Ezen (эзэн/ᠡᠵᠡᠨ): Rights, Responsibilities, and Relationships to Land

The relationship of the nomadic mind and of a nomadic nation to land is expectedly particular. While in the sedentary mode, land can be rendered as a grid of individually owned parcels, notions around land ownership are necessarily less discretized in a context defined by unfenced movement. The complexities around ownership and belonging as they existed traditionally and as they have evolved through a progression of urbanizing forces can be explored through the multivalent concept of ezen (эзэн/ᠡᠵᠡᠨ), a Mongolian word that is most commonly translated as owner, master, or sovereign.

When used together with the word for home forming geriin ezen, it denotes the head of a household. In the political context, a khan is king, and an ezen khaan is emperor. And extending beyond the human, the snow leopard is honored as the ‘mountain ezen’ and the wolf as the ‘khangai ezen.’ A well-known proverb goes, “The ezen knows their own, the shore bounds its waters.”[1] This bit of folk wisdom suggests that an ezen’s legitimacy is founded on a deep attunement to their subject. One cannot rule what they do not understand. It describes a mode of ownership founded on intimate understanding rather than imposed authority.

Needlefelt landscape of Otgontenger, the sacred mountain of Yavuukhulan's native Zavkhan Province. Felted by master artist Baasantseren. Photo by Anand Enkhbat.

The connection between familiarity and ownership is exemplified in the work of B. Yavuukhulan, preeminent figure of Mongolia’s literary tradition. Yavuukhulan was born in 1929 to a nomadic herder family during the period of Soviet collectivization, when ownership of all property, including livestock, was transferred to the state. He considers the question of belonging in his renowned poem “Where Was I Born?” (translated by the author) with a sequence of richly detailed images of the natural world he inhabits:

　　　The azure dune sky, I was born possessed

　　　In the far, far arc traveled by the brow moon

　　　In the narrow opening granted by two distant stars

　　　In that blue haze expanse at the edge of sight

　　　The azure dune sky, I was born possessed

　　　The snow white mountains, I was born possessed

　　　In the frost billowing peak wrapped by clouds

　　　In the film where snowflakes turn to ice

　　　In the rattle cold winter where lone yak bulls roam

　　　The snow white mountains, I was born possessed

　　　The pure blue plains, I was born possessed

　　　In the spring valley where mottle gray mirages flicker

　　　In the winter pass where rutting camel teeth clatter

　　　Where dinosaur tracks are still kept

　　　The pure blue plains, I was born possessed

　　　The waters of river and steams, I was born possessed

　　　In the waves where the silver moon reflection floats

　　　Where the horse hooves of my ancestors were washed

　　　Of the soil of foreign lands with its pure water

　　　The waters of river and steams, I was born possessed

　　　The fragrant wormwood and thyme, I was born possessed

　　　In the leaf where dew falls between dawn and night

　　　In the petal where the stars shine in a drop of water

　　　In the edelweiss flower, symbol of the undying eternal

　　　The fragrant wormwood and thyme, I was born possessed

　　　…[2]

The poem animates time and place with a sweeping intimacy. As he telescopes between the cosmic and minute, between the prehistoric and the present, Yavuukhulan keeps the idea of ezegnenhen, an adverb meaning “to act as an ezen,” in constant focus. A direct gloss of this refrain reads, “To the pure blue plains acting as an ezen born was I.” The direction of possession is a critical point of interpretation. Whether the sky, mountains, and waters belong to the speaker or the speaker belongs to them depends on the reader's orientation towards land.

An equally plausible translation of the refrain could be, “I was born owning the rivers and streams.”[3] Yet, at the time of the poem’s publishing in 1964, the Mongolian herder could not legally own the horse he rode on or the land where he lived. Ultimately, the poem speaks beyond the framework of private ownership. By attending closely to the contours of the world around him, as a shoreline pressing itself to the sea, Yavuukhulan affirms the intimate knowing and reciprocal belonging that defines the model of ezen for both human and land.

The sense of land as agent is most strongly expressed when exploring ezen in the spiritual register. In the Mongolian cosmovision, gazriin ezed (plural for ezen), or “the masters of the land,” are the land and water spirits understood to govern the weather and temperament of a locality. Those living on or using the land must maintain regular communion with these spiritual authorities through ritual ceremonies to ensure favorable conditions.[4] Cultural scholar S. Dulam examines the shamanic invocations used in these ceremonies, which call upon the plural “Ezed of the rising mountains, Ezed of the coursing waters…” He forwards a framework where ezen is not just the spiritual authority of the mountain, but the animating essence of the mountain itself. [5] It is an acknowledgement of the deep forces that sustain the natural balance, and furthermore a deference to their sovereign being.

A site of ritual worship overlooks the landscape as a mining truck passes in the distance. Photo by Gobimedia.

The intricacies of ezen enter fraught terrain in the modern economic context where ownership is foremost a consideration of rights. The earlier proverb, “The ezen knows their own, the shore bounds its waters,” was recently invoked by the now-former Prime Minister in a high stakes meeting with Rio Tinto executives to renegotiate the terms of the Oyu Tolgoi mine.[6] With up to a third of the country’s GDP at stake, the cultural weight of ezen is being leveraged here to assert custody of profits more than stewardship of the land.

It was the promise of economic growth that motivated Mongolia to restructure its relationship to land. Despite resistance from locals, the introduction of private land ownership was aggressively forwarded as a necessary step for economic development by international donor organizations.[7] The 2002 land reform laws cast the word ezemshih into a new legal category of leaseholding that technically preserved state ownership while allowing the rights to longterm use to be transferred to foreign actors like mining companies. This enabled extractive infrastructures to fragment the landscape, disrupting pastoral movement and contributing to the dispossession of herders of their land and livelihood. Researchers have recorded the way Mongolian herders describe the changes:

　　　“We moved here to get closer to the market. The last two years, there was a drought. Maybe it is because of the road construction. Micro mining is also appearing a lot. That is why the land and rivers might get angry (gazar us dogshrokh). I do not know if it is true. However, people are saying so. That is how it is.”[8]

This testimony captures a simultaneous triple appearance of the ezen: the companies holding the lease, the herders seeking habitation, and the nature spirits reacting to transgression. The same land reforms that set off these collisions also entitle every Mongolian citizen to a 0.07-hectare plot in the city,[9] but for many of the displaced herders, it offers scant substitution for the lost landscapes and languages of belonging.

Mongolian ger in settlements on the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar. Photo by Enkhpurev Enkhbayar.

The justification of private property lies in a particular view of nature that is worth articulating. In the market logic, land is imagined as an unclaimed substrate awaiting transformation. Locke’s labor theory of property, foundational to modern economic thought, argues that nature has no owner before it is mixed with human labor.[10] This framing positions humans as the sole holders of agency acting on a passive natural world, tasked with dividing and directing it toward productive ends. Even contemporary environmental governance often retains this assumption, shifting from exploitation to management without reconsidering how much control we have over nature in the first place.

Though scientific progress has given us increasing literacy in natural systems, the belief that we can fully master nature is worth challenging. The climate crisis shows us that while humans have an immense impact on the planet, we are far from being in control. Ecological and climate systems are nonlinear, emergent, and highly sensitive, where tiny uncertainties cascade into unpredictable outcomes. No increase in computational power removes this inherent epistemic limit.[11] Given these complexities that exceed the human capacity for full prediction and control, we must bear humility before the grander system by which nature governs itself.

As we continue to negotiate our relationships with the Earth, ezen offers a way to consider the cultural, spiritual, and economic dimensions of belonging. The nomadic vision of land is one founded in reciprocal attention, where rights are inseparable from responsibility. In Mongolian, one can be called to be an ezen to their homeland, to their profession, to their destiny. To be ezed to the planet is to answer such a call at its widest scale, accepting that our place within the living world is held not through dominion but through the steady practice of attending to it well.

The essay concludes with an anecdote well circulated among a stronghold of herders living in Tuv province:

　　　Some wealthy foreigner is brought by his Mongolian business associates to visit a local nomadic family. He is welcomed by the geriin ezen, a herder who is dressed as simply as any other herder and lives in a ger as humble as any other family’s.

　　　After his welcome, the businessman observes the free-grazing herds around his host’s home, and asks, “Those herds in that valley, whose animals are they?”

　　　His host replies, “Those are my animals.”

　　　The businessman looks out at the distance again, more carefully this time, before looking back at his host. “This is at least a few hundred acres. Who owns this land?”

　　　“This is my land, of course, but in the winters, we occupy the neighboring valley,” answered the herder.

　　　The businessman went quiet for a moment, then turned to his associates and said, “I think this man might be richer than me.”[12]

Freegrazing herds and distant gers in the Mongolian countryside. Photo by author.

References

[1]  “Эзэн нь юмаа мэддэг, эрэг нь усаа хашдаг.” 

[2] B. Yavuukhulan, "Bi khaana töröö ve?" [Where was I born?], originally published 1959, Biirbeh.mn, accessed February 20, 2026, https://www.biirbeh.mn/index.php?sel=content&f=one&obj_id=1495.

[3] Ya. Baatar, B. Yavuukhulangiin "Bi khaana töröö ve?": Sudalgaa, ekh kheregleghüün, setgelgee [B. Yavuukhulan's "Where was I born?": Research, sources, reflections] (Ulaanbaatar: Mongolian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Language and Literature, 2005; San Francisco, 2015), 245.

[4] David Sneath, "Property Regimes and Sociotechnical Systems: Rights over Land in Mongolia's 'Age of the Market,'" in Property in Question: Value Transformation in the Global Economy, ed. Katherine Verdery and Caroline Humphrey (Oxford: Berg, 2004), 168.

[5] S. Dulam, Mongol domog züin dür [The form of Mongolian mythology] (Ulaanbaatar: Ulsyn khevleliin gazar, 1989), 22.

[6] "G. Zandanshatariin khatuu shaardlaga ba bayalgiin kharaalyg yörööl bolgokh ekhlel" [G. Zandanshatar's firm demands and the start of turning the resource curse into a blessing], Önöödör newspaper, republished on Zuv.mn, March 11, 2026, https://zuv.mn/n/1eox.

[7] Holly R. Barcus, "Contested Space, Contested Livelihoods: A Review of Mongolia's Pastureland Management and Land-Tenure Reform," Geographical Review 108, no. 1 (2018): 8–10, https://doi.org/10.1111/gere.12246.

[8] Maria-Katharina Lang and Baatarnaran Tsetsentsolmon, "Connected or Traversed? Plans, Imaginaries, and the Actual State of Railway Projects in Mongolia," Transfers 10, no. 2–3 (2020): 204, https://doi.org/10.3167/TRANS.2020.10020314.

[9] Rick Miller, "Settling Between Legitimacy and the Law: At the Edge of Ulaanbaatar's Legal Landscape," Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review 24, no. 1 (2017): 11–12, https://www.jstor.org/stable/44779826.

[10] John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), II.27, pp. 287–88.

[11] Clara Deser, "Certain Uncertainty: The Role of Internal Climate Variability in Projections of Regional Climate Change and Risk Management," Earth's Future 8, no. 12 (2020): e2020EF001854, https://doi.org/10.1029/2020EF001854.

[12] Told in Mongolian to the author.