Dali City

Dali, 大利城, was a walled town that the Sui built in Shuozhou for Yami Khan in 599.^[1] Since 597 Yami had lived at the old garrison of Dujin.^[1] In 599, during the civil war, Tulan and Tardush attacked Yami and killed his brothers and sons. Yami fled to the Sui court with five horsemen.^[1] In the summer a Sui army defeated Tardush.^[1] The emperor then made Yami Yilizhendou Qimin Khan.^[1] Yami thanked the emperor in a memorial that the Sui Shu preserves.^[1] He wrote that his former wicked heart was now wholly removed.^[1] The emperor then built Dali in Shuozhou for him to live in.^[1] The Tongdian and the Bei Shi repeat the account. Notes in the Tongdian give Shuozhou as the Mayi commandery of their own day.^[2]

The Zizhi tongjian dates Yami’s new title to the tenth month of 599.^[3] It says that more than ten thousand men and women had come over to Yami. According to it, the Sui envoy Zhangsun Sheng built the town with fifty thousand men to house them.^[3]

When Tulan attacked again, the emperor brought Yami’s people inside the frontier.^[1] The raids went on. The people were therefore moved south of the Yellow River, between the prefectures of Xia and Sheng. There a ditch several hundred li long closed off a pasture bounded by the river on east and west.^[1] This has been taken as a move from the eastern end of the Yellow River’s great bend to its western end.^[4]

In 600, after Shi Wansui’s victory over Tardush at Mount Dajin, the emperor sent Zhangsun Sheng back to Dali to settle the tribes that had newly come over.^[5] The chapters on the Göktürks do not name the town again.^[6]

Dali has been placed on the bank of the Zihe, the Ulan Müren, in Suiyuan.^[7]