Gouzhu Pass

Gouzhu, 句注, was a mountain and the pass across it on the road from Mayi south to Taiyuan.^[1] The annals of the Northern Wei call it the Gouzhu defile.^[2] Steppe armies had crossed it long before the Göktürks.^[3]

The Shiji gives the first such crossing. The Han king Xin went over to the Xiongnu at Mayi. The Xiongnu then led their army south over Gouzhu and attacked Taiyuan. They came as far as Jinyang. The campaign ended at Baideng in 200 BC.^[3] Under the chanyu Junchen the Han posted an army at Gouzhu. Xiongnu horsemen came into the Gouzhu frontier of Dai.^[3]

The Göktürks appear at the pass in 619.^[4] Shibi Khan had crossed the Yellow River to Xiazhou, where the rebel Liang Shidu joined him.^[4] He gave Liu Wuzhou, the rebel of Mayi, more than five hundred riders and sent him into Gouzhu. He gathered more troops to fall on Taiyuan.^[4] In the same month Shibi died.^[4] The Tongdian sets the dispatch of the riders in the fourth month. The Jiu Tang Shu tells the whole under the second.^[5] The Xin Tang Shu and the Zizhi tongjian tell the same.^[6]

One identification places the Gouzhu mountain twenty-five li north-west of Dai county in Shanxi. It gives the mountain two further names, the Yanmen mountain and the Xing ridge.^[7] The same identification makes the Xing ridge, which a Zhou army crossed in 563 on its way to Jinyang, the Gouzhu mountain under another name.^[8] On that reading the pass held by the commandery of Yanmen is the Gouzhu pass.