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.
Mongolia is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south. It covers an area of 1,564,116 square kilometres, with a population of just 3.3 million, making it the world's most sparsely populated sovereign nation. Mongolia is the world's largest landlocked country that does not border a closed sea, and much of its area is covered by grassy steppe, with mountains to the north and west and the Gobi Desert to the south. Ulaanbaatar, the capital and largest city, is home to roughly half of the country's population.
Inner Mongolia, officially the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (IMAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. Its border includes most of the length of China's border with the country of Mongolia. Inner Mongolia also accounts for a small section of China's border with Russia. Its capital is Hohhot; other major cities include Baotou, Chifeng, Tongliao, and Ordos.
Ulaanbaatar, previously anglicized as Ulan Bator, is the capital and most populous city of Mongolia. It is the coldest capital city in the world, on average. The municipality is located in north central Mongolia at an elevation of about 1,300 metres (4,300 ft) in a valley on the Tuul River. The city was originally founded in 1639 as a nomadic Buddhist monastic center, changing location 28 times, and was permanently settled at its current location in 1778.
Outer Mongolia was the name of a territory in the Manchu-led Qing dynasty of China from 1691 to 1911. It corresponds to the modern-day independent state of Mongolia and the Russian republic of Tuva. The historical region gained de facto independence from Qing China during the Xinhai Revolution.
Mongolian is the official language of Mongolia and both the most widely spoken and best-known member of the Mongolic language family. The number of speakers across all its dialects may be 5.2 million, including the vast majority of the residents of Mongolia and many of the ethnic Mongol residents of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. In Mongolia, Khalkha Mongolian is predominant, and is currently written in both Cyrillic and the traditional Mongolian script. In Inner Mongolia, it is dialectally more diverse and written in the traditional Mongolian script. However, Mongols in both countries often use the Latin script for convenience on the Internet.
The Mongolian People's Republic was a socialist state which existed from 1924 to 1992, located in the historical region of Outer Mongolia in East Asia. It was ruled by the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party and maintained close links with the Soviet Union throughout its history. Geographically, it was bordered by China to its south and the Soviet Union to its north. Until 1944, it also bordered the Tuvan People's Republic, a Soviet satellite state recognized only by Mongolia and the Soviet Union.
A banner is an administrative division of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in China, equivalent to a county-level administrative division.
North China, or Huabei is a geographical region of China, consisting of the provinces of Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shanxi and Inner Mongolia. Part of the larger region of Northern China (Beifang), it lies north of the Qinling–Huaihe Line, with its heartland in the North China Plain.
A Borjigin is a member of the Mongol sub-clan, which started with Bodonchar Munkhag of the Kiyat clan. Yesugei's descendants were thus said to be Kiyat-Borjigin. The senior Borjigids provided ruling princes for Mongolia and Inner Mongolia until the 20th century. The clan formed the ruling class among the Mongols and some other peoples of Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Today, the Borjigid are found in most of Mongolia, Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang, and additionally genetic research has shown that descent from Genghis Khan and Amir Timur Barlas is common throughout Central Asia and other regions.
The ʼPhags-pa script is an alphabet designed by the Tibetan monk and State Preceptor Drogön Chögyal Phagpa for Kublai Khan, the founder of the Yuan dynasty, as a unified script for the written languages within the Yuan. The actual use of this script was limited to about a hundred years during the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty, and it fell out of use with the advent of the Ming dynasty.
Chifeng, also known as Ulanhad, is a prefecture-level city in Southeastern Inner Mongolia, People's Republic of China. It borders Xilin Gol League to the north and west, Tongliao to the northeast, Chaoyang (Liaoning) to the southeast and Chengde (Hebei) to the south. The city has a total administrative area of 90,275 square kilometres (34,855 sq mi) and as of the 2020 census, had a population of 4,035,967 inhabitants. However, 1,175,391 of those residents lived in the built-up area made of the 2 urban districts of Hongshan and Songshan, as Yuanbaoshan is not conurbated yet. However, a large part of Songshan is still rural and Yuanbaoshan is a de facto separate town 27 kilometers away from the core district of Chifeng. The city was the administrative center of the defunct Ju Ud League.
Ulanhu or Ulanfu, born Yun Ze, was the founding Chairman of China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, serving from 1947 to 1966.
The classical or traditional Mongolian script, also known as the Hudum Mongol bichig, was the first writing system created specifically for the Mongolian language, and was the most widespread until the introduction of Cyrillic in 1946. It is traditionally written in vertical lines Top-Down, right across the page. Derived from the Old Uyghur alphabet, it is a true alphabet, with separate letters for consonants and vowels. It has been adapted for such languages as Oirat and Manchu. Alphabets based on this classical vertical script continue to be used in Mongolia and Inner Mongolia to write Mongolian, Xibe and, experimentally, Evenki.
Pan-Mongolism is an irredentist idea that advocates cultural and political solidarity of Mongols. The proposed territory, called "Greater Mongolia", also known as which means "Whole Mongolia" usually includes the independent state of Mongolia, the Chinese regions of Inner Mongolia and Dzungaria, and the Russian republic of Buryatia. Sometimes the autonomous republic Tuva, the Altai Republic and parts of Zabaykalsky Krai and Irkutsk Oblast are included as well. As of 2006, all areas in Greater Mongolia except Mongolia have non-Mongol majorities.
Genghis Khan was the founder and first Great Khan (Emperor) of the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his death. He came to power by uniting many of the nomadic tribes of the Mongol steppe and being proclaimed the universal ruler of the Mongols, or Genghis Khan. With the tribes of Northeast Asia largely under his control, he set in motion the Mongol invasions, which ultimately witnessed the conquest of much of Eurasia, and incursions by Mongol raiding parties as far west as Legnica in western Poland and as far south as Gaza. He launched campaigns against the Qara Khitai, Khwarezmia, the Western Xia and Jin dynasty during his life, and his generals raided into medieval Georgia, Circassia, the Kievan Rus', and Volga Bulgaria.
The Mongolian Revolution of 1921 was a military and political event by which Mongolian revolutionaries, with the assistance of the Soviet Red Army, expelled Russian White Guards from the country, and founded the Mongolian People's Republic in 1924. Although nominally independent, the Mongolian People's Republic was a satellite state of the Soviet Union until a third Mongolian revolution in January 1990. The revolution also ended the Chinese Beiyang government's occupation of Mongolia, which had begun in 1919. The official Mongolian name of the revolution is "People's Revolution of 1921" or simply "People's Revolution".
The Bogd Khanate of Mongolia was the government of Outer Mongolia between 1911 and 1919 and again from 1921 to 1924. By the spring of 1911, some prominent Mongol nobles including Prince Tögs-Ochiryn Namnansüren persuaded the Jebstundamba Khutukhtu to convene a meeting of nobles and ecclesiastical officials to discuss independence from Qing China. On 30 November 1911 the Mongols established the Temporary Government of Khalkha. On 29 December 1911 the Mongols declared their independence from the collapsing Qing dynasty following the outbreak of the Xinhai Revolution. They installed as theocratic sovereign the 8th Bogd Gegeen, highest authority of Tibetan Buddhism in Mongolia, who took the title Bogd Khan or "Holy Ruler". The Bogd Khaan was last khagan of the Mongols. This ushered in the period of "Theocratic Mongolia", and the realm of the Bogd Khan is usually known as the "Bogd Khanate".
Various nomadic empires, including the Xiongnu, the Xianbei state, the Rouran Khaganate (330–555), the First (552–603) and Second Turkic Khaganates (682–744) and others, ruled the area of present-day Mongolia. The Khitan people, who used a para-Mongolic language, founded an empire known as the Liao dynasty (916–1125), and ruled Mongolia and portions of North China, northern Korea, and the present-day Russian Far East.
Tsagaan Khas or Dayar Mongol is a Mongolian neo-Nazi organisation that claims to have 3,000 members, though this claim is disputed. Other sources claim the organisation to have "more than 1,000 members". According to Reuters in 2013, they had "only 100-plus members". Nyam Puruv, a Mongolian historian, estimated in 2009 that the group actually had only dozens of members. The organisation's electoral affiliate received 1 percent or less of the vote in the 2008 Mongolian legislative elections.
