Khongirad


The Khongirad, also known as Qongirat was one of the major divisions of the Mongol tribes. Variations on the name include Onggirat, Ongirat, Qongrat, Khungirat, Kungrad, Qunghrãt, Wangjila, Yongjilie, Qungrat, and Guangjila in Chinese sources. Their homeland was located in the vicinity of Lake Hulun in Inner Mongolia and Khalkha River in Mongolia, where they maintained close ties with the ruling dynasties of northern China. Because the various Hongirad clans never united under a single leader, the tribe never rose to great military glory. Their greatest fame comes from being the primary consort clan of the ruling house of Genghis Khan's Mongol empire. Genghis Khan's mother, great grandmother, and first wife were all Khongirads, as were many subsequent Mongol queens and princesses. During the Yuan dynasty they were given the title Lu Wang, and a few Khongirads may have migrated west into the territory of modern Uzbekistan and South Kazakhstan Province.

Origin

The Khongirads are often identified as the descendants of the ancient Wuku/Wugu tribe of Tang Dynasty records. The tribe's own origin myth claims that they were descended from three brothers born of a golden vessel—Jurluq Mergen, Quba Shira, and Tusbu Da'u. The descendants of these brothers formed the Hongirad tribe, but feuds quickly splintered the tribe and gave rise to the offshoot tribes of the Ikires, Olkhonud, Karanut, Gorlos, and Qongliyuts. Only the descendants of Jurluq Mergen retained the tribal name of Hongirad. One of the most famous Hongirad ancestors was Miser Ulug, an Onggirat Hercules who was super-humanly strong and often slept for days at a time.
Many names of the 12th century's Hongirads and their subtribes have Mongol origin:
Shamanic practices continue in present-day Mongol culture.

Relationship with the Mongols: The Legend of Ergune Khun">Ergenekon">Ergune Khun

According to Mongol legend, two warriors named Kiyan and Negus were defeated in battle and forced to seek shelter in an enclosed valley called Ergune khun. After several generations the descendants of these heroes became too numerous for the valley to support, but no one remembered the way out. A blacksmith came up with a solution—they would create their own way out by melting an exposed iron vein that existed in one of the encircling mountains. Building a massive fire and stoking it with 70 large bellows, the trapped clan did just that and succeeded in creating a passage to the outside world. Once free, the people of Kiyan and Negus went on to create several tribes, including the Mongols and the Hongirads.

Consort Tribe

In addition to having a shared ancestry with the Mongols in general, the Hongirads also shared ancestors with the Mongol royal line, whose originator, Alan Qo'a, was a woman of the Kharlas clan, an offshoot of the Khongirads founded by the legendary Miser Ulug. Down to the 12th century, Mongol rulers such as Khabul Khan and his great-grandson Genghis Khan
were still taking Khongirad wives. Yesugei Ba'atur, the father of Genghis Khan, was not a high ranking Mongol leader, but even he secured himself an Onggirat wife by stealing one from another man. The wives of most rulers of the Yuan Dynasty and Golden Horde were also from the Hongirad. That is why, they held enormous powers behind the courts in both states. They forced the rulers of the Golden Horde to make peace with Kublai in 1280's and convinced Tokhta Khan to accept supremacy of the Great Khan in 1304. The Hongirad under queen Dagi and Temüder, the Minister of the Secretariat, reached their political peak in the Yuan Dynasty, the principal state of 4 khanates, during the reign of Gegeen Khan Shidebala. They built Yingchang city in modern Inner Mongolia in 1271.
After the death of the last Yuan emperor, Toghan Temur, who lost his imperial status in China and other Mongol khanates, a body of the Khongirat and Olkhunut surrendered to the Ming Dynasty in 1371. Meanwhile, the Khongirad, belonged to the southern Khalkha tumen in modern Inner Mongolia and Olkhunuts lived in modern Khovd Province.

Transoxiana

In the 18th century the basins of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya passed under the control of three Uzbek khanates claiming legitimacy in their descent from Genghis Khan. These were, from west to east, the Khongirads based on Khiva in Khwārezm, the Manghud in Bukhara, and the Mings in Kokand. The Sufi Dynasty which was founded by the Qongirat elites in Khwārezm ruled their own state under the Jochids and Timur. The Qongirat Inaks became de facto rulers of the Khanate of Khiva in 18th century and their descendants assumed the title of khan themselves in 1804. On 2 February 1920, Khiva's last khan, Sayid Abdullah, abdicated before its territory was finally incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1924.
Descendants found among the people in Mongolia and the Yugurs in Gansu, China, and little bit in the Karakalpaks and the Uzbegs.

Kazakhstan

Now, a Kazakh tribe of the Middle Juz named Qongırat are considered descendants of Khongirads . Around the beginning of the 20th century CE, the Kazakh Qongırats lived mainly in what is now Turkistan Region, especially in the vicinity of the city of Turkistan. This region borders Uzbekistan, and a majority of the local population has at times been recorded as Uzbek; the part of the region in which the Kazakh Qongırats were concentrated was located between the Sır River and the lower reaches of the Chu River where it disappears in the steppe. The Qongyrat tribe of Kazakhs are notable for the extremely high frequency among them of Y-DNA that belongs to haplogroup C-M407, a clade that otherwise has been observed with greatest frequency among Buryats and other indigenous peoples of Buryatia. Members of C-M407 also have been found with lower frequency among Mongols in Mongolia, Kalmyks, Manchus in China, and Yakuts in Sakha Republic and sporadically among Han Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, and Armenians.
Dariga Nazarbayeva's children are Kongyrat.

Rule of Khiva

They ruled the Khiva khanate in 1763-1920.