Town · The Naiman of Tayang and Buyiruq · as at first light, 1 January 1200

Altai crossing

Not a town: a road and a guess at a pass.

In the Secret History's story the pursuers cross the Altai and come down the river Urunggu to the lake. The Ulungur's upper river is the Bulgan, which rises in the Mongolian Altai at Bulgan in the Khovd country and crosses the Chinese border at Qinghe to reach the lake; the natural road from the Khovd basin to Buyiruq's winter ground follows it, and the point is set at Bulgan, the modern district centre at the head of the river. The crossing joins Buyiruq's mountain summer ground to his winter ground on the Ulungur.

It is also the head of the caravan road south to Beshbaliq and the Uyghur oases (the Tarim sheet's ground beyond 46.3 N), by which Uyghur and Muslim merchants and Uyghur scribes would reach the Naiman court. That last point is an inference from the map and from the Naiman's Uyghur chancery; no halt, inn, toll post or merchant is named in any source for 1200. The passes lie under snow in January.

Who holds it

Name
Buyiruq Khan of the Naiman
Title
Lord of the ground the road crosses
Since
not known
Born
not known
Family
not applicable
Confidence
low

Geography and the Secret History as read online.

Lord in 1200

Buyiruq Khan of the Naiman

Overlord

None shown.

What the town holds

  • The way from the Khovd basin to the Ulungur lakes
  • The head of the road to Beshbaliq (inference)

How it was acquired

Not applicable.

Allies and rivals

None shown.

How things stand that morning

A road under snow. No raid or caravan is recorded here in the winter of 1199-1200. The Kereyit-Mongol army came this way in the autumn of 1199 on the working reading.

Wealth

Whatever the caravans pay or give for passage, not documented; the Naiman court gains its cloth, grain and scribes by this road (inference).

Military

Frontier watchmen (sübechi) of the Naiman, as the Secret History shows on the Khangai side; none is named here.

Threats

  • Snow closing the pass
  • A Kereyit-Mongol army returning by the same road

Charter

None known; not a town.

Communities

Herders; merchants in the caravan season (inference).

Trade and crafts

Caravan traffic to the Uyghur oases (inference).

Where the sources disagree

  • The Secret History names the river and the lake, not the pass; Bulgan is our choice from the map. The Chinese side of the crossing (Qinghe, Takeshiken) is on this sheet's ground, the Dzungarian basin south of 46.3 N is the Tarim sheet's.

Evidence: The river is certain; the pass and the merchants' road are inferences.

On the map: A point only, at the head of the river; the true pass may be elsewhere on the border.

Primary sources for The Naiman

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

  • Record of the Personal Campaigns of the Holy Warrior (Chinggis Khan) (presented to Khubilai in 1288, finished in Mongolian in 1290; the surviving Chinese version dates from 1369). A year-by-year Chinese account of Temujin's wars, drawn from the lost Altan Debter (the same source behind the Yuan shi's first chapter and Rashid al-Din). Read online
  • The Secret History of the Mongols (1228 or 1240 (the colophon's Year of the Rat is disputed), with later additions; the surviving Chinese transcription and gloss were made under the Ming in the 1380s). The only Mongol account of Temujin's rise, written within living memory. Read online
  • Compendium of Chronicles, Rashid al-Din Fadl Allah Hamadani (1300 to 1311, at Tabriz). The official Ilkhanid history, compiled from Mongol oral tradition and the lost Altan Debter. Read online
  • Compendium of Chronicles: the Turkic and Mongol tribes and the life of Chinggis Khan, Rashid al-Din Hamadani (about 1300 to 1311, in the Ilkhanate). The fullest description of who held what on the steppe around 1200, written a century later from Mongol court records (the Altan Debter) and from informants such as Bolad Chingsang. Read online
  • History of the Yuan, Song Lian (宋濂) and the Ming history office (1369 to 1370). Juan 1, the annals of Taizu (Chinggis Khan), gives a dated outline of Temujin's early wars drawn from the same lost Altan Debter as the Shengwu qinzheng lu: the Tatar war with the Jin in 1196, the Merkit and Naiman campaigns, the Tayichi'ut war, Jamuqa's coalition of 1201 and the Tatar and Kereyit wars of 1202 and 1203. Read online
  • History of the World Conqueror: the Qara Khitai (Gur Khans) and the Uyghurs of Beshbaliq, Ala al-Din Ata-Malik Juvayni (begun about 1252 to 1253, ends with 1260). Juvayni's chapters on the Uyghur kingdom (its origin legend, Beshbaliq and Qocho, and the idiqut Barchuq's murder of the Qara Khitai resident before his submission to Chinggis Khan in 1209) and on the Gur Khans of the Qara Khitai are the fullest Muslim account of the Tarim and Zhetysu around 1200: the gurkhan Zhilugu's court at Balasagun, his tax collectors in the oasis towns and in Samarkand, his relations with the Khwarazmshah Tekish and then Muhammad, and the arrival of the Naiman prince Kuchlug in 1208. Read online
  • Journey to the West of the Perfected Changchun (Qiu Chuji), Li Zhichang (李志常) (about 1228, from the journey of 1220 to 1224). A dated eyewitness itinerary across the steppe and the Tarim twenty years after 1200: the Kereyit country and the Ongud frontier, the Naiman mountains, the Uyghur towns of Beshbaliq and the Tarim with their Buddhist and Christian communities, Almaliq of the Qarluq, and Samarkand. Read online

Sources and studies

  1. Wikipedia, 'Buyruq Khan'
  2. The Secret History of the Mongols, an English translation with numbered sections and dating footnotes (sections 141-169), read at anyflip
  3. Wikipedia, 'Naimans'

Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.