Ashide Yuanzhen

Ashide Yuanzhen was the Göktürk officer who turned Ilterish’s band into an army. In 682 he was a Tang official in charge of the surrendered tribes on the frontier.^[1] He went over to the rising. He was made Apa Tarkan and given sole command of the troops. For the next five years the Tang history names him beside the khan in the field.^[1] The one question about him that matters is whether he is the man who cut his own monument as Tonyukuk. It is not settled.

On the Tang frontier (to 682)

The Tang history introduces him at the moment of the rising. Gudulu, that is Ilterish, was a distant kinsman of Ilig. He had gathered the fugitives of Funian’s defeat in the Zongcai mountains and lived there as a robber band. He raided the Nine Surnames for sheep and horses and grew strong. Then he set himself up as khan, with his brother Mochuo as shad and Duoxifu as yabgu.^[1] At that time Ashide Yuanzhen was in the Shanyu protectorate, supervising the tribes of surrendered households. He had once been imprisoned for some offence by the chief clerk of the protectorate, Wang Benli.^[1] When Gudulu invaded, Yuanzhen asked to be allowed to supervise the tribes as before. Benli allowed it, and Yuanzhen went straight over to Gudulu.^[1] Gudulu was delighted. He made him Apa Tarkan and put him in sole charge of military affairs.^[1]

The prefecture system had kept men like him in being. They were Göktürk chiefs with Chinese ranks, in charge of their own people under a Chinese protector. They went over whole when the moment came. His clan, the Ashide, had supplied the two chiefs who raised Nishufu in 679.^[1]

Apa Tarkan (682–687)

Turkic Atlas tells the campaigns of the first years under the war of restoration. In 683 the Göktürks raided Weizhou. They killed the governor of Fengzhou, Cui Zhibian, who had marched against them. In 684 they raided Shuozhou. In 686 they beat the Tang general Chunyu Chuping at Xinzhou, with more than five thousand dead.^[1] In 687 “Gudulu and Yuanzhen” raided Changping and were driven off by Heichi Changzhi.^[1] In the eighth month they raided Shuozhou again. Changzhi beat them heavily at Huanghuadui. He pursued them more than forty li and scattered them north of the desert.^[1] Then Cuan Baobi, with thirteen thousand picked men, went out beyond the frontier in pursuit. His scouts, two thousand li out, found the camps of Yuanzhen and his people unguarded. Baobi wanted the credit before Changzhi could share it. When he came up, he sent men to warn the enemy so that they could make ready and come out to fight. Then he attacked and lost his whole army. He fled back with a few riders and was executed.^[1] In her anger the empress Wu changed Gudulu’s name in the records to Buzulu.^[1]

The Tonyukuk inscription tells the same years in the first person and never names Yuanzhen.^[2] That is the ground of the identification, and its difficulty.

Death

The Tang history reports his end in one sentence: “Yuanzhen later led troops against the Türgesh and died in battle.” The notice stands immediately before the statement that Gudulu died of illness in the Tianshou period, 690 to 692.^[1] The Xin Tang Shu repeats it.^[3]

Identification with Tonyukuk

Tonyukuk says on his stone that he was born in the realm of China. He says that he made Ilterish khan and that he led his armies.^[4] The Tang history says the same of Yuanzhen, in the same years. It knows no Tonyukuk.^[1] The identification of the two is old. Turkic Atlas sets out the case for it and the case against under Tonyukuk. The difficulty is the death. The Tang history has Yuanzhen fall against the Türgesh before Ilterish died. Tonyukuk outlived Kapgan, fought the Türgesh at Bolchu in 711 and set up his own stone in the 720s.^[2] Either the history has misplaced a death, or Yuanzhen and Tonyukuk are two men. In the second case, one of them fell against the Türgesh before Ilterish’s death while the other went on to write the history of the war. For that reason the two are best kept apart.