Mongolia

The Central Asian region of Mongolia has had a diverse and significant religious history. From the [Page 819]formation of the Mongol state in the 13th century until the second conversion of the Mongols to Tibetan Buddhism in the latter part of the 16th century, the religious landscape of Mongolian territories was characterized by religious pluralism, which resulted from the Mongols’ contact with other cultures through their military campaigns, diplomatic relations, and trade.

Although shamanism was the predominant religion among the Mongol tribes prior to the formation of the Mongol state in the early 13th century, Nestorian Christianity was also practiced. According to a letter of the 11th-century Nestorian metropolitan of Marv to the Patriarch in Baghdad, about 200,000 Turks and Mongols had converted to Christianity by 1009. The mother of the famous 13th-century Mongol khans—Möngke, Qubilai, and Hülegü—was also known to be a Nestorian Christian. Catholic and Russian Orthodox missionaries competed in their conversionary activities among the Mongols; and when Pope Innocent IV sent a letter to Güyük Khan, calling for the Mongols’ conversion to Catholicism, Güyük Khan scorned him for claiming Catholicism as the only true form of Christianity.

Berke Khan of the Golden Horde (the latter part of the 13th century) was the first Mongolian ruler to become a Muslim, but by the end of the 13th century, many ordinary Mongols and Mongol lords in Il-Khanate had converted to Islam.

During the reign of Qubilai Khan, Tibetan Buddhism exerted an important influence on the Mongol court and peacefully coexisted with shamanism. The Mongols’ conversion to Tibetan Buddhism in the 13th century was limited to Qubilai's court and the Mongolian nobility. The second conversion of the Mongol khans to the Gelugpa (dGe lugs pa) school of Tibetan Buddhism, which began in 1575, was accompanied by the persecution of shamanic practices and those who performed them and by the burning of shamanic ongghon figurines. Mongol khans used Buddhism to consolidate their powers and enforced it on their territories. This resulted in the widespread conversion of the Mongols to Buddhism and to the systematic destruction of shamanism as an organized religion. Owing to the support of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, which ruled Mongolia from the latter part of the 17th century until 1912, Buddhism became Mongolia's predominant religion. By the middle of the 18th century, shamanism was almost entirely extinct in Mongolia. During the theocratic period of the Bogd Khan state (1911–1921), ruled by the Eighth Jebtsundamba Khutukhtu, the religious and political head of the Buddhist community, the power of Buddhism reached its peak in Mongolia.

With the formation of the Mongolian People's Republic in 1924, which adopted Soviet communist policies, Mongolia was declared a secular state, which resulted in the subsequent suppression of religious expression, the destruction of Buddhist institutions, and the persecution of monks. After 70 years of religious suppression, in the late 1980s, the democratization of Mongolia facilitated a revival of Buddhism and shamanism and the inflow of diverse religious traditions from Europe, America, and Asia. Once again, the Mongolian landscape is characterized by religious pluralism, in which Buddhism stands out as the most dominant religion.

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