Rouran epochGöktürk epochUyghur epochKirghiz epoch
RouranFirst GöktürkTang ruleSecond GöktürkUyghurKirghizHunsWestern GöktürkTürgeshKarlukKhazar
  • 400
  • 500
  • 600
  • 700
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  • 900

In 840 the Kirghiz destroyed the Uyghur khaganate. They then sent the Tang princess Taihe home and gave a reason. They were descendants of the Han general Li Ling, and therefore of the same clan as the Tang emperors.[1] The Tang court did not dispute the claim. It wrote the Kirghiz khan into the register of its own imperial clan and answered the Kirghiz as kin.[2] The envoys and letters are told in Kirghiz Embassies to the Tang, and the state in its own article. The claim of the Kirghiz and the acceptance of the Tang are statements of the ninth century. They are not observations of the second century before Christ. The sources show who made them, when, and for what use.

Li Ling

Li Ling was a cavalry commandant of the Han. In 99 BC he led 5,000 foot soldiers out of Juyan, more than a thousand li to the north, and met the chanyu in battle, in the wars of the Han and the Xiongnu. The Han Shu and the Shiji tell it in much the same words.[3] He killed or wounded more than ten thousand. Then his arms and food gave out, the chanyu surrounded him, and he surrendered.[3] Four hundred of his men got home.[4] The chanyu honoured him and gave him his daughter in marriage.[4] He was the grandson of the general Li Guang, who died in 119 BC.[5]

The Xin Tang Shu adds a note on the Kirghiz past. The Xiongnu, it says, made the surrendered Han general Li Ling Right Worthy King and Wei Lü king of the Dingling. Later Zhizhi broke the Jiankun and kept his court there. The Xiajiasi of the ninth century are the old state of Jiankun.[2][6] Modern accounts add that Li Ling lived out his life among the Xiongnu as governor of the Jiankun.[5]

The claim

The Jiu Tang Shu tells the claim in the story of the princess. The Kirghiz had broken the Uyghurs and taken Taihe. They called themselves descendants of Li Ling and of the same surname as the dynasty. Therefore they ordered ten dagan to escort her to the frontier.[7] The Xin Tang Shu gives the same reason. The Kirghiz thought themselves descended from Ling and of the same clan as the Tang, and so they sent an envoy with the princess.[2] The Kirghiz petition of 842, as a Tang draft quotes it, gives the reason in other words. Their nation had originally had the same surname as the Tang, and they had not dared to keep the princess.[8]

The Xin Tang Shu ties the claim to the look of the people. The Kirghiz are tall, red-haired, fair-faced and green-eyed, and black hair is thought unlucky. Those with dark eyes are said to be Ling’s descendants.[2] Several Chinese sources say the same of dark hair and dark eyes.[5] Duan Chengshi’s Youyang zazu has the dark-haired and dark-eyed Kirghiz descend from Li Ling and his Chinese soldiers. The Tang huiyao gives a similar account that it traces to the lost Record of the Western Regions by Ge Jiayun, a protector-general of Anxi who served in the western regions from 734 to 741.[9][10] The same notice has a word of kinship for an earlier date. The Kirghiz brought tribute in the Jinglong era, 707 to 710. The emperor Zhongzong received the envoy and said that the Kirghiz state and his own were of one clan and that the Kirghiz were not like other foreign peoples.[2] The saying does not name Li Ling.

The Tang answer

In 843 the Tang gave the claim a form of its own. Li Deyu wrote the first letter to the Kirghiz khan in the emperor’s name. It says that the khan “originally received Our family name and became of Our own clan”.[11] The letter traces the line. It names Li Guang, governor of Beiping, unequalled in ability, an archer whose arrow pierced a stone. It names his sons and grandsons, a family of commanders. It names the commandant Li Ling, his direct descendant by his principal wife. “Our nation has continued as descendants of the governor of Beiping, and the Qaghan is a descendant of the commandant. Because of this, we are of the same clan.”[12] The Tang imperial family itself claimed descent from Li Guang.[5]

The court entered the claim in its books. After the audience of the second envoy, the Xin Tang Shu says, the emperor ordered that Are be written into the register of the imperial clan.[2] The third letter speaks of “the affection of those who bear the same surname” and of the khan’s wish “to preserve his original name”, that is, his relation to the house of Li.[13] The title planned in 845, Zongying Xiongwu Chengming Khan, begins with the character zong, “clan”.[14] The title of 847 leaves it out.[15]

Interpretations

There are two interpretations of the Kirghiz side. On the first, the Kirghiz kept a tradition of intermarriage between their people, perhaps including their rulers, and Li Ling and his troops. On the second, they were willing to invent such a tradition in order to win a special relation with the Tang house.[5] The sources do not decide between them.

The Chinese accounts of the dark hair point to a descent from Li Ling’s men and their Kirghiz wives. This is more logical than a descent from Li Ling alone.[9] Whatever its truth, the Kirghiz kept the belief for centuries, at least for their royal clan, and it served to raise the prestige of their rulers. It counted for most in the Tang age, because the imperial house of Li was related to Li Ling, if only by tradition.[9] A Kirghiz envoy of 856 bears a Chinese name, Li Jian (李蒹). The Chinese surname has been taken as a trace of the same connection.[16][16]

On the use of the kinship, the sources are clearer. For the Kirghiz, it made the khan a blood relative of the Tang emperors.[17] For the Tang, it gave a form of paternal superiority without the means of command. As the line of Li Guang, the Tang house stood as the senior house and the Kirghiz house as the junior.[18] The kinship went with a request: the letters that accept it ask the Kirghiz to destroy the remaining Uyghurs.[19] Both courts used the past as rhetoric. The Kirghiz showed that they knew something of Chinese history and how to use it. The Chinese were not the only people to make political use of the past.[17]

Later accounts

Some modern accounts follow the nineteenth-century Russian rendering of the Chinese sources and go further. They have the chanyu set Li Ling over the Jiankun, and they make his descendants the rulers of the Kirghiz as late as the time of Chinggis Khan.[20] The Xin Tang Shu notice does not say that his descendants ruled the Kirghiz. The Han Shu passage that tells his surrender says nothing of the Kirghiz.[21] No source shows whether Li Ling left descendants among the Jiankun, or whether the Kirghiz ruling house had any such descent. The sources show a claim, made by one court and accepted by another. In 981 the Song envoy Wang Yande saw at the Mazong mountain an inscription said to have been written by Li Ling.[6]

Some count the Xiongnu among the Turks. This position takes the derivation of the Göktürks, the Uyghurs and the Kirghiz from the Xiongnu in the Chinese sources as one of its main proofs.[22] The notices on which Turkic Atlas draws derive the Kirghiz from Li Ling and from the old state of Jiankun. None of them calls the Kirghiz descendants of the Xiongnu.

References

  1. ^ Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 195; Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
  2. ^ a b c d e f Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
  3. ^ a b Han Shu, juan 94; Shiji, juan 110
  4. ^ a b Han Shu, juan 94
  5. ^ a b c d e Drompp 2005, p. 126
  6. ^ a b İzgi 1989, p. 51
  7. ^ Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 195
  8. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 276
  9. ^ a b c Drompp 2002, p. 481
  10. ^ Drompp 1999, p. 399
  11. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 290
  12. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 290–291
  13. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 300–301
  14. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 149
  15. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 154
  16. ^ a b Drompp 1999, p. 396
  17. ^ a b Drompp 2005, p. 190
  18. ^ Drompp 1999, p. 394
  19. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 182–184
  20. ^ Khudyakov 2021, p. 111
  21. ^ Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217; Han Shu, juan 94
  22. ^ Sümer 1972, p. 1–2

Sources

Literature

  • Michael R. Drompp, Tang China and the Collapse of the Uighur Empire: A Documentary History (2005)
  • Michael R. Drompp, Breaking the Orkhon Tradition: Kirghiz Adherence to the Yenisei Region after A.D. 840 (1999)
  • Michael R. Drompp, The Yenisei Kyrgyz from Early Times to the Mongol Conquest (2002)
  • Yu. S. Khudyakov; A. Yu. Borisenko, Localization of the Kyrgyz Residence Areas in Southern Siberia and Central Asia within the Periods of late Antiquity, Early and High Middle Ages (2021)
  • Özkan İzgi, Çin Elçisi Wang Yen-te'nin Uygur Seyahatnamesi (1989)
  • Faruk Sümer, Oğuzlar (Türkmenler). Tarihleri, boy teşkilâtı, destanları (1972)

Related

What links here14

Persons
Are Khan · Li Deyu · Li Jian · Li Ling · Princess Taihe · Shiboqu Azhan · Wei Lü · Zhu-wu Alp Sol
States
Yenisei Kirghiz Khaganate
Conflicts
Uyghur–Kirghiz War
Battles & Events
Kirghiz Embassies to the Tang (842–848) · Kirghiz embassy of 648
Lineages
Are
Controversies
The Göktürks and the Xiongnu

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “The Kirghiz descent from Li Ling.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/historiography/kirghiz-descent-from-li-ling/

Last revised: 8 November 2026