The Ruins of the Ablaikit Monastery-Fortress - Alexander Geins, 1865

Translation of a report on the ruins of a Tibetan Buddhist Monastery in south Siberia

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Ruins of the Ablaikit Monastery, Album of views, drawings of buildings and ancient inscriptions of Siberia" - Grigory Spassky, 1818

Translator’s Introduction

Below is a translation of an excerpt from Alexander Konstantinovich Geins’ “Дневник 1865 года. Путешествие по Киргизским степям” (Diary 1865. Journey Across the Kyrgyz Steppes). Geins was a Russian military officer who served in the Crimean War and participated in the defense of Sevastopol, where he suffered a concussion and eye damage. Later, he joined the Russian armies during their conquest of Central Asia, and wrote a travelogue acclaimed for its geographical and ethnographical observations. The original text in full can be found here. The source for this translation can be found here.

This text focuses on the ruins of a Tibetan Buddhist monastery built by the Mongolian Zungars in the 17th century. In the years after the break up of the Mongolian Empire founded by Chingis Khan and the collapse of the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty in China, the Mongols converted to Tibetan Buddhism. The Dalai Lama’s role as the theocratic leader of Tibet was itself a Mongolian invention. The Zungar Mongols were a tribal grouping made of the Oirat, or western Mongols, and in the 17th century they formed what would be the last great Mongolian empire. For a time, the Zungars reigned supreme over the steppes of modern day eastern Kazakhstan and northern Xinjiang, but their rise also coincided with the rise of the Manchu Qing Dynasty in China, and the expansion of Russia across Siberia. Pressed between these two very powerful and expansionary empires equipped with modern weapons, the Zungars were defeated and annihilated by the Qing in the 1750’s. For more on the Zungars, see Peter Purdue’s “China Marches West”.

The ruins of the Ablaikit Monastery are located in eastern Kazakhstan, in the southern foothills of the Altai Mountains. The ruins are about 75 km south of Oskermen (formerly known as Ust-Kamenogorsk). This site very much aroused my curiosity. I have kept this introduction short, because I plan on researching the history of this monastery further. In a month or two I will publish my findings as an essay.

View of Ablaikit by Peter Simon Pallas, 1794

The Ablaikit Monastery

The ruins of Ablaikit are located on the left bank of a creek at the foot of a giant granite rock. The place is deserted and wild. High granite mountains loom all around, naked and exposed, covered in the the fallen debris of other fallen granite rocks. A separate rock, to which the ruins are joined to, protrudes precipitously into the valley and can only be accessed from the creek to the south. Here, a wall a sazhen¹ tall runs along the valley, built with slate flagstone and held together with clay. Thin pieces of stone randomly stick out from the wall here and there, so that the wall can now be easily climbed now. In some places a tree-like grass is growing on the wall. A wide gate is located on the south-eastern side of the wall. The parts of the wall that form the gate were thickened up to three sazhens. At the entrance and exit there are four finely made granite columns. Inside the gate, it can be noted just how finely cut and smoothed the stones are, and how carefully they were laid to form the wall. It should also be noted that starting from the rocky cliff to the west, the ruins stretch in a semi-circle from the north-east, to another cliff, covering its accessible slope. Upon reaching the slope, the wall adjoins the natural wall of the cliff and then begins again, running along the crown of the latter. The north-western slope of the mountain is so steep that it can be barely be climbed. Nevertheless, along its height runs a wall that rises and falls according to the terrain. A birch tree grows on the wall here. Thus, the wall covers a space of one and half versts² in diameter and about five versts in circumference.  

Located inside are traces of two different ruined structures. These remains, undoubtedly, are foundations and also made with flagstone. The building that stood on top of them was made of brick, which is evidenced by the traces of unfired and extremely strong bricks with limestone cement that are lying around the surface of the foundation, along with all kinds of other debris. Here you can see clay shards, perfectly glazed with blue and green paint, which have survived completely intact. Near the very peak of the mountain in between the gaps of the cliffs lies a deep lake³ that is seven sazhens long and two sazhens wide. It never dries up. I forgot to mention, that among the debris lying around the foundations are ornately designed roof tiles.

Ablaikit is the ruins of a Buddhist monastery and residence of the Kalmyk (Khoshot)⁴ Khan Ablai.⁵ It was founded in the 17th century. In 1671 Ablai was defeated by the Kalmyk Oirat ruler Galdan, which caused him to flee to Astrakhan⁶ where he later died. The ruins of his residence were discovered by hunters from Ust-Kamenogorsk during the reign of Peter I. The hunters found many Tangut⁷ or Tibetan inscriptions written here, which were sent to academics in Paris. Later on, Russian scientists and travelers recovered other inscriptions from these ruins.

Despite whatever scholars believe these ruins to be, either the remains of a Buddhist monastery or the chambers of Albai Khan, I, as a military man, believe the main purpose of this building was military-defensive. If one looks at the walls, that stretch out to prevent a person from climbing up and getting inside,⁸ or they turns their attention to the thickness and the care that was taken to build these walls that are fortress-like, which would need to be broken to get through, they will be able to see that the purpose of their construction was military.

Walls of Ablaikit

Inside the fortification is a lake. Grass grows on the rocks, which could feed at any time of the year a large herd of horses and sheep. Therefore, the previous owner of the Ablaikit fortification was hardly defeated by an attack.

They say that under the foundation there are cellars that go a sazhen under ground, and apparently inside of them there is hidden treasure. That the cellars exist in a state of great ruin can hardly be doubted, especially if you consider the deep pits that can be seen in the second set of ruins, which in all likelyhood were formed from the ceiling of the cellar collapsing from above.

Samsonov, the head of Semipalatinsk,⁹ told me that he requested permission to carry out excavations on the Ablaikit chambers, but General Panov did not find any article of law that would allow for this work. Additionally, Samsonov said that his father remembered from his own life how the Albaikit chambers once stood. Later, they were dismantled to be used as ovens by the Cossacks stationed at the local pikets¹⁰ and used by Kyrgyz¹¹ as wintering quarters. Such a pity!

Engraving of Ablaikit - Nicholas Jacques Bellin, 1750

Ruins of the monastery today

Artifacts recovered from Ablaikit

1. Old unit of Russian measurement. 1 sazhen = 2.1336 meters/7 feet

2. Old unit of Russian measurement. 1 verst =

3. I think this refers to Sadyrkol, to the east of Ablaikit

4. A tribal sub grouping apart of the western Oirat Mongols

5. Unrelated to the famous Kazakh Ablai Khan

6. Due to infighting among the western Mongols, the Torghuts (another sub grouping of western Mongols) fled to the steppes south of the Volga river in southern Russia in the early 17th century

7. A semi-nomadic people from the Middle Ages who created the Xi Xia state in the modern Chinese provinces of Gansu and Ningxia. They were highly influenced by Tibet and China, and adopted

8. This was difficult to translate, the original says: протянувшиеся там, где есть какая–нибудь возможность подняться человеку, влезть внутрь стены

9. Today called Semey, see map above

10. Small Cossack outposts

11. Actually Kazakhs. Up until the Soviet period the Kazakhs were often called Kyrgyz