Military organization of the Uyghur Succesor States

[arpago]

Hi! I would like to know if someone has some knowledge about the military organization of the Uyghur states of the Kingdom of Qocho and the Sha-Chou kingdom or at least from their precursor the Uyghur empire.

From which I can read and see from old paintings of Turfan it seems that they continued to rely in the heavy cavalry (with a more siniced style armours) and that very probably also recruited infantry and cavalry from the Sogdians, Chinese, Tanguts and even Tibetans who lived in the oasis under their control so also some steppe peoples.

[H. İhsan Erkoç]

Hi arpago, welcome aboard. I am also very curious about this subject. As far as I know, it has never been studied up to now. One difficulty is that the historical sources about their military activities are a bit scarce contrary to those of the previous steppe empires, so I can imagine it would be more difficult to write a history of the military organization of these Uyghur successor states.

I would like to know if any such studies have been made so far.

[arpago]

Hi Ilshan!

For now I have only found a few referentes about that matter in various texts related with the organization of the Qocho kingdom (respect the Sa-Chou kingdom is even more difficult to find sources) and about their Manichean monastic system, so for example it seems that they use a similar miltary system of ranks to the Tang chinese with Uyghur names. Also there are some references about their cavalry in articles about the foundation of the Han chinese regime of Guiyijun in Dunhuang by Zhang Yichao who used many of them along Chinese and Sogdians in his campaings.

I would try to post my sources this week.

[H. İhsan Erkoç]

That's great news, thanx arpago!