The Chinese face of the Karabalghasun stele tells of a Uyghur prince who killed a Kirghiz khan.[1] The prince later became khan. The Chinese call him Huaixin.[2] The stele is the only account of this clash. It is undated.[3]

The stele

The stele stood in the Uyghur capital on the Orkhon. The Chinese face is the part that can be read.[4] It credits the realm of the Kirghiz, which it writes Jiankun, with more than 400,000 bowmen.[3] The Tang annals count 80,000 men fit to bear arms.[5] The stele then says that the Uyghur khan was wise and brave. He shot once and hit. The khan of Jiankun fell to the shot.[3] Cows, horses, bread and weapons were piled up like a mountain.[3] The affairs of the Kirghiz realm came to an end. No living man was left on the ground.[3]

A new edition of the stele, published in 2019, reads the passage with more of its words.[1] It says that the Kirghiz khan was struck by the Heavenly Khan and gave up his life.[6] The cattle and horses that were taken filled a valley. The weapons and armour made a mountain.[6] The lines before it tell of the same man when he was chief minister. He was born with unusual omens. He planned strategy in his camp. He won battles a thousand li away.[7]

The prince

On the new interpretation the Heavenly Khan of the stele is the seventh khan of the Uyghurs, Huaixin. The exploit belongs to the years before he took the throne.[8] Huaixin became khan in 795.[9] The identity of the Heavenly Khan is itself in question. The stele is dated only to the early decades of the ninth century.[4]

The date

An older interpretation assigns the stele to the reign of the khan who ruled from 808 to 821. It understands the passage as a war of that reign, in which the Kirghiz state was shattered and ceased to exist.[10] Set beside the twenty years of war that the Xin Tang Shu counts before 840, that interpretation leaves little room for a complete Uyghur victory.[5] On the new interpretation the clash lies before 795, in the generation after the Uyghurs had subdued the Kirghiz in 758.[8] The clash may also have been the Uyghur answer to a Kirghiz refusal after 795. At that time the throne passed from one Uyghur clan to another, and the Uyghurs had to assert their rule over the Kirghiz again.[11][11] The three interpretations give the clash a different place in the history of the Kirghiz. The stele does not settle it.

Place in the war

The Chinese text of the stele calls the defeated Kirghiz ruler a khan, as the Old Turkic inscriptions of the eighth century call the Kirghiz ruler.[12] A modern account of the fall of the Uyghur khaganate suggests that the defeat may lie at the root of the Kirghiz anger of 840.[6] The Tang histories do not mention it.[5]

References

  1. ^ a b Özbay 2024, p. 189–190
  2. ^ Özbay 2024, p. 188–189
  3. ^ a b c d e Radloff 1894–1895, parts 1–3, p. 289
  4. ^ a b Karabalghasun inscription
  5. ^ a b c Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
  6. ^ a b c Özbay 2024, p. 190
  7. ^ Özbay 2024, p. 189
  8. ^ a b Özbay 2024, p. 188–190
  9. ^ Özbay 2024, p. 188
  10. ^ Barthold 1927, p. 15
  11. ^ a b Drompp 2002, p. 482
  12. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 37

Sources

Literature

  • Wilhelm Radloff, Die alttürkischen Inschriften der Mongolei (1894–1895, parts 1–3)
  • Betül Özbay, Uygur Bozkır İmparatorluğunun Çöküşüne Manihaizm mi Sebep Oldu? (2024)
  • V. V. Barthold, Kirgizy: istoričeskij očerk [Киргизы: исторический очерк] (1927)
  • Michael R. Drompp, Tang China and the Collapse of the Uighur Empire: A Documentary History (2005)
  • Michael R. Drompp, The Yenisei Kyrgyz from Early Times to the Mongol Conquest (2002)

Related

What links here1

Conflicts
Uyghur–Kirghiz War

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Huaixin's campaign against the Kirghiz.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/events/huaixin-campaign-against-the-kirghiz/

Last revised: 8 November 2026