In 725 the Tang emperor Xuanzong prepared to sacrifice to Heaven on Mount Tai. His court feared that the Göktürks of the Second Khaganate would use his absence.[1] It sent the official Yuan Zhen to Bilge Khan to summon one of his great men to attend the emperor on the journey.[1] Bilge received Yuan Zhen at a feast in his tent.[1] He sat with his wife, his brother Kül Tegin and his counsellor Tonyukuk in a ring.[1] There he asked why the Tang gave princesses to the Tibetans, the Xi and the Khitan, and never to the Göktürks.[1] Yuan Zhen promised to put the request to the emperor.[1] Bilge sent a great minister to ride with the emperor. The marriage was refused once more.[1]

The question of a bride

In 721 Bilge’s men under Tonyukuk defeated the Basmil and a Tang army from Liangzhou.[2] Soon afterwards he asked the Tang for peace and offered to be the emperor’s son.[2] The emperor accepted.[2] Bilge then asked for a princess in marriage. The emperor sent him rich gifts instead.[2] In the seventh month of 724, Bilge sent his minister Gejie Xielifa to ask again.[3] In the eighth month the envoy was sent home without an answer.[3] The Zizhi tongjian gives the reason: the envoy was of too low a standing, and the rites had not been fully observed.[3]

The mission of Yuan Zhen

In 725 Xuanzong planned the sacrifices at Mount Tai, the rite by which an emperor announced to Heaven that his work was accomplished.[1] The chancellor Zhang Yue proposed to strengthen the frontier against the Göktürks while the court was away.[1] Pei Guangting, a director in the Ministry of War, objected that calling up troops would contradict the meaning of the sacrifice.[1] Zhang Yue answered that the Göktürks had asked for peace, but their hearts were hard to read.[1] He named three men.[1] The khan was humane and kind to his people, who served him willingly. Kül Tegin was brave and unbeaten in war.[1] Tonyukuk was deep and full of plans and grew wiser the older he became. He was the equal of the Tang generals Li Jing and Xu Ji.[1] If these three acted with one mind and learned that the whole court had gone east, nothing could stop them.[1]

Pei Guangting proposed another way.[1] An envoy should summon a great minister of the Göktürks to ride in the emperor’s train.[1] The Göktürks could not refuse him. With their minister at the emperor’s side, they would find it hard to move.[1] Zhang Yue agreed.[1] The man sent was Yuan Zhen, a clerk of the Secretariat, who acted for the mission as chief of the Court of State Ceremonial.[1] The Zizhi tongjian enters the mission under the fourth month of the year.[3]

In the khan’s tent

Bilge, his wife, Kül Tegin, Tonyukuk and others sat in a ring in the tent, and a feast was set out.[1] The Xin Tang Shu calls the wife the katun.[4] The same history names Bilge’s katun elsewhere. She was Pofu, the daughter of Tonyukuk.[4] If she was the wife in the tent, all four in the ring were kin: the khan, his younger brother, his wife and her father.[5]

Bilge put his question to the envoy.[1] The Tibetans were of dog stock, he said, and the Tang had given them a bride.[1] The Xi and the Khitan had once been slaves of the Göktürks. They too had married princesses of the house of Tang.[1] The Göktürks alone had asked for a marriage again and again and had never been granted one.[1] He asked why.[1]

Yuan Zhen answered that the khan had become the emperor’s son, and father and son could not marry into each other’s house.[1] Bilge and his companions had an answer ready.[1] The chiefs of the Xi and the Khitan had also been given the imperial surname, and they had still married princesses. The Göktürks asked for no more than the same.[1] Besides, they had heard that none of the princesses sent to the foreign peoples were daughters of the emperor.[1] They did not ask whether the bride would be a true daughter or not.[1] They had asked so often in vain that they were ashamed before the other peoples.[1] In the Xin Tang Shu Bilge says that the Göktürks had become a laughing-stock among the nations.[4]

Yuan Zhen promised to petition the emperor for them.[1] Bilge sent a great minister of the Ashide, whom the Tang histories call Ashide Xielifa, to court with tribute. The minister rode with the emperor on his journey east.[1] Xielifa is the Chinese form of a title. Whether it renders the Turkic ilteber is disputed.

The hare on the road to Mount Tai

In the tenth month of 725 Xuanzong set out from Luoyang with his officials, his kinsmen and the chiefs of the foreign peoples.[3] At the halt of Jiahui he had Ashide Xielifa and the other chiefs ride inside the ranks of his guard. He gave them bows and arrows.[6] A hare started up in front of the emperor’s horse.[6] Xuanzong drew his bow, shot from the side and killed it.[6] Xielifa dismounted at once, held up the hare and danced in homage.[7] “The sage’s divine skill in arms surpasses all,” he said. “Whether there is such in heaven I do not know, but among men there is none.”[6]

The emperor had Xielifa asked whether he was hungry.[2] Xielifa answered that, having looked up at such skill, he could go ten days without food and still be full.[2] From then on the emperor often had Göktürks ride and shoot inside his guard.[1] Lü Xiang, an official who kept the record of the emperor’s acts, warned against it in a memorial.[1] An owl that does not hoot is still no bird of good omen, he wrote, and a crouching tiger is still no gentle beast.[1] He asked the emperor not to let them so close again, so that they would know their bounds.[1] Xuanzong accepted the advice and sent the foreign chiefs on ahead.[1]

The emperor sacrificed on Mount Tai in the eleventh month and was back at Luoyang in the twelfth.[3] He gave Xielifa a feast and rich gifts and sent him home.[8] The marriage was not granted.[8]

After the banquet

Bilge kept up his embassies.[4] In 727 the Tibetans wrote to him proposing a joint raid on the Tang frontier. He sent the letter to the emperor.[2] Xuanzong feasted Bilge’s envoy and granted a market at the western Shouxiang fort. Every year several hundred thousand bolts of silk were sent to the frontier for the Göktürks.[2] When Kül Tegin died, the court sent the general Zhang Quyi and Lü Xiang with a letter of condolence. The emperor wrote the text of his memorial stone himself.[2] This Lü Xiang was presumably the official who had warned against the Göktürk riders in 725.[2]

In the end the emperor agreed to the marriage.[4] Bilge sent an envoy to give thanks and to ask for the day of the wedding.[4] Soon afterwards one of his ministers poisoned him.[4] No Tang princess came to the Göktürks in his lifetime.[4]

The witnesses

The oldest account stands in the Tongdian, which was completed in 801. The Jiu Tang Shu gives the same text almost word for word.[1] It has one exchange more, the emperor’s question whether the minister was hungry.[1] The Jiu Tang Shu cannot have taken the passage from the Tongdian alone. Both go back to a common record of the court and count as one witness.[1] The Xin Tang Shu retells the episode in its own words.[4] It calls the wife the katun and keeps the question about hunger. It has the Göktürk minister bow his head to the ground in congratulation instead of dancing.[4] The Zizhi tongjian names only Bilge, Kül Tegin and Tonyukuk in the ring and leaves out the hare.[3] Every account of the banquet is a Tang account, written from what the embassy brought back.

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag ah ai aj ak al am an ao ap Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194; Tongdian, juan 198
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 212
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 215
  5. ^ Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 215; Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
  6. ^ a b c d Tongdian, juan 198; Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
  7. ^ Tongdian, juan 198; Mau-tsai 1958, Turkish edition, p. 247
  8. ^ a b Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194; Tongdian, juan 198; Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 212

Sources

Literature

  • Liu Mau-tsai, Çin Kaynaklarına Göre Doğu Türkleri (1958, Turkish edition)

Related

What links here4

States
The Tibetan Empire
Battles & Events
The Uyghur Demand for the Prince's Dance (762)
Customs & Pastimes
Mounted Archery · Seating at the Feast

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Bilge Khan's Tent Banquet (725).” Turkic Atlas, revised 4 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/events/bilge-khans-tent-banquet-725/

Last revised: 4 November 2026