Tuvan

The Tuvans are a Siberian Turkic people of the upper Yenisei and the Sayan Mountains, in the land that takes its name from them, Tuva. Chinese chronicles trace their ancestors to the Dingling and the Dubo of the eastern Sayan. In 1207 Jochi's Mongol armies brought them under Mongol suzerainty, and they were later reckoned among the Uriankhai peoples.

In 1538 Dayan Khan crushed a Uriankhai revolt and dissolved their tumen, after which the Tuvan clans fell mostly to the northern Khalkha. Tuva passed under Dzungar and then Qing rule, administered as Tannu Uriankhai.

Traditionally semi-nomadic herders of reindeer, sheep and yaks living in yurts and birch-bark tents, the Tuvans kept their Turkic speech and shamanic rites, and in the eighteenth century adopted Tibetan Buddhism through Mongol contact without abandoning the old ways.