The Han first came to the Tarim Basin as farmers. Soldiers and convicts tilled land at the oases, stored the grain and fed the envoys who passed.[1] The Xiongnu farmed at one of these places as well, and for a time both empires worked the same country.[2]
The first farms
After the campaign of Li Guangli against Dayuan, the Han raised posts from Dunhuang west to the Salt Marsh.[2] At Luntai and Quli several hundred field soldiers worked the land. A commissioner and a colonel commanded them. Their grain was meant for the envoys who travelled to foreign states.[2] The Shiji records the same arrangement. It names the place Luntou and says that envoys were set over the fields and that the grain was stored for the envoys sent abroad.[3]
The proposal of Sang Hongyang
After Li Guangli went over to the Xiongnu, the emperor regretted his distant wars. Sang Hongyang, the official in charge of grain, wrote to the throne together with the chancellor and the censor.[2] Jiezhi and Quli, east of Old Luntai, had been states of their own. The land was wide and rich in water and grass. There were more than five thousand qing of irrigable fields, the climate was mild, and the soil was good.[2] More canals could be opened and the five grains sown. They would ripen at the same time as in China.[2]
The neighbouring states, Sang Hongyang wrote, had few awls and knives. They prized gold and coloured silks. The Han could exchange these for grain.[2] He proposed to send field soldiers east of Old Luntai, to set three colonels over them and to open the canals. After a year the farms would hold stored grain. The government could then call strong men with families to settle there and to extend the irrigated land. Forts would follow, town by town to the west. They would overawe the western states and support the Wusun.[2] The emperor answered with an edict of regret for the past wars. The Han sent no more armies.[2]
His successor took up the plan. The state of Yumi had sent its crown prince Laidan as a hostage to Kucha. Li Guangli, returning from Dayuan, had rebuked Kucha for holding him and had brought him to the capital.[2] The court now made Laidan a colonel and sent him to farm at Luntai, which adjoined Quli.[2] A noble of Kucha told the king that Laidan had once been a subject of Kucha and now came wearing a Han seal and farming on the border. This, he said, would bring harm. The king killed Laidan and wrote an apology. The Han could not punish him.[2]
Quli and the contest for Cheshi
Cheshi was the next country to the east, and both empires wanted its fields. In the years of the emperor Zhao, the Xiongnu sent 4,000 horsemen to farm at Cheshi once more.[2] When the emperor Xuan came to the throne, five Han generals attacked the Xiongnu. The farmers at Cheshi fled in alarm, and Cheshi again opened to the Han.[2]
The Han then sent the palace attendant Zheng Ji and the colonel Sima Xi. They took convicts who had been freed from their sentences to farm at Quli and to store grain. The grain was meant for an attack on Cheshi.[2] In the autumn they gathered the harvest. They led more than ten thousand men from the walled states and 1,500 of their own field soldiers against Jiaohe, the Cheshi capital, and took it.[2] The Cheshi king still held a stone city to the north. The army’s food ran out, and Zheng Ji went back to farm at Quli. After the autumn harvest he attacked the stone city again, and the king fled to the Xiongnu.[2]
Zheng Ji then sent 300 men to farm at Cheshi on their own.[2] Defectors reported what the ministers of the chanyu were saying. Cheshi’s land was fertile and near to the Xiongnu. If the Han held it, they would farm much land and store much grain, and that would harm the Xiongnu country. They therefore had to contest it.[2] The Xiongnu sent cavalry against the farmers. Zheng Ji took all 1,500 field soldiers of Quli to Cheshi to farm there. The Xiongnu sent more horsemen, and the Han farmers withdrew into the town of Cheshi. The Xiongnu rode up to the wall and told Zheng Ji that the chanyu would contest this land and that no one could farm it.[2]
Zheng Ji wrote that Cheshi lay more than a thousand li from Quli, with rivers and mountains between, and that the soldiers at Quli could not help the men in Cheshi. He asked for more field soldiers. The ministers judged the road too long and the cost too great, and the farm at Cheshi was dropped.[2] The court sent the marquis of Changluo with cavalry from Zhangye and Jiuquan more than a thousand li north of Cheshi to make a show of force. The Xiongnu horsemen withdrew, and Zheng Ji went back to Quli.[2] The Han Shu counts three colonels then farming.[2]
The end of the contest
The king of Cheshi had fled to the Wusun, who refused to give him up. The Han called back the former crown prince Junsu, who lived in Yanqi, and made him king. It moved all the people of Cheshi to Quli and left the old Cheshi country to the Xiongnu.[2] The Cheshi king was then near the Han field officers and broke with the Xiongnu.[2] The Han later sent an envoy to the Wusun to demand the former king Wugui and brought him to the capital. That year was 62 BC, the fourth of Yuankang.[2] Afterwards the Han set up a Wuji colonel to farm the old Cheshi land. Under the emperor Yuan it filled the post again and had him farm at the court of the Former Cheshi king.[2]
When the Rizhu King went over to the Han in 60 BC, the farms were moved to Beixuqian and opened up the land of Yarkand. The colonel in charge of the farms came under the Protector-General for the first time.[2] The Protector sat at Wulei, near the field officers of Quli. The Han Shu calls the land fertile and central to the Western Regions.[2] The Xiongnu office over the oases had ended.[2]
Yixun and the road to the west
At Shanshan the new king asked the Han for a general to farm at Yixun and store grain, because the land there was fertile. He wished to lean on the weight of the Han. The Han sent one commander and forty officers and men to farm at Yixun. A commandant was installed there later.[2] The Han Shu adds a line on the country beyond. From Qiemo westwards all the oases planted the five grains, and their land, plants, herds and weapons were much like those of the Han.[2]
Purpose of the farms
The farms were government land worked by soldiers and, at Quli, by freed convicts.[2] Their purpose was to supply travellers, the garrison and campaigns. At Luntai and Quli they also gave the Han a base from which to watch the oasis states. The Xiongnu farms at Cheshi served the same purpose from the other side.
Chinese slips from a station of the Dunhuang frontier show what the supply at the other end of the road cost. They give six sheng of millet a day for each soldier of an escort.[4] The slips belong to about 95 BC by their neighbours.[4]
References
Sources
Literature
- Édouard Chavannes, Les documents chinois découverts par Aurel Stein dans les sables du Turkestan oriental (1913)
What links here6
- Institutions and Titles
- The Economy of the Steppe Empires · Tongpu Duwei
Cite this article
Yavuz, Emre-E. “Han Military Farms in the Western Regions.” Turkic Atlas, revised 7 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/institutions/han-military-farms/
Last revised: 7 November 2026
