Kutrigurs

Rouran epoch Göktürk epoch Uyghur epoch Kirghiz epoch

Rouran First Göktürk Tang rule Second Göktürk Uyghur Kirghiz Huns Western Göktürk Türgesh Karluk Khazar

Rouran 400–554
First Göktürk 552–630
Tang rule 630–682
Second Göktürk 682–744
Uyghur 744–840
Kirghiz 840–924
Huns 370–469
Western Göktürk 552–659
Türgesh 699–766
Karluk 766–800
Khazar 650–969

The Kutrigurs were a Hunnic people of the steppe west of the Sea of Azov. They were of common origin with the Utigurs to their east.^[1] They raided the Roman Balkans in the 550s and fell under the Avars. When the Avars fled west before the Göktürks, they took Kutrigur elements with them.^[2]

Name

ΚοτρίγουροιGreekMenander Protector
ΚουτρίγουροιGreekMenander Protector
kwrtrgrSyriac
ΚοτζαγηροίGreekTheophylact Simocatta
AltziagiriLatinJordanes

Agathias, Procopius and Menander write the name Κοτρίγουροι or Κουτρίγουροι. The Syriac list of peoples has kwrtrgr.^[1] The name has been derived from an Oguric word for nine, “the Nine Ogurs”. Another derivation explains it as “the enraged”.^[1] Menander calls them once “the so-called Kutrigur Huns”.^[3] Procopius counts them and the Utigurs as two unions of the Huns.^[1]

Raids on the empire

In 551 the Kutrigurs under Chinialon, allied with the Gepids, invaded the empire.^[2] In 558 they came again under Zabergan.^[2] Justinian expected them to return to Thrace. He pressed Sandilkhos, the leader of the Utigurs, with embassy after embassy to make war on them.^[3] He promised that if Sandilkhos destroyed the Kutrigurs, their yearly payments would go to him.^[3] Sandilkhos refused to wipe out kinsmen who shared his people’s language, tents, dress and way of life.^[3] He offered to take their horses instead.^[3] In the fighting that followed, the two peoples decimated one another.^[4]

Map of the Sea of Azov around 550: the Kutrigurs west and the Utigurs east of the Don, the Sabirs and Onogurs north of the Caucasus, Bosporos and Cherson in the Crimea, the Kutrigur raids of 551 and 558–559, and the arrival of the Avars in 557 — c. 550: The Kutrigurs live west and the Utigurs east of the Don and the Sea of Azov, the Sabirs and the Onogurs north of the Caucasus. The Kutrigurs raid in 551 and, under Zabergan, reach Constantinople in 558–559. The Avars arrive in 557. Modern map. The roads are drawn.

Under the Avars

Menander tells of an unnamed Kutrigur, “the one friendly to the Avars”. This man advised the Avar khagan to kill Mezameros, the envoy of the Antes.^[3] The Avars killed the envoy.^[3] In 568 the khagan Baian sent ten thousand of the so-called Kutrigur Huns across the Save to ravage Dalmatia.^[3] In the same year his envoys claimed from Justin II the payments Justinian had made to the Kutrigurs and the Utigurs, since Baian had subdued both peoples.^[3] Justin refused. He said that the Kutrigurs and Utigurs had partly fled from the Romans and partly been destroyed by them.^[3]

Flight before the Göktürks

When the Avars moved into Pannonia to escape the advancing Göktürks, Kutrigur elements went with them.^[4] In a letter that Theophylact preserves, a Göktürk khagan wrote to the emperor Maurice in 598 that the Tarniakh and the Kotzageroi had fled from the Göktürks. They also descended from the Var and the Chunni.^[5] They came to Europe and joined the subjects of the Avar khagan. The reinforcement was reckoned at ten thousand men.^[5] The Kotzageroi may be the Kutrigurs.^[6] A second marks the equation with a query and counts the Kotzageroi among the peoples of War-Hun origin.^[7]

Later history

The Kutrigurs may be the Altziagiri, whom Jordanes places near Cherson, where merchants brought the goods of Asia.^[8] Jordanes names the Altziagiri as one of the two branches of the Huns in that country.^[9] Or they belonged among the ten tribes of an Onogur federation.^[10] An older view took them and the Utigurs for Bulgars.^[1] Their old country has also been set west of the Don in the later Black Bulgaria.^[11] Later Byzantine writers join the name of the Bulgars to that of the Onogurs, as Onogundur-Bulgars.^[12]

The Kutrigur raids on the empire run through the first two thirds of the sixth century. The name disappears with the century.^[13] The Kutrigurs left the Pontic steppe ahead of the Göktürks. The Utigurs stayed there and served them.

References

^ a b c d e Golden 1992, p. 99
^ a b c Golden 1992, p. 99-100
^ a b c d e f g h i j Menander Protector
^ a b Golden 1992, p. 100
^ a b Theophylact Simocatta; Chavannes 1903, p. 248
^ Marquart 1903, p. 504
^ Golden 1992, p. 99,111
^ Marquart 1903, xxvi
^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 37, p. 60
^ Yavuz 2025, p. 137
^ Marquart 1903, p. 503
^ Golden 1992, p. 102
^ Marquart 1903, p. 505-506

Sources

Menander Protector
Procopius
Theophylact Simocatta
Jordanes (after Priscus and Ammianus Marcellinus)

Literature

Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
Josef Marquart, Osteuropäische und ostasiatische Streifzüge (1903)
Édouard Chavannes, Documents sur les Tou-Kiue (Turcs) occidentaux (1903)
Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
Ludwig Dindorf (ed.), Historici Graeci minores, Bd. II: Menander Protector et Agathias (1871)
Charles Christopher Mierow, The Gothic History of Jordanes in English Version, with an Introduction and a Commentary (1915)
Agathias, Ἱστορίαι / Histories (ca. 570s)
anonymous, Chronicle of Pseudo-Zachariah Rhetor (ca. 568/569)