Yenisei Kyrgyz

The Yenisei Kyrgyz were a Turkic people of the upper Yenisei and the Minusinsk Basin, in what is now southern Siberia and Tuva. Chinese histories knew them from the 3rd century BC as the Gekun or Jiankun, and they were counted among the peoples conquered by the Xiongnu around 202 BC. Their homeland lay in the forested Tannu-Ola and Sayan mountains, and their economy combined horse and cattle herding, hunting, farming and metalwork. By the 8th century they had built a state on the Göktürk model, using the Orkhon script and trading with Tang China and the Abbasid Caliphate. In 758 the Uyghurs killed their khagan and subjected them, but in 840 the Kyrgyz sacked the Uyghur capital of Ordu-Baliq and drove the Uyghurs out of Mongolia. Rather than ruling the steppe themselves, they returned to the Yenisei, while the Uyghur collapse opened the way for migrations into Turfan and Gansu. Their khagans claimed descent from the Han general Li Ling, and Tang sources noted their red hair and green eyes. In the early 13th century they submitted to Genghis Khan and lost their independence, though Kyrgyz communities survived across Inner Asia.