Choros or Tsoros (Mongolian : Цорос, ᠴᠥᠷᠥᠰ; simplified Chinese :绰罗斯; traditional Chinese :綽羅斯) 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.
In the late 14th century, the Oirats emerged as the dominant power opposing the Khalkha Mongols. The ruling clan of the Four Oirat was Choros at the time. Under their leadership, the Western Mongols established Dzungar Khanate.
In 1455 other Oirat tribes overthrew the Choros Khan, Esen Taishi, who had enthroned himself Khagan of the Mongols. About 1620 the Choros scattered after bitter fighting with the Altan Khan of the Khalkha. The Khalkha and southwestern Inner Mongolian princes repeatedly raided them from 1552 to 1628, forcing them to migrate further west. Some of the Choros fled with a group of the Dörbet Oirat northward into Siberia and present-day Barnaul. But they crushed the Khalkha Altan Khan; and made an alliance with the northern Khalkhas in 1640.
By 1690 three Oirat states had emerged: the Khoshut, the Kalmyk and the Dzungar Khanate. The majority of the Choros with the Dörbet and the Khoids settled in the region of the Black Irtysh, the Ulungur River, the Emil River, and the Ili River, forming the Dzungar Khanate. [1] The Dzunghar Khanate was ruled by the Dörbet and the Choros, displacing the Khoshut in from their homeland Dzungaria. Although they reached their peak in the late 17th century, they began to disintegrate after Galdan Boshugtu Khan's wars with the Qing. The Choros were defeated in 1697 and 1771 and they were annexed by the Qing dynasty.
The Mongols are an East Asian ethnic group native to Mongolia, Inner Mongolia in China, and the Buryatia Republic of the Russian Federation. The Mongols are the principal member of the large family of Mongolic peoples. The Oirats in Western Mongolia as well as the Buryats and Kalmyks of Russia are classified either as distinct ethno-linguistic groups or subgroups of Mongols.
The Kalmyks are a Mongolic ethnic group living mainly in Russia, whose ancestors migrated from Northern Xinjiang region of Northwestern China. They created the Kalmyk Khanate from 1635 to 1779 in the south of the European part of Russia territory. Today they form a majority in Kalmykia, located in the Kalmyk Steppe, on the western shore of the Caspian Sea.
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.
Oirats or Oirds, also formerly Eluts and Eleuths, are the westernmost group of the Mongols whose ancestral home is in the Altai region of Siberia, Xinjiang and western Mongolia.
The Dörbet is the second largest subgroup of Mongol people in modern Mongolia and was formerly one of the major tribes of the Four Oirat confederation in the 15th-18th centuries. In early times, the Dörbets and the Öold were overruled by collateral branches of the Choros lineage. The Dörbets are distributed among the western provinces of Mongolia, Kalmykia and in a small portion in Heilongjiang, China. In modern-day Mongolia, the Dörbets are centered in Uvs Province.
The Khoshut are one of the four major tribes of the Oirat people. They established the Khoshut Khanate in the area of Tibet in 1642–1717.
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.
The Torghut, are one of the four major subgroups of the Four Oirats. The Torghut nobles traced their descent to the Mongol Keraite ruler Toghrul, and many Torghuts descended from the Keraites.
Erdeni Batur was a Choros-Oirat prince generally considered to be the founder of the Dzungar Khanate, centered in the Dzungaria region, currently in north-westernmost part of China.
Kharkhul was a Choros (Oirats) prince and tayishi of the Choros tribe. He is best known for forming and leading a coalition of the Four Oirats in battle against Ubasi Khun Tayishi, the Khalkha prince who ruled the Altan Khanate in present-day northwest Mongolia.
The Zakhchin is a subgroup of the Oirats residing in Khovd Province, Mongolia. Zakhchin means 'Border people'. They are so called because they originated from the border garrison of the Dzungar Khanate. They originally spoke the Zakhchin dialect of the Oirat language, but actually pure Oirat language is used by elder generations, younger generations use a dialect being under a strong Khalkha influence.
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 Four Oirat ; also Oirads and formerly Eleuths, alternatively known as the Alliance of the Four Oirat Tribes or the Oirat Confederation, was the confederation of the Oirat tribes which marked the rise of the Western Mongols in the history of the Mongolian Plateau.
The Upper Mongols, also known as the Köke Nuur Mongols or Qinghai Mongols, are ethnic Mongol people of Oirat and Khalkha origin who settled around Qinghai Lake in so-called Upper Mongolia. As part of the Khoshut Khanate of Tsaidam and the Koke Nuur, they played a major role in Sino–Mongol–Tibetan politics during the 17th and 18th centuries. The Upper Mongols adopted Tibetan dress and jewelry despite still living in the traditional Mongolian ger and writing in the script.
The Khoshut Khanate was a Mongol Oirat khanate based on the Tibetan Plateau from 1642 to 1717. Based in modern Qinghai, it was founded by Güshi Khan in 1642 after defeating the opponents of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism in Tibet. The 5th Dalai Lama established a civil administration known as Ganden Phodrang with the aid of Güshi Khan. The role of the khanate in the affairs of Tibet has been subject to various interpretations. Some sources claim that the Khoshut did not interfere in Tibetan affairs and had a priest and patron relationship between the khan and Dalai Lama while others claim that Güshi appointed a minister, Sonam Rapten, as de facto administrator of civil affairs while the Dalai Lama was only responsible for religious matters. In the last years of the khanate, Lha-bzang Khan murdered the Tibetan regent and deposed the 6th Dalai Lama in favor of a pretender Dalai Lama.
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.
Amursana was an 18th-century taishi 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.
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.
Huang Qing Zhigong Tu is an 18th-century ethnological study of Chinese tributary states, including Western nations that traded with the Qing Empire. It was published around 1769. The book identified peoples and countries by drawing attention to their national dresses, similarly to European costume books.