The Mongol queens of the thirteenth century ruled the largest empire the world has ever known. Yet sometime near the end of the century, censors cut a section from The Secret History of the Mongols, leaving a single tantalizing quote from Genghis Khan: “Let us reward our female offspring.” Only this hint of a father’s legacy for his daughters remained of a much larger story.

The queens of the Silk Route turned their father’s conquests into the world’s first truly international empire, fostering trade, education, and religion throughout their territories and creating an economic system that stretched from the Pacific to the Mediterranean. Outlandish stories of these powerful queens trickled out of the Empire, shocking the citizens of Europe and and the Islamic world.

After Genghis Khan’s death in 1227, conflicts erupted between his daughters and his daughters-in-law; what began as a war between powerful women soon became a war against women in power as brother turned against sister, son against mother. At the end of this epic struggle, the dynasty of the Mongol queens had seemingly been extinguished forever, as even their names were erased from the historical record..

One of the most unusual and important warrior queens of history arose to avenge the wrongs, rescue the tattered shreds of the Mongol Empire, and restore order to a shattered world. Putting on her quiver and picking up her bow, Queen Mandhuhai led her soldiers through victory after victory. In her thirties she married a seventeen-year-old prince, and she bore eight children in the midst of a career spent fighting the Ming Dynasty of China on one side and a series of Muslim warlords on the other. Her unprecedented success on the battlefield provoked the Chinese into the most frantic and expensive phase of wall building in history. Charging into battle even while pregnant, she fought to reassemble the Mongol Nation of Genghis Khan and to preserve it for her own children to rule in peace.

At the conclusion of his magnificently researched and ground-breaking narrative, Weatherford notes that, despite their mystery and the efforts to erase them from our collective memory, the deeds of these Mongol queens inspired great artists from Chaucer and Milton to Goethe and Puccini, and so their stories live on today. With The Secret History of the Mongol Queens , Jack Weatherford restores the queens’ missing chapter to the annals of history.

From the Hardcover edition.

杰克·威泽弗德（Jack Weatherford），著名蒙元史专家，加州大学圣地亚哥分校人类学博士，蒙古成吉思汗大学人文学科荣誉博士。现任美国明尼苏达州圣保罗市麦卡利斯特学院人类学教授。

其代表作有：《印度缔造者》、《乡根》、《野蛮与文明》、《金钱简史》及畅销书《成吉思汗与今日世界之形成》，并因《成吉思汗与今日世界之形成》一书于2007年荣获蒙古国最高荣誉"北极星勋章"。

赵清治，北京大学中文系学士，中国人民大学语言学硕士，多伦多大学语言学硕士，东亚史博士。曾任职于中国青年政治学院、中国青少年研究中心、多伦多大学东亚图书馆、东亚系等，现任美国纽约州斯基莫尔学院访问助理教授。著有Marriage as Political Strategy and Cultural Expression: Mongolian Royal Marriages from World Empire to Yuan Dynasty （Peter Lang Publishing Inc., 2008）等多部作品。译有《忽必烈和他的世界帝国》（重庆出版社，2008）。