Yizhi-lianji

Yizhi-lianji, in Chinese 乙支連幾, was a general of the Kirghiz who came to the Tang court as an envoy in 866.^[1] The Tang huiyao names him and gives him the rank of general, jiangjun.^[1]

The embassy

The Xin Tang Shu says that the Kirghiz came to court three times in the Xiantong years, 860 to 873. It says that the later embassies and investitures are not recorded, because the court historians lost the account.^[2] The Zizhi tongjian adds that a Kirghiz ruler received imperial appointment in 867, in the reign of the emperor Yizong.^[3] Michael R. Drompp reports that the Zizhi tongjian names a Kirghiz general with the same characters, 乙支連幾, as coming in 867.^[4] The envoy stands in 866 in the Tang huiyao, as the study of the Begre stele cites it. In the Zizhi tongjian he stands in 867. The embassy and the appointment of 867 may belong to one exchange. No source says so. The envoy is known only from two modern studies.^[1]^[4]

Name and stele

ičränkiOld Turkic
乙支連幾ChineseTang Huiyao

Vladimir Tishin reads the name 乙支連幾 as a Chinese form of the Turkic rank ičräki, which stands on the stele of Tör Apa at Begre. He derives the Chinese from a Turkic ičränki. This can be taken as a distortion of ičräki. He notes that the transcription poses some problems.^[1] On that reading the Chinese text gives the envoy’s rank and not his own name.^[1] Drompp too reads the Chinese sounds as Turkic ičreki, “belonging to the royal court”, perhaps a court chamberlain. He finds the final -n of the third syllable a difficulty.^[4]

If the man of the stone is the envoy, or if his chief is the Kirghiz chancellor Apa, the stele belongs to the second half of the ninth century. A man who died at seventy-seven then died in the first years of the tenth.^[5] The equation fits the stone, but nothing on the stone says it. The Begre inscription is told in its own article.

The sources used here give nothing else about Yizhi-lianji. They give no age, no home, no mission beyond the visit of 866, and no word of his return.^[1]

References

^ a b c d e f Tishin 2019, p. 201
^ Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
^ Drompp 2005, p. 155
^ a b c Drompp 1999, p. 395
^ Tishin 2019, p. 201–203

Sources

Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217 (after Jiu Tangshu)
Tang Huiyao (Institutional History of the Tang)

Literature

V. V. Tishin, K datirovke enisejskoj runičeskoj nadpisi Begre (E 11) [К датировке енисейской рунической надписи Бегре (Е 11)] (2019)
Michael R. Drompp, Tang China and the Collapse of the Uighur Empire: A Documentary History (2005)
Michael R. Drompp, Breaking the Orkhon Tradition: Kirghiz Adherence to the Yenisei Region after A.D. 840 (1999)