The Yenisei Kirghiz, also known as the Khyagas or Khakas, were an ancient people that dwelled along the upper Yenisei River in the southern portion of the Minusinsk Depression from the 3rd century BCE to the 13th century CE. The heart of their homeland was the forested Tannu-Ola mountain range (known in ancient times as the Lao or Kogmen mountains), in modern day Tuva, just north of Mongolia. The Sayan mountains, and much of Mongolia's Great Lakes Depression were also included in their territory at different times. The Kirghiz Khaganate existed from 550 to 1293 CE, in 840 it took over the leadership of the Turkic Khaganate from the Uigurs, expanding their state from the Yenisei territories into the Central Asia and Tarim basin. The Yenisei Kirghiz mass migration to the Jeti-su resulted in the formation of the modern Kirghizstan in the Pamir area.
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The Yenisei Kirghiz may perhaps be correlated to the Tashtyk culture. The Xiajiasi first appeared as Gekun (Chinese: 鬲昆) or Jiankun (Chinese: 堅昆) in Han period records. Culturally and linguistically, the Yenisei Kirghiz were Turkic. But ethnically it is believed they were part Mongol and part Samoyed because of their red hair and light skin and eyes. Kirghiz with dark features were believed to be descended from the famous Han Dynasty general Li Ling, who defected to Siberia in the first century BCE. By the fall of the Gokturk empire in the eighth century CE, the Yenisei Kirghiz had established their own thriving state based on the Gokturk model. They had adopted the Orkhon script of the Gokturks and established trading ties with China and the Abbasid Caliphate in Central Asia and Middle East. Later, under the Uyghur Khaganate, the Yenisei Kirghiz spent much of their time in a state of rebellion, and in 840 they succeeded in sacking the Uyghur capital in Mongolia's Orkhon valley and driving the Uyghurs out of Mongolia entirely. But rather than replace the Uyghurs as the lords of Mongolia, the Yenisei Kirghiz continued to live in their traditional homeland and exist as they had for centuries. When Genghis Khan came to power in the early 13th century, the Yenisei Kirghiz submitted peacefully to him and were absorbed into his Mongol Empire, putting an end to their independent state. During the time of the Mongol Empire the Yenisei Kirghiz's territory in northern Mongolia was turned into an agricultural colony called Kem-Kemchik. Kublai Khan (who founded the Yuan Dynasty) also sent Mongolian and Chinese officials (along with colonists) to serve as judges in the Kyrgyz and Tuva regions.
The Yenisei Kirghiz had a mixed economy based on traditional nomadic animal breeding (mostly horses and cattle) and agriculture. According to Chinese records they grew Himalayan rye, barley, millet, and wheat. They were also skilled iron workers, jewelry makers, potters, and weavers. Their homes were traditional nomadic tents and, in the agricultural areas, wood and bark huts. Their farming settlements were protected by log palisades. The resources of their forested homeland (mainly fur) allowed the Yenisei Kirghiz to become prosperous merchants as well. They maintained trading ties with China, Tibet, the Abbasid Caliphate of the Middle east, and many local tribes. Kirghiz horses were also renowned for their large size and speed.
There is a discussion of the change of name in the Tang Huiyao (961 CE) article on Jiegu which very likely comes from the Xu Huiyao of Yang Shaofu and others completed in 852, the passage begins:
Now there are those who change the designation to Hegesi. This is also an old name among the northern barbarians... The change to Xiajiasi is probably because barbarian sounds are sometimes quick and sometimes slow so that the transcription of the words are not the same. When it is sometimes pronounced Xiajiasi, it is just that the word is quick. When I enquired from the translation clerk, he said that xiajia had the meaning of "yellow head and red face" and that this was what the Uyghurs called them.
This passage follows after immediately on a quotation from a lost Records of Western Regions by Gai Jiayun, who was Protector General of Anxi, the point of which is to record a legend that dark haired people among the Kirghiz were descendants of Chinese general Li Ling, who was captured by the Xiongnu. Since the Turks were being described as people of small stature in the Tangshu. The description of the Kirghiz as tall, blue-eyed blonds early excited the interest of scholars, who assumed that they could not have originally been Turkic in language. Ligeti cited the opinions of various scholars who had proposed to see them as Germanic, Slav or Ket, while he himself, following Castrén and Schott, favoured a Samoyed origin on the basis of an etymology for a supposed Kirghiz word qaša or qaš for "iron". However Pullyblank argued
As far as I can see the only basis for the assumption that the Kirghiz were not originally Turkic in language is the fact that they are described as blonds, hardly an acceptable argument in the light of present day ideas about the independence of language and race. As Ligeti himself admitted, other evidence about the Kirghiz language in Tang sources shows clearly that at that time they were Turkic speaking and there is no earlier evidence at all about their language. Even the word qaša or qaš may, I think, be Turkic. The Tongdian says: "Whenever the sky rains iron, they gather it and use it. They call it jiasha (LMC kiaa-şaa). They make knives and swords with it that are very sharp." The Tang Huiyao is the same except that it leaves out the foreign word jiasha. "Raining iron" must surely refer to meteorites. The editor who copied the passage into the Xin Tangshu unfortunately misunderstood it and changed it to, "Whenever it rains, their custom is always to get iron," which is rather nonsensical. Ligeti unfortunately used only the Xin Tangshu passage without referring to the Tongdian. His restoration of qaša or qaš seems quite acceptable but I doubt that word simply meant "iron". It seems rather to refer specifically to "meteorite" or "meteoric iron".
The trisyllabic forms with Chinese -sz for Turkic final -z appear only from the end of 8th century onward. Before that time we have a series of Chinese transcriptions referring to the same people and stretching back to the 2nd century BCE, which end either in -n or -t:
Neither -n nor -t provides a good equivalent for -z. The most serious attempt to explain these forms seems still to be that of Paul Pelliot in 1920. Pelliot suggested that Middle Chinese -t stands for Turkic -z, which would be quite unusual and would need supporting evidence, but then his references to Mongol plurals in -t suggest that he thinks that the name of the Kirghiz, like that of the Turks, first became known to the Chinese though Mongol speaking intermediaries. There is still less plausibility in the suggestion that the Kirghiz, who first became known as a people conquered by that Xiongnu and then re-emerged associated with other Turkic peoples in the 6th century, should have had Mongol style suffixes attached to all the various forms of their name that were transcribed into Chinese up to the 9th century.
The change of r to z in Turkic which is implied by the Chinese forms of the name Kirghiz should not give any comfort to those who want to explain Mongolian and Tungusic cognates with r as Turkic loanwords. The peoples mentioned in sources of the Han period that can be identified as Turkic was Dingling (later Tiele, out of whom the Uyghurs emerged), the Jiankun (later Kirghiz), the Xinli (later Sir/Xue), and possibly also the Hujie or Wujie, were all, at that period, north and west of the Xiongnu in general area where we find the Kirghiz at the beginning of Tang.
Among the present-day Turkic Tuvans on the Yenisei headwaters in the Republic of Tuva, one of the traditional clan-names is 'Kirgiz'.