page_title: Yenisei Kyrgyz
section_title: Ethnicity and language
hierarchical_section_title: Yenisei Kyrgyz / Ethnicity and language
caption_attribution_description: Русский: Государство Енисейских кыргызов (Древнехакасское), 6-9 в. Золотые сосуды и тарелка, серебряное блюдо - Копенский Чаатас. Глиняные вазы; мог. Джесос; Уйбатский Чаатас. Буддийский алтарь, Китай; бронза, позолота; с. Батеневское. English: Ancient Khakass state, 6-9 c. AD. Golden vessels and plate, silver plate, clay vessels, Buddhist altar (China).
context_page_description: The Yenisei Kyrgyz, also known as the Ancient Kyrgyz or the Khyagas, were an ancient Turkic people who 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, in modern-day Tuva, just north of Mongolia. The Sayan mountains were also included in their territory at different times. The Kyrgyz Khaganate existed from 550 to 1219 CE; in 840, it took over the leadership of the Turkic Khaganate from the Uyghurs, expanding the state from the Yenisei territories into the Central Asia and Tarim Basin. The Yenisei Kyrgyz mass migration to the Jeti-su resulted in the formation of the modern Kyrgyz Republic land of the modern-day Kyrgyz.
context_section_description: Culturally and linguistically, the Yenisei Kirghiz were Turkic. The Kirghiz were described in Tang Dynasty texts as having primarily Caucasian features, with some having East Asian features.  According to the Tang Huiyao (961 CE) article on Jiegu (the Kirghiz), which very likely comes from the Xu Huiyao that Yang Shaofu and others completed in 852, citing Ge Jiayun, who was the Protector General of Anxi:
  During the reign period of Kaiyuan of [emperor] Xuanzong, Ge Jiayun, composed A Record of the Western Regions, in which he said "the people of the Jiankun state all have red hair and green eyes. The ones with dark eyes were descendants of Li Ling.
  It further mentioned that the name Xiajiasi, by which the Kirghiz were then known, was what the Uyghurs called them and had the meaning "yellow head and red face", although confusingly it was also a name Kirghiz themselves used.  Medieval Muslim writers described contemporary Turks as "broad faced people with small eyes". and noted that Tibetans and Turks resembled each other so much that Arabs and Persians could not tell the difference between those two groups. Meanwhile, on Western Turkic coins " the faces of the governor and governess are clearly mongoloid (a roundish face, narrow eyes), and the portrait have definite old Türk features (long hair, absence of headdress of the governor, a tricorn headdress of the governess)". Considering those contemporary descriptions of Turks as possesssed Asiatic phenotypes, the description of the Kirghiz as tall, blue-eyed blonds excited the early interest of scholars, who assumed that Kyrgyz might not have originally been Turkic in language. Golden considered Kyrghyzes to be Palaeo-Siberians Turkicized under Turkic leadership. 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 Pulleyblank 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".
  American Turkologist Michael Drompp adheres to the same opinion:
  A number of researchers have been tempted to see the early Kyrgyz as a non-Turkic people or, at the very least, an ethnically mixed people with a large non-Turkic component. Many scholars have supported this idea after identifying what they believe to be examples of non-Turkic (particularly Samoyed) words among the Kyrgyz words preserved in Chinese sources. It should be noted, however, that the connection between language and "race" is highly inconclusive. The physical appearance of the Kyrgyz can no more be considered as indicating that they were not a Turkic people than can the lexical appearance of a few possibly non-Turkic words, whose presence in the Kyrgyz language can be explained through the common practice of linguist
caption: Yenisei Kyrgyz tableware and altar
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