Mongolia
country in East Asia
Mongolia is a landlocked country in East Asia. It is bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south and covers an area of 1,564,116 square kilometers (603,909 square miles), making it the 18th-largest country in the world and the second largest landlocked nation after Kazakhstan, as well as the largest landlocked country that does not border an inland sea. With a population of 3.5 million, Mongolia is the world's most sparsely populated sovereign state, excluding Western Sahara. The country constitutes a significant portion of the Mongolian Plateau, and its natural environment is characterized by grassy steppe, mountains to the north and west, and the Gobi Desert to the south. Ulaanbaatar, the capital and largest city, is home to roughly half of the country's population.
The territory of modern-day Mongolia has been ruled by various nomadic empires, including the Xiongnu, the Xianbei, the Rouran, the First Turkic Khaganate, the Second Turkic Khaganate, the Uyghur Khaganate and others. In 1206, Genghis Khan founded the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous land empire in history. His grandson Kublai Khan conquered China proper and established the Yuan dynasty. After the collapse of the Yuan, the Mongols retreated to Mongolia and resumed their earlier pattern of factional conflict, except during the era of Dayan Khan and Tumen Zasagt Khan.
In the 16th century, Tibetan Buddhism spread to Mongolia.
“Mongolia” enters the record as country in East Asia. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Mongolia, country and East can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q711. VIAF identifies the subject as 128689413. The Library of Congress control number is n80061189. Authority coordinates are 46.000, 105.000. 4 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1206.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mongolia” 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.