Ja Lama

Ja Lama
Born	Dambiijantsan 1862 Baga Dörbet ulus, Astrakhan.
Died	1922 (execution) Gobi Desert, border of Mongolia and Xinjiang Province, China
Occupation	guerrilla

Ja Lama (Mongolian: Жа Лама, also known as Dambiijantsan, Mongolian: Дамбийжанцан or Dambiijaa, Mongolian: Дамбийжаа, (1862–1922)) was an adventurer and warlord of unknown birth and background who fought successive campaigns against the rule of the Qing dynasty in western Mongolia between 1890 and 1922. He claimed to be a Buddhist lama, though it is not clear whether he actually was one, as well as a grandson and later the reincarnation of Amursana, the Khoid-Oirat prince who led the last great Mongol uprising against the Qing in 1757. He was one of the commanders of Mongolian forces that liberated Khovd city from Qing control in 1912.

Although Ja Lama claimed on numerous occasions both Russian citizenship and Kalmyk origin, his true identity is not known but it is widely accepted that his real name was Dambiijantsan and that he was born in or around 1862 in a Baga Dörbet ulus somewhere in the Astrakhan region.

Ja Lama was described as "fanatically anti-Tsarist Russian, anti-Soviet Russian, and anti-Chinese."

It is believed that Ja Lama first arrived in Mongolia sometime in 1890. By the summer of that year, he was arrested by Qing authorities for campaigning against Qing rule but avoided imprisonment after the Russian consul in Ikh Khüree (modern Ulan Bator) identified him as "Amur Sanaev," a Russian citizen of Kalmyk origin from the Astrakhan province, and secured his release and expulsion to Russia.

By autumn of 1891, Ja Lama was back in Mongolia spreading anti-Manchu propaganda for which he would be twice more arrested. After each arrest, Ja Lama was deported to Russia. Where he remained after his second arrest is unclear, but in 1910 he reappeared among the Oirat Torghuts in Xinjiang.

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