焉耆国 / Yanqi Kingdom (Xin period)

Overview

焉耆国 / Yanqi Kingdom enters the Xin-period wiki through Hanji 652 as the Western Regions polity that pretends submission, ambushes 王骏, and then suffers 郭清’s retaliatory killing of civilians.

Current Profile

The episode’s transcript writes the polity as 燕齐; this page normalizes it to Yanqi / 焉耆 because that is the received Western Regions polity name used elsewhere in the wiki for later Han material. The Xin-period profile is separate from 焉耆国 / Yanqi Kingdom (late Han) so that early-Xin and later Eastern Han evidence do not blur.

Hanji 652 presents Yanqi as a local actor responding to Xin coercion. Western Regions states initially welcome Wang Mang’s mission, but Wang Jun intends attack. Yanqi therefore feigns surrender, secretly prepares soldiers, ambushes Wang Jun inside its territory, and becomes the target of Guo Qing’s retaliatory attack.

Key Characteristics

• Western Regions polity in the Xin-period source.
• Uses false submission and ambush against Wang Jun’s expedition.
• Benefits from defections among other Western Regions troops in the source narrative.
• Suffers retaliatory killing of old and weak civilians by Guo Qing.
• Kept distinct from later Eastern Han Yanqi pages until a full cross-period synthesis is warranted.

Evidence

• False submission: Hanji 652 says Yanqi pretends to submit while secretly preparing troops.
• Ambush: Hanji 652 says Wang Jun is attacked by ambush after entering Yanqi territory.
• Retaliation suffered: Hanji 652 says Guo Qing later kills Yanqi’s old and weak civilians.
• Frontier disconnection context: Hanji 652 places the event before Western Regions contact breaks after Wang Mang’s fall and Li Chong’s death.

Qualifications

The source transcript uses 燕齐, while this page uses the normalized Yanqi / 焉耆 identity based on the Western Regions context. Exact geography, ruler names, troop numbers, and whether every named neighboring polity maps cleanly to later received names remain source-scoped.

What Changed

• Created a Xin-period Yanqi page from Hanji 652 and kept it distinct from the later-Han Yanqi synthesis.

Relationships

• 王骏 - Xin commander killed after entering Yanqi territory.
• 郭清 - Xin officer who retaliates against Yanqi civilians.
• 李崇 - Western Regions protector left with remnants after the ambush branch.
• 西域都护府 - institutional frame around Xin and Han authority in the region.
• 焉耆国 / Yanqi Kingdom (late Han) - later-period page for the same normalized polity in Eastern Han evidence.