Xulüquanqu was chanyu of the Xiongnu for nine years, from 68 BC. The Han Shu shows a ruler who wanted peace with the Han and could not carry it through.[1] Famine, the loss of Cheshi and the quarrels of his own court worked against him.[1] When he died, the consort he had set aside chose the next chanyu. The Xiongnu fell into the war of the five chanyus.[1]

Accession and the offer of peace

He was the Left Worthy King and the younger brother of Huyandi. The Xiongnu set him up in the second year of the Dijie era, 68 BC.[1] He made the daughter of the Right Great General his Great Yanzhi, the chief consort. He set aside the Zhuanqu Yanzhi, whom the former chanyu had favoured.[1] The text gives the title Zhuanqu Yanzhi also to the consort who had hidden Hulugu’s death with Wei Lü in 85 BC.[1] It does not say whether the two are one woman.[1] The father of the Zhuanqu Yanzhi whom he had set aside, the Left Great Qiequ, resented the slight.[1]

The Xiongnu could not raid the frontier then. The Han closed its outer forts to rest its people.[1][2][3] Xulüquanqu was glad when he heard of this. He called his nobles together and proposed a heqin.[1]

The Left Great Qiequ was against the plan.[1] Han envoys, he said, had always come with troops behind them.[1] The Xiongnu should do the same and send out troops with an envoy in front.[1] He asked leave to go south with the Hulushi King, each with ten thousand horse, hunting along the frontier, to meet and enter together.[1] Before they arrived, three Xiongnu riders deserted to the Han. They said that the Xiongnu meant to raid.[1] The Han ordered its border cavalry to the strong points. An army supervisor, Zhi Zhong, and three other officers went out several hundred li beyond the frontier with five thousand horse in three columns. Each took some tens of captives and returned.[1] The Xiongnu had lost their three riders.[1] They did not dare to enter and withdrew.[1]

Famine and defections

That year the Xiongnu starved. Six or seven in ten of the people and herds died.[1][4][5] The famine lasted, on one modern count, from 68 to 60 BC. People left their homes, and farming and household economy broke down.[6] The chanyu sent two garrisons of ten thousand horse each to watch the Han.[1] In the autumn, a people whom the Xiongnu had earlier taken and settled in the Left land drove off their herds. The Han Shu writes their name 西嗕.[1] Their chiefs and several thousand people went with them.[1] They fought the Outuo posts. Then they went south to surrender to the Han.[1]

The loss of Cheshi

In the next year, the walled states of the Western Regions joined in an attack on the Xiongnu. They took the kingdom of Cheshi, with its king and people.[1][7] The chanyu set up Doumo, a brother of the Cheshi king, as king of Cheshi in his turn. He moved the rest of the people east, away from their land.[1] The Han sent soldier-farmers to fill the empty Cheshi country.[1]

The chanyu was angry that the neighbouring states had joined forces.[1] He sent his Left and Right Great Generals with ten thousand horse each to farm in the Right land. He meant to press on the Wusun and the Western Regions.[1] Two years later, the Left and Right Aojian kings, with six thousand horse each, and the Left Great General struck twice at the Han farmers in the city of Cheshi. They could not take the city.[1] In the following year, the Dingling robbed the Xiongnu for the third year in a row. They killed and took several thousand people and drove off their horses.[1] The chanyu sent more than ten thousand horse after them and caught nothing.[1][8]

The last hunt

In the year after that, the chanyu took more than a hundred thousand horse to hunt along the frontier. He meant to cross it.[1][8] Before he came, one of his own men, Titu Quchang, deserted to the Han and told them.[1] The Han made him a marquis. It sent the general Zhao Chongguo with more than forty thousand cavalry to the nine commanderies on the frontier.[1] After a month, the chanyu fell ill and spat blood. He did not dare to cross.[1] He went home. The armies stood down.[1] He sent the Ti King Dulihuci and others to the Han to ask for a heqin.[1] The Han had not answered when he died.[1] The text dates his death to the second year of the Shenjue era, 60 BC.[1]

Death and succession

From the day he had set aside the Zhuanqu Yanzhi, she had been the lover of the Right Worthy King.[1] The Right Worthy King came to Longcheng for the assembly. He was leaving when she told him that the chanyu was gravely ill and that he should not go far.[1] A few days later the chanyu died.[1] The Haosu King, Xing Weiyang, sent to call the kings.[1] Before they arrived, the Zhuanqu Yanzhi and her brother, Du Longqi, the Left Great Qiequ, made the Right Worthy King, Tuqitang, chanyu as Woyanqudi.[1] Woyanqudi was a descendant of the chanyu Wuwei, 耳孫 in the word of the text. He had taken his father’s place as Right Worthy King.[1]

The new chanyu killed Xing Weiyang and the other men who had served under Xulüquanqu. He put Du Longqi in office. He removed Xulüquanqu’s sons and near kin and put his own in their places.[1] Xulüquanqu’s son Jihoushan, who had not been set up, fled to his father-in-law Wuchanmu.[1] Wuchanmu came from a small country between the Wusun and Kangju.[1] The chanyu Hulugu had married him to the sister of the Rizhu King. Hulugu had set him over his people in the right land.[1] In the fourth year of Shenjue, 58 BC, the king of Guxi, Wuchanmu and the nobles of the Left land set up Jihoushan as Huhanye. They led forty or fifty thousand men of the Left land west against Woyanqudi.[1] Woyanqudi’s army broke before the fight. He killed himself.[1]

Assessment

His accession from his brother is counted as the fourth departure from the rule of father to son in ten successions since Laoshang. This may have been a response to the leadership crisis of the time.[9] According to the text, he wished for a heqin at his accession. He sent an envoy to ask for one shortly before his death. The Han had not answered when he died.[1] His son, whom the consort’s choice had passed over, returned in 58 BC as Huhanye.[1]

References

  1. ^ 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 Han Shu, juan 94
  2. ^ Lattimore 1951, p. 470
  3. ^ Ögel 2015, p. 123–124
  4. ^ Khazanov 1994, p. 73
  5. ^ Ögel 2015, p. 123, 125
  6. ^ Ögel 2015, p. 123
  7. ^ Ögel 2015, p. 125–126
  8. ^ a b Ögel 2015, p. 127
  9. ^ Sinor 1990, p. 137

Sources

Literature

  • Denis Sinor (ed.), The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (1990)
  • Bahaeddin Ögel, Büyük Hun İmparatorluğu Tarihi II (2015)
  • Anatoly M. Khazanov, Nomads and the Outside World (1994)
  • Owen Lattimore, Inner Asian Frontiers of China (1951)

Related

What links here7

Persons
Hulugu Chanyu · Huyandi Chanyu · Woyanqudi Chanyu
Peoples
Dingling
Institutions and Titles
Livestock Losses in the Annals · Women among the Turkic Peoples · Worthy Kings of the Left and Right

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Xulüquanqu Chanyu.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/persons/xuluquanqu-chanyu/

Last revised: 8 November 2026