A HISTORY OF INNER ASIA

Kök Turks, Chinese expansion, and Arab conquest 55
dramatic component of the three inscriptions.Here are two examples;
first, the interlude of Chinese domination: 2
Younger brothers were unlike their elder brothers, sons were unlike their
fathers, qaghans unwise and incompetent succeeded on the throne, unwise and
incompetent were their officials.Because of discord between the nobles and the
commoners, because of the cunning and deceitfulness of the Chinese who set
younger and elder brothers, nobles and commoners against each other, the
Türk people caused the disintegration of the empire that had been their own,
caused the ruin of the qaghan who had been their qaghan.The sons of the
nobles became slaves of the Chinese, their ladylike daughters, maidservants.
The Turk nobles gave up their native offices, accepted Chinese titles and ranks,
submitted to the Chinese emperor, and for fifty years they offered him their
labor and their strength
The following passage tells about the liberation and subsequent conquests:
3
My father the qaghan set out with seventeen men, and as the word spread that
he had set out and was advancing, those who were in the plains went up into
the mountains and those who were in the mountains came down; they gathered,
and there were seventy-seven men.Because Heaven gave them strength, the
army of my father was like wolves and their enemies were like sheep.Leading
campaigns to the east and to the west, my father gathered the people and made
them rise.And all together they numbered seven hundred men.When they
were seven hundred, my father, in accordance with the institutions of our ancestors,
organized those who had been deprived of a qaghan, who had become
slaves and servants, who had abandoned their institutions....He led fortyseven
campaigns and fought in twenty battles.By the grace of Heaven he
deprived of their state those who had a state, he deprived of their qaghan those
who had a qaghan, he subjugated his enemies and made them bend their knees
and bow their heads
The inscription thus relates, among other things, the immense rhythm
and sweep of the Turks’ campaigns eastward all the way to Manchuria
and westward to Transoxania and Tokharistan.
Meanwhile Sinkiang and Transoxania continued to display their
special individuality, with the difference that the former came under
Chinese suzerainty while the latter remained a kaleidoscope of more or
less independent principalities, Iranian languages, and religions,
although a vague kind of Turkic suzerainty – perhaps rather an intermittent
series of pragmatic political submissions – bound the local monarchs
to the qaghans.Yet before long both areas would enter a process
2 Kül Tegin stele, East 5–8; Tekin, Grammar, pp.232–33 and 264; Sinor, “Eastablishment,” p.310.
3 Kül Tegin stele, East 11–15; Tekin, Grammar, pp.233–34 and 265–66; Sinor, “Establishment,”
p.311.