The conventional scholarship maintained until recently that nomadic peoples were “wandering tribes” who had no sovereign claims over the land through which they passed. That notion is flatly contradicted by “maps of territory of khoshuu” (qosiγun-u nutuγ-un jiruγ) of Mongolian principalities (khoshuu), which were produced by local officials toward the end of the Manchu (Qing) empire (1644-1912). The rulers of these principalities were direct descendants of Chinggis Khan (1162-1227). If pre-Chinggisid Mongolia was a world where “sons protected the territory (nuntuq), and girls get picked by their beauty”, Chinggis Khan had expanded his territory (nuntuq) westward to give his elder sons their own separate domains. Each thousand (minqan or decimal division of thousand) of the Mongol empire had its own territory (nuntuq), with officials called nuntu’ucin (lit. one who is in charge of territory) to administer it, as recorded in The Secret History of the Mongols and confirmed by such European visitors as John of Plano Carpini and William of Rubruck.

In building their alliances, Manchu and Mongolian lords declared that their territories would remain under the jurisdictions of their own respective laws and courts, refuting the idea of the nomadic polity as a “wandering tribe, whose authority structure is completely disassociated with a particular piece of land.” Indeed, “the land is the basis of nation” declared Modun, the Xiongnu ruler, in 209 B.C.E., and conquered the Eastern Hu who demanded him surrender a stretch of land. Later, an embittered pretender of the Xiongnu throne sent maps of Xiongnu territory to Han in 46 C.E. in revenge against the winner. We do not know exactly how earlier Inner Asian polities mapped their domains, but their mindscapes, too, must have been outfitted with something like the stone cairns that mark the borders of all Mongolian principalities shown in these marvelous maps.

Lhamsuren Munkh-Erdene (National University of Mongolia: currently, Visiting Fellow at Max Planck Institute, Germany) studies state and empire building in pre-modern Central Eurasia, and issues of ethnicity, nationalism, and the construction of collective identity in Mongolia. He is the author of The Taiji Government and the Rise of the Warrior State: The Formation of the Qing Imperial Constitution (2021). He completed his PhD in History and Area Studies at Hokkaido University.