Hello, (soon to be) fellow historians.
My Undergrad thesis is due to be presented in a year's time, and I'm doing my best to get ahead of the game. I love Mongolian history, so the natural order of things would be to write my thesis on the Mongols. However, I'm running into a couple major problems.
These two issues heavily overlap. I am struggling to find primary sources, and the few I've found overlap so secondary sources all cover similar topics. The goal is to offer something new to the field, and I fear I may fail to do so.
When it comes to the Mongols, almost all documents focus on the 13th and 14th centuries, so that is where I will keep my scope.
In terms of Primary sources, I have:
...and that's it. I've scoured JSTOR to no avail, and I haven't worked with any other databases before.
My secondary sources consist of:
I have checked their sources for ideas, but they were little help. Liddell Hart doesn't have any cited sources(!) This is where things get complicated. I have little ideas on what I want to write the thesis on because I want to ensure I can produce an adequate amount of primary sources before I begin reading.
Being that the Mongols weren't keen on writing things down, I figure my sources will come from China, Russia, Kwharezmia, Hungary, etc. However, I'm unaware of any writers I can turn to for documents on the Mongols.
In terms of a topic, I would prefer to write about Subutai, as he is almost entirely unknown. He was responsible for most of the conquering that made the Mongol Empire as large as it was, yet no one knows his name. However, picking a topic is skipping ahead if I don't have documents to read from.
tl;dr
Are there any contemporary documents covering the Mongols or Subutai during their westward expansion? Any places I should check to glean sources from? China, Khwaremia, Russia, Hungary?
Am I missing any obvious books or sources? Any military historians here who have indirectly studied the Mongols and have something to share?
Could the lack of sources be a point of study in itself? Were the Mongols suppressing historical writings?
I'm not asking you to do my research for me, just looking to spur some discussion and hopefully get pointed in the right direction.
Thanks!
Among the Arabic sources I know of: Ibn al-Athir was one such contemporary observer in the 13th century, who wrote about them in his "Complete History." There's an excerpt of what I believe is a longer account here and I believe there's an English edition of the Arabic.
There are also some passages relating to the Mongol's attempted expansion into India in the Travels of ibn Battuta in the 14th. More extensive are the accounts mentioned in /u/Muleo's post. [edit] His post seems to be gone, but he had mentioned Juvaini's Persian History of the World Conqueror and Rashid ad-Din's Histories.
Liddell Hart doesn't have any cited sources(!)
Frankly you should drop this then. A 90 year old book by a non-specialist with no cited sources? Why? That's almost certainly going to be worse than a more current tertiary source. I don't even think you can properly regard that as a "secondary source" at all.
I'd be hesitant about the Richard A. Gabriel book for the same reason. I've looked through his "scholarship" in Muhammad: Islam’s First Great General and it's just crap.
The other two books, as far as I'm aware, are pop histories.
In general terms I would start your preliminary reading on these topics with material like the sections on the Mongols in The Cambridge History of China, The Cambridge History of Iran, David Morgan's Medieval Persia, the works of genuine scholars of the field like Morris Rossabi as recommended by /u/lukeweiss and so on.
Start with Morris Rossabi, and see where he takes you. For an interesting primary source, translated into English (how rare!), There is an account if the daoist qiu chuji's journey to meet Genghis in the Kush. I found a digital copy for you: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044050792555;view=1up;seq=9;skin=mobile Enjoy.
A couple things to add on a bit (I've mainly dealt with the military aspect of the Mongols, so most of my sources are such):
May's other books such as The Mongol Conquests in World History and Culture and Customs of Mongolia are both pretty good, though the second one is more specific (it talks about, as you'd figure, culture - religion, literature, art, cutoms, and so on). I'd also recommend Chris Peers' Genghis Khan and the Mongol War Machine, which has a respectable source list (both primary and secondary sources - for example, it sources both Juvayni's History as well as The Secret History, with the latter being translated by Urgunge Onon, a Mongol historian. This also reminds me, you mention having The Secret History on your sources - it'd be good to note which translation you're using, since from what I've read many differ in the finer points e.g. Rachewiltz, Waley, and Cleaves all differ), however as you'd imagine it deals more with the Mongols' military conquests than other aspects.
I'd also suggest Antony Karasulas' Mounted Archers of the Steppe but with some hesitation, as it covers all civilisations from 600BC to 1300 AD rather than the Mongols themselves, and the source list (regarding the Mongols) is depressingly lacking. Better sources regarding the Mongol military would also be J. J. Saunders' The History of the Mongol Conquests, and in a more general sense David Morgan's The Mongols, preferably the latest edition (2nd?) as it's been revised with a more "up-to-date" approach to the Mongols as a whole. Also, as /u/CptBuck mentioned, stuff like Weatherford is revisionist pop history without much mention for contradicting perspectives (see my comment from some time ago).