Khurultai

(also, kuriltai). (1) In prerevolutionary Mongolia, a congress of feudal lords, who constituted the ruling class. The khurultai originated in the period when the primitive communal system was disintegrating and early feudal state alliances were forming in Mongolia (eighth to 11th centuries). Between the 12th and 17th centuries the khurultai was held periodically to resolve important matters of state, such as the election of the great khans of Mongolia. Of particular importance in the history of the Mongols were the khurultai of 1206, which proclaimed Temujin (c. 1115–1227) Ghengis Khan and head of the Mongol feudal state, and the Dzungarian Congress (1640), which ratified the Mongol-Oirat Laws (Tsaadjiin Bichig).

(2) In the period immediately after the Mongolian People’s Revolution of 1921, a meeting of democratically elected people’s representatives. Today the term khural is generally used.