Dzungar Khanate

The Dzungar Khanate was the last great nomadic steppe empire of Inner Asia, founded around 1634 by Erdeni Batur, a Choros-Oirat prince who united the western Mongol (Oirat) tribes following the death of his father Khara Khula.

Centred on the Dzungaria region of present-day northwestern China, with its seat near Lake Zaisan and later at Ghulja (Yining), the khanate at its height under Galdan Boshugtu Khan and Tsewang Rabtan stretched from southern Siberia to Tibet and from western Mongolia to the Kazakh steppe and Eastern Turkestan. Closely allied with the Gelug (Yellow Hat) school of Tibetan Buddhism, the Dzungars promulgated a codified Oirat-Mongol legal code in 1640 and patronised the creation of the Clear Script, while waging sustained wars against the Kazakhs, the Qing dynasty, and rival Khalkha Mongols. For over a century the khanate was a formidable rival to both Qing China and Tsarist Russia, the last independent power capable of contesting the great sedentary empires on the steppe. Its destruction by the Qing in a series of campaigns from 1755 to 1758, accompanied by the Dzungar genocide that killed an estimated 70 to 80 percent of the population, ended the era of independent nomadic empires and led to Qing incorporation of Xinjiang, Mongolia, and Tibet.