Mongolian is the principal language of the Mongolic language family that originated in the Mongolian Plateau . It is spoken by ethnic Mongols and other closely related Mongolic peoples who are native to modern Mongolia and surrounding parts of East and North Asia . Mongolian is the official language of Mongolia and Inner Mongolia and a recognized language of Xinjiang and Qinghai .
138-651: The Keraites (also Kerait, Kereit, Khereid ; Mongolian : Хэрэйд ; Chinese : 克烈 ) were one of the five dominant Turco-Mongol tribal confederations ( khanates ) in the Altai-Sayan region during the 12th century. They had converted to the Church of the East ( Nestorianism ) in the early 11th century and are one of the possible sources of the European Prester John legend. Their original territory
276-776: A literary standard for Mongolian in whose grammar is said to be based on the Standard Mongolian of Inner Mongolia and whose pronunciation is based on the Chakhar dialect as spoken in the Plain Blue Banner . Dialectologically, however, western Mongolian dialects in Inner Mongolia are closer to Khalkha than they are to eastern Mongolian dialects in Inner Mongolia: e.g. Chakhar is closer to Khalkha than to Khorchin. Juha Janhunen (2003: 179) lists
414-412: A Parisian goldsmith. Although he had a strong Chinese contingent, Möngke relied heavily on Muslim and Mongol administrators and launched a series of economic reforms to make government expenses more predictable. His court limited government spending and prohibited nobles and troops from abusing civilians or issuing edicts without authorization. He commuted the contribution system to a fixed poll tax which
552-705: A language Sprachbund , rather than common origin. Mongolian literature is well attested in written form from the 13th century but has earlier Mongolic precursors in the literature of the Khitan and other Xianbei peoples. The Bugut inscription dated to 584 CE and the Inscription of Hüis Tolgoi dated to 604–620 CE appear to be the oldest substantial Mongolic or Para-Mongolic texts discovered. Writers such as Owen Lattimore referred to Mongolian as "the Mongol language". The earliest surviving Mongolian text may be
690-600: A letter to Yohannan V , Patriarch of the Church of the East in Baghdad. Abdisho informed Yohannan V that the Khan asked him about fasting and whether they could be exempted from the usual Christian way of fasting since their diet was mainly meat and milk. Abdisho also related that the Khan had already "set up a pavilion to take the place of an altar, in which was a cross and a Gospel, and named it after Mar Sergius, and he tethered
828-456: A mare there and he takes her milk and lays it on the Gospel and the cross, and recites over it the prayers which he has learned, and makes the sign of the cross over it, and he and his people after him take a draft from it." Yohannan replied to Abdisho telling him one priest and one deacon was to be sent with altar paraments to baptize the king and his people. Yohannan also approved the exemption of
966-465: A millennium. It is thought that this resulted in a rapid increase in the number of war horses and other livestock, which significantly enhanced Mongol military strength. Known during his childhood as Temüjin, Genghis Khan was a son of a Mongol chieftain and rose very rapidly as a young man by working with Toghrul Khan of the Kerait. After Temujin went to war against Kurtait (also known as Wang Khan; given
1104-590: A much broader "Mongolian language" consisting of a Central dialect (Khalkha, Chakhar, Ordos), an Eastern dialect (Kharchin, Khorchin), a Western dialect (Oirat, Kalmyk), and a Northern dialect (consisting of two Buryat varieties). Additionally, the Language Policy in the People's Republic of China: Theory and Practice Since 1949 , states that Mongolian can be classified into four dialects: the Khalkha dialect in
1242-497: A new code of law of the empire, Ikh Zasag or Yassa ; later he expanded it to cover much of the everyday life and political affairs of the nomads. He forbade the selling of women, theft, fighting among the Mongols, and the hunting of animals during the breeding season. He appointed his stepbrother Shikhikhutug as supreme judge (jarughachi), ordering him to keep records of the empire. In addition to laws regarding family, food, and
1380-512: A new great khan, Batu called a kurultai on his own territory in 1250. As it was far from the Mongol heartland , members of the Ögedeid and Chagataid families refused to attend. The kurultai offered the throne to Batu, but he rejected it, claiming he had no interest in the position. Batu instead nominated Möngke , a grandson of Genghis from his son Tolui's lineage. Möngke was leading a Mongol army in Rus,
1518-503: A number of Mongol campaigns into Goryeo Korea , but Ögedei's attempt to annex the Korean Peninsula met with little success. Gojong , the king of Goryeo , surrendered but later revolted and massacred Mongol darughachis (overseers); he then moved his imperial court from Gaeseong to Ganghwa Island . In 1235, the Mongols established Karakorum as their capital lasting until 1260. During that period, Ogedei Khan ordered
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#17327718521181656-538: A parameter called ATR ( advanced tongue root ); the groups are −ATR, +ATR, and neutral. This alignment seems to have superseded an alignment according to oral backness. However, some scholars still describe Mongolian as being characterized by a distinction between front vowels and back vowels, and the front vowel spellings 'ö' and 'ü' are still often used in the West to indicate two vowels which were historically front. The Mongolian vowel system also has rounding harmony. Length
1794-539: A peace treaty with the Mongols and withdrawing from a score of forts. The Mongols then resumed attacks on the Tatars to avenge the death of their late khan, opening a long period of active hostilities. The Jin and Tatar armies defeated the Mongols in 1161. During the rise of the Mongol Empire in the 13th century, the usually cold, parched steppes of Central Asia enjoyed their mildest, wettest conditions in more than
1932-535: A postalveolar or palatalized consonant will be followed by an epenthetic [i] , as in [ˈatʃĭɮ] . Stress in Mongolian is nonphonemic (does not distinguish different meanings) and thus is considered to depend entirely on syllable structure. But scholarly opinions on stress placement diverge sharply. Most native linguists, regardless of which dialect they speak, claim that stress falls on the first syllable. Between 1941 and 1975, several Western scholars proposed that
2070-426: A short first syllable are stressed on the second syllable. But if their first syllable is long, then the data for different acoustic parameters seems to support conflicting conclusions: intensity data often seems to indicate that the first syllable is stressed, while F0 seems to indicate that it is the second syllable that is stressed. The grammar in this article is also based primarily on Khalkha Mongolian. Unlike
2208-483: A special role is played by converbs . Modern Mongolian evolved from Middle Mongol , the language spoken in the Mongol Empire of the 13th and 14th centuries. In the transition, a major shift in the vowel-harmony paradigm occurred, long vowels developed, the case system changed slightly, and the verbal system was restructured. Mongolian is related to the extinct Khitan language . It was believed that Mongolian
2346-591: A system of vowel harmony : For historical reasons, these have been traditionally labeled as "front" vowels and "back" vowels, as /o/ and /u/ developed from /ø/ and /y/, while /ɔ/ and /ʊ/ developed from /o/ and /u/ in Middle Mongolian. Indeed, in Mongolian romanizations , the vowels /o/ and /u/ are often conventionally rendered as ⟨ö⟩ and ⟨ü⟩ , while the vowels /ɔ/ and /ʊ/ are expressed as ⟨o⟩ and ⟨u⟩ . However, for modern Mongolian phonology, it
2484-521: Is Classical Mongolian , which is dated from the 17th to the 19th century. This is a written language with a high degree of standardization in orthography and syntax that sets it quite apart from the subsequent Modern Mongolian. The most notable documents in this language are the Mongolian Kangyur and Tengyur as well as several chronicles. In 1686, the Soyombo alphabet ( Buddhist texts )
2622-433: Is determined according to phonotactic requirements. The following table lists the consonants of Khalkha Mongolian. The consonants enclosed in parentheses occur only in loanwords. The occurrence of palatalized consonant phonemes, except /tʃ/ /tʃʰ/ /ʃ/ /j/ , is restricted to words with [−ATR] vowels. A rare feature among the world's languages, Mongolian has neither a voiced lateral approximant, such as [l] , nor
2760-409: Is ellipsis . The rules governing the morphology of Mongolian case endings are intricate, and so the rules given below are only indicative. In many situations, further (more general) rules must also be taken into account in order to produce the correct form: these include the presence of an unstable nasal or unstable velar, as well as the rules governing when a penultimate vowel should be deleted from
2898-466: Is CVVCCC, where the last C is a word-final suffix. A single short vowel rarely appears in syllable-final position . If a word was monosyllabic historically, *CV has become CVV. In native words, the following consonants do not occur word-initially: /w̜/ , /ɮ/ , /r/ , /w̜ʲ/ , /ɮʲ/ , /rʲ/ , /tʰʲ/ , and /tʲ/ . [ŋ] is restricted to codas (else it becomes [n] ), and /p/ and /pʲ/ do not occur in codas for historical reasons. For two-consonant clusters,
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#17327718521183036-438: Is a +ATR vowel, then every vowel of the word must be either /i/ or a +ATR vowel. In the case of suffixes, which must change their vowels to conform to different words, two patterns predominate. Some suffixes contain an archiphoneme /A/ that can be realized as /a, ɔ, e, o/ ; e.g. Other suffixes can occur in /U/ being realized as /ʊ, u/ , in which case all −ATR vowels lead to /ʊ/ and all +ATR vowels lead to /u/ ; e.g. If
3174-426: Is a typical agglutinative language that relies on suffix chains in the verbal and nominal domains. While there is a basic word order, subject–object–verb , ordering among noun phrases is relatively free, as grammatical roles are indicated by a system of about eight grammatical cases . There are five voices . Verbs are marked for voice, aspect , tense and epistemic modality / evidentiality . In sentence linking,
3312-472: Is also valid for vernacular (spoken) Khalkha and other Mongolian dialects, especially Chakhar Mongolian . Some classify several other Mongolic languages like Buryat and Oirat as varieties of Mongolian, but this classification is not in line with the current international standard. Mongolian is a language with vowel harmony and a complex syllabic structure compared to other Mongolic languages, allowing clusters of up to three consonants syllable-finally. It
3450-491: Is based primarily on the Khalkha dialect as spoken in Ulaanbaatar , Mongolia's capital. The phonologies of other varieties such as Ordos, Khorchin, and even Chakhar, differ considerably. This section discusses the phonology of Khalkha Mongolian with subsections on Vowels, Consonants, Phonotactics and Stress. The standard language has seven monophthong vowel phonemes. They are aligned into three vowel harmony groups by
3588-566: Is impeded by the fact that existing data for the major varieties is not easily arrangeable according to a common set of linguistic criteria. Such data might account for the historical development of the Mongolian dialect continuum , as well as for its sociolinguistic qualities. Though phonological and lexical studies are comparatively well developed, the basis has yet to be laid for a comparative morphosyntactic study, for example between such highly diverse varieties as Khalkha and Khorchin. In Juha Janhunen's book titled Mongolian , he groups
3726-410: Is more appropriate to instead characterize the two vowel-harmony groups by the dimension of tongue root position. There is also one neutral vowel, /i/ , not belonging to either group. All the vowels in a non compound word, including all its suffixes, must belong to the same group. If the first vowel is −ATR, then every vowel of the word must be either /i/ or a −ATR vowel. Likewise, if the first vowel
3864-1269: Is phonemic for vowels, and except short [e], which has merged into short [i], at least in Ulaanbaatar dialect, each of the other six phonemes occurs both short and long. Phonetically, short /o/ has become centralised to the central vowel [ɵ] . In the following table, the seven vowel phonemes, with their length variants, are arranged and described phonetically. The vowels in the Mongolian Cyrillic alphabet are: Khalkha also has four diphthongs : historically /ui, ʊi, ɔi, ai/ but are pronounced more like [ʉe̯, ʊe̯, ɞe̯, æe̯] ; e.g. ой in нохой ( nohoi ) [nɔ̙ˈχɞe̯] 'dog', ай in далай ( dalai ) [taˈɮæe̯] sea', уй in уйлах ( uilah ) [ˈʊe̯ɮɐχ] 'to cry', үй in үйлдвэр ( üildver ) [ˈʉe̯ɮtw̜ɘr] 'factory', эй in хэрэгтэй ( heregtei ) [çiɾɪxˈtʰe] 'necessary'. There are three additional rising diphthongs /ia/ (иа), /ʊa/ (уа) /ei/ (эй); e.g. иа in амиараа ( amiaraa ) [aˈmʲæɾa] 'individually', уа in хуаран ( huaran ) [ˈχʷaɾɐɴ] 'barracks'. This table below lists vowel allophones (short vowels allophones in non-initial positions are used interchangeably with schwa): Mongolian divides vowels into three groups in
4002-442: Is spelled Хэрэйд , ( Khereid ). In English, the name is primarily adopted as Keraites , alternatively Kerait , or Kereyit , in some earlier texts also as Karait or Karaites. One common theory sees the name as a cognate with the Mongolian [хар/khar] Error: {{Lang}}: Non-latn text/Latn script subtag mismatch ( help ) and Turkic qarā for "black, swarthy". There have been various other Mongol and Turkic tribes with names involving
4140-663: Is traditionally considered to have ended in 1480 with the Great Stand on the Ugra River by the Grand Duchy of Moscow , while the Chagatai Khanate lasted in one form or another until 1687. The Mongol Empire is also referred to as the "Mongolian Empire" or the "Mongol World Empire" in some English sources. The empire referred to itself as ᠶᠡᠬᠡ ᠮᠣᠩᠭᠣᠯ ᠤᠯᠤᠰ yeke mongɣol ulus ( lit. 'nation of
4278-402: Is word-final, it gets stressed anyway. In cases where there is only one phonemic short word-initial syllable, even this syllable can get the stress: More recently, the most extensive collection of phonetic data so far in Mongolian studies has been applied to a partial account of stress placement in the closely related Chakhar dialect. The conclusion is drawn that di- and trisyllabic words with
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4416-662: The Eastern Xia regime and the Water Tatars . In 1230, the great Khan personally led his army in the campaign against the Jin dynasty of China. Ögedei's general Subutai captured the capital of Emperor Wanyan Shouxu in the siege of Kaifeng in 1232. The Jin dynasty collapsed in 1234 when the Mongols captured Caizhou , the town to which Wanyan Shouxu had fled. In 1234, three armies commanded by Ögedei's sons Kochu and Koten and
4554-480: The Golden Horde , refused to come to the kurultai, claiming that he was ill and that the climate was too harsh for him. The resulting stalemate lasted more than four years and further destabilized the unity of the empire. When Genghis Khan's youngest brother Temüge threatened to seize the throne, Güyük came to Karakorum to try to secure his position. Batu eventually agreed to send his brothers and generals to
4692-838: The Grand Principality of Vladimir at the Battle of the Sit River . The Mongols captured the Alania capital Maghas in 1238. By 1240, all Kievan Rus' had fallen to the Asian invaders except for a few northern cities. Mongol troops under Chormaqan in Persia connecting his invasion of Transcaucasia with the invasion of Batu and Subutai, forced the Georgian and Armenian nobles to surrender as well. Giovanni de Plano Carpini ,
4830-846: The Ilkhanate in Iran, and the Yuan dynasty in China, based in modern-day Beijing . In 1304, during the reign of Temür , the three western khanates accepted the suzerainty of the Yuan dynasty. The part of the empire that fell first was the Ilkhanate, which disintegrated in the period of 1335–1353. Next, the Yuan dynasty lost control of the Tibetan Plateau and China proper in 1354 and 1368, respectively, and collapsed after its capital of Dadu
4968-509: The Kalmyk variety ) and Buryat, both of which are spoken in Russia, Mongolia, and China; and Ordos , spoken around Inner Mongolia's Ordos City . The influential classification of Sanžeev (1953) proposed a "Mongolian language" consisting of just the three dialects Khalkha, Chakhar, and Ordos, with Buryat and Oirat judged to be independent languages. On the other hand, Luvsanvandan (1959) proposed
5106-631: The Khitan , they became vassals of the Kara-Khitai state. After Kurchakus Buyruk Khan died, Ilma's Tatar servant Eljidai became the de facto regent. This upset Toghrul who had his younger brothers killed and then claimed the throne as Toghrul khan ( Mongolian :Тоорил хан/Tooril khan) who was the son of Kurchakus by Ilma Khatun, reigned from the 1160s to 1203. His palace was located at present-day Ulan Bator and he became blood-brother ( anda ) to Yesugei. Genghis Khan called him khan etseg ('khan father'). Yesugei, having disposed of all Tughrul's sons,
5244-535: The Liao dynasty of north China , which controlled much of Mongolia at the time. It is unclear whether the Keraites should be classified as Turkic or Mongol in origin. The names and titles of early Keraite leaders suggest that they were speakers of Turkic languages , but coalitions and incorporation of sub-clans may have led to Turco-Mongol amalgamation from an early time. All Khereid tribal names have meanings in
5382-902: The Mongolian language and end with either the Mongolic plural suffix "d" (t; ud, uud, üd, üüd) and singular suffix "n" common among medieval and modern clans . The Keraites consisted of eight Mongolic tribes, including the Khereid, Jirkhin, Khonkhoid, Sukhait, Albat, Tumaut, Dunghaid, and the Khirkh. Rashid al-Din Hamadani (1247–1318) says in the Jami' al-tawarikh (Section Three, Khereid Tribe): At that time they had more power and strength than other tribes. The call of Jesus - peace be upon him - reached them and they entered his faith. They belong to
5520-627: The Paschal Eucharist . As a result of the mission that followed, the king and 200,000 of his people were baptized (both Bar Hebraeus and Mari ibn Suleiman give the same number). After the final dispersal of the remaining Keraites settling along the Irtysh River by the Oirats in the early 15th century, they disappear as an identifiable group. There are various hypotheses as to which groups may partially have been derived from them during
5658-761: The Sea of Japan to parts of Eastern Europe , extending northward into parts of the Arctic ; eastward and southward into parts of the Indian subcontinent , mounted invasions of Southeast Asia , and conquered the Iranian Plateau ; and reached westward as far as the Levant and the Carpathian Mountains . The Mongol Empire emerged from the unification of several nomadic tribes in the Mongol heartland under
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5796-615: The Shuluun Huh/Zhènglán Banner , and is written in the traditional Mongolian script . The number of Mongolian speakers in China is still larger than in the state of Mongolia, where the majority of Mongolians in China speak one of the Khorchin dialects , or rather more than two million of them speak the Khorchin dialect itself as their mother tongue, so that the Khorchin dialect group has about as many speakers as
5934-594: The Stele of Yisüngge [ ru ] , a report on sports composed in Mongolian script on stone, which is most often dated at 1224 or 1225. The Mongolian- Armenian wordlist of 55 words compiled by Kirakos of Gandzak (13th century) is the first written record of Mongolian words. From the 13th to the 15th centuries, Mongolian language texts were written in four scripts (not counting some vocabulary written in Western scripts): Uyghur Mongolian (UM) script (an adaptation of
6072-693: The Tangut general Chagan invaded southern China. With the assistance of the Song dynasty the Mongols finished off the Jin in 1234. Many Han Chinese and Khitan defected to the Mongols to fight against the Jin. Two Han Chinese leaders, Shi Tianze , Liu Heima (劉黑馬, Liu Ni), and the Khitan Xiao Zhala defected and commanded the 3 Tumens in the Mongol army. Liu Heima and Shi Tianze served Ogödei Khan. Liu Heima and Shi Tianxiang led armies against Western Xia for
6210-584: The Uyghur alphabet), 'Phags-pa script (Ph) (used in decrees), Chinese (SM) ( The Secret History of the Mongols ), and Arabic (AM) (used in dictionaries). While they are the earliest texts available, these texts have come to be called " Middle Mongol " in scholarly practice. The documents in UM script show some distinct linguistic characteristics and are therefore often distinguished by terming their language "Preclassical Mongolian". The Yuan dynasty referred to
6348-564: The Yuan dynasty . Some sources give the full Mongol name as Dai Ön Yehe Monggul Ulus . The area around Mongolia , Manchuria , and parts of North China had been controlled by the Khitan -led Liao dynasty since the 10th century. In 1125, the Jin dynasty founded by the Jurchens overthrew the Liao dynasty and attempted to gain control over former Liao territory in Mongolia. In the 1130s
6486-426: The imperial guard , was founded and divided into day ( khorchin torghuds ) and night ( khevtuul ) guards. Genghis rewarded those who had been loyal to him and placed them in high positions, as heads of army units and households, even though many of them came from very low-ranking clans. Compared to the units he gave to his loyal companions, those assigned to his own family members were relatively few. He proclaimed
6624-585: The khagan (Emperor) of the Yekhe Mongol Ulus (Great Mongol State) at a Kurultai (general assembly/council). It was there that he assumed the title of Genghis Khan (universal leader) instead of one of the old tribal titles such as Gur Khan or Tayang Khan, marking the start of the Mongol Empire. Genghis Khan introduced many innovative ways of organizing his army: for example dividing it into decimal subsections of arbans (10 soldiers), zuuns (100), Mingghans (1000), and tumens (10,000). The Kheshig ,
6762-663: The leadership of Temüjin, known by the more famous title of Genghis Khan ( c. 1162 – 1227), whom a council proclaimed as the ruler of all Mongols in 1206. The empire grew rapidly under his rule and that of his descendants, who sent out invading armies in every direction. The vast transcontinental empire connected the East with the West , and the Pacific to the Mediterranean , in an enforced Pax Mongolica , allowing
6900-553: The syllable 's position in the word. In word-initial syllables, there is a phonemic contrast in vowel length . A long vowel has about 208% the length of a short vowel. In word-medial and word-final syllables, formerly long vowels are now only 127% as long as short vowels in initial syllables, but they are still distinct from initial-syllable short vowels. Short vowels in noninitial syllables differ from short vowels in initial syllables by being only 71% as long and by being centralized in articulation. As they are nonphonemic, their position
7038-530: The 10th and 11th centuries were the Naiman and the Ongud . Hamadani stated that the Keraites were Christians. William of Rubruck , who encountered many Nestorians during his stay at Mongke Khan 's court and at Karakorum in 1254–1255, notes that Nestorianism in Mongolia was tainted by shamanism and Manicheism and very confused in terms of liturgy, not following the usual norms of Christian churches elsewhere in
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#17327718521187176-651: The 16th or 17th century. According to Tynyshbaev (1925), their further fate was closely linked to that of the Argyn . The name of the Qarai Turks may be derived from the Keraites, but it may also be connected to the names of various other Central Asian groups involving qara "black". Kipchak groups such as the Argyn Kazakhs and the Kyrgyz Kireis have been proposed as possibly in part derived from
7314-405: The Chinese Taoist master Qiu Chuji to visit him in Afghanistan, and also gave his subjects the right to religious freedom, despite his own shamanistic beliefs. Genghis Khan died on 18 August 1227, by which time the Mongol Empire ruled from the Pacific Ocean to the Caspian Sea , an empire twice the size of the Roman Empire or the Muslim Caliphate at their height. Genghis named his third son,
7452-473: The Chinese title "Wang" for its meaning of King ), who was the most powerful Mongol leader at the time, he gave himself the name Genghis Khan. He then enlarged his Mongol state under himself and his kin, with the term Mongol coming to be used in reference to all Mongolic speaking tribes under the control of Genghis Khan. His most powerful allies were his father's friend, Khereid chieftain Toghrul , and Temujin's childhood anda (i.e. blood brother ) Jamukha of
7590-437: The Inner Mongolia since September, which caused widespread protests among ethnic Mongol communities. These protests were quickly suppressed by the Chinese government. Mandarin has been deemed the only language of instruction for all subjects as of September 2023. Mongolian belongs to the Mongolic languages . The delimitation of the Mongolian language within Mongolic is a much disputed theoretical problem, one whose resolution
7728-433: The Jadran clan. With their help, Temujin defeated the Merkit tribe, rescued his wife Börte , and went on to defeat the Naimans and the Tatars. Temujin forbade the looting of his enemies without permission, and he implemented a policy of sharing spoils with his warriors and their families instead of giving them all to the aristocrats. These policies brought him into conflict with his uncles, who were also legitimate heirs to
7866-422: The Jin dynasty of the Jurchens and the Western Xia of the Tanguts in northern China. He also had to deal with two other powers, Tibet and Qara Khitai . Before his death, Genghis Khan divided his empire among his sons and immediate family, making the Mongol Empire the joint property of the entire imperial family who, along with the Mongol aristocracy, constituted the ruling class. Genghis Khan arranged for
8004-424: The Jin dynasty rulers, known as the Golden Kings, successfully resisted the Khamag Mongol confederation, ruled at the time by Khabul Khan , great-grandfather of Genghis Khan. The Mongolian plateau was occupied mainly by five powerful tribal confederations ( khanlig ): Keraites , Khamag Mongol , Naiman , Mergid , and Tatar . The Jin emperors, following a policy of divide and rule , encouraged disputes among
8142-443: The Keraites from strict church law, stating that while they had to abstain from meat during the annual Lenten fast like other Christians, they could still drink milk during that period, although they should switch from "sour milk" ( fermented mare's milk ) to "sweet milk" (normal milk) to remember the suffering of Christ during the Lenten fast. Yohannan also told Abdisho to endeavor to find wheat and wine for them, so they can celebrate
8280-413: The Khalkha dialect group in the State of Mongolia. Nevertheless, the Chakhar dialect, which today has only about 100,000 native speakers and belongs to the Khalkha dialect group, is the basis of standard Mongolian in China. The characteristic differences in the pronunciation of the two standard varieties include the umlauts in Inner Mongolia and the palatalized consonants in Mongolia (see below) as well as
8418-409: The Koreans through both diplomacy and military force. The advance into Europe continued with Mongol invasions of Poland and Hungary. When the western flank of the Mongols plundered Polish cities, a European alliance among the Poles , the Moravians , and the Christian military orders of the Hospitallers , Teutonic Knights and the Templars assembled sufficient forces to halt, although briefly,
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#17327718521188556-464: The Mongol Empire. This marked a major shift in the leadership of the empire, transferring power from the descendants of Genghis's son Ögedei to the descendants of Genghis's son Tolui. The decision was acknowledged by a few of the Ögedeid and Chagataid princes, such as Möngke's cousin Kadan and the deposed khan Qara Hülëgü, but one of the other legitimate heirs, Ögedei's grandson Shiremun, sought to topple Möngke. Shiremun moved with his own forces toward
8694-420: The Mongol advance at Legnica . The Hungarian army, their Croatian allies and the Knights Templar were beaten by the Mongols at the banks of the Sajo River on 11 April 1241. Before Batu's forces could continue on to Vienna and northern Albania , news of Ögedei's death in December 1241 brought a halt to the invasion. As was customary in Mongol military tradition, all princes of Genghis's line had to attend
8832-402: The Mongol ethnicity. They reside along the Onon and Kerulen rivers, the land of the Mongols. That land is close to the country of the Khitai . They are first noted in Syriac Church records which mention them being absorbed into the Church of the East around 1000 by Metropolitan Abdisho of the Merv ecclesiastical province . After the Zubu broke up, the Keraites retained their dominance on
8970-410: The Mongol generals in Persia. Güyük appointed his best friend's father Eljigidei as chief commander of the troops in Persia and gave them the task of both reducing the strongholds of the Nizari Ismailis and conquering the Abbasids at the center of the Islamic world, Iran and Iraq . In 1248, Güyük raised more troops and suddenly marched westward from the Mongol capital of Karakorum. The reasoning
9108-427: The Mongolian language in Chinese as "Guoyu" ( Chinese : 國語 ), which means "National language", a term also used by other non-Han dynasties to refer to their languages such as the Manchu language during the Qing dynasty , the Jurchen language during the Jin dynasty (1115–1234) , the Khitan language during the Liao dynasty , and the Xianbei language during the Northern Wei period. The next distinct period
9246-408: The Mongolian name Khereid may be an ancient totem name derived from the root Kheree ( хэрээ ) for " raven ". The Khereid should not be confused with the Kerei , an unrelated turkic tribe in northwest Kazakhstan . The Keraites first entered history as the ruling faction of the Zubu , a large confederacy of tribes that dominated Mongolia during the 11th and 12th centuries and often fought with
9384-439: The Mongolic language family into four distinct linguistic branches: The Common Mongolic branch is grouped in the following way: There is no disagreement that the Khalkha dialect of the Mongolian state is Mongolian. However, the status of certain varieties in the Common Mongolic group—whether they are languages distinct from Mongolian or just dialects of it—is disputed. There are at least three such varieties: Oirat (including
9522-499: The Mongols and helped them conquer the rest of Yunnan . Möngke's general Qoridai stabilized his control over Tibet, inducing leading monasteries to submit to Mongol rule. Subutai's son Uryankhadai reduced the neighboring peoples of Yunnan to submission and went to war with the kingdom of Đại Việt under the Trần dynasty in northern Vietnam in 1258, but they had to draw back. The Mongol Empire tried to invade Đại Việt again in 1285 and 1287 but were defeated both times. After stabilizing
9660-476: The Mongols' decision to withdraw. Following the Great Khan Ögedei's death in 1241, and before the next kurultai, Ögedei's widow Töregene took over the empire. She persecuted her husband's Khitan and Muslim officials and gave high positions to her own allies. She built palaces, cathedrals, and social structures on an imperial scale, supporting religion and education. She was able to win over most Mongol aristocrats to support Ögedei's son Güyük . But Batu, ruler of
9798-465: The Mongols. There were four Han Tumens and three Khitan Tumens, with each Tumen consisting of 10,000 troops. The Yuan dynasty created a Han army 漢軍 from Jin defectors, and another of ex-Song troops called the Newly Submitted Army 新附軍. In the West Ögedei's general Chormaqan destroyed Jalal ad-Din Mingburnu , the last shah of the Khwarizmian Empire . The small kingdoms in southern Persia voluntarily accepted Mongol supremacy. In East Asia, there were
9936-656: The Syriac word ܟܹܪܝܼܬ "Keraith"). According to these accounts, shortly before 1007, the Keraite Khan lost his way during a snowstorm while hunting in the high mountains of his land. When he had abandoned all hope, a saint, Sergius of Samarkand , appeared in a vision and said, "If you will believe in Christ, I will lead you lest you perish." The king promised to become Christian, and the saint told him to close his eyes and he found himself back home (Bar Hebraeus' version says
10074-426: The accusative, while it must take the nominative if it is indefinite . In addition to case, a number of postpositions exist that usually govern the genitive, dative-locative, comitative and privative cases, including a marked form of the nominative (which can itself then take further case forms). There is also a possible attributive case (when a noun is used attributively ), which is unmarked in most nouns but takes
10212-497: The army, Genghis also decreed religious freedom and supported domestic and international trade. He exempted the poor and the clergy from taxation. He also encouraged literacy and the adaptation of the Uyghur script into what would become the Mongolian script of the empire, ordering the Uyghur Tata-tonga , who had previously served the khan of Naimans , to instruct his sons. Genghis quickly came into conflict with
10350-416: The building of foreign merchants' quarters, Buddhist monasteries , mosques , and Christian churches in the Mongol capital. As construction projects continued, Karakorum was adorned with Chinese, European, and Persian architecture . One famous example was a large silver tree with cleverly designed pipes that dispensed various drinks. The tree, topped by a triumphant angel, was crafted by Guillaume Boucher ,
10488-514: The central problem remains the question of how to classify Chakhar, Khalkha, and Khorchin in relation to each other and in relation to Buryat and Oirat. The split of [tʃ] into [tʃ] before *i and [ts] before all other reconstructed vowels, which is found in Mongolia but not in Inner Mongolia, is often cited as a fundamental distinction, for example Proto-Mongolic *tʃil , Khalkha /tʃiɮ/ , Chakhar /tʃil/ 'year' versus Proto-Mongolic *tʃøhelen , Khalkha /tsoːɮəŋ/ , Chakhar /tʃoːləŋ/ 'few'. On
10626-646: The charismatic Ögedei , as his heir. According to Mongol tradition, Genghis Khan was buried in a secret location . The regency was originally held by Ögedei's younger brother Tolui until Ögedei's formal election at the kurultai in 1229. Among his first actions Ögedei sent troops to subjugate the Bashkirs , Bulgars , and other nations in the Kipchak-controlled steppes. In the east, Ögedei's armies re-established Mongol authority in Manchuria, crushing
10764-697: The construction of a palace within the surrounding of its walls. Meanwhile, in an offensive action against the Song dynasty , Mongol armies captured Siyang-yang, the Yangtze and Sichuan , but did not secure their control over the conquered areas. The Song generals were able to recapture Siyang-yang from the Mongols in 1239. After the sudden death of Ögedei's son Kochu in Chinese territory the Mongols withdrew from southern China, although Kochu's brother Prince Koten invaded Tibet immediately after their withdrawal. Batu Khan , another grandson of Genghis Khan, overran
10902-514: The descendants of Tolui. The conflict over whether the Mongol Empire would adopt a sedentary, cosmopolitan lifestyle or continue its nomadic, steppe-based way of life was a major factor in the breakup. After Möngke Khan died (1259), rival kurultai councils simultaneously elected different successors, the brothers Ariq Böke and Kublai Khan , who fought each other in the Toluid Civil War (1260–1264) and also dealt with challenges from
11040-611: The descendants of other sons of Genghis. Kublai successfully took power, but war ensued as he sought unsuccessfully to regain control of the Chagatayid and Ögedeid families. By the time of Kublai's death in 1294, the Mongol Empire had fractured into four separate khanates or empires , each pursuing its own interests and objectives: the Golden Horde khanate in the northwest, the Chagatai Khanate in Central Asia,
11178-428: The emperor's nomadic palace with a plan for an armed attack, but Möngke was alerted by his falconer of the plan. Möngke ordered an investigation of the plot, which led to a series of major trials all across the empire. Many members of the Mongol elite were found guilty and put to death, with estimates ranging from 77 to 300, though princes of Genghis's royal line were often exiled rather than executed. Möngke confiscated
11316-903: The empire's finances, Möngke once again sought to expand its borders. At kurultais in Karakorum in 1253 and 1258 he approved new invasions of the Middle East and south China . Möngke put Hulagu in overall charge of military and civil affairs in Persia, and appointed Chagataids and Jochids to join Hulagu's army. The Muslims from Qazvin denounced the menace of the Nizari Ismailis , a well-known sect of Shiites . The Mongol Naiman commander Kitbuqa began to assault several Ismaili fortresses in 1253, before Hulagu advanced in 1256. Ismaili Grand Master Rukn al-Din Khurshah surrendered in 1257 and
11454-519: The estates of the Ögedeid and the Chagatai families and shared the western part of the empire with his ally Batu Khan. After the bloody purge, Möngke ordered a general amnesty for prisoners and captives, but thereafter the power of the great khan's throne remained firmly with the descendants of Tolui. Möngke was a serious man who followed the laws of his ancestors and avoided alcoholism. He was tolerant of outside religions and artistic styles, leading to
11592-412: The examples given above, the words are phonetically [ˈxɔjɔ̆r] , [ˈatʃĭɮ] , and [ˈsaːrmăɢ] . The phonetic form of the epenthetic vowel follows from vowel harmony triggered by the vowel in the preceding syllable. Usually it is a centralized version of the same sound, with the following exceptions: preceding /u/ produces [e] ; /i/ will be ignored if there is a nonneutral vowel earlier in the word; and
11730-441: The exchange of trade, technologies, commodities, and ideologies across Eurasia . The empire began to split due to wars over succession, as the grandchildren of Genghis Khan disputed whether the royal line should follow from his son and initial heir Ögedei or from one of his other sons, such as Tolui , Chagatai , or Jochi . The Toluids prevailed after a bloody purge of Ögedeid and Chagatayid factions, but disputes continued among
11868-635: The following Mongol dialects, most of which are spoken in Inner Mongolia . There are two standard varieties of Mongolian. Standard Mongolian in the state of Mongolia is based on the northern Khalkha Mongolian dialects, which include the dialect of Ulaanbaatar , and is written in the Mongolian Cyrillic script . Standard Mongolian in Inner Mongolia is based on the Chakhar Mongolian of the Khalkha dialect group, spoken in
12006-444: The following restrictions obtain: Clusters that do not conform to these restrictions will be broken up by an epenthetic nonphonemic vowel in a syllabification that takes place from right to left. For instance, hoyor 'two', azhil 'work', and saarmag 'neutral' are, phonemically, /xɔjr/ , /atʃɮ/ , and /saːrmɡ/ respectively. In such cases, an epenthetic vowel is inserted to prevent disallowed consonant clusters. Thus, in
12144-437: The general Jürchedei. Genghis Khan' son Tolui married another niece, Sorghaghtani Bekhi , and his son Jochi married a third niece, Begtütmish . Tolui and Sorghaghtani Bekhi became the parents of Möngke Khan and Kublai Khan . The remaining Keraites submitted to Timujin's rule, but out of distrust, Timujin dispersed them among the other Mongol tribes. Rinchin protected Christians when Ghazan began to persecute them but he
12282-635: The great Mongols' or the 'great Mongol nation') in Mongol or kür uluγ ulus ( lit. the 'whole great nation') in Turkic. After the 1260 to 1264 succession war between Kublai Khan and his brother Ariq Böke , Kublai's power became limited to the eastern part of the empire, centered on China. Kublai officially issued an imperial edict on 18 December 1271 to give the empire the Han -style dynastic name of "Great Yuan" ( Dai Yuan , or Dai Ön Ulus' ; Chinese : 大 元 ; pinyin : Dà Yuán ) and to establish
12420-596: The ground. Kiev had been a very large and thickly populated town, but now it has been reduced almost to nothing, for there are at the present time scarce two hundred houses there and the inhabitants are kept in complete slavery. Despite the military successes, strife continued within the Mongol ranks. Batu's relations with Güyük , Ögedei's eldest son, and Büri , the beloved grandson of Chagatai Khan , remained tense and worsened during Batu's victory banquet in southern Kievan Rus'. Nevertheless, Güyük and Buri could not do anything to harm Batu's position as long as his uncle Ögedei
12558-583: The independent words derived using verbal suffixes can roughly be divided into three classes: final verbs , which can only be used sentence-finally, i.e. ‑ na (mainly future or generic statements) or ‑ ö (second person imperative); participles (often called "verbal nouns"), which can be used clause-finally or attributively, i.e. ‑ san ( perfect - past ) or ‑ maar 'want to'; and converbs , which can link clauses or function adverbially , i.e. ‑ zh (qualifies for any adverbial function or neutrally connects two sentences ) or ‑ tal (the action of
12696-479: The khan's army and was composed of warriors from many different tribes with no loyalties to anyone but the Khan. This made the central faction more of a quasi-feudal state than a genuine tribe. The "outer" faction was composed of tribes that pledged obedience to the khan, but lived on their own tribal pastures and functioned semi-autonomously. The "capital" of the Keraite khanate was a place called Orta Balagasun, which
12834-529: The kurultai convened by Töregene in 1246. Güyük by this time was ill and alcoholic, but his campaigns in Manchuria and Europe gave him the kind of stature necessary for a great khan. He was duly elected at a ceremony attended by Mongols and foreign dignitaries from both within and without the empire — leaders of vassal nations, representatives from Rome, and other entities who came to the kurultai to show their respects and conduct diplomacy. Güyük took steps to reduce corruption, announcing that he would continue
12972-403: The kurultai to elect a successor. Batu and his western Mongol army withdrew from Central Europe the next year. Today researchers doubt that Ögedei's death was the sole reason for the Mongols withdrawal. Batu did not return to Mongolia, so a new khan was not elected until 1246. Climatic and environmental factors, as well as the strong fortifications and castles of Europe, played an important role in
13110-413: The language is spoken by roughly half of the country's 5.8 million ethnic Mongols (2005 estimate) However, the exact number of Mongolian speakers in China is unknown, as there is no data available on the language proficiency of that country's citizens. The use of Mongolian in Inner Mongolia has witnessed periods of decline and revival over the last few hundred years. The language experienced a decline during
13248-405: The late Qing period, a revival between 1947 and 1965, a second decline between 1966 and 1976, a second revival between 1977 and 1992, and a third decline between 1995 and 2012. However, in spite of the decline of the Mongolian language in some of Inner Mongolia's urban areas and educational spheres, the ethnic identity of the urbanized Chinese-speaking Mongols is most likely going to survive due to
13386-418: The leftmost heavy syllable gets the stress. Yet other positions were taken in works published between 1835 and 1915. Walker (1997) proposes that stress falls on the rightmost heavy syllable unless this syllable is word-final: A "heavy syllable" is defined as one that is at least the length of a full vowel; short word-initial syllables are thereby excluded. If a word is bisyllabic and the only heavy syllable
13524-421: The main clause takes place until the action expressed by the suffixed verb begins). Roughly speaking, Mongolian has between seven and nine cases : nominative ( unmarked ), genitive , dative - locative , accusative , ablative , instrumental , comitative , privative and directive , though the final two are not always considered part of the case paradigm. If a direct object is definite , it must take
13662-595: The middle, the Horcin-Haracin dialect in the East, Oriat-Hilimag in the west, and Bargu–Buriyad in the north. Some Western scholars propose that the relatively well researched Ordos variety is an independent language due to its conservative syllable structure and phoneme inventory. While the placement of a variety like Alasha , which is under the cultural influence of Inner Mongolia but historically tied to Oirat, and of other border varieties like Darkhad would very likely remain problematic in any classification,
13800-431: The northern Caucasus and Hungary. The pro-Tolui faction supported Batu's choice, and Möngke was elected; though given the kurultai's limited attendance and location, it was of questionable validity. Batu sent Möngke, under the protection of his brothers, Berke and Tukhtemur, and his son Sartaq to assemble a more formal kurultai at Kodoe Aral in the heartland. The supporters of Möngke repeatedly invited Oghul Qaimish and
13938-491: The only vowel in the word stem is /i/ , the suffixes will use the +ATR suffix forms. Mongolian also has rounding harmony, which does not apply to close vowels. If a stem contains /o/ (or /ɔ/ ), a suffix that is specified for an open vowel will have [o] (or [ɔ] , respectively) as well. However, this process is blocked by the presence of /u/ (or /ʊ/ ) and /ei/ ; e.g. /ɔr-ɮɔ/ 'came in', but /ɔr-ʊɮ-ɮa/ 'inserted'. The pronunciation of long and short vowels depends on
14076-630: The other due to the Ming conquest of Karakorum. The remnants of the Keraits by late 14th century lived along the Kara Irtysh . These remnants were finally dispersed in the 1420s in the Mongol-Oirat wars fought by Uwais Khan . The Keraites were converted to the Church of the East , a sect of Christianity , early in the 11th century. Other tribes evangelized entirely or to a great extent during
14214-618: The other hand, the split between the past tense verbal suffixes - /sŋ/ in the Central varieties v. - /dʒɛː/ in the Eastern varieties is usually seen as a merely stochastic difference. In Inner Mongolia, official language policy divides the Mongolian language into three dialects: Standard Mongolian of Inner Mongolia , Oirat, and Barghu-Buryat. The Standard Mongolian of Inner Mongolia is said to consist of Chakhar, Ordos, Baarin , Khorchin, Kharchin, and Alasha. The authorities have synthesized
14352-483: The other major Ögedeid and Chagataid princes to attend the kurultai, but they refused each time. The Ögedeid and Chagataid princes refused to accept a descendant of Genghis's son Tolui as leader, demanding that only descendants of Genghis's son Ögedei could be great khan. When Möngke's mother Sorghaghtani and their cousin Berke organized a second kurultai on 1 July 1251, the assembled throng proclaimed Möngke great khan of
14490-448: The phonology, most of what is said about morphology and syntax also holds true for Chakhar, while Khorchin is somewhat more diverse. Modern Mongolian is an agglutinative —almost exclusively suffixing—language, with the only exception being reduplication. Mongolian also does not have gendered nouns, or definite articles like "the". Most of the suffixes consist of a single morpheme . There are many derivational morphemes. For example,
14628-732: The policies of his father Ögedei, not those of Töregene. He punished Töregene's supporters, except for governor Arghun the Elder . He also replaced young Qara Hülëgü , the khan of the Chagatai Khanate , with his favorite cousin Yesü Möngke , to assert his newly conferred powers. He restored his father's officials to their former positions and was surrounded by Uyghur, Naiman and Central Asian officials, favoring Han Chinese commanders who had helped his father conquer Northern China. He continued military operations in Korea, advanced into Song China in
14766-588: The pope's envoy to the Mongol great khan, travelled through Kiev in February 1246 and wrote: They [the Mongols] attacked Russia, where they made great havoc, destroying cities and fortresses and slaughtering men; and they laid siege to Kiev, the capital of Russia; after they had besieged the city for a long time, they took it and put the inhabitants to death. When we were journeying through that land we came across countless skulls and bones of dead men lying about on
14904-555: The preferential policies for minorities in education, healthcare, family planning, school admissions, the hiring and promotion, the financing and taxation of businesses, and regional infrastructural support given to ethnic minorities in China. In 2020, the Chinese government required three subjects—language and literature, politics, and history—to be taught in Mandarin in Mongolian-language primary and secondary schools in
15042-601: The presence of urban ethnic communities. The multilingual situation in Inner Mongolia does not appear to obstruct efforts by ethnic Mongols to preserve their language. Although an unknown number of Mongols in China, such as the Tumets, may have completely or partially lost the ability to speak their language, they are still registered as ethnic Mongols and continue to identify themselves as ethnic Mongols. The children of inter-ethnic Mongol-Chinese marriages also claim to be and are registered as ethnic Mongols so they can benefit from
15180-486: The remnants of the Keraites who sought refuge in Eastern Europe in the early 15th century. Mongolian language The number of speakers across all its dialects may be 5–6 million, including the vast majority of the residents of Mongolia and many of the ethnic Mongol residents of the Inner Mongolia of China . In Mongolia , Khalkha Mongolian is predominant, and is currently written in both Cyrillic and
15318-644: The saint led him to the open valley where his home was). When he met Christian merchants, he remembered the vision and asked them about the Christian religion, prayer and the book of canon laws. They taught him the Lord's Prayer , Te Deum , and the Trisagion in Syriac. At their suggestion, he sent a message to Abdisho, the Metropolitan of Merv , for priests and deacons to baptize him and his tribe. Abdisho sent
15456-640: The south, and into Iraq in the west, and ordered an empire-wide census. Güyük also divided the Sultanate of Rum between Izz-ad-Din Kaykawus and Rukn ad-Din Kilij Arslan , though Kaykawus disagreed with this decision. Not all parts of the empire respected Güyük's election. The Hashshashins , former Mongol allies whose Grand Master Hasan Jalalud-Din had offered his submission to Genghis Khan in 1221, angered Güyük by refusing to submit. Instead he murdered
15594-591: The southern part of the empire he continued his predecessors' struggle against the Song dynasty. In order to outflank the Song from three directions, Möngke dispatched Mongol armies under his brother Kublai to Yunnan , and under his uncle Iyeku to subdue Korea and pressure the Song from that direction as well. Kublai conquered the Dali Kingdom in 1253 after the Dali King Duan Xingzhi defected to
15732-610: The splitting of the Middle Mongol affricates * ʧ ( ᠴ č ) and * ʤ ( ᠵ ǰ ) into ʦ ( ц c ) and ʣ ( з z ) versus ʧ ( ч č ) and ʤ ( ж ž ) in Mongolia: Aside from these differences in pronunciation, there are also differences in vocabulary and language use: in the state of Mongolia more loanwords from Russian are being used, while in Inner Mongolia more loanwords from Chinese have been adopted. The following description
15870-470: The stem with certain case endings (e.g. цэрэг ( tsereg ) → цэргийн ( tsergiin )). The additional morphological rules specific to loanwords are not covered. Mongol Empire The Mongol Empire of the 13th and 14th centuries was the largest contiguous empire in history . Originating in present-day Mongolia in East Asia , the Mongol Empire at its height stretched from
16008-578: The steppe until they were absorbed into the Mongol Empire . At the height of its power, the Keraite Khanate was organized along the same lines as the Naimans and other powerful steppe tribes of the day. A section is dedicated to the Keraites by Rashid al-Din Hamadani (1247–1318), the official historian of the Ilkhanate , in his Jami' al-tawarikh . The people were divided into a "central" faction and an "outer" faction. The central faction served as
16146-430: The suffix ‑ н (‑ n ) when the stem has an unstable nasal. Nouns can also take a reflexive-possessive suffix , indicating that the marked noun is possessed by the subject of the sentence: bi najz-aa avar-san I friend- reflexive-possessive save- perfect "I saved my friend". However, there are also somewhat noun-like adjectives to which case suffixes seemingly cannot be attached directly unless there
16284-426: The term, which are often conflated. According to the early 14th-century work Jami' al-tawarikh by Rashid-al-Din Hamadani , Mongol legend traced the clan back to eight brothers with unusually dark faces and the confederation they founded. Kerait was the name of the leading brother's clan, while the clans of his brothers are recorded as Jirkin, Konkant, Sakait, Tumaut, Albat . Other researchers also suggested that
16422-567: The territories of the Bulgars , the Alans , the Kypchaks, Bashkirs, Mordvins , Chuvash , and other nations of the southern Russian steppe. By 1237 the Mongols were encroaching upon Ryazan , the first Kievan Rus' principality they were to attack. After a three-day siege involving fierce fighting, the Mongols captured the city and massacred its inhabitants. They then proceeded to destroy the army of
16560-410: The throne; they regarded Temujin not as a leader but as an insolent usurper. This dissatisfaction spread to his generals and other associates, and some Mongols who had previously been allies broke their allegiance. War ensued, and Temujin and the forces still loyal to him prevailed, defeating the remaining rival tribes between 1203 and 1205 and bringing them under his sway. In 1206, Temujin was crowned as
16698-524: The time, possibly to pay homage, or perhaps with other plans in mind. Before the forces of Batu and Güyük met, Güyük, sick and worn out by travel, died en route at Qum-Senggir (Hong-siang-yi-eulh) in Xinjiang , possibly a victim of poison. Güyük's widow Oghul Qaimish stepped forward to take control of the empire, but she lacked the skills of her mother-in-law Töregene, and her young sons Khoja and Naku and other princes challenged her authority. To decide on
16836-399: The title of Khan , Toghrul, fearing Temüjin's growing power, plotted with Jamukha to have him assassinated. In 1203, Temüjin defeated the Keraites, who were distracted by the collapse of their coalition. Toghrul was killed by Naiman soldiers who failed to recognize him. Genghis Khan married the oldest niece of Toghrul, Ibaqa , and then two years later divorced her and had her remarried to
16974-538: 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. In the discussion of grammar to follow, the variety of Mongolian treated is the standard written Khalkha formalized in the writing conventions and in grammar as taught in schools, but much of it
17112-487: The tribes, especially between the Tatars and the Mongols, in order to keep the nomadic tribes distracted by their own battles and thereby away from the Jin. Khabul's successor was Ambaghai Khan , who was betrayed by the Tatars, handed over to the Jurchen, and executed. The Mongols retaliated by raiding the frontier, resulting in a failed Jurchen counter-attack in 1143. In 1147, the Jin somewhat changed their policy, signing
17250-424: The voiceless velar plosive [k] ; instead, it has a voiced alveolar lateral fricative , /ɮ/ , which is often realized as voiceless [ɬ] . In word-final position, /n/ (if not followed by a vowel in historical forms) is realized as [ŋ] . Aspirated consonants are preaspirated in medial and word-final contexts, devoicing preceding consonants and vowels. Devoiced short vowels are often deleted. The maximal syllable
17388-547: The word baiguullagiinh consists of the root bai 'to be', an epenthetic ‑ g ‑, the causative ‑ uul ‑ (hence 'to found'), the derivative suffix ‑ laga that forms nouns created by the action (like - ation in organisation ) and the complex suffix ‑ iinh denoting something that belongs to the modified word (‑ iin would be genitive ). Nominal compounds are quite frequent. Some derivational verbal suffixes are rather productive , e.g. yarih 'to speak', yarilc 'to speak with each other'. Formally,
17526-769: The world. He attributes this to the lack of teachers of the faith, power struggles among the clergy and a willingness to make doctrinal concessions to win the favour of the Khans. Contact with the Catholic Church was lost after the Islamization under Timur (reigned 1370–1405), who effectively destroyed the Church of the East. The Church in Karakorum was destroyed by the invading Ming dynasty army in 1380. The legend of Prester John , otherwise set in India or Ethiopia,
17664-572: Was also brought in connection with the Eastern Christian rulers of the Keraites. In some versions of the legend, Prester John was explicitly identified with Toghril, but Mongolian sources say nothing about his religion. An account of the conversion of this people is given in the 12th-century Book of the Tower ( Kitab al-Majdal ) by Mari ibn Suleiman , and also by 13th-century Syriac Orthodox historian Bar Hebraeus where he names them with
17802-557: Was collected by imperial agents and forwarded to units in need. His court also tried to lighten the tax burden on commoners by reducing tax rates. He also centralized control of monetary affairs and reinforced the guards at the postal relays. Möngke ordered an empire-wide census in 1252 that took several years to complete and was not finished until Novgorod in the far northwest was counted in 1258. In another move to consolidate his power, Möngke assigned his brothers Hulagu and Kublai to rule Persia and Mongol-held China respectively. In
17940-417: Was created, giving distinctive evidence on early classical Mongolian phonological peculiarities. Mongolian is the official national language of Mongolia, where it is spoken (but not always written) by nearly 3.6 million people (2014 estimate), and the official provincial language (both spoken and written forms) of Inner Mongolia, where there are at least 4.1 million ethnic Mongols. Across the whole of China,
18078-545: Was executed by Abu Sa'id Bahadur Khan when fighting against his custodian, Chupan of the Taichiud in 1319. Keraites arrived in Europe with the Mongol invasion led by Batu Khan and Mongke Khan . Kaidu 's troops in the 1270s were likely mostly composed of Keraites and Naimans. From the 1380s onward, Nestorian Christianity in Mongolia declined and vanished, on the one hand due to the Islamization under Timur and on
18216-458: Was expansive, corresponding to much of what is now Mongolia . Vasily Bartold (1913) located them along the upper Onon and Kherlen rivers and along the Tuul river . They were defeated by Genghis Khan in 1203 and became influential in the rise of the Mongol Empire , and were gradually absorbed into the succeeding Mongol khanates during the 13th century. In modern Mongolian , the confederation
18354-532: Was now the only one in line to inherit the title khan. The Tatars rebelled against the Jin dynasty in 1195. The Jin commander sent an emissary to Timujin. A fight with the Tatars broke out and the Mongol alliance defeated them. In 1196, the Jin Dynasty awarded Toghrul the title of "Wang" (king). After this, Toghrul was recorded under the title "Wang Khan" ( Chinese : 王汗 ; pinyin : Wáng Hàn ). When Temüjin, later Genghis Khan , attacked Jamukha for
18492-600: Was probably located in an old Uyghur or Khitan fortress. Markus Buyruk Khan was a Keraite leader who also led the Zubu confederacy. In 1100, he was killed by the Liao. Kurchakus Buyruk Khan was a son and successor of Bayruk Markus, among whose wives was Toreqaimish Khatun, daughter of Korchi Buiruk Khan of the Naimans . Kurchakus' younger brother was Gur Khan. Kurchakus Buyruk Khan had many sons. Notable sons included Toghrul , Yula-Mangus, Tai-Timur, and Bukha-Timur. In union with
18630-560: Was related to Turkic , Tungusic , Korean and Japonic languages but this view is now seen as obsolete by a majority of (but not all) comparative linguists. These languages have been grouped under the Altaic language family and contrasted with the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area . However, instead of a common genetic origin, Clauson, Doerfer, and Shcherbak proposed that Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic languages form
18768-643: Was still alive. Ögedei continued with offensives into the Indian subcontinent , temporarily investing Uchch , Lahore , and Multan of the Delhi Sultanate and stationing a Mongol overseer in Kashmir , though the invasions into India eventually failed and were forced to retreat. In northeastern Asia, Ögedei agreed to end the conflict with Goryeo by making it a client state and sent Mongol princesses to wed Goryeo princes. He then reinforced his kheshig with
18906-590: Was taken over by Ming forces . The Genghisid rulers of the Yuan then retreated north and continued to rule the Mongolian Plateau . The regime is thereafter known as the Northern Yuan dynasty in historiography, surviving as a rump state until the conquest by the Qing dynasty in the 1630s. The Golden Horde had broken into competing khanates by the end of the 15th century and its rule on Eastern Europe
19044-585: Was unclear. Some sources wrote that he sought to recuperate at his personal estate, Emyl; others suggested that he might have been moving to join Eljigidei to conduct a full-scale conquest of the Middle East, or possibly to make a surprise attack on his rival cousin Batu Khan in Rus. Suspicious of Güyük's motives, Sorghaghtani Beki , the widow of Genghis's son Tolui, secretly warned her nephew Batu of Güyük's approach. Batu had himself been traveling eastward at
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