling in the air towards the Northeast,” and that “his own country was about to collapse in the general upheaval which was overwhelming the world.”

21. Zizhi Tongjian Gangmu: Tong Kien Kang Mu or Kangmu, quoted from Sir Henry Hoyle Howorth, History of the Mongols, 504–5.

22. Ed. Chavannes, “Inscriptions et pièces de chancellerie chinoises de l’époque mongole,” 381.

23. Ibid., 374.

24. Juvaini, 666.

25. Farhad Daftary, The Isma’ilis: Their History and Doctrines (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 427.

26. Ibid., 682.

27. Ibid., 719.

28. Ibid., 725.

29. Minhāj Sirāj Jūzjānī, abakāt-i-Nāirī: A General History of the Muhammadan Dynasties of Asia, vol. 2, trans. H. G. Raverty (London: Gilbert & Rivington, 1881), 1245.

30. John Andrew Boyle, The Mongol World Empire 1206–1370 (London: Variorum, 1977), 158.

31. Hend Gilli-Elewy, 361–62.

32. Ibid., 366. “Hulegu seized the treasures of Baghdad, the enumeration of, and amount of which wealth, the pen of description could neither record, nor the human understanding contain, and conveyed the whole—money, jewels, gold, and gem-studded vases, and elegant furniture—to his camp.” Minhāj Sirāj Jūzjānī, abakāt-i-Nāirī: A General History of the Muhammadan Dynasties of Asia, 1255–56.

33. Bar Hebraeus, 430.

34. L. J. Ward, “The Zafar-Nmah of HamdAllāh Mustaufī and the Il-Khān Dynasty of Iran,” Ph.D. diss. (University of Manchester Faculty of Arts, October 1983), 76.

35. Hend Gilli-Elewy, 368.

36. Joseph Thiel, 1–81.

37. Li Zhichang died in 1256 despite other claims that he died two years or twenty years later.

38. Joseph Thiel, 40.

39. Ibid., 7.

40. Ibid., 41.

41. Ibid., 43.

42. Pseudo Ibn Fowati quoted in George Lane, “Whose Secret Intent?,” in Eurasian Influences on Yuan China, ed. Morris Rossabi (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Publishing, 2013), 12.

43. “The old Mongol tradition,” wrote Russian scholar Nicholay Gumilev, “had been poured out too widely to remain of a piece and the streams formed from this source could not, and did not wish to, flow along one course.” (Searches for an Imaginary Kingdom, by L. N. Gumilev, trans. R.E.F. Smith [Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987], 203). Nineteenth-century Mongolian writer Injannasi reached the same conclusion. “The decline of our Mongols was the result of too much easy living,” he wrote. Yet, “when one tries to explain this fact, he is accused of being an infidel or heretic before he is heard”(Köke Sudur [The Blue Chronicle], trans. John Gombojab Hangin [Wiesbaden, Germany: Otto Harrassowitz], 1973, 51).

Chapter 17: Life After Death

1. The De Monarchia of Dante Alighieri, trans. Aurelia Henry (Chesterland, OH: General Bookbinding Co., 1896), book III, chapter VIII, 2, 26.

2. Ibid., book I, chapter XV, 4, 196.

3. “Questi non ciberà terra né peltro, / ma sapïenza, amore e virtute, / e sua nazion sarà tra feltro e feltro.” The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: Inferno, trans. Allen Mandelbaum (New York: Bantam Classics, 1982), canto I, lines 103–5, 6. Many Renaissance scholars have rejected this supposed Mongol symbolism and insisted instead that the symbols derived from classical Greek and Roman sources. The connections to Genghis Khan via Marco Polo are explained in Cesare Emiliani, “The Veltro and the Cinquecento diece e cinque,” Dante Studies, vol. 111 (1993): 149–51. Other background information is available in Leonardo Olschki, The Myth of Felt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1949). Gran Cano also bears similarity to the nickname Cangrande, given to one of Dante’s patrons, Francesco della Scala.

4. As of the secte of which that he was born

He kept his lay, to which that he was sworn;

And therto he was hardy, wys, and riche,

And pitous and just, alwey yliche. . . .

Geoffrey Chaucer, The Squire’s Tale (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990), 131.

5. The Pearl Rosary, trans. Johan Elverskog (Bloomington, IN: The Mongolia Society, 2007), 15.

6. For centuries, Guards kept foreigners away from the shrines, and only a few Mongols could enter. Not until centuries later did the first foreigners, two Belgians, manage to see the shrines and describe them. According to their report, the tents “contained various precious objects, such as a gold saddle, dishes, drinking-cups, a tripod, a kettle, and many other utensils, all in solid silver.” Missions Catholiques, No. 315, June 18, 1875, 293, quoted in The Book of Ser Marco Polo, trans. Henry Yule, chap. X (London: John Murray, 1903), 249. Another visitor described the shrine as “two large white felt tents, placed side by side, similar to the tents of the modern Mongols.” Because of the secrecy surrounding the shrines, many people erroneously assumed that they contained the remains of Genghis Khan. One such report claimed that “a red curtain, when drawn, discloses the large and low silver coffin, which contains the ashes of the Emperor, placed on the ground of the second tent.” He had been buried at Burkhan Khaldun, and although the portable shrines had moved around with the items that had belonged to him, he never again left his beloved mountain. M.C.E. Bonin, Revue de Paris, February 15, 1898, quoted in ibid., 250.

7. N. Hurcha, “Attempts to Buddhicise the Cult of Chinggis Khan,” Inner Asia, vol. 1 (1999).

8. Ibid., 49.

9. In the Hellenistic kingdoms that arose in Afghanistan after Alexander the Great, Heracles became the protector of the Buddha known as Vajrapani. Heracles was frequently depicted in art and on coins as the perfect embodiment of manhood, and according to Greek mythology, he usually carried a large club with which he had slain a lion as his first heroic act. In the Greco-Buddhist synthesis of art and religion, Heracles and his club represented the Bodhisattva Vajrapani and his thunderbolt, with which he protected the Buddha. His name meant “holder of the thunderbolt,” from the Sanskrit vajra, meaning both thunderbolt and diamond.

10. White History: This document was supposedly written in the time of Khubilai Khan in the late thirteenth century and miraculously rediscovered in the late sixteenth century. Most likely it was written in the sixteenth century but possibly with some original portions from the thirteenth. Shagdaryn Bira, Mongolian Historical Writing from 1200 to 1700, trans. John R. Krueger (Bellingham, WA: Center for East Asian Studies, Western Washington University, 2002), 64. Also on Vajrapani, see Michael Jerryson, “Buddhist Tradition and Violence,” The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence, ed. Mark Juergensmeyer, Margo Kitts, and Michael Jerryson (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013), 56.

11. Ibid., 53.

12. Walther Heissig, A Lost Civilization: The Mongols Rediscovered, trans. D.J.S. Thomson (New York: Basic Books, 1996), 86.

13. Karl Sagaster, Die Weise Geschichte (Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz, 1976), 315.

14. Larry Moses and Stephen A. Halkovic, Jr., Introduction to Mongolian History and Culture, Indiana University Uralic and Altaic Series, vol. 49 (Bloomington, IN: Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, 1985), 211.

Chapter 18: The Unfulfilled Law

1. John Locke, The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, 1669, §§ 95–110.

2. Tobias George Smollett, Thomas Francklin, et al., The Works of M. de Voltaire: A Treatise on Toleration, vol. 24 (London: Newberry et al., 1764), 46.

3. Anne de La Roche-Guilhem, trans., 9. The book also appeared simultaneously from a different printer with a different title: Taxila or Love prefer’d before Duty. For information on her life, see Alexander Calame, Anne de La Roche-Guilhem: Romancière huguenote (1644–1707) (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1972), 44.

4. On October 18, 1685, Louis XIV issued the Édit de Fontainebleau, which revoked the Édit de Nantes of Henry IV in 1598 giving rights to Huguenots.

5. Anne de La Roche-Guilhem, 3–9, 88.

6. Pétis de la Croix, 78–90.

7. Minhāj Sirāj Jūzjānī, abakāt-i-Nārī: A General History of the Muhammadan Dynasties of Asia, vol. 2, trans. H. G. Raverty (London: Gilbert & Rivington, 1881), 1010.

8. Adams in a letter to Jefferson on June 28, 1813, compares the war techniques of Zingis to those of American Indians and the Mongol hunting battue to those used in Scotland. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 5, ed. H. A. Washington (Washington, DC: Taylor & Maury, 1854), 148. Newspapers of the time contained articles linking Indians and Tartars and the army of Zingis Khan: “From the American Magazine,” The Connecticut Journal, November 12, 1788, 2; Salem Mercury, November 18, 1788, 1; Worcester Gazette, November 20, 1788, 1; Newport Herald, December 4, 1788, 1; Albany Gazette, December 26, 1788.

9. Luciano Petech, “Notes on Tibetan History of the 18th Century,” T’oung Pao, 2nd series, vol. 52, livr. 4/5 (1966): 272.

10. Luciano Petech, “The Dalai-Lamas and Regents of Tibet: A Chronological Study,” ibid., vol. 47, livr. 3/5 (1959): 368–94.

11. Ippolito Desideri, 229.

12. Ibid., 244.

13. “The sorrowful news of his death and the manner in which he had died spread throughout Tibet, and the universal grief it excited is beyond description, as was the bitter hatred aroused toward the new king among all classes of people, especially those who make a show of being churchmen and religious. It was even more disastrous for the new Grand Lama who had been chosen as the replacement by the king himself. The king had forced his discontented people to accept the new Grand Lama under the threat of violence and with the aid of a foreign power, the emperor of China, who had allied himself with his royal relative and supported his decision in this manner. The emperor and the king issued a joint edict ordering a mandatory death sentence for anyone unwilling to recognize the new Dalai Lama.” Ibid., 244–45.

14. Ibid., 245.

15. Tibetan title: Tho rangs mun sel nyi ma shar ba’i brda. Trent Pomplun, “Natural Reason and Buddhist Philosophy: The Tibetan Studies of Ippolito Desideri, SJ (1684–1733),” History of Religions, vol. 50 (2011), 388.

16. Ippolito Desideri, 185.

17. Ibid., 187.

18. Ibid., 187–88.

19. Mission to Tibet: The Extraordinary Eighteenth-Century Account of Father Ippolito Desideri, S. J., trans. Michael Sweet (Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2010), 245.

20. Ippolito Desideri, 192.

21. M. Klaproth, “Account of Tibet, by Fra Francesco Orazio Della Penna de Billi, 1730,” Monthly Register for British and Foreign India, China, and Australia, vol. XV (1834): 296.

22. Ibid., 298.

23. Genghiscano Imperador de’ Tartari Mongoli.

24. London Daily Post, December 19, 1744.

25. Liu Wu-Chi, “The Original Orphan of China,” Comparative Literature, vol. 5 (1953): 193–212.

26. Voltaire, The Orphan of China, trans. William F. Fleming (Jersey City, NJ: Start Publishing, 2012), act 4, scene 1.

27. Ibid., act 2, scene 6.

28. Portrait of a salon reading of the work: www.histoire-image.org/etudes/salons-xviiie-siecle?i=1258, Lecture de la tragédie de “l’orphelin de la Chine” de Voltaire dans le salon de madame Geoffrin. The picture shows a gathering of distinguished guests in the drawing room of French hostess Marie-Thérèse Rodet Geoffrin (1699–1777), who is seated on the right.

29. Arthur Murphy, The Orphan of China, a Tragedy, 3rd ed. (London: P. Valliant, 1772; original publication, 1759), 1.

30. Hsin-yun Ou, “Gender, Consumption, and Ideological Ambiguity in David Garrick’s Production of The Orphan of China (1759),” Theatre Journal, vol. 60 (2008): 383–407.

31. Liu Wu-Chi, “The Original Orphan of China,” 211.

32. “Review of The Orphan of China, a Tragedy,” The Monthly Review 20 (June 1759): 575, art. 24. Quoted in Hsin-yun Ou, 383.

33. Alexander Dow, Zingis a Tragedy, as it is performed at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane (London: T. Becket & P. A. De Hondt, 1769), 1. Review in The Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. 39 (1769): 40–43.

34. Alexander Dow, 85.

35. Some Account of the English Stage, vol. 5 (Bath, England: H. E. Carrington, 1832), 220.

36. Gio Batista Casti, Gengis Cano or Il Poema Tartaro (Brusselles, Belgio: Presso H. Tarlier, 1829).

37. Lorenzo da Ponte, Memoirs, trans. Elisabeth Abbott (New York: The New York Review of Books, 2000), 142.

38. Charles Mills, History of Muhammedanism (London: Black, Parbury, and Allen, 1817), 216.

39. I. Pottinger, A Letter from Mons. De Voltaire to the Author of the orphan of China (London, 1759). The Library of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Edwin Wolf and Kevin J. Hayes (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2006), 815, entry 3535.

40. Article from South Carolina Gazette, March 17, 1764, published in “Historical Notes,” The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine, vol. 14 (1913): 171–72. Liu Wu-Chi, “The Original Orphan of China,” 211.

41. Pennsylvania Gazette, January 15, 1767.

42. Harold Lawton Bruce, “Voltaire on the English Stage,” University of California Publications in Modern Philology, vol. 8 (1918): 142–43.

43. John Kuo Wei Tchen, “George Washington: Porcelain, Tea, and Revolution,” Racially Writing the Republic: Racists, Race Rebels, and Transformations of American Identity, ed. Bruce Baum and Duchess Harris (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009), 36. Also see John Kuo Wei Tchen, New York Before Chinatown: Orientalism and the Shaping of American Culture (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 19–22; A. Owen Aldridge, The Dragon and the Eagle: The Presence of China in the American Enlightenment (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1993), 95; Philip Vallenti, “The Orphan of Zhao—A Chinese Inspiration for the American Revolution?,” seminar sponsored by the New York Chinese Opera Society, New York, 2015.

44. Thomas Jefferson, “1783 Catalog of Books [circa 1775–1812], 32 [electronic edition]. Thomas Jefferson Papers: An Electronic Archive (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 2003), www.thomasjeffersonpapers.org.

45. Cyrus King of Massachusetts quoted in Charles Jared Ingersoll, History of the Second War Between the United States of America and Great Britain, vol. II (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co., 1852), 273.

46. Pétis de la Croix, 78.

47. “A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, 18 June, 1779”: Well aware that the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds; that Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do, but to extend it by its influence on reason alone; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time: That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical; that even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness; and is withdrawing from the ministry those temporary rewards, which proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct, are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labours for the instruction of mankind; that our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry; that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right; that it tends also to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing, with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments, those who will externally profess and conform to it; that though indeed these are criminal who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that the opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty, because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own; that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them. We the General Assembly of Virginia do enact that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities. And though we well know that this Assembly, elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of legislation only, have no power to restrain the acts of succeeding Assemblies, constituted with powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this act irrevocable would be of no effect in law; yet we are free to declare, and do declare, that the rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right. http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-02-02-0132-0004-0082.

48. John Adams, one of the Founding Fathers and the second president of the United States, remained critical of the excessive praise heaped on Genghis Khan. Because of his diplomatic problems dealing with Napoleon, Adams had a strong dislike for conquerors in general. In a letter to Thomas Jefferson, who was the sometimes rival and sometimes ally of Adams, on July 16, 1814, Adams criticized Napoleon as a “military fanatic” comparable to Alexander, Caesar, Muhammad and Genghis Khan. In another letter to Jefferson on March 10, 1823, Adams criticizes Napoleon’s campaigns because conquest is always bad. He wrote that Genghis Khan destroyed “many millions of lives, and thought he had a right to the whole globe, if he could subdue it” (The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. H. A. Washington [New York: H. W. Derby, 1861]).

Epilogue: The Thunderbolt of God

1. John McCannon, “By the Shores of White Waters: The Altai and Its Place in the Spiritual Geopolitics of Nicholas Roerich,” Sibirica, vol. 2 (2002): 183.

2. Roerich, Heart of Asia, 3, 119.

3. Theodore A. Wilson, “Parsifal in Politics: Henry Agard Wallace, Mysticism and the New Deal,” Irish Journal of American Studies, vol. 5 (December 1996): 10.

4. Nasan Bayar, “On Chinggis Khan and Being Like a Buddha,” The Mongolia-Tibet Interface: Opening New Research Terrains in Inner Asia, ed. Uradyn E. Bulag and Hildegard G. M. Diemberger (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2007), 197–221, 211. Photographs of the buildings and surroundings are in the Wallace Collection at the University of Iowa; http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu.

5. “Snow,” 1945, Mao Zedong, Poems (Beijing, 1959); Michal Biran, Chinggis Khan (Oxford, UK: Oneworld Publications, 2007), 137.

6. Message of Dalai Lama XIV to the Mongolian Nation, dated August 31, 2006: Их Монго Улс Great Mongolian State, ed. Do, Chuluunbaatar, et al. (Ulaanbaatar: Master, 2007), 290.

7. Quote from poem in chapter 68 of Book XXIII in Köke Sudur Nova (Injannasi’s Manuscript of the Expanded Version of His Blue Chronicle), Part I, ed. Gombojab Hangin (Weisbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz, 1978), xix.

8. Prjevalsky (Mongolia and Tangut; story of Khatun Gol) in The Travels of Marco Polo, trans. Henry Yule, 917.

9. Shambala, as it is known in Mongolian, comes from the Sanskrit term Sambhala, also known from Tibetan sources by spellings Xembala (used in the seventeenth-century Portuguese explorers’ reports), Shambhala (often used by English-speaking followers of Tibetan Buddhism), and Shamballa (used by some mystics). It gave rise to the English concept Shangri-la as an earthly paradise.

10. One legend predicts that Genghis Khan will return and rule again in a place of precious stones with a holy lake. “A legend about Chings Khan’s ruling in the future,” by Kápolinás Olivér, paper delivered at Summer School of Young Mongolists, Ulaanbaatar, 2011.

A Note on Sources and Further Reading

1. Junko Miyawaki-Okada, “The Japanese Origin of the Chinggis Khan Legends,” Inner Asia, vol. 8 (2006) 123–34.

2. Injannasi, 59.