from Volume II Part 1 - Literary Sources
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
When the Mongols invaded China in the thirteenth century, China already had a long and sophisticated tradition of historical and bureaucratic writing; moreover, a large population of literate elites produced written records in great numbers and multiple genres. Chinese records, together with those in Persian, provide the largest trove of sources available for the Mongol Empire. These consist of transmitted sources, often reprinted in later centuries; stone inscriptions surviving from the Mongol era; and newly excavated sources. Genres include official histories, unofficial histories, bureaucratic documents, legal records, travelogues, contracts, miscellaneous notes, gazetteers, genealogies, encyclopedias, and other assorted literary output. Furthermore, Mongolian texts such as the Secret History of the Mongols are preserved in Chinese characters, used phonetically to represent Mongolian words. This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of these varied sources, organized roughly by genre.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.