'Returning-to-Righteousness Army', 848–1036 AD), Golden Mountain Kingdom of Western Han (西漢金山國; Xīhàn Jīnshān guó; Hsi-han Chin-shan kuo, 909–911), and Dunhuang Kingdom of Western Han (西漢敦煌國; Xīhàn Dūnhuáng guó; Hsi-han Tun-huang kuo, 911–914), was a Chinese regional military command and later an autonomous dynastic regime nominally subordinate to the Tang dynasty, the Five Dynasties, and the Northern Song dynasty.

The Hexi Corridor was an important part of the Silk Road, connecting Central Asia with Northwest China.

[2] In respect to their political and social systems, the Tibetans made many changes in Dunhuang according to their own practice.

It is not very clear yet to what extent the previous social relations and structure were changed, but apparently the great families in Dunhuang remained influential in local affairs during the occupation period.

Many members from the Zhang, Yin, Suo, Yan, and other clans were appointed by the Tibetan government to important positions.

[3]After some 60 years of Tibetan rule, Tibet entered its Era of Fragmentation and was torn by civil war by 851.

In another manuscript, P 3556, we find that Zhang Yichao's father, Zhang Qianyi, became a xiaoyao zhike ["a free man", a word usually used in traditional China to refer to an intellectual who refused to serve the government and lived in seclusion] and was kept out of political power during the Tibetan period.

[6] Zhang claimed the title of acting prefect of Shazhou and submitted a petition to Emperor Xuānzong of Tang, offering his loyalty and submission.

[7]By 861 the Guiyi Circuit had extended its authority to Guazhou, Ganzhou, Suzhou, Yizhou, Lanzhou, Shanzhou, Hezhou, Minzhou, Liangzhou, and Kuozhou.

Desperate to strengthen his position among his dispirited followers, he told them: “I shall pay tributes to the Tang and borrow 500,000 Chinese soldiers to punish those who dare disobey me.

[9]In 867 Zhang Yichao departed for the Tang court after his brother Yitan, who had been staying in Chang'an as a hostage, died.

In his absence, his nephew Zhang Huaishen 張淮深 took over the rule of the Guiyijun, yet the Tang court did not officially appoint him military commissioner.

Thus while Zhang Huaishen received no support from the Tang, the Uighurs, as part of their westward expansion, deeply invaded the territories of Ganzhou and Suzhou, and even attacked Guazhou.

Even though Zhang Huaishen successfully defeated their scattered attacks, in 876 the Xizhou Uighurs seized Yizhou and with this the Guiyijun lost one of its important garrisons.

[13] In another memorial presented to the Emperor Tang Yizong, Zhang Yichao implored the court not to abandon Liangzhou.

[15] In 894 Suo Xun was killed by a local aristocrat by the name of Li Mingzhen and Zhang Yichao's daughter.

[17] The rulers of Guiyi in Dunhuang briefly called themselves "emperors" for a short period after the final collapse of the Tang dynasty.

The Great Chancellor (大宰相) and the elders of Jinshan State made a treaty with the Ganzhou Uyghurs, recognizing their superiority.

During the Zhang family’s rule, the Guiyijun basically controlled the entire Hexi region but by the end of the 10th century it was only able to keep the prefectures of Guazhou and Shazhou.

During the Cao family’s rule which began in 914, the Guiyijun maintained friendly relations with the Xizhou Uighurs in the west and the kingdom of Khotan.

During the late 10th century, as a result of the holy war launched by the Islamic Karakhanid Khanate against Khotanese Buddhists, Khotan increasingly relied on its eastern neighbors to resist hostile invasion.

In 918 Cao Yijin, with the support of the Uighur Khagan, the puye 僕射 of Liangzhou and the xianggong 相公 of Lingzhou, sent envoys to the Later Liang and was conferred by the court the title of military commissioner of the Guiyijun.

[39] Despite Zhang's association with Buddhism, due to a shortage of manpower, he made many temple households independent peasants to satisfy the demands of recruitment.

At the beginning of the Guiyi period, the Buddhist master Faheng and his disciples Fajing and Fahai delivered lectures in Dunhuang.

After 883, lectures by monks are no longer mentioned in manuscript colophons and only lay devotional practices such as building caves, erecting statues, and addresses to common people are recorded.

[39] In addition to Buddhism, discoveries of Manichaean, Nestorian Christian, and Zoroastrian documents and other artifacts at Mogao Caves dating back to the Guiyi era reveal their coexistence in a multi-religious world.

[42] While the region occasionally fell under the rule of different states (the Tang, the Tibetan Empire, and later the Western Xia led by the Tanguts), it retained its multilingual nature as evidenced by an abundance of manuscripts (religious and secular) in Chinese and Tibetan, but also Sogdian, Khotanese (another Eastern Iranian language native to the region), Uyghur, and Sanskrit.

[43] To the east of the Returning to Righteousness Army alone, names of some ten ethnic groups appear in both Chinese literature and Dunhuang manuscripts.

[40]From the Chinese surnames listed in the Tang-era Dunhuang manuscript Pelliot chinois 3319V (containing the following text: 石定信右全石丑子石定奴福延福全保昌張丑子李千子李定信), the names of the Nine Zhaowu Clans (昭武九姓), the prominent ethnic Sogdian families of China, have been deduced.

[47] Sogdians of Dunhuang also commonly formed and joined lay associations among their local communities, convening at Sogdian-owned taverns in scheduled meetings mentioned in their epistolary letters.