"Tatar men are free to marry as they please. Wives spend very little money on their husbands, but the profits they receive from their husbandry and business activities are so great that they are obliged to pay their mothers-in-law a certain amount. It is lawful for a wife to have special powers. At the same time, this power extends to the children she has borne. Since there is no limit to the number of wives, they have more children than any other people. After the death of the father, the son can take the wife left by the father as his wife, with the exception of his biological mother. They cannot marry their own sisters, but when their brothers die, they can marry their sisters-in-law or brothers-in-law. Every marriage is carried out with a grand ceremony. ”

"The Tatars believe in a god of high character and follow the teachings of this god. They burned incense and worshipped him and prayed for him to give them knowledge and health. They also worship a god called 'Natigai'. His statue was covered with felt or other cloth and enshrined in every household. The Tatars also made a wife and children for this god, with the wife on his left and the children in front of him. They believed that this god was in charge of all things on earth, blessed their children, and cared for their domestic animals and grains. They had great respect for this god, and every time they ate, they would put a piece of good meat on the idol's mouth and wipe it one by one, and then wipe his wife and children one by one. They also sprinkled some broth outside the door to worship other spirits, and when they had done this, they thought that the god and his family had enjoyed themselves almost, and then they ate and did not perform other ceremonies. ”

"The clothes worn by the wealthy Tatars were cloth woven with gold and silver threads, or made of sable, silver, and other animal skins, and were extremely luxurious."

"The Tatars were mainly armed with bows, arrows, iron spears, and sometimes spears, but they played with bows and arrows from childhood, so bows and arrows were their most skillful weapons. The armor they wore was made of salted buffalo hides and other animal skins, and was extremely hard. They fought bravely, never valued their own lives, and were unwilling to retreat in the face of any danger. They have a very ferocious temperament. ”

"The Tatars were able to endure all kinds of hardships. When necessary, they could feed on horse milk for a month, or feed themselves on any other beast they could catch. Their horses are kept on grass and never use barley or other cereals. The men were trained to stay on horseback for two days and two nights, and when the horses were grazing, they slept on them. There is no nation in the world that has shown such fortitude in the midst of hardship and such perseverance in the midst of want. The Tatars obeyed the orders of their superiors absolutely and maintained them at a small cost. It is because they have all the virtues necessary for a soldier that they are able to conquer the whole world. ”

"When a great leader of the Tatars went on expeditions, he himself was always the forerunner of the cavalry. The state of organization of the army was such that the marshal appointed ten-commanders, centurions, thousand-commanders, and ten-thousand-commanders. The Centurion obeys the Centurion, the Centurion obeys the Commander of the Thousand, and the Commander of the Thousand Commanders obeys the Commander of the Ten Thousand Commanders. ”

"Therefore, each officer only needs to lead ten men or ten groups of men. The team of every 100 people is called a mouk, and every ten mouks make up a meng'an. When the ranks advanced, a detachment of two hundred men acted as the advance guard, two days ahead, and there were also guards on the sides and in the front and rear to avoid a surprise attack from the enemy. ”

"The Tatars marched long distances, never carrying camping and cooking utensils, and as it has already been said, they could live on horse's milk for most of the month, and they carried a kind of small tent made of felt to shelter from the wind and rain. When the situation was urgent and there was an urgent need to send spies, they were able to gallop non-stop for ten days, neither lighting fires nor eating, and only using horse blood to sustain their lives. If necessary, each person cuts one of the blood vessels of his horse and sucks the horse's blood. ”

The Tatars dried the milk and made it into a paste for food. It is prepared as follows: first boil the milk, remove the fat part floating on it, and put it in another vessel to make the cream. Because if this substance is left in the milk, the emulsion will not condense into a solid. Then dry the cheese from which the butter has been removed and set aside. On the march, each man carried ten pounds with him, and every morning he put half a pound of dried milk in a leather bag, with a moderate amount of water, and they rode on horseback, and the leather bag was violently vibrated to make the dry milk in it a kind of thin porridge. They used it for their own food. ”

"When these Tatars fight, they never get tangled with the enemy. They simply surrounded the enemy, first firing arrows from one side, and then from the other. They also sometimes feigned flight to lure the enemy into pursuit, and then fired arrows from behind, killing the opponent's men and horses, as if they were engaged head-on. In this tactic, the enemy at first thought that he had won, but in fact he was bound to lose, because the Tatars, having lured the enemy into depth, turned back and fought again to defeat the remnants of the enemy. Therefore, no matter how hard the opponent fights, he will eventually become a prisoner of the Tatars. The Tatar horses turned very quickly, and with a shout, the horses could immediately turn in any direction. They have won many victories with this advantage. ”

But everything here refers to the Tatars as they were, and now they have changed a lot. The Tatars living in the Khitan had abandoned their habits and adapted to the customs of those who were idolatrous, while those living in the Levant provinces had been assimilated by the Saracens. Kublai Khan did not complete his conquest of the Silk Kingdom of Serika (i.e., the Song Dynasty), but he received many advanced technologies from the Serika, the most important of which was artillery, a huge tube made of iron that could spew long bursts of terrifying fire and smoke, while shooting huge spherical stone projectiles or iron-cast hollow catapults containing explosives and incendiary objects far away. However, because this weapon was heavy and difficult to move, the Tatars did not use it in peacetime battles, but used it in a concentrated manner when attacking cities and fortified fortresses. They can easily destroy even the strongest fortresses, killing all the defenders. ”

"Kublai Khan had nearly a thousand pieces of artillery, large and small, the largest of which was called the 'Xiangyang Cannon', which had a hundred, and each cannon needed to be dragged by eighty oxen. Smaller cannons can be dragged with a horse or ox. Small artillery was not powerful enough to completely destroy the walls, but it was effective in killing and injuring the defenders behind the walls, so the Tatars used small artillery more often than the cannons. ”