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The Wei Shu is the dynastic history of the Northern Wei, compiled by Wei Shou and presented in 554. It appeared within living memory of the events of the 520s, and two years after the fall of the Rouran. Like the Zhou Shu for the Göktürks, it is the one connected account of the Rouran Khaganate, written by the state that fought it. Its chapter on the Rouran did not survive intact. The text read today was restored in the Song period from the Bei Shi, which had abridged Wei Shou’s chapter.[1]

Compilation and transmission

Wei Shou began the work in 551 on the order of the first Northern Qi emperor. He presented the annals and biographies in the third month of 554 and the ten treatises in the eleventh month of the same year.[2] He compiled it from the national history of the Wei and the court diaries. He also called in the genealogies of the great families.[2] The national history went back to the annals that Deng Yuan wrote under the founder Daowu. Cui Hao continued it in thirty juan from 429. In 487 Li Biao recast it in the form of annals and biographies.[3] When the Wei Shu was presented, the older histories of Cui Hao and Li Biao were burned.[4] The work was revised three times under the Northern Qi. The last revision came in 573, a year after Wei Shou’s death.[5]

By the Song collation, some thirty juan were lost or incomplete.[6] The Song editors marked juan 101 to 104 as lost and noted of juan 103 that Wei Shou’s chapter was gone. The collation notes of the palace edition point to two traces of the Bei Shi left in the restored text.[1] They took juan 102, on the Western Regions, entire from the Bei Shi.[7] The annals of Taizong in juan 3 were thought to come from the Wei Shu of Wei Dan, compiled under the Sui. The annals of the Eastern Wei in juan 12 were rebuilt from the Bei Shi and two other works, with a few entries of Wei Shou’s own text left in them.[8] The restored chapters are not Wei Shou’s text. They keep their value as sources, because the Bei Shi’s account of the Wei is taken from his.[9] The annals show where the Bei Shi shortened. Under 473, they record a Rouran raid on Dunhuang, beaten off by the garrison commander. They refer the details to the Rouran chapter.[10] The restored chapter has nothing of the raid.[11]

Chapter 103

Juan 103 gathers four northern peoples: the Rouran, the Yuwen, the Duan and the Gaoche.[12] The Rouran section begins with the slave Mugulü and goes through the chiefs before the khaganate. It tells Shelun’s rise and title. It then takes each khan in turn, with his title and its gloss “in the language of Wei”. It ends with Anagui’s marriage alliances with Gao Huan and the Eastern Wei in the 540s. The war of 546 to 552 is not in it.[12] The Gaoche section contains the origin legend of the wolf and the chanyu’s daughters, the customs of the “high carts”, and their wars with the Rouran. It also covers Afuzhiluo’s secession and the kings Mi’etu and Yifu. It tells the death of Futu north of Barkol, with detail the Rouran section lacks.[12] The two sections together are the main source for the Rouran khans, the Yujiulü, the Gaoche secession, Taiwu’s campaign and the civil war of 520.

Chapter 102

Chapter 102 describes the Western Regions as the Wei court knew them. It holds a long entry on the Hephthalites. The entry says that their king’s capital, the city of Badiyan, lay more than 200 li south of the Wuxu river and 10,100 li from Chang’an. It identifies the city as Wangshe cheng.[13] The people numbered about a hundred thousand. They lived in felt tents, without walled towns, and moved with the seasons.[13] Their customs were much like those of the Göktürks. Their language differed from that of the Rouran, the Gaoche and the other hu.[13] They sent embassies to the Wei from the Tai’an era onward.[13] At the end of the Zhengguang era they sent a lion. The revolt of Moqi Chounu held it back on the road. It was sent on to the capital after his defeat.[13]

The entry also gives the capital many temples and stupas adorned with gold. It ends with two distances: 1,500 li south to Cao and 6,500 li east to Guazhou.[13] Both stand in the same words in chapter 83 of the Sui Shu. The Sui Shu has the river name of the entry as well, in another writing.[14] The Bei Shi, from which the Song editors took the chapter, drew on the Sui Shu beside the old Wei Shu. The restored chapter therefore holds sentences that belong to a later layer than Wei Shou’s text.[15] The temples and stupas may belong to the report of Pei Ju in 607.[16] If so, they describe the Hephthalite capital after the fall of the realm, not the people whom the embassy of 518 to 522 found.[16]

Bias

The chapter is written to demean. It writes the people’s name with the graph 蠕蠕, “wriggling”. It says that the emperor Taiwu substituted this graph because he held them witless and like insects. The chapter opens with a runaway slave. It preserves Daowu’s speech on the Rouran who would not change their cows for bulls. Its concluding judgement calls them the offspring of the Xiongnu, without root or origin, criminals gathered from the runaways.[12] Against that, the same chapter records, without seeming to notice, a state that gave its rulers titles for their deeds, counted its own reign years and married into every dynasty around it. This state beat the Wei’s own client Gaoche more often than it lost. The concluding judgement itself admits that the Wei’s campaigns into the steppe were “a matter of urgent necessity”.[12] The Wei glosses of the khans’ titles are the only Rouran words that survive. They survive as the Wei rendered them.[12]

Chapter 9

The annals of the emperor Xiaoming date the rising of the Six Garrisons to the third month of 524. They record in the sixth month of 525 that Anagui broke its leader, Poliuhan Baling, and beheaded his general Kongque.[17] The Rouran chapter tells the same campaign at more length. It has the envoy with gifts, the hundred thousand men, the march from Wuchuan west towards Woye, and the court’s later order to hold back from plunder.[12] Neither chapter says that the Rouran were given leave to plunder.

Dependence

The histories on which Wei Shou built, the national history of the Wei and the court diaries, are lost.[4] The Bei Shi abridged his Rouran chapter. The Song editors then restored the lost chapter from the Bei Shi.[18] Where the two agree on the Rouran, they are therefore one witness. The text read under the name of the Wei Shu is the Bei Shi’s. The Zhou Shu takes up the story where the chapter ends, in 546. For the war of 546 to 552, it is the only witness. On three points, the chapter and one modern account differ. The first is the blow that broke Datan, 429 in the chapter. The second is the western victory over the Gaoche, Chounu’s in 516 in the chapter. The third is the Rouran chancery, which the chapter denies.[19]

Text used

The Chinese Wikisource transcript of the chapter has no critical apparatus and no page numbers. Citations therefore give the juan. The translations are made from the Chinese directly.

The passage

Wei Shu 102: the Hephthalites and the customs they share with the Göktürks

嚈噠國，大月氏之種類也，亦曰高車之別種，其原出於塞北。

自金山而南，在于闐之西，都烏許水南二百餘里，去長安一萬一百里。

其王都拔底延城，蓋王舍城也。

其城方十里餘，多寺塔，皆飾以金。

風俗與突厥略同。

其俗兄弟共一妻，夫無兄弟者其妻戴一角帽，若有兄弟者依其多少之數，更加角焉。

其語與蠕蠕、高車及諸胡不同。

眾可十萬。無城邑，依隨水草，以氈為屋，夏遷涼土，冬逐暖處。

The Yanda, the Hephthalites, were of the stock of the Great Yuezhi. They are also called a separate branch of the Gaoche. Their origin lay beyond the northern frontier.

They lived south of the Golden Mountain and west of Yutian. Their capital lay more than two hundred li south of the Wuxu river, and 10,100 li from Chang'an.

The king's capital was the city of Badiyan, which is the city of Wangshe.

The city was more than ten li square. It had many temples and stupas, all adorned with gold.

Their customs were much the same as those of the Göktürks.

In their custom, brothers shared one wife. If a husband had no brothers, his wife wore a hat with one horn. If he had brothers, horns were added according to their number.

Their language differed from that of the Rouran, the Gaoche and the various Hu.

Their host may have numbered a hundred thousand. They had no walled towns but followed water and grass, made their houses of felt, moved to cool ground in summer and sought warm places in winter.

[13] Wei Shu, juan 102

Wei Shu 102: customs of Kang and what they share with the Göktürks

人皆深目、高鼻、多髯。

善商賈，諸夷交易多湊其國。

有大小鼓、琵琶、五弦箜篌。

婚姻喪制與突厥同。

國立祖廟，以六月祭之，諸國皆助祭。

The people all have deep-set eyes, high noses and thick beards.

They are good at trade, and the exchanges of the various foreigners converge in their country.

They have large and small drums, the pipa and the five-string konghou.

Their marriage and mourning customs are the same as those of the Göktürks.

The state keeps an ancestral temple and holds a sacrifice in it in the sixth month, and all the states help with the sacrifice.

[13] Wei Shu, juan 102

Wei Shu 102: Kang, its royal house and the daughter of Dadu Khan

康國者，康居之後也。

遷徙無常，不恒故地，自漢以來，相承不絕。

其王本姓溫，月氏人也。

舊居祁連山北昭武城，因被匈奴所破，西踰葱嶺，遂有其國。

枝庶各分王，故康國左右諸國，並以昭武為姓，示不忘本也。

王字世夫畢，為人寬厚，甚得眾心。

其妻突厥達度可汗女也。

Kang was descended from Kangju.

They moved without fixed order and did not always stay on their old land, but from the Han onward they continued without a break.

The original surname of its king was Wen, and he was a man of the Yuezhi.

They had lived at the city of Zhaowu, north of the Qilian mountains. After the Xiongnu defeated them, they crossed the Congling range to the west and came to hold that country.

Its branches and cadet lines each ruled a part. This is why the states around Kang all take Zhaowu as their surname, to show that they do not forget their root.

The king, whose style was Shifubi, was generous and kind by nature and won the hearts of the people.

His wife was a daughter of Dadu Khan of the Göktürks.

[13] Wei Shu, juan 102

Wei Shu 102: Qiuci and its distance from the Göktürk court tent

龜茲國，在尉犂西北，白山之南一百七十里，都延城，漢時舊國也。

其南三百里有大河東流，號計式水，即黃河也。

東去焉耆九百里，南去于闐一千四百里，西去疏勒一千五百里，

北去突厥牙帳六百餘里，

東南去瓜州三千一百里。

The kingdom of Qiuci lay northwest of Yuli, 170 li south of the White Mountain. Its capital was the city of Yan. It was an old state of the Han time.

Three hundred li south of it a great river flows east. It is called the Jishi river, and it is said to be the Yellow River.

To the east it is 900 li to Yanqi, to the south 1,400 li to Yutian, to the west 1,500 li to Shule,

to the north more than 600 li to the court tent of the Göktürks,

and to the southeast 3,100 li to Guazhou.

[13] Wei Shu, juan 102

Wei Shu 102: Shule sends supplies to the Göktürks

疏勒國，在姑默西，白山南百餘里，漢時舊國也。

其王戴金師子冠。

土多稻、粟、麻、麥、銅、鐵、錫、雌黃、錦、綿，每歲常供送於突厥。

其都城方五里，國內有大城十二，小城數十。

南有黃河，西帶葱嶺，東去龜茲千五百里，西去鏺汗國千里，南去朱俱波八九百里，

東北至突厥牙帳千餘里，

東南去瓜州四千六百里。

The kingdom of Shule lay west of Gumo, more than a hundred li south of the White Mountain. It was an old state of the Han time.

Its king wore a crown with a golden lion.

The land produced much rice, millet, hemp, wheat, copper, iron, tin, orpiment, brocade and silk floss, and every year it regularly supplied and sent goods to the Göktürks.

Its capital was five li square, and the country had twelve large cities and several dozen small ones.

To the south lay the Yellow River, and to the west the Congling range. It was 1,500 li east to Qiuci, 1,000 li west to the kingdom of Bohan, and 800 or 900 li south to Zhujubo,

to the northeast more than 1,000 li to the court tent of the Göktürks,

and to the southeast 4,600 li to Guazhou.

[13] Wei Shu, juan 102

References

  1. ^ a b 内田吟風 1937, p. 534,539
  2. ^ a b 内田吟風 1937, p. 525
  3. ^ 内田吟風 1937, p. 514-519
  4. ^ a b 内田吟風 1937, p. 531
  5. ^ 内田吟風 1937, p. 530
  6. ^ 内田吟風 1937, p. 531,533
  7. ^ 内田吟風 1937, p. 538
  8. ^ 内田吟風 1937, p. 534,535
  9. ^ 内田吟風 1937, p. 533
  10. ^ Wei Shu, juan 7
  11. ^ Wei Shu, juan 103; 内田吟風 1945, p. 152
  12. ^ a b c d e f g Wei Shu, juan 103
  13. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Wei Shu, juan 102
  14. ^ Wei Shu, juan 102; Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 83
  15. ^ Herrmann 1925, p. 566
  16. ^ a b Herrmann 1925, p. 571,577
  17. ^ Wei Shu, juan 9
  18. ^ 内田吟風 1937, p. 539
  19. ^ Yavuz 2025

Sources

Literature

  • Uchida Ginpū 内田吟風, 後魏柔然表 (下): 中古蒙古史の編年史的整理の意圖をかねて (1945)
  • Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
  • Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
  • Kürşat Yıldırım, On the Culture of Rouran Khanate (2024)
  • Uchida Ginpū 内田吟風, 魏書の成立に就いて (1937)
  • Uchida Ginpū 内田吟風, 魏書序紀特に其世系記事に就て：志田不動麿學士「代王世系批判」を讀む (1937)
  • Uchida Ginpū 内田吟風, 魏書西域傳原文考釋（上） (1970)
  • Albert Herrmann, Die Hephthaliten und ihre Beziehungen zu China (1925)

Drawn on by

Bei Shi · Zizhi tongjian

Articles resting on this source 122

Afuzhiluo · Aksu · Alchon Huns · Anagui · Asena the She-Wolf (Gök Börü) · Ashina · Avars · Ayran · Bread · Bride-Price in Livestock · Bukhara · Buluzhen Khan · Buyeo · Camels · Captives and the Unfree · Chinese Bans on the Export of Iron · Chinese transcriptions of Turkic · Chounu Khan · Culture of the Turkic Peoples · Datan Khan · Diwan · Donghu · Drums and Banners for the Khans · Dzungaria · Eastern Wei · Felt · Fufuluo · Futu Khan · Gao Huan · Gaoche · Gaoche secession (487) · Gaoche Thunder Rite · Gouzhu Pass · Grape Wine in Central Asia · Han campaigns against the Northern Xiongnu · Hephthalites · History of the Turkic peoples · Horse and Camel Races at the Xiongnu Sacrifices · Horse Sacrifice · Huaihuang · Hulü Khan · Jade Gate · Jiaohe · Jiuquan · Kam (Turkic Shaman) · Karashahr · Kashgar · Khan (Khagan) · Khitan · Kidarites · Kumys · Lacquerware · Liang Shu · Luntai · Millet · Millet Beer · Mounted Archery · Mugulü · Mumocheng · Murong · Nagai Khan · Nezak Shahs · Northern Wei · Ordos · Oxus · Pingliang · Poliuhan Baling · Poluomen Khan · Post and Communication · Revolt of the Six Garrisons · Riding Round the Dead · Rise of Anagui Khan · Rouran · Rouran civil war (520–521) · Rouran Domination of the Turkic Peoples · Rouran Khaganate · Samarkand · Scapulimancy · Seasonal Pastures · Seating at the Feast · Shamanism · Shanshan · Shelun Khan · Shiwei · Six Garrisons · Skull Cup · Sogdians · Song Shu · Steppe Diet · Taiwu's campaign against the Rouran (429) · Tally Sticks and the Golden Arrow · The Battue · The Chile Song · The Flight of the Ashina (439) · The Gaoche Herds of 429 · The Gaoche Wedding · The Göktürks and the Xiongnu · The Great Empires of the Steppe · The Great Sacrifice of the Gaoche · The origin of the Avars · The origin of the title Khan · The Rouran–Wei wars, 402–449 · The Three Xiongnu Assemblies · Tiele · Tuhezhen Khan · Tulun Khan · Tuoba · Turkic Mythology · Wagons of the Steppe Peoples · Water Cult · Wei Jie · Western Wei · Women among the Turkic Peoples · Woye · Wuti Khan · Xianbei · Yada Stone · Yarkand · Yucheng Khan · Yueban · Yujiulü · Yunzhong

Related

What links here63

Persons
Afuzhiluo · Chounu Khan · Datan Khan · Diwan · Futu Khan · Mugulü · Nagai Khan · Poluomen Khan · Shelun Khan · Tuhezhen Khan · Tulun Khan · Wuti Khan · Yucheng Khan
States
Buyeo · Eastern Wei · Gaoche · Northern Wei · Rouran Khaganate · Shanshan · Western Wei
Conflicts
Gaoche secession (487) · Rouran civil war (520–521) · Rouran Domination of the Turkic Peoples · Taiwu's campaign against the Rouran (429)
Battles & Events
The Flight of the Ashina (439) · The Great Sacrifice of the Gaoche
Places
Dzungaria · Huaihuang · Jade Gate · Jiuquan · Mumocheng · Ordos · Pingliang · Yunzhong
Peoples
Alchon Huns · Hephthalites · Khitan · Rouran · Tiele · Tuoba
Lineages
Fufuluo · Murong · Yujiulü
Institutions and Titles
Drums and Banners for the Khans · Skull Cup · Tally Sticks and the Golden Arrow
Religions
Gaoche Thunder Rite · Riding Round the Dead
Foods
Grape Wine in Central Asia · Kumys · Millet · Millet Beer · Steppe Diet
Customs & Pastimes
Horse and Camel Races at the Xiongnu Sacrifices · Mounted Archery · Seating at the Feast · The Battue · The Chile Song · The Gaoche Wedding
Sources
Bei Shi (History of the Northern Dynasties) · Liang Shu · Song Shu
Controversies
The Huns and the Xiongnu

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Wei Shu.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/sources/weishu/

Last revised: 8 November 2026