Livestock Raids

Herds were the commonest booty of the steppe. The sources show raids for animals in three roles. A raid fed a hungry people, built a following around a new leader, and cut the horse supply of a state.

The Göktürks and the Sui

In the first years of the Sui, Ishbara Khan invaded the northern provinces with a force of 400,000 archers. His horsemen came through the passes of Mujia and Shimen, and in seven commanderies the livestock was gone.^[1] The commanderies were Wuwei, Tianshui, Anding, Jincheng, Shangjun, Honghua and Yan’an.^[1]

In 601 a Göktürk force under Ayusi crossed the Yellow River and drove off 6,000 of Yami Khan’s people and more than 200,000 head of mixed livestock.^[1] The Sui general Yang Su pursued them, won back the people and the animals and gave them to Yami.^[1]

Ilterish and the Nine Oguz

The Second Khaganate began with a raid for herds. After the defeat of the Göktürk pretender Funian, Ilterish, whom the Chinese call Gutuolu, gathered the scattered survivors in the Zongcai mountains. He had more than 5,000 men.^[2] He raided the Nine Oguz and took many sheep and horses. He grew strong and proclaimed himself khan.^[2] The Xin Tang Shu calls the same deed the theft of the Nine Oguz’s livestock and horses.^[3] The herds were the means by which a leader with 5,000 men became a khan.

Bilge Khan’s inscription

The Bilge Khan inscription names horse herds several times among the booty. At seventeen, Bilge says, he marched against the Tangut and took their sons, their women, their horse herds and all their possessions.^[4] A modern count of his ages puts the campaign in 700.^[5]^[6] In a later campaign against the Tatabı he took their horse herds and all their goods.^[7]

The third passage is damaged at its start. The Turk people were hungry, the inscription says, and Bilge took a herd of horses and fed them.^[8] The next sentence reports that when he was thirty-four the Oghuz fled to China, and he campaigned against them.^[8] The words “that herd” refer to a sentence that is lost, so the inscription does not say where the herd came from.

The Tang horse pastures

The Tang kept state herds of horses in the Longyou pastures in the north-west. In 700 Kapgan, whom the Chinese call Mochuo, carried off more than 10,000 horses from the Longyou studs.^[2] The Xin Tang Shu counts the horses at 10,000.^[3] It adds that in the following year he attacked Yan and Xia and took 100,000 sheep and horses.^[3] When Zhongzong came to the throne in 705, Kapgan took another 10,000 or more horses from the Longyou pastures.^[2] The Tang court answered with armies and with a reward for Kapgan’s head, but the raids on the studs went on.^[2]

In 721 Tonyukuk captured the people of the Basmil.^[2] Then he led his army out through the Chiting pass and plundered the sheep and horses of Liangzhou.^[2] A Tang force that came out against him was defeated.^[2]

The Uyghurs

In the eighth month of 842 the Uyghur khan Ögä led his people past the frontier beacon and into the Datong plain.^[9] His men drove off tens of thousands of cattle and horses of the mixed peoples under Tang rule and fought as far as the gate of Yunzhou.^[9] Earlier in the same year Ögä had asked the Tang court for grain, cattle and sheep, and the court had refused him cattle and sheep.^[9] The raid followed.

The figures

The figures are round: 10,000, 100,000, 200,000.^[10] They are the counts of the injured party, and the sources do not say how the animals were driven home or how many arrived.