Marco Polo tells a quaint story about a daughter of Kaidu’s, who was renowned for her fame in wrestling. She had sent challenges in all directions, offering to marry any many who should throw her, while he should forfeit 100 horses if he failed. In this way she had won 10,000 horses. He goes on to describe how a prince came from a distant land where he was renowned for his skill and strength, and was determined to win her or a lose a thousand horses; that both Kaidu and his wife tried to persuade their daughter to allow herself to be beaten; that she refused; that the match came off in the presence of the royal pair... and that after a long struggle she threw him on his back on the palace pavement; he lost his horses and his wife, for she would not have him...
—from “Kaidu Khan”

This 1876 work is a comprehensive history of the nomad tribes who dominated Central Asia during the early centuries of the last millennium, and of their great rulers: the khans. Drawing firsthand on numerous scholarly sources and full of illustrative detail and entertaining anecdotes, this remains a vital reference on a civilization now lost to time.

Part 1 of this three-volume work includes the tales of:

• Jingis (Genghis) Khan
• Ogotai Khan
• Kuyuk Khan
• Mangu Khan
• Khubilai Khan
• Toghon Timur Khan
• the Chakhars and the Forty-Nine Banners
• the early contact between the Russians and the Mongols
• and much more.


British ethnologist and historian SIR HENRY HOYLE HOWORTH (1842–1923) served as president of the Royal Archaeological Institute, and is the author of Glacial Nightmare and the Flood (1893) and Methods of Archaeological Research (1896), among other works.