The Jiu Tang Shu names a man of the Tang nobility who sang the songs of the Göktürks.[1] Wu Yanxiu, a great-nephew of the empress Wu Zetian, was sent to the Göktürks in 698 to marry a daughter of Kapgan Khan. He was held among them until 705.[2] He came back knowing their language.[1] In the house of the princess Anle he sang Göktürk songs and danced the Huxuan, the whirl of the Hu. The princess later married him.[1] Neither the words nor the tunes of his songs are recorded.[1] Before him a Göktürk troupe had stood among the performers of the Sui court. The first Tang emperor had his court music played for Göktürk envoys.[3]

Wu Yanxiu among the Göktürks, 698–705

In 698 Kapgan Khan, the ruler of the Second Göktürk Khaganate, sent word to the court of Wu Zetian that he had a daughter. He asked for a marriage alliance.[2] An edict sent Wu Yanxiu, then Prince of Huaiyang, to receive her as his wife.[2] The general Yan Zhiwei went with him, with much gold and silk.[4] Yanxiu was the second son of Wu Chengsi, whose father was a brother of the empress.[1]

The envoys came to Kapgan’s southern court at Black Sands, and the khan spoke to Yan Zhiwei.[4] He said that he had meant his daughter for a son of the emperors of the house of Li. Now they brought him a son of the house of Wu. Was this a son of the Son of Heaven?[4] The Göktürks, he went on, had submitted to the house of Li for generations.[4] Now he heard that only two sons of the Li emperors were left. He would bring his army to set them up.[4] He had Yanxiu and his companions seized and kept apart. Then he went to war, in the first of Kapgan’s wars with the Tang.[2]

For a long time Yanxiu could not return.[1] Early in the Shenlong era, which began in 705, Kapgan asked again for peace and sent Yanxiu ahead to carry his submission.[1] Only then did Yanxiu come home.[1] He was made Duke of Huan and a general of the Left Guard.[1] How he had lived among the Göktürks, his biography does not say.[1]

The songs in the house of the princess Anle

The princess Anle was the youngest child of the emperor Zhongzong and the empress Wei. They indulged her most.[1] Her husband Wu Chongxun was Yanxiu’s cousin and often brought him to her residence.[1] Yanxiu had been long among the foreigners and understood the language of the Göktürks.[1] In the princess’s house he often sang Göktürk songs and danced the Huxuan, with grace and charm. The princess was much taken with him.[1] After Chongxun’s death Yanxiu won her favour and married her.[1] When the empress Wei fell, Yanxiu and the princess fought for a long time in the inner residence. Both were beheaded.[1] That was in 710.

The biography gives no line of the songs. It does not say from whom Yanxiu had learned them.[1] The Jiu Tang Shu’s chapter on the court music and the music of the foreign peoples names no Göktürk song.[5]

The whirl of the Hu

The Huxuan was the dance of the music of Kang, Samarkand.[5] In the Jiu Tang Shu’s description of the Tang court music, the two dancers of the Kang division turn as fast as the wind. The dance is commonly called the Huxuan.[5] In the Kaiyuan era Kang, Mi and Jumi sent Huxuan dancing girls to the Tang court with their tribute.[6] The Sui Shu traces the music of Kang at the Chinese court to the Göktürk empress of 568. It had come to Chang’an in her train.[7]

Where Yanxiu had learned the dance, his biography does not say.[1] Some scholars think that he learned it among the Göktürks.[8] The biography names the dance together with the songs and the language he brought back.[1]

The Göktürk troupe at the Sui court

When the Sui fixed the court music at the beginning of the Kaihuang era, they set up seven divisions.[7] Beside them stood further troupes from Shule, Funan, Kang, Baekje, the Göktürks, Silla and Wa.[7] The Sui Shu does not say what the Göktürk troupe played, or whether it sang.[7] In the Daye era the emperor Yangdi fixed nine divisions. The Göktürks were not among them.[7] The Tang took over the nine divisions for their banquets and later made them ten.[5] The Göktürks are not among the ten either.[5]

In 606, the Sui Shu says, Yami Khan came to court. Yangdi, wishing to impress him, gathered the variety performers of all quarters at the eastern capital.[7] Yami was greatly startled by them.[7] The next year the emperor came to Yulin, and Yami paid court at his travelling palace. The shows were put on for him again, during the emperor’s visit of 607.[7]

Music for Göktürk envoys

The first Tang emperor received Göktürk envoys with music.[9] In 618 Kutluk Tegin, the envoy of Shibi Khan, was feasted in the Taiji hall while the nine divisions were played.[4] In the ninth month of the same year the emperor sent singing girls to Shibi Khan, escorted by his nephew Li Chen and by the chief minister of the Court of Imperial Sacrifices.[10] In the first month of 620 the Göktürks were feasted with the nine divisions played in the palace courtyard and given coloured silks. In the fifth month their envoys were feasted in the same way.[11] In the fourth month of 625 the envoys of the western Göktürks and of Linyi received the same honour.[11]

The khans had music at their own courts.[12] When the pilgrim Xuanzang came to Tong Yabgu near Suyab, the khan gave a feast with wine and music. The sounds of the music of the foreign peoples rang out together.[12] The Life of the pilgrim says that although these were tunes of a foreign custom, they delighted the ear and the eye and gladdened the heart.[12]

The songs of the north in the music office

The Tang music office kept songs from the steppe of an older time.[5] The Jiu Tang Shu calls them the music of the Northern Di and names the Xianbei, the Tuyuhun and the Buluoji as the peoples whose music was known.[5] All of it was music played on horseback. Since the Han it had belonged to the office of drums and wind instruments.[5] The music bureau of the Northern Wei had kept “northern songs”, which the women of the palace sang morning and evening at the old capital of Dai.[5] Under the Zhou and the Sui these songs were played together with the music of Xiliang.[5]

Under the Tang fifty-three of these pieces survived. The titles of six could be understood, among them “Murong Khan”, “Tuyuhun” and “Buluoji”.[5] In the pieces that could not be understood, the word “khan” occurred again and again.[5] The Jiu Tang Shu concludes that they were Xianbei songs from the time of the Yan and the Wei. It adds that their words, in the language of the northerners, could no longer be understood at all.[5]

Early in the Kaiyuan era the court asked the singer Zhangsun Yuanzhong about these songs.[5] He said that his family had handed the art down since the first Tang emperor.[5] His grandfather had learned it from General Hou Guichang of Bingzhou, whose family had practised the northern songs for generations. In the Zhenguan era Hou had been ordered to teach them to the music office.[5] Even the interpreters could not make out the words.[5] The Göktürks are not among the peoples whose songs the music office kept.[5]

The instruments of the Kirghiz

The Xin Tang Shu lists the instruments of the Kirghiz. It says that their script and language were the same as those of the Uyghurs.[13] Their music used flutes, drums, the mouth organ sheng, the reed pipe bili and plate bells.[13] Their entertainments were tricks with camels, lion performances, feats on horseback and rope-walking.[13]

Words for music in Kashgari’s dictionary

Mahmud al-Kashgari, who wrote his dictionary of the Turkic languages in Arabic between 1073 and 1077, records the Turkic words for several instruments.[14] Qopuz is the lute, “the ʿūd that one plays”.[15] Kashgari derives qopzādi, “he played the lute”, from it.[16] A man who owns a lute is qopuzluγ kiši.[17] Sibizγu is the flute, and sibizγu ötrüldi means “the flute was sounded”.[18] The Oghuz called the tambourine tümrüg.[19]

For the drum, tavul, Kashgari thought of an Arabic origin in ṭabl. He had, however, heard the word from genuine Turks in the farthest reaches of Islam.[20] Drums also sounded in war. Tūγ uruldi means “the sentry drums were beaten”. A verse on a battle speaks of the moment “when my banners of war were set up and the drums beat”.[21] Bödig is “dance”.[22]

Kashgari set into his book examples of the verses that the Turks uttered in their pronouncements and declarations.[23] Some scholars argue that the oldest Turkic verse, like the Mongol, rested on alliteration, not on rhyme. In that case rhyme came in through Persian models, as the Kutadgu Bilig and the poems that Kashgari kept already show.[24] One of them is a lament, which Kashgari explains as grief over Afrāsiyāb.[25] In his translation the men howl like wolves, tear their collars with wailing, warble like a singer, and weep until their eyes are covered with tears.[25]

In Kazakh music the two-stringed horsehair fiddle qyl-qobyz and the reed flute sybyzgy are counted among the common instruments of the nomadic period.[26] The names correspond to Kashgari’s qopuz and sibizγu. Among the Altai, Kirghiz and Kazan Turks the word for the strings of an instrument is kıl, “hair”, meaning horsehair. The Kirghiz call stringed instruments kılduu. These words were noted in modern times and say nothing about the age of the nomads.[27] The qopuz that Kashgari knew was a lute, not an instrument played with a bow.[15] A Turkish work on the history of Turkic culture quotes an Old Uyghur sentence in which a man sits and plays the kobuz with his hand while he sings with his mouth. It does not say from which text the sentence comes or when the text was written.[28]

The songs of the Göktürks reached the Tang court in the voice of a Chinese prince who had spent seven years among them.[2] No witness wrote down what they sounded like.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 183
  2. ^ a b c d e Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 183; Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
  3. ^ Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 15; Cefu yuangui, juan 974
  4. ^ a b c d e f 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 r Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 29
  6. ^ Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 221
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 15
  8. ^ Mau-tsai 1958, Turkish edition, p. 460
  9. ^ Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194; Cefu yuangui, juan 974
  10. ^ Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 186
  11. ^ a b Cefu yuangui, juan 974
  12. ^ a b c Life of Xuanzang, juan 2; Beal 1911, p. 43
  13. ^ a b c Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
  14. ^ Dīvān Lughāt al-Turk
  15. ^ a b Dīvān Lughāt al-Turk; al-Kāshgharī 1072–1074, p. 282
  16. ^ Dīvān Lughāt al-Turk; al-Kāshgharī 1072–1074, p. 78
  17. ^ Dīvān Lughāt al-Turk; al-Kāshgharī 1072–1074, p. 367
  18. ^ Dīvān Lughāt al-Turk; al-Kāshgharī 1072–1074, p. 363,218
  19. ^ Dīvān Lughāt al-Turk; al-Kāshgharī 1072–1074, p. 356
  20. ^ Dīvān Lughāt al-Turk; al-Kāshgharī 1072–1074, p. 47
  21. ^ Dīvān Lughāt al-Turk; al-Kāshgharī 1072–1074, p. 192
  22. ^ Dīvān Lughāt al-Turk; al-Kāshgharī 1072–1074, p. 313
  23. ^ Dīvān Lughāt al-Turk; al-Kāshgharī 1072–1074, p. 72
  24. ^ Pelliot 1930, p. 349–350
  25. ^ a b Dīvān Lughāt al-Turk; al-Kāshgharī 1072–1074, p. 189
  26. ^ Rancier 2018, p. 214–215
  27. ^ Ögel 2000, p. 93
  28. ^ Ögel 2000, p. 413

Sources

Literature

  • Maḥmūd al-Kāshgharī, Dīwān Lughat al-Turk (1072–1074)
  • Liu Mau-tsai, Çin Kaynaklarına Göre Doğu Türkleri (1958, Turkish edition)
  • Samuel Beal (trans.), The Life of Hiuen-Tsiang by the Shaman Hwui Li (1911)
  • Razia Sultanova, Megan Rancier (ed.), Turkic Soundscapes: From Shamanic Voices to Hip-Hop (2018)
  • Bahaeddin Ögel, Türk Kültür Tarihine Giriş IX: Türk halk musikisi aletleri (2000)
  • Paul Pelliot, Sur la légende d'Uɣuz-khan en écriture ouigoure (1930)

Related

What links here2

Battles & Events
Music of Empress Ashina (568)
Customs & Pastimes
Culture of the Turkic Peoples

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Turkic Songs at the Tang Court.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/customs/turkic-songs-at-the-tang-court/

Last revised: 8 November 2026