Wen-wu Alp was a general of the Kirghiz. He was the third envoy that their khan sent to the Tang after the fall of the Uyghurs.[1] He reached Chang’an in the first half of July 843.[1]

The embassy

The khan’s gifts were 100 horses and ten falcons.[2] A letter of Li Deyu to a Tang general gives only the season, summer. It says that the Kirghiz had recently sent a general and more than a hundred persons to court. They had asked leave to send 400,000 of their own troops after the Uyghur khan, to take him and send him to the capital.[3] One reckoning takes that letter for one of the summer of 844 and dates the answer to Wen-wu Alp to 844 as well.[3] The reckoning followed here puts the answer in the summer of 843.[3]

Li Deyu’s letter

Li Deyu wrote the answer in the emperor’s name that summer. Wuzong disliked the first draft. Li Deyu then offered a second version in far more obsequious language.[4] The letter opens with the arrival of the general and the khan’s gifts. It repeats that the court accepts the khan’s claim of kinship with the Tang house. Then it returns to the Uyghur refugees whom the Black Carts sheltered.[2] It urges the khan to destroy them root and branch.[5]

The khan had asked for a title that was, or contained, the Turkic words Tängri Qaghan, “Heavenly Khan”. The letter refuses. It says that the Tang had granted the title to Uyghur rulers and that the Uyghurs themselves had not chosen it. It adds that a destroyed people was now to be shunned. It offers instead the old offices that Taizong had given a Kirghiz chief, general of the Left Guard and governor-general of Jiankun.[2] The letter says that General Wen-wu Alp and the others understood the emperor’s wishes.[6] The Tang title and the answer to it are told in Kirghiz Embassies to the Tang.

After his return

In the spring of 845 the Kirghiz complained that no Tang envoy had come since the return of General Wen-wu Alp.[7] The Tang answered that the letter he carried had told the Kirghiz to send a petition. An official would then be sent to confer the appointment. No petition had reached Chang’an.[7] The fourth envoy, Tatik Iznanchu, had come in the autumn of 844.[8]

Name

The Chinese form is Wen-wu He. The element he usually renders Turkic alp, “brave”. The reconstructed Tang pronunciation of Wen-wu suggests nothing in Old Turkic.[1]

The sources do not say whether Wen-wu Alp reached home or served the khan again.[7]

References

  1. ^ a b c Drompp 2005, p. 138
  2. ^ a b c Drompp 2005, p. 140
  3. ^ a b c Drompp 2005, p. 139
  4. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 139–140
  5. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 141
  6. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 302
  7. ^ a b c Drompp 2005, p. 147
  8. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 145–146

Literature

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

Related

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Wen-wu Alp.” Turkic Atlas, revised 22 October 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/persons/wen-wu-alp/

Last revised: 22 October 2026