In 585 Ishbara Khan was hard pressed by Tardush in the west and afraid of the Khitan in the east. He asked the Sui emperor for refuge.[1] The emperor let him bring his tribes across the desert to Baidao. He sent troops to protect him.[2] Ishbara made a treaty that took the desert as the frontier. He wrote to the emperor as his subject.[2] From that year Ishbara was a vassal of the Sui.

Background

The quarrel between Ishbara and Apa had become a war.[2] Apa fled to Tardush. Tardush sent him back east with nearly a hundred thousand horsemen.[2] The Tongdian says that from this time the Göktürks were divided into an eastern and a western part. They were two states that raided each other.[3] The Zizhi tongjian enters under 585 that Apa grew strong. His lands reached Dujin, the Ötüken mountains, in the east and passed beyond the Altai in the west. Kucha, the Tiele, Yiwu and the peoples of the Western Regions submitted to him.[4] He was called the khan of the Western Göktürks. The Sui sent an envoy to him as well.[4]

Ishbara’s army is put at thirty or forty thousand and Tardush’s at perhaps more than a hundred thousand.[5] In the same account, the western army marched on Ötüken in September 585. Ishbara had already fled to China.[6]

Refuge at Baidao

Ishbara sent envoys to report his danger. He asked leave to lead his tribes across the desert to the south and to lodge them within the plain of Baidao.[2] The emperor agreed. Guang, the prince of Jin, was ordered to support him with troops. He was to give him food and clothing, carriages, robes, drums and pipes.[2]

From Baidao Ishbara struck west at Apa.[2] The Sui Shu says he defeated and captured him.[2] The Zizhi tongjian says only that he defeated him, and the Tongdian only that he attacked him.[7] A modern translation notes that the Sui Shu later has Bagha take Apa alive in 587. It notes also that Chinese critics took the word “captured” here for an addition.[8] While Ishbara was away, the tribes of the Aba state fell on his camp. They carried off his wives and children.[2] Sui troops beat the Aba. They gave everything they took to Ishbara.[2]

Treaty and memorial

Ishbara was delighted. He made a treaty that took the desert as the frontier. He sent the emperor a memorial.[2] In it he called himself the emperor’s subject Shetu.[2] Since Heaven had set up the Göktürks, he wrote, more than fifty years had passed.[2] He wrote that they had controlled the desert and ruled as kings in their borderland. Their land was more than ten thousand li wide. They had treated China as an equal.[2] Lately the weather had been mild and the winds and clouds in order. He had thought that a great sage must have risen in China.[2] “Heaven has not two suns, and the earth has not two kings; the emperor of the great Sui is the true emperor.”[2] He bent the knee and would remain a vassal forever. He would send a son to the court as a hostage and fine horses every year.[2]

One thing he refused. He wrote that it was not yet possible to cut the lapels and loosen the braids, or to change their speech to the Chinese pitch-pipes, because the customs were old.[2] He sent the memorial with his seventh son, Kuhanzhen.[2] The Tongdian gives the memorial in shorter form. The Zizhi tongjian keeps only the sentences on the two suns and the true emperor.[9]

The emperor’s answer

The emperor issued an edict. It said that Ishbara had been the hero of the lands north of the desert for many years, and that among the barbarians none was greater.[2] It said that, though at peace before, they had been two states. Now they were ruler and subject and had become one body.[2] The emperor had the news announced at the altars and in the ancestral temple. He had it proclaimed throughout the empire.[2] From then on the edicts sent to Ishbara did not use his personal name, as a mark of distinction.[2]

Ishbara’s wife, the Zhou princess Qianjin, received the imperial surname Yang. She was entered in the register of the imperial house and was given the new title Princess Dayi.[2] The title may contain a barb. Dayi means Great Justice. A saying of the Zuo zhuan holds that great justice does not shrink from killing kin. The princess had been made the daughter of the man who destroyed her father’s house.[10] Kuhanzhen was given the rank of zhuguo and made duke of Anguo. He was feasted in the inner palace and presented to the empress.[2] The Zizhi tongjian has him reach Chang’an on the bingxu day of the eighth month of 585.[4] Ishbara was pleased. From then on his tribute came every season.[2]

Assessment

The submission was perhaps less a success of Chinese arms than a sign of the forces that were pulling the Göktürk state apart. It can also be seen as a preview of things to come.[11] It has also been called a choice. Ishbara offered himself to the Sui as a subordinate and received the protection of the emperor’s troops in return.[5] Another argument is that Ishbara took the court’s courtesies for the signs of a lasting peace. He did not see that they had been forced from it by years of war, when it could not yet destroy him.[10] The memorial counts as a written profession of loyalty, which the court prized. It is dated to 28 August 585, with the arrival of Kuhanzhen on 1 September.[12]

In the first month of 586 the Sui is said to have given the Göktürks its calendar. This was the sign that a people kept the emperor’s year.[10] In March 584 ten thousand men and women of the Suni tribe had gone over to the Sui. A second group followed three days later.[13] The receivers of the calendar may have been such a smaller group and not Ishbara’s people. The reasoning is that the notice names no leader.[14]

In 584 Ishbara had called himself the Son of Heaven born of Heaven. In 585 he called himself the emperor’s subject.

References

  1. ^ Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84; Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 176
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
  3. ^ Tongdian, juan 197
  4. ^ a b c Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 176
  5. ^ a b Yavuz 2025, p. 322
  6. ^ Yavuz 2025, p. 323
  7. ^ Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 176; Tongdian, juan 197
  8. ^ Mau-tsai 1958, Turkish edition, p. 76
  9. ^ Tongdian, juan 197; Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 176
  10. ^ a b c Ecsedy 1968, p. 167
  11. ^ Golden 1992, p. 132
  12. ^ Ecsedy 1968, p. 166,167
  13. ^ Ecsedy 1968, p. 164
  14. ^ Ecsedy 1968, p. 167,168

Sources

Literature

  • Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
  • Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
  • Liu Mau-tsai, Çin Kaynaklarına Göre Doğu Türkleri (1958, Turkish edition)
  • Ildikó Ecsedy, Trade-and-War Relations between the Turks and China in the Second Half of the Sixth Century (1968)

Related

What links here11

Persons
Kuhanzhen · Princess Qianjin
States
Sui
Conflicts
Hegemony Wars in Northern China
Battles & Events
Embassy of Yu Qingze (584) · Ishbara's Hunt (587)
Places
Baidao Plain
Institutions and Titles
Diplomacy of the Steppe Empires · Drums and Banners for the Khans · Envoys and Embassies · Post and Communication

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Submission of Ishbara (585).” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/events/submission-of-ishbara-585/

Last revised: 8 November 2026