Xing Ridge

The Xing ridge, 陘嶺, was a mountain pass on the road from the northern frontier of the Northern Qi to Jinyang.^[1] It enters Göktürk history in a single campaign. In 563 the Zhou emperor sent Yang Zhong, duke of Sui, with ten thousand men to attack the Qi together with the Göktürks.^[2] After Yang Zhong’s army had crossed the Xing ridge, Mukan came with a hundred thousand riders to join it.^[2] In the first month of 564 the joined army attacked the Qi emperor at Jinyang. It could not take the city.^[2] Mukan then let his men plunder the country and went home. The campaign was over.^[2]

The biography of Yang Zhong in the Zhou Shu tells the crossing more closely.^[3] Yang Zhong marched out by Wuchuan and took more than twenty garrisons on his way.^[3] The Qi were holding the narrows of the Xing ridge. He broke them with a surprise force.^[3] He left a rearguard at Lingqiu. Mukan, with the Ditou and Buli khans, came to meet him with a hundred thousand horse.^[3] The Bei Shi repeats the sentence of the Zhou Shu’s chapter on the Göktürks. It is no second witness.^[4]

One identification makes the Xing ridge the Gouzhu mountain north-west of Dai county in Shanxi.^[5] The same identification gives the Xing ridge as a further name of the Gouzhu mountain where it treats the events of 619.^[6] In 619 Shibi Khan sent Göktürk riders under the warlord Liu Wuzhou into the Gouzhu pass. If the identification is right, the pass the Zhou army forced in 563 is the same pass.