著者

白 玉冬

出版者

東洋文庫

雑誌

東洋学報 : 東洋文庫和文紀要 (ISSN:03869067)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.97, no.3, pp.384-360, 2015-12

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The success of the Tang Dynasty in quelling the Huang Chao 黄巣 Rebellion (875-884) was in large part made possible by the contingent of Shatuo 沙陀 Turks and Tatars 達靼 led by Shatuo warlord Li Keyong 李克用, whose son, Li Cunzu 李存勗, would found the Later Tang polity of the Five Dynasties Period. The close relationships that would exist between the Later Tang Dynasty and the Tatar settlements in the north Gobi Desert at the beginning of the 10th century dates back at least to 878, when Li Keyong along with his father Li Guochang raised their own rebellion against the Tang Dynasty, were defeated and took refuge among the Tatar tribes. The purpose of this article is to trace the origins of the Tatars who interacted with the Shatuo warlords during the final years of the Tang Dynasty, by discussing the Nine Tatars settled in the northern Gobi. To begin with, the author points to a letter written by Li Keyong to his arch-enemy Zhu Quanzhong 朱全忠, in which we discover the existence of a tribal settlement in Yinshan 陰山, which Li refers to as Yiqin 懿親. A review of the use of "Yinshan" in the Tang Period sources, mainly epitaphs mentioning people of Turkic descent, shows that while 1) Yinshan could refer to the present day Yinshan and Tianshan mountain ranges of the southern Gobi Desert, there is also its use as 2) a synonym for all of northern China and 3) possible reference to Ötükän yïš 于都斤山 (the Khangai Mountains of central Mongolia) in the northern Gobi. The problem is 1) that there is no record of Tatar (Shiwei 室韋 in the Tang records) settlements in the Yinshan Mts, and the fact that the Yinshan region, being a mixed agricultural-pastoral area, played only a peripheral role in the nomadic states of the period, meaning that the only region capable of spawning large powerful nomadic organizations was the northern Gobi. Consequently, the author reasons that the migration of Tatar tribes into the central Mongolian steppe around the time of the collapse of the Eastern Uighur Khanate must have included at least one part of the Nine Tatars, the Kelie 克烈 (the Kereyids), settling there during the latter part of the 9th century. The Yuanshi's 元史 biography of Suge 速哥 describes the Kereyids as matrilineal kin to the "Li Tang", a polity which should be interpreted as the Later Tang Dynasty, which the Shatuo Li Family claimed to be the legitimate successor to the Tang Dynasty. And if so, the Kereyids correspond to Li Keyong's Yiqin settlement. The author concludes that the Tatars who protected Li Keyong and his father in exile, then fought beside the Shatuo warlord in the counterinsurgency effort against Huang Chao were in fact the Nine Tatars of mainland Mongolia, or least one contingent thereof i.e., the Kereyids. Therefore, the history of Mongolia around the 10th century becomes closely connected to the development of the dynasties in mainland China and thus constitutes an indispensable part of eastern Eurasian history.