ARTICLE IV.

NOTICES OF THE MEDIEVAL GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY OF CENTRAL AND WESTERN ASIA.

Drawn from Chinese and Mongol writings, and compared with the observations of Western authors in the Middle ages.*

By E. BRETSCHNEIDER, M.D.

T1

INTRODUCTION.

THE restlessly progressing civilization of Europe has led to a high development of the faculties and the critical judgment of European nations. Every day science unveils mysteries and facts, which have been hidden from human knowledge for many thousand years. It is also a merit of our times to have delivered science from all the fables and hypotheses, with which ancient scholars were so much pleased. It is now a rule adopted for all branches of knowledge, that in scientific researches, the leading idea must be to bring to light the truth. With respect to some sciences, as for instance geography, this aim can be attained with more or less completeness by means of direct observations. But as to history, and especially history of remote. times, we depend entirely upon the statements and views of ancient chroniclers, whose style is often far from being clear, whilst the veracity of their reports is not always to be relied on. The same must be said with respect to ancient geographical accounts and narratives of travels. For researches in these departments it is therefore of great importance, to compare the statements of several contemporaneous authors who have written on the same subject. Judging from this point of view, it seems to me that the ancient historical and geographical accounts of the Chinese, as far as they treat of nations, countries and events spoken of also by western writers, present a high interest; all the more so, when we have to compare statements on the same subject of nations so diametrically different in their mode of viewing things. In a recently published paper (Notes on Chinese Mediæval Travellers to the West) I tried to review the narratives of some Chinese travellers to western Asia in the Mongol period, which permit a

Read before the Society, on November 29th, 1875.

comparison with the accounts of those western mediæval travellers, who went to eastern Asia in the same 13th century. Now I venture to lay before the reader a paper of kindred character. In the present essay I wish to render accessible to European scholars interested in Asiatic history and geography, some accounts of this subject found in ancient Chinese and Mongol works, and referring to the days of Mongol supremacy in Asia. As I have access to many special sources of information, with respect to eastern Asiatic literature, I have been enabled to gather a considerable amount of additional material bearing on the history and the geographical knowledge of that period. These eastern sources of information will generally prove to be meagre and fragmentary; and sometimes they only become intelligible, when compared with the detailed records left behind by the Arabian and Persian chroniclers; but they have nevertheless a considerable interest, and we shall see, that much fresh light is thrown by Chinese and Mongol writers, in corroboration of the statements of European mediæval travellers across the Asiatic continent, and in elucidating dubious questions with respect to Asiatic history and geography.

The object, which it was originally proposed to accomplish by the publication of this paper, was the explanation of an ancient Chinese map of western and central Asia, and even eastern Europe, dating from the first half of the 14th century. But in commenting on this map, I was induced to examine for the corroboration of my views, the Chinese historical works of the the Mongol period; and I found, that it would be useful for the understanding of the slender information furnished by the ancient map, to give a short but coherent account of the warlike enterprises of the Mongols in the western part of Asia and in eastern Europe, according to the Mohammedan authors, and to add all the information on the same subject, which I have been able to find in Chinese and Mongol works.

I divide my paper into six parts.

In the first, I review the writings of eastern and western authors, to which reference is made in this essay.

In the second, I give a full account of the Kara-khitai or Si Liao, an interesting nation originating in eastern Asia, who in 'the 12th century dominated over the whole of central Asia, and was finally destroyed by Chinghiz khan.

In the third, I have attempted to bring together the accounts found in Chinese and Mongol medieval works with respect to the Mohammedans.

The fourth and the fifth parts are devoted to the record of the military doings of the Mongols in the far west.

The sixth part treats of the above-mentioned ancient map of central and western Asia.

It may be the proper place here, for a few remarks regarding the Chinese mode of rendering foreign words and proper names, and my mode of romanizing Chinese sounds. In rendering Chinese sounds, representing foreign words met with in Chinese works of the Yuan period, I have found that to use the Russian mode of spelling (in roman letters), restores the original words more closely than any other of the numerous systems invented by the sinologues of various nations. This is easily understood. The official and other documents, on which the Yuan shi or Chinese " History of the Mongol dynasty," and many other Chinese works of that time are based, have been written (in Chinese, or translated into Chinese from the Mongol) in Peking; and the Russian pronunciation of Chinese sounds, established first more than fifty years ago by Father Hyacinth, and adopted subsequently with some insignificant changes by all Russian sinologues, refers to the Peking Mandarin dialect. I have little doubt, that the Peking pronunciation in the days of the Mongols was the same as now. When casting his eyes upon the ancient Chinese map, a facsimile of which is appended to this paper, the reader will admit that with a few exceptions, all the names of countries and places in western Asia are rendered as exactly by the Chinese sounds as the language permits; and when examining the other map, where the Chinese sounds are romanized according to the Russian system, he will easily recognize the Persian or Arabic names intended. It would in some cases be very difficult to identify the names found on the ancient map had I adopted the English or French mode of spelling. Fearing however lest my pleading in favour of the Russian system might prejudice some English linguists, I confess that I am completely ignorant of linguistic theories, and of the rules to be followed in romanizing Chinese and other sounds. I can judge this matter only from a practical point of view.

It is known, that the Chinese, when rendering a foreign word are obliged to represent every syllable by one of their characters, which are all monosyllabic. But it is not always possible to render correctly the sounds of other languages by Chinese characters. This is the case with the syllables terminating in a consonant. With the exception of n or ng, the Chinese sounds of the Mandarin dialect never have a consonant at the end. Thus the Chinese in rendering the name Thalas, Djand, Nakhshab, Chach, are obliged to write 塔刺思T"a-lu-sze 毡的Djan-di,那黑沙不 Na-hei-sha-bu, Cha-chi (see the ancient map). Sometimes again they do not attempt to render the terminal consonant, e. g. Djambalik, Almalik and Pulad, are termed on the map

Djang-ba-li, A-li-ma-li and Pu-la. It is difficult for a European to pronounce a Chinese character sounding like or This sound is rendered eulh by French sinologues, which seems to me quite a corrupt spelling; for it is (in Peking at least) the nearest to our (with rattling), and Russian sinologues render it simply by r, whilst the English write urh. The rule for spelling foreign names adopted by the Chinese of the Mongol period, proves that in some cases, characters liko and were considered as equivalents for our r Thus they write Ma-djar, Sa-ma-r-kan, ★ ƒ Tiemu-r, for Madjar (Hungaria), Samarcand, Timur. At the present day the Chinese always render our r, or the syllables ri, ra, ru, by characters sounding li, la, lu; and occasionally the Chinese of the Mongol period followed the same rule; e. g. we read on the ancient map, Dju-li-djang, Ho-la-huo-djo, Sa-li-ya, intended for Djurdjan, Kara-khodjo,

Saria.

PART I. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES.

1. IT has appeared desirable to put at the head of this essay, a critical review of the works, from which the information dealt with in these pages has been derived. I may begin with the Chinese and Mongol literature.

Among the Chinese works extant, treating of the history and geography of Asia in the 13th and 14th centuries, the Yuan shi, or Chinese "History of the Mongol Dynasty without doubt takes the first rank. It is only to be regretted, that the work has been compiled with great carelessness by the Chinese scholars of the Ming dynasty, who had been entrusted with this task. In the Annals of the Ming shi or "History of the Ming,' sub anno 1369 (a year after the expulsion of the Mongols from China), I find the following statement, with respect to the compilation of the Yuan shi. In the above-mentioned year (the Ming) the detailed records of the reigns of the thirteen Yüan emperors (+) were procured, and the emperor (Hung-wu) gave orders to compile the history of the Yuan, under the direction of Sung Lien and Wang Wei. The work, which occupied sixteen scholars, was begun in the 2nd month of 1369, and finished in the 8th month of the same year. But as at that time, the record of the reign of Shun-ti (the last Mongol emperor in China) was not yet received, the scholar 1 Ou-yang Yu and others, were sent to Pei-p'ing to obtain the required