Mongolian Plateau in the context of "Liao dynasty"

Mongolia is a landlocked country in East Asia. Bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south and southeast, it covers an area of 1,564,116 square kilometres (603,909 square miles), making it the 18th-largest country in the world and the second largest landlocked country after Kazakhstan, as well as the largest landlocked country that does not border an inland sea. With a population of 3.5 million, it is the world's most sparsely populated sovereign state. The country constitutes a significant portion of the Mongolian Plateau, and its natural environment is characterized by grassy steppe, 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.

The territory of modern-day Mongolia has been ruled by various nomadic empires, including the Xiongnu, the Xianbei, the Rouran, the First Turkic Khaganate, the Second Turkic Khaganate, the Uyghur Khaganate and others. In 1206, Genghis Khan founded the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous land empire in history. His grandson Kublai Khan conquered China proper and established the Yuan dynasty. After the collapse of the Yuan, the Mongols retreated to Mongolia and resumed their earlier pattern of factional conflict, except during the era of Dayan Khan and Tumen Zasagt Khan.

The Qing dynasty (/tʃɪŋ/ CHING), officially the Great Qing, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and an early modern empire in East Asia. The last imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the Ming dynasty and succeeded by the Republic of China. At its height of power, the empire stretched from the Sea of Japan in the east to the Pamir Mountains in the west, and from the Mongolian Plateau in the north to the South China Sea in the south. Originally emerging from the Later Jin dynasty founded in 1616 and proclaimed in Shenyang in 1636, the dynasty seized control of the Ming capital Beijing and North China in 1644, traditionally considered the start of the dynasty's rule. The dynasty lasted until the Xinhai Revolution of October 1911 led to the abdication of the last emperor in February 1912. The multi-ethnic Qing dynasty assembled the territorial base for modern China. The Qing controlled the most territory of any dynasty in Chinese history, and in 1790 represented the fourth-largest empire in world history to that point. With over 426 million citizens in 1907, it was the most populous country at the time.

Nurhaci, leader of the Jianzhou Jurchens and House of Aisin-Gioro who was also a vassal of the Ming dynasty, unified Jurchen clans (known later as Manchus) and founded the Later Jin dynasty in 1616, renouncing the Ming overlordship. As the founding Khan of the Manchu state he established the Eight Banners military system, and his son Hong Taiji was declared Emperor of the Great Qing in 1636. As Ming control disintegrated, peasant rebels captured Beijing as the short-lived Shun dynasty, but the Ming general Wu Sangui opened the Shanhai Pass to the Qing army, which defeated the rebels, seized the capital, and took over the government in 1644 under the Shunzhi Emperor and his prince regent. While the Qing became a Chinese empire, resistance from Ming rump regimes and the Revolt of the Three Feudatories delayed the complete conquest until 1683, which marked the beginning of the High Qing era. As an emperor of Manchu ethnic origin, the Kangxi Emperor (1661–1722) consolidated control, relished the role of a Confucian ruler, patronised Buddhism, encouraged scholarship, population and economic growth.

Inner Asia refers to the northern and landlocked regions spanning North, Central, and East Asia. It includes parts of western and northeast China, as well as southern Siberia. The area overlaps with some definitions of "Central Asia", mostly the historical ones, but certain regions that are often included in Inner Asia, such as Manchuria, are not a part of Central Asia by any of its definitions. Inner Asia may be regarded as the western and northern "frontier" of China proper and as being bounded by East Asia proper, which consists of China proper, Japan, and Korea.

The extent of Inner Asia has been understood differently in different periods. "Inner Asia" is sometimes contrasted to "China proper", that is, the territories originally unified under the Qin dynasty with majority Han populations. By the year 1800, Chinese Inner Asia consisted of four main areas, namely Manchuria (modern Northeast China and Outer Manchuria), the Mongolian Plateau (Inner Mongolia and Outer Mongolia), Xinjiang (Chinese Turkestan or East Turkestan), and Tibet. Many of these areas had been only recently conquered by the Qing dynasty of China and, during most of the Qing period, they were governed through administrative structures different from those of the older Chinese provinces. A Qing government agency, the Lifan Yuan, supervised the empire's Inner Asian regions, also known as Chinese Tartary. The frontier regions of China proper—Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan, and Yunnan—are also sometimes included as part of Inner Asia.

The Xiongnu (Chinese: 匈奴, [ɕjʊ́ŋ.nǔ]) were a tribal confederation of nomadic peoples who, according to ancient Chinese sources, inhabited the eastern Eurasian Steppe from the 3rd century BC to the late 1st century AD. Modu Chanyu, the supreme leader after 209 BC, founded the Xiongnu Empire.

After overthrowing their previous overlords, the Yuezhi, the Xiongnu became the dominant power on the steppes of East Asia, centred on the Mongolian Plateau. The Xiongnu were also active in areas now part of Siberia, Inner Mongolia, Gansu and Xinjiang. Their relations with the Chinese dynasties to the south-east were complex—alternating between various periods of peace, war, and subjugation. Ultimately, the Xiongnu were defeated by the Han dynasty in a centuries-long conflict, which led to the confederation splitting in two, and forcible resettlement of large numbers of Xiongnu within Han borders. During the Sixteen Kingdoms era, listed as one of the "Five Barbarians", their descendants founded the dynastic states of Han-Zhao, Northern Liang and Helian Xia and during the Northern and Southern dynasties founded Northern Zhou (founded by members of the Yuwen tribe of Xiongnu origin) in northern China.

The Yuan dynasty, officially the Great Yuan, was a Mongol-led imperial dynasty of China and a successor state to the Mongol Empire after its division. It was established by Kublai (Emperor Shizu or Setsen Khan), the fifth khagan-emperor of the Mongol Empire from the Borjigin clan, and lasted from 1271 to 1368. In Chinese history, the Yuan dynasty followed the Song dynasty and preceded the Ming dynasty.

Although Genghis Khan's enthronement as Khagan in 1206 was described in Chinese as the Han-style title of Emperor and the Mongol Empire had ruled territories including modern-day northern China for decades, it was not until 1271 that Kublai Khan officially proclaimed the dynasty in the traditional Han style, and the conquest was not complete until 1279 when the Southern Song dynasty was defeated in the Battle of Yamen. His realm was, by this point, isolated from the other Mongol-led khanates and controlled most of modern-day China and its surrounding areas, including modern-day Mongolia. It was the first dynasty founded by a non-Han ethnicity that ruled all of China proper. In 1368, following the defeat of the Yuan forces by the Ming dynasty, the Genghisid rulers retreated to the Mongolian Plateau and continued to rule until 1635 when they surrendered to the Later Jin dynasty (which later evolved into the Qing dynasty). The rump state is known in historiography as the Northern Yuan.

The Mongol heartland or Mongolian heartland is the contiguous geographical area in which the Mongol people have primarily lived, particularly as a historiographic term. It is generally considered to comprise the Mongolian Plateau and some adjacent territories, although its exact extent has been changing over the course of history—particularly since the rise of the Mongol Empire in the 13th century. The area is also described as the heartland of the Mongol Empire during its greatest extent, when it stretched from the Sea of Japan in the east to the Middle East and Eastern Europe in the west, making it the largest contiguous land empire in human history.

The modern area that the Mongols live in approximately includes: the modern state of Mongolia; the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, along with Dzungaria in Xinjiang and parts of Manchuria, Qinghai, and Ningxia in China; as well as the Buryatia Republic and a few smaller territories in Russia. The Mongolic peoples in this area share the common traditional Mongol culture as well as the Mongol language to varying levels. With the exception of the Mongolian state, all areas in the Mongol heartland have non-Mongol majorities.

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, Central and North Asia. Mongolian is the official language of Mongolia and Inner Mongolia and a recognized language of Xinjiang and Qinghai.

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 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 Tibetan Plateau, also known as the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau, Qingzang Plateau, or as the Himalayan Plateau, is a vast elevated plateau located at the intersection of Central, South, and East Asia. Geographically, it is located to the north of Himalayas and the Indian subcontinent, and to the south of Tarim Basin and Mongolian Plateau. Geopolitically, it covers most of the Tibet Autonomous Region, most of Qinghai, the western half of Sichuan, Southern Gansu provinces, southern Xinjiang province in Western China, Bhutan, the Indian regions of Ladakh and Lahaul and Spiti (Himachal Pradesh) as well as Gilgit-Baltistan in Pakistan, northwestern Nepal, eastern Tajikistan and southern Kyrgyzstan. It stretches approximately 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) north to south and 2,500 kilometres (1,600 mi) east to west. It is the world's highest and largest plateau above sea level, with an area of 2,500,000 square kilometres (970,000 sq mi). With an average elevation exceeding 4,500 metres (14,800 ft) and being surrounded by imposing mountain ranges that harbor the world's two highest summits, Mount Everest and K2, the Tibetan Plateau is often referred to as "the Roof of the World".

The Tibetan Plateau contains the headwaters of the drainage basins of most of the streams and rivers in surrounding regions. This includes the three longest rivers in Asia (the Yellow, Yangtze, and Mekong). Its tens of thousands of glaciers and other geographical and ecological features serve as a "water tower" storing water and maintaining flow. It is sometimes termed the Third Pole because its ice fields contain the largest reserve of fresh water outside the polar regions. The impact of climate change on the Tibetan Plateau is of ongoing scientific interest.