I ended my earlier
Exegesis of Chagatayid Influence in the Ili Basin with the
Death of Tughluq Temür, who before he died had appointed the up-and-coming chieftain Temür as an adviser to his son. Temür would soon became known as Tamerlane.
Tamerlane (1336–1405), immortalized in Christopher Marlowe’s
Tamburlaine the Great (written in 1587–88), was not a Mongol but a Turk, and his career as one of the world’s greatest conquerors lies for the most part outside the scope of my narrative. I have already noted, however, how he married the Chagatayid princess Saray Mulk-khanum, daughter of Qazan, the last ruler of Transoxiana, in an attempt to legitimize his rule. Indeed, he never took for himself the title of khan, but claimed instead to be an
emir (commander, or general) acting in the name of the Chagatayids. During his reign the Chagatayids princes of Ulus Chagatay were reduced to the role of powerless figureheads and puppets. The eastern Chagatayids attempted to retain their independence, but in the late 1370s and 1380s Tamurlane made several successful forays into Moghulistan and finally Khizr Khodja, the only surviving son of Tughluq Temür, was forced to come to terms with him. In 1397 he offered up his sister Tukal-khanum as a bride to Tamerlane and accepted the title of khan of Moghulistan, subordinate to the Scourge of God himself. His western flank secure, Khizr Khan, turning his attention east, achieved a certain reputation for himself by declaring a Holy War on Uighuristan and imposing Islam on the hitherto staunchly Buddhist population of the
Turpan Depression.
After Tamerlane’s death in 1405 the Chagatayids in Moghulistan enjoyed a brief resurgence. In addition to Uighurstan they added Kashgaria—the oasis cites of the western Tarim Basin—to their domains and appeared poised to once again dominate Inner Asia, or at least the westesrn half of it. Yet at the same time other peoples coming to the fore were challenging the Chagatayids for their territories. These included the Kazakhs, who asserted themselves in the western part of the Seven Rivers, the Kyrgyz in the Issuk Kul region, and the Oirats, who soon appeared in the Ili Basin. It is the Oirats, from whom Dambijantsan’s people the Kalmyks came, that interest us most.
During the reign of the Chagatayids in Moghulistan, the Oirats, whose
Origins I Have Traced Earlier, had been nomadizing in the Zungarian Basin, the Tarbagatai Mountains to the north, and in the western reaches of current-day Mongolia. In the 1420s we find Esen, son of Toghan, founder of the first Oirat Empire, raiding the Ili Basin, where he took as prisoner the then-reigning Vais Khan. After Vais Khan offered up a sister to Esen as a bride he was released, but the Oirats kept a foothold in the region. By the 1450s the Ili River Valley had been incorporated into the Oirat Empire, which at it height was said to stretch from Lake Baikal in the east to Lake Balkash in the west, including much of the Seven Rivers region. After Esen’s assassination in 1455 the first Oirat Empire disintegrated. For the next hundred and fifty years the Ili Basin and adjacent regions would be fought over by various tribes of the Oirat, surviving Chagatayid princes, resurgence Timurids, Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz. (It was in this period, by the way, that we see perhaps the most brilliant florescence of the Chagatai lineage, although admittedly not in our immediate area of interest; Babur (1483-1530), founder of the Mughal Dynasty in India and author of the
Baburnama, was a descendant of both Tamurlane and Chagatai.
By the early 1600s we find the Khoshuut, one of the tribes of the old Oirat Empire, roaming in the steppes along the Irtysh River in the Zungarian Basin and what is now eastern Kazakhstan. Up until this time the Oirats had apparently adhered to the ancient animist and shamanic beliefs of their forefathers. In the early 1620s or thereabouts one of their chieftains, Baibagas, converted to the Gelug sect of Tibetan Buddhism. In his zeal he in turn converted other Oirat chieftains: Khu Urluk of the Torgut; Dalai Taiji of the Dörböt; and Khara Khula of the Choros. The Oirats leaders very quickly became zealous Buddhists, and they soon began sending their sons to study in the great Gelug monasteries of Tibet. They also did not hesitate to project their beliefs into the political realm. Baibagas’s brother, Güüsh Khan, who had carved out a khanate around Khökh Nuur (Qinghai Lake) and the Tsaidam Depression, in current-day Qinghai Province, China, rode into Tibet in the late 1630s to defend the 5th Dalai Lama from the King of Tsang, the ruler of much of Tibet, who was persecuting the Gelug Sect. In 1642 he overthrow the king and proclaimed the Dalai Lama both the spiritual and temporal leader of Tibet. Not until 1959, when the current Dalai Lama went into exile, was the theocratic system established with the help of Güüsh Khan interrupted.
The Oirats who migrated to the Caspian Steppes in the 1630s took their newly acquired beliefs with them, resulting in a conclave of Tibeto-Mongolian Buddhists which would continue on in Europe down to the present day. The Golden Temple (Gaden Shedrup Choekhorling), opened on October 5, 1996 and consecrated by the 14th Dalai Lama on November 30, 2004, is reputedly the largest Buddhist temple in Europe, and noisy contingents of Kalmyk Buddhists have in recent years attended Kalachakra initiations given by the Dalai Lama in locations as far-flung as
Graz in Austria, Toronto, Canada, and
Amaravati in India. It was this Buddhist culture into which Dambijantsan was born in 1860.
Khara Khula of the Choros, as we have seen, was the father of Baatar Khongtaiji, founder of the Zungarian Confederation. Baatar Khongtaiji established his main capital on the Imil River near current-day Tacheng, on the Chinese-Kazakhstan border, but he spent much of his time camped in the Ili River Valley. We have also seen how Baatar-Khongtaiji’s son Galdan seized control of the Zungarian Khanate in 1676. In 1678 the 5th Dalai Lama, who apparently wanted to use him as a counterweight against the increasingly powerful Qing Dynasty, gave Galdan the title of Boshigt, “Khan by Divine Grace,” and thus legitimized his rule of the Zungarian Khanate. As an Oirat, and not a Chingisid, or descendant of Chingis Khan, he had no real right to take the title of khan for himself. (His name, Galdan, comes from the Tibetan
dga’ldan, defined as the “Tushita Paradise of the Maitreya Buddha.” Between 1678 and 1680 he was apparently headquartered at Kulja, near the old Chagatayid capital of Almalik in the Ili Valley, during which time he annexed Kashgaria and Uighurstan, including the oasis cities of
Kashgar and
Khotan,
Turpan, and Hami.
When we last left Galdan Bolshigt in 1688 he had invaded Khalkh Mongolia and driven Zanabazar, the First Bogd Gegeen of Mongolia and his followers southeast toward the Chinese borderlands. In 1690 news reached Beijing that Galdan Bolshigt and a force of some 30,000 men had reached the Khülün Nuur (Dalai Nuur) area in what is now Inner Mongolia and was proceeding southward along the Khalkh River. On July 26 they overran the first Qing outposts. At first it appeared to the emperor’s advisors in Beijing that the insolent Oirat actually intended to march on Beijing itself. Actually up to 20,000 of Galdan’s men deserted on the march south and the remainder were near starvation. But in early August the Kangxi emperor himself accompanied an army north pass the
Great Wall Via the Gubeikou Pass seventy miles north of Beijing. Kanxi himself soon complained of illness and returned to Beijing, but General Fuquan, who held the title of Prince of Yu and was Kangxi’s half-brother, led the army north through the
Mulan Hunting Grounds, the private hunting preserve of the Qing emperors.
Just south of the current-day town of Saihanba the forested ridges of northern Hebei end with dramatically abruptness and the terrain suddenly changes to rolling, treeless steppes. Not coincidentally, here is also the current-day border between Hebei Province and Inner Mongolia. About ten miles north of the border, on a broad flat expanse of steppe broken only by a conspicuous hill of reddish rock known as Ulaan Butong in Mongolian (Hong Shan in Chinese; “Red Mountain,” or in a more figurative rendering “Red Urn”) the two armies collided on September 3.
The Qing had cannons, a relatively new innovation, and one which would seem to give them unquestioned superiority. At two o’clock in the afternoon the Qing army commenced firing artillery. Across a broad swamp the Mongols lined up their camels as barricades again the artillery and stood their ground, returning a heavy barrage of musket fire. A French Jesuit in the Qing court by the name of Jean F. Gerbillon had accompanied the Qing army from Beijing and later gave an eyewitness account of the battle. Toward evening commander Tong Gougang, uncle of Kangxi, was killed by Mongol musket fire, a devastating blow to the morale of the seemingly superior Qing army.
At nightfall the fighting ended and each army returned to their camp. There had been no clear victor, but nevertheless “Generalissimo” Fuquan sent a dispatch to Beijing claiming the Mongols had been decisively defeated. In fact, further engagements over the next day or two again ended with no clear victor. The tenacious Mongols simply refused to give up. In order to break the stalemate Fuquan called in a high-ranking lama to begin negotiations with Galdan. An agreement was reached whereby Galdan could return to Mongolia after swearing an oath to his “war-god” (probably the Tibeto-Mongolian deity Mahakala) that he would never again invade Qing territory. Thus ended the Battle of Ulaan Butong.
Fuquan was left with the unenviable task of informing the Kangxi emperor that Galdan had not been defeated and captured but had instead been allowed to return to Mongolia. Elated by the earlier dispatch in which Fuquan had claimed a victory, Kangxi and his advisors were infuriated when they found out what actually happened. The oath of a renegade like Galdan, they said, was worthless; he would simply regroup and attack again. Fuquan was ordered to stay put until scouts who were sent reported that Galdan had actually returned to Mongolia, and then he was ordered back to Beijing. He reached the capital on December 22 and was made to wait outside the city walls while his fate was decided. Finally he was court-martialed, dismissed from his military command, removed from the council of princes and advisors, and docked three years’ salary. Many of his officers were also fined and demoted. Stung by his rough handling by Kangxi, Fuquan was down but not out. He retired to his luxurious home in Beijing and became a literary patron, famous for entertaining writers and poets in his well-appointed garden.
In 1691, as we have seen, Zanabazar, the First Bogd Gegeen of Mongolia, met with Kangxi at
Dolonnuur and forfeited Mongolian independence in exchange for the assistance of the Qing in expelling Galdan from the Khalkh domains. But not until 1696 would Kangxi once again confront Galdan. This time he was determined to stamp out the Zungarian upstart. Three separate armies totaling some 73,000 men, one accompanied by Kangxi himself, headed north into the heartland of the Khalkh in an attempt to corner Galdan. On June 12, 1696 the 14,000-man army led by General Fiyanggü confronted Galdan and 5,000 of his men at a place called, in Chinese sources, Jao Modo, near the Tuul River not far south of current-day Ulaan Baatar (Jao Modo is apparently a Chinese corruption of
zuun mod, Mongolian for “100 Trees.” Whether this refers to the current town of Zuun Mod, capital of Töv Aimag, just south of Ulaan Baatar, is unclear.) This time the Mongols could not withstand the Manchu cannon fire. Galdan’s men were massacred, his own wife killed in the battle, and Galdan himself managed to escape with only forty or fifty of his own men.
Galdan fled west and finally holed up in what is now Gov-Altai Aimag. He had only 300 men with him and posed little threat to the Qing Dynasty, but the mere fact that he had twice escaped from Qing armies had infuriated Kangxi, who became even more determined to finally defeat and hopefully capture his nemesis. In the spring of 1697 two more Qing armies were dispatched to western Mongolia and once again Kangxi himself accompanied one of them. There are some indications that by now Kangxi considered tracking down Galdan as a kind of sport, like the hunting he had practiced at his immense Mulan Hunting Preserve, only with Galdan as the prey and not wild animals. He was denied the pleasure of finally bringing Galdan Bolshigt to bay. On April 4, 1697, Galdan suddenly died under circumstances which remained cloudy. Some said he committed suicide; others said his Buddhist teachings would have forbidden this (he had been recognized as the incarnation of an important lama as a youth, which would put an added onus on suicide). Still others, including Kangxi himself, believed he was poisoned by his close advisors after he refused their advice to surrender. In any case, Kangxi , still not satisfied, demanded the ashes of his body, which had reportedly been cremated by his followers. According to Chinese accounts, in the fall of 1698 Kangxi was finally mollified by seeing Galdan’s ashes scattered on a military parade ground in Beijing, where they were scattered to the four winds. Interestingly, to this day oral legends in Khovd Aimag discount this version of events, and some maintain that he was buried where he died, a place marked by an ovoo in current-day Gov-Altai Aimag.
Dambijantsan would later claim Galdan Boshigt as one of his role models, and just north of Tsambagarav Mountain he would attempt to create a miniature state which he may have dreamed would be the foundation of a new version of the Zungarian Khanate. And Dambijantsan’s death would became just as shrouded in controversy and legend as Galdan Bolshigt’s own end.
