diff --git a/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/index/query/TermsFilterParser.java b/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/index/query/TermsFilterParser.java
index 94264cdfd2d4d..4917f64dfaa54 100644
--- a/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/index/query/TermsFilterParser.java
+++ b/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/index/query/TermsFilterParser.java
@@ -155,8 +155,14 @@ public Filter parse(QueryParseContext parseContext) throws IOException, QueryPar
                 previousTypes = QueryParseContext.setTypesWithPrevious(new String[]{smartNameFieldMappers.docMapper().type()});
             }
         }
-        
+
         if (lookupId != null) {
+            // if there are no mappings, then nothing has been indexing yet against this shard, so we can return
+            // no match (but not cached!), since the Terms Lookup relies on the fact that there are mappings...
+            if (fieldMapper == null) {
+                return Queries.MATCH_NO_FILTER;
+            }
+
             // external lookup, use it
             TermsLookup termsLookup = new TermsLookup(fieldMapper, lookupIndex, lookupType, lookupId, lookupPath, parseContext);
             if (cacheKey == null) {
diff --git a/src/test/java/org/elasticsearch/test/integration/search/query/SimpleQueryTests.java b/src/test/java/org/elasticsearch/test/integration/search/query/SimpleQueryTests.java
index 85c7e7802c2ac..2270a9811efe7 100644
--- a/src/test/java/org/elasticsearch/test/integration/search/query/SimpleQueryTests.java
+++ b/src/test/java/org/elasticsearch/test/integration/search/query/SimpleQueryTests.java
@@ -31,7 +31,6 @@
 import org.elasticsearch.rest.RestStatus;
 import org.elasticsearch.search.facet.FacetBuilders;
 import org.elasticsearch.test.integration.AbstractSharedClusterTest;
-import org.elasticsearch.common.xcontent.XContentBuilder;
 import org.testng.annotations.Test;
 
 import java.io.IOException;
@@ -57,7 +56,7 @@ public class SimpleQueryTests extends AbstractSharedClusterTest {
     public int numberOfNodes() {
         return 4;
     }
-    
+
     @Test // see https://github.com/elasticsearch/elasticsearch/issues/3177
     public void testIssue3177() {
         run(prepareCreate("test").setSettings(ImmutableSettings.settingsBuilder().put("index.number_of_shards", 1)));
@@ -933,6 +932,12 @@ public void testTermsLookupFilter() throws Exception {
         assertThat(searchResponse.getHits().getTotalHits(), equalTo(2l));
         assertThat(searchResponse.getHits().getHits()[0].getId(), anyOf(equalTo("2"), equalTo("4")));
         assertThat(searchResponse.getHits().getHits()[1].getId(), anyOf(equalTo("2"), equalTo("4")));
+
+        searchResponse = client().prepareSearch("test")
+                .setQuery(filteredQuery(matchAllQuery(), termsLookupFilter("not_exists").lookupIndex("lookup2").lookupType("type").lookupId("3").lookupPath("arr.term"))
+                ).execute().actionGet();
+        assertThat("Failures " + Arrays.toString(searchResponse.getShardFailures()), searchResponse.getShardFailures().length, equalTo(0));
+        assertThat(searchResponse.getHits().getTotalHits(), equalTo(0l));
     }
 
     @Test