Felt is wool matted by moisture, heat and pressure rather than woven. It can be made anywhere there are sheep, with no loom. It is the fabric of the steppe. It covers the tent, forms the floor inside it, lines the coat and serves as the saddle blanket.

Two consequences follow. First, a household that keeps sheep makes its own shelter and clothing, without a workshop and without a town. This is part of why the steppe economy needs so little from a settled one. Second, felt survives in frozen graves. The Pazyryk burials in the Altai preserved hangings and saddle covers that would have rotted anywhere warmer. Much of what is known of early steppe art comes from them. An older view dated the Pazyryk finds to the second century BC, to the age of the Xiongnu, and called the felt appliqué of the Altai graves Hunnic.[1][2]

The Kutadgu Bilig of 1069–1070 names two things that furnish a house among the goods the herders deliver: the felt, kidiz, and the rug, yadım.[3]

The Irk Bitig has felt in one of its omens. In omen 33, a man puts the felt into water. The text adds: beat it more, and tie it tightly. The omen is bad.[4]

The first line of the east face of the Bilge Khan inscription names the lords of the Toquz Oghuz, and the words after that name are read in two ways. One proposal takes eki ediz for a people, the two Ediz, and kerekülüg for “with tents”.[5] The other reads kidiz kerekülüg, “with felt tents”, so that the lords are those “of the felt tents”.[5] Its proponent points out that eki ediz would stand nowhere else in the runiform texts.[6] The word kidiz is old. It is found in an Old Uyghur text as well, and it survives in the Turkic languages today as kiyiz, kigiz and kidiz.[7]

The Wei Shu says of the Hephthalites that they had no walled towns. They moved in search of water and grazing and made their houses of felt. They moved to cool country in summer and to warm country in winter.[8] In 644 Xuanzang crossed the mountains east of Kishm. He came to a country whose people lived in felt tents and led a nomad life. Its borders touched those of the Göktürks, and the people had soon taken over their customs.[9][10]

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.[11][12] The Tongdian compares the cart huts of the Shiwei with the felt carts of the Göktürks.[13] In 843, the Tang officer Shi Xiong looked from the wall of Zhenwu at the Uyghur camp and saw dozens of felt carts.[14] In 564 the Göktürks are said to have spread felt rugs on the frozen Yellow River on their way home, so as not to slip.[15][16]

References

  1. ^ Ögel 1984, p. 62–69
  2. ^ Ögel 1978, p. 181
  3. ^ Kutadgu Bilig; Dankoff 1983, couplet 4442
  4. ^ Irk Bitig; Tekin 1993, p. 16–17
  5. ^ a b Açıkgöz 1994, p. 8
  6. ^ Açıkgöz 1994, p. 1, 8
  7. ^ Açıkgöz 1994, p. 8–9
  8. ^ Wei Shu, juan 102
  9. ^ Record of the Western Regions
  10. ^ Herrmann 1925, p. 575–576
  11. ^ Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
  12. ^ Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
  13. ^ Tongdian, juan 200
  14. ^ Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 161
  15. ^ Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance)
  16. ^ Taşağıl 1995, p. 24

Sources

Literature

  • Albert Herrmann, Die Hephthaliten und ihre Beziehungen zu China (1925)
  • Bahaeddin Ögel, İslâmiyetten Önce Türk Kültür Tarihi. Orta Asya Kaynak ve Buluntularına Göre (1984)
  • Bahaeddin Ögel, Türk Kültür Tarihine Giriş III: Türklerde ev kültürü (1978)
  • Talat Tekin, Irk Bitig: The Book of Omens (1993)
  • Ahmet Taşağıl, Gök-Türkler, Bd. I (1995)
  • Robert Dankoff (trans.), Wisdom of Royal Glory (Kutadgu Bilig): A Turko-Islamic Mirror for Princes (1983)
  • Halil Açıkgöz, Bilge Kağan Yazıtının Doğu Yüzünün İlk Satırında (i)ki (e)d(i)z k(e)r(e)kül(ü)g mü yoksa kid(i)z k(e)r(e)kül(ü)g „Keçe Çadırlı“ mı Okunmalı? (1994)

Related

What links here12

Battles & Events
Li Chengqian's Göktürk Camp
Places
Aksu · Noin Ula
Peoples
Eurasian Nomads · History of the Turkic peoples
Institutions and Titles
Felt, Cloth, Leather and Wood in Kashgari's Dictionary · Livestock in the Hudud al-Alam · Raw Materials and Trade among the Turkic Peoples · Sheep · The Economy of the Steppe Empires
Religions
Raising on the Felt
Customs & Pastimes
Culture of the Turkic Peoples

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Felt.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/institutions/felt/

Last revised: 8 November 2026