«Тахиййат»: Сборник статей в честь Н. Н. Дьякова

m 160 n John Masson Smith, Jr. [Chinggis] ... which is addressed to you. Whosoever we are, whether [Mongol] or Naiman or Merkit or [Muslim], and wherever ear is capable of hearing, and wherever a horse [pony] is able to tread , there make it heard and understood 1 . [emphasis added] Such offers became familiar as Mongol power grew: accept, help spread and enforce, the word that Chinggis Qan is the one lord — or else. Since the Merkits and Naimans are solicited, the order must be early: both suffered major defeats in 1204, and again in 1205; their fugitive remnants were extinguished in 1216 or 1217 (Merkits) and 1218 (Naimans). The offer would have been pointless after 1205. As for “wherever a horse is able to tread”, the Mongols knew, if only from traders’ accounts of their Silk Road journeys, that there was a wide world out there accessible to their ponies. Temüchin challenged them to take this world 2 . The Mongols accepted, and largely met the challenge. 1 Rubruck/Jackson, 248. This text is known because incorporated in a submission order sent by Möngke Qan by hand of William of Rubruck to King Louis of France. Its anachro- nistic reference to the Merkits and Naimans indicates that it was an authentic and thus unal- terable document of Chinggis’, preserved in an imperial archive accessible to Möngke; see: Voegelin E. The Mongol Orders of Submission to European Powers, 1245–1255, Byzantion , 15 (1940–41. See also J. M. Smith, Jr, “The Mongols and World-Conquest”, Mongo1ica 5 ([Ulaanbaatar], 1994), 206–214. 2 “Another decree [of Chinggis] is that they are to bring the whole world into subjec- tion...”: Plano Carpini, 25.