In 579 the emperor Tiberius told an Avar embassy at Constantinople that the Göktürks were encamped at Cherson, the Roman city on the south-western coast of the Crimea.[1][2] He said it to keep the Avars from crossing the Danube.[1] According to one theory, the Göktürks besieged Chersonesos soon after they took Bosporos in 576. They thereby reached, it holds, the western limit of their realm.[3] In Menander’s account the Avar envoy saw at once that the emperor had put the story together on purpose.[1]

The Avar embassy

In this year the Avar khan Baian was building a bridge over the Save.[4][5] His envoys asked Tiberius to make ships ready for an Avar army to cross the Danube against the Slavs.[1] Tiberius saw that the khan meant to cut off Sirmium. He had no army to oppose him, since all his units were fighting the Persians in Armenia and Mesopotamia.[1] He pretended to approve the attack on the Slavs. The moment was not good, he said, “since the Turks were encamped at Cherson and they would quickly hear if the Avars crossed the Danube”.[1] He promised to learn where the Göktürks meant to attack and to tell the khan.[1]

The Avar envoy understood that the emperor hoped to turn the Avars from their aim by the fear of the Göktürks.[1] He seemed to go along and agreed to refer the matter to the khan.[1] On the way home he was killed by Slavs who were raiding Illyricum.[1]

Interpretations

Menander neither confirms nor denies that the Göktürks stood before Cherson.[6] There are three interpretations. The first takes the emperor’s words as evidence that by the middle of 579 the Göktürks had overrun the whole of the Crimea.[7] The second has Bosporos fall to the Göktürks only about 579.[8] The third has the Göktürks join the attack soon after 576 and besiege the old Greek fortress city of Chersonesos.[3] The Göktürks, it holds, kept the Crimea occupied as a punishment for Roman conduct and to forestall an Avar expansion.[3] The siege and occupation of the peninsula lasted until 598.[9] The same account counts Cherson as the farthest point of the Göktürk khaganate in the Crimea.[10]

Valentinos had sailed by way of Cherson to the Göktürks three years before.[11] The episode belongs to the last years of the Göktürk expansion into Europe that Menander covers. In his fragments the Göktürks of 579 appear only as a name that the emperor used against the Avars.

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Menander Protector; Blockley 1985, fr. 25.2
  2. ^ Blockley 1985, p. 275
  3. ^ a b c Yavuz 2025, p. 321
  4. ^ Menander Protector; Blockley 1985, fr. 25.1–25.2
  5. ^ Blockley 1985, p. 283
  6. ^ Menander Protector
  7. ^ Blockley 1985, p. 277–278
  8. ^ Golden 1992, p. 131
  9. ^ Yavuz 2025, p. 388
  10. ^ Yavuz 2025, p. 455
  11. ^ Menander Protector; Blockley 1985, fr. 19.1

Sources

Literature

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

Related

What links here6

Persons
Türk-shad
Conflicts
The Göktürk–Rouran Wars
Battles & Events
Siege of Bosporos, 576
Places
Bosporos · Cherson
Peoples
Avars

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “The Göktürks before Cherson (579).” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/events/gokturks-before-cherson-579/

Last revised: 8 November 2026