Rouran epochGöktürk epochUyghur epochKirghiz epoch
RouranFirst GöktürkTang ruleSecond GöktürkUyghurKirghizHunsWestern GöktürkTürgeshKarlukKhazar
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  • 500
  • 600
  • 700
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  • 900

The Second Göktürk Khaganate was not conquered. It killed its own khans, and then the peoples it had ruled divided what was left. Both Chinese histories agree on that much. They agree on very little else.

The murders at the top (741)

After Bilge Khan, his son Yijan took the throne. The Jiu Tang Shu says that he soon fell ill and died. The Xin Tang Shu gives him eight years on the throne.[1] The second figure is probably an error. Tengri is on record as khan seven years after Bilge’s death.[2] Tengri was Yijan’s younger brother, and he was still a boy. His mother was a daughter of Tonyukuk. She took part in the government with a minor official, and the tribes did not accept it.[3] In 740 the Tang emperor sent Li Zhi with a seal letter to confirm Tengri as khan.[3] Two uncles of the khan commanded the army: the Left Shad in the east and the Right Shad in the west. The Jiu Tang Shu calls them cousins of his father.[1] Tengri and his mother lured the Right Shad to them and beheaded him.[1] One record places the death of Tengri in 741.[4] According to the Jiu Tang Shu, the Left Shad, “fearing the same fate, led his troops against Tengri and killed him, and set himself up under the name Wusumishi Khan”.[3] That is Ozmish.

The Xin Tang Shu tells the same collapse with different men. In this account, the Left Shad is Pan Kül Tegin, who set up a son of Bilge. The yabgu Guduo killed the boy and then his brother. Then he made himself khan.[5][6] The sources do not settle which man began the killing.

The coalition (742)

At the start of the Tianbao period, the Uyghurs, the Karluk and the Basmïl rose together. They killed the usurping yabgu and raised the Basmïl chief as Jiedie Yishi Khan. The Uyghurs and Karluk made themselves his yabgus of left and right.[5] Meanwhile, the people set up Ozmish as khan, with his own son as Right Shad.[5] The Xin Tang Shu makes Ozmish a son of the Left Shad Pan Kül Tegin.[5][7]

By 742 there were two khans on the Orkhon.[5] One had been raised by a coalition of subject peoples. The other had been raised by what remained of the Göktürks. The Tang emperor sent envoys ordering Ozmish to submit. Ozmish would not submit, and his people would not follow him. The three tribes attacked him together.[5] The Jiu Tang Shu puts it in one sentence: “the Basmïl tribe rose in arms against him. The Left Shad was heavily defeated and fled for his life, and the whole country fell into chaos.”[3]

In the eighth month of 742, the princesses and princes of the house went over to the Tang. They were received in Chang’an.[3]

The end (744–745)

In 744 the Basmïl killed Ozmish. They sent his head to the capital, where it was offered in the ancestral temple.[5] His younger brother, the tegin Gulongfu, was set up as Baimei Khan. The country fell into turmoil.

Then the coalition turned. The Tang commander of Shuofang, Wang Zhongsi, struck the eleven tribes of the left. At the same time, the Uyghurs and Karluk killed the Basmïl khan, their own khan of two years. They raised the Uyghur Guli Peiluo as Kutluk Bilge Kül Khan.[5][8] In the next year they killed Baimei Khan and sent his head after his brother’s. Bilge Khan’s widow came in with her people. She was made a lady of the Tang court with a yearly allowance.[5]

“With that the Göktürk state that had begun under the Western Wei was no more, and its lands passed wholly to the Uyghurs.”[5]

The identity of Ozmish

The one substantial disagreement in the sources concerns the man whose death is usually given as the end.

The Jiu Tang Shu makes Ozmish the Left Shad himself, a Göktürk, and the Basmïl his enemies.[3] The Xin Tang Shu makes him the son of the Left Shad.[5] A further account differs. In it, a coalition of Basmïl, Karluk and Uyghurs toppled the dynasty in 742, and the Basmïl chieftain was proclaimed khan under the name Ozmïš. An Uyghur-led coalition toppled that man in turn in 744.[9] In this version, Ozmish is not the last Göktürk khan at all but the first of the men who replaced him. The Uyghur chapter of the Tang history has the Basmïl led in 744 by a chief named Ashina Shi, whom the Tang had recognised as khan. This does not make the question easier.[10]

Every account agrees on the year and the outcome. The last Ashina khan of the Orkhon fell in 744, and the Uyghurs took the country.

Causes of the collapse

No foreign conquest explains it. No Chinese army took the Ötüken. No famine of the kind that broke Ilig in 630 is recorded.[3] In the Tang histories the Tang contribution is a general striking at the margin and a temple where heads were presented. Modern accounts give the Tang a larger part. They see the Tang court as the instigator: it sent an envoy, Sun Laonu, to the Uyghurs, Karluk and Basmïl with an offer to leave the Göktürks and join the Tang. Wang Zhongsi then did not fight Ozmish himself. He set the three tribes on him.[11]

The sources record a succession that went wrong twice over: a boy khan, a mother who meddled in the government and two armed uncles. They also record a khan whose own people would not follow him.[5] The war of restoration sixty years earlier had been won by a man with seven hundred followers, because the tribes came to him. This war was lost by a man with a state, because the tribes went away. The inscriptions of the dynasty’s best years had said exactly what would happen if lords and commons were not straight with one another.

The sequel belongs to the Uyghurs, who held the Orkhon for the next ninety-six years. It also belongs to the Basmïl, who had been khans for two years and were finished as a people.

After the fall

Members of the house went over to the Tang. Apusi, who had been Ozmish’s yabgu of the west, submitted in 742 and was made a prince.[12] In 752 he rose in revolt and raided the frontier.[13] Two years later he was captured and put to death at Chang’an.[14] In 756 the Ashina officer Ashina Chengqing rose in Yingchuan.[15] The Chinese records note Göktürk groups on the frontier again in 764, 837 and 847.[15] They also note Göktürk envoys at the courts of the Five Dynasties between 925 and 941.[16]

References

  1. ^ a b c Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194; Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 215
  2. ^ Taşağıl 2004, p. 55–56
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
  4. ^ Taşağıl 2004, p. 55
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 215
  6. ^ Taşağıl 2004, p. 57
  7. ^ Taşağıl 2004, p. 58
  8. ^ Taşağıl 2004, p. 59
  9. ^ Golden 1992
  10. ^ Mackerras 1972
  11. ^ Taşağıl 2004, p. 57–59
  12. ^ Taşağıl 2004, p. 58, 60
  13. ^ Taşağıl 2004, p. 60
  14. ^ Taşağıl 2004, p. 58, 60–61
  15. ^ a b Taşağıl 2004, p. 61
  16. ^ Taşağıl 2004, p. 61–62

Sources

Literature

  • Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
  • Colin Mackerras, The Uighur Empire According to the T'ang Dynastic Histories (1972)
  • Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
  • Ahmet Taşağıl, Gök-Türkler, Bd. III (2004)

Related

What links here2

Persons
Right Shad (d. 741)
Institutions and Titles
Shad

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Fall of the Second Khaganate, 741–744.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/conflicts/fall-of-the-second-khaganate/

Last revised: 8 November 2026