Ilig Khan

Ilig was the last khan of the eastern Göktürks. The Chinese histories describe him most fully, because his ten years were the first ten years of the Tang and his fall was the dynasty’s first great victory. Modern accounts pair him with Tong Yabgu in the west. They call the two talented, ambitious and reliable men who led the divided realm in its last decade, “heroes of the Ashina dynasty”.^[1] The Jiu Tang Shu tells the reign year by year.

Before the throne

He was the third son of Yami Khan. Under his brothers he held the title Moheduo Shad, with a camp north of Wuyuan on the Ordos.^[2] When Li Yuan entered Chang’an in 618, the rebel Xue Ju, who held Longyou, allied himself with the shad.^[2] The Tang sent Yuwen Xin with gold and silk to bribe him. He broke with Xue Ju.^[2] He persuaded the Sui governor of Wuyuan, who had attached the town to the Göktürks, to return it to the Tang. He also sent Göktürk troops to join Li Shimin’s army.^[2] In 620, when Chula died, the princess Yicheng passed over Chula’s son and set up Duobi as Xieli Khan.^[2] He took Yicheng as his wife, his father’s and his two brothers’ widow. He made Shibi’s son Shiboubi Töles Khan. He sent envoys to announce Chula’s death. For Chula the Tang emperor suspended court for a day.^[2] The chapter says that he had inherited his father’s and brothers’ resources, strong in men and horses, and the ambition to overawe China.^[2] The Tang, with the central plain barely settled, indulged him with gifts beyond counting. His words grew insolent and his demands endless.^[2]

Wars with the Tang (621–625)

In the fourth month of 621 he led more than ten thousand riders with the Mayi rebel Yuan Junzhang against Yanmen. Li Da’en drove him off.^[2] The Tang had sent three envoys to him and he had detained them all. The Tang held his envoys in turn.^[2] Now, checked, he grew afraid. He released one envoy, asked for peace and sent several dozen jin of fish glue, wishing the two states to be as one like the glue.^[2] The campaigns began in the Yanmen province, with five victories in the field. In August 621 a thrust into Taiyuan followed. It ended with a Tang offer of tribute and a princess. Ilig then withdrew, and both courts released their prisoners.^[1] In 622 Li Da’en reported famine among the Göktürks and proposed to take Mayi.^[2] The Tang column was late. Ilig sent several tens of thousands of riders with Liu Heita. They surrounded Li Da’en and killed him with several thousand men.^[2] That summer Liu Heita brought ten thousand Göktürk riders into Hebei. Ilig himself led fifty thousand south to Fenzhou and sent thousands more into Ling and Yuan. He withdrew when Li Shimin reached Puzhou.^[2]

In the eighth month of 624 Ilig and Töles invaded with the whole strength of the state by way of Yuanzhou. Camp after camp moved south.^[2] Li Shimin was sent against them. Rain cut his supplies, and his generals showed their fear at Binzhou. He rode with a hundred horsemen to the Göktürk line.^[2] He called out that the state and the khan had sworn not to betray each other. He was the prince of Qin, he said, and had come to decide it. If the khan came alone, the two of them would fight alone.^[2] Ilig could not read him. He laughed and did not answer.^[2] Li Shimin rode on. He had Töles reminded of their oath and asked where the feeling of their “incense fire” had gone.^[2] The prince made to cross the ditch. Ilig saw him ride out so lightly and heard the words about the incense fire. He began to suspect Töles. He sent word that the prince need not cross, and he drew back.^[2] Li Shimin then worked on Töles. Töles was won over and would not fight. With uncle and nephew divided, Ilig could not fight either. He sent Töles and the tegin Ashina Simo to ask for peace. Töles swore brotherhood with the prince.^[2] In 625 Ilig gathered more than a hundred thousand men. He plundered Shuozhou and destroyed the army of Zhang Jin at Taiyuan. He camped at Bingzhou, and he withdrew when Li Shimin marched.^[2]

Wei river (626)

In 626 Ilig led more than a hundred thousand riders against Wugong. The capital was put under martial law.^[3] The Jiu Tang Shu puts the raid in the seventh month. The Zizhi tongjian puts it in the eighth, after Li Shimin had taken the throne.^[3] He advanced to Gaoling, where Yuchi Jingde beat him at Jingyang. Yuchi took the irkin Ashide Wumo Chur.^[2] He sent his confidant Zhishi Sili to the court to overawe it with the claim that the two khans’ million men had arrived.^[2] The new emperor told the envoy that he had made peace with the Göktürks face to face and that they had broken it. He had given the khan’s father and son silk beyond counting. He would kill the envoy first.^[2] He had Sili locked up. He rode with six horsemen to the Wei river and spoke with Ilig across the water, reproaching him with the broken oath. The Göktürk chiefs dismounted and bowed.^[2] Then the Tang armies came up. Ilig saw the strength of the array and learned that his envoy was held, and he was afraid.^[2] The emperor rode alone to the bank to speak with him. He waved his armies back.^[2] To his minister who had objected he explained why the Göktürks had swept in. They had heard of the trouble at the palace and of his new accession, and they thought he would not dare resist.^[2] If he had shut the gates, they would have plundered at will. By riding out alone and displaying his army, he had turned their calculation. In his words, “to subdue the Xiongnu begins from here”.^[2] That day Ilig asked for peace. Two days later a white horse was killed and the oath sworn on the Bian bridge, and Ilig withdrew.^[2] In the ninth month Ilig sent three thousand horses and ten thousand sheep. The emperor refused them and ordered instead the return of the Chinese Ilig had carried off.^[2] The appearance before Chang’an fell eighteen days after Taizong’s accession. It came from Ilig’s judgement that the Xuanwu gate coup showed weakness, as the Sui had once judged the Göktürk civil war.^[1] Taizong’s answer, calm diplomacy and an army at the ready, was the beginning of years of contest.^[1]

Collapse from within (627–629)

In 627 the Xueyantuo, the Uyghurs and the Bayirku north of the Yinshan all rose together and drove off his Yukuk Shad.^[2] Ilig sent Töles against them. Töles lost the army and rode back alone. Ilig in anger held him more than ten days, so that Töles turned against him in his heart.^[2] A great snow fell that year, several feet on level ground. The sheep and horses all died and the people starved.^[2] Fearing a Tang attack, Ilig moved into Shuozhou under pretence of a hunt and made ready.^[2] The Tang ministers urged the emperor to strike. The emperor refused: “a common man must keep his word, how much more the lord of the world”. He waited.^[2] To this belong the Tatabï revolt that had begun while Ilig stood before Chang’an, Töles’s failure against it, and the ten days of torture that followed.^[1] To it belong the killing of the Yukuk Shad by the leaders of the Nine Oghuz from whom the Uyghurs came, and Ilig’s irrational punishments of his own men.^[1] In 628 Töles sent to say he was at odds with Ilig and asked leave to attack him.^[4] Töles’s submission to the Tang falls on 21 April 628, together with his appointment as a Tang general against Ilig. The Xueyantuo’s declaration of independence, as Syr Tardush, falls in the same year.^[5] In 629 the Xueyantuo proclaimed a khan north of the desert and sent tribute to the Tang. Ilig for the first time called himself a subject and asked for a princess and the rites of a son-in-law.^[2]

The Jiu Tang Shu gives the Göktürks’ own diagnosis.^[2] Ilig entrusted everything to the various hu, the Sogdians, and kept his own kinsmen at a distance.^[2] The hu were greedy and fickle. Laws multiplied and the army marched year after year. The people suffered and the tribes fell away.^[2] Snow fell year after year and the herds died. His revenues failed, and he taxed the tribes again. Inside and out they deserted him.^[2] Modern accounts take the raiding to have been the only means by which he could hold his power. They take its failure, with disaster, hunger and the tax, as the cause of the end.^[6] When Ilig, having asked for peace, again supported Liang Shidu, the emperor sent Li Jing on the Dingxiang road, with five other columns under his command.^[2] In the twelfth month Töles, the Yushe Shad and the tegin Yinnai came over with their people.^[2]

Fall (630)

In the first month of 630 Li Jing camped at the Eyang ridge. He fell on Dingxiang by night.^[2] Ilig fled in alarm and moved his camp to the mouth of the desert. The hu chief Kang Sumi came over with the Sui empress Xiao and Yang Zhengdao.^[2] In the second month, at his wits’ end, Ilig fled to the Iron Mountain with several tens of thousands of men still. He sent Zhishi Sili to the court to confess his fault and offer the whole state in submission.^[2] The emperor sent Tang Jian and An Xiuren to receive it. Ilig grew easier.^[2] Li Jing struck while the envoys were there. He broke Ilig utterly and destroyed the state.^[2] Ilig rode off alone on a thousand-li horse to the camp of his kinsman Shaboluo. In the third month the deputy commander Zhang Baoxiang came upon the camp. He took Ilig alive and sent him to the capital.^[2] It was Taizong’s winter war. Chinese cavalry, lightly armoured, galloped into the Göktürk bases in December 629. Modern accounts call this surprise shrewd.^[1] A last thrust followed in March 630, while peace talks were under way. It went to the Iron Mountain, which may be the Altai, where Ilig may have had his base.^[1] The Göktürk commanders surrendered one after another. One of them, Ilig’s uncle, handed the khan over with his own hands.^[1] The Jiu Tang Shu names Zhang Baoxiang and Shaboluo’s camp instead. The two accounts stand side by side. The Xin Tang Shu and the Zizhi tongjian identify Shaboluo as Suni Shi, a younger brother of Ilig’s father, and so his uncle.^[7]

Captivity and death (630–634)

Taizong received him with a speech that the chapter preserves. Taizong said that he never forgot a service or remembered a wrong. Ilig’s crimes were not small, but since the oath at the Wei river there had been no deep offence, and so he would let it pass.^[2] Taizong gave him back his household, lodged him at the imperial stables and fed him.^[2] Ilig was despondent and sang and wept with his family.^[2] The emperor saw him waste away. He made him governor of Guozhou, a land full of deer, so that he might hunt and not lose his nature.^[2] Ilig declined the post. The emperor then made him a general of the right guard and gave him land and a house.^[2] In 631 the emperor drew the moral before his ministers. Yami had been saved by the Sui. Shibi had besieged the Sui emperor at Yanmen. Xieli’s brothers had slaughtered the house that saved them. “Was not Xieli’s ruin the fruit of ingratitude?”^[2] Modern accounts also record the other side. Taizong had him treated decently, not as spoils but as a noble guest.^[1] Ilig was a ruler without a people. He was condemned to a dreary existence as a courtier far from home, while his kinsmen fell in battle against the Syr Tardush whom Taizong had backed.^[1] Ilig died in 634.^[2] The emperor had his people bury him by their own rites, burning the body east of the Ba river. He gave him the title of prince who returned to righteousness and the posthumous name Huang.^[2] His old retainer was the Hulu Daguan Tuyuhun Hunye, a bondsman of Ilig’s mother, Lady Poshi, to whom the khan had been given at his birth. Tuyuhun Hunye cut his throat in grief. The emperor was struck by it and had him buried beside his master with a stele.^[2]

Name and title

頡利可汗ChineseJiu Tangshu 194
咄苾ChineseJiu Tangshu 194
莫賀咄設ChineseJiu Tangshu 194

Ilig, it has been argued, must have been his title, “ruler of the land”, the title Bumin was given shortly before his death. His personal name is unknown, and the Orkhon inscriptions do not mention him. The Jiu Tang Shu gives the name Duobi.^[1] Turkic Atlas treats the view under the title.

Winters of 626 and 627

The winters of his last years can also be measured. The ice cores record a large eruption in 626. The histories of the Mediterranean record a dimmed sky in 626 and 627. The tree rings show the summer of 627 among the four coldest of fifteen hundred years. One study of 2007 argued that this cold stands behind the collapse of 630. A second of 2017 weighed environment against politics.^[8] Turkic Atlas treats the debate under climate and the steppe empires. What the Chinese account names is natural disasters, hunger, a tax on an exhausted people and the tribes that left.

Assessment

Taizong took the title Heavenly Khan after his victory. He presented himself as the liberator of the tribes from Ilig’s tyranny, and he divided them among Tang protectorates. This was realpolitik par excellence: he robbed the Göktürks of their independence to bind them to himself.^[1] The Jiu Tang Shu has a long debate on the settlement of the surrendered Göktürks. Wen Yanbo would keep them whole as a shield on the frontier. Wei Zheng would send them back beyond the river as beasts in human form.^[2] In the end the Ordos loop was divided into protectorates, and several thousand Göktürk families lived at Chang’an.^[2] The fifty years of Tang rule that followed are the khaganate’s epilogue and the Second Khaganate’s prologue.^[2] Ilig is the khan whom the Chinese chapter, hostile as it is, cannot make small. He came nearer to Chang’an than any steppe ruler before him. He fell to snow, to his subjects and to a Chinese emperor who fought on horseback.

References

^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Yavuz 2025
^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag ah ai aj ak al am an ao ap aq ar as at au av aw ax ay az ba bb bc bd be bf bg bh bi bj Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
^ a b Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194; Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 191
^ Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194; Yavuz 2025
^ Yavuz 2025, p. 377
^ Golden 1992
^ Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 215; Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 193
^ Fei 2007; Cosmo 2017

Sources

Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 191, 193 (after Wei Shu, Zhou Shu, Sui Shu and Bei Shi)
Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 215 (after Jiu Tangshu)

Literature

Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
Ulf Büntgen; Vladimir S. Myglan; Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist; Michael McCormick; Nicola Di Cosmo et al., Cooling and societal change during the Late Antique Little Ice Age from 536 to around 660 AD (2016)
Michael Sigl; Mai Winstrup; Joseph R. McConnell; Ulf Büntgen et al., Timing and climate forcing of volcanic eruptions for the past 2,500 years (2015)
Jie Fei; Jie Zhou; Yongjian Hou, Circa A.D. 626 volcanic eruption, climatic cooling, and the collapse of the Eastern Turkic Empire (2007)
Nicola Di Cosmo; Clive Oppenheimer; Ulf Büntgen, Interplay of environmental and socio-political factors in the downfall of the Eastern Türk Empire in 630 CE (2017)