Glossary

A reader who meets shad or Kut in the middle of a paragraph should not have to open an article to keep reading. Every entry here is the first sentence of the article it names; the article itself carries the attestation, the competing readings and the sources.

14 terms. Where a form in Old Turkic or in the runiform script is recorded, it stands beside the lemma.

Atabeg Institutions and Titles: Father-lord: the commander set over a Seljuk prince as guardian and tutor, who governed the province in the prince's name — an office that in several places swallowed the dynasty it was meant to serve.
Beg bäg 𐰋𐰏 Institutions and Titles: The lord of a tribe or a clan, and the estate of such men: the rank that stands between the khan above and the commons below, named on every face of the Orkhon stones and still audible in the modern Turkish bey.
Buddhism among the Göktürk Religions · brief: The religion to which Taspar Khan was converted by a Chinese monk in the 570s, which no other Göktürk of the First Khaganate is recorded as adopting, and which the Bugut inscription is held to profess.
Ilteber Ilteber Institutions and Titles: The rank of a subject ruler: the man left on his own throne under a khan who was not of his people, with a tax officer set beside him — attested from the Caucasus to Turfan, and known chiefly under a Chinese spelling whose equation with the Turkic word is disputed.
Khan (Khagan) 𐰴𐰍𐰣 Institutions and Titles: The title of the supreme ruler of the steppe, taken by Bumin from the Rouran in 552; the single place in this work where its forms, its history and the ranks around it are set out.
Kut qut Institutions and Titles: The heaven-granted fortune that made a man fit to rule: in the Xiongnu ruler's title, in the khan's own account of himself, in the name of the Ötüken forest — and in the name of the man who restored the khaganate.
Manichaeism Religions: The religion of Mani, carried by the Sogdians to China and the steppe and adopted by the Uyghur khan at Luoyang in 762 and 763; the official religion, at times, of the hu in China, and the shield of the Sogdians there until 840.
Ötüken ötüken yış Places: The forested upland of the Orkhon country that the Göktürk inscriptions call sacred and name as the one place from which the realm can be held; seat of the Rouran, the Göktürk and the Uyghurs.
Shad Institutions and Titles · brief: A military rank of the Göktürk, held by a prince of the house over a wing or a subject people; Kül Tegin was šad over the Tarduš under his uncle.
Tengrism Teŋri 𐱅𐰭𐰼𐰃 Religions: Modern name for the sky-centred religion of the Old Turkic peoples, whose attested core is Teŋri, the fortune he grants, and the sacred Earth-and-Water.
Töre törü Institutions and Titles: The customary law of the Göktürk: succession, punishment, marriage, burial and the limits on taking from the land — the order a ruler was held to as much as anyone.
Toy toy Institutions and Titles: The assembly of the Ashina nobility: it raised Bumin to yabgu in 542, met each year at the ancestral cave, and in 581 elected a khan against a dead khan's wish.
Tuğ Institutions and Titles: The standard of the steppe ruler: a pole with a metal finial and horse tails, carried before the khan, raised over the camp and at the assembly, and counted by the tail — the visible sign of the authority that Kut makes invisible.
Yabgu Institutions and Titles · brief: The title of the ruler of the western wing of the Göktürk, held by Istemi and his successors; a rank above a tribal chief and below a khan, and by the reading this work adopts the Ashina's own title before 552.