An Eighteenth Century Chinese Description of the Kirghiz People

“An Eighteenth Century Chinese Description of the Kirghiz People” is part of a translated 18th century Chinese manuscript called “Si yu wen kian lou” (published in Beijing in 1777). It is an unnamed Chinese official’s description of the Kyrgyz (Kirghiz) people of Central Asia.

The Kyrgyz are a Turkic-speaking Central Asian people. Many of them live in the former Soviet Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan. Other Kyrgyz people, however, live in China and the other countries around Kyrgyzstan.

Islam was introduced to Central Asia by trade in the 7th century and today the majority of the people in Kyrgyzstan and neighboring republics are Muslim. The widespread adoption of Islam by the Kyrgyz tribes took place between the 17th and 19th centuries. Before they were conquered by Genghis Khan’s Mongol Empire in the 13th century, the Kyrgyz were part of the powerful Turkic Khaganate of Central Asia. In the 17th century the Kyrgyz were conquered by the Mongol Oirat Dzungar Empire.

In the 18th century, some of them came under the rule of the Manchu Qing Dynasty of China. As China weakened in the 19th century, and the Imperial Russia expanded into Central Asia, most Kyrgyz came under Russian rule. They became part of the Soviet Union after the Russian Bolshevik Revolution, and, finally, gained independence in 1991, after the collapsed of the USSR.

Like neighboring Central Asian groups, the Kyrgyz were traditionally nomadic livestock herders. Their Turkic language is related to the languages of their nomadic Kazakh, Turkmen, Uyghur, and Uzbek neighbors, and is also related to the Turkish language of Turkey. The lifestyle of the Kyrgyz also resembled that of the Mongols who lived nearby.

The text describes how the Kyrgyz territories in the Ili region (around modern-day north-western China’s Xinjiang Region, eastern Kazakhstan, and north-eastern Kyrgyzstan) were conquered by China’s Qing Emperor Qianlong (or Kien Long, lived 1711-99, ruled 1736-96).

As a result of the Chinese invasion, some of the Kyrgyz tribes became tribute-paying vassals of Qing China, but other tribes maintained their independence. The Qing Dynasty itself had been founded by the Manchus (formerly called the Jurchens), a non-Han Chinese people who had lived in modern-day Manchuria north of historical China. In 1644 the Manchu captured the Chinese capital Beijing, and founded the Qing Dynasty of China, replacing the previous Ming Dynasty.

As rulers of China, the Manchu emperors of the Qing Dynasty expanded their frontiers to include most of what are now China and Mongolia. Qing Chinese influence also extended into parts of Central Asia, and Korea and some Southeast Asia states paid tribute. Both Mandarin Chinese and the Manchu language were used for official purposes in Qing China.

This 18th century Chinese description of the Kyrgyz tribes was translated into Russian and published in that language by George Timkowski, an early 19th century Russian envoy to China. Timkowski’s Russian translation was then edited, annotated, and translated into French by German linguist and Orientalist Julius Heinrich Klaproth (1783-1835). Klaproth’s annotated French version of the text was translated into English in the early 19th century by H. E. Lloyd.