Shegui Khan

Shegui Khan ruled the western Göktürks from 611 to 618 or 619. He came after the humiliation of Heshana and before the great years of his own younger brother Tong Yabgu.^[1] He came to the throne by a Chinese plan and an arrow. He left the west stronger than he found it.^[1] The states west of the Jade Gate were his subjects, and his court stood on the Sanmi mountain north of Kucha. The eastern Göktürks were once more his rivals rather than his masters.^[1]

Descent and position

Shegui was a younger brother of Tardush.^[2] The Chinese histories place him a generation lower. The Sui Shu gives his descent in the words of the strategist Pei Ju. Shegui was the son of Duliu and the grandson of Datou, that is Tardush. His was a line that had been khans for generations and had ruled in the west.^[3] He had since lost his position and was subordinate to Chuluo, that is Heshana. He therefore sent envoys to seek support.^[3] The Xin Tang Shu calls him simply Datou’s grandson.^[1] The two statements of his descent are not reconciled. He was a sub-khan who had for some time been seeking the hand of a Sui princess. The Sui Shu shows exactly that: a chieftain, not yet a khan, whose envoy arrived at the Sui court asking for a marriage.^[4]

Pei Ju’s arrow

The occasion was Heshana’s refusal. In the sixth year of Daye, 610, the emperor Yangdi was about to tour the west. He sent Wei Jie to summon Heshana to meet the imperial train at the Dadouba valley.^[3] Heshana’s people would not allow it. Heshana excused himself to the envoy on other grounds, and the emperor was furious but could do nothing.^[3] The Sui Shu’s chapter on the Western Regions names a censor, Wei Jie, among the envoys whom the emperor sent to the lands of the western barbarians.^[5] He may be the same man as the envoy of 610.^[6] Just then Shegui’s envoy came seeking a marriage, and Pei Ju laid out the plan. Heshana did not come to court because he relied on his strength, and the way to weaken him was to split his state.^[3] Pei Ju said that the court should treat Shegui’s envoy generously and appoint Shegui Great Khan. The Göktürk power would then be divided, and both halves would follow China.^[3] The emperor agreed. He had Pei Ju visit the envoy’s lodging morning and evening to hint at the plan.^[3] He then received the envoy in the Renfeng hall and spoke of Heshana’s disobedience and Shegui’s good heart. He said he would set Shegui up as Great Khan and have him raise troops to punish Heshana, after which the marriage would follow.^[3] He took a peach-bamboo arrow with white feathers and gave it for Shegui, saying: “This matter should be quick, swift as an arrow.”^[3] On the way back the envoy passed through Heshana’s country.^[3] Heshana admired the arrow and wanted to keep it. The envoy got away only by a trick.^[3]

Shegui heard the news and rejoiced. He raised his army and fell on Heshana, who was heavily beaten.^[3] Heshana abandoned his wife and children and fled east with several thousand riders of his retinue. He was robbed on the road and hid east of Gaochang on the Shiluoman mountain. There the king of Gaochang, Qu Boya, reported him to the court.^[3] The rest is Heshana’s story. Pei Ju brought the khan’s Chinese mother Xiang to the Jade Gate, and her messenger talked her son into coming to court. The Sui gave him the title Heshana Khan in 611, and after that the west was Shegui’s.^[3] The Xin Tang Shu tells the same change from the other side. When Heshana went to the Sui court, his people had all been against it. Once he was detained and not sent back, they together set up Tardush’s grandson, titled Shegui Khan.^[1] The attack and the title fall in 611. The Sui Shu sets Pei Ju’s plan in 610 and dates the attack no more closely.^[7]

Reign

The Jiu Tang Shu says that in the east he went as far as the Golden Mountain, the Altai, and in the west as far as the sea.^[8] The states west of the Jade Gate were all subject to him. He became the rival of the northern Göktürks and set his court at Sanmi mountain north of Kucha.^[8] The Xin Tang Shu says the same in fewer words. His court was at Sanmi mountain north of Kucha, the states west of the Jade Gate mostly served him, and he stood against the eastern Göktürks.^[1] Modern accounts identify Sanmi with the valley of the Tekes. They also regard it as the region where the Ektag of the Byzantine envoys to Istemi and to Tardush should be sought.^[9] When his arms revived, the Xueyantuo and the Qibi dropped the title and submitted to him. They had set up khans of their own against Heshana.^[10] Chach, on the Syr Darya, had wavered in its loyalty to the Göktürks. Shegui crushed it and put a tegin named Dianzhi in charge of the country.^[5] The Tarim cities and the Tiele, lost under Heshana, were thus back in western Göktürk hands. The seat of the khan stood on the northern rim of the basin rather than in the Seven Rivers.

The second war with Persia falls in these years. Modern accounts assign it to him.^[7] After the first war of 588 and 589, a Göktürk army pushed deep into Persian territory in 606 and 607. It reached Ray and Isfahan. For an unknown reason, the yabgu of the west, Shegui, withdrew it to Central Asia.^[11] The Sasanian general Bagratuni, an Armenian, then beat the Hephthalite vassals of the Göktürks near Balkh without difficulty.^[7] Eight years later the Göktürks under Tong Yabgu regained Bactria.^[7] The Chinese chapters know nothing of this war.^[11] The notice on Persia in the Jiu Tang Shu, however, has the Yabgu Khan of the western Göktürks defeat Persia repeatedly at the end of the Sui. It does not name him.^[12] Sebeos, the Armenian historian, tells the war from the Persian side. He names no year and no khan.^[13] At the call of the Kushan kings, the great Khak’an sent an army across the Oxus. It beat the Persians and raided as far as the borders of Ray and Isfahan. It went home when the Khak’an’s order reached its commander.^[14] Afterwards the Armenian Smbat Bagratuni, in Persian service, killed the king of the Kushans in single combat and pursued his army to Balkh.^[15] Smbat died soon after, in the twenty-eighth year of Khosrow II.^[16] A shorter account has Shegui reign from 611 to 618 or 619. It says he expanded the lands under his control to the Altai in the east and “to the sea” in the west, and kept his principal camp north of Kucha.^[2] Thus he paved the way for the brief efflorescence of western Göktürk power under his younger brother.^[2]

Tribute and the Tang

When the Sui fell, Shegui turned to the new dynasty. The Xin Tang Shu says that in the year after the first year of Wude, that is 619, Shegui sent envoys to ask that Heshana be killed because of the hereditary grudge between them.^[1] The emperor Gaozu refused. His ministers argued that to keep one man was to lose a state. The future Taizong argued that to kill a man who had come over was ill-omened. The emperor still refused.^[1] At a banquet in the palace, when the wine was flowing, the envoys were let loose on Heshana at the Secretariat. They killed him, and it was not announced.^[1] Shegui also sent the giant eggs of Tiaozhi and lion skins as tribute, year after year. The emperor bound him closely with gifts and agreed to join forces with him against the eastern Göktürks.^[1] The older Tang accounts tell the episode differently. The Jiu Tang Shu and the Tongdian give the request for Heshana’s death to Shibi, khan of the eastern Göktürks, and have the eastern envoys kill him. The Zizhi Tongjian also names the northern Göktürks.^[17] The Jiu Tang Shu gives the eggs of Tiaozhi to Tong Yabgu, in 620, and the alliance against the east to him as well.^[18] The Xin Tang Shu reworks these older accounts and is not an independent witness beside them. The same tribute in the Tang history shows the western Göktürks as middlemen of a trade that reached from Babylonia to Chang’an.^[2] The Jiu Tang Shu’s annals record joint embassies of the “Yabgu Khan” of the western Göktürks and the king of Gaochang in 619 and 620. The second brought “great birds of Tiaozhi”.^[19] Modern accounts take the Yabgu Khan of those years for Tong Yabgu already.^[19] The Zizhi Tongjian names him outright. In the seventh month of 619, the envoys of Tong Yabgu Khan and of the king of Gaochang brought tribute together.^[20]

Death and succession

The Xin Tang Shu says of his end only this: “When Shegui died, his younger brother Tong Yabgu succeeded him.”^[1] The Jiu Tang Shu has him die soon after he set up his court north of Kucha, and his younger brother take his place.^[18] One reckoning puts his death in 618 or 619. The Xin Tang Shu, however, still has Shegui’s envoys at Chang’an in 619.^[21] A second reckoning dates the accession of the Yabgu Khan before 616, on the strength of the Tang notice on Persia, with Tong Yabgu succeeding no later than 618.^[21] The difference is two or three years. It turns on whether the Chinese chapters mean one man or two. They name the khan of 619 and 620 sometimes Shegui and sometimes Yabgu Khan.

Assessment

A Chinese arrow made Shegui a khan, and he became a khan in his own right. The plan that set him up was meant to divide the Göktürks, and it did. The half it created was the stronger one. Within a decade it stretched from the Altai to the Oxus and beyond. It held the Tarim, and its court stood on the mountain north of Kucha. What Tong Yabgu did with that inheritance is the best-known chapter of western Göktürk history. That there was an inheritance to take up is Shegui’s doing.