Kujie Valley

The Kujie valley, 窟結谷, is named once. The name occurs in the Sui Shu’s account of the war that the Sui fought for Yami Khan, their client on the Göktürk throne.^[1] The chapter tells the campaign in the paragraph that opens with the first year of Renshou, 601.^[1]

That year Yang Su, commander of the Yunzhou route, marched north with Yami. The Huxue and other tribes had first attached themselves to Yami. Now they rebelled.^[1] While Yang Su’s army stood north of the river, the Göktürk irkin Awu Sili and others crossed to the south. They carried off six thousand of Yami’s men and women and more than two hundred thousand head of livestock.^[1] Yang Su pursued them with light cavalry and fought on for more than sixty li. He defeated the irkin and returned the people and the herds to Yami.^[1]

After the army had crossed the river, raiders attacked Yami’s people again. Yang Su and the cavalry general Fan Gui struck them southeast of the Kujie valley. They defeated the raiders a second time and pursued them for more than eighty li.^[1] The Bei Shi repeats the passage with the name of the valley but without the distance.^[2]

The Zizhi tongjian records the irkin’s raid and Yang Su’s pursuit under 602. It does not name the valley.^[3] The biographies of the Sui generals have been compared. They date the campaign variously from about 600 to 602. On that basis the raid and its repulse are placed between the end of 600 and 602.^[4] The site of the valley has not been fixed. The valley is put in the great bend of the Yellow River in Suiyuan.^[4]