Murong

Rouran epoch Göktürk epoch Uyghur epoch Kirghiz epoch

Rouran First Göktürk Tang rule Second Göktürk Uyghur Kirghiz Huns Western Göktürk Türgesh Karluk Khazar

Rouran 400–554
First Göktürk 552–630
Tang rule 630–682
Second Göktürk 682–744
Uyghur 744–840
Kirghiz 840–924
Huns 370–469
Western Göktürk 552–659
Türgesh 699–766
Karluk 766–800
Khazar 650–969

The Murong were one of the houses that emerged when Tanshihuai’s confederation broke apart. Of all these houses, they rose fastest and furthest. In the fourth century they took the Liao country, destroyed Buyeo and sacked the capital of Goguryeo. They also ruled northern China as a succession of states called Yan. A branch of the same house went west and became the Tuyuhun of the Koko Nor.

The Wei Shu account

The chapter that records the Murong is not their own. The Wei Shu treats them from the side of their enemies the Yuwen. What it gives is a run of defeats that Murong Hui and his sons inflicted on the Yuwen.^[1] The Yuwen chief sent his brother Quyun against Murong Hui, and Hui beat him. The chief then sent a separate division under Suyan against Hui at Jicheng, and Hui beat that too.^[1] A later Yuwen chief, Xunniyan, marched on Jicheng himself. He decided to take Hui’s son Han first, because Han was reckoned the dangerous one. Han heard of it. He sent a man disguised as an envoy of the Duan to tell Xunniyan that Han had long been a nuisance and should indeed be dealt with, and to come quickly. Then he laid an ambush on the road. Xunniyan believed the message and marched hard and unguarded into the ambush, where he was caught. Han sent word to his father. Hui came up at dawn with everything he had. Xunniyan’s men broke and their camp was fired. Xunniyan galloped back on a single horse, and Han took the whole host prisoner.^[1]

That is a neighbour’s chapter. It shows that by the early fourth century the Murong were the strongest house on the Liao frontier, and that they won by intelligence work as much as by cavalry.

The Jin Shu

The Jin Shu treats the Murong in detail: the Yan states, the campaign that destroyed Buyeo, the sack of the Goguryeo capital in 342, and the long rule in northern China.^[2] This summary of the events follows the modern scholarship on the Jin Shu.^[2] In the Göktürk chapters, by contrast, the Murong are only a name in a genealogy. The Wei Shu sees them from the Yuwen side rather than from their own.

Three threads into the khaganates

Three threads run from the Murong into the history of the khaganates.

The first thread is the title. The word khagan is first recorded among Xianbei groups in the third century. The Tuyuhun ruler bears it in the early fourth century. That is a century and a half before the Rouran founder took it, and two centuries before Bumin.^[3]

This early dating is disputed. The Song Shu tells how a messenger of Murong Hui addressed Tuyuhun, Hui’s elder brother, as khan when he asked him to turn back from his journey west.^[4]^[5] Some scholars take this for a tale of the Song period, which gave the founder of the Tuyuhun the highest title of its own time.^[6] The Jin Shu names Murong Hui, who lived from 269 to 333, Great Chanyu of the Xianbei from 307.^[7]^[8] It gives the same title to his son Huang in 334, and it never calls either of them khan.^[7]^[9] In their view, the title appears among the Tuyuhun only with Shulohan, to whom the Jin Shu gives the name Moyin Khan, and whose accession the Song Shu places at the start of the Yixi period, in 405.^[7]^[10]^[11] The Beishi names Kualü, whose reign began after 525, as the first Tuyuhun ruler to call himself khan.^[12]^[13]

The second thread is Korea. The Murong campaigns ended Buyeo as a power. They are also the reason Goguryeo spent the middle of the fourth century rebuilding. The eastern neighbour that the Göktürks later found on their flank had been shaped by a Xianbei house.

The third thread is a pattern. A steppe house took a Chinese frontier province, ruled it with Chinese offices and a Chinese dynastic name, and was absorbed. The Tuoba did the same thing more completely as the Northern Wei. The courts the Ashina dealt with in 552 were its successors.