Background
Zanabazar was born as a son of Tüsheet khan Gombodorj – at that time one of the three khans in Khalkha – and his wife, Khandojamtso. Zanabazar became a religious leader in eastern Mongolia. In that time western Mongolia had gained in power under Galdan Boshogtu Khan. Galdan Boshogtu, not descended from the Golden Lineage (Genghis Khan), tried to unite all the Mongolian states and take the throne for himself. Zanabazar declined all the western Mongols' proposals. Finally Galdan Khan decided to reunite the Mongol states by force and collaborated with rising power on the north Russia and in south Manchus against eastern Mongolia. Thousands of warriors from the western Mongol Empire went to war with eastern Mongolia. When Galdan Khan's army came to the area where today the city of Ulan Bator is located, conducting two wars in front, on the north with Russia on the west with Galdan Boshogtu, Zanabazar escaped to southern Mongolia. The Manchus were interested in defeating both Mongolian states, and this gave them an incredible chance to accomplish that goal. The Manchu army went to war with the Western (Oirad) Mongol Empire, Zanabazar's goal. After the battle at Zuun Mod (near present-day Ulan Bator) the Oirad Mongol warriors were defeated and went back to the west. Zanabazar became a religious leader in Mongolia while his native land (Eastern Mongolia) fell to and became a vessel of the Manchus.
Read more about this topic: Zanabazar
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)