kurultai

thumb|right|Timur's great 'kurultai', from a 16th century copy of Sharaf al-Din Ali Yazdi's Zafarnama A kurultai (, ), also called a quriltai, was a medieval political and military council consisting of members of a Mongol khan's family, imperial sons-in-law, captains of the army and others during and before the Mongol empire.

==Etymology== According to the , the oldest recorded pre-Genghis Khan mention of the root word "Qur" is found in Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk (11th century), where it was used as a verb meaning 'to assemble, to assemble into a formation, to build'. The root word and the word kurultai are currently in use in numerous Turkic languages. According to another hypothesis, the root of the term is from the hypothetical Proto-Mongolic verb *kura-, *kurija- 'to collect, to gather' whence khural 'meeting, assembly' in Mongolic languages. From this same root arises the Mongolian word 'feast', which originally referred to large festive gatherings on the steppe, but it is now used mainly in the sense of 'wedding'.