Hoboksar

Hoboksar lies in a basin north of the Dzungarian plain, among the pastures of the western Mongols or Oirats. Here Batur Khong Tayiji gathered power among the Oirat tribes in the seventeenth century, making the district an early centre of the Dzungar state. A castle southeast of Hoboksar, built between 1639 and 1643, gave his authority a fortified seat in the midst of pastoral country.

Qing armies conquered Dzungaria in the eighteenth century, and in 1758 Hoboksar came under the frontier administration of Tarbagatai. In 1771 Torghut Mongols who had left the Volga region returned east to Qing territory; some were settled around Hoboksar. Their arrival added another chapter to the history of Oirat communities whose migrations had linked the grasslands of Inner Asia across immense distances.