50 Fun Facts About Mongolia

Mongolia is landlocked between which two countries?

Mongolia is wedged between Russia and China: Russia runs along its entire northern border and China wraps around the south, east and west, leaving it no coastline.

What is the capital and largest city of Mongolia?

Ulaanbaatar, on the Tuul River in the north-central part of the country, holds roughly half of Mongolia's population.

Mongolia holds which demographic distinction among sovereign states?

Most sparsely populated among sovereign states, Mongolia has about 3.5 million people on 1.56 million square kilometres, roughly two people per square kilometre.

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

World's coldest capital: the city's average annual temperature is about -1.3 °C, because cold air pools in its river valley each winter under a temperature inversion.

What does the name of Mongolia's capital mean?

Red Hero is the meaning of the name the capital received under communist rule in the 1920s; before that the city was known in the West as Urga.

Which desert covers southern Mongolia?

The Gobi, a cold rain-shadow desert of rock and gravel rather than dunes, stretches across southern Mongolia into northern China.

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

Dinosaur eggs: the American Museum of Natural History expedition led by Roy Chapman Andrews unearthed a nest of them at the Flaming Cliffs in 1923, the first ever recognised as dinosaur eggs.

What is the highest point in Mongolia?

Khüiten Peak, at 4,374 m in the Tavan Bogd massif of the Altai in the far west, is the country's highest point.

Roughly what share of Mongolians are nomadic or semi-nomadic?

About 30% of Mongolians live as nomadic or semi-nomadic herders, moving with their livestock between seasonal pastures across the steppe.

What is the birth name of Genghis Khan?

Temüjin, eldest son of the chieftain Yesugei and Hö'elün, was reportedly named after a Tatar captive his father had just taken.

In which year was Genghis Khan proclaimed ruler of all Mongols, founding the Mongol Empire?

1206: at a kurultai on the Onon River that year the newly united tribes between Manchuria and the Altai Mountains proclaimed him Genghis Khan.

The Mongol Empire holds what historical distinction?

At its height it covered about 22 percent of Earth's land area.

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

Kublai, a son of Tolui, completed the conquest of the Song in 1279 and ruled as Yuan emperor from Khanbaliq, on the site of modern Beijing.

Which Mongol capital, built under Ögedei from 1235, did Ming armies raze in 1380?

Karakorum, in the Orkhon Valley, served as the imperial seat from 1235 until the court moved to China in the 1260s; Erdene Zuu monastery rose beside its ruins in 1585.

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, the sacred peak in the Khentii Mountains he had chosen years earlier, is the traditional burial site; the grave itself remained unlocated into the 21st century.

Whom did the teenage Genghis Khan kill to secure his position in the family?

His older half-brother Begter, whom he shot with an arrow with his brother Khasar's help after quarrels over food, once the Tayichiud had abandoned the fatherless family.

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

The Qing, the Manchu dynasty, accepted the Khalkha Mongols' submission at Dolon Nor in 1691 and forbade mass Chinese settlement in Mongolia, which helped preserve Mongol culture.

Which religion spread through Mongolia in the 16th century after Altan Khan met the Dalai Lama?

Tibetan Buddhism: Altan Khan's 1578 meeting with Sonam Gyatso, on whom he bestowed the title Dalai Lama, made the Gelug school the faith of the Mongol nobility.

Mongolia declared independence from China in 1911 under which ruler?

The Bogd Khaan, the eighth Jebtsundamba Khutuktu and head of Mongolian Buddhism, was enthroned as theocratic monarch in December 1911 after the Chinese imperial dynasty collapsed.

The Mongolian People's Republic, a Soviet satellite, was founded in which year?

1924: after the death of the theocratic monarch that year, the country was proclaimed the Mongolian People's Republic, the world's second communist state.

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

Khorloogiin Choibalsan, interior minister from 1936 and prime minister from 1939, ran the 1937–39 purges that killed well over 20,000 people and razed almost every monastery.

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

Khalkhin Gol: in the summer of 1939 Soviet and Mongolian troops under Georgy Zhukov crushed Japan's Kwantung Army along the river of that name on the Manchurian border.

Mongolia's peaceful democratic revolution took place in which year?

1990: hunger strikes and mass demonstrations in Sükhbaatar Square that winter forced the Politburo to resign in March, and multiparty elections followed in 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.

How many provinces, or aimags, is Mongolia divided into?

21 aimags, which are subdivided into about 330 districts called sums; the capital is administered separately as a municipality.

Mongolia's strategy of building ties beyond its two giant neighbours is known as what?

Third neighbour policy is the term for courting partners such as the United States, Japan and the EU; George W. Bush made the first sitting US presidential visit in 2005.

Mongolia ranks second in the world for raw cashmere output behind which country?

China is the dominant producer and Mongolia ranks second; the fibre is combed from goats' winter undercoat each spring and is a main cash income for herders.

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

Copper and gold: Oyu Tolgoi, in the far south near the Chinese border, is among the world's largest copper-gold deposits; its underground mine began production in 2023.

Mongolian has mainly been written in which alphabet since the 1940s?

Cyrillic, with two extra letters, was adopted under Soviet influence in 1941 and became the everyday script in 1946, replacing the traditional vertical Mongolian script.

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

Kazakhs, about 4 percent of the population, are concentrated in the far western province of Bayan-Ölgii and are famed for hunting with golden eagles.

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

Wrestling, archery and horse racing make up the three games, held nationwide around 11 to 13 July each year, with the main festival in the capital.

Naadam was added to which UNESCO list in 2010?

Intangible Cultural Heritage: UNESCO inscribed Naadam, locally called eriin gurvan naadam, 'the three games of men', on its Representative List in 2010.

What is the morin khuur?

A horsehead fiddle: the two-stringed morin khuur has a carved horse's head on its neck and accompanies urtyn duu long songs and khoomei throat singing.

What is the traditional Mongolian portable dwelling called?

A ger, known elsewhere as a yurt, has a collapsible wooden lattice wall and roof poles under a felt cover made from the herders' own sheep.

The traditional game shagai involves flicking what at a target?

Sheep ankle bones, called shagai, are flicked from a small wooden board at a row of target bones in shagai shooting, played at Naadam alongside the three main sports.

Mongolian wrestler Hakuhō set the all-time record in which Japanese sport?

Sumo: his 33rd top-division championship in January 2015 passed Taihō's record, and he retired in 2021 with 45, the most in the sport's history.

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

Judo: Tüvshinbayar won the men's 100 kg judo class at Beijing 2008, the first Olympic gold for Mongolia, and took silver in the same event at London 2012.

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

The Soyombo, a symbol devised by Zanabazar in the 17th century, stacks fire, sun and moon above arrow shapes, bars and a yin-yang-like pair of fish.

What was removed from the Mongolian flag in 1992?

A communist star: the five-pointed socialist star that had sat above the national emblem on the hoist stripe since 1945 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, Tengri, the sky revered by the Mongols, is what the central blue stripe stands for; the red stripes on either side stand for progress and prosperity.

Przewalski's horse, the takhi, was reintroduced to Mongolia from the 1990s after what?

Becoming extinct in the wild: the last wild takhi was seen in the 1960s, and zoo-bred animals were released from 1992 at Hustai National Park and Takhin Tal.

How many chromosome pairs does Przewalski's horse have, compared with 32 in domestic horses?

33 pairs, 66 chromosomes in all, against 64 in the domestic horse; the two interbreed and produce fertile offspring with 65 chromosomes.

The Khoit Tsenkher Cave, with 20,000-year-old paintings of mammoths and ostriches, is nicknamed what?

The Lascaux of Mongolia: the cave, in Khovd Province in the west, has ochre paintings of mammoths, ostriches and antelope that earned it the comparison with the famous French site.

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

The Xiongnu, united by Modu Chanyu in 209 BC, dominated the steppe for two centuries and extracted tribute and marriage alliances from the early Han emperors.

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

Kazakhstan, at about 2.7 million square kilometres, is the largest landlocked country; Mongolia, around 1.56 million square kilometres and 18th in the world by area, is second.

In which year was Mongolia's capital first founded, as a mobile monastery called Örgöö?

1639: Örgöö ('palace') was founded that year as the mobile monastic seat of the four-year-old Zanabazar, and the monastery-town moved along the Selenge, Orkhon and Tuul rivers before settling at its site in 1778.

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

Ulan-Ude, the Buryat capital east of Lake Baikal, is where the Trans-Mongolian branches south; the line crosses Mongolia and enters China at Erenhot, and was completed in 1956.

How tall is the golden statue of Migjid Janraisig inside Gandan Monastery in the capital?

26.5 metres: the gilded copper statue, rebuilt in 1996 after the original was carted off by the Soviets in 1938, stands inside Gandan, one of very few monasteries to survive the late-1930s purges.

Which town in Inner Mongolia did Altan Khan found in 1557?

Hohhot, whose Mongolian name means 'blue city', grew from the walled town Altan Khan built in the 1550s; the Ming court later named it Guihua.