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The Secret History of the Mongols (Mongolian: Монголын нууц товчоо; Mongolyn Nuuts Tovchoo) is the first literary work of Mongolian culture. It was written for the royal Mongol family some time after Genghis Khan's death in 1227 AD, by an anonymous author and probably originally in the Uyghur script, though the surviving manuscripts all derive from a Chinese transliteration and translation of the 14th century. It is currently regarded as the single significant Mongolian account of Genghis Khan. It is regarded as a piece of classic literature in both Mongolia and the rest of the world.

Like many texts during the period, it contains elements of folklore and poetry, and is not really as factual as some historians would have wanted. It is also at times inconsistent. The work sets out with a rather mythical genealogy of Temüjin's family. The description of Temüjin's life begins with the kidnapping of his mother Hoelun by his father Yesügei. It then covers Temüjin's early life, the difficult times after the murder of his father, the many conflicts, wars, and plots before he gains the title of Genghis Khan in 1206. The later parts of the work deal with Genghis and Ögödeis campaigns, and the text ends with Ögödeis reflections on what he did well and what he did wrong. Several passages of the Secret History appear in slightly different versions in the 17th century Mongolian chronicle Altan Tobchi.

layout of a 1908 Chinese edition of the Secret Histoy of the Mongols. Mongolian text in Chinese transscription, with a glossary on the right of each row.

The only surviving copies of the work are transscriptions of the original Mongolian text with Chinese characters, accompanied by a (somewhat shorter) in-line glossary. In China, the work had been well-known as a text for teaching Chinese to read and write Mongolian during the Ming Dynasty, but by the 19th century, copies had become very rare. The first to discover the Secret History for the west and offer a translation from the Chinese glossary was the Russian sinologist Palladiy Kafarov. The first translations from the original transcribed Mongolian text were done by the German sinologist Erich Haenisch (edition of the reconstructed original text: 1937; of the translation: 1941, second edition 1948) and Paul Pelliot (ed. 1949).

Arthur Waley published a partial translation of the Secret History, but the first full translation into English was Francis Woodman Cleaves, The Secret History of the Mongols: For the First Time Done into English out of the Original Tongue and Provided with an Exegetical Commentary, 1. (Harvard-Yenching Institute) Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982. The somewhat archaic and stilted language adopted by Cleaves was not satisfying to all, and between 1971 and 1985, Igor de Rachewiltz published a fresh translation in eleven volumes of the series Papers on Far Eastern History accompanied by extensive footnotes commenting not only on the translation but also various aspects of Mongolian culture.

• unknown; translated by Urgunge Onon, revised by Sue Bradbury [1228] (1993). Chinggis Khan: The Golden History of the Mongols (hardback) (in English), London: The Folio Society. 

• Secret History of the Mongols: Full text in Mongolian
• Secret History of the Mongols: full text, history, translations into Russian, German, French, original transliteration
• The Secret History of the Mongols: partial text
• Timothy May: Extensive review of the publication of Rachewiltz' translation and notes September 2004
• Lingua Mongolia includes step by step translation of the first 8 Items of the Chinese transcription of the Secret History
• Modern Mongolian Version (and audio files) -ELibrary.MN
• Secret History Wiki Public Domain Translation Project]