Külüg Bagha

Külüg Bagha is the Turkic reading of the name of the Uyghur general whom the Chinese texts call Julu Mohe.^[1] He hated the minister Kürabir and went over to the Kirghiz. In 840 he brought their army against the Uyghur court on the Orkhon.^[2] The two Tang histories record nothing else of him.^[2]

Name

Külüg BaghaOld Turkic
句錄莫賀ChineseXin Tangshu 217
句錄末賀ChineseJiu Tangshu 195

The Xin Tang Shu writes the name 句錄莫賀 and the Jiu Tang Shu 句錄末賀, the same sounds with a different third character.^[3] The older history calls him a general. The newer calls him a great chief in its account of the Uyghur fall, and a general of the Uyghurs in its account of the Kirghiz.^[3] The form Külüg Bagha is a reading of the Chinese sounds, and no Turkic text is known to give it.^[1]

The flight to the Kirghiz

The Uyghur court had broken apart in 839.^[4] A minister, Kürabir, had moved against the khan, who died. Another khan had been set up.^[2] The year brought famine, pestilence and heavy snow.^[4] Julu Mohe hated the minister and fled.^[5] One reckoning places the flight in the winter of 839 and 840.^[1]

The Jiu Tang Shu tells what followed briefly. At the head of 100,000 Kirghiz horse he attacked the Uyghur fortresses. He killed the new khan, beheaded Kürabir, and burned and all but destroyed the court. The Uyghurs scattered over the lands of the barbarians.^[5] The Xin Tang Shu has the same events in its chapter on the Uyghurs, with the Kirghiz as his partners. The great chief Julu Mohe and the Kirghiz together gathered 100,000 horse. They killed the khan, executed the minister and set fire to the royal camp.^[4] The two histories give the figure, and it is not a count.

In its chapter on the Kirghiz the same history makes him the guide. Their general Julu Mohe led Are to the defeat and death of the Uyghur khan. The Uyghur tegins all scattered.^[4] Are then came himself. He burned the camp and the golden tent, took the treasure and found the princess Taihe.^[4] The whole war is told in the Uyghur–Kirghiz War, and the last act in the fall of Ordu-Balık.

After 840

The texts say nothing of him once the camp is burned.^[2] L. R. Kyzlasov reconstructs a Kirghiz realm in which the Kirghiz ruler left Külüg Bagha Tarkan, the Uyghur who had gone over to him, on the Orkhon as his representative.^[6] The reconstruction is judged to rest largely on conjecture.^[6] A Turkish history of the Kirghiz gives his tribe as the Aldız, on the authority of an earlier historian.^[7]

The Suji inscription names a Kutlug Baga Tarkan as the lord of the Kirghiz officer who speaks in it.^[8] Neither the inscription nor the Chinese texts say whether he and the Uyghur defector are one man.^[9]

References

^ a b c Drompp 2005, p. 37
^ a b c d Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 195; Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
^ a b Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217; Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 195
^ a b c d e Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
^ a b Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 195
^ a b Golden 1992, p. 181
^ Kalkan 2005, p. 86
^ Butanaev 2015, p. 9–10
^ Suji inscription; Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217

Sources

Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217 (after Jiu Tangshu)
Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 195
Suji inscription

Literature

Michael R. Drompp, Tang China and the Collapse of the Uighur Empire: A Documentary History (2005)
Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
Mustafa Kalkan, Kırgız Boylarının Yenisey'den Çıkarılmaları ve Coğrafî Dağılımları (2005)
V. Ja. Butanaev, Literaturnoe nasledstvo enisejskich kyrgyzov vremën drevnetjurkskich kaganatov [Литературное наследство енисейских кыргызов времён древнетюркских каганатов] (2015)