Yinshan

The Yinshan, 陰山, are mountains on the northern frontier of China. The histories of the eastern Göktürks name them from the reign of Shibi Khan to the fall of the khaganate in 630.^[1] They lay south of the desert. In 630 the Tang counted the land they had won as reaching from the Yinshan north to the great desert.^[2]

Shibi Khan

Shibi Khan succeeded his father in the Daye years of the Sui, when China was falling into disorder.^[3] Many Chinese fled to him. His rule reached from the Khitan and the Shiwei in the east to the Tuyuhun and Gaochang in the west.^[3] The Jiu Tang Shu says that he looked down from the Yinshan and had a mind to slight China.^[3] One translation renders the phrase as looking down from the top of the Yinshan.^[4]

Ilig Khan

In 625 Ilig Khan plundered Shuozhou with more than a hundred thousand men. A Tang army was destroyed at Taigu.^[5] The Göktürks took its chief of staff, Wen Yanbo, prisoner.^[5] Because he served close to the emperor, they questioned him about the troops and grain of the Tang.^[5] He would not answer. They moved him to the Yinshan.^[5]

In 627 the Xueyantuo, the Uyghurs, the Bayırku and other tribes north of the Yinshan rose together. They drove off Ilig’s Yukuk Shad.^[3] The Tongdian counts more than ten tribes.^[6] Ilig sent Töles against them. Töles lost his army and fled back with his light horse.^[3] The same year a great snow lay several feet deep on level ground. The sheep and horses died.^[3]

The fall of the khaganate

In the first month of 630 Li Jing fell by night on Dingxiang. Ilig withdrew.^[2] He fled to the Iron Mountain with some tens of thousands of men. He offered to submit.^[2] While Tang envoys were in his camp, Li Jing and Li Shiji met at Baidao and marched by night.^[2] At the Yinshan they came on more than a thousand Göktürk tents and took the people with them as captives.^[2]

A vanguard of two hundred horsemen under Su Dingfang came through the fog to within seven li of the khan’s tent before it was seen.^[2] Ilig fled on a fast horse. His people broke.^[2] Li Jing’s men killed the Sui princess Yicheng. They took more than a hundred thousand men and women.^[2] The Zizhi tongjian enters the victory at the Yinshan under the second month of 630, in the Tang conquest of the eastern khaganate.^[2]

Location

Some scholars identify the Yinshan with the Daqing Shan north of Guihuacheng, in Suiyuan.^[7] The same scholars give Mount Dajin and Mount Qin as other names of that range.^[7]