50 Fun Facts About Mongolia

Mongolia is landlocked between which two countries?

It is the largest landlocked country that does not touch an inland sea.

What is the capital and largest city of Mongolia?

Roughly half the country's population lives there.

Mongolia holds which demographic distinction among sovereign states?

About 3.5 million people share 1.56 million square kilometres.

With an average annual temperature of -1.3 °C, Mongolia's seat of government holds which record?

Cold air pools in the river valley in winter under a temperature inversion.

What does the name of Mongolia's capital mean?

The city was renamed on becoming capital of the People's Republic in 1924; before that it was known in the West as Urga.

Which desert covers southern Mongolia?

It is the sixth-largest desert in the world.

What was found in the Gobi in 1923 that had never been found anywhere before?

Twenty-six of them, each about 23 cm long, were unearthed.

What is the highest point in Mongolia?

It rises to 4,374 m in the Tavan Bogd massif of the far west.

Roughly what share of Mongolians are nomadic or semi-nomadic?

Horse culture remains integral to national life.

What is the birth name of Genghis Khan?

He was the eldest son of the chieftain Yesugei and his wife Hö'elün.

In which year did Temüjin take the title Genghis Khan and found the Mongol Empire?

He had just united the tribes between Manchuria and the Altai Mountains.

The Mongol Empire holds what historical distinction?

At its height it covered about 22 percent of Earth's land area.

Which grandson of Genghis conquered China and founded the Yuan dynasty?

He set up his capital at what is now Beijing.

What was the capital of the Mongol Empire, sacked by Ming armies after 1368?

The Erdene Zuu monastery was later built nearby in 1585.

Genghis Khan died in 1227 while campaigning against which state?

His third son Ögedei took the throne after a two-year interregnum.

Genghis Khan is believed to be buried near which sacred peak?

The site he chose years earlier lies in the Khentii Mountains and has never been found.

Whom did the young Temüjin kill to secure his position in the family?

His family had been abandoned by its tribe after his father died.

Which dynasty absorbed Mongolia in the 17th century and ruled it until 1911?

The Manchu rulers forbade mass Chinese immigration, which helped preserve Mongol culture.

Which religion spread through Mongolia in the 16th century after Altan Khan met the Dalai Lama?

By 1911 the country's 115,000 monks made up 21 percent of the population.

Mongolia declared independence from China in 1911 under which ruler?

Actual independence came in 1921 with Soviet backing.

The Mongolian People's Republic, a Soviet satellite, was founded in which year?

It lasted until the peaceful democratic revolution of 1990.

Which Stalinist leader ran Mongolia from 1928, destroying monasteries and purging thousands?

The purges from 1937 killed more than 30,000 people, including an estimated 17,000 monks.

Mongolian and Soviet forces defeated Japan in which 1939 border battles?

Mongolia fought Japan again in August 1945.

Mongolia's peaceful democratic revolution took place in which year?

A new constitution followed in 1992 and the first non-communist election win in 1993.

What is the name of Mongolia's parliament?

It has 126 seats and is elected directly by the people.

How many provinces, or aimags, is Mongolia divided into?

They are subdivided into 330 districts called sums.

Mongolia's strategy of building ties beyond its two giant neighbours is known as what?

George W. Bush became the first sitting US president to visit, in 2005.

Mongolia produces about what fraction of the world's raw cashmere?

Herding remains central, but copper and coal now drive industry.

Oyu Tolgoi, developed with Rio Tinto, is a giant mine producing which metals?

It was the largest foreign investment project in Mongolia when agreed in 2009.

Mongolian has mainly been written in which alphabet since the 1940s?

The traditional vertical script was restored for official documents alongside it in 2025.

Which Turkic-speaking minority makes up most of Mongolia's Muslim population?

They are concentrated in the far western province of Bayan-Ölgii.

What are the three sports of the Naadam festival's 'Three Manly Games'?

Naadam runs from 11 to 13 July each year.

Naadam was added to which UNESCO list in 2010?

The festival is locally called eriin gurvan naadam, 'the three games of men'.

What is the morin khuur?

It accompanies urtyn duu long songs and khoomei throat singing.

What is the traditional Mongolian portable dwelling called?

Its wooden lattice frame carries a cover of felt made from the herders' own sheep.

The traditional game shagaa involves flicking what at a target?

The small bones are sent flying with a flick of the finger.

Mongolian wrestler Hakuhō set the all-time record in which Japanese sport?

His 33rd top-division title in January 2015 was the most in the sport's history.

Mongolia's first Olympic gold medal, won by Naidangiin Tüvshinbayar, came in which sport?

He won the men's 100 kg class at Beijing 2008.

What is the symbol on the hoist side of the Mongolian flag called?

Its elements represent fire, sun, moon, earth, water and two fish that never sleep.

What was removed from the Mongolian flag in 1992?

The star had sat above the national symbol for the final 47 years of the People's Republic.

What does the central stripe on the Mongolian flag represent?

The red stripes stand for thriving for eternity.

Przewalski's horse, the takhi, was reintroduced to Mongolia from the 1990s after what?

Hustai National Park was one of the first release sites.

How many chromosome pairs does Przewalski's horse have, compared with 32 in domestic horses?

Neither species is the ancestor of the other.

The Khoit Tsenkher Cave, with 20,000-year-old paintings of mammoths and ostriches, is nicknamed what?

It lies in Khovd Province in the west.

Which nomadic empire, formed in 209 BC, forced China's Qin dynasty to build the Great Wall?

The Rouran, later, were the first to use the title Khagan.

Mongolia is the second-largest landlocked country after which nation?

At 1,564,116 square kilometres Mongolia ranks 18th in the world by area, yet it has no coastline and no neighbours other than Russia and China.

In which year was Ulaanbaatar first founded, as a mobile yurt monastery called Örgöö?

The monastery-town moved repeatedly along the Selenge, Orkhon and Tuul rivers before settling at its present site.

The Trans-Mongolian Railway leaves the Trans-Siberian at which Russian city?

After running through Ulaanbaatar the line enters China at Erenhot, joining Moscow and Beijing by rail; the link was completed in 1956.

How tall is the golden statue of Migjid Janraisig inside Ulaanbaatar's Gandan Monastery?

Gandan is one of the very few Mongolian monasteries to survive the wholesale destruction of the late 1930s under Choibalsan.

Which town in Inner Mongolia did Altan Khan found in 1557?

Altan Khan later met the Dalai Lama in 1578, a meeting that brought Tibetan Buddhism to the Mongols on a large scale.