Officers: prévôtés, bailiwicks, seneschals · The Naiman of Tayang and Buyiruq · as at first light, 1 January 1200

Kokse Sabraq

Kokse Sabraq is the best Naiman soldier in the sources.

In the Year of the Dog he draws up the Naiman at the Bayidaraq confluence; the Ong Khan lights fires to deceive him and slips away by night, and Kokse Sabraq then falls on the retreating Kereyit, takes Senggum's wife and son and half of Toghrul's people, herds and milk at the mouth of the Telegetu pass, until Temujin's four captains, Bo'orchu, Muqali, Boroqul and Chila'un, ride to Toghrul's help and recover Senggum and his people, wives and children (Secret History 159, 162, 163). In 1204 he advises Tayang not to boast and not to attack, and is overruled by Kuchlug. Whom he serves in 1200 is not known: he is with Buyiruq when the Kereyit and Mongols come, and with Tayang a few years on.

Who he is

Name
Kokse Sabraq (Kökse'ü-sabraq)
Title
Captain (noyan) of the Naiman
Since
not known
Born
not known
Family
Naiman; family not known
Confidence
medium for the man, nothing for 1200

Secret History 159, 162, 163, 177, 190, 194-195; Wikipedia on Buyruq Khan and Toghrul (calls him Buyruq's general).

Overlord

Buyiruq Khan in the Year of the Dog (1202; also on Rashid's order in 1199); Tayang Khan in 1204 (Secret History 190, 194).

What it holds

  • A command of Naiman horsemen (no number)
  • The loot he took from Senggum in the Year of the Dog (returned)

Allies and rivals

Enemy of Toghrul and Senggum. Served Buyiruq, then Tayang.

How things stand that morning

Buyiruq's captain, probably with him on the Ulungur or the Altai pastures (not pinned). On the working reading (autumn 1199) he has just struck at Senggum's household on the Kereyit retreat and lost it again to Temujin's four captains; on the Secret History's order he has not yet done so.

Wealth

Share of loot; not known.

Military

Led Naiman horse in the open field and the night raid; he is the Naiman who finds the weak point of the Kereyit retreat.

Threats

  • Toghrul and Temujin's four captains

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.

  1. 1204 (and 1202 for the raid on Senggum, if the Secret History's order is right)Advises Tayang against attacking at his council in the spring of 1204 and is overruled by Kuchlug. The Bayidaraq confluence and the raid on Senggum are autumn 1199 on the working reading, 1202 on the Secret History's.Depends on: The Kereyit and Mongols entering the Naiman country; Tayang's decision to fight. Stopped by: A truce; Tayang taking his advice.

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.
  • Whose man he is: Wikipedia's chronology of Temujin's rise sends him out under Tayang in 1199, the English article on Toghrul makes him Buyiruq's general, and the Secret History has him with Buyiruq in the Year of the Dog and with Tayang in 1204. This record keeps him with Buyiruq for the Kishil-bash campaign and with Tayang from 1204; the question Khangai march leaves to this sheet is settled that way.

Evidence: Appears only in the stories of the Kishil-bash campaign (1199 or 1202) and of 1204.

On the map: No map part.

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

Sources and studies

  1. The Secret History of the Mongols, an English translation with numbered sections and dating footnotes (sections 141-169), read at anyflip
  2. The Secret History of the Mongols, the same translation (sections 177-202), read at anyflip
  3. Wikipedia, 'Buyruq Khan'
  4. Wikipedia, 'Toghrul'

Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.