Kapgan Khan

Kapgan was the younger brother of Ilterish. He was Ilterish’s shad from the first day of the rising. From 691 to 716 he was the khan of the Second Göktürk Khaganate.^[1] Under him the state that his brother had restored became an empire again.^[1] The Tang history says that his territory stretched ten thousand li from east to west. It gives him four hundred thousand bowmen. It adds that since Ilig in 630 no one had been so powerful.^[1] The Kül Tegin inscription says that under him “the slave came to have slaves of his own, and the serving-woman serving-women of her own”.^[2] The same sources report that he used his people cruelly and that the tribes fled him as he aged. They add that he died by a single straggler’s sword, with the state already coming apart.^[1]

Names

𐰴𐰯𐰍𐰣: 𐰴𐰍𐰣Bögü KhanOld TurkicTonyukuk inscription
默啜ChineseJiu Tangshu 194
Qapaghan KhanEnglish
遷善可汗, 立功報國可汗ChineseJiu Tangshu 194

The Chinese call him Mochuo 默啜. The literature takes this as a Turkic title, Bögü Čor. Other suggestions are beg čor and bük čor, and the word bögü also stands in three Yenisei epitaphs.^[3] His own side calls him Kapgan Khan on the Tonyukuk stone and, once, Bögü Khan. The Orkhon monuments call him simply “my uncle the khan”.^[4] Empress Wu gave him the Chinese titles “Khan Who Turns to Goodness” in 694 and “Khan Who Wins Merit and Repays the State” in 696. In 698, after he had laid Hebei waste, she changed his name in the records to “Beheaded Chuo”.^[1]

Accession

When Ilterish died, in the Tianshou period between 690 and 692, his sons were small. Bilge was eight and Kül Tegin seven.^[1] The Tang history says that Mochuo “usurped the position and set himself up as khan”.^[1] The Kül Tegin inscription was carved by the nephew who had by then killed the uncle’s sons. It says only that “under that same law my uncle became khan”.^[2] It adds that he set the people in order once more and nourished them. He made the poor rich and the few many.^[2] In a damaged line, the Tonyukuk inscription gives an age of twenty-seven beside his name. It then says that he sat on the throne. If the age is his at accession, he was born in the 660s. The line does not say so.

Making of the empire (693–699)

His first raid as khan, on Lingzhou in 693, drew out a Tang army under ten generals. The army found no enemy and went home. His first embassy afterward drew a title, a fief and five thousand pieces of silk.^[1] The turn came in 696.^[1] The Khitan under Li Jinzhong and Sun Wanrong rose against the Tang and took Yingzhou. Mochuo offered to crush them for the empress if she would return the Göktürk households that had surrendered to China west of the Yellow River. She agreed. He fell on the Khitan and broke them. He took their families, and “from this time his forces grew”.^[1]

In 698 he asked for more: the surrendered households of the six prefectures of the Ordos loop, the land of the Shanyu protectorate, farming tools and seed, and a marriage.^[1] The empress refused at first. When he detained her envoy, her court took fright, and she gave way.^[1] Several thousand tents of the six prefectures, forty thousand bushels of seed and three thousand implements were driven out to him. In the history’s words, “it was from this that Mochuo grew strong”.^[1] The six prefectures were the settlements of the Göktürks and their Sogdian partners along the Ordos. Their return gave the khaganate back the population it had lost in 630. Their settlement in the Ordos has been dated to the years 670 to 673. They went there, probably, of their own accord.^[5] The bridegroom who arrived was a nephew of the empress, not a son of the Tang. Mochuo threw him into confinement.^[1] He told the envoys that his daughter had been promised to a son of the Li house. He said he would now set the two surviving Li princes on their throne himself. Then he led a hundred thousand men into Hebei.^[1] Zhaozhou and Dingzhou fell. The prefect of Dingzhou was killed and the city burnt. The Tang armies of three hundred thousand moved at last. By then he had already gone north by the Wuhui road with eighty or ninety thousand captives, killing as he went.^[1]

The next year he gave the state its shape. His brother Duoxifu became shad of the left, and Ilterish’s son Moju became shad of the right. Each had twenty thousand men.^[1]^[6] His own son Fuju became Lesser Khan above the two shads. He had forty thousand men of the Ten Surnames of the west and the title “Khan Who Expands the West”. As the history puts it, “from then on he raided the frontier every year”.^[1] Turkic Atlas describes the structure under the khaganate. The Lesser Khan is the Inel Khan whom the Tonyukuk stone sends at the head of the army. The Eletmiš Yabgu of the Ongi inscription has been identified with Duoxifu on the evidence of the title alone.^[6]

Western campaigns (710–712)

The three-khan coalition of the Tang, the Ten Arrows and the Kirghiz, and the campaigns that broke it, are told on the Tonyukuk stone. Turkic Atlas tells them under the battle of Bolchu.^[7] The campaigns began with the winter crossing of the Sayan and the killing of the Kirghiz khan. Then, against Kapgan’s own order, the army marched by night over the Altai and the Irtysh and destroyed the Türgesh army.^[8] The stone’s account of the orders does not flatter the khan. He went home to bury the katun. He told the army to sit in the Altai and gather news. He sent a secret message to his general not to let Tonyukuk move.^[9] The Tang history credits the result to Mochuo without the detail: “in the Jingyun period he led troops west against Suoge and destroyed him”. From then on, it says, the Khitan and the Xi paid him levies, and his land ran ten thousand li.^[1] He acquired the Ten Arrows about 711 to 712. He was less successful against the Arabs beyond the Oxus.^[10]

Revolts and death (714–716)

“Relying on his military might he used his people cruelly. When Mochuo grew old, the tribes increasingly fled and scattered.”^[1] In 714 he sent the Lesser Khan with picked cavalry against Beiting.^[1] The Tang garrison held and sallied, and it beheaded a tegin under the walls. The husband of the khan’s sister was afraid to go home. He took his wife to China and took a Chinese title.^[1] In 715 the Ten Surnames of the west went over to the Tang with more than ten thousand tents. They were the five chuo of the Üç Tuğlu and the five sijin of the Nushibi. A Koguryŏ prince and a governor of the Xiedie went with them.^[1] The Tang settled them south of the River.^[1] That autumn Mochuo beat the Nine Surnames north of the desert so badly that their leader Abusi went over to China with what was left.^[1]

In 716 he marched north again, against the Bayirku of the Nine Surnames. He beat them on the Tola.^[1] The history describes his death: “Trusting in his victory he rode home carelessly without taking precautions. He met a Bayirku straggler, Xiezhilüe, in a willow wood, who burst out, attacked Mochuo and beheaded him”. The straggler carried the head, with a Tang envoy who happened to be in the country, to Chang’an.^[1] Kül Tegin was the nephew Mochuo had passed over. He gathered the old followers. He killed the Lesser Khan and Mochuo’s brothers and trusted men almost to a man. Then he set his own elder brother on the throne.^[1] The two chapters of the Xin Tang Shu on the Göktürks do not tell the purge alike.^[11] The first says that nearly the whole family of Mochuo’s son was killed. The second says that all officials except Tonyukuk were destroyed.^[11] One modern account takes both for exaggerations.^[11] The Kül Tegin inscription addresses the people. Of the same death it says only that “because you did not understand, and because of your own wickedness, my uncle the khan flew away”.^[2]

Assessment

The two Göktürk stones and the Tang history agree about him more than they agree about anyone else of the dynasty. He rebuilt the state’s numbers by war and by exaction. The exactions fell on the Khitan and the Xi, who paid him services, on the six prefectures and on the Ten Arrows. For a decade he made the state the equal of Ilig’s. He held it by force alone. Therefore, when the force failed at the edges, the whole came apart in his nephews’ hands. Tonyukuk served him for twenty-five years and did not like him. He gave Kapgan the closing lines of his monument anyway: “Because Ilterish Khan and Bilge Tonyukuk toiled, Kapgan Khan’s Türk Sir people prospered as they did.”^[12]

References

^ 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 Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
^ a b c d Kül Tegin inscription
^ Erhan 2011, p. 12
^ Tonyukuk inscription; Tekin 1968, p. 287, 289
^ Sinor 1990, p. 311
^ a b Dobrovits 2000, p. 149
^ Tonyukuk inscription; Tekin 1968, p. 285–288
^ Tonyukuk inscription; Tekin 1968, p. 286–288
^ Tonyukuk inscription; Tekin 1968, p. 287
^ Golden 1992
^ a b c Dobrovits 2000, p. 150
^ Tonyukuk inscription; Tekin 1968, p. 290

Sources

Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 215 (after Jiu Tangshu)
Tonyukuk inscription
Kül Tegin inscription

Literature

Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
Friedrich Hirth, Nachworte zur Inschrift des Tonjukuk. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Ost-Türken im 7. und 8. Jahrhundert nach chinesischen Quellen (1899)
Denis Sinor (ed.), The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (1990)
Talât Tekin, A Grammar of Orkhon Turkic (1968)
Mihály Dobrovits, Ongin Yazıtını Tahlile Bir Deneme (2000)
Aydın, Erhan, Yenisey Yazıtlarında Geçen Unvanlar ve Unvan Niteleyicileri (2011)