Dzungar people
ethnic group consisting of the Oirat people living in Dzungaria or the Dzungar Khanate.
The Dzungar people (also written as Zunghar or Junggar; from the Mongolian words züün gar, meaning 'left hand') are the many Mongol Oirat tribes who formed and maintained the Dzungar Khanate in the 17th and 18th centuries. Historically, they were one of the major tribes of the Four Oirat confederation. They were also known as the Eleuths or Ööled, from the Qing dynasty euphemism for the hated word "Dzungar", and as the "Kalmyks". In 2010, 15,520 people claimed "Ööled" ancestry in Mongolia. An unknown number also live in China, Russia and Kazakhstan.
Origin
The Dzungars were a confederation of several Oirat tribes that emerged in the early 17th century to fight the Altan Khan of the Khalkha (not to be confused with the better-known Altan Khan of the Tümed), Tümen Zasagt Khan, and later the Manchu for dominion and control over the Mongolian people and territories. This confederation rose to power in what became known as the Junggar Basin in Dzungaria between the Altai Mountains and the Ili Valley. Initially, the confederation consisted of the Oöled, Dörbet Oirat (also written Derbet) and the Khoid. Later on, elements of the Khoshut and Torghut were forcibly incorporated into the Dzungar military, thus completing the reunification of the West Mongolian tribes.
According to oral history, the Oöled and Dörbet tribes are the successor tribes to the Naimans, a group of Mongols who roamed the steppes of Central Asia during the era of Genghis Khan.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dzungar people” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.