Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Kalmyks
Summary
The Kalmyks (Kalmyk: Хальмгуд, Xaľmgud; Halimaguud; Калмыки; archaically anglicised as Calmucks) are a Mongolic ethnic group living mainly in Russia, whose ancestors migrated from Dzungaria. They created the Kalmyk Khanate from 1635 to 1779 in the south of the European part of Russia territory. Today they form a majority in Kalmykia, located in the Kalmyk Steppe, on the western shore of the Caspian Sea.
They are the only traditionally Buddhist people who are located within Europe. Through emigration, small Kalmyk communities have been established in the United States, France, Germany, and the Czech Republic.
Timeline of the Oirats
The Kalmyk are a branch of the Oirat Mongols, whose ancient grazing-lands spanned present-day parts of Kazakhstan, Russia, Mongolia and China. After the fall of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty of China in 1368, the Oirats emerged as a formidable foe against the Khalkha Mongols, the Han-led Ming dynasty and the Manchu-led Qing dynasty. For 400 years, the Oirats conducted a military struggle for domination and control over both Inner Mongolia and Outer Mongolia. The struggle ended in 1757 with the defeat of the Oirats of the Dzungar Khanate against the Qing Empire, in the Dzungar–Qing Wars; they were the last of the Mongol groups to resist vassalage to Qing.
At the start of this 400-year era, the Western Mongols designated themselves as the Four Oirat. The alliance comprised four major Western Mongol tribes: Khoshut, Choros, Torghut and Dörbet. Collectively, the Four Oirat sought power as an alternative to the Mongols, who were the patrilineal heirs to Genghis Khan. The Four Oirat incorporated neighboring tribes or splinter groups at times, so there was a great deal of fluctuation in the composition of the alliance, with larger tribes dominating or absorbing the smaller ones. Smaller tribes belonging to the confederation included the Khoits, Zakhchin, Bayids and Khangal.
Together, these nomadic tribes roamed the grassy plains of western Inner Asia, between Lake Balkhash in present-day eastern Kazakhstan and Lake Baikal in present-day Russia north of central Mongolia.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.