Mongols

• 1. Introduction

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  The Mongols built the largest contiguous land empire in human history, stretching from the Adriatic Sea to the shores of Indonesia, and from Japan to Palestine. Yet the people behind that empire were not one unified tribe but a patchwork of nomadic groups scattered across a vast plateau, speaking related dialects, sharing ancestral myths, and bound by a common heritage traced back to a group scholars call the Proto-Mongols. How did such a dispersed people forge an empire? And what became of them once that empire shattered? Those questions run through every chapter of Mongol history, from the earliest mentions in Tang dynasty records to the modern republics of Buryatia and Kalmykia in Russia, and through the autonomous regions of Inner Mongolia in China. The word "Mongol" itself first appeared in 8th century Chinese records as the name of a single tribe of the Shiwei. By the 13th century it had become an umbrella term for dozens of Mongolic-speaking peoples united under one man.

• 2. Roots in the Steppe

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  Sima Qian, China's greatest ancient historian, recorded the Donghu living in Inner Mongolia north of Yan as early as 699-632 BCE, alongside a people called the Shanrong. These Donghu are the most traceable ancestors of the Mongolic peoples, with Chinese historical texts linking only Mongolic tribes and kingdoms to them. Their territory stretched across eastern Mongolia and Manchuria, and they neighboured the Xiongnu, a contested people whose precise ethnic identity scholars still debate today.

  The Xianbei, part of the Donghu confederation, carry the clearest thread into later Mongolic history. A poem from the Warring States period, "The Great Summons," in the Verses of Chu anthology, mentions Xianbei women by physical description, placing this people in literary consciousness well before the common era. Archaeological traces reach even further back: the Zhukaigou culture of the Ordos Desert, dated 2200-1500 BCE, shows maternal DNA corresponding to the Mongol Daur people and the Tungusic Evenks. That culture had trade relations with the Shang dynasty.

  After the Xiongnu king Modu Chanyu defeated the Donghu, the Xianbei and Wuhuan survived as the main remnants of the confederation. The Wuhuan traced the direct Donghu royal line, while the Xianbei occupied a lateral branch, though both shared the same language. In 49 CE the Xianbei ruler Bianhe raided and defeated the Xiongnu, killing 2,000, after receiving gifts from Emperor Guangwu of Han. Under Tanshihuai, who reigned 156-181, the Xianbei reached their greatest territorial peak before their confederation fragmented.

• 3. The Name Becomes an Empire

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  Three groups that split from the Xianbei state shaped the long road to Genghis Khan's empire: the Rouran, the Khitan, and the Shiwei. A subtribe of the Shiwei called the "Shiwei Menggu" is considered the origin of the Genghisid Mongols. The Rouran were the first to use the title khagan; Yujiulü Shelun adopted it in 402. The Khitan developed two scripts of their own, and Mongolic words survive in their half-deciphered writings.

  Abaoji, who lived 872-926, rose from the Khitan and founded the Liao dynasty in 916. When the Jurchen-led Jin dynasty ended the Liao in 1125, remnants led by Yelü Dashi fled west to found the Qara Khitai. That state lasted until 1218, when Genghis Khan absorbed it. By then the word Mongol had grown from the name of a single tribe into the label for a huge coalition of Mongolic-speaking peoples united under his rule.

  The empire that followed was staggering in its reach. Mongolic peoples became Padishahs of Persia, Emperors of China, and Great Khans of the Mongols simultaneously. Al-Adil Kitbugha, himself a Mongol, became Sultan of Egypt. The Golden Horde established governance over Russia by 1240. By 1279, the Yuan dynasty controlled all of China proper after the conquest of the Song. Genghis Khan's most sacred personal site was Mount Burkhan Khaldun, where, as a young man, he had thanked the mountain for saving his life, praying at its foot with his belt around his neck and his hat at his chest.

• 4. Fragmentation and Survival

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  After the Yuan dynasty fell in 1368, roughly 250,000 Mongols remained in southern China. Many were massacred by the rebel army; survivors were eventually absorbed into the surrounding population. The remnants of the Yuan imperial family retreated north to Mongolia, keeping their language and culture intact. The Northern Yuan carried on in the Mongolian steppe, but the Oirads began challenging Eastern Mongol supremacy almost immediately.

  Esen Taish, whose father Togoon Taish reunited the Mongols by killing Adai Khan in Ejin in 1434, proved a formidable leader. Esen's 30,000 cavalries defeated 500,000 Chinese soldiers in the 1449 Tumu Crisis, one of the most lopsided victories in the era. In 1453, within eighteen months of defeating the titular Khan Taisun, Esen himself claimed the title of Great Khan, holding it from 1454 to 1455.

  A generation later, Dayan Khan, who reigned 1479-1543, reunited the Mongols again. He had been raised to power as a child by Queen Mandukhai, who lived approximately 1449-1510, during a crisis in which the line of Kublai Khan was on the verge of dying out entirely. The royal clan of the Borjigin, descended from Bodonchar Munkhag who lived approximately 850-900, continued to produce Khans and princes for Mongolia and surrounding regions until the early 20th century. After the fall of the Northern Yuan in 1635, the Dayan Khanid aristocracy carried that legacy forward until 1937, when most of its members were killed during the Stalinist purges.

• 5. Persecution and Dispersal

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  About 200,000-250,000 Oirats migrated from western Mongolia to the Volga River in 1607, establishing the Kalmyk Khanate under Tayishi Kho Orluk. By the early 18th century, roughly 300,000-350,000 Kalmyks shared their vast Russian borderland with approximately 15,000,000 Russians. The Tsardom of Russia systematically undercut Kalmyk autonomy, settling Russian and German communities on their pastures, imposing a council on the Kalmyk Khan, and pressuring Buddhist Kalmyks to convert to Orthodoxy.

  In January 1771, approximately 170,000-200,000 Kalmyks began migrating east from the Volga toward Dzungaria, passing through the territories of their Bashkir and Kazakh enemies. Empress Catherine the Great ordered the Russian army, Bashkirs, and Kazakhs to exterminate all migrants and abolished the Kalmyk Khanate. About 100,000-150,000 Kalmyks who had settled on the western bank of the Volga could not cross because the river failed to freeze during the winter of 1771. After seven months of travel, only 66,073 of the original group reached Dzungaria.

  The Dzungar Khanate's destruction by the Qing dynasty in 1755-1758 was even more catastrophic. Scholars estimate that approximately 80% of the Dzungar population was destroyed by a combination of warfare and disease. The Dzungar population had reached 600,000 in 1755. Historian Mark Levene described the extermination of the Dzungars as "arguably the eighteenth century genocide par excellence."

  In Mongolia itself, during the Stalinist repressions of the late 1930s, between 22,000 and 33,000 Mongols were shot dead under Soviet orders, representing 3-5% of the total population. The overall population of the Mongolian People's Republic at that time was only about 700,000 to 900,000. The Soviet Union then attempted to convince the Kalmyks and Buryats that they were not Mongols at all, as part of a deliberate demongolization policy. Stalin deported all remaining Kalmyks to Siberia in 1943, and around half of the 97,000-98,000 deportees died before being allowed to return home in 1957.

• 6. Faith Across Centuries

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  The original religion of the Mongolic peoples was shamanism. The Rouran took an early turn toward Buddhism; in the 5th century, the monk Dharmapriya was proclaimed State Teacher of the Rouran Khaganate, and 3,000 families along with some Rouran nobles converted. In 511, the Rouran Douluofubadoufa Khan sent Hong Xuan to the Tuoba court carrying a pearl-encrusted statue of the Buddha as a gift.

  Genghis Khan kept close watch on the supreme shaman Kokochu Teb, whose authority sometimes conflicted with his own. After the empire expanded, Möngke Khan organized a formal religious debate in Karakorum in 1254, bringing together Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists in what was then one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world. The Mongolic leader Abaqa Khan sent a delegation of 13-16 people to the Second Council of Lyon in 1274; their leader Zaganus underwent a public baptism. Yahballaha III, who lived 1245-1317, and Rabban Bar Sauma, who lived approximately 1220-1294, were famous Mongolic Nestorian Christians.

  The Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism became the state religion of Mongolia in 1576. The 4th Dalai Lama, Yonten Gyatso, who lived 1589-1617, was himself a Mongol and remains the only non-Tibetan Dalai Lama in history. The word "dalai" is Mongolian for "ocean." Among the most revered Mongol holy men were Zanabazar, who lived 1635-1723, Zaya Pandita, who lived 1599-1662, and Danzanravjaa, who lived 1803-1856. Many Buddhist philosophical works lost in Tibet survive in older and purer form in Mongolian ancient texts, including the Mongol Kanjur. In the most recent Mongolian census, almost forty percent of the population reported as atheist, while 53% identified with Tibetan Buddhism.

• 7. Language and Identity Today

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  Mongolian is spoken by nearly 2.8 million people in Mongolia, according to a 2010 estimate, and is the official provincial language of China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, where at least 4.1 million ethnic Mongols live. Across all of China, the language is spoken by roughly half of the country's 5.8 million ethnic Mongols, though exact figures remain uncertain because China has not collected data on language proficiency among its citizens.

  The use of Mongolian in Inner Mongolia has moved through cycles: a decline during the late Qing period, a revival between 1947 and 1965, a second decline from 1966 to 1976, a second revival from 1977 to 1992, and a third decline between 1995 and 2012. Some Mongol groups, such as the Tumets, may have largely lost the ability to speak Mongolian, yet they remain registered and self-identified as ethnic Mongols. The children of inter-ethnic Mongol-Chinese marriages also claim and are recorded as ethnic Mongols.

  In Russia, the 2010 census counted 461,410 Buryats and 183,400 Kalmyks. In 1958, the word "Mongol" was removed from the name of the Buryat-Mongol Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Agin-Buryat Okrug and Ust-Orda Buryat Okrug were merged into larger Russian oblasts in 2008 over Buryat resistance. Mongolia officially joined the United Nations on the 27th of October 1961. The Inner Mongolian People's Party today is a member of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization, its leaders still working toward a sovereign state or a merger of Inner Mongolia with Mongolia.