Lam Ap

The old chronicles say

Lam Ap was the neighbour to the south of Giao Chau. Tuong Lam, the southernmost district of Nhat Nam commandery, bordered this kingdom. Dao Hoang, in the memorial he sent to the Jin court after the Jin destroyed the Wu in 280, recorded that beyond the frontier, Lam Ap lay only seven hundred li away.¹²

The heaviest scene of Lam Ap's raids is in the Thuy kinh chu. Li Daoyuan records that in 344, Pham Van of Lam Ap attacked Nhat Nam, Cuu Duc and Cuu Chan; the common people fled in every direction; for a thousand li there was no smoke from a cooking fire; and only then did he go home. That scene exists only in the Chinese histories; the Complete Annals do not have the name Pham Van, and the Lam Ap raids they do record fall in the years 399, 413, 415, 420 and 431.³⁴

In 433, Lam Ap came not with an army but with a letter: King Pham Duong Mai sent envoys with a memorial and offerings of local produce, asking to be given Giao Chau to govern; the edict in reply said the road was long, and refused. Eight hundred years later, Le Van Huu read this far and commented that Lam Ap took advantage of a time when the Viet country had no army, raided Nhat Nam and Cuu Chan, and asked to be given them, and he treated the Ly-dynasty campaigns against Champa as washing away the disgrace of that time.⁵⁶

The Song shu records that in the twenty-third year of the Yuanjia era, that is, 446, Dan Hoa Chi, inspector of Giao Chau, was sent to attack Lam Ap; that army took the citadel of Khu Tuc and beheaded the chief commander Phu Long. Nearly a century later, the only victory of Ly Bi's side that the histories record in those years was also against Lam Ap. The Liang shu records that in 543 the king of Lam Ap sacked Duc Chau and attacked Ly Bi; Bi's general Pham Tu in turn defeated the king of Lam Ap at Cuu Duc, and the king of Lam Ap fled in defeat.⁵⁷