In the spring of 848 the Kirghiz minister Apa, whom the Tang histories write Abo, led an army against the Shiwei.[1] The army was said to number 70,000. It beat the Shiwei.[1] Apa took the Uyghurs who had sheltered among the Shiwei back north of the desert.[1] The Tang records tell of no later blow of the Kirghiz against the Uyghur remnant.[2]

The Uyghurs among the Shiwei

After the Uyghur khaganate fell in 840, thirteen clans of the khan’s camp raised Ögä as khan and went south to the Tang frontier.[3] After his defeat in 843 he was killed.[1] The Jiu Tang Shu has a Uyghur minister force the Uyghurs to kill him in the Altai. The Xin Tang Shu has the Black Carts kill him for a bribe. Both have his brother Ye’nian made khan.[1] Ye’nian gathered 5,000 of the remnant. They depended for food and sheep on Shuoshelang, a great chief of the Xi.[1]

In the first years of Dazhong the military governor of Youzhou, Zhang Zhongwu, beat the Xi. The Uyghurs then had nothing left to live on and dwindled day by day.[1] By the spring of the second year only the nominal kings and nobles remained, fewer than 500. They lived under the protection of the Shiwei.[2] The Shiwei were a Mongolic people of eastern Mongolia and western Manchuria.[4] Zhang Zhongwu sent the Shiwei envoys home from Youzhou with the order to send Ye’nian to him.[1] Ye’nian was afraid. That night he rode west with his wife, his son the tegin Dusi, and nine riders.[1] The rest could not follow. The Uyghur ministers and officials, old and young, wept aloud.[1] The seven Shiwei clans divided the Uyghurs among them, each taking a part.[1]

The attack

The Kirghiz were angry, says the Xin Tang Shu. Their minister Apa led 70,000 troops against the Shiwei and brought all the Uyghurs back north of the desert.[3] The Jiu Tang Shu tells it with more detail.[2] Three nights after the Shiwei divided the Uyghurs, Apa came to take Ye’nian and the Uyghurs. He came from the south-west, from the northern border of Tiande, with the troops of the various barbarian peoples, said to number 70,000.[2] He beat the Shiwei greatly. He took the Uyghurs who were among them back north of the desert.[2]

The Jiu Tang Shu dates the attack to the spring of the second year of Dazhong, which is 848.[2] One modern calculation arrives at March 848. It places the attack within days of the events of the summer of 847, which the Zizhi tongjian reports just before it.[5] The sources do not make the order of these events clear. The calculation bridges it with the word “apparently”.[5]

Aftermath

Some Uyghurs escaped Apa by hiding in the mountain forests. There they plundered other tribes to live.[2] They set their hearts on the west, on reaching Pang Tegin, who had styled himself khan and held cities west of the desert.[2] The Xin Tang Shu says that these few gradually went to him.[3] By another account they made their way west to Gansu, to the court that Pang Tegin had set up there.[5]

The Kirghiz khan who had destroyed the Uyghur khaganate had apparently died, killed by one of his officials, before 6 February 847. The news had not reached the Tang court.[6] The attack on the Shiwei may therefore show the policy of a new khan, who wished to sweep away the last embers that his predecessor had left.[6] The Tang court had sent its title to the Kirghiz in 847, after the embassies of 842 to 844. The Xin Tang Shu does not name the khan who received it.[3]

The Xin Tang Shu says of the Kirghiz that in the end they could not take the Uyghurs.[3] The sources show the Kirghiz taking groups of Uyghur refugees in successful raids. The remark may therefore refer to the large group that had fled to the south-east and was building a base in Gansu and the northern Tarim basin, or the Uyghur homeland in Mongolia itself.[7] Some of the Uyghurs whom Apa brought back may be those who later came to the Tang court with the Kirghiz envoy Li Jian in 856.[8] No Kirghiz foray beyond the homeland is known after 848.[9]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 195; Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 195
  3. ^ a b c d e Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
  4. ^ Golden 1992, p. 163
  5. ^ a b c Drompp 2005, p. 156
  6. ^ a b Drompp 2005, p. 158
  7. ^ Drompp 1999, p. 396–397
  8. ^ Drompp 1999, p. 396
  9. ^ Drompp 1999, p. 397

Sources

Literature

  • Michael R. Drompp, Tang China and the Collapse of the Uighur Empire: A Documentary History (2005)
  • Michael R. Drompp, Breaking the Orkhon Tradition: Kirghiz Adherence to the Yenisei Region after A.D. 840 (1999)
  • Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
  • V. V. Tishin, K datirovke enisejskoj runičeskoj nadpisi Begre (E 11) [К датировке енисейской рунической надписи Бегре (Е 11)] (2019)

Related

What links here2

Persons
Apa (Kirghiz Chancellor)
Peoples
Shiwei

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Kirghiz campaign against the Shiwei (848).” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/events/kirghiz-campaign-against-the-shiwei-848/

Last revised: 8 November 2026