Tutuk was the rank of a governor or of the head of a tribe. The Göktürks took the word from the Chinese 都督, dudu, “military governor”.[1] The Orkhon inscriptions give it to a Chinese commander and to a governor of the Az. The Yenisei epitaphs contain it fourteen times, and the Uyghurs used it for the heads of their tribes.

The Chinese office

The Tang called a command a dudufu, 都督府, and its holder a dudu. In 630 they set up two such commands over the eastern Göktürks, Dingxiang and Yunzhong.[2] Turkic Atlas describes the system under the loose-rein prefectures. In 648 Taizong made the Kirghiz chief Shiboqu Azhan the dudu of the Jiankun command.[3] Some scholars hold that the Tang emperors gave the title to Turkic chiefs, as they gave other Chinese titles.[4]

In the Orkhon inscriptions

The Kül Tegin inscription has a Chinese commander called Oŋ Tutuk. When Kül Tegin was sixteen, an army of fifty thousand men came against the Göktürks under him. Kül Tegin charged on foot and seized the yurç of Oŋ Tutuk and presented him to the khan, and the army was wiped out.[5] Tekin translates yurç as the brother-in-law of the governor, and another translation renders the prisoner as his nephew.[6][7] The Bilge Khan inscription names the same commander and army in the account of Bilge’s eighteenth year. The fight was at Iduk Baš.[8] Modern accounts identify the governor with Wei Yuanzhong and set the clash in the Ordos in 701. Turkic Atlas gives the evidence under the wars of Kapgan.[9]

At Bolču, in the war against the Türgeš, Kül Tegin took “the Türgeš khan’s minister, the az tutuk”, the governor of the Az.[10] The Az had a ruler of their own with the title of elteber, and the governor was perhaps appointed by the Türgeš.[11] A damaged line of the funeral account in the Bilge Khan inscription names a Bukuğ Tutuk beside a party of five hundred men that came under Lisün Tay-Seŋün.[12]

In the Yenisei epitaphs

The title stands fourteen times in eleven Yenisei epitaphs. One of the occurrences is written totog.[4] The epitaph numbered E 48, the Abakan inscription, has it four times.[4] In E 25 the dead man names himself küç köl totok and says that he is parted from his own. Here köl is taken to qualify the title.[13] The epitaphs are undated.[14] The article on the Yenisei inscriptions describes the group.

The Uyghur use

In the Uyghur Khaganate the tribal leaders bore the title tutuk. There were eleven of them, one for each of the nine tribes and one each for the Karluk and the Basmïl. The tutuk of the Uyghurs was normally a close relative of the khan, but not the khan himself.[15]

The same word stands in the story of the origin of the Kimek. Gardīzī tells that a younger son of a Tatar chieftain was given the new name Tutug, and the name has been understood as this title.[16]

Form and origin

There are two views on how the word is to be read. One derives it from the Chinese dudu and reads the vowels as o, so that the word is totok and must not be read tutuk.[4] The other also takes the Chinese loan and reads the word tutuk.[4] The handbooks write both totoq and tutuq.[17]

On the origin there are three views. The first and the second regard the word as a Chinese loan. The third regards it as a Turkic formation like buyruk, from the verb tut-, “to hold”. One form of this view holds that the Chinese took the word from Turkic and not the other way round.[18] The word passed into Tibetan as to-dok, into Sogdian as twtwk’n and into Khotanese as tuttū.[4] One suggestion holds that the Rouran took the title from Chinese before 558.[4]

The word sounds close to tudun, the title of the khan’s overseer in a subject country. The Chinese histories write the two with different characters, 吐屯 for the overseer and 都督 for the governor.[19]

Two other titles of Chinese origin stand in the Yenisei epitaphs beside it, çigşi and saŋun.

References

  1. ^ Erhan 2011, p. 21,142; Golden 1992, p. 21,142
  2. ^ Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
  3. ^ Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 198
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Erhan 2011, p. 21
  5. ^ Kül Tegin inscription
  6. ^ Tekin o. J., p. 47
  7. ^ Taşağıl 2004, p. 40
  8. ^ Bilge Khan inscription
  9. ^ Taşağıl 2004, p. 29, 38
  10. ^ Kül Tegin inscription
  11. ^ Golden 1992, p. 142
  12. ^ Bilge Khan inscription
  13. ^ Erhan 2011, p. 16
  14. ^ Erhan 2011, p. 6
  15. ^ Sinor 1990, p. 323
  16. ^ Golden 1992, p. 203
  17. ^ Golden 1992, p. 142, 203
  18. ^ Erhan 2011, p. 21–22
  19. ^ Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 215; Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194

Sources

Literature

  • Aydın, Erhan, Yenisey Yazıtlarında Geçen Unvanlar ve Unvan Niteleyicileri (2011)
  • Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
  • Denis Sinor (ed.), The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (1990)
  • Ahmet Taşağıl, Gök-Türkler, Bd. III (2004)

Related

What links here7

Persons
Kül Tegin
Peoples
Az
Institutions and Titles
Çigşi · Saŋun · Tudun
Sources
Bilge Khan inscription · Kül Tegin inscription

Cite this article

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

Last revised: 8 November 2026