Tarikh-i Jahangushay

Tārīkh-i Jahāngushāy (Persian: تاریخ جهانگشای "The History of The World Conqueror") or Tārīkh-i Jahāngushāy-i Juwaynī (تاریخ جهانگشای جوینی) is a detailed historical account written by the Persian Ata-Malik Juvayni describing the Mongol, Hulegu Khan, and Ilkhanid conquest of Persia as well as the history of Isma'ilis. It is considered an invaluable work of Persian literature.^[4]

It is written in Persian, and is one of the earliest known examples of Persian miniature and the "Metropolitan style" of the Mongol Ilkhanid court, together with the 1297-1299 manuscript Manafi' al-hayawan (Ms M. 500) commissioned by Mongol ruler Ghazan.^[5] These are no earlier known Persian illustrated manuscripts from before the Mongol conquest (with the possible exception of Varka and Golshah, which however was created in Konya, modern Turkey, at the time of the Sultanate of Rum sometime in the 13th century), although miniatures are known from Mina'i ceramics.^[6]^[7]

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 nerge as an army training exercise for the nomadic Mongols. In a nerge, 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 nerge 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.

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^[8] 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.^[9]

Account of the fall of Merv

After the fall of Merv, the people were rounded up and distributed among the soldiers in tens, hundreds and thousands, and each man in the remaining Mongol army was assigned the execution of "three to four hundred people." However, there is no doubt that this type of savagery was part of the terror spread by the Mongol army.