Empires in Motion

209–200 BC Modu unites the steppe

In 209 BC Modu killed his father Duman and became chanyu. Between the Xiongnu and the Donghu lay an empty strip more than a thousand li wide. When the Donghu demanded it, Modu struck east and destroyed their king. The Wuhuan held out at the Wuhuan mountain and paid the Xiongnu a yearly tribute of oxen, horses and sheepskins; the Xianbei withdrew far beyond the Liaodong frontier. Modu drove back the Yuezhi, took back the land Meng Tian had seized as far as Chaona and Fushi, and subjected the Hunyu, Qushe, Dingling, Gekun and Xinli in the north. In 200 BC he surrounded the Han emperor Gaozu for seven days on the hill of Baideng near Pingcheng.

176–c. 160 BC The height of the realm

In 176 BC Modu wrote to the Han court that the Wise King of the Right had destroyed the Yuezhi, and that Loulan, the Wusun, the Hujie and twenty-six states around them had all become Xiongnu: all the peoples who draw the bow were now one family. His son Laoshang killed the Yuezhi king and made a drinking cup of his skull. The Yuezhi left the Hexi and moved west into the land of the Saka. The Han Shu names a Xiongnu Commandant of Slaves who resided between Karashahr, Weixu and Weili and taxed the oasis states. In 162 BC the emperor Wendi confirmed the Long Wall as the line between the two realms. No source describes the northern edge of the realm in Tuva and beyond the Baikal.

127–121 BC The Han take the Ordos and the Hexi

In 127 BC the Han general Wei Qing drove the kings of the Loufan and the Baiyang out of the Ordos. Han founded Shuofang there and restored Meng Tian's wall along the river; in exchange it gave up the district of Zaoyang beyond Shanggu. In 123 BC the chanyu withdrew north across the Gobi on the advice of the defector Zhao Xin. In the spring and summer of 121 BC Huo Qubing struck into the Hexi corridor, and in the autumn the Hunye king killed the Xiutu king and went over to Han with more than forty thousand people. From then on, says the Shiji, the land from Jincheng and the Hexi west along the Southern Mountains to the Salt Marsh was empty of Xiongnu. By this time the Wusun held the land of the Saka, and the Yuezhi had moved on to the north bank of the Oxus.

119–c. 100 BC North of the Gobi

In 119 BC Wei Qing and Huo Qubing crossed the Gobi with separate armies. Huo Qubing marched more than two thousand li beyond Dai, sacrificed on Mount Langjuxu and turned back at the Hanhai. Afterwards, says the Shiji, there was no royal court south of the Gobi. Han settled soldiers and farmers from Shuofang west to Lingju and set up the commanderies of the Hexi, from Wuwei to Dunhuang; the Wuhuan were moved beyond the frontier of five eastern commanderies to watch the Xiongnu for Han. By 105 BC the chanyu had moved further north-west, his left wing facing Yunzhong and his right Jiuquan and Dunhuang. The southern edge of the realm ran somewhere in the Gobi.

60–51 BC The Western Regions lost, the realm divided

In 71 BC the Dingling struck the Xiongnu from the north, the Wuhuan from the east and the Wusun from the west, and the peoples bound to them fell away. In 60 BC the Rizhu king went over to Han. The Xiongnu Commandant of Slaves was abolished, and Zheng Ji became the first Protector-General of the Western Regions, with his seat at Wulei. In 57 BC five chanyus contended for the throne. In 54 BC Zhizhi took the royal court, and his younger brother Huhanye moved south to the Han frontier. In 51 BC Huhanye came before the emperor at Ganquan and was allowed to live below the Guanglu wall.

49–33 BC Zhizhi in the west, Huhanye in the north

Believing that Huhanye, weak and bound to Han, could not come back north, Zhizhi led his people west. He defeated the Wusun, received the surrender of the Wujie in the north, broke the Jiankun in the west and brought the Dingling under him, and made his seat in the land of the Jiankun. Around 44 BC he killed a Han envoy and went on to Kangju; of his people only three thousand arrived. In 36 BC the Protector-General Gan Yanshou and his deputy Chen Tang marched on Kangju and killed him. Huhanye meanwhile returned to the royal court in the north, and in 33 BC he received the palace lady Wang Zhaojun as his wife. From then on the land north of the Long Wall belonged to the Xiongnu again.

AD 48–50 Northern and Southern Xiongnu

Under Wang Mang the states of the Western Regions went over to the Xiongnu. In AD 48 the chiefs of eight southern tribes raised Bi, the Rizhu king, as chanyu under the name Huhanye; he came to the Wuyuan frontier and offered to shield Han against the northern Xiongnu for ever. The next year the northern chanyu fell back a thousand li. In AD 50 the southern court moved inside the frontier, first to Yunzhong and in the winter to Meiji in Xihe, and its chiefs were stationed along the frontier commanderies from Beidi to Dai. Beyond the Liaodong frontier the Xianbei sent their first envoys to Han in AD 49.

AD 87–93 The end of the Northern Xiongnu

In AD 87 the Xianbei entered the eastern lands of the Northern Xiongnu and killed the chanyu Youliu; fifty-eight tribes, two hundred thousand people, came to the frontier to surrender. In 89 Dou Xian marched out with the southern chanyu, defeated the northern chanyu at Mount Jiluo and had an inscription cut on Mount Yanran, more than three thousand li beyond the frontier. A rock inscription in the Gobi of central Mongolia is identified with this text; it lies much closer to the frontier than the figure of the source. In 91 Geng Kui defeated the northern chanyu at the Jinwei mountains, and the chanyu fled to the land of the Wusun. The Xianbei moved into the empty land, and more than a hundred thousand Xiongnu tents that stayed behind called themselves Xianbei.

c. AD 155–180 The Xianbei in the old Xiongnu land

The Xianbei leader Tanshihuai set his court on the Chuochou river below Mount Tanhan, more than three hundred li north of Gaoliu. According to the Hou Han Shu he raided the Han frontier in the south, held off the Dingling in the north, drove back the Fuyu in the east and struck the Wusun in the west, and held all the old Xiongnu land, fourteen thousand li from east to west. He divided it into an eastern, a central and a western part; the western reached Dunhuang and the Wusun. The Southern Xiongnu remained inside the Han frontier. One reckoning puts the last defeat of the Northern Xiongnu by the Xianbei in 155, a second puts their move west around 158; the hatched area north of Kangju shows where the second places them.

429 Taiwu crosses the Gobi

The Northern Wei emperor Taiwu leaves Pingcheng, crosses the Gobi and scatters the Rouran of Datan at the Li river; his armies sweep five thousand li from east to west. The route is drawn after the Wei Shu; the rivers it names are not located with certainty.

460 The Tölös subjected

In the west the Rouran subject the Tölös, that is the Tiele. That their reach then extended to Lake Balkhash and the Seven Rivers is the extent the modern literature gives; the sources do not state it. The Ashina, five hundred families, settle on the southern slope of the Altai as the smiths of the Rouran.

487 The Gaoche break away

More than a hundred thousand Gaoche tents under Afuzhiluo leave the khaganate and found a kingdom of their own north-west of Gaochang. The Rouran khan Tulun pursues them, is beaten again and again, and leads his people east.

525 Anagui fights for the Wei

In 520 Anagui has brought the Tiele under Rouran rule again; after the Chinese histories their lands reach as far as the Caspian and the Alans. In 523, in a year of hunger, Anagui raids the Six Garrisons on the Wei frontier. In 525, after the garrisons have risen themselves, he leads a hundred thousand men from Wuchuan west towards Woye against the rebels, on the Wei's behalf.

545 The Rouran at their height

The Rouran rule the eastern and central steppe; the Ashina in the Altai and the Tiele of Dzungaria are their subjects, and the Tiele range, after the Chinese histories, as far as the Caspian. The frontier drawn here, from the Khingan to the Seven Rivers and from Lake Baikal to the frontier of the Wei, is the extent the modern literature gives.

546 Bumin defeats the Tiele

In 546 the Tiele of Dzungaria move against the Rouran. Bumin, chief of the Ashina, intercepts them on the march and defeats them, and more than fifty thousand Tiele tents submit to him. The Ashina are still subjects of the Rouran, but now a power of their own.

552 Bumin destroys the Rouran

Early in 552 a Rouran army is beaten in Dzungaria and a second destroyed north of Huaihuang; Anagui dies. The Göktürks take the steppe, and a Rouran remnant holds out in the east. The extent of the new khaganate follows the modern estimate.

553–555 The last Rouran; Istemi marches west

Issik breaks the Rouran of Dengshuzi at Mount Mulai north of Woye, and the remnant in the Northern Qi is destroyed by its hosts in 554. In the west Istemi marches from 553 and, by one reckoning, reaches the Seven Rivers by 555.

c. 560 The Hephthalites destroyed

Istemi destroys the Hephthalites and takes the trade of Sogdiana. One reading has him act with the Persian king Khosrow I and divide their lands along the Oxus, in 557 or 560. The route drawn follows one modern reconstruction: the Göktürks take Chach, cross the Chirchik and win after eight days in the hills at Nasaf; a second reading has the decisive fight at Bukhara itself. Khosrow comes up from the south as far as Balkh. In the east Mukan takes the Kirghiz on the Yenisei and the Khitan.

568–569 Embassies to Constantinople

Persia shuts its markets to the Sogdian silk. Istemi sends the Sogdian Maniakh to Constantinople, and the Roman envoy Zemarchos reaches him in 569 at a mountain called Ektag. Where Ektag lay is disputed: the Altai and the Tian Shan are both proposed.

576 Bosporos

In the year of Istemi's death a Göktürk army takes Bosporos in the Crimea, the western limit of the expansion into Europe. That the western wing then reached the Volga and the northern Caucasus is inferred.

581–584 The realm divides

Taspar dies in 581 with the khaganate at what is inferred to be its greatest extent. The succession divides the house, and Ishbara, Apa and Tardush go to war while the Sui take sides. The line between the eastern and the western wing is reconstructed as running from the Altai through Dzungaria to the Dzungarian Gate.

583 The campaign against the Sui

Ishbara invades China with Apa, Tardush and Bagha beside him. A rising of the Tiele draws Tardush off, and a Sui surprise attack near Baidao breaks the Göktürk army. Ishbara then raids Apa's camp and kills his mother, and Apa flees west to Tardush.

584 Three powers

Apa, with Tardush behind him, holds a coalition from the Kyrgyz to Kucha and Hami. Ishbara keeps the east around Ötüken, with Amrak on the Tola as second khan. Tardush's western dominions reach from the Black Sea to Suyab.

585 Ishbara turns to the Sui

Pressed by Tardush, Ishbara declares himself a vassal of the Sui. In September the western army marches on Ötüken, and Apa's power reaches it; Ishbara has withdrawn south to Baidao under Sui protection. Later in the year he strikes back at Apa.

587 Apa taken alive

Ishbara dies, and by his will his brother Bagha succeeds him. Bagha marches west under drums and banners sent by the Sui emperor; Apa's men take them for a Sui army and come over, and Apa is taken alive. In the west Apa's people raise Niri as their khan.

588 Tulan, and the war with Persia

Bagha falls to a stray arrow on a second campaign in the west, and Ishbara's son Yongyulü succeeds him as Tulan Khan. In the same year a Göktürk army crosses the Oxus, takes Balkh and Herat, and is destroyed by Bahram Chobin. The division of the khaganate is complete.

c. 603 Two khaganates

Tulan is killed by his own followers in 599. About 603, facing a revolt of the Tiele and other tribes, Tardush flees to the Tuyuhun and disappears. Yami, a Sui client since 597, marches into Ötüken with Göktürk and Chinese troops, and the realm stays divided into an eastern and a western khaganate.

588–589 Bahram Chobin against Šāba

Hormizd sent against Šāba a man of Rayy, Bahram son of Bahram-Gushnasp, called Chobin, with twelve thousand men he had chosen himself. In Tabari he marched fast until he was past Herat and Badghis, and Šāba noticed nothing until the Persians had built a fortified camp close to his own. After negotiations and fighting Bahram killed Šāba with an arrow. In Thaʿālibī, Šāba-Šāh sends his brother Faghfūra to offer Bahram a safe return or high office; Bahram answers that he has come for Šāba-Šāh's head, and Faghfūra is found among the dead. One reading sets the decisive battle in April 588 at the Hyrcanian rock, where Bahram beat the Göktürks under Bagha, pursued them to the Oxus and, reportedly, killed Bagha there with an arrow; a second places the defeat at Herat in 589. Tabari's march is drawn to the place he gives; the pursuit of the first reading is dotted, and where it reached the river is not recorded.

589 Beyond the Oxus: Parmūdha and the treasure

Šāba's son Parmūdha, “who was his father's equal”, came up next. Bahram beat him, shut him up in one of his fortresses and pressed him until he surrendered. In Thaʿālibī, Bahram crosses the Oxus, routs Barmūdha in a night attack and besieges him in Paikent, near Bukhara, until he gives himself up on Hormizd's guarantee of his life. Bahram sent the prisoner to the king with the treasure of the fortress, by Tabari's account two hundred and fifty thousand camel loads; Thaʿālibī counts among it the crown, belt and earrings of Siyāwush. One reading has Bahram retake Herat in 589 and reach the country around Bukhara. Sebeos tells the campaign as the conquest of Balkh and of the land of the Kushans to the far side of the Oxus, where Bahram killed the great king of the Mazkʿutʿkʿ. The stations are those Thaʿālibī and Sebeos name; the way between them is drawn, and so is the road to the capital at Ctesiphon.

589 The break with Hormizd

Theophylact sends Bahram from the war against the Göktürks to the Caucasus. In the eighth year of Maurice he ravaged Suania, sent its booty to Babylonia and moved camp to the Araxes. The Roman general Romanus came from Lazica into Albania; Bahram drew back towards Ganzak, crossed the river again and was beaten in the plain of Albania. Hormizd dismissed him and sent him women's clothes as the prize of his disgrace. One reading holds that the Mazkʿutʿkʿ whom Sebeos puts beyond the Oxus belong to this campaign. The Persian and Arabic accounts know nothing of a Roman defeat. In them the quarrel is over the booty: in Sebeos the army killed the guards whom Hormizd sent for the whole treasure and made Bahram its king, and in Thaʿālibī the king sends him cotton, a spindle and women's clothes. Theophylact names Suania, the Araxes and Albania; the way between them is drawn.

590 Bahram takes Ctesiphon; Khosrow II flees

In Thaʿālibī, Bahram made peace with the khagan, Barmūdha's son, gave him back his country and raised the revolt in Khorasan. The rebels declared Hormizd deposed and marched on Ctesiphon, in the Persian and Arabic accounts from Khorasan. In Theophylact they wait at the crossing of the Zab, and the army sent against them goes over to Bahram. In the capital the nobles deposed Hormizd and blinded him, and his son Khosrow II took the throne; Hormizd was killed soon after. Bahram came on fast. After a meeting on the Nahrawan and a night attack, Khosrow fled across the Tigris. Theophylact takes him through the desert and along the Euphrates past Anatha to Circesium, and on to the Roman general at Hierapolis; Sebeos has him stop at a city he calls Khaab, read as Aleppo, and Tabari has him write to the emperor Maurice from Antioch. Bahram took the palace and at the great festival put on the royal diadem. The stations are those Theophylact names; the way between them is drawn.

591 The battle of 591

Maurice sent Khosrow back with a Roman army. It set out from Dara, crossed the Tigris and the Zab, and joined a second Roman army that came from Armenia. Bahram marched from Ctesiphon into Atropatene. Theophylact puts the battle near Ganzak, on the river Blarathos, with more than sixty thousand men on Khosrow's side and forty thousand on Bahram's; Tabari and Sebeos also place the fighting in Atropatene. Bahram's army broke, and he escaped. Among the prisoners were men “of the Turkish race” with a cross tattooed on their foreheads, and Khosrow sent them to Maurice. The stations are those Theophylact names; the way between them is drawn, and so is the meeting of the two Roman armies south of Lake Urmia.

from 591 Bahram's flight and death

Tabari has Bahram escape to Khorasan and go on to the Göktürks, whose king received him with high honour. In Thaʿālibī he halts at Nishapur and crosses into Transoxiana to the khagan, Barmūdha's son, who meets him as an equal and refuses to give him up. Khosrow sent an envoy with a precious jewel who won over the khatun, the khagan's wife, and she had Bahram killed; in Thaʿālibī a man of the court stabbed him with a dagger dipped in poison. Sebeos has Bahram flee to Balkh and be put to death there by its people on Khosrow's order. One reading makes him a respected general at Suyab who uncovered a conspiracy within the Ashina before a Persian agent poisoned him. The flight is drawn through the stations Thaʿālibī names; the way on to Suyab follows that reading and is dotted.

606 or 614 The host of the great khagan

Khosrow II sent the Armenian Smbat Bagratuni east against the Kushans. Smbat called up his old troops from Hyrcania, beat the Kushan raiders and camped at Apr Shahr near Nishapur, in the province of Tus, with three hundred men in the walled village of Khrokht. The kings of the Kushans called on the great khagan, king of the regions of the north. A host of three hundred thousand, thirty thousand in an older translation, crossed the Oxus. It surrounded Khrokht, from which Smbat broke out, and routed the Persian relief force under Datoyean; its raids reached the borders of Rayy and of the province of Isfahan. Then an order of the great khagan reached its commander, the Chembukh, and the host recrossed the river and went home. Sebeos gives no year. One reading dates the war to 606 and 607 and has the western yabgu Shegui withdraw the army; a second places it in 614 and 615, counting back from Smbat's death in the twenty-eighth year of Khosrow II; a third dates it to 597 and 598. Khrokht is not located; the routes between the named places are drawn.

607 or 615 Smbat's counter-campaign

Khosrow's inquiry blamed Datoyean, who was put to death, and cleared Smbat. With fresh troops Smbat marched against the Kushans and the Hephthalite king. The Kushan king challenged him to single combat between the lines, and Smbat's lance split his armour and killed him. Smbat's horsemen pursued the fleeing army as far as Balkh, the capital of the Kushans, and plundered Herat, Badghis, Tokharistan and Talaqan. He came back with great booty and camped in the province of Merv. In the reading that dates the war to 606 and 607, the Hephthalites he beat near Balkh were still vassals of the Göktürks; in the second the campaign falls in 615. Sebeos names Balkh and Merv; the way between them is drawn.

626–627 Šat's raid

Soon after the treaty a first raid fell on Albania at Heraclius's command. Khosrow asked the raiders at whose command they had entered his country and offered them twice what the emperor could give. For that year they went home through the same gates. Then the king of the north sent the promised army under his nephew, called Šat after his princely rank. Šat raided Albania and part of Atrpatakan and camped on the Araxes. From there the raiders demanded that Khosrow give back the Roman lands, the prisoners and the wood of the Cross. Khosrow answered that their houses had long been allied through sons and daughters, and called the emperor a slave of his. The Armenian History of the Albanians dates Šat's raid to the beginning of Khosrow's thirty-seventh year; one reckoning reads this as the summer of 626, a second as the summer of 627.

627 Before Tiflis

Jebu Xak'an came himself with his son. The wall that the Persian kings had built between the Caucasus and the Caspian fell at the very outset, and the defenders of Partaw fled to the mountains of Arcax. The northern army then swept over Georgia and laid siege to Tiflis. Theophanes has Ziebel break through the Caspian gates into Adraigan and the emperor set out from Lazica to join him; the Georgian chronicle brings Heraclius by way of Atsqur in Upper Kartli. Before the town Ziebel kissed the emperor's neck while the Persians looked on, and Nikephoros has Heraclius set his own crown on the chieftain's head. Sahraplakan brought a thousand horsemen of the palace guard to relieve the city. The besiegers wore themselves out, and Heraclius sent his ally home for the summer. The townspeople hung a pumpkin drawn as Jebu Xak'an on the wall and drove a spear into it. One reckoning puts the meeting in 626, a second in 627, a third in 628.

Sept. 627 The march to Nineveh

Ziebel picked forty thousand men for the emperor and went back to his own land. From September Heraclius marched south with them. Sebeos traces the way through Shirak, across the Araxes at Vardanakert and through Gogovit and Her and Zarewand into Atrpatakan. The winter and the constant Persian attacks wore the northern allies down, Theophanes says, and they slipped away little by little until all had gone home. On 9 October the Roman army rested for a week in the land of Chamaetha, while the Persian general Razates reached Ganzak behind it. On 1 December Heraclius crossed the Great Zab and camped near Nineveh. On 12 December the armies met there, and Razates fell with nearly all his officers.

627–628 Dastagerd and Ctesiphon

After the battle Heraclius crossed the Great Zab. His officer George seized the four bridges of the Lesser Zab by night, and on 23 December the army crossed them and kept Christmas in the mansions of Iesdem. The emperor destroyed the palaces of Dezeridan and Rousa, crossed the bridge of the Tornas and spent New Year's Day in the palace of Beklal. Khosrow fled from Dastagerd to Ctesiphon and crossed the Tigris. Heraclius kept the Epiphany at Dastagerd and pulled down its palaces. On 7 January he marched on and camped twelve miles from the river Narbas, which lay twelve miles from Ctesiphon; its bridges were cut, and it had no ford. Sebeos has him camp outside Ctesiphon and burn the royal palaces around the city.

628 The return to Atrpatakan

From there Heraclius went on to Siazouros and through February burnt the villages and towns of the district. In March he spent seven days at the village of Barzan. There, Theophanes says, a Persian officer came over to him with word that Khosrow's eldest son was ready to rise against his father. Khosrow was deposed by that son, Kavadh, whom Theophanes calls Siroes, and put to death in February 628. The new king made peace with the emperor. Sebeos brings Heraclius back to Atrpatakan. The way from Barzan to Ganzak is drawn after a lost dispatch of the emperor, sent from the camp near Ganzak on 15 March.

628–629 The fall of Tiflis

In the Armenian History of the Albanians the storm from the north came down a second time. Jebu Xak'an returned with his son Šat and laid siege to Tiflis, which no longer had brave defenders. After two months his men climbed on one another, topped the wall and killed all they found. The Persian governor and a Georgian prince were blinded for having drawn the king as a blind man, then strangled and flayed. Jebu Xak'an went home with the treasure and sent Šat with the army to the land of the Albanians. The Georgian chronicle tells it differently: Heraclius took the town after its prince Stephanos fell in a sortie, and his officer Jibghu took the citadel while the emperor marched on by way of Gardaban. One reckoning puts the fall in the spring of 629, a second soon after the accession of Kavadh in 628.

629–630 Šat in Albania

Šat's bands fell on every canton of Albania on the same day. The catholicos of Albania, hunted through the mountains of Arcax, came at last with the nobles and their gifts to Šat's camp north of Partaw. There Šat swore by the life of his father Jebu Xak'an that the raiding would stop. His father, he said, had received the three kingdoms of the Albanians, the Lpʿinkʿ and Čoł as his royal patrimony for ever. In the second year of the Persian king Artashir the prince of the north taxed the craftsmen, the merchants and the fishers of the Kur and the Araxes after the Persian cadastre. He sent Čorpan Tarxan ahead into Armenia with about three thousand men, and a Persian army of ten thousand was destroyed on the shore of Lake Sevan. The northern army halted in the passes of Armenia, Georgia and Albania. There a message came from Jebu Xak'an to Šat: “Brigands have fallen upon me, and you shall never see my face again.”

c. 687 Ötüken

Tonyukuk led the host across the Kök Öng toward the Ötüken forest and beat the Oguz on the Tola, two thousand against three thousand. No source dates the move; by 687 there was again a khan at Ötüken. From there Ilterish raided the Tang frontier year after year, in 687 as far as Changping on the plain of Hebei.

698 Kapgan

Kapgan, the younger brother of Ilterish, ruled from 691. In 696 he broke the Khitan, who had risen against the Tang; from 697 the Khitan and the Xi were subject to his levies. In 698 the Tang drove out to him several thousand tents of the six prefectures of the Ordos, forty thousand bushels of seed and three thousand implements. In the same year he raided Hebei with a hundred thousand men. Zhaozhou and Dingzhou fell, and he went home with eighty or ninety thousand captives.

710–711 Kirghiz and Türgesh

In the winter of 710 the Göktürks crossed the Kögmen, whose one road was closed by snow, with a guide of the Az, and killed the khan of the Kirghiz in the Soŋa forest. Then they crossed the Altai where there was no road and the Irtysh where there was no ford. At Bolchu they killed the khan of the Türgesh and took his realm. The year of Bolchu is 710 or 711, and where it lay is not settled.

712–714 To the Iron Gate

After Bolchu the Ten Arrows answered to the Göktürks, until the defections of 715. Their army crossed the Pearl River, the Syr Darya, and went as far as the Iron Gate; the Sogdians came over, with Suk at their head. In 714 Inel and Tongga Tegin laid siege to Beiting. Guo Qianguan held the city and beheaded Tongga Tegin. At the height of Kapgan's power, the Tang history says, his realm stretched more than ten thousand li from east to west.

716 The death of Kapgan

In 716 Kapgan beat the Bayirku on the Tola. Carrying his victory lightly, he went home without precautions and was killed in a willow wood by a Bayirku straggler. Kül Tegin killed the Lesser Khan and set his brother Bilge on the throne. The Türgesh raised a khan of their own, and the Khitan and the Xi went over to the Tang.

721–734 Bilge Khan and Tonyukuk

In 720 the Tang planned an attack from three sides. In the autumn of 721 Tonyukuk sent a detachment to take Beiting before the Basmïl reached it and captured their whole force; on the way home he stripped Liangzhou of its sheep and horses. In 727 the Tang granted a market at the western Shouxiang city. Kül Tegin died in 731, Bilge Khan in 734. Their stones stand in the valley of the Orkhon, Tonyukuk's on the upper Tola.

741–745 The fall

After 741 the realm fell into chaos. The Basmïl, the Uyghurs and the Karluk rose against the last khans. In 744 the Basmïl killed Ozmish Khan; the Uyghurs and the Karluk then killed the Basmïl khan and raised the Uyghur Kutlug Bilge Kül as khan. In 745 Baimei, the last khan of the Göktürks, was killed. Ötüken passed to the Uyghur Khaganate.

747–758 Bayanchur Khan

Bayanchur, khan from 747, names his own land in the Tariat inscription: the Ötüken, the Selenga, the Orkhon and the Tola. He fought the Tatars, the Chik on the Kem and, across the Altai on the Bolchu, the Karluk, who withdrew west to the lands of the Ten Arrows. In 757 his horsemen helped the Tang retake Chang'an and Luoyang from the rebels of An Lushan. He had Sogdians and Chinese build Bay Balık on the Selenga, and in 758 the Uyghurs defeated the Kirghiz, whose ruler then took a title from the Uyghur khan.

759–779 Bögü Khan

In 762 Bögü Khan led five thousand horsemen south by way of Taiyuan, and his brother defeated the rebel Shi Chaoyi at Mount Beimang by Luoyang. From Luoyang the khan brought Manichaean teachers into his land. Meanwhile the Tibetans took the Hexi corridor from the Tang, which left the Tang garrisons of Beiting and Anxi cut off, and in 766 the Karluk took Suyab and Talas. In 779 Tun Bagha Tarkan killed Bögü and seized the throne.

780–792 The war over Beiting

From 781 the envoys of the cut-off Tang garrisons in Beiting and Anxi travelled to Chang'an through Uyghur land. By then the Tibetans also held Dunhuang and Hami. In 790 they took Beiting; the Shatuo and the Karluk around the city, normally Uyghur subjects, went over to them, and the Uyghur army sent to relieve it was beaten. In 791 the Uyghurs defeated the Tibetans and the Karluk at Beiting and sent the captives to the Tang court. The Chinese histories date the fall of Beiting to 787, 790 or 791.

795–821 The height of the realm

Under the Ädiz khans from 795 the Uyghur realm reached its greatest extent. The Karabalghasun inscription tells how the khan retook Beiting, relieved Kucha from a Tibetan siege and destroyed the Tibetans at Yushu west of Karashahr, and how Uyghur armies pursued their enemies to the Pearl River and west to Ferghana. The khan set a yabgu over the Karluk. A Manichaean hymn-book names Beiting, Kocho, Kucha and Karashahr among the Uyghur dependencies, and in 808 the Uyghurs took Liangzhou from the Tibetans.

821–839 Twenty years of war with the Kirghiz

In 821 the Tang princess Taihe was married to the Uyghur khan. As Uyghur power weakened, the ruler of the Kirghiz called himself khan; the Uyghurs sent a minister against him without success, and the Xin Tang Shu counts twenty years of war. The Kirghiz kept ties with the Karluk, the Tibetans and the Arabs. In 839 a minister rose against the khan with the help of the Shatuo, and the khan died; famine, pestilence and heavy snow killed the herds.

840 The fall of Ordu-Balık

In 840 a Uyghur general went over to the Kirghiz and led a hundred thousand horsemen against the Uyghur court. They killed the khan, burned Ordu-Balık and the golden tent, and took Princess Taihe. The Uyghurs scattered: fifteen tribes under the minister Sazhi and Pang Tegin went west to the Karluk, one branch to the Tibetans and one to Anxi, and thirteen tribes under Wujie Tegin crossed the Gobi south to the Tang frontier. The Kirghiz moved their own court south of the Lao mountain, fifteen days' ride from the old Uyghur court; the place is not identified.

841–848 After the fall

Wujie Khan camped on the Tang frontier between Tiande and Zhenwu and raided the prefectures of Yun and Shuo. In 843 a Tang army surprised his camp near Zhenwu, freed Princess Taihe and drove him north-east, where he was killed. In the west Pang Tegin called himself khan and held the cities west of the desert; the Xin Tang Shu places him in Ganzhou, the Jiu Tang Shu in Anxi. In 848 a Kirghiz army of seventy thousand came south to the Tiande frontier and carried the last Uyghurs of the east back north of the Gobi.