The yada stone is the stone that Turkic and Mongol peoples have used, in the telling of many witnesses, to command the weather. In the eleventh century Kashgari names it yat and calls the art divination with stones.[1] In the nineteenth century the Altaians called the man who worked it the yadachi. The missionaries and travellers who met him wrote down what he did.[2] Between the two lie Arabic and Persian reports of Turks who fought with rain stones. They also include a modern note to a thirteenth-century traveller’s account that quotes a Persian historian on a Mongol rite. The Chinese histories tell of weather-working men from the fifth to the eighth century and name no stone.

WEATHER-WORKING AND THE STONE IN SEVEN RECORDS weather madeor foretolda stoneis named Yueban envoy at the Wei court, 448 Nishidu in the Zhou Shu, undated tale Uyghur shamans at Lingtai, 765 Turks against Ismāʿīl ibn Aḥmad, 892–907 Kashgari's dictionary, 1070s Rashid al-Din, as the rite is reported Altai, Radloff and Verbitskii, 1861 and after
Seven records of weather-working. A filled dot in the second column means that the record names a stone, a hollow dot that it does not. The three oldest records name none. Modern diagram, built from the records discussed below.

Weather-working in the Chinese histories

The Zhou Shu tells of Nishidu, a wolf-born ancestor in the account of the Suo origin of the Göktürks. His brothers were dull, and their state was destroyed. Nishidu had received a strange power and could summon wind and rain.[3] He married two wives, who were said to be the daughters of the spirit of summer and the spirit of winter. He fathered four sons.[3] The Tongdian repeats the Zhou Shu almost word for word.[4] The Bei Shi differs by one character. For zhengzhao, summon, it writes zhengzhan. In the Bei Shi, therefore, Nishidu divined wind and rain instead of summoning them.[5] The difference matters here because Kashgari’s later word yat covers both acts, divining the weather and bringing it on.

A second record comes from the Wei court in 448. The embassy of the Yueban included a conjurer. He said that sorcerers in his country had brought continuous rain, hard wind, heavy snow and great floods when the Rouran came to raid them. As a result, two or three in every ten of the Rouran froze or were swept away.[6] The emperor Taiwu ordered the rhythms of their drumming and dancing taken into the Music Bureau.[7] Some scholars call these sorcerers users of the yada stone, though the text names no stone.[8]

A third comes from the war on the Tang frontier in 765. The Uyghur army that came to Jingyang had two shamans with it.[9] At Lingtai, according to the Jiu Tang Shu, the Tang vanguard commander Bai Yuanguang joined the Uyghur troops and learnt the strength of the Tibetan camp. The moon was bright and he wished for some darkness. The Uyghurs had their shamans bring wind and snow. At dawn the Tibetans were frozen and their bows and arrows were useless. They went forward wrapped in felt. Bai Yuanguang and the Uyghurs followed and cut them down over the whole plain.[9] The Xin Tang Shu says only that snow came on heavy and dark.[10] Neither text names a stone.[11]

None of the three says how the weather was made.[12] The question is whether the later stone belongs to them.

Kashgari’s account

The earliest text that names a stone is the dictionary of Mahmud al-Kashgari from the 1070s. Four entries contain it. Yat is glossed as a kind of divination, kahāna, with special stones with which one brings on rain, wind and the like.[1] Kashgari says the art is well known among the Turks. He saw it himself in Yaγma, where it was performed to put out a fire that had broken out.[1] Snow fell in the summer, by the leave of God Most High, and put out the fire in his presence.[1]

A verb form shows the diviner at work for a ruler. Beg yatlatti means that the emir ordered the diviner to bring wind and rain by divination.[13] Kashgari adds that this is well known in the country of the Turks. Wind, hail and rain are brought forth with stones, he says, by the leave of God Most High.[13] The diviner is the yatčï, and Kashgari’s example says that the diviner performed a divination with stones for clouds and rain.[14] The verb yatla- is used a second time, in the sense of treating someone as a stranger. That sense belongs to the other word yat, foreigner.[15]

Kashgari writes as a Muslim for an Arabic-reading audience. His Arabic gloss for the art is kahāna, soothsaying, and for the diviner kāhin. He therefore files the weather rite under divination.[16] Twice he adds that it works by the leave of God, the phrase of a pious writer who reports a practice of the Turks.

Arabic and Persian reports of the stone

Muslim writers of the tenth and eleventh century report the stone among the Turks beyond the frontier. The Persian geography Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam says that the Oghuz greatly esteem their physicians and that these physicians have command over their lives and property.[17] Its editor notes that Gardizi says the original rain stone was in the possession of the Oghuz. He notes that Misʿar ibn Muhalhil, quoted by Yaqut, says the rain magnet belonged to the Kimek. He suggests that the item on the physicians’ power may be connected with the tale.[18] A modern commentary abstracts the account of Ibn Muhalhal. It says of the Kimek that there is a stone here with which they produce rain as often as they will.[19] One study counts the miraculous rain stone among the older Turkic practices that lay beneath the religions the Kimek took up.[20]

One account has the stone in a battle. In a report by Ibn al-Faqih, the Turks used a magic rain stone against the Muslims. The emir Ismāʿīl ibn Aḥmad, who raided Taraz in the year 280 of the Hijra, secured by prayer the help of God, who scattered the unbelievers.[21] A longer version gives Ismāʿīl twenty thousand men against sixty thousand armed Turks. Some of the Turks came over to him and told him that the Turks would send a great hail. He prayed two rakʿas. The clouds settled on the Turkish army, a terrible hail fell and the Turks were beaten.[22]

The same report tells how the caliph al-Maʾmun took an interest in the stone. He sent Nuh ibn Asad to look into it. Nuh assembled the old men of the country and the Muslim Turks, who said that the news was true but that they did not know the cause.[23] In the same report a former governor of Khurasan tells how the son of a khan of the Nine Oghuz, who had quarrelled with his father, rode east with his men and got the stone on a mountain.[23]

The Mongol period

A note to the account of the Franciscan William of Rubruck says that the Mongols used a stone, called yada or jada, to bring on storms and draw rain. Rashid al-Din called the rite for it yeda mishi. He says that certain stones, soaked in water and dried, have the property of drawing storms with snow and great cold, or torrents of rain, even in summer.[24] A second authority cited in the note says that the Kalmuks use bezoar stones for it.[24] A second note refers to the long discussion of the stone in the edition of Rashid al-Din and to a study of the Golden Horde. It says that the rain stone of the Turks and Tatars was called jadah, and still known among the Kalmuks.[19]

The yadachi of the Altai

In the Altai of the nineteenth century the yadachi was a recognised specialist beside the kam. Verbitskii lists him fifth among the Altaian practitioners: the man who rules the weather with a stone, the yada-tash, which is found very rarely and only in cliffs where the wind always blows.[25] To obtain it the yadachi gives up all he owns. He is therefore a poor man, childless and soon widowed.[25] For dry weather he keeps the stone in a dry hot place or under the arm. For wind he holds it in the open air. For a cold north wind, so that a horse does not sweat on a hot day, he ties it to the horse’s mane. For bad weather he keeps it a day in cold water. When the stone grows weak, the yadachi revives it by putting it in the open belly of a living bird or animal.[25]

Radloff met the yadachi on his journeys. In 1861, not far from the sources of the Abakan, a guide of the Tölös tribe who was a yadachi, a weather-maker, had no yada stone with him. Weeks of storm followed the party. The guide met them with a medicine from Radloff’s travelling chest. He warmed it in a spoon over the fire, raised both hands and the spoon to the sky and recited a prayer.[26] The prayer asks the high god, Kaira Khan, to open the sky a hand’s breadth and the width of a needle. It names the speaker as of the clan of the rainmakers and as the root of the cedar.[27]

Among the Soyots, at Lake Kara-Köl, Radloff found the stone itself. He writes that belief in the power to command the weather was general among the peoples of the Altai and among the Soyots. In some families the power passed from father to son. Some of these weather-compellers were known far and wide and were said to be able to make the sun shine into one’s face while the rain ran down one’s back.[28] The stone, a rock crystal, had properties by which only the initiated could recognise it. They were kept secret.[28] A Soyot woman brought a jada tash, and one of Radloff’s guides performed the rite. He tied the stone to a stick with a string a foot long, held it first over the fire so that smoke clouded it, then swung the stick on all sides through the air and sang the spell aloud. The weather did not improve.[29]

A survey of the peoples of Siberia, on the authority of an earlier collector, says that the stone is found in narrow mountain defiles where winds blow continually.[30] The Altaian rainmakers do not seem to address a special thunder god. They appeal to Heaven in general, Kaira Khan, or to gods who live at the springs of rivers and are believed to cause rain. The most famous of these are Mordo Khan and Abakan Khan at the source of the Abakan.[31] The Buryat know a separate rain god, Khuran Nojon, who keeps nine water barrels in heaven.[32]

The stone among other peoples

The Yakuts call the stone sata. They say that it is found in the bodies of animals, the strongest being the one taken from the belly of a wolf. A living sata looks like a human skull, with eyes, ears and a wide mouth. It dies if the hand or eye of a woman or a stranger touches it. If one lifts it up, a cold wind rises and rain or snow falls. A man who has it can tie it under the mane or tail of his horse on a long ride, and the horse will not sweat. One of the Yakut shamans is said to have received it from an eagle.[33] A Yakut yadachi’s spell asks that his child and his wife may not live and that his property be given up. This agrees with the Altaian account of what the yadachi pays.[34]

In the Kirghiz epic of Er Kökçe the hero Er Kosay pulls a cay stone from under the girth of his long-eared yellow horse when his men are thirsty in the desert. He shakes it and lays it down. Rain falls, and they drink the rain water.[35] The Kirghiz say that the stone lies in the belly of a sheep and that with it snow can be brought in summer.[35] In the Chagatai literature the verse of Alishir Navoi names it, and a Turkic gloss on the verse explains yad as a rain bead which brings rain when sacrificial blood is rubbed on it.[36] Eastern Turkestan had a written rule of the yadachis, as it had for its bakshis.[35]

A work of 1879 quotes a Chinese author on the practice among the Turkestanis. The author says that the stone is found in the stomach of cows and horses, and sometimes in the tail of a lizard and the head of a wild boar. To pray for rain, the Turkestanis tie the stone to a willow rod and lay it in clean water, and rain follows at once. For clear weather they put it in a small bag and fasten it to the horse’s tail. They wear it in the belt when they want cool weather.[37] The same work gives a story about the origin of the stone. Japheth, the ancestor of the Turks, received from Noah a stone on which the name of God was first written. The stone was therefore lost to the rest of the world and is found only among the Turks, the descendants of Japheth.[38]

Names and terms

The name has several forms. Kashgari writes yat for the stone and the art, yatčï for the diviner and yatla- for the act.[39] The Altaians say yada or jada, the Kipchak dialects cay, and the Yakuts sata.[40] The Mongols say yada or jada, and Rashid al-Din calls the rite yeda mishi.[24]

The word itself may be Persian. It has been derived from the Avestan yātu, sorcery, and the New Persian jādū, magic. The word is widest among the Turkic languages. In the Ottoman Turkish of Anatolia it survives as zadu, witch or old woman.[37] If the word is Persian, the Turkic origin legend of the stone, with Japheth as the ancestor, was told about a borrowed word.

Value as a record

The practice is well attested from the eleventh century. Kashgari saw it. The Arabic and Persian writers of the tenth and eleventh century tell of it among the Turks. Rashid al-Din has a rite for it among the Mongols. In the nineteenth century the Altaians, Soyots, Yakuts and Kirghiz describe the yadachi and his stone in many accounts. These accounts agree on the main points: the stone is found in an animal or in a windy cliff, and a specialist owns it and pays for it.

Earlier records give less. The Zhou Shu, the Wei Shu as it is reported and the Jiu Tang Shu describe men who command or foretell the weather, and none of them names a stone. Some scholars join the tale of Nishidu to the later belief in the yada stone, as a trait of Turkic and Mongol shamans.[41] A Turkish study opens from the belief that the great Turkic god gave the stone to the first ancestor of the Turks and that kams and great commanders have held it in every age. It takes the Chinese notices of Nishidu and the Yueban as its earliest evidence.[40] The Muslim-period story of Japheth and Noah tells the origin differently.[38] Whether the stone of the Göktürk and Uyghur khaganates is the stone of the tenth and the nineteenth century stays open.

References

  1. ^ a b c d Dīvān Lughāt al-Turk; al-Kāshgharī 1072–1074, ii 147
  2. ^ Verbitskii 1893, scan 31; 8–9; Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), scan 31; 8–9
  3. ^ a b Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
  4. ^ Tongdian, juan 197
  5. ^ Bei Shi (History of the Northern Dynasties), juan 99
  6. ^ Wei Shu, juan 102; Erkoç 2026, p. 247
  7. ^ Wei Shu, juan 102; Erkoç 2026, p. 247–248
  8. ^ Erkoç 2026, p. 248
  9. ^ a b Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 195
  10. ^ Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
  11. ^ Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 195; Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
  12. ^ Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50; Wei Shu, juan 102; Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 195
  13. ^ a b Dīvān Lughāt al-Turk; al-Kāshgharī 1072–1074, ii 141
  14. ^ Dīvān Lughāt al-Turk; al-Kāshgharī 1072–1074, ii 307
  15. ^ Dīvān Lughāt al-Turk; al-Kāshgharī 1072–1074, ii 307; ii 230
  16. ^ Dīvān Lughāt al-Turk; al-Kāshgharī 1072–1074, ii 141; ii 147
  17. ^ Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam; Minorsky 1937, p. 100
  18. ^ Minorsky 1937, p. 312
  19. ^ a b Yule 1866, clxxxvii
  20. ^ Golden 1992, p. 205
  21. ^ Frye 1954, p. 150
  22. ^ İnan 2017; first edition 1954, p. 161–162
  23. ^ a b İnan 2017; first edition 1954, p. 161
  24. ^ a b c Rockhill 1900, p. 254
  25. ^ a b c Verbitskii 1893, scan 31
  26. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 8
  27. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 8–9
  28. ^ a b Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 179
  29. ^ Radloff 1893 (zweite Ausgabe), p. 180
  30. ^ Czaplicka 1914, p. 200
  31. ^ Holmberg 1927, p. 447–448
  32. ^ Holmberg 1927, p. 448
  33. ^ İnan 2017; first edition 1954, p. 162–163
  34. ^ İnan 2017; first edition 1954, p. 163
  35. ^ a b c İnan 2017; first edition 1954, p. 164
  36. ^ İnan 2017; first edition 1954, p. 162
  37. ^ a b Vámbéry 1879, p. 249–250
  38. ^ a b Vámbéry 1879, p. 249
  39. ^ Dīvān Lughāt al-Turk; al-Kāshgharī 1072–1074, ii 147; ii 307
  40. ^ a b İnan 2017; first edition 1954, p. 160
  41. ^ Golden 1992, p. 119

Sources

Literature

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  • Ármin Vámbéry, Die primitive Cultur des turko-tatarischen Volkes, auf Grund sprachlicher Forschungen erörtert (1879)
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  • Vasilii Ivanovich Verbitskii, Алтайские инородцы (Altai Foreigners) (1893)
  • Marie Antoinette Czaplicka, Aboriginal Siberia: A Study in Social Anthropology (1914)
  • Uno Holmberg (Harva), The Mythology of All Races, Volume IV: Finno-Ugric, Siberian (1927)
  • William Woodville Rockhill (trans. and ed.), The Journey of William of Rubruck to the Eastern Parts of the World, 1253–55, as narrated by himself, with two accounts of the earlier journey of John of Pian de Carpine (1900)
  • Henry Yule, Cathay and the Way Thither, vol. I (1866)
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  • Hayrettin İhsan Erkoç, Asya Hunlarında Dinî İnançlar (Religious Beliefs of the Xiongnu) (2026)

Related

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Yada Stone.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/religions/yada-stone/

Last revised: 8 November 2026