In the winter of 842 a Kirghiz general reached the Tang frontier city of Tiande. Three more envoys followed him within two years.[1] They came from the khan who in 840 had destroyed the Uyghur khaganate. They asked the emperor to confirm his place.[2] The court answered first with letters written by the chief minister Li Deyu.[3] It also had the khan entered in the register of the imperial clan. In 847 it invested him.[4] The letters asked one thing above all: that the Kirghiz finish off the Uyghurs who had escaped across the desert.[5] The Kirghiz asked for a title with the Turkic word for Heaven in it. The Tang refused.[6] The title of 847 was Chinese and left out the kinship. The court’s interest in the Kirghiz faded soon after.[7]

Background

After the Kirghiz took the Uyghur royal camp in 840, their ruler Are found the Tang princess Taihe, who had been married into the Uyghur court, among the spoils.[4] He sent envoys to bring her home, because the Kirghiz counted themselves of the same clan as the Tang emperors.[4] The Uyghur prince Wujie caught the escort on the road. He killed the envoys and carried the princess south across the desert.[8] The claim of kinship is told in its own article.

The first envoy

The first envoy was a general whom the Chinese write Ta-bu-he-zu. He came to Tiande in the tenth month of 842, between 6 November and 5 December, with six companions.[9]

What he said is known from a letter that the military governor Liu Mian drafted to the Uyghur minister in December 842 or January 843.[9] The Kirghiz petition, as the draft reports it, said that in destroying the Uyghurs the Kirghiz had obtained the emperor’s daughter, the Taihe Princess. Because their nation was originally of the same surname as the Tang, they had not dared to keep her.[10] They had sent General Du-lü-shi Alp to escort her. They had heard nothing since. They had now sent out 400,000 troops to look for her.[10] The envoy added that when the Kirghiz moved to He-luo-chuan and held the former Uyghur land, they would also obtain Anxi, Beiting and five tribes of Tatars and others.[11] That is an announcement. The Chinese text does not say that the Kirghiz reached any of these places. No other Chinese source has them attack or wish to attack Anxi or Beiting.[12]

The second envoy

Are’s envoys with the princess had been killed. He had no way to reach the Tang court. He sent another envoy with a letter that told what had happened.[4] The man was Zhu-wu Alp Sol (註吾合素). The Xin Tang Shu glosses his name. Zhu-wu is a barbarian family name, he means “fierce” and su “left”. The name therefore stands for a fierce and warlike man who shoots well from the left.[4]

He reached Chang’an on 16 March 843 with two horses as a gift. The emperor received him on 19 March.[13] Wuzong was delighted that so distant a people kept up its tribute. He ranked the envoy above the envoy of Bohai.[4] He sent Zhao Fan, minister of the Imperial Stud, with credentials to console the Kirghiz country.[4] Princess Taihe, rescued by a Tang army in February, entered the city on 29 March.[14]

The envoy also brought a proposal: a joint Kirghiz and Tang campaign into the Tarim basin.[15] Wuzong liked the thought of winning back the western regions. Li Deyu did not. He pointed to the distance, to the 10,000 men that each outpost would need and to the cost of supplying even nearer garrisons such as Tiande and Zhenwu. The Kirghiz hoped to draw the Tang in for “gold and silks”, he said. A Kirghiz victory would raise another strong enemy in the north. Wuzong agreed.[15]

The interpreters

On 12 February 843, before the second envoy came, Li Deyu asked the emperor for new interpreters.[16] The court’s interpreters of Turkic, he wrote, were of the Uyghur race and would bear the Kirghiz a grudge. They would not translate faithfully and would tell the Uyghurs in the capital whatever was unfavourable to them.[17] The interpreters he named, Shi Foqing and others, were probably Sogdians from Tashkent.[18] One study finds no evidence that any of them was disloyal. It holds that the real subject of the interviews was the plan against the Uyghur remnants.[19]

The picture of the envoys

The emperor ordered the chief ministers to meet the envoys at the Court of State Ceremonial and the interpreters to examine the mountains, rivers and customs of the Kirghiz country.[4] Li Deyu proposed a picture. In the Zhenguan era Yan Shigu had asked for a record of the foreign embassies in the manner of the Zhou historians’ Wang hui pian. Now that the Kirghiz had opened wide dealings with China, there should be a Wang hui tu (王會圖) to show to later ages. The emperor ordered that what the Court had gathered be painted.[4] The envoy and his companions, seven men in all, were questioned there.[20] The picture and the written account are lost. The account was quite likely the basis for part of what the Xin Tang Shu says of the Kirghiz.[20]

The letters of Li Deyu

Li Deyu wrote four letters to the Kirghiz khan in the emperor’s name, from the spring of 843 to the spring of 845.[21]

The first answers the first envoy.[3] It recalls how Taizong was acknowledged as Heavenly Khan in 630 or 631 and how in 647 or 648 a Kirghiz chieftain came to court and received titles.[22] The Xin Tang Shu has the visit too. Taizong made the chieftain’s country the Jiankun command and made him general of the Left Guard and its governor.[4] The letter then names the kinship. The khan descends from the Han commandant Li Ling, the Tang house from Li Ling’s grandfather Li Guang, and so “we are of the same clan”.[23] It thanks the khan for sending the princess back, mourns the escort that was massacred, and urges the destruction of the Uyghurs, who are fewer than a thousand.[23] It offers a document of appointment and “a fine title”.[18] The second letter calls the ruler king, not khan. It may be a draft that was never sent.[24]

The third answers the envoy Wen-wu Alp, who arrived in the first half of July 843 with 100 horses and ten falcons.[25] It praises the khan for sweeping away the Uyghurs and speaks of “the affection of those who bear the same surname”. It tells him to flatten the Uyghur tribes of He-luo-chuan and to change his dwelling, clothing and insignia.[26]

The fourth answers Tatik Iznanchu, the last envoy of Wuzong’s reign, who brought two white horses in the autumn of 844.[27] The Kirghiz had complained that no Tang envoy had come since Wen-wu Alp left and that the Stelae Road was blocked.[28] The Tang answered that the petition it had asked for had never arrived. It recalled that the princess had been captured by the Uyghurs five days after she left the khan and had wandered two years in the desert.[29] A note of 3 April 845 has the Kirghiz envoy say that the Kirghiz meant to go to the Black Carts that winter and gather the remnants of the Uyghur khan’s people.[30]

The letters use the most courteous forms of Tang diplomacy and contain no open demand of submission.[31]

The refused title

The khan wished to take for himself a title like those of earlier rulers of the steppe.[32] The third letter shows that he had asked for a title that was or contained Tängri Khan, “Heavenly Khan”.[33] The Tang answered that this was a former Uyghur title which it had granted. It added that the Uyghurs themselves had not chosen it, and that the name of a destroyed nation should be shunned.[34] It offered what Taizong had given the Kirghiz chieftain, general of the Left Guard and governor-general of Jiankun.[34] In 845 the Kirghiz still hoped for a title with more of a Turkic flavour, or at least with Tängri in it.[35]

The plan against the Uyghur remnants

The remnants of Wujie’s people had taken refuge with the Black Carts. Are wished to attack them in autumn, when the horses were fat, and asked the emperor for troops.[4] The court also reckoned that the four garrisons and eighteen prefectures of Hexi and Longyou had long been lost to the barbarians. With the Uyghurs broken and Tibet in disorder, the moment had come.[4]

On 4 June 845 Li Shi was named envoy. An edict gave the Kirghiz khan the title Zongying Xiongwu Chengming Khan.[36] Apart from the word for khan, the title is entirely Chinese. It is far plainer than the titles the Tang had given the Uyghur khans.[36] No Kirghiz attack on the Uyghur refugees came in the autumn of 845.[37] Each side was waiting. The Kirghiz would attack only after the appointment. The Tang would grant it only after the Uyghurs were gone.[38] Wuzong died on 22 April 846, before Li Shi set out. The title was never issued.[39]

The investiture of 847

Xuanzong, who took the throne in 846, removed Li Deyu at once.[40] He wished to carry out the will of his predecessor. But someone said that the Kirghiz were a small tribe, not strong enough to stand against the Tang.[4] The chief ministers and the officials of the departments of the fourth rank and above debated it. They agreed that the Uyghurs had been given titles when they were strong, that now they were happily gone, and that to raise the Kirghiz as well would breed trouble later. The matter was dropped. Then, in the first year of Dazhong, 847, Xuanzong ordered the minister Li Ye to bear the investiture of the Kirghiz as Yingwu Chengming Khan.[4] The title is a shortened form of the one prepared in 845. It drops the reference to kinship.[41]

The investiture was made to “the Kirghiz”. The Xin Tang Shu does not name the khan.[4] The ruler who had destroyed the Uyghur khaganate had apparently been murdered by one of his officials before 6 February 847. The news reached the court later.[42]

Kirghiz authority on the steppe

The letters also show where the Kirghiz khan stood. The third letter says that foreign peoples lie between the two states. In 845 the Kirghiz complained that the Stelae Road, probably the way to central Mongolia, was closed.[43] Michael R. Drompp draws from these passages, and from the khan’s wish for the Uyghur land and for a title of the earlier steppe rulers, the conclusion that the Kirghiz remained centred on the upper Yenisei and did not replace the Uyghurs on the Orkhon.[44] In his judgement a Kirghiz post of any size on the plateau would have kept the road open. The plea for Tang help against the Uyghur remnants shows, in his view, that there was no real Kirghiz control there.[45] Their influence beyond their homeland lasted a few years. There is no evidence that their control of the plateau was more than ephemeral.[46]

The court itself expected that the Kirghiz would take the Uyghur place. The first letter says that, now that the Uyghur camp was levelled, the mountains and rivers of the two nations were no longer separated. With the khan a neighbour on the border, the court could again examine his tribute and petitions.[47] A letter of the spring of 845 says that the court had heard that the khan wished to move that autumn to the camp of the Uyghurs. It calls the plan a good one.[48] Drompp reads the two letters as showing that the Kirghiz had not occupied the old Uyghur heartland by then.[48]

Other views have been put forward. Kyzlasov reconstructs a Kirghiz realm from the Altai to the Irtysh and from Tuva to Lake Baikal.[49] The national historiography of Kyrgyzstan speaks of a Great Kirghiz State from 840 to 924.[50] The commentary on the Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam lets a Kirghiz empire last until about 917.[51] The state on the Yenisei is told in its own article, and the war before the embassies in the article on the war.

After 848

In the spring of 848 the Kirghiz minister Apa, leading a force said to number 70,000, struck the Shiwei, among whom the Uyghurs had been divided. He brought the Uyghurs back north of the desert, as the Jiu Tang Shu tells it.[52] The Xin Tang Shu counts three Kirghiz embassies under Xiantong, 860 to 873, and then loses the thread. The court historians kept no record of the later embassies and investitures.[4] The Zizhi tongjian adds one more investiture of a Kirghiz ruler, in 867 under the emperor Yizong.[53] The sources name three envoys after 847, in 856, 863 and 867. The envoy of 863 asked once more for Anxi and other lands.[54] The court urged the Kirghiz to finish off the Uyghur refugees. The two sides worked together very little, largely because of the great distance between them.[55] The Kirghiz did send an army to crush the last Uyghur remnants. It came to little, because the Chinese had already taken in or killed most of the refugees who reached their border.[55] After 848 no Kirghiz campaign beyond the homeland is known.[56]

Reliability

The embassies are known only from the Chinese side. The Kirghiz petition of 842 is preserved only as quoted in a Tang draft. The khan’s later letters can be read only through the answers.[57]

References

  1. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 103,131,138,145–146
  2. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 136
  3. ^ a b Drompp 2005, p. 125
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
  5. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 136,290–292,303
  6. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 140,302
  7. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 154–155
  8. ^ Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 195; Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
  9. ^ a b Drompp 2005, p. 103,276
  10. ^ a b Drompp 2005, p. 276
  11. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 277
  12. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 104–105
  13. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 131
  14. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 114,120
  15. ^ a b Drompp 2005, p. 132
  16. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 130–131
  17. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 130–131,292
  18. ^ a b Drompp 2005, p. 292
  19. ^ Lung 2010
  20. ^ a b Drompp 2005, p. 133
  21. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 125,182,308
  22. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 126,288–289
  23. ^ a b Drompp 2005, p. 290–291
  24. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 135–136
  25. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 138,300
  26. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 300,303
  27. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 145–146,308
  28. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 147,309
  29. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 147,310
  30. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 148,312
  31. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 182–184
  32. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 141
  33. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 140
  34. ^ a b Drompp 2005, p. 302
  35. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 150
  36. ^ a b Drompp 2005, p. 149
  37. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 150–151
  38. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 151
  39. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 151,153
  40. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 153–154
  41. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 154
  42. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 158
  43. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 147,303
  44. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 38,140–141,147–148,200–203
  45. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 147–148
  46. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 197,200
  47. ^ Drompp 1999, p. 394
  48. ^ a b Drompp 1999, p. 395
  49. ^ Golden 1992, p. 181
  50. ^ Kalkan 2005, p. 87–88
  51. ^ Minorsky 1970, p. 282
  52. ^ Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 195
  53. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 155
  54. ^ Drompp 1999, p. 395–396
  55. ^ a b Drompp 2002, p. 483
  56. ^ Drompp 1999, p. 397
  57. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 126,276

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)
  • Rachel Lung, Sogdian Translators in Tang China: An Issue of Loyalty (2010)
  • Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
  • Mustafa Kalkan, Kırgız Boylarının Yenisey'den Çıkarılmaları ve Coğrafî Dağılımları (2005)
  • V. Minorsky, Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam, "The Regions of the World": A Persian Geography 372 A.H. – 982 A.D., translated and explained, with the preface by V. V. Barthold, 2nd ed. (1970)

Related

What links here18

Persons
Are Khan · Emperor Wuzong of Tang · Emperor Yizong of Tang · Li Deyu · Li Shi (Tang envoy) · Li Ye (Tang envoy) · Ögä Khan · Princess Taihe · Ta-bu-he-zu · Wen-wu Alp · Zhao Fan
States
Yenisei Kirghiz Khaganate
Conflicts
Uyghur–Kirghiz War
Battles & Events
Kirghiz campaign against the Shiwei (848) · Rescue of Princess Taihe (840–843) · Tang investiture of the Kirghiz (847)
Institutions and Titles
Envoys and Embassies
Controversies
The Kirghiz descent from Li Ling

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Kirghiz Embassies to the Tang (842–848).” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/events/kirghiz-embassies-to-the-tang/

Last revised: 8 November 2026