In 591 the Persian king Khosrow II and his Roman allies defeated the rebel general Bahram Chobin. Among the prisoners were men “of the Turkish race”.[1][2] Khosrow sent them to the emperor Maurice, to show Rome’s strength and to offer him the first-fruits of the victory.[1] On their foreheads they bore the sign of the cross.[1] Asked about it, they said that their mothers had put it there, on the advice of Christians, against a plague.[3] Theophylact Simocatta tells the story. Theophanes the Confessor repeats it from him.[4]

The battle

During his revolt Bahram had made peace with the khan, the son of Barmūdha. He had given the khan back his country and concluded a pact of friendship with him.[5] According to some scholars, this alliance explains the Göktürk contingent in his army.[6] Khosrow and the Roman army under Narses met him near the river Blarathos, south of the plain of Canzacon.[7][1] Narses broke the centre of Bahram’s array. The rest of his forces gave way.[1] Six thousand fugitives gathered on a hillock. The Romans surrounded and overpowered them. Many were led in chains to Khosrow.[1]

The captives

Khosrow handed some of the prisoners to the sword. He gave others to be trampled by the elephants.[1] When he learned that some were “of the Turkish race”, he sent them to Maurice.[1] On their foreheads was inscribed “the sign of the Lord’s passion, which is called a cross by the ministers of the Christian religion”.[1] The emperor asked what the mark meant.[1] They answered that their mothers had given it to them.[1] When a fierce plague was raging among the eastern Scythians, some Christians had advised that the foreheads of the young be tattooed with this sign.[3] The barbarians took the advice, Theophylact says, and were saved by it.[8]

Theophanes’ version

Theophanes the Confessor, a later Byzantine chronicler, retells the battle under the year 588/589. His translators note that it was fought in 591.[9] In his words, “all the Turks were sent to the emperor in Byzantium”, and they had “the symbol of the cross tattooed in black” on their foreheads.[10] Asked how they came by the sign, they said that many years earlier there had been a plague in their country. Some Christians among them had suggested it. From then on their country had been safe.[10] Theophanes drew the passage from Theophylact. The two are therefore one witness.[4]

Interpretations

The Christians of the story may have been Nestorian missionaries, whose work then reached from Persia along the trade routes to China.[11] A different explanation is that Christianity, apparently in its Nestorian form, existed among the Göktürks of Sogdiana some thirty years before 591.[6] Grown men who bore the cross in 591 had been marked as children.[6] If so, the Christian communities among the Göktürks also explain how the Nestorian monk Alopen could travel to China in 635.[6] The Church of the East was that Nestorian church.

Modern accounts note that the story does not agree with another passage of Theophylact.[12] In the digression on the khan’s letter to Maurice, he says that the Göktürks boasted of never having witnessed an epidemic of plague.[13] The Chinese sources record a serious famine and epidemic among the Göktürks in 585.[12]

The captives are the earliest Göktürks in the Greek sources who bear a Christian sign. They reached Constantinople as spoils of a Persian civil war. In that war Göktürks had fought for the loser, who soon after died in exile among the Göktürks.

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, p. 146
  2. ^ Scott 1997, p. 390
  3. ^ a b Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, p. 146–147
  4. ^ a b Scott 1997, p. 389
  5. ^ aṯ-Ṯaʿālibī; Zotenberg 1900, p. 658
  6. ^ a b c d Chavannes 1903, p. 245
  7. ^ Whitby 1986, p. 145
  8. ^ Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, p. 147
  9. ^ Scott 1997, p. 389–390
  10. ^ a b Theophanes the Confessor; Scott 1997, p. 389
  11. ^ Whitby 1986, p. 147
  12. ^ a b Whitby 1986, p. 191
  13. ^ Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, p. 191

Sources

Literature

  • Michael Whitby, Mary Whitby (trans.), The History of Theophylact Simocatta (1986)
  • Cyril Mango, Roger Scott (trans.), The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor: Byzantine and Near Eastern History AD 284–813 (1997)
  • Édouard Chavannes, Documents sur les Tou-Kiue (Turcs) occidentaux (1903)
  • Hermann Zotenberg (ed., trans.), Histoire des rois des Perses par Abou Mansour ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Mohammad ibn Ismaʿil al-Thaʿalibi (1900)

Related

What links here2

Battles & Events
Murder of Bahram Chobin
Sources
Theophylact Simocatta

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Göktürk prisoners with the cross (591).” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/events/gokturk-prisoners-with-the-cross-591/

Last revised: 8 November 2026