In the first year of Dazhong, 847, the Tang emperor Xuanzong sent Li Ye, president of the Court of State Ceremonial, with the tally to invest the Kirghiz as Yingwu Chengming Khan.[1] The investiture came two years after the first plan. Wuzong had planned it in 845. His death in 846 and a court debate under his successor had stopped it.[1] The title of 847 was a shorter form of the title that Wuzong had prepared. It left out the reference to the kinship of the Kirghiz with the Tang house.[2]

The plan of 845

The Kirghiz khan had asked for troops to strike the Uyghur remnants among the Black Carts in the autumn.[1] The court judged that the four garrisons and eighteen prefectures of Hexi and Longyou had long been lost to the barbarians. With the Uyghurs weak and Tibet in disorder, it held, the moment had come.[1] It named the Attendant-in-Ordinary Li Shi as envoy to the Kirghiz to invest their chief as Zongying Xiongwu Chengming Khan.[1] An edict of 4 June 845 named Li Shi and gave the title.[3] Wuzong died before the envoy set out.[1] The date of his death was 22 April 846.[4]

The debate

Xuanzong took the throne in 846 and wished to carry out the plan of his predecessor.[1] At once he removed Li Deyu. Li Deyu was the chief minister who had handled the whole Uyghur crisis and the correspondence with the Kirghiz.[5] Li Shi’s embassy was not sent because of the mourning for the dead emperor.[2]

Then someone said that the Kirghiz were a small tribe and not strong enough to stand against the Tang.[1] The emperor ordered the chief ministers and the officials of the departments of the fourth rank and above to discuss it.[1] They said that the Uyghurs had been given titles when they were strong. Now the Uyghurs were happily gone, and to raise the Kirghiz as well would breed trouble later.[1] The matter was dropped.[1]

The investiture

In the first year of Dazhong the emperor decreed after all that Li Ye, president of the Court of State Ceremonial, should bear the tally and invest the Kirghiz as Yingwu Chengming Khan.[1] The envoy was named in the sixth month, which is between 16 July and 14 August 847.[2] The title is a shortened form of the one prepared in 845. Apart from the word khan, it is Chinese.[6] It no longer contained the reference to kinship with the imperial house.[2]

The Xin Tang Shu does not say why Xuanzong changed his mind. It calls the decision sudden.[1] The decision may have followed an attack on Tang territory in the month before. Uyghurs, Tanguts and Tibetans made the attack, apparently stirred up by the Tibetans. Wang Zai and the Shatuo leader Zhuye Chixin, also called Li Guochang, beat them.[2] The Uyghurs in that attack probably did not belong to Ögä. They may have been among those who fled west after 840.[2]

Identity of the khan

The investiture was made to “the Kirghiz”. The Xin Tang Shu does not name the khan.[1] The ruler who had destroyed the Uyghur khaganate had apparently been murdered by one of his officials some time in the Huichang years, before 6 February 847. The news reached the Tang court later.[7] The investiture may therefore have reached a new khan. The Kirghiz attack on the Shiwei in the spring of 848 may show the policy of that khan.[7] The question is open. No source for 847 names the khan. The khan of 840 is Are.

After 847

Xuanzong took little interest in relations with the Kirghiz.[2] Contacts went on. They seem to have consisted mainly of Kirghiz envoys coming to the capital at irregular intervals.[2] One more investiture of a Kirghiz ruler is recorded, in 867 under the emperor Yizong.[8] The Xin Tang Shu ends the story with the remark that the court historians lost the record of later embassies and investitures.[1] In 843 the Kirghiz had asked, in the embassies of those years, for a title with the Turkic word for Heaven in it. In 847 the Tang court gave them a Chinese one.[9]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h Drompp 2005, p. 154
  3. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 149
  4. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 153
  5. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 153–154
  6. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 149,154
  7. ^ a b Drompp 2005, p. 158
  8. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 155
  9. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 140,154

Sources

Literature

  • Michael R. Drompp, Tang China and the Collapse of the Uighur Empire: A Documentary History (2005)

Related

What links here4

Battles & Events
Kirghiz campaign against the Shiwei (848) · Kirghiz embassies of the Xiantong era (860–873)
Institutions and Titles
Diplomacy of the Steppe Empires · Envoys and Embassies

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Tang investiture of the Kirghiz (847).” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/events/tang-investiture-of-the-kirghiz-847/

Last revised: 8 November 2026