Khalkha

Khalkha, largest group of the Mongol peoples, constituting more than 80 percent of the population of Mongolia. The Khalkha dialect is the official language of Mongolia. It is understood by 90 percent of the country’s population as well as by many Mongols elsewhere.

Traditionally, the Khalkha were a nomadic, pastoral people. Under Genghis Khan and his successors, they became a warlike imperial nation. In later centuries they were squeezed between the expanding empires of the Russians and the Manchu. The eastern Khalkha submitted to the Manchu, became part of China, and today inhabit the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China. Beginning in the 1920s, the western Khalkha came increasingly under the influence of the Soviet Union.

The old Khalkha society was based on kinship traced through the paternal line and was organized in clans and tribes. Leadership was determined on the basis of ability. Married sons often lived near their fathers and other male relatives. A class of nobility was set apart from the commoners. Under Manchu dominance the importance of kin groups declined, giving way to Chinese methods of civil administration.

Traditionally, most Khalkha lived in mobile herding camps that were moved four or five times a year from one pasturage to another. Communist attempts to collectivize the nomads and to increase the production of livestock met with considerable resistance. In the 1990s more than half of the population lived in urban areas, notably in Ulaanbaatar.

The traditional Khalkha dwelling was the circular felt tent erected on a collapsible lattice frame. This structure—called a ger or (in Turkic languages) a yurt, or yurta—is readily disassembled and transported. In the late 20th century it was still a common form of housing in Ulaanbaatar, where population growth outpaced the construction of apartment buildings. Food consists almost entirely of meat, milk, and other animal products. The most popular drink is fermented mare’s milk, or airag, called kumys in Russian (koumiss).

Shamanism was the basis of indigenous belief among the Khalkha until the 17th century, when Tibetan Buddhism was introduced. In the early 20th century the Buddhist monasteries of Mongolia had great power and wealth, but by the 1960s most of them had been closed or converted to other uses. Since 1990 interest in Buddhism has grown once again.