Uyghur Khaganate: A Visual History

The Uyghur Khaganate replaced the Second Turkic Khaganate in Mongolia in 744 and lasted until the Kyrgyz destroyed its capital in 840. Its cavalry rescued the Tang dynasty during the An Lushan rebellion, recapturing Chang'an and Luoyang, and the Uyghurs then extracted huge payments in silk for horses. Uniquely among steppe empires they built a walled capital, Ordu-Baliq, and made Manichaeism the state religion. Famine, internal feuds and the Kyrgyz invasion scattered them; refugees founded the Uyghur states of Turfan and Gansu.

When it existed: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Uyghur Khaganate. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

Uyghur territory

Timeline of the Uyghur Khaganate

1. 744
   Uyghurs overthrow the Turks
2. 757
   Uyghur cavalry retake Chang'an
3. 762
   Luoyang sacked; Bogu meets Manichaeans
4. 763
   Manichaeism adopted
5. 780
   Uyghur envoys massacred at Tang border
6. 821
   Peace with Tibet and the Tang
7. 840
   Kyrgyz destroy Ordu-Baliq

Rise

The Uyghurs, a Tiele Turkic people, allied with the Karluks and Basmyl to overthrow the eastern Turks in 744 and then took sole control of Mongolia. Their khagans kept the Turkic imperial titles and the Orkhon heartland but, unusually, built cities and traded intensively through Sogdian merchants.

Saviours of the Tang

When An Lushan's rebellion drove the Tang court from Chang'an in 756, the Uyghurs sent 4,000 horsemen who helped retake both capitals in 757 and again in 762, sacking Luoyang for their pains. In return the Tang paid for horses at 40 bolts of silk each, sent princesses as brides and tolerated Uyghur swagger in the capital. Bogu Khagan converted to Manichaeism after meeting its priests in Luoyang in 762.

Fall

In the 830s a run of harsh winters, plague and civil war between khagan and ministers weakened the state. In 840 a Kyrgyz army from the Yenisei invaded, killed the khagan and burned Ordu-Baliq. Uyghur groups fled south to the Tang border, where they were massacred, and south-west to Gansu and the Turfan oases, where the Kingdom of Qocho preserved Uyghur culture until the Mongols.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• Tang dynasty (618 to 907)
• Eastern Turkic Khaganate (603 to 630)
• Tibetan Empire (618 to 842)
• Liao dynasty (916 to 1125)
• Khazar Khanate (650 to 969)
• Abbasid Caliphate (750 to 1258)

Wars of the same era and region

• An Lushan Rebellion (755 to 763)

8 surprising things about the Uyghur Khaganate

1. The Uyghurs are the only steppe empire to have adopted Manichaeism, a religion that forbade its elite from eating meat.
2. Tang China at times paid the Uyghurs over a million bolts of silk a year for horses it did not want.
3. Ordu-Baliq's ruins in Mongolia cover 25 km2 and include the base of a huge stele in three scripts.
4. The Uyghur script, adopted from Sogdian, was later borrowed by the Mongols and then the Manchus.
5. Uyghur soldiers in the Tang capital were notorious for kidnapping and brawling and could not be arrested.
6. The modern Uyghurs of Xinjiang took the name in the twentieth century; the connection to the khaganate is real but indirect.
7. The Kyrgyz who destroyed the Uyghurs came from Siberia and did not stay in Mongolia.
8. The Uyghur khagan Bogu was murdered by his own minister in 779 for planning to invade the Tang.

Sources

• Uyghur Khaganate Wikipedia
• Uighur Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Uyghur Khaganate World History Encyclopedia
• Colin Mackerras, The Uighur Empire According to the T'ang Dynastic Histories (1972) Australian National University Press

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