The Siege of Jiuquan (578)

In the winter of 578 Taspar Khan raided the frontier of the Northern Zhou again.^[1] He besieged Jiuquan, plundered widely and withdrew.^[1] The Zhou annals and the Zizhi tongjian set the siege in the eleventh month. They add that the Göktürks killed and carried off officials and people.^[2] The Bei Shi repeats the sentence of the Zhou Shu.^[3]

Background

This was Taspar’s second raid on the Zhou in 578.^[1] In the fourth month he had struck Youzhou, in the raid on Youzhou. The Zhou emperor Wu died before he could answer it.^[1] Taspar was then the protector of the Qi pretender Gao Shaoyi, whose court in exile stood among the Göktürks.^[1]

Jiuquan

Jiuquan lay on the western frontier of the Zhou. It was the home of the Sogdian An Nuopantuo. The Western Wei had sent him to the Göktürks in 545 as their first envoy.^[1] A modern translation places the old town north of the modern Jiuquan in Gansu.^[4] This raid is placed at Suzhou.^[5] The same translation gives Suzhou as the later name of the modern Jiuquan.^[6]

A second notice

The edict the Sui emperor issued against the Göktürks names Jiuquan once more. It says that Tardush had earlier attacked Jiuquan. Afterwards Khotan, Persia and the Hephthalites rose against the Göktürks at once.^[7] The Zizhi tongjian dates the edict to 583.^[8] The Zhou Shu names Taspar as the leader of the raid of 578, while the edict names Tardush.^[9] The edict does not say whether it means the siege of 578 or a later attack.^[7]

Aftermath

In the second month of 579 Taspar asked the Zhou for peace and a marriage. This led to the marriage of Princess Qianjin.^[10] He did not stop raiding. In the fifth month of 579 the Göktürks struck Bingzhou.^[10] The siege of Jiuquan was a raid and not a conquest. The Göktürks took what they could carry and left the town to the Zhou.