Hope, Michael. A first draft of history: Nasawī’s Account of the Tatars and Early Persian historiography of the Mongol Empire

Hope, Michael — PhD in Asian Studies, Associate Professor of Asian History, Yonsei University, Underwood International College, Seoul, Korea, Orc ID 0000-0003-3454-5458, Scopus ID 56978986200; e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

I am indebted to Dr. F. Veselov for his assistance preparing this article.

The middle of the thirteenth century was a pivotal moment in the historiography of the Mongol Empire. Having seized the throne in 1251, Möngke Khan also took control of its past, commissioning a number of new court histories. It is now widely believed that Möngke initiated the compilation of the history of Chinggis Khan (r. 1206–1227) and his successor Ögödei (r. 1229–1241), known as The Secret History of the Mongols. Drawing on earlier genealogies, proclamations, and correspondence, the Secret History has been treated as the first authoritative account of the creation of the Mongol State. Yet this view may not be accurate as there is strong evidence that the first Persian histories of the Mongol Empire were informed by even earlier narrative histories from the Mongol court. The content of these accounts suggest that they were shaped heavily by the information of Qara Khitai officials who either fled, or were appointed to the early Mongol administration of Iran. These Persian authors provide anecdotal evidence of how the Mongols remembered their past before the new version promoted by Möngke took hold. The present study will analyse one of the earliest Persian histories, the Account of the Accursed Tatars and the Beginning of their Rule by Shihāb al-Dīn Nasawī (d. 1250), to determine the possible provenance of these Mongol histories and their contribution to the historiography of the empire.

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