The embassies to Ctesiphon, 568

After the Hephthalite realm fell, the Sogdian cities came under the khaganate, and their silk needed a buyer. Menander says that the power of the Göktürks was growing. The Sogdians had once been subjects of the Hephthalites and were now subjects of the Göktürks. They asked their king to send an embassy to the Persians, so that they might travel there and sell raw silk to the Medes.^[1] Istemi sent two embassies to Khosrow I. Both were refused.^[1] Menander names no place and gives no year.^[1] Some scholars think that the envoys were received at Ctesiphon.^[2] Both embassies came before Maniakh reached Constantinople in late 568 or early 569.^[1]

The first embassy

The first embassy was Sogdian, led by Maniakh. It asked leave to sell raw silk in Persia without hindrance.^[1] Khosrow was unwilling to grant these men free access to Persia. He put them off from one day to the next.^[1] When they pressed him, he summoned a council.^[1] The Hephthalite Katulph had betrayed his people to the Göktürks and then gone over to the Persians.^[1] He advised Khosrow not to return the silk, but to buy it at a fair price and burn it before the envoys’ eyes.^[1] In that way the king could not be charged with an injustice, and it would be plain that he wanted no silk from the Göktürks.^[1] The silk was burned, and the Sogdians went home displeased.^[1] Khosrow’s men burned the goods from Sogdiana in the open street, in full public view.^[3]

Khosrow paid for the silk and destroyed it. He thereby refused the trade without seizing anything.^[4] Modern accounts read Menander’s report as pointing to two Persian concerns: the southward advance of the Göktürks, and the wish to keep as much of the silk trade as possible on the southern routes.^[5]

The second embassy

When the Sogdians reported what had happened, Istemi sent a second embassy of his own, of Göktürks. He wished to establish friendly relations with the Persians.^[1] Khosrow discussed it with the Persian high officials and with Katulph.^[1] They decided that friendship with the Göktürks was wholly against Persia’s interest, because the Scythians could not be trusted.^[1] Scythians here means the nomads of the steppe in general, not the Göktürks alone.^[5]

Khosrow ordered some of the envoys poisoned, so that no more would come.^[1] All but three or four of them died of a poison mixed into their food.^[1] The Persians let it be said that the envoys had died of the stifling dryness of Persia, because their own country was often under snow and they could not live without cold.^[1] The survivors suspected otherwise, but at home they repeated the Persian version.^[1] Istemi was a shrewd and intelligent man. He saw what had been done and knew that the envoys had been killed by treachery.^[1] Menander calls this the cause of the hostility between the Persians and the Göktürks.^[1] Whether it was murder or the climate cannot be settled from the one account that survives. That account is not a neutral one.

Consequences

The two embassies decided the direction of Göktürk policy for a generation. Maniakh advised Istemi to turn to the Romans, who used more silk than any other people. The road to them ran around Persia and across the Caucasus to Constantinople.^[1] That was the road of the embassy of 568.^[1] Persia gained a hostile neighbour on the Oxus with a grievance of its own. Rome gained an ally on Persia’s far side. In 569 the Roman envoy Zemarchos went with Istemi on his march against Persia.^[6]

References

^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v Menander Protector; Blockley 1985, fr. 10.1
^ Yavuz 2025, p. 282–283
^ Yavuz 2025, p. 282
^ de la Vaissière 2005a, p. 232
^ a b Blockley 1985, p. 262
^ Menander Protector; Blockley 1985, fr. 10.3

Sources

Menander Protector

Literature

R. C. Blockley, The History of Menander the Guardsman: Introductory Essay, Text, Translation, and Historiographical Notes (1985)
Étienne de la Vaissière, Sogdian Traders: A History (2005)
Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)