Overview of daily and ceremonial life among the steppe peoples from the Xiongnu to the Kirghiz: how they feasted, sang, hunted, ate, dressed, camped, married, buried their dead and wrote. The customs of the Göktürks are known mostly from the descriptions of their neighbours: Chinese historians, a Roman envoy, a Chinese Buddhist pilgrim and an Armenian chronicler of the Caucasus. The Zhou Shu says at three points that the Göktürks were like the Xiongnu of old: in the title of their khan, in the title of his wife, and in their customs.[1] The step from likeness to descent is disputed. The Göktürks and the Xiongnu sets the competing views side by side.

Belief and the cosmos are treated in Tengrism and Turkic Mythology.

Feasts and assemblies

Main articles: The Göktürk Feast, The Three Xiongnu Assemblies, The Xianbei Spring Assembly, The New Year on the Steppe, Seating at the Feast, Feasts in Kashgari’s Dictionary

The chiefs of the Xiongnu came together three times a year.[2] In autumn, when the horses were fat, they held a great assembly at Dailin and counted the people and the herds.[2] In the last month of spring the Xianbei held a great assembly by a river.[3] In both accounts of it, the assembly is a feast at which marriages were made.[3] At Tong Yabgu’s court near Suyab, the officers sat before the khan on long mats in two rows.[4] No Göktürk text describes a feast at the turn of the year.

Songs and music

Main articles: The Chile Song, Turkic Songs at the Tang Court, Wuhuan Funeral Songs, Kirghiz Entertainments

The Sui Shu says that the Göktürks drank fermented mare’s milk until they were drunk, and that they sang and shouted to one another.[5] After the failed siege of Yubi in 546, the sick Gao Huan had his general Hulü Jin, a Chile, sing the Chile Song, and he joined in himself.[6] The Yuefu shiji, the anthology that gives the words of the song, says that it was first in the Xianbei language and was turned into the language of Qi.[7] Wu Yanxiu, a man of the Tang nobility, was held among the Göktürks until 705.[8] In the house of the princess Anle he sang Göktürk songs.[9] Neither the words nor the tunes of his songs are recorded.[9] The music of the Kirghiz used flutes, drums, the mouth organ sheng, the reed pipe bili and plate bells.[10]

Hunting, games and riding contests

Main articles: Hunting among the Göktürks, The Battue, Mounted Archery, Göktürk Games, Horse and Camel Races at the Xiongnu Sacrifices, Wooden Horses, Knucklebones

The sources of the sixth to the eighth century show the hunt as food in lean years, as the pastime of khans and as an occasion for envoys and ruses. In the Tonyukuk inscription the khan’s first followers sat at Kara Kum, north of Čogay, where they ate game and hare, and the throat of the people was full.[11][12] The Shiji says that Xiongnu children rode sheep and shot birds and mice with the bow.[2] The Sui Shu names two pastimes among the customs of the Göktürks: the men liked to play chupu, and the women kicked a ball.[5] Neither game is described. The Southern Xiongnu gathered at their sacrifices, discussed the affairs of the state, and ran horses and camels for pleasure.[13]

Food and drink

Main articles: Steppe Diet, Kumys, Ayran, Qurut, Millet Beer, Tutmaç, Bread, Grape Wine in Central Asia

The Shiji says of the Xiongnu that they ate the meat of their herds.[2] The Sui Shu says of the Göktürks that they ate meat and drank soured milk.[5] Kumys is mare’s milk fermented in a skin until it is slightly sour and slightly alcoholic. The dictionary of Mahmud al-Kashgari first writes down its Turkic name in the 1070s.[14] At the feast that Istemi gave the Roman envoys in 569, they drank no wine pressed from grapes, Menander says, because the land did not grow the vine.[15][16] For the Göktürks, no source gives a word for bread.

Dress, hair and ornament

Main articles: Göktürk Dress and Hair, Felt, Cloth, Leather and Wood in Kashgari’s Dictionary

The Göktürks let their hair hang down and fastened their robes on the left.[1] The Sui Shu adds that they dressed in furs and coarse wool.[5] In a memorial to the Sui emperor, Ishbara Khan wrote that his people could not for now recut the fold of the robe or undo the plaits, because the custom was old.[5][17] Near Suyab, the western khan Tong Yabgu wore a robe of green satin.[4] His hair was loose, bound only with a band of silk some ten feet long that was wound round his head and hung down behind.[4] Kimiškä is an embroidered felt of Kashgar.[18]

Felt, tent and camp

Main articles: Felt, Ordu, Wagons of the Steppe Peoples, Seasonal Pastures

Felt, wool matted by moisture, heat and pressure, covers the tent, forms the floor inside it, lines the coat and serves as the saddle blanket. The Sui Shu says of the Göktürks that they followed water and grass and had no fixed dwelling, and that they lived in domed tents of felt.[5][1] The ordu is the ruler’s camp, and in a realm without a capital, it is the capital. The Zhou Shu says that the khan’s tent opened to the east, out of reverence for the quarter where the sun rises.[1] In 843 the Tang officer Shi Xiong looked from the wall of Zhenwu at the Uyghur camp and saw dozens of felt carts.[19] The sources name wagons for the Huns, the Gaoche, the Göktürks and the Uyghurs. None of them describes how a wagon was made.

Marriage and family

Main articles: The Gaoche Wedding, Bride-Price in Livestock, Levirate

Among the peoples of the steppe a marriage was paid for in animals. The Wei Shu says that the Gaoche paid the betrothal gift in cattle and horses and counted it an honour.[20] At the wedding the bride’s kin rode horses bareback out of a pen while the owner tried to frighten them.[20] On the day the bride was fetched, both families feasted in front of the tent all day.[20] In 541 the Rouran khan Anagui sent a thousand horses as the betrothal gift for a princess of the Eastern Wei.[21] Among the Göktürks, when a father, an elder brother or an uncle died, his sons, younger brothers and nephews took as wives the stepmothers, the uncles’ wives and the elder brothers’ wives.[1]

Death and memorial

Main articles: Burial and the balbal, Stone Figures, Göktürk Face-Cutting, Riding Round the Dead, Following in Death, Funeral Games of the Caucasian Huns, Wuhuan Funeral Songs

The Zhou Shu says that the body was laid out in a tent, and that the kin killed sheep and horses and set them before it.[1] They rode seven circuits round the tent, and at each coming to the door they cut their faces with a knife and wept, so that blood and tears ran together.[1] After the burial a stone was set up at the grave, and the number of the stones followed the number of men the dead man had killed in his life.[1] The Göktürks use the word balbal themselves.[22] What the stones represent is argued. The commonest view takes each stone for a man the dead had killed, set there to serve him.[22] The commonest carved figure of the early medieval steppe is a standing man who holds a cup at the chest in his right hand, with a belt cut round his waist and a sword, a sabre or a dagger at his side.[23][24][25]

Writing and inscriptions

Main articles: The Old Turkic script, The origin of the Old Turkic script, Yenisei inscriptions, Kül Tegin inscription, The twelve-year animal cycle

The Old Turkic script is an alphabet of some forty signs, written from right to left, in which the steppe wrote its own language on stone, on rock faces, on paper and on objects of daily use.[26] The great stone monuments of the Orkhon valley carry the longest texts and the only dated ones: the Kül Tegin and Bilge Khan stones of 732 and 735 and the Tonyukuk inscription before them.[27] Vilhelm Thomsen read the inscriptions in 1893 and published the full decipherment in 1896.[28][29] There are several theories about the origin of the letters, and the question is not closed. The Göktürks dated by a run of twelve years, each named for an animal, and the run repeated without an era and without a count of cycles.[22] No runiform text has been securely dated to the First Khaganate.

Names and titles

Main articles: Khan (Khagan), Er At, Tamga, Töre, Toy, Kut

Bumin took the title of khan.[1] In the Kül Tegin inscription, by the Kut of his mother the katun, Kül Tegin got a man’s name, er at.[30] A tamga is a mark: a few strokes cut into the hide of an animal, into rock, into a coin die or a seal. The Siberian ibex is the animal of the tamga cut on the Kül Tegin stele, and it is understood as the dynastic mark of the Ashina. When Bumin and Istemi mounted the throne, the Kül Tegin inscription says, they took in hand the el and the törü of the Göktürk people, the realm and its right order, which were named together and governed together.[31] In 581 the choice of Taspar’s successor fell to the assembly of the nobility, the toy, which set the dying khan’s wish aside.[5]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
  2. ^ a b c d Shiji, juan 110
  3. ^ a b Hou Han Shu, juan 90; Sanguozhi, juan 30
  4. ^ a b c Life of Xuanzang, juan 2; Beal 1911, p. 42
  5. ^ a b c d e f g Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
  6. ^ Bei Qi Shu (Book of Northern Qi), juan 2; Bei Shi (History of the Northern Dynasties), juan 6; Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 159
  7. ^ Yuefu Shiji (Collection of Yuefu Songs)
  8. ^ Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 183; Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
  9. ^ a b Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 183
  10. ^ Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
  11. ^ Tonyukuk inscription
  12. ^ Tekin 1968, p. 283–284
  13. ^ Hou Han Shu, juan 89
  14. ^ Dīvān Lughāt al-Turk; al-Kāshgharī 1072–1074, p. 282
  15. ^ Menander Protector; Blockley 1985, fr. 10.3, p. 121
  16. ^ Laufer 1919, p. 233
  17. ^ Mau-tsai 1958, Turkish edition, p. 75,78
  18. ^ Dīvān Lughāt al-Turk; al-Kāshgharī 1072–1074, p. 364
  19. ^ Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 161
  20. ^ a b c Wei Shu, juan 103
  21. ^ Bei Shi (History of the Northern Dynasties), juan 98
  22. ^ a b c Kül Tegin inscription
  23. ^ Šer 1966, p. 11–12, 25–26
  24. ^ Ögel 1978, p. 160
  25. ^ Amartuvshin 2000, p. 20
  26. ^ Tekin 1968, p. 21
  27. ^ Kül Tegin inscription; Tekin 1968, p. 10–11
  28. ^ Thomsen 1896
  29. ^ Tekin 1968, p. 13–14
  30. ^ Kül Tegin inscription
  31. ^ Kül Tegin inscription; Tekin 1968, p. 385

Sources

Literature

  • R. C. Blockley, The History of Menander the Guardsman: Introductory Essay, Text, Translation, and Historiographical Notes (1985)
  • Berthold Laufer, Sino-Iranica. Chinese Contributions to the History of Civilization in Ancient Iran (1919)
  • Samuel Beal (trans.), The Life of Hiuen-Tsiang by the Shaman Hwui Li (1911)
  • Liu Mau-tsai, Çin Kaynaklarına Göre Doğu Türkleri (1958, Turkish edition)
  • Talât Tekin, A Grammar of Orkhon Turkic (1968)
  • Vilhelm Thomsen, Inscriptions de l'Orkhon déchiffrées (1896)
  • Ja. A. Šer (Ya. A. Sher), Каменные изваяния Семиречья (Kamennye izvaniya Semirech'ya) (1966)
  • Bahaeddin Ögel, Türk Kültür Tarihine Giriş IV: Türklerde yemek kültürü (1978)
  • Ch. Amartuvshin, Batı Moğolistan’da Bulunan Eski Türk Anıtları (2000)
  • Maḥmūd al-Kāshgharī, Dīwān Lughat al-Turk (1072–1074)

Related

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Culture of the Turkic Peoples.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/customs/culture-of-the-turkic-peoples/

Last revised: 8 November 2026