Buyiruq Khan

Who he is

Name

Buyiruq (Buyiruq Khan, Buyirugh; the name is a Turkic title for a commander)

Title

Khan (qan) of the mountain Naiman of the Guchugud branch; the second Naiman khan beside Tayang

Since

After the death of Inanch Bilge Khan: Wikipedia gives his reign as c. 1198 to 1206

Born

not known

Family

Guchugud branch; younger son of Inanch Bilge Khan by Wikipedia's account; brother or half-brother of Tayang. Wives and children not known; his nephew Kuchlug succeeds to the Naiman leadership after 1206 (Wikipedia).

Confidence

medium for the man, low for the camp

Secret History 142-144, 158-163, 177 (translation with dating footnotes read online); Wikipedia on Buyruq Khan and Toghrul.

Overlord

None shown.

What it holds

• The Guchugud Naiman of the Altai, a following of herding clans (no count)
• The Ulungur river and lake and the country of Lake Kishil-bash south of the Altai as winter ground; the Altai slopes towards Khovd and the Soqoq-usun as summer ground (Secret History 158; the exact places are not pinned)
• The captain Kokse Sabraq (in his service in the Year of the Dog) and the scout Yeditubluq
• A refuge for Toghrul's exiled brother Erke Qara, about 1198 (Rashid via Wikipedia; medium)

How it was acquired

Divided from Tayang after Inanch Bilge's death with a faction of the Naiman (Wikipedia).

Allies and rivals

Enemy of Toghrul (who wants Erke Qara). Ally of Jamuqa and Qutuqa of the Oirat in 1201; no recorded quarrel with Tayang. The Uyghurs of Qocho lie south of him.

How things stand that morning

On the working reading (Rashid, the Chinese annals, the regional brief's '1199?') Temujin and Toghrul came over the Altai in the autumn of 1199, beat him at Lake Kishil-bash, and on the way home his captain Kokse Sabraq cut off Toghrul's son Senggum: Buyiruq is beaten but not broken, Toghrul's camp is shaken, and Erke Qara, the Kereyit exile, is still his guest. On the Secret History's order of events nothing has yet been fought and Buyiruq sits at peace on the Ulungur with a guest he will not give up. The winter camp is on the Ulungur (the lake, the river, the Kran valley); in the summer he is on the Altai's north-east side.

Wealth

Herds; the Altai pastures and the Ulungur lakes; the road south to Beshbaliq and the Uyghur oases.

Military

Naiman horsemen of his branch; captain Kokse Sabraq, who stood at the Bayidaraq confluence in the Year of the Dog; no castles. No numbers.

Threats

• Toghrul's Kereyit and Temujin, coming across the Altai
• Tayang if the brothers fall out
• A hard winter on the Ulungur

What the year holds

What happened next, if nothing in play changes it. Each event carries what it depends on and what would stop it.

In 1200

1. 1202, only if the Secret History's order is right (the autumn of 1199 and already past on the working reading)Toghrul and Temujin attack him at Soqoq-usun and chase him over the Altai and down the Ulungur to Lake Kishil-bash.Depends on: Toghrul pursuing Erke Qara and the Naiman. Stopped by: A truce, or the campaign having been fought already in 1199.

Later, on the likely course

1. 1201At the Argun oath and Koyiten (the storm-stone fails); he withdraws south of the Altai.Depends on: Jamuqa's election as gurkhan. Stopped by: The coalition not meeting.
2. 1206Killed while hunting by Mongol pursuers; Kuchlug takes over the Naiman remnant.Depends on: Temujin's victory in 1204 and the proclamation of 1206. Stopped by: Buyiruq's flight beyond reach.

Places of note

• Lake Kishil-bash (the Ulungur lake, by the usual identification): Where the Secret History destroys Buyiruq's force; Kizilbash is generally taken for Lake Ulungur or a lake beside it (not pinned).

Where the sources disagree

• Dating of the war on Buyiruq at Lake Kishil-bash and of Kokse Sabraq's seizure of Senggum's household. Rashid al-Din's order of events, the Chinese annals and the older English histories (Cambridge History of China, vol. 6, pp. 338-339, via Wikipedia's article 'Naimans') put a first campaign by Temujin and Toghrul against Buyiruq in 1199, before the Tayichi'ut war of 1200. The regional brief marks it '1199?', and the central-steppe records (Kereyit and the Khangai belt) treat it as done, so this record uses it as the working reading: by 1 January 1200 the Kereyit and Mongols have beaten Buyiruq at Kishil-bash and his captain Kokse Sabraq has struck back at Senggum on the way home (autumn 1199). The Secret History, in the translation read for this record, tells the same two episodes after the oath at the Argun (Year of the Cock, 1201) and Koyiten, in the Year of the Dog, which its footnotes give as 1202; on that order nothing has been fought between the Naiman and the Kereyit-Mongol allies on 1 January 1200 and both episodes lie in the future. The two cannot be reconciled with certainty and each record carries both. We could not open the Yuanshi or the Shengwu qinzheng lu (ctext and zh.wikisource were unreachable), so the Chinese side rests on secondary citations.
• Wikipedia's Buyruq article says the 1202 attack was by Toghrul's Keraites at 'Soqoq-Usun, near modern Ulaangom'; the Secret History says Chinggis Qahan and the Ong Qan together. The Ulaangom identification is Wikipedia's, not the source's.

Evidence: Buyiruq appears in a few lines of the Secret History, in Rashid's account and in Chinese annals we could not open; his camps and family are not given.

On the map: The Ulungur is the best-supported anchor (Secret History 144, 158); the rest of his range is inferred.

Primary sources for The Naiman

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

• Record of the Personal Campaigns of the Holy Warrior (Chinggis Khan) (presented to Khubilai in 1288, finished in Mongolian in 1290; the surviving Chinese version dates from 1369). A year-by-year Chinese account of Temujin's wars, drawn from the lost Altan Debter (the same source behind the Yuan shi's first chapter and Rashid al-Din). Read online
• The Secret History of the Mongols (1228 or 1240 (the colophon's Year of the Rat is disputed), with later additions; the surviving Chinese transcription and gloss were made under the Ming in the 1380s). The only Mongol account of Temujin's rise, written within living memory. Read online
• Compendium of Chronicles, Rashid al-Din Fadl Allah Hamadani (1300 to 1311, at Tabriz). The official Ilkhanid history, compiled from Mongol oral tradition and the lost Altan Debter. Read online
• Compendium of Chronicles: the Turkic and Mongol tribes and the life of Chinggis Khan, Rashid al-Din Hamadani (about 1300 to 1311, in the Ilkhanate). The fullest description of who held what on the steppe around 1200, written a century later from Mongol court records (the Altan Debter) and from informants such as Bolad Chingsang. Read online
• History of the Yuan, Song Lian (宋濂) and the Ming history office (1369 to 1370). Juan 1, the annals of Taizu (Chinggis Khan), gives a dated outline of Temujin's early wars drawn from the same lost Altan Debter as the Shengwu qinzheng lu: the Tatar war with the Jin in 1196, the Merkit and Naiman campaigns, the Tayichi'ut war, Jamuqa's coalition of 1201 and the Tatar and Kereyit wars of 1202 and 1203. Read online
• History of the World Conqueror: the Qara Khitai (Gur Khans) and the Uyghurs of Beshbaliq, Ala al-Din Ata-Malik Juvayni (begun about 1252 to 1253, ends with 1260). Juvayni's chapters on the Uyghur kingdom (its origin legend, Beshbaliq and Qocho, and the idiqut Barchuq's murder of the Qara Khitai resident before his submission to Chinggis Khan in 1209) and on the Gur Khans of the Qara Khitai are the fullest Muslim account of the Tarim and Zhetysu around 1200: the gurkhan Zhilugu's court at Balasagun, his tax collectors in the oasis towns and in Samarkand, his relations with the Khwarazmshah Tekish and then Muhammad, and the arrival of the Naiman prince Kuchlug in 1208. Read online
• Journey to the West of the Perfected Changchun (Qiu Chuji), Li Zhichang (李志常) (about 1228, from the journey of 1220 to 1224). A dated eyewitness itinerary across the steppe and the Tarim twenty years after 1200: the Kereyit country and the Ongud frontier, the Naiman mountains, the Uyghur towns of Beshbaliq and the Tarim with their Buddhist and Christian communities, Almaliq of the Qarluq, and Samarkand. Read online