Datan Khan

Datan was the khan who made the Rouran a danger to China. He was also the first khan whom China broke. His fifteen years are the best-recorded stretch of the khaganate’s history in the Wei Shu. This is because the Wei fought him in person. Two emperors marched against him. One of them, Taiwu, nearly died doing it.^[1]

Accession (414)

He was the son of Puhun, the youngest paternal uncle of Shelun. Before his accession he commanded a separate division on the western frontier, where he had won the people’s hearts.^[1] Buluzhen heard that the Gaoche chief Chiluohou meant to make Datan ruler. Buluzhen moved against him. Datan raised his army. He seized Buluzhen and Shelun’s son Shebo and strangled them. Then he set himself up as khan.^[1] The people acclaimed him. He took the title Mouhan Heshenggai Khan, which the Wei glossed as “victorious”.^[1] He was one of the most powerful of the khans. He was the cousin of Hulü. He was allied with Feng Ba of the Northern Yan. The founder of the Northern Yan was of Koguryŏ descent. Datan sent Feng Ba horses every year.^[2]

War with Mingyuan

Datan led his people south. They broke into the frontier.^[1] The emperor Mingyuan marched against him in person. Datan fled in fear.^[1] Xi Jin commanded the Wei column sent after him. It met snow and cold. Two or three men in ten lost fingers to frostbite or died.^[1] These campaigns belong to the Ordos country, the natural frontier between Chinese and steppe culture. They are the start of a pattern of Rouran raids and Wei counter-strokes under Taiwu that brought the Wei no decisive victory.^[2]

Siege of Taiwu at Yunzhong (424)

When Mingyuan died, his son Taiwu came to the throne. Datan heard the news with joy. In the autumn of 424 he raided Yunzhong.^[1] Taiwu marched against him in person. He reached Yunzhong in three days and two nights. Datan’s horsemen surrounded the emperor more than fifty ranks deep. The riders pressed on the heads of the horses, close as a wall.^[1] The Wei soldiers were terrified. The emperor’s face did not change. The men steadied.^[1] Some scholars put the invading army at sixty thousand men. It was sent in immediately after Taiwu’s accession in 423.^[2]

What ended the siege was a death in the khan’s family.^[1] Datan had made his nephew Yuzhijin a tribal commander. Yuzhijin was the son of Datan’s brother Dana. Dana had lost a contest for the state to Shelun and had fled to the Wei.^[1] Wei archers shot Yuzhijin dead. Datan took fright and withdrew.^[1]

Wei campaigns of 425 and 429

In 425 Taiwu went out against him in strength. He advanced on five roads at once, east and west. The emperor himself was on the middle road.^[1] At the edge of the desert, the columns left their baggage. They took fifteen days’ rations on light horse and crossed the sands. Datan’s people fled north in alarm.^[1] In the eighth month of 428 Datan sent a son with more than ten thousand horse into the frontier to kill and plunder. The Gaoche, now Wei subjects, pursued and beat them.^[1]

The decisive campaign came in 429.^[1] It has its own article, Taiwu’s campaign of 429. Taiwu crossed the desert in the fifth month, against the advice of his ministers and his astrologers. He reached the Li river. Datan’s people fled west.^[1] Datan’s brother Pili was bringing the eastern camps to join him. He ran into the Wei western column and lost several hundred chiefs.^[1] When Datan heard this, he burned his tents and fled west with his clan. No one knew where.^[1] The tribes scattered into the mountain valleys. Their herds ran loose on the plain, and no one was left to gather them.^[1] The Gaoche turned on Datan’s people and killed them. More than three hundred thousand surrendered. The Wei took a million horses and captives.^[1] One modern account calls the defeat of 429 and the Gaoche revolt that followed the critical juncture at which “the hitherto largely successful Jou-jan qagan” died.^[3] Even in this last great campaign, Taiwu failed to capture Datan. He hesitated for fear of a trap.^[2]

The Yueban

In Datan’s time the Rouran fell out with the Yueban, a people north-west of the Wusun.^[4] The two had been on friendly terms.^[4] The Yueban king once led several thousand men into the Rouran country to meet Datan.^[4]^[5] More than a hundred li inside the border, the Yueban saw that the Rouran did not wash their clothes, did not bind up their hair and did not wash their hands. The king told his followers that they had tricked him into a land of dogs, and rode back.^[4]^[5] Datan sent horsemen after him but did not catch him.^[4]^[5] From then on the two peoples were enemies and fought each other repeatedly.^[4]^[5]

Death

His people were weakened and scattered. Datan fell ill and died. His son Wuti succeeded him.^[1]

Name and the Otuz Tatar

TatarOld Turkic
大檀ChineseWei Shu 103
牟汗紇升蓋可汗ChineseWei Shu 103

A further suggestion concerns Datan’s name and his following. Historians have reconstructed his actual name as Tatar. The loyal following he gathered in the war with the Wei may have become semi-autonomous within the khaganate after his death.^[2] Their descendants would then be the Otuz Tatar, the “Thirty Tatars”. The Orkhon inscriptions name them among the mourners at the funeral of the founders. After the fall of the Rouran, they withdrew to the Khingan and dealt with the Göktürks in diplomacy and war.^[2] Many peoples bore the name Tatar in the Middle Ages and after. On this view, the name would go back to this khan.^[2] This is a reconstruction. The Wei Shu knows him only as Datan.^[1]

Assessment

Datan shows what the Rouran could do against a united northern China. He brought an emperor to the edge of death. He forced three imperial campaigns into the steppe. He lost. The Wei Shu shows him in a pattern: the raid, the pursuit, the flight beyond the sands. It is the pattern of every later khan’s dealings with the Wei. It was also what wore the khaganate down from within.^[2]