"The origins of Činggis Qa'an: At the beginning there was a blue-grey wolf, born with his destiny ordained by Heaven Above. His wife was a fallow doe. They came crossing the Tenggis [sea]. After they had settled at the source of the Onan River on Mount Burqan Qaldun, Batačiqan was born to them. ~ The Secret History of the Mongols, de Rachewiltz translation So begins The Secret History of the Mongols, a medieval Mongolian-language history dedicated to the rise of Chinggis Khan (Genghis Khan)."
"Many of these works were created on the orders of the khans in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, such as the mammoth Jāmiʿ al-Tawārīkh (c. 1314), an immense Persian-language "universal history," or the Veritable Record of Chinggis Khan ( Taizu Shilu 太祖實錄) (c. 1287) and the Conquests of Chinggis Khan ( Shengwu Qinzheng lu 聖武親征錄) (c. 1320). But none is as famous as the Secret History of the Mongols, utterly unique in style and form;"
The Secret History of the Mongols begins with a mythic origin tale of a blue-grey wolf and a fallow doe whose descendants include Batačiqan, the ancestor of Chinggis Khan. The work is a medieval Mongolian-language history dedicated to the rise of Chinggis Khan and reflects Mongol perspectives on their past. A substantial corpus of Mongol-era written works survives, many produced by khanic commission in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, including Persian Jāmiʿ al-Tawārīkh and Chinese imperial records. The Secret History stands apart in style and form, composed internally rather than within Chinese or Persian historiographical genres.
Read at Medievalists.net
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