Sartuul
Sartuul is one of the Mongol clans. A common hypothesis is the origin of the Sartuuls from the Sarts. Another hypothesis is the version that traces the origin of the Sartuuls to an area called Sarta Uula or Sart Uul, the name of a mountain where they live. During the Chinese Qing dynasty rule, there was a banner named Tsetsen Sartuul's hoshuu 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, 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, 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 he set forth against the Sarta’ul people…*”
- **§264** – “* went seven years in the country of the Sarta’ul people…*”