READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM

HISTORY OF THE MONGOLS.

CHAPTER I. GEOGRAPHY.

BEFORE entering upon the proper subject of this work, I have deemed it convenient to give in the following chapter a general survey of the various nations and tribes of Asia with which the Mongols came in contact in the beginning of the thirteenth century. And I have included in it all the tribes mentioned by Raschid which there is reason for believing were other than Mongol.

CHINA—The most powerful and important neighbour of the Mongols in their early days was no doubt the Chinese Empire, which had been for a long time divided into two sections. On the fall of the great dynasty of the Thang, which reigned from 616 to 907, and which controlled the whole of China proper, it broke into ten fragments, ruled over by the governors of the various provinces. This division gave rise naturally to a great deal of internal dissention, and favoured the ambitious views of the tribes on the northern frontier. At this period the south-eastern part of Mongolia and the districts of Liau si and Liau tung were occupied by a number of tribes known collectively as Khitan. The exact affinities of these tribes are among the most puzzling riddles in Eastern ethnology. Mr. Wylie, of Shanghai, a very much esteemed Chinese scholar, has favoured me with a list of Khitan words, considerably more extended than that collected by Klaproth, and from an examination of these, and from other considerations I am disposed to think that the Khitans (as is natural perhaps in a frontier race), were very much mixed and had affinities with Mongols, Koreans, and Tunguses. I am quite satisfied, at all events, that it is a mistake to make them a Tunguisic tribe in the same sense that the Manchus and their ancestors the Juchi Tartars are Tunguses. The principal tribe among the Khitans was that of the Shé liu or Thie la, pronounced Ye liu by the Chinese which lived in the district where is situated the ruined town of Barin in Mongolia. About the year 907 the chief of this tribe, named Juliji Apaoki, having subdued the other Khitan tribes, made himself master of the greater part of the borderers on the great desert of Shamo, and in 916 had himself proclaimed Wangti or Emperor. With an astonishing rapidity he conquered the country from Kashgar in the west to the mountains Thsun ling in the east. Lake Baikal bounded his empire on the north, while on the south he conquered considerable districts in the north-east oi China and the greater part of Corea. He established his court at Liau yang in Liau tung, and afterwards moved it to Yan in Pehchehli, the modem Peking. He died in 927 a.d. His son and successor Tai tsun assisted a Chinese general who had rebelled and helped him to mount the throne. In return for this service the new Emperor, who held his court at Pien, now Kai fong fu, on the southern bank of the Yellow River, ceded sixteen districts in the provinces of Pehchehli, Shansi, and Liau tung to him, and undertook to pay him annually a subsidy of 300,000 pieces of silk, and even acknowledged himself his vassal in the letters which he addressed to him, by styling himself his grandson and subject. The successor of this Emperor having endeavoured to break these engagements, Tai tsun marched against him, conquered the pro­vinces north of the Yellow River, captured Pien, seized the Emperor and carried him off into Tartary. In the year 937 the Khitan Emperor gave his dynasty the title of Liau, which means iron. After the fall of the Thang, five small dynasties successively occupied the metropolitan throne of Kai fong fou. On their ruins there arose in 960 the dynasty of the Sung, which once more reunited the greater part of China under its sceptre. The Sung Emperors fought against the Khitans, but could not wrest from them the sixteen districts which had been ceded, as I have mentioned, and at length, in 1004, the Sung Emperor undertook to pay the Khitan ruler an annual tribute in silver and silken goods. The power and influence of the Khitans must have been both very great and very wide spread. They seem to have been obeyed by all the tribes of Mongols, Turks, and Tunguses who inhabited the country from lake Balkhash to the Yellow Sea, and a very good proof of their influence may be cited in the fact that they gave a name to China by which it became familiar to the Arabs, Persians, and Turks, and through them to the mediaeval writers of Europe, namely, Cathay. The contact of the Khitans and the Chinese was followed, as seems to be universally the case there, by the gradual weaning of the race of soldiers from their old habits and the acquirement of the effeminate manners which prevail in Eastern courts. This change enabled another and more vigorous face to supplant them. This was the race of the Juchi or Niuchi, the ancestors of the present Manchu dynasty in China. The Juchi lived in that part of Manchuria bounded on the north by the Amur, on the east by the ocean, on the south by Corea, and on the west by the river Sungari, which separated their country from that of the Khitans. The leader of this revolt was named Aguta. He rebelled in 1114, won several victories over the Khitans, and the following year adopted the title of Wangti, and gave his new empire the name of Aijin kurun, in Chinese Kin kué, i.e,, golden realm, whence its Mongol name Altan or Altun, “golden.” He then commenced a vigorous campaign against the Khitans, whom he rapidly conquered. He died in 1123. His successor U ki nai followed up his victories, subdued the empire of Hia, and captured the Khitan Emperor Yeliu Yen hi, who had fled in that direction, the ninth and last of his race who ruled in China. A prince of the fallen house and some of his followers escaped westwards and founded another empire, namely, that of the Kara Khitai, to which I shall presently refer.

The invasion of the Juchi was abetted by the Sung Emperor, who doubtless hoped by their means to recover possession of the lost pro­vinces in Northern China, but he soon found reason to repent of his policy. In 1125 the Juchi invaded Southern China. The year following they advanced as far as the river Hoang ho, and laid siege to Kai fong fu, the capital of the Sung empire. The Sung Emperor went to the camp of the invaders to ask for terms, but was sent off to Tartary with his family. His brother escaped and was proclaimed Emperor by the Chinese. The Juchi proceeded to conquer the northern portion of China, penetrated beyond the river Yang tsi, captured Lin ngan, the chief city of the province of Che kiang, and, after securing many victories, made peace with the Sung Emperor in 1142, by which the conquests they had made were ceded to them, and they were to receive an annual tribute of 250,000 ounces of silver and 250,000 pieces of silk, while the Sung Emperor declared himself their vassal. The rivers Hoai and Han became the boundaries of the two empires, the Kin Emperor ruling over the provinces of Pehchehli, Shan si, Shang tung, Honan, and the northern part of Shen si, which were collectively known as Khan zi to the Chinese, while the southern empire was known to them and to Marco Polo as Manzi. The Mongols called it Nangkias. The capital of the former was the city anciently known as Yen king or Chun king. When the Kin Emperor in 1153 moved the seat of empire there he gave it the name of Ta hing fu, and the title of Chung tu, or Imperial city of the centre. It is now widely celebrated as Peking, i.e., “the northern capital.” The Mongols called it Khanbalig. The Sung Emperor's capital was Lin ngan, called also Hang chau in Che kiang. In the northern section, subject to the Kin dynasty, there were five cities distinguished as Imperial residences: 1. Liau yang chau in Liau tung, called the eastern court; in Chinese Tung-king. 2. Tai-tung-fu in Shansi, the western court, or Si-king. 3. The present city of Peking, then called Chung tu or Chung king, or central court. 4. Pien leang or Kai fong fu, on the southern bank of the Yellow River in Honan, which was the southern court, or Nan king. And lastly, 5. Ta ning fu, on the river Loha in Northern China, then called the northern court, or Peking, which must of course be carefully distinguished from the Peking or northern court of our day. Besides their authority in China, the Kin Emperors were lords paramount in the steppes and deserts beyond, but their influence there was very much more limited than that of the Khitans. It probably extended little beyond the immediate borders of China. We know that Sungaria and the towns on either side of the Thian Shan mountains, which were apparently subject to the Khitans, were controlled by the enemies and rivals of the Kin, the Kara Khitai, while the Mongols, as we shall see, began to act a very independent part almost immediately after the Kin conquest of Northern China. Even in Manchuria we find Juchi tribes acting independently of the central authority in China under their own princes. These independent tribes were probably the ancestors of the modern Solons. We may take it, therefore, that although they were no doubt dependent, their dependence was largely nominal. Having briefly pointed out the condition of China, we will now turn to the adjoining and subordinate empire of Hia, which was so terribly desolated by Jingis Khan, and where, as one learns from Mr. Morgan, the groans and shrieks of the spirits of those whom he so ruthlessly slaughtered still haunt the place, and add to the horrors of the surrounding wilderness.

HIA, OR TANGUT.—This empire was known in early times to the Mongols as Kashin or Kashi, which is a corruption of the Chinese word Ho-si. This means “west of the river,” and designated the great province of Shen si, which lay west of the Yellow River. While Jingis was undertaking the conquest of Kashi, Ogotai had a son to whom the name of Kashi was given, but he died young from excessive drinking, upon which the name was changed. At first it was changed to Kurik, and afterwards to Tangut. A Chinese Uighur vocabulary, cited by Klaproth, gives Cho si as the synonym of Tangut, and another of Chinese and Bukharian words gives it as Tanghut, The Thibetans called it Nimak. The name of Tangut is derived from the tribe Thang hiang, who according to Ma tuan lin, were descended from the primitive inhabitants of China, namely, the San Miao, and were driven by the Chinese into Kokonur and Eastern Thibet. They lived in early times in the country of Si chi, west of the department of Liu thao, in the modern Chinese province of Kan suh; their country was traversed by the very sinuous channel of the Yellow River. In the third and fourth centuries of our era the Emperors of the Chinese dynasties Wei and Tsin began to abate the power of the Eastern Thibetans called Khiang. In the sixth century the Emperors of the Chau dynasty destroyed the power of the tribe Thang chang. Afterwards other Thibetans named Teng chi became powerful. They were in turn dis­placed by the Thang hiang or Tangut. Li ki tsien, the chief of this tribe, who was ruler of Hia chan and a feudatory of the empire, took advantage of the anarchy which existed in China at the end of the tenth century, refused to acknowledge the Chinese ruler, and submitted to the Khitans; but in 1043 his grandson Chao yuen hao submitted to the Sung Emperor, who granted him the title of Emperor of Hia. At first their country was very limited in extent, but they conquered a large area in Shensi. At the beginning of the twelfth century they were in possession of Hia chau, In chau, Sui chau, Yan chau, Tsing chau, Ling chau, Yan chau, Hoei chau, Ching chau, Kou chau, and Liang chau, towns situated on the north of the modern provinces of Kansu and Shensi, and the country of the Ordus. They had conquered the towns of Sha chau, Kua chau, and Su chau from the Uighurs, and were also possessed of the fortified posts of Hung, Ting, Wei, and Lung. The topography of Tangut is very confused, as may be seen from Colonel Yule’s narrative. Klaproth says that Hing chau, now called Ninghia, was the capital of the kingdom. It was situated at a small distance from the left bank of the Yellow River, where this river leaves the province of Kansuh and enters Mongolia. This town, according to Raschid, was called in the Tangutan language Eyirkai, and by the Mongols Eyirkaya. By Ssanang Setzen it is called Irghai. Ssanang Setzen distinguishes between Turmegei or Termegetu, which he calls the capital of Tangut, and Irghai, but he is an authority of no value for this period. Irghai seems to be the city called Wuhlahai by the Chinese, and is to be identified with the Egrigaia of Marco Polo, the Erequir of De la Croix, and was captured by Jingis in his second expedition. It and its district are tentatively identified by Colonel Yule with the principality of Alashan. Raschid tells us the name of the Emperor of Hia in the time of Jingis was Lung Shidirghu, the Shidurgo of Ssanang Setzen; he adds, there were many kings in the country. Among the great cities which were royal residences he names Kendjan fu, Kamdjiu, Azerdi, Khaladjan, and An Balik ; besides these there were twenty-four other large towns in the empire. The greater portion of their inhabitants, he says, were Mussulmans, but the villagers and their chiefs were mainly Buddhists.

KARA KHITAI.—Having surveyed the chief powers encountered by the Mongols on the south, we will now do the same for the west. When the Khitan empire was overthrown by the Kin Tatars in 1122 or 1123, as I have described, a member of the Imperial family of the Liau or Khitan dynasty escaped westwards with a following of about 2,000 men. H is name was Yeliu Tashi, or, according to western writers, Tushi Talgun, and also Tushi Taifu. He was well received by the chiefs of the various Turkish tribes who had been dependent on his dynasty, and by means of the contin­gents they supplied him with, he succeeded in getting together a very con­siderable army. He first settled in the valley of the Imil, and, according to Carpini, built the town there which afterwards became the capital of the Khanate of Ogotai, and which was situated not far from the modern Khuguchak, otherwise called Tarbagatai. At this time the Turkish Khans of Turkestan, who claimed descent from the mythical Afrasiab, had become very feeble, and were constantly threatened by the Karluks, Kankalis, and other nomads in their neighbourhood, and we are told that Yeliu Tashi was called in to the rescue. He speedily occupied Balasaghun, their capital, and then deposed the descendant of Afrasiab from his dignity of Khan, leaving him only the title of Ilk Turkan, or chief of the Turks. He then proceeded to conquer the Karluks, whose chiefs, the Arslan Khans, apparently dominated over Kashgar anti Khotan, and the country of Little Bukharia. He was acknowledged as their suzerain by the Idikut or chief of the Uighurs of Bishbalig; he defeated the Kankalis and Kirghises, and made himself master ot Ferghanah and Transoxiana, and then ravaged the country of Khuarezm and made its ruler tributary. He then took the title of Gurkhan, or great Khan. I have discussed the site of his capital, Balasaghun, in some letters in the Geographical Magazine, and have endeavoured to fix it at the ruinheaps of It Kichu, on the river Chu, which I believe represent the Equius of Rubruqius. Thence he governed a vast territory. The country immediately subject to him was that watered by the Chu, the Jaxartes, and the great plains that border the Balkhash sea on the south-east, but, as I have said, the Turkish tribes to the east were dependent on him. Among these the most important no doubt were the Karluks, whose capital was Almaligh, the modem Kuldja, and who ruled over a considerable territory on both sides of the Thian Shan range, and the Uighurs, who lived at Bishbalig, i.e., Urumtsi. He doubtless also was more or less dominant over the Naimans, about whom I shall have more to say presently. He was no doubt the most powerful sovereign of Central Asia, and his career of rapid conquest was a pro­totype on a smaller scale of that of Genghis Khan in later days, while the integration of the various Turkish tribes of Sungaria and Turkestan under his sceptre made the path of the succeeding conqueror much more easy, for when he defeated the usurper of the throne of Kara Khitai named Kushluk, he became at once the master of a regulated and tolerably orderly empire, and not of a mere congeries of broken tribes, and an empire which stretched from the Oxus to the great desert of Shamo, and from Thibet to the Altai.

KHUAREZM.—West, or rather south-west of Kara Khitai, and bordering upon it, was the empire of Khuarezm, with which the Mongols had a most bloody and prolonged struggle. This empire, like several others in South-western Asia, was founded by a Turk who had been originally a slave. The sovereigns of Persia were in the habit of pur­chasing young Turks, who were captured by the various frontier tribes in their mutual struggles, and employing them in their service. They generally had a body guard formed of them, and many of them were enfranchised and rose to posts of high influence, and in many cases sup­planted their masters. The founder of the Khuarezmian power was such a slave, named Nushtekin, in the service of the Seljuk Sultan Malik Shah. He rose to the position of a Teshtedar or chamberlain, which carried with it the government of the province of Khuarezm, that is of the fertile valley of the Oxus and the wide steppes on either side of. it, bounded on the west by the Caspian and on the east by Bukharia. He was succeeded by his son Kutb-ud-din Muhammed, whose services to the Seljuk rulers, Barkiarok and Sandjar, obtained for him the title of Khuarezm Shah, a title which was borne by the rulers of that province before the Arab invasion. He was succeeded by his son Atsiz, who several times took up arms against his sovereign Sandjar, and became virtually independent of him. He was ruler of Khuarezm when Yeliu Tashi, the founder of Kara Khitai, entered his dominion, and having been defeated by him he was obliged to become his tributary. He was succeeded in 1156 by his son Iyal Arslan, who, on Sandjar’s death in 1157, conquered the western part of Khorassan. He left two sons named Takish and Sultan Shah, between whom a Jong struggle ensued. Takish was eventually victorious. He also conquered the Seljuk ruler Togrul, and sent his head to the Khalif at Bagdad. By this conquest Irak Adjem was added to his dominions. With the deaths of Togrul and Sandjar, the Seljuk dynasty in Persia came to an end, and Takish obtained the investiture of their states from the Khalif. Takish was succeeded in 1200 by his son Alai ud din Muhammed, who by the con­quest of Balkh and Herat completed the subjection of Khorassan to the Khuarezmian empire. Shortly after Mazanderan and Kirman were reduced to obedience. He then broke off his allegiance to the ruler of Kara Khitai, whose dependent in Transoxiana, named Osman, became his man. He also conquered a portion of Turkestan as far as Uzkend, where he placed a garrison. Some time after, having quarrelled with Osman, the ruler of Transoxiana, who had become his son-in-law, he attacked and took him prisoner, and afterwards put him to death. He then appropriated his dominions and made Samarkand his capital. In he annexed the principality of Gur, and three years later attacked and subdued the country of Ghazni. When he captured its chief town he discovered proofs that the Khalif had been intriguing against him. He accordingly determined to depose him. He marched a large army west­wards. On his way he received the submission of the rulers of Azer­baidjan and Fars, and at length entered the dominions of the Khalif, which at this time were limited to the provinces of Irak Arab and Khuzistan. Muhammed occupied the former province, and proceeded to divide it into various military fiefs; but this was the extent of his aggression in this direction. A terrible snowstorm overtook his troops on the mountains of Essed abad, and after losing many of them the rest were attacked by the Turkish and Kurdish tribes and suffered terribly, a fate which popular superstition naturally assigned as the result of so unholy a war. Muhammed deemed it prudent to retire, and his retreat was probably hastened by the approach of the Mongols. He gave Irak Ajem as an appanage to his son Rokn ud din. The provinces of Kirman, Kesh, and Mukran were assigned to Ghiaz ud din; Ghazni, Basinan, Gur, Bort, &c., which formed the old Gur empire, were assigned to Jelal ud din; while his youngest son, whom he had fixed upon as his heir, was assigned Khuarezm, Khorasan, and Mazanderan. From this enumeration it may be gathered that Muhammed was a very powerful sovereign. He controlled an army of 400,000 men, and his dominions at the invasion of the Mongols stretched from the Jaxartes to the Persian Gulf, and from the Indus to Irak Arab and Azerbaidjan. Here also, as in the case of Kara Khitai, we can see how the work was prepared for the hands of Jingis by the consolidation of a great number of small states into one powerful one, on whose fall a vast empire was at once added to the Mongol dominions.

AZERBAIDJAN.—I have mentioned that Azerbaidjan and Fars were not actually subject to the Khuarezm Shah but only tributary. The former was ruled at the time of the Mongol invasion by the Atabeg Uzbeg. He was descended from Ildéguiz, who, like the founder of many of the petty dynasties of Southern Asia, was a Turkish slave, and belonged to the Seljuk Sultan of Irak Ajem. He was a native of Kipchak, and having been freed rose successively to the highest dignities in the kingdom, and in 1146 received as a fief the provinces of Azerbaidjan and Arran, which were separated from one another by the river Kur. When about forty years later the Seljuk dynasty of Irak came to an end, Azerbaidjan remained subject to the family of lldéguiz. His fifth successor was the Uzbeg I have mentioned. He had succeeded to power in 1197, and had about 1216 acknowledged himself as the vassal of the Khuarezm Shah. At the time of the Mongol invasion he was an old man. His capital was Tabriz.

FARS was ruled over by the dynasty of the Salgarids, so named from its founder Salgar, who was the chief of a Turkish tribe and a vassal of the Seljuki. Sankor, the grandson of Salgar, had profited by the decay of the Seljuki to take possession of Fars. This was in 1148. Sankor’s grandson was named Sad. It was to him the Sheikh Saáde dedicated his Gulistan. He became a vassal of the Khuarezm Shah Muhammed, and it was he who subsequently submitted to the Mongols. The capital of Fars, which was the kernel of the old Persian monarchy, and whose name still points to its having been so, was Shiraz. A small portion of Fars, with its capital at Darabsherd, was subject to the dynasty of the Shebankyare of the family Fasluye, but they were of small interest. An account of them may be seen in Von Hammer’s history of the Ilkhans, 1,68,69.

LURISTAN.—Luristan, according to Von Hammer, derives its name from two brothers of the name of Lur or Lor, who in the third century of the Hejira ruled over certain nomad Kurdish tribes, which two centuries later migrated from the mountain Saumal in Northern Syria, and settled in Luristan. Luristan was divided into two principalities, known as Great and Little Luristan. The rulers of the former were known as the Great Atabegs, and those of the latter as the Little Atabegs. Hazerasp was the Atabeg of Great Luristan at the invasion of Jingis Khan. He was a trusted friend of the Khuarezm Shah Muhammed. At the time of Khulagu’s invasion of Western Persia his son Tilde or Téguéle was the ruler of Great Luristan. He joined the Mongols with a con­tingent when they marched upon Baghdad, but they afterwards grew suspicious of him, and he was put to death, and Khulagu put Shems ud din Alp Argun on the throne in his place. At the same period Little Luristan was ruled by Bedr ud din Massud, who conciliated and was supported by the Mongols.

INDIA.—At the date of the Mongol invasion the metropolitan throne of Delhi was occupied by a dynasty descended from Sultan Kutb ud din Ibak i Shil, who was a Turkish slave in the service of the Sultan i Ghazi, Muizz ud din Muhammed, son of Sam, whence the dynasty was known as that of the Muizziah Sultans. He became the deputy of the Sultans of Ghazni in India, where he gained many victories. He was at length made free and granted the title of Sultan. This was about the year 603 of the Hejira. On his death, four years later, he was succeeded by Aram Shah, who after a very short reign was displaced by a usurper named Shams ud din Iyal timish, a former slave of Kutb-ud-din’s, and also his son-in-law. The Indian empire was then divided into four sec­tions. Shams ud din possessed himself of Delhi and the country around ; Nasir-ud- din kaba jah, another son-in-law of Kutb-ud-din, appropriated Sind and Multan, Bhakar and Siwastan, and subsequently the territory to the north-east as far as Sursuti and Kuhram. The chiefs of the Kalladjes or Turks assumed independence in Bengal, while Lahore became the prey of its several neighbours. Such was the position of affairs when the Mongols appeared on the Indus. Let us now travel considerably westwards beyond the limits of the Khuarezmian empire.

BAGHDAD.—Irak Arab and a large portion of Khuzestan were directly subject to the Khalifs. Besides this local authority they were the supreme heads of the Moslem faith, and held the highest post in the hierarchy of Islam, in direct descent from the prophet himself. They were acknowledged as their suzerains by the various chiefs of Asia who had been converted, and when they succeeded to their several dignities of Sultan, or Malik, or Atabeg, they sent to notify the fact to the Khalifs, who in turn invested them with authority and sent them the diploma of office and the various emblems of royal dignity.t They held their court at Baghdad. For six centuries the Khalifate had been in the possession of the family of the Abbasids, so named because they were descended from Abbas, the uncle of Muhammed. They displaced the Ommyades. “From an obscure residence in Syria,” says Gibbon, “they secretly dis­patched their agents and missionaries, who preached in the eastern provinces their hereditary indefeasible right, and Muhammed, the son of Ali, the son of Abdallah, the son of Abbas, the uncle of the prophet, gave audience to the deputies of Khorassan, and accepted their free gift of 400,000 pieces of gold.” The Ommiads were distinguished by their white garments, the Abbasids by their black ones. It was Suffah, the son of Muhammed ben Ali, who finally vanquished Mervan, the fourteenth and last of the Ommiad Khalifs. This was in 750 A.D. Almansor, the brother of Salah, laid the foundations of Baghdad in 762 A.D., which became the capital of the Moslem world. The rule of the Abassids was a protracted one, and lasted until they were finally destroyed by the Mongols, as I shall describe in the following pages, but for a long period their authority was chiefly spiritual, and the reins of power were in the hands of the several dynasties who ruled in Persia, the Buyeds, the Sultans of Ghazni, the Seljukian Turks, and the Khuarezmians. More or less dependent upon the Khalifs were several small districts governed by various dynasties of Atabegs, a name which answers to Mayors of the Palace or Tutors, and which was granted in the early days of the Arabian prosperity to various provincial governors, who retained this title when they became independent princes. Among these the chief was

MOSUL.—At the time of Khulagu’s invasion its ruler was Bedr-ud-din Lulu, who had been a slave of Nur-ud-din Arslan Shah, of the dynasty of the Sunkars, chiefs of Diar Bekr, who on his death appointed him Tutor (Atabeg) to his son Massud, with the government of the principality of Mosul. On the death of Massud in 1218, and of his two young sons who followed him to the grave within the next two years, Bedr-ud-din Lulu became independent sovereign of Mosul, and was sovereign of it thirty-seven years later when Khulagu invaded the country. Besides Mosul there were other petty principalities feudally dependent on the Khalifs. At Diarbekr and Mardin were small dynasties of the family of the Beni Ortok, descended from a Turkoman chief named Ortok, who was in the service of the Seljuki, and under them had possession of Jerusalem. Other small dynasties dependent on the Khalif ruled at Erbil and Sindshar.

We will now go farther west again towards Egypt and Syria.

EGYPT was at the time of the Mongol invasion subject to the Beni Ayub or Ayubits, who were made famous in history by the exploits of their great chief Saladin. They were descended from the Malek Ayub, son of Shadi, who was a Kurdish chief. Shadi left two sons, Najm ud din Ayub and Asad ud din Sher i koh. Ayub’s third son was the famous Salah ud din, generally known as, Saladin, who, having been appointed Vizier to Nur ud din, the ruler of Egypt, succeeded on the death of that prince in usurping the throne of Egypt.J In the sonorous words of Gibbon, “ He despoiled the Christians of Jerusalem, and the Atabegs of Damascus, Aleppo, and Diarbekr. Mecca and Medina acknowledged him for their temporal protection. His brother subdued the distant regions of Yemen, or the happy Arabia ; and at the time of his death his empire was spread from the African Tripoli to the Tigris, and from the Indian Ocean to the mountains of Armenia.’ On his death, in 1193, he was succeeded in Egypt by his son Aziz. Aziz was succeeded by Adil, the brother of Saladin, about the year 1200. Adil was succeeded by his son Kamil, who was the greatest of the family after Saladin, and ruled over the greater part, if not all, the dominions of that conqueror. He died in 1239, and was succeeded by his son Salih. Saladin had a body guard of Kurdish slaves, who were known as Mameluks. Salih especially favoured these Mameluks, who from having their barracks on the river (Bahr) were known as Bahrits. Salih died in 1249 at Mansura, while St. Louis was at Damietta. His son Muazzam Turanshah was assassinated by his father's Mameluks. After which they swore allegiance to a widow of Salih’s named Shejer ud din, and having raised one of their chiefs named Eibeg to the command of the army, he married the Sultana, who three months later resigned the crown to him. He thus became the founder of the first Mameluk dynasty, namely, of that of the Bahrits. This was in 12 50?

SYRIA. — Saladin was succeeded in Syria, whose capital was Damascus, by his eldest son Afzal. He was displaced by his brother Aziz, the Sultan of Egypt, who appropriated his territory, and ^who was succeeded, as I have said, by his uncle Adil. On Adil’s death Syria became the portion of his second son Muazzam. On whose death in 1230 the throne of Damascus fell to his son Nassir. Nassir was deprived the following year by his uncle Kamil, the ruler of Egypt, who appointed his own brother Ashraf to the government of Syria. Ashraf was the ruler of Syria when the Mongols appeared on its borders in pursuit of the Khuarezm Shah Jelal ud din Muhammed. After some years the throne of Damascus was appropriated by Ashraf’s nephew Salih, the Sultan of Egypt. On the assassination of Salih’s son Turanshah by the Mameluks, Nassir Saladin Yusuf, the prince of Aleppo, seized the throne. Although he was master of Syria from the Euphrates to the borders of Egypt, there were several petty princes within its borders who before his aggrandisement were doubtless his peers, and who belonged to the Ayubit family. Among these was first, the prince of Hirns, who at the time of Khulagu’s invasion was named Ashraf, he was the grandson of the Melik Esed ud din Shirkuh. He had been deprived of his principality by Nassir about 1248, and had been given in exchange the district of Telbashir.t Ashraf was reinstated by the Mongols, and became their deputy in Syria. Secondly, The princes of Hamath, who were descended from Tayeddin, the grandson of Ayub and the nephew of the great Saladin, by whom he was appointed Lord of Hamath. His son Melik Mansur the First gained considerable renown in the war with the Crusaders, and by his patronage of the learned. He was succeeded by his son Mansur the Second, who when Kliulagu approached Syria fled to Egypt.t Thirdly, The princes of Karak and Shubek. They were descended from the Melik Aadil Seifeddin Ebubekr, who was given this appanage by his brother the great Saladin. His great grandson Melik Moghis Fetheddin Omar ruled over it at the invasion of Khulagu.§ Besides their possessions in Syria, the Ayubits still retained a small portion of Saladin’s dominions in Mesopotamia. This consisted of the principality of Mayafarkin. It was governed by a dynasty descended from Melikol Aadil, the brother of Saladin. At the time of Khulagu’s invasion it was subject to the Melik Kamil, who was its fifth ruler. He was killed by the Mongols.

THE CRUSADERS.—While the greater part of Syria was in the hands of the Ayubits the Christians retained a few places on the coast. Saladin had taken Jerusalem from them in 1187, but they held Acre or Polemais which had been conquered by Philip Augustus of France and Richard the First of England about 1191. They also held Tyre, Caesarea, and Tripoli on the coast of Syria.

RUM.—At the time of the great Mongol invasion the empire of the Seljuki in Persia and Khorassan had been extinguished and replaced by that of the Khuarezm Shahs. The Seljuki, however, still retained their hold upon Asia Minor. The dynasty of the Seljuki of Rum or Asia Minor was founded by Soliman Shah, a cousin of Malik Shah, the ruler of Persia, by whom he was sent westwards at the head of 80,000 tents of Ghuz Turks or Turkomans, from Transoxiana, to conquer the country He conquered the central part of Asia Minor from the Byzantines, and made Nicaea, the chief town of the ancient Bithynia, his capital. His dominions were called Rum by Eastern writers, and were bounded on the east by Great Armenia and a part of Georgia, on the north by the Black Sea, on the south by Little Armenia, a part of Cilicia, and the sea opposite Cyprus; and on the west extended as far as Attalia on the sea. It included the ancient Lycaonia, Cappadocia, Isauria, Phrygia, Bithynia, Paphlagonia, Lydia, and the country round Trebizond. Soliman died in 1086, after reducing Antioch and its dependent cities. It was these Seljukian Turks with whom the early Crusaders came in contact. In 1096 they captured their capital Nicaea, and so broke their power that the Greek Emperor recovered much ground which had been lost, and occupied the cities of Ephesus, Smyrna, Sardis, Nicaea, &c., and cut the Turks off from the sea. It was then that they chose the remote and almost inaccessible Iconium as their capital. The seventh successor of Soliman, named Kai Kobad, occupied the throne of Iconium when the Mongols in 1235-7 made their first raid upon the kingdom of Rum; but it was in the reign of his successor, Ghiath ud din Kai Khosru, and in 1242, that they made a vigorous effort, under the command of Baiju to conquer it, and in fact succeeded in making it tributary.

LITTLE ARMENIA.—To the south of the Seljukian kingdom of Rum, and protected by the Taurus mountains, was a small state which had considerable intercourse with the Mongols. This was known as Little Armenia. It comprehended the ancient districts of Cilicia and Comagene, with many towns of Cappadocia and Isauria. Its capital was Sis. It originated with Rupen, a relative of Kakig the Second, the last king of Armenia proper, of the race of the Bagratids. When their power was finally destroyed, he in 1080 occupied some districts in Cilicia, where many Armenians had sought refuge from the sword of the captured the fortress of Alamut from the Seljuki. He afterwards con­quered the surrounding district, which was named Rudbar, and planted several fortresses there as well as in Kuhistan. The weakness of the later Seljuki enabled the Ismailites to increase their power, which was much augmented by the terrible secret assassinations which Hassan secured. Hassan died in 1124, after living for thirty-four years at Alamut, which he only left twice, spending his time there in meditation, &c. He was followed by Kia Buzurk Umid, whom he nominated as his successor. The power of the Assassins continued to increase, and two of the Abassidan Khalifs were victims of their fanaticism. Kia Burzurk was succeeded by his son Muhammed, and he by his son Hassan. Hitherto the Ismailite chiefs had merely called themselves the missionaries or champions of the Imams, that is, of the Fatimite Khalifs. Hassan in 1164 proclaimed himself the vicar of the Invisible Imam, and broke away entirely from his allegiance to the traditions of the Shias. Thenceforward the Ismailites were known as Molahids (i.e., the lost). He introduced a great deal of new mystical teaching. Having been assassinated by his brother, he was succeeded by his son Muhammed, who, on the destruction of the Fatimites in Egypt by Saladin, acquired fresh renown, and terribly punished the orthodox Mussulmans who dared to denounce his followers as heretics. Muhammed was succeeded by his son Jelal ud din Hassan, who professed the orthodox faith and submitted to the Khalif. When Jingis Khan passed the Oxus he sent him his sub­mission. Jelal ud din was succeeded in 1221 by his son Alai ud din Muhammud, who was only nine years old when he succeeded. He was himself assassinated in 1255, and was succeeded by his son Rokn ud din Khurshah, with whom Khulagu fought, and who eventually destroyed him. Among the chief fortresses of the Ismailites were Alamut, Lemsher (also written Lemhesser), Guirdkuh Lal, and Meimun-diz.

THE KIPCHAKS.—Having glanced at the various kingdoms with which Jingis Khan and his successors came into conflict in Asia, we may now take a rapid survey of the nomadic tribes whom they conquered and who formed such an important element in their armies, and we may begin with the most western. The Kipchaks, according to Raschid and Abulghazi, were one of the five sections into which the Turkish nation subject to Oghuz Khan was divided. Abulghazi tells us a curious story about the origin of their name. He says that at the time when Oghuz Khan lived it was customary for great chiefs and some of their greater fol­lowers to take their wives with them on their expeditions. On one occasion one of these chiefs having been killed in a combat, his wife escaped and joined the camp of Oghuz Khan. She was then great with child, and being suddenly taken ill where there was no hut, and when the weather was very severe, she took refuge in a hole in a tree, where she gave birth to a son. Oghuz Khan adopted the boy, his father having died in his service, and gave him the name of Kiptchak, which he says in the old Turk language meant a hollow tree. When the boy reached the age of maturity Oghuz Khan sent him with a considerable force towards the Don and Volga. He subdued the country, and from him were descended the Kipchaks who inhabited the steppes there and who gave them their name of Desht Kipchak, or the Plains of Kipchak. I am disposed to attach credit to the principal features of this story. Kipchak is a personal name among the Turks, and it is a very common practice for Turkish tribes to be named after noted chiefs, ex. gr._f the Uzbegs, Nogays, &c. The Kipchaks were called Comans by European writers. This we know not only from a comparison of the statements we have about both races, and from the fact that both races occupied the same area at the same time, but we are expressly told that the Comans called themselves Capchat. The name Coman is derived no doubt from the river Kuma, the country about which was known to the Persians as Kumestan, and to the Nubian geographer Edrisi in the eleventh century as Al Komania; he adds, “which gives their name to the Komanians.” Klaproth has published a Comanian vocabulary and other evidence showing the Comanians to have spoken a very pure Turk language. A part of their old country on the Kuma is still called Desht Kipchak, and the Kumuks, who have been pushed somewhat south by the Nogays, are, I believe, their lineal descendants. Others of their descendants no doubt remain also among the Krim Tatars. To the early Arab writers the Kipchaks were known as Gusses, a name by which we also meet with them in the Byzantine annals.f This shows that they belonged to the great section of the Turks known as the Gusses or Oghuz Turks, whose eponymous hero was Oghuz Khan. They first invaded the country west of the Volga at the end of the ninth century, from which time till their final dispersal by the Mongols in the thirteenth century they were very persistent enemies of Russia. After the Mongol conquest it is very probable that they became an important element in the various tribes that made up the Golden Horde or Khanate of Kipchak. As I have said, they were called Gusses by the Arabs. This connects them very closely with the Turks who ravaged Persia so terribly in the eleventh century, and to whom the Seljuki and Ottomans affiliated them­selves, both tribes deriving themselves from the Gusses. They also formed a large part of the nomades who are known as Turkomans. The original homeland of all these tribes was doubtless the land where the Middle Horde of the Kirghiz Kazaks now lived. The Kazaks were also Gusses, and in fact remain a type of what the other Gusses probably were before they were sophisticated by contact with the Persians. One of the main divisions of the Middle Horde and a tribe of the Uzbegs are still called Kipchak, and in the country of the Middle Horde may be found a town Kapchak and a lake Kapchi.

THE KAN KALIS.—East of the Yaik, in the wide steppe lands now occupied by the Kirghiz Kazaks of the Little Horde, lived the Kankalis. Like their western neighbours, the Kipchaks, they also formed one of the five sections into which the subjects of Ughuz Khan were divided. In later times they were very closely connected with the Kipchaks, as may be collected from the fact that one of the four main divisions of the Uzbegs is called Kankli-Kipchak. But at an earlier date their histories ran in separate channels. They are called Kangli by Rubruquis, who tells us he crossed their country after passing the Volga, or rather the Yaik. Carpini calls them Kangites, and Constantine Porphyrogenitus Kangar. According to Raschid and Abulghazi their name is derived from the use of wheeled carriages or arabas, kanek meaning wheels. The Emperor Constantine identifies them with the Pechenegs, and this is confirmed by the statement of Abulfeda, who, citing Ebn Said, says that eastward of Comania were the mountains, the lake, and the capital of the Begjnak, who were Turks. Now the country of the Pechenegs and Kankalis was until the seventeenth century the camping ground of the Nogays, who seem from the researches of Levchine to have extended as far as the river Sarisu, which divided them from the Kazaks. We are not surprised to find, therefore, the name Kangli surviving among the Nogays, who are still distinguished as their ancestors were by the use of wheeled cars or arabas, and there are few things more certain than that the Kankalis are now represented by the Nogays. Besides the Nogays there are no doubt many Turkomans also descended from them. According to Abulghazi the Kankalis at the accession of Jingis occupied the country as far east as the valleys of the Chu and the Taras.|| In the time of Jingis the Kankalis were very closely connected with Khuarezm. The Khuarezm Shah Takish, the father of Muhammed, the great rival of Jingis, married Turkan Khatun, the daughter of Jinkeshi Khan, of the tribe Bayaut, which, according to Muhammed of Nessa, was a branch of the YSmeks, who D’Ohsson says were comprised in the general name of Kankalis. He was apparently a person of very great consequence, and probably the paramount chief among them. In the wake of Turkan Khatun many Kankalis embraced Islamism and entered the service of Muhammed. Abulghazi says all her nearest relatives thus went. Among these there are named her eldest brother Khumar Tekin, who was appointed Darugha, governor of Urgendj. There also went Inaljek, the son of her father’s younger brother; he became a Mussulman, and was appointed governor of Turkestan, and Muhammed ordered that he was in future to be no longer styled Inaljek but Ghair Khan (? a form of Gur Khan). Another chief named Kuk, one of the principal men among the Kankalis, also joined him and was appointed governor of Bokharah, with the title of Khan ; he was styled Kuk Khan. Altogether, says Abulghazi, there were 50,000 or 60,000 Kankalis who entered the service of the Khuarezm Shah ; 10,000 families of them remained on the Chui and Telash (? Taras), but on the arrival of Jingis Khan those who lived on the Telash were dispersed,* while those in the service of the Khuarezm Shah were terribly punished in the ensuing campaign. As I have said, their descendants still constitute the main portion of the Nogay Hordes.

THE KARLUKS.—Like the Kankalis, the Karluks were dependents of the Gur Khans of Kara Khitai. They also formed a section of the subjects of Oghuz Khan. Their name, according to Raschid, means the men of the snows or snow lords, Abulghazi says they inhabited the mountains of Mongolia, and that they were not a numerous race, and adds that the number of their families did not, at the most flourishing period of their history, exceed 2,000 families. The accounts of the Karluks, as given by Juveni and Raschid, are not quite consistent. According to one account Almaligh was their chief town,) while Juveni makes it the seat of another Turkish prince. I have small doubt that Juveni is right, and he is confirmed by Abulghazi. According to his account, when Jingis Khan returned from his campaign against Tangut in 1211, Arslan Khan of the Karluks, who was also Prince of Kayalik or Kabalik, and who had broken off his allegiance to the Gur Khan of Kara Khitai, submitted to him, and he gave him a Mongol princess in marriage. It was ordered also that Arslan should no longer be styled Arslan Khan but Arslan Siriaki, or Arslan the Syrian, that is, the Muhammedan. He accompanied Jingis Khan iii his campaign against the Khuarezm Shah.

ALMALIGH.—In the tenth and eleventh centuries the Turics of Turkestan were dominated over by a Grand Khan, who had his seat of empire at Kashgar, and who ruled from the borders of China to those of the Jaxartes. His power seems to have decayed and to have been much invaded by the Kankalis and Karluks, and he at last submitted to the Gur Khan of Kara Khitai, whose dependent he became. When Gushluk usurped the throne of Kara Khitai the Khan of Almaligh and Fulad was called Ozar. Erdmann, who confuses this dynasty with that in the last paragraph, calls him Kunas, and says he was known as Merdi Shudsha (lion heart or lion man). This latter statement is probably well founded, for the Khans of Almaligh are doubtless to be identified with the Lion Khans of Kashgar mentioned by Visdelou.t It would seem that Ozar Khan of Almaligh, having refused to acknowledge Gushluk, the latter marched against him, and having surpri >ec him when hunting put him to death. Ozar had acknowledged th* supremacy of Jingis Khan, and on his death his son Siknak Tikin was named his successor by the Mongol Khan, who gave him a daughter of Juji’s in marriage. He also accompanied Jingis in his Eastern campaign.

THE NAIMANS.—That the Naimans were Turks, as both Klaproth and D’Ohsson affirm, I have shown in the notes at the end of this work. According to Raschid they were nomads. Some of them were settled in the district of Sehets. (?) The places where they lived included Egeh Altai (? Yeke Altai or Great Altai); Karakorum, where Ogotai fixed his residence ; the mountains Alwi Sepras (called Elui Seras by D’Ohsson), and Gul Irtish, where the Kankalis also lived ; the Irtish Muran, a branch of the Irtish (by which probably the Black Irtish is meant); the surrounding mountains and districts as far as the country of the Kirghises on one side, and that of the Uighurs on the other.§ That is, it included the whole of Northern Sungaria from near lake Saissan to Karakorum. It is important to remember that Raschid makes Karakorum, which afterwards became the capital of Ogotai, a chief camping ground of the Naimans. The reading is con­firmed by Abulghazi, who says that they had their chief camping ground in the district called Karakorum in Mongolia; and in a very independent authority, namely, a map of the north-western frontiers of China at the Mongol period, contained in the Hai kue thu chi, a Chinese work on universal historical geography, we are told Holin (the Chinese name for Karakorum) was situated between the Orkhon and the Timur, and it is added that the Naimans had formerly their principal camp thereof Abulghazi says he knew nothing of the former history of the Naimans except that they had a king named Karkish, who left his dominions to his son Inat. At a later date they were ruled over by Iandj Belgeh Buka Khan, who divided his kingdom between his sons Taibuka and Buyuruk Khan. Taibuka retained possession of his father’s residence, Kara­korum, while Buyuruk went to live at Kizilbashi (? the Kizilbash lake), near the Altai.tt At the end of his description of the Naimans, Raschid mentions a people whom he calls Tigin, whose chief was called Kader Buyuruk Khan, and who lived in close alliance with the Naimans. In regard to these names, Tigin seems to be a form of the Turkish title Tikin, while Kader is explained by Raschid as meaning mighty or strong. It is clearly the Kadr which occurs so frequently as the title of the Turkish Khans of Turkestan. It is a Turkish title, and Raschid expressly says it was a name not used by the Mongols, who pronounced it Kadsher. He also mentions another tribe, which he names Tebgi. D’Ohsson writes the name Sikin biki, he says it was closely connected with the Onguts although it lived with the Naimans. The women of the Naimans and of this latter tribe were famed for their beauty.t I know nothing of these two tribes beyond the facts mentioned by Raschid.

THE UIGHURS.—The Uighurs were undoubtedly Turks. They were known to the Chinese as Hoei-hu. In the second half of the eighth century and beginning of the ninth the Uighurs were all-powerful in Eastern Asia, and had their capital at Karakorum. Their princes entered into matrimonial alliances with the Chinese Emperor, and they seem to have occupied all the western part of Mongolia, from Karakorum to the country of the Ortus. Like the power of most Turkish con­federacies, however, theirs was not very long lived. Their possessions in the south were overrun and occupied by the Thibetans, and in the north they were much harrassed by their western neighbours the Hakas, a name which I have elsewhere connected with Oghuz.§ The latter at length, in 840, marched against them at the head of 100,000 horsemen, defeated and captured their Khan Khaisa, whose head they cut off. After this defeat a large number of the Uighurs dispersed, many of them seeking refuge on the borders of Shensi, where they nominated Uhi as their Khan. At length in the year 848 they were finally dispersed, many of their hordes fled to the countries of Sha Chau and Kua chau.ll The Hakas, who supplanted them and occupied their capital Karakorum, were, as I believe, the direct ancestors of the Naimans, who were encamped there at the accession of Jingis. It was these disasters which led to the Uighurs migrating and settling largely in an old Turk land, namely, on the eastern spurs of the Thian Shan mountains. Their principal, seat was Bishbalik (the five towns), which Klaproth has shown to be identical with Urumtzi. On the north they extended as far as the river Achu, on the south they had the Chinese principality of Thsiau thsiuan kiun (the present country of Su chau), on the east they bordered upon Gundun Gachikia (Visdelou reads it Yuen tun Kia cha), and on the west upon the Sifans or Thibetans. Nestorian Christianity was widely spread among them, as we learn from many Eastern travellers. And it was from the Nestorians they doubtless derived their alphabet, which is founded on the Syriac. They taught letters to the Mongols, and were in early times the most cultivated race of Eastern Asia. Like the other Turks of the Thian Shan range, the Uighurs submitted to the Gur Khans of Kara Khitai. Their ruler was entitled Idikut, and he became their tributary, having a deputy of the Gur Khans in his territory. When the star of Jingis rose the Idikut broke off his allegiance to the Kara Khitai and became the protege of Jingis, who gave him his daughter in marriage. At this time he was named Baurchik, and the Uighurs continued to be ruled by his family until the Mongols were driven away from China. The eastern neighbours of the Uighurs were the Keraits.

THE KERAITS.—In regard to the Keraits I hold very heretical views. They have been almost, if not quite, universally treated as Mongols. I believe, on the contrary, that they were Turks, and have given my reasons at some length in the notes at the end of this volume. The history of the Keraits and of Prester John, their celebrated sovereign, is given in detail in the tenth chapter, where the question as to their habitat has been fully discussed, and it has been shown to correspond to the frontier districts of the Ordus country and the neighbourhood Of Koko Khotan.

THE MERKITS.—The country of the Merkits or Mecrits is well defined by more than one author. Thus Marco Polo says, when you leave Karakorum and the Altai, and you go north for forty days, you reach the country called the plain of Bargu. The people there are called Mescript. Raschid tells us the Merkits were called Mekrits by one section of the Mongols. He says they were also known by the common name of Udut or Uduyut. In another place he says one of their tribes was called the Udut Merkits. This name of Udut Klaproth connects with great probability with the river Uda, a western feeder of the Selinga.t In 1197 Genghis Khan marched against the Merkits, and we are told he encountered and defeated the Udut Merkits near the river Mondja, in the canton Karas Muren, beyond the Kerulon and Selinga. Klaproth adds that this river still bears the name Mandzia. It springs to the north of the sources of the Onon and Kerulon, in the angle formed between those rivers by the Bakha Kentei and the IkS Kentei. It crosses the frontier of Siberia at the post Obur khadain ussu, passes near the fort of Mandzinskoi, called Manzanskoi in Pozniakof’s map, and joins the Chikoi (one of the main feeders of the Selinga) opposite the village of Manghir Chuiska4 The following year Wang Khan, the Kerait chief, defeated the Merkits at a place called Buker kehreh, when their chief Tukta bigi took refuge in the country of Barkuchin. Kehreh no doubt means plains, and Buker kchrch is doubtless the plains of Bargu of Marco Polo, and was situated near the outfall of the Selinga. After the defeat and death of the Naiman chief Tayang Khan, Jingis marched against the Merkits, and we are told that the chief of the Uhuz or Udut Merkits (Erdmann says the Uighur Merkits) submitted voluntarily to him at the river Bar. I notice a town called Borskaya on an eastern feeder of the lower Selinga. This tribe having afterwards revolted, Jingis attacked it in a place named Kurukchal, “near the Selinga.” These facts make it almost certain that the Merkits lived upon the lower Selinga and its feeders and in the country south-west of the Baikal Sea. The Merkits have generally been treated as Mongols. It is not improbable that as they were a frontier race they may have been somewhat mixed with Mongol blood. But I believe this to have been trifling, and that they were almost as typically Turks as the Uighurs. The proofs of this I must remit to the notes at the end of the volume. The ruler of the Merkits in the time of Jingis was Tukta Bigi, who will appear frequently in the following pages. He had six sons, namely, Tugun, Tuseh, Kudu, Jilaun (who married a daughter of Wang Khan of the Keraits), Jiyuk, and Kultukan Mergen, All six came to a violent end. Tugun was killed by Wang Khan; Tuseh, Jilaun, and Jiyuk fell in battle with Jingis Khan; Kudu was put to death when escaping, while Kultukan was a great archer and fled to Kipchak, where he was captured and put to death by order of Juji. Kulan the daughter of Dair Ussun, chief of the Merkits, was married to Jingis Khan, and she was the mother of his fifth son Kulkan.

THE KIRGHISES AND KEMKEMJUKS.—The Kirghises and Kemkemjuks were two closely allied Turkish tribes, who lived in the time of Jingis on the upper waters of the Yenissei and on the Kemjik. A place at the embouchure of the Kemjik into the Yenissei, is still known as Kemkemjik Boru. Boru is merely equivalent to stony mountain or fell. Raschid tells they formed two neighbouring nations, their country was thickly settled, and their kings were called Inal. The Chinese authors who wrote during the Mongol supremacy place them in the same district, between the Iyus, the Ob, and the Yenissei. They remained in the same district down to the seventeenth century, when, as reported by Strahlenberg and other Swedish exiles, they left their old country and migrated towards lake Saissan and the mountainous country to the south. Here they are still found, and are known as Buruts, Black Kirghises, or Rock Kirghises. They are in fact the Kirghises proper, those frequently so called being in reality Kazaks and not Kirghises.

THE URASUTS, TELENKUTS, AND KESTIMIS. — These tribes, Raschid says, were also called the wood-folk, and he tells that they lived in the woods in the country of the Kirghises and Kemkemjuks. They were closely bound up with the Kirghises, and were apparently three sections of one race, as Abulghazi says, and doubtless also their descendants are the well-known Telenguts, or white Kalmuks of recent travellers, who are found scattered in the high country of Northern Sungaria. They are otherwise called Teleuts, and their original seat was apparently the Al tan, or Golden lake, otherwise called Telezkoi. Their physique and looks are very like those of the Mongols, but their speech is Turkish. Klaproth suggests that they have changed in the latter re­spect, and that originally they were Mongols. It is curious that Abul­ghazi classes the Telenguts among the Uirads, that Ssanang Setzen speaks of them as the Telengud Uirad, while they are known to the Russians as White Kalmuks. In regard to the Kestimis, I may add that several tribes of Siberian Turks are still styled Kitshi, as Kitshi Taidkge, Kitshi Kurmachi, Kitshi Argun, Kitshi Pushku.

THE UIRADS, KURIS, TULAS, TUMATS, BARGUTS, AND KURLUTS were various tribes who lived on the east and west of the Baikal Sea, about the feeders of the Angara, and in the dis­trict known as Barguchin Tugrum. I have now little doubt that they were Mongols, and were the ancestors of the Western Mongols or Kal­muks. I have entered into the subject fully in the last chapter of this volume on the Buriats.

THE WILD URIANKUTS— The name Uriankut, or Uriangkhan, has given rise to some difficulty. One of the six great divisions of the Mongols in the time of Dayan Khan was called Uriangkhan. The tribe which had charge of the burying-place of Jingis was called Uriankut. The Turks on the Chulim are called Uriangkhai, and the same name is applied by the Chinese to the Southern Samoyedes, who live about the Kossgol lake. This variety of application is explained when we find that the name merely means woodmen.^ Raschid men­tions one tribe of Uriangkuts among the Darlegin Mongols, but he also names a second tribe, the Wild Uriangkuts. He describes them as dressing themselves in deerskins; as keeping neither oxen nor sheep. He speaks of their living in birch huts ; as using snow shoes, &c., and it is quite clear that he refers to the Uriangkhai of the Chinese authors—that is, to the Samoyedes, who still have their headquarters close to the Mongol country and about lake Kossagol.

BULGACHINS AND KERMUCHI NS.—Raschid merely names these tribes, and tells us they were neighbours of the Kirghises. They are probably to be identified with some of the broken tribes of Turks or Samoyedes who live on the northern flanks of the Sayanian mountains.

THE JELAIRS.—We now approach a part of our subject which is unusually difficult. I have stated in a note at the end of this work my reasons for making the Jelairs a Turkish tribe and not a Mongol one. They were divided into ten sections, namely, the Jait, Tukraut (Tak- raun of D’Ohsson), Kengeksaut (Kungkassaun of D’Ohsson), Kumsaut, Uyat, Selkan (Bilkassan of D’Ohsson), Kugir, Tulangkit, Buri, and Shenegkut. During the reign of Jingis Khan the most important chief of the Jelairs was Mukuli Kiwang, of the section Jait. He commanded the left wing of the army of Jingis. Kiwang was a Chinese title, meaning great chief, it was given to him when the Mongols sought refuge at Karaun Shidun.* This title was inherited by his son Bughul, and his descendants.! Abulghazi reports of the Jelairs that they were an ancient tribe, and very numerous, and that on one occasion when they were at war with the Khitai, they all assembled in one place, and their tents formed seventy kurens (/>., rings). These rings have been aptly com­pared to the rings among the ancient Avars. The Jelair tribe consisted of many uvruks, which were formed into groups, each one with a separate chief. The greater part of the Jelairs were encamped on the Onon.f

SUWEIT AND KABTERUN.—These tribes are called Sunit and Kairun by D’Ohsson. If the reading of the latter be the right one, we may have their descendants in the well-known tribe of the Sunids, which belongs to the forty-nine banners. These Sunids are probably a very old tribe, for they and their chief Kiluken Bahadur are named by Ssanang Setzen in his account of Jingis Khan. This makes the identifica­tionprobable. But as the Suweit are not classed with either the Niruns and Darlegins, />., with the two great sections of the Mongols proper, it is probable that if they were Mongols they had a distinct history and traditions, like the Uirads, &c. The Kabterun are named by Raschid as a section of the Suweit.§

THE TARTARS.—I shall remit the discussion of several matters which suggest themselves on reading the name Tartar to the notes at the end of the volume, and shall here content myself with a short resum6. The Chinese used the name in a general sense, to include the greater part of their northern neighbours, and it was in imitation of them pro­bably that the Europeans applied the name to the various nomade hordes who controlled Central Asia after the Mongol invasion. But the name properly belonged, and is applied by Raschid and other Mongol histo­rians, to certain tribes living in the north-eastern comer of Mongolia, who, as I believe, were partially, at least, of Tungusic race,|| and whose descendants are probably to be found among the Solons of Northern Manchuria. Raschid tells us they consisted of 70,000 families, who lived on the borders of China, and had their principal camp at Buyur ilaur, that is the well-known lake Buyur. They were divided into six tribes, namely, the Tutukeliuts, Alj. (called Antsi by the Chinese and Ssanang Setzen), Jaghan, Kuisin (called Kuyin by D’Ohsson), Nezait (the Terat of D’Ohsson), and Yerkui (the Berkui of D’Ohsson); of these the Tutu­keliuts were the most important, whence a male Tartar was frequently called Tutukelina, and a female Tutukeljin.* They fought a good deal with one another, and as I shall show presently, had a long struggle with the Mongols, after which they were almost exterminated. Two of Jingis Khan’s wives, namely, Bisulun and Bisugat were Tartars ; they were sisters. A favourite general of his whom he had adopted as a boy, named Kutuku Noyan, and who will appear in the following pages, was also a Tartar.

THE ONGUTS.—The Onguts, of Raschid, were known to the Chinese as White Tartars. One section of the Tartars above described was called Jaghan Tartar, z>., White Tartars, and it seems pretty certain that the Onguts were a section of the Tartars proper. We are told that about the year 880 or 883, Chu ye che sin, otherwise called Li kue chang (who was of the Turkish race of the Sha to), and his son, Li ke yung, having been defeated by He lien tho and others, left China, afraid of being punished, and retired among the Tha che,t and that he re-entered China followed by the Tha che, and with their help defeated the rebel Hoam chao. After this he settled with the Tha che between Yun chau and Tai chau (two towns in the northern part of Shansi).{ I have no doubt that these Tartars, who occur frequently in subsequent history, are the White Tartars of the days of Jingis. At that time they were in the service of the Kin Emperors, by whom they were employed to garrison a portion of the Great Wall, whence their name of Onguts, from Ongu a wall.§ Their chief, at the time of Jingis (according to Raschid), was called Alakush Tikin Kuri. Alakush is a Turkish proper name, which means a pied bird ; Tikin is a title borne by chiefs of Turkish tribes. Gaubil, who calls him Alausse, says he belonged to the ancient race of Kings of the Thu kiu,1f which exactly agrees with the fact named above, that the leader who planted the colony of Onguts in Northern Shan si was of the race of the Sha to Turks, which accounts further for his close connection with the chief of the Naimans. I believe the Onguts, then, to have been a colony of Tartars from Manchuria, governed by a Turkish dynasty.

HISTORY OF THE MONGOLS. CHAPTER II. THE ORIGINS OF THE MONGOLS