IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Cathay and the Way Thither : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
256 CATHAY UNDER THE MONGOLS.
copious writings by the unlearned, for only portions and fragments have been translated. D'Ohsson, who makes much use of Rashid's History of the Mongols, says that though in some parts he copies from those who had gone before him, his history is altogether the most complete, and the most eminent for orderly arrangement and noble simplicity of style. Many of his facts are to be found in no other history ; it is the only one which gives information as to the ancient nations of Tartary, and the ancestry of Chinghiz. He was aided with information by Pûlad Ching-sang, a great Mongol prince, who was the Great Khan's envoy at Tabriz, and who was said to have better knowledge of such subjects tha'n any man living. To him, probably, he owed much of the information in the chapters here translated.
Even from such fragments as this, and those which Sir Henry Elliot has introduced in his Biographical Index to Historians of Indict, it may be gathered that Rashid had far more correct ideas of geography than any of his contemporaries with whom we have to do in this book. This indeed might have been expected from a man so accomplished, and occupying a position which was not merely that of first minister of Persia, but that of a statesman in one great branch of an empire whose relations embraced nearly all Asia with a closeness and frequency of intercourse to which there has never been an approach in later days.
In 1836 Quatremère commenced the publication of a text and translation of the Mongol History of Rashid, at the expense of the French government, and on a most costly and cumbrous scale. It went no further than the first volume, containing a life of Rashid and an account of his works, the author's own preface, and the history of Hulagu.
The late Mr. Morley was engaged on an English translation of the whole of the Jami'-utt-Tawécrikh, as may be seen from his letters in vols. vi and vii of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. But it never was published, and I am not aware what
progress had been made.'
1 This sketch has been derived from Quatremère, from D'Ohsson's Preface, from Mr. Morley's letters just mentioned, and from Sir H.
Elliot's Index. But the last seems to draw his material from Quatre-mère and Morley.
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