Buryat

The Buryats are the northernmost Mongol people, formed around Lake Baikal from Mongolic, Turkic, Tungusic and Samoyedic tribes. The name Buriyad first occurs in the Secret History of the Mongols, recording how Jochi, son of Genghis Khan, subdued them on the Angara in 1207.

In the late 1300s they joined the Oirats against the Eastern Mongols, and by the seventeenth century they paid tribute to the Khalkha khans while levying sable tribute from Evenk and Samoyed neighbours.

Russian Cossacks reached Transbaikalia in 1609 and Lake Baikal in 1643, putting down repeated revolts; the treaties of Nerchinsk in 1689 and Kyakhta in 1727 transferred both shores from Mongolia to Russia. Under Russian rule western Buryats took to agriculture and Orthodoxy, while eastern Buryats kept nomadic life and turned to Tibetan Buddhism, its first local monastery built after recognition in 1741.