The Quasi-Qazaqlïq Activities and Quasi-Qazaq Groups in Pre-Mongol and Mongol Central Eurasia

CHAPTER 2 The Quasi-Qazaqlïq Activities and Quasi-Qazaq Groups in Pre-Mongol and Mongol Central Eurasia

Quasi-Qazaqlïq Activities in Pre-Mongol Central Eurasia Described in the Chinese Dynastic Histories

In post-Mongol Central Eurasia, the political adventurers or underdogs who fled from their original abodes and went to some remote regions where they engaged in brigandage came to be designated as qazaq, meaning a fugitive, freebooter, or vagabond. As a matter of fact, the practices of flight and plundering had existed in Central Eurasia during the pre-Mongol period. Being highly mobile horsemen and natural warriors, Central Eurasian nomads, when confronted with adversity, would readily move to remote regions and acquire provisions through plunder if needed. In this study, I refer to the fleeing and plundering activities performed by the nomad fugitives who were seeking their survival as “quasi-qazaqlïq” activities. Quasi-qazaqs differed from mobile pastoralists in that they were fugitives who, sometimes forming an all-male war band, relied mainly on brigandage and not pastoralism. Through their quasi-qazaqlïq activities, lesser tribal leaders were able to secure their own territories, while the fugitive bands they led sometimes developed into a new polity or even acquired a new identity. The Standard Chinese Histories record quite a few instances of such quasi-qazaqlïq activities in the sections on the “northern barbarians.”1

Fugitive Tribal Leaders and Their Nomad Followers Mugulü (ca. r. 308–316), the progenitor of the Rou-ran nomadic tribe, perhaps best deserves the title quasi-qazaq among the fugitive tribal leaders recorded in the Chinese dynastic histories.2 According to the Weishu [Book of the Wei

1 The Standard Histories (zhengshi 正史), also known as the Twenty-Four Histories, are a col- lection of official Chinese annals covering the period from antiquity to the Ming Dynasty in the seventeenth century. 2 The Avars, who established a khaganate (ca. 567–ca. 805) centered in the Carpathian Basin, may have been the remnants of the Rou-ran Khaganate destroyed by the Kök Türks in the mid-sixth century. Although the Rou-ran origin of the European Avars will remain open to debate, the Avar Khaganate, like the Rou-ran nomadic state, was founded by fugitive nomads.

Dynasty], around the year 277, Mugulü, a cavalryman serving in the army of the Tabgach, a semi-nomadic people of probable Xianbei origin that would later found the Northern Wei Dynasty (386–538), escaped to the steppe in order to avoid capital punishment and became the leader of a band of fugitives. The account runs as follows:

The Ruan-ruans are the descendants of the Dong Hu (“Eastern Barbarians”). Their clan name is Yujiulü. At first, in the late years of Shenyuan, a plundering horseman captured a slave. His hair grew from the edge of his eyebrows. He had forgotten his name. His master named him Mugulü. Mugulü means bald headed. Mugulü and Yujiulü sound sim- ilar. Therefore, their descendants later adopted this as their clan name. When Mugulü became an adult, he was freed from slavery and became a cavalryman. During the reign of Mudi, he was going to be beheaded as punishment for tardiness. He escaped and hid himself between the desert and the valley. He gathered around him fugitives and when their number reached one hundred, he joined the Hetulin tribe.3

Tuyuhun, the eponymous founder of the Tuyuhun state, a nomadic polity that was centered in the northeastern Tibetan Plateau from the fourth century to the seventh century, was also the leader of an emigrant tribe like his near contemporary Mugulü. After quarreling over grazing land with his brother, who was the leader of the Murong Xianbei tribe, Tuyuhun left his abode in western Manchuria and migrated westward with his tribesmen in 285. This group of Xianbei vagrants reached northeastern Tibet and settled there in the early fourth century. The Jinshu [Book of the Jin Dynasty] records this event as follows:

Tuyuhun is the concubine-born older half-brother of Murong Wei. His father, Shegui, portioned out a tribe of one thousand seven hundred households to be subordinated [to Tuyuhun]. After Shegui’s death, Wei succeeded him. When the horses of the two tribes fought, Wei said in anger: “Our deceased father had divided the tribe and made it separate. Why did you not go far away, but allow the horses to fight each other?” Tuyuhun said: “The horses are just animals and it is their nature to fight. How can you blame people for it? Breaking up is very easy. I will leave you and go 10,000 li away” . . . He went west and lived in the Yin Mountain.

3 Wei Shou 魏收, Weishu 魏書 [Book of the Wei Dynasty] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2003), 103: 2289. Shenyuan was the founder of the Tabgach Dynasty.