Shanyu Protectorate

The Shanyu protectorate governed the Göktürks who lived inside the Chinese frontier after the Tang conquest. Its seat was the old town of Yunzhong on the northern frontier.^[1]

Before the protectorate

After the fall of Ilig Khan in 630 the Tang divided his land into six prefectures under two area commands. Dingxiang stood on the left and Yunzhong on the right.^[2] From Youzhou to Lingzhou the court set up four more prefectures, Shun, You, Hua and Chang.^[2] The settlement followed the court debate of 630. The commands were loose-rein prefectures: the chiefs kept their following and held office from the court.

Founding in 650

After Chebi Khan was taken in 650, all the Göktürks were subjects within the frontier.^[2] The Tang then divided them between two protectorates, Shanyu and Hanhai.^[3] The Jiu Tang Shu and the Tongdian give Shanyu three governor-generalcies, Langshan, Yunzhong and Sanggan, and fourteen prefectures, Sunong among them.^[4] The Xin Tang Shu gives twenty-four prefectures.^[1] The Tang Huiyao counts ten governor-generalcies and twenty-two prefectures for the two protectorates together.^[5] Twenty-four is also the number of prefectures that joined the revolt of 679.^[6] In both protectorates the chiefs themselves served as governors-general and prefects.^[2]

Seat and renaming

The Tang Huiyao says that in the second month of 663 the Yanran protectorate was moved to the camp of the Uyghurs and renamed Hanhai. The old Hanhai protectorate was moved to the ancient town of Yunzhong and renamed the Yunzhong protectorate. The desert was the boundary: the barbarian prefectures north of it belonged to Hanhai, those south of it to Yunzhong.^[7] The Xin Tang Shu puts the renaming in the first years of Linde, 664 to 665.^[1]

Yunzhong had been the residence of Princess Yicheng.^[1] After Ilig’s fall Li Jing settled several hundred tents of broken Göktürks there and set a chief of the Ashide over them.^[1] When they grew in number, the chief asked that a prince be made their khan, to rule them from afar.^[1] Gaozong answered that the khan of the day was the chanyu of old. He renamed the Yunzhong protectorate the Shanyu Grand Protectorate and appointed Prince Xulun of Yin as its protector.^[1]

A modern note reads the sources so that an earlier Shanyu protectorate was dissolved in 663 and the name came back in 664 with the move to Yunzhong. The same note puts the seat 400 li north-west of Datong.^[8] The town and its location are told under Yunzhong.

The revolt of 679

In 679 the Ashide chiefs Wenfu and Fengzhi rose together inside the Shanyu command. They set up Nishufu as khan, and twenty-four prefectures went over to them.^[9] The first Tang force, under Xiao Siye, was beaten and lost more than ten thousand men.^[2] The rest of the war is told in The Göktürk War of Restoration. In 683 the Göktürks besieged the Shanyu protectorate itself.^[5]

The grandfather of Ilterish had been a chief under Sheli Yuanying, the governor-general of Yunzhong on the right of the Shanyu command.^[4] Ashide Yuanzhen supervised the surrendered tribes for the protectorate. Its chief of staff, Wang Benli, once jailed him for an offence. When Ilterish raided, Yuanzhen asked leave to resume his duties, and Wang Benli allowed it. Yuanzhen went straight over to Ilterish, who made him Apa Tarkan and gave him sole command of the troops.^[2]

Later years

In 698 Qapghan asked the court for the surrendered households and the land of the Shanyu protectorate, with farm tools and seed. The court gave him the households of the six prefectures, more than 40,000 shi of seed and 3,000 farm tools.^[2] The exchange is told in The request for farm tools and iron, 698.

A memorial of 845 gives the later names. It says that the Shanyu command became the Anbei protectorate in the first year of Shengli, 698, and became the Shanyu protectorate again in the eighth year of Kaiyuan, 720.^[10] In 845 an edict renamed it Anbei once more. The ministers argued that the region of Zhenwu was the old land of the chanyu and that the name should not be kept, lest it stir the hearts of the northern peoples.^[10] The same memorial puts the first commands in the fourth and fifth years of Wude, which does not agree with the other histories.^[10] The line continues in the Anbei protectorate.