At the feasts and audiences of the steppe rulers, a guest’s place showed his rank. The sources say again and again who sat where. The Shiji records that the Xiongnu held the left to be the senior side.[1] Priscus describes how Attila seated his guests to his right and his left in 449.[2] The Wei Shu tells how the Rouran khan Anagui was given his place below the princes at the court of the Northern Wei in 520.[3] At the Tang court, the envoys of the Göktürks and the Türgesh quarrelled over the higher seat in 730. In 758 the envoys of the Uyghurs and the Abbasids quarrelled over who should go in first.[4][5] Each time the court gave each party a side of its own.[6]

The Xiongnu

The Shiji describes the customs of the Xiongnu in a few lines.[1] When they sat, the left was the senior side, and they faced north.[1] The Han Shu repeats the sentence.[7] It copies the Shiji here and is not a second witness. The same order of left and right ran through the realm. The kings and generals of the left lived in the east, and those of the right lived in the west. The chanyu’s heir was always made the Worthy King of the Left.[1]

Rank ruled the meal as well. The Shiji says that the strong ate the fat and the best, and the old ate what was left.[1] A Han envoy once reproached the Xiongnu for despising the old.[1] Zhonghang Yue, a Han eunuch who had gone over to the chanyu, answered him.[1] He said that the Xiongnu lived by war. The old and the weak could not fight, so the best food went to the strong who protected them. In that way fathers and sons kept each other alive.[1]

The chanyu’s tent had its own rule of entry. Under the chanyu Wuwei, who came to the throne in 114 BC, a Han envoy could not enter the felt tent unless he laid aside his staff of office and had his face marked with ink.[1] The envoy Wang Wu knew the customs of the Xiongnu. He did both and was let in, and the chanyu took a liking to him.[1] A later envoy, Yang Xin, refused to give up his staff.[1] The chanyu then received him sitting outside the tent.[1]

Attila’s hall

Priscus came to Attila’s court with the Roman embassy of 449 and sat at his banquet.[8] The seats stood along both walls of the hall, and Attila sat in the middle on a couch.[8] The first place of honour was that of the guests on his right. The second was that of the guests on his left.[8] The Romans sat on the left together with Berichus, a noble of the Huns, who had the higher place.[8] Onegesius sat on a chair to the right of the royal couch. Two of Attila’s sons sat facing him.[8] The eldest son sat on his father’s couch, far down at its end, with his eyes on the ground out of respect for his father.[8]

Each guest had his own cupbearer.[9] Attila drank first to the man in the first place. This man rose and could not sit down again until he had tasted or drained his cup.[2] Then Attila honoured the second, and so on down the seats.[9] Attila greeted the Romans too in the order of the chairs.[9]

Anagui at Luoyang

In 520, ten days after he had been made khan, the Rouran ruler Anagui was beaten by a cousin. He fled south to the Northern Wei.[3] In the tenth month, the emperor Xiaoming received him in the Xianyang hall at Luoyang.[3] Officials of the fifth rank and above, members of the imperial house and the envoys of subject states stood ranged in the courtyard.[3] The princes and dukes entered with Anagui and took their places in the courtyard, facing north.[3]

When the places were fixed, ushers led the princes and dukes up into the hall.[3] Anagui was given his place below the princes.[3] The officials sent to receive him, his younger brother and his two uncles were placed below the body of officials.[3] The emperor sent a secretary with words of welcome, and Anagui answered with a request.[3] He wrote that the emperor had graciously called his brother and his uncles up into the hall. However, he had a cousin whose office in the north had been higher than his uncles’.[3] He asked that the cousin be called up as well.[3] The emperor agreed, and the cousin was placed below Anagui’s brother and above the two uncles.[3] The rank of the Rouran court, where office counted for more than age, was therefore carried over into the seating of the Wei.[3]

As the banquet drew to its end, Anagui stood behind his seat holding a written petition and asked to come before the throne.[3] There he asked for troops to win back his realm.[3] He took his leave early in 521. The emperor received him with his uncles and brothers in the Western Hall, had them come up the steps and gave them seats.[3]

In the khans’ tents

The Göktürk khans placed their guests as well. At Talas, on the Roman embassy of 569, Istemi invited a Roman and a Persian envoy to dine with him.[10] As Menander records, he honoured the Romans more and had them recline on the more honourable couch.[11] The Persian envoy then answered the khan back. He broke the custom of silence that the Göktürks kept at their feasts.[11]

The Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang came to Tong Yabgu near Suyab. The khan held court in a great tent adorned with golden flowers.[12] His officials sat before him on long mats in two rows, all in brocade, and the guards stood behind them.[12] When the pilgrim was still thirty paces away, the khan came out of the tent and bowed to welcome him.[12] The biography of the pilgrim explains that the Göktürks worshipped fire and would not sit on wood. They therefore spread thick cushions on the ground.[12] For the pilgrim, they set up an iron folding seat with a mat.[12] Then the Chinese envoys and those of Gaochang were brought in with their letters and gifts, and the khan bade them sit.[12] Wine was served to music, and the feast began.[12]

In 725 Bilge Khan received the Tang envoy Yuan Zhen at a feast in his tent.[13] He sat in a ring with his wife, his brother Kül Tegin and his counsellor Tonyukuk.[13]

Ishbara received the Sui envoy Yu Qingze in 584. He drew up his troops and displayed his treasures. He received the envoy sitting and pleaded illness as the reason for not rising. He said that since his father and uncles none of them had bowed to anyone.[14][15] According to a modern account, kneeling, sök- or sökür-, was said among the Göktürks only of enemies. It does not believe that the great men sat kneeling in the tents of the khans.[16]

In 758 the Tang prince Li Yu, a cousin of the emperor, came to the Uyghur khan Bayanchur with his investiture and with his bride, the princess of Ningguo.[17] The khan sat on a couch in his tent, in a reddish-yellow robe and a foreign cap, among many guards and insignia.[5] The prince was made to stand outside the tent.[5] The khan asked what relation he was to the Heavenly Khan, the Tang emperor, and the prince said he was his cousin.[5] The khan asked who was standing above him.[5] It was the eunuch Lei Lujun.[5] The khan said that a eunuch was a slave. He asked how a slave could stand above a nobleman.[5] Lei Lujun took fright and stepped down below the prince.[5]

Li Yu then would not bow.[5] The khan reminded him that there was a rite between the rulers and subjects of two states.[5] The prince answered that the emperor was giving the khan his own daughter, not a girl of his clan.[5] He said that a son-in-law of the Son of Heaven could not receive the emperor’s edict sitting on his couch.[5] The khan rose and received his investiture.[17][18] Four years later, a Tang prince stood before the next Uyghur khan, and the question was the dance of homage.[5]

At the Tang court

The Tang court ranked foreign envoys by their places too. It could make a captive khan perform there. In 633 the retired emperor Gaozu had Ilig Khan, a prisoner since 630, rise and dance at a feast.[19]

In 730 an envoy of the Türgesh khan Sulu came to Chang’an, and the emperor Xuanzong gave a banquet for him in the Danfeng tower.[4] A Göktürk envoy who had arrived earlier came to the banquet on the same day and disputed precedence with him.[4] The Göktürk said that the Türgesh were a small state and had been subjects of the Göktürks, and should not sit above him.[4] The Türgesh envoy answered that the banquet was given for him, and he would not sit below.[4] The Tongdian and the Jiu Tang Shu say that the Secretariat-Chancellery and the officials deliberated.[4] The two envoys were seated apart under an eastern and a western tent, the Göktürk in the east and the Türgesh in the west.[4][20] The Zizhi tongjian has the emperor himself order the two tents.[21] The Xin Tang Shu names the Türgesh envoy, the chief Yezhi Abusi. It says that only with the Türgesh in the western seat could the banquet go ahead.[22] None of the histories says which of the two sides counted as the higher.[23]

Early in 757, the emperor Suzong was at Pengyuan. The Uyghur envoy Geluozhi was ashamed of his low place in the ranks.[24][25] The emperor did not want him to leave aggrieved.[24] He had him brought up into the hall, consoled him and sent him off.[24] Later that year, the two capitals had been retaken, and the Uyghur prince, the Yabgu, came to Chang’an. The emperor feasted him in the Xuanzheng hall.[5] The Yabgu went up into the hall, and the other Uyghur chiefs stood ranged below the steps.[5]

On the first day of the fifth month of 758, eighty Uyghur envoys under Duohai Apo and six chiefs of the Black-robed Arabs, the Abbasids, came to audience together.[5][26] At the gate of the hall, they disputed who should go in first.[17] The ushers divided them to the left and the right. They went in at the same moment through the eastern and the western gate.[5] The ushers, sixteen in number, brought those who had audience into the emperor’s presence.[27]

Thirty years later, the Uyghur khan’s sister came to Chang’an to fetch his Tang bride, the princess of Xian’an.[24] The emperor Dezong asked the minister Li Pi how to receive her.[24] Li Pi recalled that Suzong had received a Uyghur bride as a subject. She had bowed alone in the courtyard, even in the years when the Tang needed Uyghur help. Li Pi said that this held all the more now.[24] She was led in through the Yintai gate, where three senior princesses were waiting, and an interpreter carried the words between them.[24] She returned every bow.[24] At the place of the banquet, one of the emperor’s consorts came down the steps to wait for her, and the two bowed to each other.[24] The Uyghur princess went up by the western steps and sat down.[24] When the emperor gave her a gift, she came down and bowed. For a gift from anyone else, she only rose from her mat to bow.[24][28]

The Tang court settled every quarrel of precedence that the histories record in the same way. It did not say who was senior. It gave each party a side of its own, east and west in 730, left and right in 758.[6]

At the Karakhanid court

The Kutadgu Bilig was written at the Karakhanid court in 1069–1070. It makes the seating of the court a duty of the grand chamberlain. He sets each person’s proper place, seated or standing, and leaves no place empty.[29] The book says that a wise man raises whatever seat he is given. If he sits in the courtyard, the courtyard is above the place of honour.[30] The book warns a guest to stay away from a feast where his place might break the order of rank. At table, he waits until the senior guest has put out his hand. The man who knows törü, decorum, rises to the head of the tör, the place of honour.[31] A modern account explains tör as the place of honour in a house or tent, where the drinking cups and jugs had to stand.[32]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Shiji, juan 110
  2. ^ a b Priscus; Müller 1851, fr. 8, pp. 91–92
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Wei Shu, juan 103
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Tongdian, juan 199; Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 195
  6. ^ a b Tongdian, juan 199; Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 195
  7. ^ Han Shu, juan 94
  8. ^ a b c d e f Priscus; Müller 1851, fr. 8, p. 91
  9. ^ a b c Priscus; Müller 1851, fr. 8, p. 92
  10. ^ Menander Protector; Blockley 1985, fr. 10.3, p. 121
  11. ^ a b Menander Protector; Blockley 1985, fr. 10.3, p. 123
  12. ^ a b c d e f g Life of Xuanzang, juan 2
  13. ^ a b Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
  14. ^ Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
  15. ^ Ögel 2000, p. 48
  16. ^ Ögel 1978, p. 271
  17. ^ a b c Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 195; Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
  18. ^ Mackerras 1972, p. 62–65
  19. ^ Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 194
  20. ^ Ögel 2000, p. 54
  21. ^ Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 213
  22. ^ Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 215
  23. ^ Tongdian, juan 199; Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194; Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 215; Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 213
  24. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
  25. ^ Mackerras 1972, p. 57
  26. ^ Mackerras 1972, p. 62
  27. ^ Mackerras 1972, p. 133
  28. ^ Mackerras 1972, p. 99
  29. ^ Kutadgu Bilig; Dankoff 1983, couplets 2547–2552
  30. ^ Kutadgu Bilig; Dankoff 1983, couplet 262
  31. ^ Kutadgu Bilig; Dankoff 1983, couplets 4584–4585, 4596, 4604
  32. ^ Ögel 1978, p. 172

Sources

Literature

  • Karl Müller (ed.), Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, Bd. IV (darin: Menandri Protectoris fragmenta, griechisch mit lateinischer Übersetzung) (1851)
  • R. C. Blockley, The History of Menander the Guardsman: Introductory Essay, Text, Translation, and Historiographical Notes (1985)
  • Colin Mackerras, The Uighur Empire According to the T'ang Dynastic Histories (1972)
  • Bahaeddin Ögel, Türk Kültür Tarihine Giriş III: Türklerde ev kültürü (1978)
  • Bahaeddin Ögel, Türk Kültür Tarihine Giriş IV: Türklerde yemek kültürü (1978)
  • Bahaeddin Ögel, Türk Kültür Tarihine Giriş VII: Türklerde ordu, ordugah ve otağ (2000)

Related

What links here4

Battles & Events
Bilge Khan's Tent Banquet (725) · Ilig Khan's Dance at the Weiyang Palace (633) · The Uyghur Demand for the Prince's Dance (762)
Customs & Pastimes
Culture of the Turkic Peoples

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Seating at the Feast.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/customs/seating-at-the-feast/

Last revised: 8 November 2026