Erdeni Batur - Diplomacy With Mongols

Diplomacy With Mongols

His increased stature and the wide recognition the Dzungar Khanate received as a great power among Central Asian nomads led Erdeni Batur to call for a pan-Mongolian alliance in 1640. The entente took place inside Dzungar territory at a place called Ulan Buraa, near the Tarbagatai Mountains on the border between what is now the Xinjiang province of China and Kyrgyzstan. The ruling princes of all Mongolian tribes were present at the entente, except for the Mongol tribes of Inner Mongolia, who recently joined the Qing.

One of the purposes for the entente was to form a pan-Mongol coalition against all potential external enemies, such as the Kazakhs and the newly emerging Qing state. The second yet equally important purpose was to devise a method by which disputes could be resolved short of war. To that end, a legal code was drafted, establishing a system of rules that governed the daily activities of all Mongols from the Volga River in southeastern Russia to present-day eastern Mongolia. These set of laws are called the "Great Code of the Forty and the Four" (Döchin Dörben Hoyar un Ike Tsagaza) known as the Khalkha-Oirat Law.