The herding peoples of the steppe lived on their animals. Horses, cattle and sheep gave them meat, milk and hides. The hunt added game.[1] The outside observers describe their food in a few recurring words. The Shiji says of the Xiongnu that they ate the meat of their herds.[1] The Sui Shu says of the Göktürks that they ate meat and drank soured milk. The Xin Tang Shu says of the Kirghiz that they lived on meat and fermented mare’s milk.[2] Whether the soured milk of the Chinese histories was the forerunner of ayran, of kumys or of both, the texts do not say.[3] Grain stood beside meat and milk, above all millet. The herders grew it in small fields or received it from their settled neighbours.

The Xiongnu

The Shiji describes the Xiongnu as herders who moved in search of water and grazing. It names horses, cattle and sheep as the most numerous of their animals.[1] Their boys rode sheep and shot birds and rats with the bow. When they were a little older, they shot foxes and hares, and these were eaten.[1] In peaceful times, the Shiji says, they followed their herds and made their living by hunting birds and beasts.[1] From the ruler down, all of them ate the meat of their herds and dressed in hides, felt and furs.[1] The strong ate the fattest and best parts, and the old ate what was left.[1] The Han Shu repeats the passage from the Shiji.[4]

Zhonghang Yue, a eunuch of the Han court who had gone over to Laoshang Chanyu, turned this diet into an argument.[1] The Xiongnu, he told the chanyu, were fewer than the people of a single Han commandery. They were strong because their food and clothing were different. They depended on nothing from the Han.[1] Whatever Han food they received they should throw away, to show that it was not as handy or as good as their own milk and curds.[1] A Han envoy reproached the Xiongnu for despising the old.[1] Zhonghang Yue answered that war was their business. The old and the weak could not fight, so the best food and drink went to the strong, who protected them.[1] He said that their custom was to eat the meat of their animals, drink their juice and wear their hides. The animals ate grass, drank water and moved with the seasons.[1] The juice is the milk of the herds. The Han Shu repeats both speeches.[4]

The Wuhuan and the Xianbei

The Wuhuan of the eastern steppe are described in an early history of the Wei that Pei Songzhi quotes in his commentary on the Sanguozhi.[5] Every day they shot and hunted birds and beasts. They ate meat and drank soured milk, 酪, and dressed in wool and fur.[5] Before they ate or drank, they always made an offering first.[5] The Hou Han Shu gives the same account of their food.[6] Of the Xianbei both texts say that their language and customs were those of the Wuhuan.[7]

Under Tanshihuai the Xianbei grew so numerous that farming, herding and hunting no longer fed them.[8] On a journey through his lands Tanshihuai saw the Wuhouqin river, broad and still, with fish in it that his people could not catch.[6] He attacked a people in the east who were skilled at fishing with nets. He took a thousand of their households and settled them on the river to catch fish for food.[8] The Hou Han Shu calls that people the Wo.[6]

The Huns and the Alans

Ammianus Marcellinus says that the Huns needed neither fire nor seasoned food.[9] They ate the roots of wild plants and the half-raw flesh of any animal, which they warmed a little by putting it between their thighs and the backs of their horses.[9] Of the Alans he writes that they had no huts and did not use the plough. They lived on meat and plenty of milk.[10] Some scholars hold that Ammianus gave the Huns what the earlier historian Pompeius Trogus had written of the Scythians. According to them, he was nevertheless right for his own time: in war and migration the Huns lived on their sheep and cattle.[11] In their view, only the poorest Huns may have had to add grain of their own to a diet of meat, milk and cheese.[11]

Priscus, who travelled with the Roman embassy of 449, dined at the table of Attila.[12] The other guests were served a rich meal on silver dishes.[13] Attila ate nothing but meat, from a wooden plate, and drank from a wooden cup.[13] In the villages of his realm the envoys were given millet, and their servants also received a barley drink, kamos.[14]

The Gaoche

The Wei Shu describes the Gaoche, the “high carts” whom the later histories call the Tiele, in the same terms.[15] They dressed in hides and ate meat. Their cattle and sheep were like those of the Rouran.[15] They had no grain and made no wine.[15] On the day a bride was fetched, men and women went together, carrying fermented mare’s milk and cooked meat cut at the joints. Host and guests sat together in front of the tent and feasted all day.[15] The Wei resettled the eastern Gaoche south of the desert after the campaign of 429.[15] Their herds multiplied there. After some years, they gradually came to eat grain.[15] The Tongdian copies the Wei Shu’s notice on the Gaoche and is not a second witness.[16]

The Göktürks

The Zhou Shu names herding and hunting as the occupation of the Göktürks.[17] The Sui Shu says that they ate meat and drank soured milk. It says that they drank fermented mare’s milk until they were drunk, and that they sang and shouted to one another.[3] The Bei Shi joins the words of the Zhou Shu and the Sui Shu. The Tongdian repeats the sentence on the fermented mare’s milk. Neither is a further witness.[18] Guests at the khans’ courts describe the meat and drink of their feasts.[19][20] A Turkish history of culture names the meat of horse and sheep as the main food of the Göktürks and preserved meat as an important export to China. It adds a sweet milk drink, in Chinese lo, that it calls widespread among the Xiongnu, and wine and pekmez that the Uyghurs of Turkestan made from their own grapes. It names no source for any of these.[21] Another account says that, in the seasons when mare’s milk was plentiful, travellers saw the people of Central Asia drink only kumys in place of a meal. The travellers it names are Carpini and Rubruck of the thirteenth century.[22]

The Sui Shu’s chapter on the northern peoples shows a khan at the hunt.[3] In 587 Ishbara Khan asked the Sui emperor for leave to hunt between the prefectures of Heng and Dai.[3] The emperor allowed it and sent him wine and food.[3] In one day Ishbara killed eighteen deer with his own hand and sent their tails and tongues to the court.[3]

The Göktürks’ own record of game as food stands in the Tonyukuk inscription.[23] In the first years of the restored khaganate, its people were living at Čogay Kuzı and Kara Kum. Tonyukuk remembers that they lived there eating deer and hare, and that the people’s mouths were full.[24] The words of the inscription are kiyik yiyü tabıšgan yiyü olurur ertimiz.[23]

The Kirghiz and the tenth century

The Xin Tang Shu says that the tribes of the Kirghiz lived on meat and fermented mare’s milk, 馬酪, and that only their ruler set out cakes.[25] The same notice lists the crops of their fields, millet, wheat and barley among them. It says that they brewed liquor from millet.[25] It names wild horses and deer among the wild animals of their country.[25] The Persian geography Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam of 982 calls the Kirghiz hunters and killers of game.[26] Of the Kimek, their neighbours to the west, it says that their food in summer was milk and in winter preserved meat.[27] Among the Karluk some were hunters, some farmers and some herdsmen.[28]

The Arabic writer al-Jāḥiẓ describes the Turk on campaign in a treatise on the merits of the Turks.[29] The Turk rides out far in pursuit of game, with his mare and her colts following.[29] If he cannot hunt men, he hunts wild beasts. If he cannot find them and wants something to eat, he bleeds one of his animals. If he is thirsty, he milks one of his mares.[30] Anyone else, al-Jāḥiẓ adds, would be harmed by living on meat alone.[30] What the rider did with the blood, the treatise does not say.[30]

The Kutadgu Bilig, written at the Karakhanid court in 1069–1070, lists the game that falls to a ruler: yak, ibex, deer, wild ass, wolf, fox, lion, bear and boar, and birds taken with falcons, with panthers and hounds for the chase.[31]

Bones from Xiongnu settlements

Excavated Xiongnu settlements confirm the herds and qualify the hunt. At the domestic sites of the Khanui valley in Mongolia, sheep and goats make up 54 per cent of the animal bones that could be identified, horses 25 per cent and cattle 16 per cent.[32] Marmots were eaten as a seasonal addition.[32] Wild animals other than fish are very rare in Xiongnu domestic sites. Of more than a thousand recorded Xiongnu burials, only about eight held the remains of wild animals.[33] At the fortified settlement of Ivolga, hunting has been judged an entertainment rather than a means of getting food.[33] The same settlement held millet, barley and wheat.[34]

The written record and the bones agree that the herds fed the steppe. They differ on the hunt. The Chinese histories make it a livelihood of the Xiongnu, and the Tonyukuk inscription remembers a time when deer and hare fed the people. By contrast, the bones of the Xiongnu camps show little game. Grain stood beside meat and milk from the Xiongnu onward. On the Yenisei the Kirghiz grew it in their own fields. One account says that the Turkic peoples never kept or ate pigs, and that the pig cult grows towards the east among the Proto-Mongols. In the prayers of the Altai peoples the wild boar is the worst of the spirits.[35]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Shiji, juan 110
  2. ^ Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84; Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
  3. ^ a b c d e f Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
  4. ^ a b Han Shu, juan 94
  5. ^ a b c Sanguozhi, juan 30
  6. ^ a b c Hou Han Shu, juan 90
  7. ^ Sanguozhi, juan 30; Hou Han Shu, juan 90
  8. ^ a b Hou Han Shu, juan 90; Sanguozhi, juan 30
  9. ^ a b Ammianus Marcellinus; Rolfe 1939, xxxi.2.3, p. 381–383
  10. ^ Ammianus Marcellinus; Rolfe 1939, xxxi.2.18, p. 391
  11. ^ a b Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 177
  12. ^ Priscus; Müller 1851, fr. 8, p. 91–92
  13. ^ a b Priscus; Müller 1851, fr. 8, p. 92
  14. ^ Priscus; Müller 1851, fr. 8, p. 83
  15. ^ a b c d e f Wei Shu, juan 103
  16. ^ Tongdian, juan 197
  17. ^ Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
  18. ^ Bei Shi (History of the Northern Dynasties), juan 99; Tongdian, juan 197
  19. ^ Menander Protector; Blockley 1985, fr. 10.3, p. 121
  20. ^ Life of Xuanzang, juan 2; Beal 1911, p. 43
  21. ^ Kafesoğlu 1997, p. 318–319
  22. ^ Ögel 1978, p. 160, 175
  23. ^ a b Tonyukuk inscription
  24. ^ Tonyukuk inscription; Ross 1930, p. 38
  25. ^ a b c Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
  26. ^ Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam; Minorsky 1937, p. 96
  27. ^ Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam; Minorsky 1937, p. 99–100
  28. ^ Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam; Minorsky 1937, p. 97
  29. ^ a b al-Jāḥiẓ, Manāqib al-Turk, p. 667–668; Walker 1915, p. 667–668
  30. ^ a b c al-Jāḥiẓ, Manāqib al-Turk, p. 668; Walker 1915, p. 668
  31. ^ Kutadgu Bilig; Dankoff 1983, couplets 5372–5379
  32. ^ a b Houle 2011, p. 145
  33. ^ a b Houle 2011, p. 146
  34. ^ Houle 2011, p. 138
  35. ^ Ögel 1995, p. 541

Sources

Literature

  • John C. Rolfe, Ammianus Marcellinus, with an English Translation, vol. III: Books XXVII–XXXI (1939)
  • Karl Müller (ed.), Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, Bd. IV (darin: Menandri Protectoris fragmenta, griechisch mit lateinischer Übersetzung) (1851)
  • Otto J. Maenchen-Helfen, The World of the Huns: Studies in Their History and Culture (1973)
  • R. C. Blockley, The History of Menander the Guardsman: Introductory Essay, Text, Translation, and Historiographical Notes (1985)
  • Samuel Beal (trans.), The Life of Hiuen-Tsiang by the Shaman Hwui Li (1911)
  • E. Denison Ross (after Vilhelm Thomsen), The Orkhon Inscriptions; The Tonyukuk Inscription. Being a Translation of Professor Vilhelm Thomsen's Final Danish Rendering (1930)
  • V. Minorsky, Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam, "The Regions of the World": A Persian Geography 372 A.H. – 982 A.D., translated and explained, with the preface by V. V. Barthold (1937)
  • al-Jāḥiẓ, رسالة في مناقب الترك Risāla fī Manāqib al-Turk (9th c.)
  • C. T. Harley Walker, Jāḥiẓ of Basra to al-Fatḥ ibn Khāqān on the 'Exploits of the Turks and the Army of the Khalifate in General' (1915)
  • Jean-Luc Houle; Lee G. Broderick, Settlement Patterns and Domestic Economy of the Xiongnu in Khanui Valley, Mongolia (2011)
  • İbrahim Kafesoğlu, Türk Millî Kültürü (1997)
  • Bahaeddin Ögel, Türk Kültür Tarihine Giriş IV: Türklerde yemek kültürü (1978)
  • Bahaeddin Ögel, Türk Mitolojisi (Kaynakları ve açıklamaları ile destanlar) II (1995)

Related

What links here7

Peoples
Eurasian Nomads · History of the Turkic peoples
Foods
Millet · Millet Beer
Customs & Pastimes
Culture of the Turkic Peoples · The Göktürk Feast
Sources
Sanguozhi

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Steppe Diet.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/foods/steppe-diet/

Last revised: 8 November 2026