Khalkha Mongols in the context of "Dayan Khan"

Altan Khan of the Tümed (2 January 1508 – 13 January 1582; Mongolian: ᠠᠯᠲᠠᠨ ᠬᠠᠨ, Алтан хан; Chinese: 阿勒坦汗), whose given name was Anda (Mongolian: Алтан (Аньда); Chinese: 俺答), was the leader of the Tümed Mongols, the de facto ruler of the Right Wing, or western tribes, of the Mongols, and the first Ming Shunyi King (順義王). He was the grandson of Dayan Khan (1464–1543), a descendant of Kublai Khan (1215–1294), who had managed to unite a tribal league between the Khalkha Mongols in the north and the Chahars (Tsakhars) to the east. He later swore allegiance to Ming China and became a patron of the Gelug Tibetan Buddhists.

The culture of Mongolia has been shaped by the country's nomadic tradition and its position at the crossroads of various empires and civilizations. Mongolian culture is influenced by the cultures of the Mongolic, Turkic, and East Asian peoples, as well as by the country's geography and its history of political and economic interactions with other nations.

One of the most distinctive aspects of Mongolian culture is its nomadic pastoral economy, which has shaped the traditional way of life for the Mongols for centuries. The nomadic lifestyle is centered around the family and the community, and involves the herding of 5 main animals including sheep, goat, horse, cow, camel and some yaks. This way of life has had a significant impact on Mongolian culture, influencing everything from the country's social relationships and family structures to its art, music, and literature.

The Olot people (/ˈoʊlɒt/; Mongolian: Өөлд Ööld [ˈɵɮʊ̆t]) are an Oirat sub-ethnic group of Choros origin. They were one of the strongest tribes of the Oirats. Today, Mongolian Olots live in Erdenebüren and Ölziit sums. There are a few Olots in Hulunbuir region and around 40,000 Olots in Xinjiang province of China. Ölziit Olots absorbed into the Khalkha Mongols, and the Erdenebüren Olots of around 3,000 retained their Oirat heritage.

The Khalkha dialect is a dialect of central Mongolian widely spoken in Mongolia. According to some classifications, the Khalkha dialect includes Inner Mongolian varieties such as Shiliin gol, Ulaanchab and Sönid. As it was the basis for the Cyrillic orthography of Mongolian, it is de facto the national language of Mongolia. The name of the dialect is related to the name of the Khalkha Mongols and the Khalkha River.

There are certain differences between normative (standardised form of Khalkha) and spoken Khalkha. For example, the normative language uses proximal demonstratives based on the word stem ʉː/n- (except for the nominative in [i̠n] and the accusative which takes the stem ʉːn-) and thus exhibits the same developmental tendency as exhibited by Oirat. On the other hand, the spoken language also makes use of paradigms that are based on the stems inʉːn- and inĕn-. This seems to agree with the use in Chakhar Mongolian. The same holds for the distal demonstrative /tir/.

The tovshuur, also known as topshur or topshuur (Mongolian Cyrillic: товшуур; Mongolian: ᠲᠣᠪᠰᠢᠭᠤᠷ, romanized: tobshiğur) is a two- or three-stringed lute played by the Western Mongolian (Oirats) tribes called the Altai Urianghais, the Altais, Tuvans, and Khalkha peoples. The topshur is closely tied to the folklore of Western Mongolian people and accompanied the performances of storytellers, singing, and dancing.According to descriptions given by Marco Polo, the Mongols also played the instruments before a battle.

Mongolia under Qing rule was the rule of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty of China over the Mongolian Plateau, including the four Outer Mongolian aimags (a.k.a. "leagues") and the six Inner Mongolian aimags from the 17th century to the end of the dynasty. The term "Mongolia" is used here in the broader historical sense, and includes an area much larger than the modern-day state of Mongolia. By the early 1630s Ligdan Khan saw much of his power weakened due to the disunity of the Mongol tribes. He was subsequently defeated by the Later Jin dynasty and died soon afterwards. His son Ejei handed the Yuan imperial seal over to Hong Taiji in 1635, thus ending the rule of the Northern Yuan dynasty in Inner Mongolia. However, the Khalkha Mongols in Outer Mongolia continued to rule until they were overrun by the Dzungar Khanate in 1690, and they submitted to the Qing dynasty in 1691.

The Qing dynasty ruled Inner and Outer Mongolia for over 200 years. During this period, Qing rulers established separate administrative structures to govern each region. While the empire maintained firm control in both Inner and Outer Mongolia, the Mongols in Outer Mongolia (which is further from the capital Beijing) enjoyed a higher degree of autonomy, and also retained their own language and culture during this period.

Abtai Sain Khan (Mongolian: ᠠᠪᠲᠠᠶ ᠢᠰᠠᠶᠢᠨ ᠬᠠᠨ Абтай сайн хан; 1554–1588) – alternately Abatai or Avtai (Mongolian: Автай хан, meaning who have the gift of witchcraft (Автай) and good (сайн) – was a Khalkha-Mongolian prince who was named by the 3rd Dalai Lama as first khan of the Tüsheet Khanate in 1587. He zealously propagated Tibetan Buddhism among the Khalkha Mongols and founded the Buddhist monastery of Erdene Zuu in 1585.

Abtai was born in 1554 to the Khalkha Mongol prince Onokhui üizen Noyan (b. 1534). He was the eldest among Onokhui üizen Noyan's five sons which include Abugho, Tarni, Tumengken, and Barai. He was the great-grandson of Batu Mongke Dayan Khan (1464–1517 / 1543) and grandson of Gersenji (1513–1549). Blood smeared on his fingers at birth presaged a great warrior and from 1567 to 1580 Abtai led several campaigns against western Oirat Mongol tribes, finally defeating the Oirats' Khoshut tribe at Köbkör Keriye in the mid-1580s. Abtai then placed his son Shubuudai on the Oirat throne. His ferociousness in battle earned him the moniker The Mad Hero or the Mad Taiji of North Khalkha.

The Four Oirats (Written Oirat: ᡑᡈᠷᡋᡈᠨ
ᡆᡕᡅᠷᠠᡑ, Dörbön Oyirad; Mongolian: Дөрвөн Ойрад, romanized: Dörvön Oirad, pronounced [ˈtɵrw̜ʊ̈ɴ ˈɞe̯ɾ(ə)t]; Chinese: 四衛拉特) or Oirat Confederation, formerly known as the Eleuths, was the confederation of the Oirat tribes which marked the rise of the Western Mongols in the history of the Mongolian Plateau.

Despite the universal currency of the term "Four Oirat" among Eastern Mongols, Oirats, and numerous explanations by historians, no consensus has been reached on the identity of the original four tribes. While it is believed that the term Four Oirats refers to the Choros, Torghut, Dorbet and Khoid tribes, there is a theory that the Oirats were not consanguineous units, but political-ethnic units composed of many patrilineages. In the early period, the Kergüd tribe also belonged to the confederation.