Sartuul () is one of the Mongol clans. A common hypothesis is the origin of the Sartuuls from the . Another hypothesis is the version that traces the origin of the Sartuuls to an area called Sarta Uula (Moon Mountain) or Sart Uul (Mountain with the Moon), the name of a mountain where they live.[Davaadorzhiĭn Ganbold, Da Haliun – Facts about Mongolia, p.120] During the Chinese Qing dynasty rule, there was a banner named Tsetsen Sartuul's hoshuu (Wise Sartuul's banner) and descendants of the banner began to use its name as a clan name when Mongolians began using their ancestors' clan names after 1990.
9 khutagts of Khalkha and 2 presidents of Mongolia are from the Tsetsen Sartuul's hoshuu.
Demographics
According to Mongolia’s
2015 Interim Population and Housing Census,
2 166 people self-identified as Sartuul, up from
1 286 in the 2010 full census.
Present-day distribution
A 2018 report by the state news agency
MONTSAME notes that Sartuul households are concentrated in eleven
soums of
Zavkhan Province, where local officials recognise them as a distinct cultural group.
A tourist ethnography compiled by *Mongolia-Guide* adds that smaller Sartuul communities exist in seven other provinces and twenty-four
soums nationwide.
History and sources
Much of the clan’s internal history is preserved in the three-volume chronicle
Sart Gol Tsetsen Vangiin Shashdir Orshvoi (“Treatise on the Sart River Wise Prince’s Banner”), published in 2017 and deposited in the National Archives of Mongolia. The set is accompanied by a 32-metre genealogical scroll listing more than 4 000 individuals and tracing the banner’s ruling line over thirty generations to
Genghis Khan.
Etymology
French sinologist
Paul Pelliot linked the ethnonym
Sartuul to the Turkic term
sart (ultimately from Sanskrit
sarṭha, “merchant”), suggesting that the clan descends from Muslim traders resettled in Mongolia after the early-13th-century Khwārazm campaign.
A 2019 philological survey of Sino-Mongol bilingual glossaries observes that
sarṭ- retained the sense “merchant” until at least the 11th century before shifting toward “town-dweller” in Turkic languages, supporting Pelliot’s derivation.
Attestation in The Secret History of the Mongols
The 13-century chronicle
The Secret History of the Mongols regularly uses the ethnonym
Sarta’ul to denote the Muslim townsfolk of Khwarazm and neighbouring regions of Central Asia. In §104 it places the **Qara-Khitai** realm “*in the land of the Sarta’ul at the Cui River*”.
Later, when recounting Chinggis Khan’s Khwarazmian campaign, the chronicle records:
-
**§254** – “*After that, one hundred of Chinggis Qahan’s emissaries … were killed by the Sarta’ul people. Chinggis Qahan said: ‘How can my golden tether be broken by the Sarta’ul people?’*”
-
**§257** – “*In the year of the Hare 1219 he set forth against the Sarta’ul people…*”
-
**§264** – “*He went seven years in the country of the Sarta’ul people…*”
These passages show that, for the Mongols themselves, **Sarta’ul** was a standard label for the Khwarazmian (and more generally Muslim) populations they encountered, supporting the modern derivation of *Sartuul* from *sart* “merchant / town-dweller”.
See also
-
List of modern Mongol clans
-
List of medieval Mongol tribes and clans
