Shiwei

The Shiwei were a group of peoples north of the Khitan. The Sui Shu calls them a kind of Khitan, the northern kind. It divides them into five parts that had no ruler over them all.^[1] The Göktürks put them under tudun. In the 840s the Shiwei took in the broken Uyghurs and divided them among seven of their clans.^[2] The Kirghiz minister Apa then beat them and took the Uyghurs north of the desert.^[3]

The Shiwei of the Wei Shu

The Wei Shu gives the Shiwei, which it writes 失韋, their own entry. Their country lay six thousand li from Luoyang, in a land the text calls damp. It was reached through the Khitan country and across a series of rivers.^[4] Their language was the same as that of the Kumo Xi, the Khitan and the Doumolou.^[4] They grew millet, wheat and panicum, ate pigs and fish, and kept cattle and horses but no sheep. They lived in settlements in summer and moved in search of water and grazing in winter.^[4] They shot horn bows with long arrows and dressed in white deerskin.^[4] A theft was paid back threefold, a killing with three hundred horses. The dead were laid in trees, and the mourning lasted three years.^[4] In the fourth month, the text says, they first sent envoys, Zhang Yandoufa and others. Missions followed until the end of the Wuding years.^[4] The annals of the Eastern Wei date the first mission to the fourth month of 544.^[5]

The five Shiwei of the Sui Shu

The Sui Shu names five divisions: the South, the North, the Bo, the Shenmodan and the Great Shiwei.^[1] The South Shiwei lived three thousand li north of the Khitan in a damp country, in twenty-five tribes. Each tribe had a chief whose native title the text writes 餘莫弗瞞咄. They rode in ox carts and lived in huts of rush mats, like the felt carts of the Göktürks.^[1] They had no sheep, few horses and many pigs and cattle. They had no iron of their own and got it from Koguryŏ.^[1] A man abducted his bride and sent oxen and horses afterwards. The tribes built one great shed together, and the dead were laid on it.^[1]

Eleven days’ march north of them the Northern Shiwei lived in nine tribes around Mount Tuhe, in the coldest country of all. Snow buried a horse. In winter they went into the mountains and lived in pits, and many cattle froze. They hunted deer, broke the ice to net fish, and “rode wood” over the snow.^[1] A thousand li farther north lived the Bo Shiwei, more numerous than the Northern Shiwei, in houses of birch bark. The Shenmodan lived four days south-west of them. They took their name from a river and lived in pits in winter.^[1] The Great Shiwei lay several thousand li to the north-west along a steep road. Their language was not understood, and their land was rich in sable and squirrel.^[1] Of all five, the Sui Shu says, only the Northern Shiwei sent envoys.^[1]

The Tongdian repeats the account and adds the nine divisions that the Tang knew: the Lingxi, Shanbei, Huangtou, Daruzhe, Xiaoruzhe, Nabei, Powo, Damo and Luotuo Shiwei. They lay three and a half to six thousand two hundred li north-east of Liucheng.^[6] Further missions to the Eastern Wei are recorded for 546, 548 and 549.^[5]

Under the Göktürks and the Uyghurs

The Sui Shu says that the Göktürks always had three tudun govern the Shiwei.^[1] The Tongdian says that Ishbara Khan once set the tudun Pan Die over them. The Sui Shu says the same of the Khitan.^[7] When Shibi Khan was at the height of his power, his rule reached from the Khitan and the Shiwei in the east to the Tuyuhun and Gaochang in the west.^[8] In 607 the Sui emperor sent word that he would march through the Göktürk lands. Qimin Khan then called together the chiefs of the Xi, the Shiwei and other peoples under him, some dozens of them.^[9] The Kül Tegin inscription does not name the Shiwei.^[10]

A Uyghur chief minister went with a thousand men to Zhenwu to escort a Tang princess, who was to marry the Uyghur khan. The Shiwei plundered him there, and he died in the fight.^[11] The Xin Tangshu names no year. The year 788 is taken from a modern account of the Uyghurs.^[12]

The Shiwei and the last Uyghurs

After the Tang took Taihe back from Ögä, the Uyghur khan fled north-east about 400 li and camped by the Hejie Shiwei.^[13] He gave his sister in marriage to the Shiwei and put himself in their care.^[13] A tegin named Kezhili went north-east to the Great Shiwei with two tribes.^[13] The Xin Tangshu gives the khan’s refuge as the Black Carts. The sources do not say how the two names stand to each other.^[11]

When Ögä’s successor E-nie fled west with nine riders, the Uyghurs who were left, some five hundred princes and great men, turned to the Shiwei. The Shiwei divided them into seven parts, one for each of seven Shiwei clans.^[3] The Kirghiz were angry. Their chancellor Apa came from the south-west with a reported 70,000 men. He beat the Shiwei and took the Uyghurs back north of the desert.^[3] The reference literature dates the march of the Kirghiz minister to March 848.^[14] Some scholars say that the Kirghiz attacked the Uyghurs who had reached the Shiwei and took some of them north.^[15]

Later, the Qidan guo zhi is said to open Abaoji’s march into Mongolia with a punitive expedition against the Shiwei and the Jurchen.^[16] The Khitan campaigns against the Shiwei and the Xi have been dated to 901.^[16]

Language and descent

The reference literature places the Shiwei north of the Khitan, in eastern Mongolia and Heilongjiang. It calls them semi-nomads who raised cattle, horses and pigs and, by custom, no sheep.^[17] It counts them as Mongolic, in the orbit of the Khitan.^[15] The Wei Shu gives their language as that of the Khitan and the Kumo Xi. The Tongdian gives the language of the South Shiwei as that of the Mohe.^[18]

Three identifications are open. The first identifies the Otuz Tatar, the Thirty Tatars of the Göktürk inscriptions, with the Shiwei, and the Toquz Tatar, the Nine Tatars, with the southern Shiwei.^[19] The Tatars article gives the evidence. The second identifies the Mengwu among the Shiwei, whom the Jiu Tangshu names in connection with events of the eighth century, with the Mongols, as a form of Monggol. A challenge to this identification links the name with Mangut.^[20] The third regards the names Xianbei and Shiwei as two dialect forms of one name, rendered Serbi or Sirvi, which no one has explained.^[21]

References

^ a b c d e f g h i j Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
^ Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84; Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 195
^ a b c Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 195; Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
^ a b c d e f Wei Shu, juan 100
^ a b Wei Shu, juan 12
^ Tongdian, juan 200
^ Tongdian, juan 200; Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
^ Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
^ Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 180
^ Kül Tegin inscription
^ a b Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
^ Mackerras 1972, p. 96
^ a b c Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 195
^ Drompp 2005, p. 156
^ a b Golden 1992, p. 163
^ a b Golden 1992, p. 183
^ Golden 1992, p. 184
^ Wei Shu, juan 100; Tongdian, juan 200
^ Golden 1992, p. 145
^ Golden 1992, p. 283
^ Golden 1992, p. 68

Sources

Wei Shu, juan 12, 100
Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
Tongdian, juan 200 (after Sui Shu and Zhou Shu)
Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194, 195
Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217 (after Jiu Tangshu)
Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 180 (after Wei Shu, Zhou Shu, Sui Shu and Bei Shi)
Kül Tegin inscription

Literature

Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
Michael R. Drompp, Tang China and the Collapse of the Uighur Empire: A Documentary History (2005)
Colin Mackerras, The Uighur Empire According to the T'ang Dynastic Histories (1972)