- 400
- 500
- 600
- 700
- 800
- 900
- Rouran 400–554
- First Göktürk 552–630
- Tang rule 630–682
- Second Göktürk 682–744
- Uyghur 744–840
- Kirghiz 840–924
- Huns 370–469
- Western Göktürk 552–659
- Türgesh 699–766
- Karluk 766–800
- Khazar 650–969
The word bökli stands twice in the Kül Tegin inscription. Both times it marks the eastern edge of the Göktürk world. It is the one place where the Göktürks’ own monuments may name a Korean state, and the common view is that they do so. It is not the only view, and the difference is large. On the first view the east of the world is Korea. On the second it is a Chinese dynasty.
The two passages
The first passage is the funeral of the founders. From the front, from the sunrise, came the Bökli and the Čölgil as mourners and wailers. The Chinese, the Tibetans, the Avars, the Romans, the Kırgız, the Three Kurıkan, the Thirty Tatar, the Kıtañ and the Tatabı came as well.[1] The list covers the known world as seen from the Orkhon valley. It claims that these are the peoples who matter and that all of them came.[2]
The second passage concerns the fifty years of service under the Tang. Eastward, toward the sunrise, they campaigned for him as far as the Bökli khan. Westward they campaigned for him as far as the Iron Gate.[1] Here bökli is not a mourner but a limit. It is the furthest point east on which Göktürk troops were spent while they had no realm of their own, set against the Iron Gate in the west.
The Korean identification
On the common view Bökli is Goguryeo, and the two words together mean the Bökli of the open country. This identification does two things at once. It gives the mourner list a span from Korea at the sunrise to Rome at the sunset. The list then makes a claim about the whole inhabited world rather than about a neighbourhood.[2] It also makes the second passage a statement about the Tang wars in Korea, in which Göktürk contingents are known to have served.
If the identification holds, it gives the one firm point of contact between the Göktürks and the Korean peninsula in the whole period. It is a point made by the Göktürks about themselves rather than by a Chinese historian about them.
The Chinese identification
Li Yong-Song has argued that Čölgil is Čülüg el, the realm of the Čü, and that this is the Northern Zhou. In that case the two words are two states, not a name and its epithet. The second of them is a Chinese dynasty.[2] The mourner list would then open with Korea and the Zhou side by side. The word čölgil would say nothing about Korea at all.
The English translation of the inscription separates the two words and lets both stand. It does not settle the question inside an epithet.[2] The translation leaves the question open because the inscription itself does not decide it.
Other readings of the first word
Editors of the inscription have printed the first word as bükli or as bökli.[3] In a paper read to the Turkish History Congress of 1976, Masao Mori divides it into two words, bök eli.[3] He takes the second for the state of Gaogouli, the Chinese name of Goguryeo, east of the Göktürk realm.[3] Tekin, in his edition of 1988, reads bük(e)li instead, “people of the forest”. He did so without knowing Mori’s reading.[3] The scholar who reports both readings holds the forest reading to be wrong.[3]
The weight of the arguments
Three points depend on this, and they should be kept apart.
The identification of Bökli with Goguryeo is separable from the reading of čölgil. Even if Li Yong-Song is right about the second word, the first may still be Korea. What changes is that the east of the list holds two states and not one state with an epithet.
The span of the mourner list is the weaker argument, because it is circular. The list reads as a claim about the whole world if Bökli is Korea, and the elegance of that claim is then used to support it.
The second passage is the stronger argument. A limit set against the Iron Gate is a limit at the other end of the known world. There was also a Tang war in Korea in the years the inscription describes.
None of this amounts to a finding. The inscription establishes that the Göktürks named something at the sunrise and counted it among the powers. What that something was is interpreted, not stated. Modern writers use the passage as the founding moment of a Turkish–Korean friendship. This use belongs to the twentieth century and is treated in its own article.
References
Sources
Literature
- Emre-E. Yavuz (ed.), The Kül Tegin Inscription: working translation with transcription and notes (2026)
- Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
- Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
- Ahmet Bican Ercilasun, Köl Tigin Yazıtı Bir Nutuk Metni midir? (1990)
What links here6
- Battles & Events
- The khan's letter to Maurice
Cite this article
Yavuz, Emre-E. “The Bökli question.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/historiography/bokli-goguryeo-debate/
Last revised: 8 November 2026
