Geleg Noyan Qutuytu and his Darkhad subjects from the Khuvsgul-Sayan region

Russian expansion toward southern Siberia in the seventeenth century faced strong resistance by the peoples living in the forest-steppe zone. Turkic- and Mongolic-speaking nomadic people of the Inner Asian steppe zone, who controlled the area before the Muscovites, were not willing to lose their subjects to the Tsar, for economic reasons. Weakened by internecine strife, Khalkha nobilities of Khuvsgul-Sayan region were not strong enough to oppose the Russian state successfully. In this paper I describe the situation of Geleg Noyan Qutuytu. This belligerent high-ranking lama from the Qotoyoyid noble family was an active player in the local scene of Russian-Mongolian relations. Reprinted by permission of the White Horse Press