Amursana (Mongolianᠠᠮᠤᠷᠰᠠᠨᠠᠭᠠ; Chinese:阿睦爾撒納; 1723–21September 1757) was an 18th-century taishi (太师; 太師) or prince of the Khoit-Oirat tribe that ruled over parts of Dzungaria and Altishahr in present-day northwest China. Known as the last great Oirat hero, Amursana was the last of the Dzungar rulers. The defeat of his rebel forces by Qing dynasty Chinese armies in the late 1750s signaled the final extinction of Mongol influence and power in Inner Asia, ensured the incorporation of Mongol territory into the Qing Chinese Empire, and brought about the Dzungar genocide, the Qing Emperor's "final solution" to China's northwest frontier problems.[1]
Amursana was born in 1723 to a noble mother from the Dzungar-Oirat tribe and taisha or crown prince of the Khoit-Oirat clan. Amursana's mother, Boitalak (博託洛克) was the daughter of Tsewang Rabtan, leader of the Dzungar-Oriat tribe following the death of Galdan Boshugtu Khan. She first married Danjung (丹衷), the eldest son of Lha-bzang Khan, ruler of the Khoshut-Oirats tribe. Following Danjung's death c. 1717, allegedly at the hands of his father-in-law, Boitalak married Amursana's father, a taisha or crown prince of the Khoit-Oirat clan.[2]
Alliance and split with Dawachi
Dawachi in Chinese full dress
The Khoits ranked lower within the Oirat tribal hierarchy — their taishi answered to the Dorbet Oirats— and by the time Amursana became khan, the power of the Dzungars was on the wane. The death of Tsewang Rabtan's son Galdan Tseren and the succession of Tsewang Dorji Namjal in 1745 led to a fierce internecine struggle for Dzungar leadership. Tsewang Dorji was subsequently blinded and imprisoned in Aksu by his elder brother Lama Dorji (喇嘛達爾札; d. 1752), who then usurped the khanship.[2] Although a Khoit, Lama Dorji's only opposition came from the Dzungar Khan, Dawachi, grandson of Khong TayijiTsewang Rabtan's cousin Tsering Dhondup (大策凌敦多布). In 1751, Lama Dorji defeated Dawachi who was forced to flee across the border into Kazakh Khanate territory with about a dozen men.[2] Amursana was one of Dawachi's few followers who returned to Tarbagatai to join up with his Khoit clansmen. With a thousand of his men, he then marched to Ili where they surprised Lama Dorji and killed him on 13January 1752. Other sources claim that Lama Dorji was killed by his own troops in December 1752.[3] Dawachi then assumed the title 'of taisha of the Dzungars and richly rewarded Amursana for his efforts.[2]
As a Khoit, Amursana did not rank as part of the Dzungar Khanate's hierarchy and relied on Dawachi for influence among the various Oirat clans. Nevertheless, marriage to the daughter of Ablai Khan, leader of the neighboring Kazakh Khanate, and alliances with various Oirat clan leaders enabled him to build up enough support to call on Dawachi to divide the Khanate's lands between them. Dawachi refused and instead attacked his former ally, forcing him to flee east to Khovd.[3] There, Amursana swore allegiance to the QingQianlong Emperor, bringing with him 5,000 soldiers and 20,000 women and children.[2] He then traveled to Beijing to seek the emperor's assistance in defeating Dawachi and retaking Ili and neighboring Kashgar. Amursana's persuaded the ambitious and glory-seeking Qianlong to back his plan,[4] in addition to granting him a princedom of the first degree (雙親王; 双亲王), which entitled Amursana to double stipends and privileges, as a bonus.[2]
Meanwhile, most of the Oirat Khoshut had also defected to the Qing leaving Dawachi—reportedly a "drunken and incompetent" ruler—with only the Dzungars under his control.[2]
Late in 1754, in an attempt to definitively settle the 60-year-old Dzungaria problem, Qianlong gave orders for a final advance on Ili. Amursana was made Border Pacification Vice-general of the Left[zh] of the Northern Route Army. General Ban Di[zh] took command of the army, which set out from Uliastai in March 1755 and linked up with the Western Route Army under Yong Chang[zh] and Salar (薩喇勒) three months later.[2] The combined forces reached Bortala,[3] in June 1755.[5]
Qing forces captured Ili without a fight and Dawachi withdrew south-west to the Gedeng Mountains[6] where he made a last stand with his 10,000 men. Dawachi's army was routed and he was captured and dispatched to Beijing. Amursana had hoped to usurp Dawachi's position as head of the Dzungars but Qianlong had already pre-empted such a move. Before the expedition to Ili had set out and fearing the rise of a new Mongolian empire, Qianlong had proclaimed that the four Oirat clans of Dzungaria would be resettled in their own territory each with their own Khan appointed directly by Beijing. Amursana spurned the offer of Khan over the Khoits and demanded to be khan of all Oirats. Amursana was instructed to return to Beijing but sensing danger, he escaped from his escort en route to the Qing imperial resort of Chengde on 24September 1755.[2]
Amursana rebellion (1756–1758)
Qing general Zhaohui attacks Amursana's forces in a night battle in present-day Wusu, Xinjiang
Amursana rallied the majority of the remaining Oirats and launched his rebellion against the Qing. The Chinese armies had by now withdrawn leaving behind only a skeleton force under Ban Di. Helpless and unable to do anything, Ban Di committed suicide on 4October 1755.[2] For the following eight months, Amursana was the sole leader of the Oirats and the de facto Dzungar Khan.
Meanwhile, as he had promised, Qianlong appointed Khans for each of the four Oirat clans in a move designed to prevent them joining the rebellion. Qing troops were once more dispatched in late March, 1756 retook Ili. Amursana escaped and fled to the Kazakh Khanate where his father-in-law, Ablai Khan, refused to hand him over, despite the threat of a Qing invasion of his territory.[2]
Qianlong railed at his generals for their failure to capture the fugitive, saying they were a waste of time and money. He dismissed them and ordered the withdrawal of all troops then appointed Zhaohui commander of a small expeditionary force that was sent to garrison Ili.
Partisans of Amursana, in the Battle of Khorgos against Qing China (1758)
Amursana returned to Ili to rally the insurgents and almost annihilated Zhaohui's forces. The hopelessly outnumbered Chinese general, despite putting up a spirited defence, was forced to retreat with 500 soldiers.[7] The rebels cut the post routes to the capital but Zhaohui managed to fight his way back to Barkul, where he pleaded with Qianlong to take more drastic measures against the rebels.[2]
Meanwhile, Qing attention became temporarily focused on the Khalka prince Chingünjav, a descendant of Genghis Khan, who between the summer of 1756 and January 1757 mounted the most serious Khalka Mongol rebellion against the Qing until its demise in 1911. Before dealing with Amursana, the majority of Qianlong's forces were reassigned to ensure stability in Khalka until Chingünjav's army was crushed by the Qing in a ferocious battle near Lake Khövsgöl in January, 1757.[8]
After the victory, Qianlong dispatched additional forces to Ili where they quickly routed the rebels. Amursana escaped for a third time to the Kazakh Khanate, but not long afterwards Ablai Khan pledged tributary status to the Chinese, which meant Amursana was no longer safe.[2]
Death and aftermath
Portrait of the Qianlong Emperor
Amursana fled west to Siberia and sought asylum from the Russians at their fortress in Semipalatinsk (modern Semey, Kazakhstan). He was then taken to Tobolsk where he died of smallpox on 21September 1757, aged 35.[9]
The Chinese demanded the return of the fugitive and his followers under the terms of Article X to the Treaty of Kiakhta, but the Russians hid the facts behind his flight and death hoping to gain leverage through the possession of his body. After Qing envoys were told that Amursana had died crossing the Irtysh River, they spent the next month dredging it but found nothing.[9] After a long period of wrangling, the Russians finally agreed to ship Amursana's frozen body from Tobolsk to Kiakhta for viewing but refused a request that it be handed over for "posthumous punishment"; they instead buried it.[10] Repeated Qing requests to St. Petersburg for the return of Amursana's corpse were rebutted by the Russians on the grounds that their amicable relations should not be upset by "a few rotten bones".[9] Qianlong piled on the pressure: he placed Russian Orthodox monks in Beijing under house arrest and threatened to cut off trade altogether. In the end, Amursana's body was not returned. Qianlong's insistence that "The state only needs to capture Amursana. When he has died, and his body is retrieved, the entire [D]zungar affair can be called a success", failed to convince the Russians to return the body.[9]
Qianlong's obsession with the matter appears to have been influenced by his grandfather Kangxi's treatment of the body of his arch-enemy Galdan Boshugtu Khan, whose head was placed on public display and his ashes crushed on the military parade ground in the Chinese capital.[11]
On 18October 1768, both parties signed an amendment to Article X of the Treaty of Kiakhta in the Russian, Manchu and Mongol languages prescribing punishments that would apply to future criminals, including defectors.[10] However, as the border with Dzungaria had not been defined at the time of the original 1727 treaty, Amursana and his compatriots did not qualify.[11]
Legacy
Ja Lama who claimed to be the reincarnation of Amursana
Ja Lama (1862–1922), who fought successive campaigns against Chinese rule in western Mongolia between 1890 and 1922, at first claimed to be the grandson and later the reincarnation of Amursana.[12] He was also the inspiration behind the Ak Jangnew religious movement.[12]
The Dzungar Khanate, also written as the Zunghar Khanate or Junggar Khanate, was an Inner Asian khanate of Oirat Mongol origin. At its greatest extent, it covered an area from southern Siberia in the north to present-day Kyrgyzstan in the south, and from the Great Wall of China in the east to present-day Kazakhstan in the west. The core of the Dzungar Khanate is today part of northern Xinjiang, also called Dzungaria.
The Ten Great Campaigns were a series of military campaigns launched by the Qing dynasty of China in the mid–late 18th century during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor. They included three to enlarge the area of Qing control in Inner Asia: two against the Dzungars (1755–1757) and the "pacification" of Xinjiang (1758–1759). The other seven campaigns were more in the nature of police actions on frontiers already established: two wars to suppress the Gyalrong of Jinchuan, Sichuan, another to suppress the Taiwanese Aboriginals (1787–88), and four expeditions abroad against the Burmese (1765–1769), the Vietnamese (1788–1789), and the Gurkhas on the border between Tibet and Nepal (1790–1792), with the last counting as two.
Erdeniin Galdan, known as Galdan Boshugtu Khan was a Choros Dzungar-Oirat khan of the Dzungar Khanate. As fourth son of Erdeni Batur, founder of the Dzungar Khanate, Galdan was a descendant of Esen Taishi, the powerful Oirat Khan of the Northern Yuan dynasty who united all Mongols in the 15th century. Galdan's mother Yum Aga was a daughter of Güshi Khan, the first Khoshut-Oirat King of Tibet.
Afaq Khoja, born Hidayat Allah, also known as Apaq Xoja or more properly Āfāq Khwāja, was a Naqshbandi īshān and political leader with the title of Khwaja in Kashgaria. He was also known as Khwāja Hidāyat Allāh.
Wāli-ūllah Abū'l-Mansūr Khan, better known as Abylai Khan or Ablai Khan was Khan of the Middle Jüz and was the last independent Kazakh Khan of the Kazakh Khanate before the Khanate was absorbed into the Russian Empire.
Tsewang Rabtan was a Choros (Oirats) prince and the Khong Tayiji of the Dzungar Khanate from 1697 until his death in 1727. He was married to Lha-bzang Khan's sister.
Galdan Tseren was a Choros (Oirats) prince and the Khong Tayiji of the Dzungar Khanate from 1727 until his death in 1745.
Choros or Tsoros was the ruling clan of the Ööld and Dörbet Oirat and once ruled the whole Four Oirat. They founded the Dzungar Khanate in the 17th century. Their chiefs reckoned their descent from a boy nourished by a sacred tree.
The Dzungar people are the many Mongol Oirat tribes who formed and maintained the Dzungar Khanate in the 17th and 18th centuries. Historically, they were one of the major tribes of the Four Oirat confederation. They were also known as the Eleuths or Ööled, from the Qing dynasty euphemism for the hated word "Dzungar", and as the "Kalmyks". In 2010, 15,520 people claimed "Ööled" ancestry in Mongolia. An unknown number also live in China, Russia and Kazakhstan.
The Kalmyk Khanate was an Oirat khanate on the Eurasian steppe. It extended over modern Kalmykia and surrounding areas in the North Caucasus, including Stavropol and Astrakhan. During their independence, the Kalmyks both raided and allied with Russia in turn, engaging in numerous military expeditions against the Crimean Tatars, the Ottoman Empire, neighboring Muslim tribes, and the highlanders of the North Caucasus. The Khanate was annexed by the Russian Empire in 1771.
The Dzungar–Qing Wars were a decades-long series of conflicts that pitted the Dzungar Khanate against the Qing dynasty and its Mongol vassals. Fighting took place over a wide swath of Inner Asia, from present-day central and eastern Mongolia to Tibet, Qinghai, and Xinjiang regions of present-day China. Qing victories ultimately led to the incorporation of Outer Mongolia, Tibet and Xinjiang into the Qing Empire that was to last until the fall of the dynasty in 1911–1912, and the genocide of much of the Dzungar population in the conquered areas.
The Revolt of the Altishahr Khojas was an uprising against the Qing dynasty of China, which broke out in 1757 during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor. The rebels were led by Khwāja-i Jahān, leader of the White Mountain Sufis. Qing era documents refer to the event as the "Pacification of the Muslim regions". Hojijan and his brother, Burhān al-Dīn, both held the Muslim title Khoja.
The Dzungar genocide was the mass extermination of the Mongol Dzungar people by the Qing dynasty. The Qianlong Emperor ordered the genocide after the rebellion in 1755 by Dzungar leader Amursana against Qing rule, after the dynasty first conquered the Dzungar Khanate with Amursana's support. The genocide was perpetrated by Manchu generals of the Qing army, supported by Turkic oasis dwellers who rebelled against Dzungar rule.
Tsewang Dorji Namjal (1732–1750) was the mid-eighteenth century khan or ruler of the Dzungar Khanate, which covered most of present-day Xinjiang and part of eastern Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and southern Siberia.
The Dzungar conquest of Altishahr resulted in the Tibetan Buddhist Dzungar Khanate in Dzungaria conquering and subjugating the Genghisid-ruled Yarkent Khanate in Altishahr. It put a final end to the independence of the Chagatai Khanate.
The Qing dynasty in Inner Asia was the expansion of the Qing dynasty's realm in Inner Asia in the 17th and the 18th century AD, including both Inner Mongolia and Outer Mongolia, both Manchuria and Outer Manchuria, Tibet, Qinghai and Xinjiang.
Lama Dorji, or Lama Darja was a mid-eighteenth century khan or ruler of the Dzungar Khanate, a confederation of Mongol tribes that ruled over most of present-day Xinjiang and part of eastern Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and southern Siberia. He was the eldest son of Galdan Tseren, Khong Tayiji of the Dzungar Khanate from 1727 until his death in 1745. Before his death, Galdan Tseren had designated his second son Tsewang Dorji Namjal to succeed him. However, a succession dispute soon erupted among Galdan Tseren's three sons.
Dawachi was the last khan of the Dzungar Khanate from 1753 until his defeat at the hands of Qing and Mongol forces at Ili in 1755.
The Kazakh–Dzungar Wars (1643–1756) were a series of long conflicts between the Kazakh Juzes and Dzungar Khanate. The strategic goal for the Dzungar Khanate was to increase their territories by taking lands of the Kazakhs. The Dzungars were not only seen as a threat by the Kazakhs, but for the rest of Central Asia and the Russian Empire itself.
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