When the Kirghiz took the Uyghur court in 840, they found the Tang princess Taihe among the spoils and sent her home with an escort.[1] The Uyghur khan Ögä ruled the Uyghurs who escaped. The Chinese call him Wujie. He met the escort on the road and killed it.[1] He carried the princess south across the desert and kept her as a hostage.[2] In 843 a Tang army broke his camp, and the general Shi Xiong brought her back.[1]

The princess among the spoils

Taihe had been married to a Uyghur khan in 821, and she was still at the Uyghur court when the Kirghiz came.[2] The Kirghiz found her after they had burned the royal camp and taken the treasure.[3] Their khan Are held the Kirghiz to be of the same clan as the Tang emperors. For this reason he sent her back and gave her an escort.[1]

The sources do not agree on the escort. The Jiu Tang Shu has ten Kirghiz dagan.[2] The Zizhi tongjian is reported to have ten officials with the title tarkhan.[4] The petition of the Kirghiz of 842, as a Tang draft quotes it, has a general, Du-lü-shi Alp.[5]

The seizure by Ögä

Thirteen clans of the khan’s camp raised Ögä as khan. They went south and made their camp at Cuozi Mountain, by the Tang frontier.[6] On the road Ögä met the Kirghiz envoys and killed them. He took the princess with him across the desert.[1] Li Deyu’s letter to the Kirghiz khan says that the Uyghurs seized her only five days after she left the khan and killed all the envoys. It adds that she then wandered two years in the desert.[7]

At the border of Tiande, Ögä asked the Tang for the city of Tiande, so that he could live there with the princess.[2] The princess herself sent envoys to the Tang court. They were to say that Ögä had been installed as khan, and to ask for orders.[3] A minister of the Uyghurs asked to borrow Zhenwu for the princess and the khan to live in. The court refused. It sent the general Wang Hui with 20,000 hu of grain to console the Uyghurs.[3] The Kirghiz knew nothing of her fate.[5] The first Kirghiz envoy of the embassies to the Tang brought a petition to Tiande in the winter of 842.[8] The petition says that the Kirghiz had sent an escort with her and that no news had come. It adds that they had sent out 400,000 troops to search.[5]

The night attack

The Uyghur khan had camped near Zhenwu and attacked it.[9] There the military governor Liu Mian decided to strike. He ordered Shi Xiong to lead three Shatuo tribes under Zhuye Chixin, with Qibi and Tangut troops, in a surprise attack on the khan’s camp.[9] The plan was to hit the Uyghurs so suddenly that in their confusion they would leave the princess. Liu Mian himself would follow with a large army.[9] The Xin Tang Shu names Liu Mian and Shi Xiong, deputy commander of the Tiande field army.[3] Their force was picked cavalry and a mixed host of Shatuo and other peoples.[3] It left Yunzhou by night, went by Mayi and defeated an enemy party at the Anzhong fort.[3]

Shi Xiong looked out from the walls of Zhenwu. He saw felt-covered carts with persons in red and green clothes of a Chinese style.[9] His spies told him that they were the carts of the princess and her household. He sent a spy to her with the order to stay hidden in her cart and not to move.[9] While it was dark he had ten holes made in the wall.[9] At dawn he had pennons and torches raised on the walls. He drove cattle, horses and other animals out through the holes and sent his men after them to the sound of drums.[10] Shi Xiong’s biography in the Jiu Tang Shu says that the torches lit up the sky and the noise shook the earth. The khan, terrified beyond measure, fled with some cavalry.[11] The Xin Tang Shu gives a shorter account. Ögä was pressing Zhenwu when Shi Xiong rode in, broke out of the walls at night and fought hard. The khan took fright and drew off.[3]

Shi Xiong pursued the beaten Uyghurs to Shahu Mountain, whose name means Kill the Foreigners.[3] One modern reckoning puts the decisive fight there on 13 February 843.[11] The reports give 10,000 killed, a round and imprecise figure, and from 5,000 to 20,000 prisoners.[11] According to the Xin Tang Shu, the tegins and all below them, several tens of thousands, surrendered. Shi Xiong collected the baggage and the edicts that the Tang had given Ögä.[3] The khan was wounded and fled. He gathered what was left of his people and went to the Black Carts for shelter.[3] By one report he escaped with several hundred cavalry.[11]

The two accounts

The Jiu Tang Shu tells it differently. In the third year of Huichang the Uyghur minister Pugu Yi came to Youzhou and agreed to hand the princess over there. Ögä camped eighty li from the Youzhou frontier.[2] His close kin and the Manichaean Zhijing had already gone into the Zhenwu army.[2] That night Liu Mian’s army fell on the camp. Ögä fled some four hundred li to the north-east and camped among the Shiwei.[2] He did not take the princess with him.[2] The text calls Shi Xiong the prefect of Fengzhou. He met the princess’s tent with his troops and brought her back.[2]

A further account, by Cai Xi, claims the rescue for him.[11] Cai Xi says that he rushed into the Uyghur camp, found the princess and helped her onto a horse.[11] He led her toward the Tang lines and shouted that this was the princess. Shi Xiong heard him and gave them a guard of thirty infantry.[11]

The return

The princess was taken to Yunzhou and from there to Taiyuan.[11] Liu Mian’s victory report reached the capital on 19 February 843.[11] At Taiyuan the emperor sent her a fur of white sable, which the Kirghiz had presented to the throne, and a jade ring.[12] She entered Chang’an on 29 March 843, some six weeks after the fight.[12] The chief ministers met her at the Zhangjing Monastery outside the Tonghua Gate, the gate by which she had left more than twenty years before. She went to the ancestral temple and wept there.[13] On the same day an edict changed her title to Dingan Dachang Gongzhu, and the household that had been set up for her abroad was abolished.[14]

Li Deyu’s letter to the Kirghiz khan tells it in Tang terms. The khan’s soldiers rescued her and sent her back out of kinship. The Uyghurs seized her and killed the escort. Tang troops brought her to court.[15] The Tang court accepted the claim of kinship from which the Kirghiz had acted, and it entered their khan in the register of the imperial clan.[3]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217; Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 195
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 195
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
  4. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 38
  5. ^ a b c Drompp 2005, p. 276
  6. ^ Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217; Tang Huiyao (Institutional History of the Tang), juan 98
  7. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 310
  8. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 103,276
  9. ^ a b c d e f Drompp 2005, p. 113
  10. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 113–114
  11. ^ a b c d e f g h i Drompp 2005, p. 114
  12. ^ a b Drompp 2005, p. 120
  13. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 120–121
  14. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 121
  15. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 290–291

Sources

Literature

  • Michael R. Drompp, Tang China and the Collapse of the Uighur Empire: A Documentary History (2005)
  • Colin Mackerras, The Uighur Empire According to the T'ang Dynastic Histories (1972)

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Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Rescue of Princess Taihe (840–843).” Turkic Atlas, revised 28 October 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/events/rescue-of-princess-taihe/

Last revised: 28 October 2026