Islam in Mongolia

[3] Some Mongolian Muslims fused elements from Buddhism into their beliefs, even thinking of the Buddha as synonymous to Adam,[4] the first prophet in Islam, although this does not happen in modern times.

The earliest evidence of Islam in Mongolia is dated to 1254, when the Franciscan William of Rubruck visited the court of the great khan Mongka at Karakorum.

[8] Later, it was the Mamluk ruler Baibars who played an important role in bringing many Golden Horde Mongols to Islam.

Although the court of the Yuan Empire adopted Tibetan Buddhism as the official religion, the majority of the ordinary Mongols, especially those who continued living in Mongolia proper, remained Shamanists.

[3] During the Qing dynasty, Chinese Muslims settled in Mongolia for mercantile purposes and soon developed religious infrastructures for their communities.

[3] The majority of these Kazakhs were the Kerei and Naiman clans, many of them escaping persecution in Czarist Russia and Qing China.

When Bogd Khan assumed power in Mongolia on December 29, 1911, the Kazakhs in Xinjiang and Altai regions sought the patronage of the restored Khanate.

The government of Bogd Khan admitted them and allowed them to settle in the western region of Mongolia's Khovd Province.

[citation needed] Bayan-Ölgii aimag was established as part of the administrative reforms of the Mongolian People's Republic in 1940.

However, there was a decline in the Muslim population[13][14] in 1990-1993 due to the large wave of repatriation of ethnic Kazakhs (so-called oralmans) to Kazakhstan following the break-up of the Soviet Union.

[20] On 20 December 2023, the Mongolian Agency for Standard Metrology was granted accreditation for halal food product certification meeting the requirements of the Gulf Cooperation Council Accreditation Center, which enabled the agency to issue halal certification for food produced in the country for exports.