Li Deyu

Li Deyu was chief minister of the Tang under the emperor Wuzong. He decided how the court met the fall of the Uyghur khaganate in 840 and the rise of the Kirghiz.^[1] He lived from 787 to 850.^[2] The Xin Tang Shu names him as chief minister in its accounts of the Uyghur remnant and of the Kirghiz.^[1] One important body of documents from these years has survived: his writings.^[2]

Life and writings

In his own time he was famous as a court official and man of letters. He was perhaps infamous as the leader of a political clique in one of the great rivalries of the late Tang court.^[2] He was the most important official of Wuzong’s government. He oversaw all weighty business of state.^[3] In 844 the emperor gave him the title Duke of Wei.^[3]

His works survive. They include more than 230 official documents written in his office as chief minister. Over 80 of these documents concern the Uyghur crisis.^[3] He had asked the emperor to have a scholar of the Hanlin Academy draft the Uyghur edicts. The emperor refused.^[3] The collections go under two titles, the Li Wenrao wenji and the Huichang yipin ji.^[3] The letters to the Kirghiz are told in their own article.

The Uyghurs, 840 to 843

When the Uyghur remnant under Ögä came to the frontier, Li Deyu argued for feeding their khan and not attacking him. The Uyghurs had once done the dynasty service. They were now hungry and in disorder. Their khan had nowhere to go.^[1] The emperor followed him in this.^[1] After the Tang victory at Shahu Mountain in February 843 he wrote the proclamation of thanks and reward.^[4] It ended by naming the Xiongnu chiefs Huhanye and Zhizhi as examples of the choice between favour and ruin. It ordered the Uyghurs living in Chang’an and Luoyang to wear Chinese dress and be divided among the circuits.^[4] This proclamation rapidly advanced the persecution of Manichaeism, which had begun with the closing of temples in south-eastern China.^[5] The emperor also had him gather thirty foreigners, from the time of the Qin and Han on, who had adopted Chinese ways and served loyally. They were for a book to honour the Uyghur chiefs who had surrendered. The emperor also ordered Li Deyu to record the victory on a stone at Youzhou.^[1]

The Kirghiz, 842 to 845

Li Deyu wrote every letter the court sent to the Kirghiz khan.^[6] On 12 February 843 he asked for interpreters of Turkic who were not Uyghurs. He feared that the Uyghur interpreters at court would bear the Kirghiz a grudge. He also feared that they would tell the Uyghurs in the capital what the envoy said.^[7] The second envoy proposed a joint campaign into the Tarim basin. Li Deyu argued against it. He pointed to the distance, to the 10,000 men each outpost would need and to the cost of supplying even Tiande and Zhenwu. A Kirghiz victory would only raise another strong enemy in the north, he said. The emperor agreed.^[8]

The envoy was questioned about the mountains, rivers and customs of his country. Afterwards Li Deyu proposed a picture of the Kirghiz, in the manner of the Wang hui pian that Yan Shigu had asked for in the Zhenguan era. The emperor ordered that what the Court of State Ceremonial had gathered be painted.^[1] Li Deyu wrote a preface to the account that came out of the interview.^[9]

In his letters he accepted the kinship that the Kirghiz claimed through Li Ling. The Tang house, he wrote, came from Li Ling’s grandfather Li Guang. Therefore the Tang and the khan were of one clan.^[10] In a memorial that went with the third letter he wrote that he had not known that the Kirghiz were descendants of the old Jiankun.^[11] He refused the title Tängri Khan, which the Kirghiz had asked for, because it had been a Uyghur title that the Uyghurs had not chosen for themselves. He offered titles from the time of Taizong.^[12] In answering the fourth envoy he wrote in a simple style so that the Kirghiz could understand him.^[13] What he wanted from them throughout was the end of the Uyghur remnant and of the Black Carts who sheltered it.^[14] Turkic Atlas tells the claim and the letters under the descent from Li Ling and under Kirghiz Embassies to the Tang.

On 11 February 845 he composed the formal announcement of the emperor’s new title. The announcement spoke at length of the Uyghurs and the Kirghiz.^[15]

Fall

Wuzong died on 22 April 846. A valedictory edict issued on the same day named Li Deyu to manage the state until the new emperor took the throne.^[16] The edict may be a forgery, since the emperor had been unable to act for many days.^[16] The new emperor, Xuanzong, disliked him and removed him from high office at once.^[17] He was demoted by stages, each post more junior and more southern. On 8 October 848 he was exiled to Yazhou in northern Hainan.^[18] He died there on 26 January 850, at the age of 63 sui.^[18] In 852 his son, Li Ye, took his coffin to Luoyang for burial.^[18]

After his fall the court’s interest in the Kirghiz was slight.^[19] The embassy that Li Deyu’s court had prepared, under Li Shi, never left. The envoy of 847, Li Ye, carried a shorter title that dropped the claim of kinship.^[19]

References

^ a b c d e f Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
^ a b c Drompp 2005, p. 2
^ a b c d e Drompp 2005, p. 3
^ a b Drompp 2005, p. 114–115
^ Drompp 2005, p. 115
^ Drompp 2005, p. 125
^ Drompp 2005, p. 130–131
^ Drompp 2005, p. 132
^ Drompp 2005, p. 133
^ Drompp 2005, p. 290–291
^ Drompp 2005, p. 139
^ Drompp 2005, p. 140
^ Drompp 2005, p. 146
^ Drompp 2005, p. 136,148
^ Drompp 2005, p. 152
^ a b Drompp 2005, p. 153
^ Drompp 2005, p. 153–154
^ a b c Drompp 2005, p. 157
^ a b Drompp 2005, p. 154

Sources

Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217 (after Jiu Tangshu)

Literature

Michael R. Drompp, Tang China and the Collapse of the Uighur Empire: A Documentary History (2005)
Rachel Lung, Sogdian Translators in Tang China: An Issue of Loyalty (2010)