In 584 the Sui emperor sent the minister Yu Qingze to Ishbara Khan, in answer to a letter in which Ishbara had called the emperor his father-in-law.[1] Ishbara received the envoy seated and said that his house bowed to no one.[2] In the end he knelt, took the emperor’s letter and placed it on his head. He called himself the emperor’s subject.[2] The embassy belongs to the Göktürk–Sui wars and to the first years of the civil war.

Background

After his defeats of 583 Ishbara fell on Apa’s camp and killed his mother. Apa went over to Tardush.[2] The two sides fought without end. Both sent envoys to the Sui court asking for peace and help.[2] The emperor refused them all.[2] Then Princess Qianjin, Ishbara’s wife and a daughter of the Zhou house, wrote to the emperor. She asked to be counted as one of his children.[2] The emperor sent the officer Xu Pinghe to Ishbara.[2] Guang, the prince of Jin, was then in command at Bingzhou. He asked leave to use the Göktürks’ quarrel and attack them, and the emperor refused.[2]

The Zizhi tongjian tells it differently.[3] Ishbara, beaten again and again by the Sui, asked for a marriage alliance. Qianjin asked to take the surname Yang and to become the emperor’s daughter.[3] The emperor sent Xu Pinghe and gave her the new title Princess Dayi.[3] The Sui Shu gives the new title only after Ishbara’s submission of 585.[2] One account has Sui diplomats visit Qianjin at Ötüken and Ishbara befriend them. It makes the title of Dayi a kind of dowry.[4]

Ishbara’s letter

Ishbara’s letter is dated the tenth day of the ninth month of the year chen.[2] A modern translation gives the year as 584, a year of the dragon.[5] The Chinese annals date by the sixty-year cycle as well. A Chinese reckoning would put the tenth day of the ninth month of that year on 19 October. Some scholars therefore ask whether the cycle date was the Göktürks’ own way of counting years, the earliest trace of it.[6] Against it stand the Chinese statements that the Göktürks reckoned the years by the greening of the grass and had no calendar.[7] The same scholars hold that the animal cycle and the grass reckoning could well have stood side by side.[8] Ishbara called himself the wise and holy Son of Heaven of the great Göktürks under heaven, born of Heaven. He gave his full title, which begins with Illig.[2] He wrote that the emperor was his wife’s father and so his own father-in-law. He added that he was the husband of the emperor’s daughter and so like a son.[2] Their two lands were different, he wrote, but their feelings were one. The bond would last for ten thousand generations, with Heaven as witness.[2] All the sheep and horses of his country were the emperor’s beasts. All the emperor’s silks were his.[2] Some scholars take the line as the khan’s statement of the barter he hoped for, livestock for silk. They doubt that the letter in its present form is the khan’s own wording.[9]

The emperor answered in kind. He had received the letter and saw that Ishbara meant well.[2] Since he was Ishbara’s father-in-law, from that day he regarded Ishbara as no different from his sons.[2] Besides the regular envoys he was sending a great minister, Yu Qingze, to see his daughter and to see Ishbara.[2] The Zizhi tongjian makes Zhangsun Sheng the envoy’s deputy.[3]

At the khan’s court

Ishbara drew up his troops and laid out his treasures. He received Yu Qingze seated and said he was ill and could not rise. He declared: “Since my father and uncles, we have not bowed to anyone.”[2] Yu Qingze rebuked him.[2] Qianjin told the envoy privately: “The khan has the nature of a jackal and a wolf. If you quarrel with him too much, he will bite.”[2]

Zhangsun Sheng then spoke to the khan.[2] In the Zizhi tongjian he says that the Göktürks and the Sui were both great states with a Son of Heaven. The khan, he says, need not rise if he did not wish to.[3] The katun, however, was the emperor’s daughter, and so the khan was the emperor’s son-in-law. How could he not honour his father-in-law?[3] Ishbara laughed and said to his daguan, his officers: “I must bow to my father-in-law.”[3] He knelt, knocked his head on the ground, received the sealed letter and placed it on his head.[1] Afterwards he was deeply ashamed, and his men gathered and wept aloud.[2]

Yu Qingze then demanded that Ishbara call himself the emperor’s subject.[2] Ishbara asked his followers what “subject” meant. They told him that in the Sui a subject was what the Göktürks called a slave.[2] Ishbara said: “That I can be the slave of the Son of Heaven of the great Sui, I owe to Minister Yu.”[2] He gave Yu Qingze a thousand horses and married him to a cousin of his.[2] A modern translation notes that Yu Qingze’s biography speaks of a daughter instead.[10]

Consequences

The embassy did not end the war in the steppe. The next year, pressed by Tardush and Apa, Ishbara asked the Sui for refuge and made the submission of 585.[1] In the letter of 584 he had written as the emperor’s son-in-law and his equal under Heaven. At the end of the embassy he had called himself the emperor’s slave.

References

  1. ^ a b c Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84; Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 176
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 176
  4. ^ Yavuz 2025, p. 322
  5. ^ Mau-tsai 1958, Turkish edition, p. 74
  6. ^ Ecsedy 1968, p. 165
  7. ^ Ecsedy 1968, p. 165,166
  8. ^ Ecsedy 1968, p. 166
  9. ^ Ecsedy 1968, p. 139,165
  10. ^ Mau-tsai 1958, Turkish edition, p. 75

Sources

Literature

  • Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
  • Liu Mau-tsai, Çin Kaynaklarına Göre Doğu Türkleri (1958, Turkish edition)
  • Ildikó Ecsedy, Trade-and-War Relations between the Turks and China in the Second Half of the Sixth Century (1968)

Related

What links here7

Persons
Princess Qianjin
Institutions and Titles
Border Markets · Diplomacy of the Steppe Empires · Envoys and Embassies · Post and Communication · The twelve-year animal cycle
Customs & Pastimes
Seating at the Feast

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Embassy of Yu Qingze (584).” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/events/embassy-of-yu-qingze-584/

Last revised: 8 November 2026