From Hovd Travel in Mongolia
Contents |
History of Hovd
Intro
The archaeological record tells us that humans have lived in the area that is now Hovd aimag for many thousands of years. The cave paintings at Tsenkheriin Agui date back at least 15,000 years, and Stone Age tools (some of which are on display at the Hovd Museum) have been found across the aimag.
As an aimag, Hovd wouldn't be officially established until 1931. But the town that would one day become the aimag's capital city has a recorded history that dates back to 1685, making it one of Mongolia's oldest cities.
(Please note that the history presented on this page is only a summary of the events. For expanded coverage of any of the particular historical figures or events, please follow the links provided and read on!)
The Great Zuungarian King
Hovd City was originally founded as a western military outpost by the Zuungarian King Galdan Boshogt in 1685, (from 1635-1757, Zuungaria was a kingdom in western Mongolia that united the loosely-affiliated Mongolian Oirat tribes to rival the more numerous Khalkh Mongols in eastern Mongolia; Zuungaria included present-day western Mongolia, including what is now Hovd aimag, and present-day Xinjiang province in China). The city of Hovd was born out of warfare and struggled against the Manchurian Qing Dynasty for the next 225 years. Galdan established his outpost at Hovd before leading his Zuungarian armies eastward to battle the Khalkh Mongols. He successfully drove the Khalkh Mongols into Inner Mongolia (already a province of the Qing Dynasty), but Galdan's rule over a united Mongolia would be short-lived. The Khalkhs would return with the aid of the Qing army and the combined force crushed Galdan's army in 1696. With a little help from their enemies, the Khalkhs defeated Galdan's Zuungarian army, but the hefty price of the Qing's support was that Khalkh Mongolia (essentially all of what is present-day central and eastern Mongolia) became a Qing province, and would remain one until the 20th century.
Amarsanaa's Uprising and the Collapse of the Zuungars
Sixty years later it would be Zuungaria's turn to fall to the Qing, and the events followed a similar storyline to the collapse of Khalkh Mongolia. In 1753 a struggle began between a newly-crowned Zuungarian King named Davatsi, and a man who would become a hero of western Mongolia named Amarsanaa. The two men were former allies who overthrew an earlier Zuungarian King, but when Davatsi refused to share power with Amarsanaa, Amarsanaa made the same error the Khalkh Mongols made before him, and turned to the Qing Emperor for help. The difference between Amarsanaa and the Khalkh ruler Zanabazar before him, and the reason that Amarsanaa is revered to this day while Zanabazar is still criticized in some circles, is Amarsanaa planned to use the Qing Army to unseat Davatsi, and then use his newfound power to rid Mongolia (both Zuungaria and Khalkh Mongolia) of the Qing threat forever. But once the Qing were invited into the power struggles of Mongolian kings and rulers, they would not be dislodged so easily. With Qing assistance, Amarsanaa became the Zuungarian King, but his plans for revolution were squashed by a combination of a staggeringly large Qing army, a lack of support from Mongolia's noblemen, and stunningly, a lack of support from Mongolia's religious leaders, including Mongolia's 2nd Bogd Gegeen and the Dalai Lama himself, Kelsang Gyatso.
After Amarsanaa's army fell to the Qing in 1757, Zuungaria became yet another province of the Qing Empire. Thus, the western Mongols joined the eastern Mongols in what many Mongols to this day consider to be the darkest period of their history. In 1762, with the establishment of the Manchurian Fortress of Sangiin Kherem at the northern end of town, Hovd City was developed into a real city on the banks of the Buyant River. Many sources point to this date as the true founding date of Hovd City, as it evolved from a military outpost to a growing, tree-lined frontier town.
Dambijantsan, Ard Ayush and the Last Great Battle
Hovd's restless existence under Manchurian rule was approaching a century and a half when an enigmatic figure appeared on the scene. The most rudimentary of details about his life remain cloudy to us today, and these same details may have been even cloudier to his contemporaries. He went by a host of names, various theories abounded about his origins and his age, but today he is known to us as Dambijantsan, or the Ja Lama. At first he claimed to be the grandson of Amarsanaa, though he later changed his story when grumblings about the believability of his claim started to surface (Amarsanaa died in 1757, the exact year of Dambijantsan's birth are not known, but 1862 has been accepted as an estimate that's as good as any other; some basic math led people to doubt he could really be Amarsanaa's grandson). In any case, in the 1890's this figure traveled around western Mongolia, now claiming to be the reincarnation of Amarsanaa (the Zuungarian King who had led the last great uprising against the Qing) and promising to lead the Mongolian people to freedom.
This new wave of active unrest against the Qing continued to spread when in 1903 a local man named Ard Ayush (from Hovd aimag's Tsetseg soum) started rallying the locals and filed what has become a very famous public petition against the Manchurians. In 1911 he started fighting against the Mongolian noblemen who were living comfortable, perk-filled lives under the Qing rulers. He was arrested and placed in Sangiin Kherem where he was subjected to 9 different kinds of torture (there are illustrations depicting the methods of torture at the Hovd Museum).
After years of revolutionary sentiment brewing, events finally started to fall into place when in 1912 the Qing dynasty collapsed in China. Mongolia took this opportunity to declare its independence, and though some of the Qing military fortresses in Mongolia would be given up without a fight, this would not be the case in Hovd. In 1912 a Mongolian named Magsarjav, who had been assigned to Hovd as a military aide to Sangiin Kherem's Qing High Official, relayed the new Mongolian government's demand that the official step down, but the official refused.
In early 1912, Magsarjav traveled to (what would later become) Ulaanbaatar to report on the situation, and while there he and another man named Damdinsuren were appointed commanders of the Mongolian army, and were dispatched to liberate Hovd. On their march westward, this army first assured the liberation of Uliastai (in present-day Zavkhan aimag) and Ulaangom (in present-day Uvs aimag) in May. The army then turned its attention to Hovd and Sangiin Kherem, the final lingering presence of Qing rule in Mongolia.
Armed with only ancient flintlocks and bows, for the first several weeks of fighting the Mongolian army was unable to breach the walls of Sangiin Kherem. The big break in the battle didn't come until a relief corps that the Qing High Official had summoned from Xinjiang arrived, though the arrival of reinforcements had an unintended impact on the fates of the combatants. The columns of reinforcements got within 10 miles of Sangiin Kherem when they were ambushed by the Mongolian army. Amongst the seized booty were 80 camel loads of modern Japanese rifles and ammunition. Armed with this modern weaponry, the 2,000 strong Mongolian force led jointly by Dambijantsan, Magsarjav, and Damdinsuren opened a ten-day siege that first reclaimed the town outside the walls of the 40,000 square meter fortress, then launched a two-day assault on the Qing soldiers behind the walls of Sangiin Kherem.
On August 7, 1912 the Manchurian forces were overrun, and at last surrendered. There are conflicting reports of what happened in the aftermath of the surrender. According to one source, 500 Manchu soldiers were killed in the battle, and 1,000 more soldiers and civilians were taken prisoner; Dambijantsan wanted to execute all of the prisoners, including the Manchu High Official, but a Russian consul intervened and allowed safe passage for the High Official and his entourage back into China. Another source maintains that Dambijantsan had his way and inflicted horrifying reprisals on the Chinese military population and Mongolian noblemen who had helped the Manchus oppress the population of Hovd. For more details of his reprisals, go here.
The Socialist Years (1924-1990)
The exact details of Hovd's history during the Socialist Years have been hard to come by so far, so instead here is a brief outline of the broader events that shaped Mongolia as a whole, and in turn would have affected Hovd as well.
