Kharchin

The Kharchin are a Mongol tribe of the border country between Chifeng and northwestern Liaoning. Their name goes back to the early 1200s, when Kipchak and Qanqli captives famed for brewing black kumis were enrolled in the Mongol imperial guard and called Kharachin; by the 1400s they were a tribe of the Yüngshiyebü tümen.

In 1510 Dayan Khan made them a right-wing tribe, and under his grandson Kundulun they spread east into the lands of the Ming Döyin, or Uriangkhan, Guards, whose herdsmen gradually took the Kharchin name.

Ligdan Khan scattered the old Yüngshiyebü Kharchin in 1628, whereupon the Uriangkhan leader Subudi led the merged tribe to submit to Hong Taiji. In 1636 and 1648, and under the Kangxi emperor, the Qing enrolled them as the three Kharchin banners of the Josotu League; they increasingly settled into agriculture beside Chinese migrants.