Kuchlug

Biography

Flight to Qara Khitai

In 1204, the Naiman tribe fought Genghis Khan's Mongol forces at the foothills of the Khangai Mountains. Tayang Khan was killed, and Kuchlug fled to his uncle Buiruk Khan. Genghis Khan pursued and killed Buiruk Khan. Kuchlug then fled to the Merkit leader Toqto'a, who was also killed by Genghis Khan at the Irtysh River. Homeless, Kuchlug fled to the Qara Khitai dynasty. Upon arrival, he sent a substitute to meet Yelü Zhilugu while posing as a horse groom, waiting outside the palace. The Qara Khitai Empress Guerbisu noticed his exceptional bearing and questioned him; Kuchlug's keen observation and candor won her favor, and he was admitted to the palace as a personal attendant, quickly winning Yelü Zhilugu's trust.

Usurping the Throne

Kuchlug recalled his scattered Naiman tribesmen and cultivated relationships with important Qara Khitai ministers and generals. The debauched Yelü Zhilugu had squandered the state's resources, causing widespread resentment and losing his influence. Seeing the opportunity, Kuchlug raised his own forces. In 1211, the vassal states of Samarkand and Khwarazm rebelled. Kuchlug conspired with their leaders and launched a surprise attack on the Qara Khitai capital Balasagun. Zhilugu was forced to submit. Kuchlug honored Zhilugu as Taishang Huang (Retired Emperor) and announced that he would not change the state name or institutions, but in reality he had usurped all power.

Religious Persecution

After usurping the throne, Kuchlug formally broke with Islam. From autumn 1211, for four consecutive years, he sent armies to Kashgar during each harvest to burn grain, seize livestock, and force submission through starvation. In 1215, he moved his capital to Kashgar. He massacred the aristocracy and religious leaders of the Qarakhanid dynasty, closed mosques, banned Islamic worship, and forced residents to choose between converting to Buddhism or adopting Khitan dress. In 1216, he captured Khotan and crucified the Grand Imam on the door of a mosque.

Defeat and Death

In 1218, the Mongol general Jebe marched against Kuchlug under the banner of religious freedom, and was welcomed by Muslims in the Tarim Basin. Kuchlug abandoned his capital without fighting and fled into the Pamir Mountains, where he was captured by local hunters at Sarigh Qul (present-day Tashkurgan) and handed over to Jebe's vanguard commander. He was soon killed. From that year, Kashgar was incorporated into the Mongol Empire.

Kuchlug, also written Quzhulu or Guchuluk, was a son of the Naiman king Tayang. When Temujin rose and united the Mongol tribes, the Naiman, whose lands lay about the Altai, fought the Mongols at the foot of the Khangai mountains; Tayang was defeated and killed, and Kuchlug fled to his uncle Buyruq Khan. Temujin pursued him relentlessly, and in 1206 Buyruq too was beaten and taken and killed. Kuchlug escaped again to the Merkit chief Toqto'a, who likewise fell in battle on the Irtysh. With nowhere left to turn he made his way by Beshbaliq into Western Liao for refuge, wandering for a time in the mountains near Kucha until troops of that state found him and brought him to the capital, Khosygord.

The ruler of Western Liao was Yelü Zhilugu. According to Rashid al-Din's Jami' al-Tawarikh and Juvaini's History of the World Conqueror, Zhilugu agreed to see Kuchlug, but the wary prince, fearing the meeting would go against him, sent a close follower to present himself under his name while he stood at the palace gate disguised as a groom. When the empress Gurbesu returned to the palace she met this pretended groom at the gate, saw that despite his wretched look he had an uncommon air, and on questioning him found Kuchlug, quick to read a face, telling her the truth, which won her favor. Admitted thereafter to the palace as a personal attendant, he soon pleased Zhilugu greatly, declaring that with the mere name of Western Liao he could recall his scattered tribes north of the Tianshan to strengthen the dynasty against Genghis Khan's invasion, and swearing that he would never turn from the direction the Gur-khan set. He was rewarded with rank and married the Western Liao princess Hunhu, becoming son-in-law to the throne.

Once trusted, Kuchlug did in no long time gather his old Naiman following and used his position to win over many of the ministers and commanders of Western Liao. The fatuous and dissolute Zhilugu had squandered the state's resources until it was impoverished and universally resented, and had long since lost his authority; Kuchlug, judging the moment ripe, built up his forces within the realm and conspired with the rulers of Samarkand and Khwarezm, who had already risen in revolt, to surround Khosygord with a surprise attack. Zhilugu, at the end of his resources, offered to submit, but Kuchlug feigned unwillingness to accept, honoring him instead as retired emperor and Gurbesu as empress dowager while declaring that the name and institutions of Western Liao would be unchanged; having emptied his father-in-law of power, he took the throne. After that, Samarkand and Khwarezm declared independence under their earlier compact, the Uyghur state of Xizhou had already gone over to Genghis Khan, and the only power still loyal to him was the eastern Qarakhanid state centered on Kashgar.

Its khan, Muhammad ibn Yusuf, had once risen at Kashgar with the Muslims of Khotan against Western Liao and been crushed, captured and imprisoned at Khosygord. To win over so influential a Muslim leader, Kuchlug released him in the year he took the throne and, on his pledge of allegiance, sent him back to Kashgar; but when the nobles and religious leaders of Kashgar learned that he had taken service with an unbeliever, they stabbed him to death at the city gate as he was escorted in, and with the last ruler's death the eastern Qarakhanid state, three and a half centuries old, came to an end. This drove the Buddhist Kuchlug into open war with Islam. From the autumn of 1211, for four years running, he sent armies at harvest time to burn and plunder the grain and cattle of Kashgar, forcing its people to submit by force and famine until the once wealthy city was all but a ruin. In the autumn of 1215 he moved his capital there, and on entering it hunted down and killed the nobles and religious leaders of the former Qarakhanid state, quartered his Naiman soldiers in the households of the city to rape and loot, closed the mosques around Kashgar, forbade Muslim prayer and assembly, and told the people they must either become Buddhists or adopt Qidan dress — one or the other. The townsfolk changed their clothing and kept their faith.

In 1216 Kuchlug took Khotan and drove its clergy out of the city. The great imam Ala al-Din Muhammad came forward to argue with him and, after torture, was nailed alive to the great wooden door of the mosque, and Muslim hatred of Kuchlug grew deeper. In the spring of 1218 the governor of Otrar in Khwarezm had Genghis Khan's caravan envoys killed, giving him his pretext for the conquest of Central Asia. The Mongols marched west in two columns, one under the general Jebe south to Kashgar against Kuchlug, the enemy he had beaten before. The Mongol army, raising the banner of freedom of belief, was welcomed by the Muslims of the Tarim basin; Kuchlug fled the city without giving battle, wandered among the valleys of the Pamirs, and was at last surrounded and taken by hunters in a dead-end place called Sariq Qol — today's Tashkurgan — and handed over to the Uyghur commander Qoshmaili, the vanguard of Jebe's pursuit. He was put to death soon after, Western Liao fell with him, and the Kashgar region passed under Mongol rule. A Naiman prince who had lost his own kingdom and then made himself master of Western Liao, Kuchlug destroyed himself by his change of faith and his tyranny, losing the support of every party in Central Asia; his fall was the work of Mongol arms, and no less of his own way of ruling.

On Kuchlug's end the sources differ somewhat. According to the History of the World Conqueror and the Jami' al-Tawarikh, he fled Kashgar and wandered among the valleys of the Pamirs until hunters captured him in the region of Sariq Qol — today's Tashkurgan — and handed him to Jebe's troops; other accounts have him taken and killed only after fleeing as far as Badakhshan in what is now northeastern Afghanistan. What is certain is that he was put to death in 1218, and with him the Western Liao, from Yelü Dashi's founding, ended after more than ninety years, while the city-states of the Tarim basin and both sides of the Tianshan passed one by one under Mongol rule. Kuchlug and Muhammad of Khwarezm had had a secret compact to divide Central Asia along the Syr Darya, splitting the old Western Liao lands between them; soon after he took the throne the compact turned into mutual suspicion and strife, and when the Mongols came west the forces that might have combined had already worn each other down — a condition of the Mongols' rapid success.

The relation between Kuchlug's way of ruling and his failure has long drawn the attention of scholars. He came to power in Western Liao as a fugitive prince of a destroyed Naiman kingdom, with no local political base of his own; to tighten his grip he moved Naiman tribesmen into the realm and quartered soldiers in private households, holding the population down by main force, and all this sharpened the hostility between rulers and ruled. His conversion to Buddhism and his order that the Muslims of Kashgar and Khotan choose between their faith and Qidan dress cost him the support of the most highly organized force in Central Asian society, the religious establishment. When the Mongol army came south proclaiming freedom of belief, the Muslims went over to it in numbers, and Kuchlug abandoned his city without giving battle and fled — a collapse whose speed is not hard to explain. The fall of Western Liao also opened the road for the Mongol conquest of the west, and Khwarezm and the cities of Central Asia fell into war one after another, changing the political map of the whole region.

Major Activities

Kuchlug used the old followers of the Naiman to seize power at a time when the Western Liao was weakening and its dependent forces were falling away. His acquisition of the position of Guchluk's son-in-law, his permission to gather his old followers and the coup of 1211 form a continuous process of ascent; reducing everything to personal "cunning" is no substitute for an analysis of the political situation.

His conquests at Kashgar and Khotan and his religious coercion are the acts of rule that both encyclopedic accounts emphasise. When the Mongol armies advanced, local discontent with his rule formed part of the background to his defeat; the final collapse also depended on the actual military action of the Mongols, and the whole course of the war cannot be explained by religious policy alone.

Personal Relations

• Tayang Khan Baibugha**: Father, leader of the Naiman tribe
• Yelü Zhilugu**: Emperor of Qara Khitai, usurped by Kuchlug
• Princess Hunghu**: Qara Khitai princess, Kuchlug's wife
• Genghis Khan**: Founder of the Mongol Empire, who destroyed the Naiman tribe
• Jebe**: Mongol general who captured and killed Kuchlug

Historical Assessment

Kuchlug is a classic example of a refugee who usurped the throne of his benefactor. Having fled to Qara Khitai as a homeless prince, he married into the royal family, gained the emperor's trust, and then seized power. His religious persecution policies — forcing Muslims to convert to Buddhism or wear Khitan clothing — alienated virtually all his subjects and directly facilitated the Mongol conquest. His death marked the end of Qara Khitai as a political entity and the beginning of Mongol expansion into Central Asia.