50 Fun Facts About Mongolia

Mongolia is landlocked between which two countries?

Russia and China are Mongolia's only neighbours, so every road and railway out of the country has to cross one of them.

What is the capital and largest city of Mongolia?

Ulaanbaatar began as a migratory camp and grew up around a monastery founded in 1639; about half of all Mongolians now live there.

Mongolia holds which demographic distinction among sovereign states?

Most sparsely populated: about 3.5 million people share 1.56 million square kilometres, and roughly half of them live in the capital, leaving the steppe emptier still.

Mongolia's seat of government holds which record among the world's capitals?

World's coldest capital: the city sits about 1,300 m up, hundreds of kilometres from any sea, and each winter the Siberian high-pressure system settles frigid air over it.

What does the name of Mongolia's capital mean?

Red Hero is the name the capital took in 1924, when Mongolia became a people's republic; the hero may be the revolutionary Damdin Sükhbaatar.

Which desert covers southern Mongolia?

The Gobi: much of it is bare rock rather than sand dunes, and it runs on from southern Mongolia into northern China.

What did Roy Chapman Andrews's 1923 expedition famously discover at Mongolia's Flaming Cliffs?

Dinosaur eggs: the nest was credited to Protoceratops for decades, until 1990s finds of brooding adults and an embryo showed such eggs belonged to the supposed 'egg thief' Oviraptor's kin.

Mongolia's highest peak, Khüiten, rises in which far-western mountain range?

The Altai: Khüiten stands on Mongolia's border with China, and for years it went by another name, Friendship Peak.

Mongolia's herders traditionally raise sheep, goats, cattle, horses and which other animal?

Camels join sheep, goats, cattle and horses in Mongolia's herds: two-humped Bactrians, the animals whose caravans once carried the Silk Road trade.

What is the birth name of Genghis Khan?

Temüjin: the oldest accounts say his father Yesugei named him after a Tatar captive he had just taken, though a later tradition ties the name to the word for iron.

Which Mongol khanate, built up by Batu, dominated the Russian principalities for over two centuries?

The Golden Horde held sway over the Russian princes from about 1240 until 1480, when Ivan III of Moscow faced down its army on the Ugra River.

The Mongol Empire holds what historical distinction?

Largest contiguous land realm ever: the Mongol Empire stretched from the Sea of Japan to eastern Europe, and only the British Empire, scattered across the oceans, ever covered more land.

Which grandson of Genghis conquered China and founded the Yuan dynasty?

Kublai moved his capital off the steppe to a new city, Khanbaliq, which grew into modern Beijing, and completed the conquest of the Song in 1279.

Which Mongol capital did Ögedei order built in the Orkhon Valley in 1235?

Karakorum was the imperial seat until the court moved to China in the 1260s; blocks from its ruined palace were later reused to build Erdene Zuu monastery beside it.

Genghis Khan died in 1227 while campaigning against which state?

Western Xia, the Tangut kingdom in what is now north-west China, was under siege when he died in August 1227; its capital fell and the state was wiped out soon after.

Genghis Khan is believed to be buried near which sacred peak?

Burkhan Khaldun, in the Khentii range, sheltered him from Merkit raiders as a young man, and he honoured it as sacred ever after; medieval chronicles place his tomb nearby, but it has never been found.

Whom is the teenage Genghis Khan said to have killed to secure his place in the family?

His older half-brother, Bekter, seems to have stood for a rival branch of the family after their father's death left it abandoned by its clan.

Which dynasty absorbed Mongolia in the 17th century and ruled it until 1911?

The Qing, a Manchu dynasty, accepted the Khalkha Mongols' submission in 1691, after a Dzungar invasion overran them, and held Mongolia until the dynasty collapsed.

Which title did the 16th-century Mongol ruler Altan Khan give a visiting Tibetan monk?

Dalai Lama: 'dalai' is Mongolian for ocean, and Altan Khan's gift of the title to the monk Sonam Gyatso helped turn the Mongols to Tibetan Buddhism.

Mongolia declared independence from China in 1911 under which Buddhist leader, enthroned as its monarch?

The Bogd Khaan ruled as a holy king until his death in 1924, when the new government forbade the search for his reincarnation and declared a people's republic.

Traditional Mongolian script is written in which direction?

Top to bottom: the columns run from left to right, a layout inherited from the Old Uyghur alphabet, which had turned a right-to-left script on its side.

Which Stalinist leader dominated Mongolia from the late 1930s, destroying monasteries and purging thousands?

Khorloogiin Choibalsan had trained as a boy to be a Buddhist monk, yet the purges he oversaw in the late 1930s killed at least 20,000 people and all but wiped out the monasteries.

Mongolian and Soviet forces defeated Japan in which 1939 border battles?

Khalkhin Gol: Zhukov's rout of the Japanese on that river in summer 1939 helped turn Tokyo's ambitions south, toward Southeast Asia and Pearl Harbor, rather than north into Siberia.

Which protest made Mongolia's Politburo resign in March 1990?

Hunger strike: ten activists began one in the capital's main square on 7 March 1990, and two days later the whole Politburo resigned; multiparty elections followed that July.

What is the name of Mongolia's parliament?

State Great Khural is the unicameral parliament; its membership was enlarged from 76 to 126 seats at the 2024 election.

Mongolia's 21 provinces are known by which Mongolian name?

Aimags: the word first meant a clan or tribe and only later a province; each aimag is split into districts called sums and then into bags.

Mongolia's strategy of building ties with distant partners such as the US and Japan is known as what?

Third neighbour policy: since the early 1990s Mongolia has courted partners far beyond its borders so that it never depends entirely on the two powers that surround it.

Which luxury fibre, combed from Mongolia's goats each spring, is one of the country's best-known exports?

Cashmere: Mongolia is the world's second-largest producer of the raw fibre after China, but the swelling goat herds have overgrazed its grasslands.

Oyu Tolgoi, developed with Rio Tinto, is a giant mine producing which metals?

Copper and gold: the richest ore lies deep underground, so a block-cave mine was dug beneath the open pit and began producing in March 2023.

Which alphabet has Mongolia mainly used to write its language since the 1940s?

Cyrillic: in early 1941 Mongolia adopted a Latin alphabet, then dropped it within weeks for Cyrillic, which became the official script in 1946.

Which Turkic-speaking minority makes up most of Mongolia's Muslim population?

Kazakhs live mainly in the far western province of Bayan-Ölgii, where the tradition of hunting with trained golden eagles survives.

What are the three sports of the Naadam festival's 'Three Manly Games'?

Wrestling, archery and horse racing: the races are cross-country runs of 15 to 30 km ridden by child jockeys, and women now compete in the archery too.

Naadam was added to which UNESCO list in 2010?

Intangible Cultural Heritage: UNESCO's 2010 listing notes that Naadam winners earn titles; top wrestlers hold lifelong ranks such as Falcon, Elephant and Lion.

What is the morin khuur?

A horsehead fiddle: its two strings and its bow are made of horsehair, and the carved head on its neck honours the animal at the centre of nomadic life.

What is the traditional Mongolian portable dwelling called?

A ger, known elsewhere as a yurt, can be taken down or put up in anything from half an hour to three hours, which lets a herding family move camp with the seasons.

Shagai, the pieces used in traditional Mongolian games and fortune-telling, are what?

Sheep ankle bones: in knuckle-bone shooting, a team sport UNESCO listed in 2014, players flick small marble tablets along a wooden board at a target made of the bones.

Mongolian-born Hakuhō retired in 2021 holding the all-time title record in which Japanese sport?

Sumo: he arrived in Japan at 15 so slight that no stable would take him until one master relented; he retired with a record 45 top-division championships.

Mongolia's first Olympic gold medal, won by Naidangiin Tüvshinbayar in 2008, came in which sport?

Judo: until his 100 kg title at Beijing 2008, Mongolia had collected more Olympic medals than any other nation without ever winning gold.

What is the symbol on the hoist side of the Mongolian flag called?

The Soyombo began as a character in a script devised by the monk Zanabazar in 1686; its two fish are said to stand for watchfulness, because fish never close their eyes.

What was removed from the Mongolian flag in 1992?

A communist star: the five-pointed socialist star above the national emblem on the hoist stripe was dropped when the 1992 constitution ended the People's Republic.

What does the central stripe on the Mongolian flag represent?

The eternal blue sky: the Mongols revered the sky, Tengri, as their highest power, and Genghis Khan's heirs claimed its mandate to rule the world.

Which animal, last seen in the wild in the 1960s, has been released back into Mongolia from zoo stock since 1992?

Przewalski's horse, the takhi: every one alive descends from fewer than 15 captured animals, and it carries 66 chromosomes to the domestic horse's 64.

The Dukha of northern Mongolia's taiga, also known as the Tsaatan, are nomads who herd which animal?

Reindeer: the Dukha very rarely eat their animals, keeping them instead for milk, which they make into cheese, and as pack animals.

The Mongolian vocal art khöömei is better known in English as what?

Throat singing: a khöömei singer holds a steady drone while shaping the mouth to pick out a whistling melody of harmonics above it, sounding two notes at once.

Which steppe empire, united under Modu Chanyu in 209 BC, was early Han China's great rival?

The Xiongnu made the early Han emperors buy peace with silk, rice and princess brides, and the threat of their raids drove China to link its border walls into the first Great Wall.

Mongolia is the second-largest landlocked country after which nation?

Kazakhstan touches the Caspian Sea, but because the Caspian is an enclosed lake with no outlet to the ocean it still counts as landlocked, ahead of second-placed Mongolia.

By what name did Westerners know Mongolia's capital before it was renamed in 1924?

Urga was the outsiders' name, taken from Russian, for a town the Mongols themselves called Khüree; it kept that double identity until the 1924 renaming.

The Trans-Mongolian Railway leaves the Trans-Siberian at which Russian city?

Ulan-Ude, capital of Buryatia, is where the line turns south; it crosses Mongolia on Russian broad gauge, so the track width changes at the Chinese border.

Which monastery in Mongolia's capital, for decades the country's only working one, houses a 26.5-metre gilded statue?

Gandan reopened in 1944 as Mongolia's one working monastery; its 26.5-metre statue of Avalokiteśvara was dedicated in 1996 to replace an original lost in the years of persecution.

Which city in Inner Mongolia did Altan Khan found in the 16th century?

Hohhot spent centuries under the Chinese names Guihua and Guisui before its Mongolian name was restored in 1954; it is the capital of China's Inner Mongolia region.