Ordu-Baliq
archaeological site in Mongolia
Ordu-Baliq (meaning "city of the court", "city of the army"; Chinese: 窩魯朵八里), also known as Mubalik and Karabalghasun, was the capital of the Uyghur Khaganate. It was built on the site of the former Göktürk imperial capital, 27 km (17 mi) north-to-northwest of the later Mongol capital, Karakorum. Its ruins are known as Kharbalgas (Хар Балгас) in Mongolian, which means "black ruins". They form part of the Orkhon Valley Cultural Landscape World Heritage Site.
Location
Ordu-Baliq is in a grassy plain called the Talal-khain-dala steppe, on the western bank of the Orkhon River in the Khotont sum of the Arkhangai Province, Mongolia. The Orkhon emerges from the gorges of the Khangai Mountains and flows northward to meet the Tuul River, which has on its upper reaches the current capital of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar.
A favorable micro-climate makes the location ideal for pasturage, and it lies along the most important east-west route across Mongolia. As a result, the Orkhon Valley was a center of habitation and important political and economic activity long before the birth of Genghis Khan, who made it known to the wider world.
History
In 744, after the defeat of the last Göktürk Kaghan by the Uyghur-Karluk-Basmyl alliance, the Uyghurs under Bayanchur Khan (Bayan Çor) established their imperial capital Ordu Baliq on the site of the old ördü ("nomadic capital"). Ordu-Baliq flourished until 840, when it was reduced to ruin by the invading Yenisei Kyrgyz.
The public source identifies “Ordu-Baliq” as archaeological site in Mongolia. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Ordu-Baliq, archaeological and site.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ordu-Baliq” 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.