The Making of the Shatuo: Military Leadership and Border Unrest in North China’s Daibei (808–880)

In the early ninth century, a composite military group mostly of Turkic extraction collectively known as the Shatuo moved from the northwestern borderlands to the central provinces of the empire. Shatuo soldiers were recruited in the mobile army under the command of a provincial military governor, and their families and civil settlements were registered as settlers in the borderlands. The Shatuo settled first in Yanzhou and then in Daibei in the mobile garrisons under the command of the Hedong provincial governor. The recruitment of the Shatuo as garrison soldiers was part of the reorganization of the frontier defense undertaken by Dezong (780–805) in Ling-Yan and the subsequent military reforms undertaken by Xianzong (806–820) in 819. For most of the ninth century, Shatuo retainers served under subordinate command, and the provincial governors were able to exert a certain control over them and exploit them as a mobile force. Once Zhuxie Chixin (d. 887) reached the highest provincial position of military governor, however, the power balance between the imperial court and the Shatuo changed to favor the latter. The court lost control over the northern garrisons after a military mutiny in Daibei that led to the slaughter of several officials. In the early 880s, Zhuxie Chixin (now Li Guochang) and his son Li Keyong (856–907) consolidated their power over Daibei, clearing the way for the Shatuo to become the dynastic founders of the tenth-century northern regimes. This paper explores the stages of the Shatuo’s growth in the late Tang period from retainers to an enlarged military force. It shows how the Zhuxie-Li were able to take advantage of the relative mobility that characterized the Tang military ranks, quickly progressing through the ranks of the army and taking over civilian positions as well. The Shatuo also benefited greatly from the general shortage in manpower in the aftermath of the Uighur refugee crisis and the various mutinies that took place in the Hedong provincial armies during this period. Moreover, this paper shows how the term “Shatuo” was used both in reference to a specific military formation, the Daibei mobile encampment, and to the troops who were more closely affiliated to the Zhuxie-Li clan and rebelled against the Tang court. In both senses, different ethnic elements are to be found under the catch-all term “Shatuo.” This paper shows how ethnicity played little to no role in the internal dynamics of military affiliation. Belonging to the Shatuo was more of a military, political, and constitutional matter. Biological and cultural ties among the Shatuo may have been emphasized and created in later periods as a means of expressing political loyalty. This paper endeavors to explore some aspects of this constitutive process.