This account of the
Mongol invasions of his homeland
Iran, written based on survivor accounts, is one of the main sources on the
rapid sweep of
Genghis Khan's armies through the nomadic tribes of
Tajikistan and the established cities of the
Silk Road including
Otrar,
Bukhara, and
Samarkand in 1219, and successive campaigns until Genghis Khan's death in 1227 and beyond. Juvayni's writing is sometimes inflated, as when he estimates the strength of the Mongol army at 700,000, against other accounts that put the number between 105,000 and 130,000. His descriptions are often written from a sense of drama: of the fall of
Assassin castle
Maymun-Diz in November 1256, where he was present at the siege, he describes the effect of
trebuchet (catapult) bombardment on the battlements: The first stones which were discharged from them broke the defenders' trebuchet and many were crushed under it. Fear of the quarrels from the crossbows overcame them so that they were in a complete panic and tried to make shields out of veils [i.e. they did best to defend with very indadequate equipment.] Some who were standing on towers crept in their terror like mice into holes or fled like lizards into the crannies of the rocks. Juvayni's descriptions are, however, a very valuable resource for contemporary Mongol history, along with the work of
Rashid al-Din, and the
Secret History of the Mongols.
Description of Mongolian hunting practices and the nerge One of his convincing descriptions is that of the Mongol hunt or '''' as an army training exercise for the nomadic Mongols. In a , the whole army rounded up all the animals over a large region, in order to obtain dried meat before the onset of winter. In the time of Genghis Khan, the was converted into an exercise in discipline, with severe punishments for commanders of tens, hundreds, or thousands who let animals escape. This is because the
Yassa, the Mongolian
de facto law, is without respect of persons and, according to the Persian historian
Mirkhvand, enjoins corporal punishment without respect of persons for those who allow animals to escape. Once rounded up, the animals were ruthlessly massacred, first by the Khan, then by princes, and finally, only after so commanded, by all the army. This was to form a model for the ruthlessness of Mongol attacks on well-established human settlements. . Manuscript copied in 1438 (
Supp. Persan 206)
Hunting of wolves An account of the tragic failure of a Chinese student – (Jiang Rong: "The Wolf") – to save a wild wolf of a type formerly hunted by the historical Mongol people (and still today by their descendants), would indicate that wolves were targeted by such hunts, as traditional methods of the ravaging wolves in imminent danger of extinction were described. Snow leopards and others were also likely to have been hunted.
The place of horses in the Mongolian diet It is reported by British historian
Stephen Turnbull that the Mongols ate horse milk powder with water, around 250 grammes a day – although an account they quote mentions that they took 4.5 kg along for an expedition and claims they hunted on campaign, such as digging around for marmots. In times of desperation, they also drank blood from their horses by temporarily opening a vein and drain some blood into a cup. This they would drink either plain or mixed with milk or water.
English translation • Juvaini stopped working on the original Persian-language text in 1260, leaving it in a disorganised and incomplete state. Mirza Muhammad Qazvini completed the best text and published it in 1937. The 1958 edition (Boyle's English translation) is in two volumes. A book review of the 1958 edition was published by
The American Historical Review. A revised edition of the Boyle translation was published in 1997. ==References==