Shanshan was the kingdom at the eastern end of the southern road through the Western Regions. The Han Shu says that it was originally called Loulan.[1] In 77 BC the Han had the king of Loulan killed and set up his brother. The kingdom then received the name Shanshan.[1][2][3] From then on it lay between the Han and the Xiongnu, and each of the two powers held it in turn. The road from Dunhuang and the Jade Gate passed through it. In the second century Han officials argued that if Shanshan fell to the Xiongnu, the other oases would follow and the commanderies of Hexi would be in danger.[4]

The renaming of 77 BC

Before the renaming the country had stood between the two powers, as Turkic Atlas tells under Loulan. Modern accounts hold that Loulan stayed under Xiongnu command until 109 BC, and that at the Xiongnu’s order it and Jushi plundered the Han caravans on the road west.[5] One scene in the Han Shu adds to this. The Xiongnu had not dared to stop the army of the Erhshi general, Li Guangli, on its way to Dayuan. Instead they sent horsemen to Loulan to waylay the envoys who followed. Ren Wen, an army judge, held the Jade Gate as rearguard of the army. He took prisoners, learned what was planned and reported it. The emperor ordered Ren Wen to seize the king. The king was brought to the capital and questioned. He answered: “A small state between great states cannot be safe unless it belongs to both. I wish to move my country into Han land.” The emperor found the words just. He sent the king home and used him to watch the Xiongnu. From then on the Xiongnu trusted Loulan less.[1]

The two courts then quarrelled over the succession. When the king died, the people asked for the son who was a hostage in China. He had been convicted under Han law and castrated. The Han would not send him but told the Loulanese to set up the next in line. The Han demanded a hostage of the new king again, and he sent a son to the Xiongnu too. When the next king died, the Xiongnu heard of it first. They sent home their hostage, and he became king.[1] The Han summoned him to court. He put the visit off. The kingdom served the Xiongnu as eyes in the rear and killed Han envoys. This went on until the king’s brother Weituqi, who had gone over to the Han, told the court everything.[1]

The general Huo Guang then sent Fu Jiezi to Loulan. Fu Jiezi had the king stabbed at a feast. He told the nobles that the Han would set up Weituqi.[1] The Han did so. They renamed the kingdom Shanshan and had a seal cut for the new king. They gave him a lady of the palace for his wife and fitted him out with carriages, horses and baggage. The chancellor and the generals led the officials out to the Heng Gate to see him off.[1]

Before he left, Weituqi told the emperor that he had lived long in China and was now alone and weak. A son of the former king was alive, and Weituqi feared being killed by him. The town of Yixun in his country had good land. He asked the Han to send a general to farm there and lay up grain, so that he might lean on the general’s weight. The Han sent one officer and forty men to farm Yixun and keep the country quiet. Later a commandant was set over the place. The text dates the office at Yixun from this.[1] Modern accounts identify Yixun with Vash-shahri, west of the seat Yuni. A commentary of about 500 names Yixun as the capital of Shanshan and Yuni as the old eastern city, from which the seat is taken to have moved west.[6]

The country in the Han Shu

The Han Shu gives the seat of the king as the town of Yuni, 1,600 li from the Yang Pass and 6,100 li from Chang’an.[1] Modern accounts identify Yuni with Charklik, south-west of the Lop Nor.[7] The kingdom counted 1,570 households, 14,100 people and 2,912 men fit to bear arms.[1] From Shanshan it was 1,785 li north-west to the seat of the Protector-General. It was 1,365 li to the country of Moshan and 1,890 li north-west to Jushi. Qiemo lay 720 li to the west.[1] Beyond Qiemo the people sowed the five grains. Soil, plants, herds and weapons were much like those of the Han.[1]

The ground was sand and salt with little arable land, and the kingdom relied on the fields and grain of the countries beside it. It produced jade and had reeds, tamarisk, the “poplar of the Hu” and white grass. The people followed their herds from water to pasture. They kept donkeys and horses and many camels, and made weapons as the Ruoqiang did.[1] The Ruoqiang were a herding people who sowed nothing and lived on the grain of Shanshan and Qiemo. The road from their country ran north-west to Shanshan and joined the main road there.[1] In the Han Shu, Shanshan, Khotan and Yarkand are the three lands of jade.[1][8]

The court was small. The Han Shu lists one man each as marquis who supports the state, marquis who repels the Hu, commandant of Shanshan, commandant who attacks Jushi, left and right qiequ, and lord who attacks Jushi, and two chief interpreters.[1] Two of the offices are named for Jushi, the kingdom that lay across the northern road. This suggests a standing duty to face it.

Between the Han and the Xiongnu

The southern road ran from Shanshan along the Southern Mountains to Shache, which modern accounts identify with Yarkand. From there it crossed the Pamirs to the Yuezhi and Parthia.[1][8] Under Emperor Xuan the Han broke Jushi. They controlled the southern road only and could not yet take the northern. In 60 BC Zheng Ji, who protected the envoys west of Shanshan, received the Rizhu king. The court made Zheng Ji protector of the northern road as well. The office of Protector-General dates from him.[1][2] The Tarim basin article tells how the system worked.

Ban Gu closes the chapter with a judgement that gives the later position. Since the Jianwu years, he writes, the Western Regions had longed for the virtue of the Han and wished to join it. Only the small towns of Shanshan and Jushi, whose borders pressed on the Xiongnu, were still held by the Xiongnu. The great states Yarkand and Khotan sent hostages to the Han again and again and asked to be put under a Protector-General.[1]

Under the Later Han

After the usurpation of Wang Mang the states of the Western Regions turned against China and fell back under the Xiongnu. The Xiongnu taxed them hard. In the Jianwu years all the states sent envoys asking to be taken in and to have a Protector-General. Guangwu, with the empire barely settled, did not allow it. The Xiongnu grew weak, and the king of Yarkand destroyed state after state. When he died, the survivors fought one another. Shanshan swallowed Xiaowan, Jingjue, Ronglu and Qiemo, and Khotan took Qule and Pishan.[4]

In the fourteenth year of Jianwu, 38, the king of Yarkand and An, the king of Shanshan, sent envoys to court together with tribute. The Western Regions were opened again.[4] In the winter of the twenty-first year, 45, the king of Front Jushi, Shanshan, Yanqi and fifteen other states sent sons to serve at court and asked for a Protector-General. Guangwu sent the hostages back with rich gifts, because the north was not yet subdued. The states then asked the Dunhuang prefect to keep the hostages, to show Yarkand that the Protector would soon come out.[4]

The Protector did not come. In the next year the king of Yarkand wrote to An and told him to close the road to the Han. An refused and killed the messenger. The king of Yarkand attacked. An lost the battle and fled into the mountains, and more than a thousand of his people were killed or carried off. The hostages who had been kept at Dunhuang slipped home. An wrote to the emperor, asking again to send a son and to have a Protector. He said that since no Protector came he was truly pressed by the Xiongnu. The emperor answered that no envoy or great army could yet come out, and that if the states could not follow their hearts they were free to go east, west, north or south. Shanshan and Jushi went back to the Xiongnu.[4] According to the text, the king of Shanshan too began to grow strong in the Yongping years of Emperor Ming, after Khotan had destroyed Yarkand. On the southern road east of the Pamirs only Khotan and Shanshan were great.[4]

Ban Chao at Shanshan, 73

In 73 Ban Chao came to Shanshan as envoy with thirty-six men. The king, Guang, received him with respect and then grew cool. Ban Chao concluded that Xiongnu envoys were in the country. He attacked their camp at night with fire. He killed the envoy and more than thirty of his men and burned the rest. The king of Shanshan was shown the head. The whole kingdom was seized with terror, and the king sent a son as hostage to the Han.[9] Shanshan was Ban Chao’s first station in the Western Regions. Turkic Atlas tells the night at length under Ban Chao. In 94 Ban Chao led the troops of eight states, seventy thousand men in all, against Yanqi. Shanshan was one of the eight.[9]

After Ban Chao

When the Han gave up the Protector-General, the Northern Xiongnu took the states back. The Dunhuang prefect sent the chief clerk Suo Ban with more than a thousand men to Yiwu. The king of Front Jushi and the king of Shanshan came over to him. A few months later the Northern Chanyu and the king of Rear Jushi killed Suo Ban and drove out the Front king. Shanshan, hard pressed, begged the prefect for help, and the prefect asked leave to send troops. The dowager Deng refused. She had a deputy colonel for the Western Regions seated at Dunhuang with three hundred men.[4]

The Dunhuang prefect Zhang Dang then put three plans to the court. The best was to strike the Hu Yan king and raise 5,000 men in Shanshan to threaten Rear Jushi. The worst was to give up Jiaohe and bring Shanshan and the others inside the pass. Chen Zhong of the Secretariat argued against giving up. The Northern Xiongnu had broken Jushi and would attack Shanshan to the south. If Shanshan were left without help, the other states would follow and the four commanderies of Hexi would be in danger.[4] Ban Yong also spoke against giving up the Western Regions. He said that after the Tibetan revolt the Xiongnu had sent envoys to the oasis states and demanded all taxes that had fallen due and not been paid, had raised the sums and had given a very short term. Shanshan and Jushi were frightened and angry.[9][10] The court sent Ban Yong with five hundred convict soldiers to Liuzhong.[4] In the first month of the next year Yong reached Loulan, and Shanshan submitted. The text adds that Yong gave three seal ribbons in special award.[9] In a later campaign against the king of Rear Jushi, Yong led 6,000 horse from Dunhuang, Zhangye and Jiuquan together with troops of Shanshan, Shule and Front Jushi.[9] Earlier the court had asked Yong whether it would be wise to station a chief clerk at Loulan.[9] His answer is quoted as saying that an officer at Loulan would command the roads to Yanqi and Kucha. He would hearten Shanshan and Khotan in the south, hold the Xiongnu in awe in the north and be a neighbour of Dunhuang in the east. The answer is dated to 119.[9][11]

The name Shanshan and the town of Loulan

There are three explanations of the two names. The first follows the Han Shu. The kingdom was Loulan. It was renamed in 77 BC, and its court then sat at Yuni, south-west of the Lop Nor. The walled town of the Lop desert went on under the old name. The equation of the two names therefore holds in a political sense and not in a geographical one.[12][13] The second ties the name to the end of the town. The town of Loulan was given up between the second third of the fourth century and the beginning of the fifth, probably because the desert advanced round the Lop Nor. The kingdom withdrew to the mountain foot in the south. The Chinese then gave it the name of the kingdom of Shanshan.[14] A third holds that a smaller realm of Shanshan already existed round Yuni before 77 BC, perhaps dependent on Loulan. That realm then took over the lands of Loulan when that kingdom fell. The name Loulan lived on among the people.[11]

The texts themselves use the name Shanshan for the kingdom from the first century on. The Han Shu entry on the kingdom is headed Shanshan, and the Hou Han Shu speaks of the king of Shanshan in the first century.[1][4] The Weilüe, quoted in the commentary to the Sanguozhi, counts Loulan among the states that belonged to Shanshan on the southern road, with Qiezhi, Xiaowan and Jingjue.[15] The Wei Shu and the Zhou Shu say that Shanshan was anciently the kingdom of Loulan.[16] The Chinese translation of the Candragarbha Sutra, made in 566, contains a list of countries of eastern Turkestan. The list ends with a name taken to be Shanshan and equated with Krorain on the Lop Nor.[17]

After the Han

By the fifth century the Wei Shu describes the capital as the town of Yuni. It was a city one li square on sandy, salty ground with little water and grass, and the road of the White Dragon Dunes lay to the north.[18] The king began to send envoys with tribute early in the Taiyan years. In the fourth year, 438, he sent his brother Suyanqi to serve at the Wei court.[18]

After the Wei took Liangzhou, the fighting of the Hexi reached Shanshan. Juqu Wuhui fled to Dunhuang and later planned to cross the sands. He sent his brother Anzhou against Shanshan. King Bilong was afraid and wished to submit, but Wei envoys returning from India and Jibin urged him to resist. The fighting went on. Anzhou could not win and fell back on the eastern city. Bilong then took half his people west to Qiemo, in the third year of Zhenjun, 442, and his heir went over to Anzhou.[18] The Wei sent Wan Dugui over the sands with 5,000 light horse. The king, Zhenda, came out bound and surrendered. Wan Dugui set him free and took him to the capital. That year the Wei made Han Ba, a duke of Jiaozhi, king of Shanshan with the rank of general, to hold the country. They levied labour and taxes from its people as from a commandery.[18]

Faxian, who travelled in 400, described a formidable desert between Dunhuang and Shanshan. The advance of the desert round the Lop Nor blocked part of the southern road between Khotan and Dunhuang.[19] In 609 the Sui set up commanderies named Xihai, Heyuan, Shanshan and Qiemo and sent convicts to garrison them.[20] The meeting at which this was done is told in the assembly at Mount Yanzhi. Between 627 and 649 a Sogdian leader, Kang Yandian, settled in Shanshan and founded towns south of the Lop Nor.[21][22]

Sources

The Han Shu describes the kingdom in its chapter on the Western Regions. The chapter has a separate entry for Shanshan with numbers, distances, offices and produce. The Hou Han Shu has no entry of its own for Shanshan in its chapter on the Western Regions.[4] It tells the later history of the kingdom there and in the biography of Ban Chao. Both are by Fan Ye, so they do not confirm each other as independent witnesses. The Wei Shu chapter on the Western Regions was lost and has come down in the form the Bei Shi gave it. Its entry on Shanshan shares sentences with the Zhou Shu.[16]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u Han Shu, juan 96
  2. ^ a b c Chavannes 1913, vii
  3. ^ a b Herrmann 1910, p. 103
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Hou Han Shu, juan 88
  5. ^ Ögel 2015, p. 23,56
  6. ^ Herrmann 1910, p. 121–122
  7. ^ a b Herrmann 1910, p. 100
  8. ^ a b Herrmann 1910, p. 122
  9. ^ a b c d e f g Hou Han Shu, juan 47
  10. ^ Ögel 2015, p. 341
  11. ^ a b Herrmann 1910, p. 104
  12. ^ Chavannes 1913, iv,vii
  13. ^ Herrmann 1910, p. 100–104
  14. ^ de la Vaissière 2005a, p. 122–123
  15. ^ Sanguozhi, juan 30
  16. ^ a b Wei Shu, juan 102; Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
  17. ^ Lüders 1930, p. 27–28
  18. ^ a b c d Wei Shu, juan 102
  19. ^ de la Vaissière 2005a, p. 123
  20. ^ Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 181
  21. ^ de la Vaissière 2005a, p. 123–124
  22. ^ Mori 1983, p. 342–343

Sources

Literature

  • Étienne de la Vaissière, Sogdian Traders: A History (2005)
  • Édouard Chavannes, Les documents chinois découverts par Aurel Stein dans les sables du Turkestan oriental (1913)
  • Albert Herrmann, Die alten Seidenstrassen zwischen China und Syrien. Beiträge zur alten Geographie Asiens, Bd. 1 (1910)
  • Heinrich Lüders, Weitere Beiträge zur Geschichte und Geographie von Ostturkestan (1930)
  • Bahaeddin Ögel, Büyük Hun İmparatorluğu Tarihi II (2015)
  • Masao Mori (護雅夫), Soğdluların Orta-Asya'daki Faaliyetleri (1983)

Related

What links here10

States
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Places
Jade Gate · Khotan · Kucha · Loulan · Tarim Basin · Xihai · Yiwu
Institutions and Titles
Han Military Farms in the Western Regions · Tongpu Duwei

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Shanshan.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/polities/shanshan/

Last revised: 8 November 2026