Bayirku

Rouran epoch Göktürk epoch Uyghur epoch Kirghiz epoch

Rouran First Göktürk Tang rule Second Göktürk Uyghur Kirghiz Huns Western Göktürk Türgesh Karluk Khazar

Rouran 400–554
First Göktürk 552–630
Tang rule 630–682
Second Göktürk 682–744
Uyghur 744–840
Kirghiz 840–924
Huns 370–469
Western Göktürk 552–659
Türgesh 699–766
Karluk 766–800
Khazar 650–969

The Bayirku were one of the Tiele peoples. The Chinese group the Tiele as the Nine Surnames, and the inscriptions group them as the Nine Oguz. The Bayirku lived north-east of the Orkhon country, toward the Tola. In the Kül Tegin inscription, Kül Tegin breaks their chief Ulug Irkin at Lake Türgi Yargun. Bilge Khan’s northward campaigns go “as far as the country of the Yir Bayırku”. Kül Tegin rides a white stallion of the Bayirku into the Kirghiz battle.^[1]

Their place in the history of the Second Khaganate is a single afternoon in 716.^[2] Kapgan beat them on the Tola. He rode home carelessly, and a Bayirku straggler named Xiezhilüe set upon him in a willow wood. Xiezhilüe beheaded him and carried the head, with a Tang envoy, to Chang’an.^[2] Under the Uyghurs the Bayirku were one of the tribes of the empire. On the north face of the Tariat stele, line 6 puts one man in charge of affairs of the Bayırku and the Tardush.^[3]

The killing of Kapgan, 716

The Bayirku ended the reign of the most feared khan of the Second Khaganate. The Chinese account of how they did it is four sentences long.

In 716 Kapgan campaigned north against the Bayirku of the Nine Surnames and fought them at the Tola river. The Bayirku were badly beaten.^[2] Taking his victory lightly, the khan went home without taking precautions.^[2] In a willow wood he met a Bayirku straggler named Xiezhilüe. Xiezhilüe burst out of the trees, struck him down and cut off his head.^[2] The man then joined the Tang envoy Hao Lingquan and carried the head to Chang’an.^[2]

A defeated people, a single scattered soldier and an unguarded road achieved what twenty-five years of Tang campaigning had not. What followed at once was the end of Kapgan’s line. Kül Tegin gathered his father’s old following. He killed Kapgan’s son, the lesser khan, and his brothers and closest men almost to the last. Then he set up his own elder brother as Bilge Khan.^[2]

Standing among the Nine

The Bayirku appear in the Chinese chapter as one of the Nine Surnames, the Nine Oguz of the inscriptions. They appear too as a people whom the khans of both the Göktürks and the Uyghurs had to hold down rather than rely on. Ilterish began by raiding the Nine Surnames for sheep and horses. That plunder made the band of five thousand into a power.^[2] Two years before he died, Kapgan fought them north of the desert. He routed them and drove their chief Abusi into Tang service.^[2]

The relation never became anything else between the raid of 682 and the willow wood of 716.

References

^ Kül Tegin inscription; Tekin 1968, p. 310, 352
^ a b c d e f g h i Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
^ Aydın 2013, p. 18

Sources

Kül Tegin inscription
Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 215 (after Jiu Tangshu)

Literature

Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
Liu Mau-tsai, Çin Kaynaklarına Göre Doğu Türkleri (1958, Turkish edition)
Talât Tekin, A Grammar of Orkhon Turkic (1968)
Erhan Aydın, Tariat Yazıtı’nın kuzey yüzünün 5. satırı üzerine yeni okuma ve anlamlandırma önerileri (2013)