History 465: Mongols

Rise of the Mongols offers readers a selection of five important works that detail the rise of the Mongol Empire through Chinese eyes.

The narratives by John of Plano Carpini and William of Rubruck of their journeys to Mongolia in the middle of the thirteenth century differ from the majority of works in this series. They give a first-hand authentic account of the first contact between Western Christendom and the Far East, and this at the moment when the whole oriental world from Korea to Hungary was being turned upside down and remade by one of the greatest catastrophes in the history of the world.

Islamic Central Asia is the first English-language anthology of primary documents for the study of Central Asian history. These documents cover the period from the 7th-century Arab conquests to the 19th-century Russian colonial era and provide new insights into the history and significance of the region.

The texts of Willem van Ruusbroec and Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, translated from the Latin and edited, with an Introductory Notice.