Sources and historiography

Detail

The basic problem: nomads did not write about themselves

• Steppe dwellers produced no literature of their own. Almost everything we know about them comes from outside.
• Our knowledge rests on chronicles, travelogues and documents written by city-based literati — educated men of settled towns.
• These writers were often extremely ignorant of steppe life and openly biased against it. They wrote about people whose daily world they had never seen.
• So the first rule for a student: the Mongols were "written about", not self-written. Every source must be tested for the writer's prejudice.

The 'barbarian' stereotype

• The Greek word barbaros meant a non-Greek person whose speech sounded to Greek ears like meaningless "bar-bar".
• In this stereotype the nomad was shown as childlike, cowardly, effeminate, cruel, greedy, and incapable of self-government — that is, unfit to rule himself, so fit to be ruled.
• The stereotype passed from the Greeks to the Romans, who applied it to the Germanic tribes, the Gauls and the Huns.
• Chinese terms for steppe peoples worked the same way — the names used for them were never positive.
• Point to remember: the picture of the "wild nomad" is a literary habit of settled societies, not a description of real steppe life.

The counter-current: literati who praised the Mongols

• Mongol success created a second kind of source. Once the empire grew rich and powerful, learned men were drawn to it.
• These included Buddhist, Confucian, Christian, Turkish and Muslim scholars. Some travelled and wrote travelogues; some took service under Mongol masters.
• They produced sympathetic accounts, and in places outright eulogies (praise-writing).
• Result: the hostile city tirade is not the only voice. Historians must weigh hostile and flattering accounts against each other.
• The best example of a scholar-servant of the Mongols is Rashid al-Din (1247–1318), a Persian statesman who served the Ilkhanids in Iran [3].
• Ghazan Khan (ruled 1295–1304) ordered his vizier Rashid al-Din to write a history of the Mongols [4].
• Under Uljaitu (1304–17) this grew into the Jami' al-tawarikh ("Compendium of Chronicles"), a world history covering Mongolia, China, India and Europe [3][4].
• Rashid al-Din got his facts from a mixed team — high Mongol officials for Mongolia and China, a Kashmiri Buddhist for India, and a Catholic monk for the popes and emperors of Europe [3].
• It is listed in UNESCO's Memory of the World register [5].
• This is the clearest proof of the NCERT point: a Muslim official writing an admiring imperial history for Mongol patrons.

Many languages, many versions

• The crucial languages are Chinese, Mongolian, Persian and Arabic.
• Also useful: Italian, Latin, French and Russian.
• Versions of the same text often differ a lot:
• The Mongolian and Chinese versions of The Secret History of the Mongols (Mongqol-un niuca tobca'an) are quite different from each other.

• The Italian and Latin versions of Marco Polo also differ.

• The Secret History of the Mongols is the earliest narrative account of Genghis Khan.

• It dates to the mid-13th century [2].
• It is written in Middle Mongol but survives in a Chinese transcription — that is, Mongol words written down using Chinese characters [2].
• It was almost unknown until a copy was found by a Russian Orthodox monk in Beijing in the late 19th century [2].
• It is part history, part legend, and covers Mongol clan structure, nomadic life and the decimal military system [2].

Why historians must also be philologists

• Because the sources are foreign-language texts about Mongols, the historian has to double as a philologist — a philologist studies old languages and works out what each word really meant at the time.
• Igor de Rachewiltz did this work on The Secret History of the Mongols.
• Gerhard Doerfer did it for Mongol and Turkic terms that entered Persian.
• Why it matters: a mistranslated tribal title or office name can change our whole picture of Mongol government.

Russian and Soviet scholarship

• The most valuable modern research began in the 18th–19th centuries, exactly as the Tsarist regime was taking control of Central Asia.
• The earliest material is survey notes made in a colonial setting — written by travellers, soldiers, merchants and antiquarians (collectors of old objects) moving with or behind the empire.
• Soviet Marxist historiography then fitted the Mongols into a fixed scheme: a transition from a tribal to a feudal mode of production. Theory came first, evidence second.
• Even inside that frame, good work appeared:
• B.Y. Vladimirtsov produced excellent studies of Mongol language, society and culture.
• V.V. Bartold gave a sympathetic, positive assessment of Genghis Khan — and this fell foul of Stalinist censors.

• Bartold's writings were published in nine volumes only in the 1960s, in the more liberal Khrushchev era.

• Lesson for the exam: the politics of the historian's own country shapes what gets printed. Bartold's delay is the standard example.

Prelims Hooks

• Mongqol-un niuca tobca'an = The Secret History of the Mongols, the earliest narrative account of Genghis Khan; mid-13th century, written in Middle Mongol preserved in Chinese transcription [2].
• A Russian Orthodox monk found a copy of the Secret History in Beijing in the late 19th century [2].
• Greek barbaros = a non-Greek whose speech sounded like "bar-bar"; the stereotype passed to the Romans, used for Germanic tribes, Gauls, Huns.
• Igor de Rachewiltz → Secret History; Gerhard Doerfer → Mongol/Turkic terms in Persian.
• B.Y. Vladimirtsov → Mongol language, society and culture; V.V. Bartold → positive view of Genghis Khan, blocked by Stalinist censors, published in nine volumes in the 1960s (Khrushchev era).
• Soviet Marxist historians placed the Mongols in a shift from tribal to feudal mode of production.
• Rashid al-Din (1247–1318), vizier of Ghazan Khan (r. 1295–1304), wrote the Jami' al-tawarikh (Compendium of Chronicles), expanded under Uljaitu (1304–17) [3][4].
• The Jami' al-tawarikh is inscribed in UNESCO's Memory of the World register [5].
• Core source languages: Chinese, Mongolian, Persian, Arabic; also Italian, Latin, French, Russian.
• Marco Polo: the Italian and Latin versions differ, like the Mongolian and Chinese Secret History.

Mains Points

• Source bias is the central methodological issue. Nomads left no writing of their own, so every account is filtered through settled, city-based literati. The Greek–Roman–Chinese "barbarian" stereotype is not evidence about nomads; it is evidence about how agrarian states saw people outside their tax and revenue system. Useful in any GS-I answer on writing the history of non-literate societies.
• Hostile and eulogistic sources must be read together. Mongol power attracted Buddhist, Confucian, Christian, Turkish and Muslim scholars who served Mongol patrons — Rashid al-Din's Jami' al-tawarikh, commissioned by Ghazan Khan, is the model case [3][4]. Praise written for a patron and abuse written by a victim are both partial; the historian triangulates.
• Philology is history here. Different versions of the Secret History and of Marco Polo carry different meanings, so the historian must work on the language itself (de Rachewiltz, Doerfer) before making historical claims. Good example for an answer on "problems of using medieval sources".
• Historiography carries the politics of its own age. Russian research grew out of Tsarist expansion into Central Asia; Soviet scholarship forced the Mongols into a tribal-to-feudal scheme; Bartold's favourable view of Genghis Khan could be published only after Stalin, in the 1960s. This links neatly to colonial historiography of India (James Mill, the periodisation debate).