Dujin Garrison

The old garrison of Dujin, 度斤舊鎮, was the place to which Yami Khan moved in 597, in the years of the civil war.^[1] Yami, then titled Tuli Khan, lived in the north of the realm of Tulan Khan.^[1] In 597 he sent to fetch the bride the Sui had promised him. The emperor married him to Princess Anyi, a woman of the imperial clan.^[1]

The Sui Shu says that Yami had lived in the north and, because of the marriage, moved south to the old garrison of Dujin, where the Sui loaded him with gifts.^[1] The Zizhi tongjian adds that the Sui envoy Zhangsun Sheng persuaded him to lead his people there.^[2] Tulan was angered. “I am the great khan,” he said, “and I am treated worse than Rangan.”^[1] He stopped his tribute and raided the frontier.^[1] From the garrison Yami watched Tulan’s movements and reported them. The Sui frontier was therefore always ready.^[2] The Tongdian and the Bei Shi repeat the Sui Shu’s account.^[3]

In 599 Tulan and Tardush fell on Yami together and killed his brothers, sons and nephews. Yami fled to the Sui with five horsemen.^[1] The garrison is not named again.^[4]

The name

All four histories write the name 度斤.^[5] The Zhou Shu writes the mountain of the khan’s habitual seat 都斤, Dujin, with a different first character.^[6] That mountain has been read as Ötüken.^[7] One translation reads the garrison’s name as the same mountain and renders the move as one to the old camp of the Göktürks on the slope of Mount Dujin.^[8] The French translation of 1864 renders it as a move to his own old stronghold of Dujin.^[9] Where the garrison lay, the histories do not say.^[1]