Kingdoms of Central Asia

The nomads of Central Asia were the masters of horsemanship and were deadly shots with their composite bow. They were virtually born as fighting men, and almost every element of their lives involved the same training and skills that they would take into battle. All they needed was someone who could unite the many tribes and put an end to the incessant internecine feuding which characterised them until the start of the thirteenth century AD.

The Mongols themselves appear to have been born out of an amalgam of native Turkic and Tungusic groups in north-eastern Central Asia and East Asia. Early Turkic groups display an affinity with or links to Indo-Iranian tribes, as well as to proto-Mongol groups. The famous Mongol foundation epic, the Secret History of the Mongols, states that they reached the steppe from over the 'Tengis' - the sea or lake - twenty-two generations before the birth of Genghis Khan in 1162.

That word seems to be the cause of much academic controversy though. The 'Tengis' has been argued to be Lake Baikal in Siberia (immediately to the north of modern Mongolia), while others prefer Lake Hulun which, with its smaller neighbour, Buir, gives its name to the Hulunbuir region of northern Inner Mongolia, now within China but also part of the original formation zone for Tungusic peoples.

There are reasons for the claim that Hulunbuir is the original Mongol homeland. In the fifth century AD, according to scanty sources, a forest people who were known to the Chinese as Shiwei (or Shih-Wei) dominated the forests of the north-east, across Manchuria. One of its twenty tribes were the Meng-wu, Meng-ku, or Mongols, a group which occupied territory in the western part of their range. They moved onto the steppe, became herders, and settled along the River Erguna which now marks the Sino-Russian border.

They were there for four centuries before most of them migrated westwards to their new homeland in Mongolia. Top Mongols generally selected their mates from the Ongirat, a group which lived to the south and east of Lake Hulun. They were famous for their beautiful women.

Mongols briefly became powerful in Mongolia around AD 1130, defeating neighbouring tribes and forcing the Jin to pay tribute. In 1160 they were destroyed by the neighbouring Tartars and their clans fought each other for local superiority. Mongol power collapsed until a new figurehead could be found to reunite the clans. The uniquely-titled 'Chingiz Khan' did just that, becoming the first of the 'Great Khans' of the Mongol empire.

The Tartars or Tatars provided a major force during the Mongol expansion, and the name still survives today in several major communities in far Eastern Europe. They were originally the Ta-ta (Ta-tan, or Da-Dan of Chinese records) of the north-eastern Gobi desert in the fifth century, but were subjugated by the Khitans in the ninth century (who went on to form their own Qara-Khitaï empire in the twelfth century).

The Tartars drifted southwards and offered staunch opposition in the twelfth century to Mongol growth. In the end they were subjugated by Chingiz Khan and subsequently became an integral part of his vast army. Pulled westwards, they settled in large numbers in today's eastern Ukraine (including Crimea) and southern Russia.

Bodonchar Munkhag has been claimed as being the founder of the Borjigin clan which ruled the early Meng-wu Mongolian state in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries. He is claimed as being the twelfth non-biological descendant of Borte Chino, mythical father of the Mongol people, and the direct ancestor of Chingiz Khan. Later Chaghatayid tradition dated him in the form of 'Buzanjar Munqaq' to the rebellion of Abu Muslim in AD 747. That date tends to match up more accurately to Bodonchar's non-biological great-grandfather, Borjigidai 'the Wise' (or Borjigidai Mergen).

Far East Kingdoms

Central Asia

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