Falconry

The Irk Bitig has falcons in four omens.^[1] In the fourth the falcon speaks. It is white-spotted and likes to sit on a sandalwood tree.^[2] In the forty-third a falcon goes hunting river birds, and a predatory eagle flies up to meet it. The omen is bad.^[3] The verb of that omen means to go hunting for birds.^[4] In the forty-fourth a bird that the translation calls a hawk drops from the sky on a hare and comes away with torn claws. The hare escapes. The omen is bad.^[3] The Turkic word for the hawk of that omen and for the falcons of the others is the same, togan kuš.^[5] In the sixty-fourth a gray falcon with a white neck sits on a rock with a wide view and spends the summer in a poplar. The omen is very good.^[6]

In none of the four does a man keep or fly the bird.^[7] The falcons hunt for themselves. The book of omens therefore shows them as hunters and not as the hunter’s tool.

Mahmud al-Kashgari shows the bird in a man’s hand.^[8] His dictionary of the 1070s lists the lāčin, the shahin falcon, a bird of prey, and the čaγri, the sacer falcon.^[8] A verse under čaγri describes a hunt. The hunter takes the sacer in his hand, rides a courser to the mountain goats, and hunts wild beasts and foxes with his hounds.^[9] Both words serve as men’s names.^[8] Neither text is evidence for the Göktürk khaganates. The Irk Bitig belongs to the Uyghur period and the dictionary to the eleventh century.^[10]

The falcon on the hunter’s hand is attested for the eleventh century. The falcon that hunts for itself is attested for the tenth. For the hunting of the Göktürks themselves the sources name no bird.