Mongol heartland

The Mongol heartland, also written Mongolian heartland, is the contiguous area where the Mongol people have mainly lived, and it is used above all as a historians term. It is generally taken to cover the Mongolian Plateau and some neighbouring lands, though its exact extent has shifted over time, especially since the Mongol Empire rose in the thirteenth century. Today the area is described as including the state of Mongolia, the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Dzungaria in Xinjiang and parts of Manchuria, Qinghai and Ningxia in China, the Buryatia Republic and a few smaller territories in Russia. Genghis Khan united the nomadic tribes here and became the first Khagan in 1206, and later the Qing dynasty ruled most of the area for over two hundred years. Apart from the state of Mongolia, every part of it now has a non-Mongol majority, though the Mongolic peoples share a traditional culture and Mongolic languages to varying degrees.