Search the history of over billion web pages on the Internet. Anyone who wishes to trace the major events In history must be himself an accomplished linguist or must put his reliance on translations that are often inaccurate and out of date or on Indirect references to works that have never been translated from their original tongue.
The rise and expansion of the Mongol Empire are among the most important events of later medieval history. There was barely a country in Europe or Asia that was not In some way affected by the Mongol onslaught, and many of them had their whole course changed by it.
But the historian who attempts to tell Its story is faced with essential sources in a greater number of languages than any one human being can be expected to know. Sooner or later he has to depend upon translators, whose works will be useless to him unless they are exact, intelligent and clear. Of the writers who have left contemporary accounts of the Mongols none is more Important than Juvaini. He knew personally many of the chief actors in the dramatic stories that he told. He himself was intimately connected with one of the most interesting episodes in the story, the destruction of the headquarters of the Assassins at Alamut.
He was, moreover, a historian in the best Moslem tradition, a man of wide interests and of literary accomplishment. But hitherto his work in its entirety has only been accessible to Persian scholars. A full and worthy translation of his history into English is therefore a very welcome contribution to historiography.
I hope that it will be read not only by the specialist students of the Mongol expansion and of the strange sect of the Assassins but also by everyone who finds pleasure in reading history. Of the laws which Chingiz-Khan framed and the yasas which he promulgated after his rise to power. Chingiz-Khan's rise to power and the beginning of the passing to him of the empires and kingdoms of the kings of the world: Of the sons of Chingiz-Khan 40 V.
