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Who are the Buryats

Buryats of Russia, Mongolia, Shenehen and the world diaspora share one cultural space. This page is the way into it: the project follows the people rather than a border, so what follows is about the ethnos, not about borders.

Everything below comes from material already published here — verified resources, a chronology with sources, and the people who carry the culture forward.

Across borders

One people, many regions

Buryat communities developed around Baikal, across Transbaikalia, Mongolia and Shenehen. The map keeps these connected regions in one frame without reducing the culture to a single administrative border.

CisbaikaliaEkhirit, BulagatTunka · OkaKhongodorTransbaikaliaKhoriBarguzinBarguzin BuryatsSelenga · DzhidaSartuul, Songol, TabangutAgaAga BuryatsMongoliaBuryats of MongoliaShenehensince the 1920s · ChinaLake Baikalapproximate areas · late 19th–early 20th c.

Regions on the map

  • CisbaikaliaEkhirit, Bulagat
  • Tunka · OkaKhongodor
  • TransbaikaliaKhori
  • BarguzinBarguzin Buryats
  • Selenga · DzhidaSartuul, Songol, Tabangut
  • AgaAga Buryats
  • MongoliaBuryats of Mongolia
  • Shenehensince the 1920s · China

Areas of Buryat settlement

ethnographic map · settlement areas are approximate

Clans

Clans and genealogies are part of this record. The list below repeats the map above: regions together with the clan names attached to them, in approximate areas of the late 19th to early 20th century.

Archives, metrical books and finding aids for researching clan lineages and family history.

All entries

History

This is a working historical framework — nine periods organised around changes in community life rather than the rulers of a single state, revised as source-level evidence improves.

  1. Before the 12th centuryDeep past and the formation of communities
  2. 12th–16th centuriesBuryad and related communities in the Mongol world
  3. 17th century–1727Border-making and colonial encounter
  4. 1727–mid-19th centuryReconstitution under border regimes
  5. Mid-19th century–1917Land, print and trans-Mongol modernity
  6. 1917–1937Revolutionary plurality and projects of autonomy
  7. 1937–1958Territorial fragmentation, state violence and war
  8. 1958–1989Late socialist Buryat modernity
  9. Since 1989Revitalisation, memory and the transnational Buryat world
Full chronology

Language

Dictionaries, phrasebooks, apps and courses for learning, reading and writing Buryat.

25entries

All entries

Culture & community

News outlets, Buddhist archives and community projects that carry Buryat culture today.

All entries

People

scholars, writers, keepers of the language

14people

All people

What is not here yet

Encyclopedic figures — population, the classification of the language, religious composition — appear on this page only with a named source and the date of the latest check. Until that check is done the line stays empty: a gap in the evidence is named as a gap rather than filled with a smooth narrative.

Principles & sources