Li Ye (Tang envoy)

Li Ye was the minister of the Court of State Ceremonial. The emperor Xuanzong ordered him in 847 to bear the tally and invest the Kirghiz as Yingwu Chengming Khan.^[1]

The investiture of 847

The Xin Tang Shu puts the order in the first year of Dazhong. The court had debated the embassy prepared under Wuzong and dropped it.^[1] The Zizhi tongjian names Li Ye envoy in the sixth month of 847, between 16 July and 14 August. It calls him president of the Court for Diplomatic Relations.^[2] The title he carried, Yingwu Chengming Khan, is a shorter form of the one prepared in 845, Zongying Xiongwu Chengming Khan. It leaves out the word that stood for kinship with the Tang house.^[2] The text of the edict of appointment has not survived.^[2]

No reason is given for the court’s change of mind. The account of it uses a word read as “sudden”.^[2] The change may have followed an attack on Tang land in June and July of that year by Uyghurs, Tanguts and Tibetans.^[2]

The Xin Tang Shu says the investiture was made to “the Kirghiz”.^[1] It names no khan. The ruler who destroyed the Uyghur khaganate seems to have been dead by then, murdered by one of his own officials before 6 February 847.^[3] The sources do not say whether Li Ye reached the Kirghiz. They do not say what he found there or what he brought back.^[1] In the spring of 848 a Kirghiz force under the minister Apa struck the Shiwei. This has been taken as the policy of a new khan.^[4] The embassies are told in Kirghiz Embassies to the Tang.

Men of the name

A Li Ye of Fengxiang is named in the Xin Tang Shu among the commanders sent in 850 against the Tanguts, together with a Li Shi of Hedong.^[5] The text does not say that he is the envoy.^[5] A son of Li Deyu bears the same romanised name. In 852 he took his father’s coffin from Hainan to Luoyang.^[6] Nothing else is recorded of the envoy’s life, his family or his death.^[1]