The steppe empires did not keep armies apart from their peoples. The Shiji says that every Xiongnu strong enough to draw a bow served as an armoured horseman.[1] The Chinese histories therefore count a steppe ruler’s strength in archers, those who draw the bow.[2] The Tang histories count fighting men and set them beside the whole population.[3] The sources show three orders: the decimal commands of the Xiongnu, the wings and princely commands of the Göktürks, and the tribes of the Uyghur army. The khan’s guard stands beside them. The figures the sources name for the size of the hosts follow, with the limits of each. How the hosts fought is told in Warfare of the Steppe Empires.

The Xiongnu: Ten Thousand Horsemen

The Shiji describes the order of the Xiongnu court in one passage. Below the chanyu stood the Worthy Kings of the left and the right, the Guli Kings, the Great Generals, the Great Commandants, the Great Danghu and the Gudu Marquises.[1] The chiefs from the Worthy Kings down to the Danghu numbered twenty-four.[4] Each commanded a host of ten thousand horse, or several thousand if he was lesser, and all twenty-four bore the title Ten Thousand Horsemen, wanqi.[1] The Han Shu writes the larger figure as more than ten thousand.[5] One modern account takes the title as a rank and the figures as approximate divisions, not as exact counts.[6]

Each of the twenty-four appointed his own commanders of a thousand, of a hundred and of ten. He also appointed lesser kings, chancellors, commandants, danghu and juqu.[1] The same modern account describes the whole as a military decimal order. The great chiefs stood at its head, and each held his own pastures.[7] The offices passed by inheritance. Three clans, the Huyan, the Lan and later the Xubu, were the noble stock of the realm.[1]

The twenty-four were also lords of territory. The kings and generals of the left lived in the east, facing Shanggu, and those of the right in the west, facing Shangjun. The chanyu’s own court faced Dai and Yunzhong. Each had his own pastures and moved in search of water and grazing.[1] The offices and the two wings are described under Worthy Kings of the Left and Right.

The chiefs came to the chanyu three times a year. In the first month they met in a small assembly at his court. In the fifth month a great assembly at Longcheng sacrificed to the ancestors, to Heaven and Earth and to the spirits. In autumn, when the horses were fat, the great assembly at Dailin counted men and livestock.[1] The Shiji does not call this count a muster of the army.[1] The assemblies are treated in Xiongnu Assemblies.

Zhonghang Yue, a Han eunuch who had gone over to the chanyu, described the system to the Han envoys. The Xiongnu made war and attack their business, he said. The old and weak could not fight, so the best food went to the strong, who defended them all.[1] He called the commands light and easy to carry out, and the rule of the realm like the rule of a single body.[1] The man and his career are told under Zhonghang Yue.

Order of the Xiongnu courtChanyuhouse of Luandi · court facing Dai and YunzhongLEFT · EASTfacing Shanggu and eastward; neighbours Huimo, ChaoxianWorthy King (tuqi)Guli KingGreat GeneralGreat CommandantGreat DanghuGudu MarquisRIGHT · WESTfacing Shangjun and westward; neighbours Yuezhi, Di, QiangWorthy King (tuqi)Guli KingGreat GeneralGreat CommandantGreat DanghuGudu MarquisThe heir was as a rule the Left Tuqi KingTitles in the order of the Shiji list; it does not say how the 24 chiefs map onto them.24×wanqi萬騎24 great chiefs, each called “ten thousand horsemen” (wanqi):the largest led over 10,000 riders, the smallest a few thousand.Each appointed his own leaders of thousands, hundreds and tens;offices were hereditary (clans Huyan, Lan, later Xubu).THE YEAR1st monthsmall assembly at court5th monthgreat assembly at LongchengautumnDailin: count of people and herds© Emre-E Yavuz 2026
The order of the Xiongnu court and its twenty-four great chiefs, as the Shiji describes it. A modern diagram after Shiji 110 and Han Shu 94; positions are schematic, not territories. Diagram: Turkic Atlas.

The size of the Xiongnu host

The Shiji gives Modu more than three hundred thousand archers, once he had beaten the Donghu and the Yuezhi.[1] For the siege of the Han emperor at Baideng in 200 BC it gives four hundred thousand picked horse.[1] The Han Shu has more than three hundred thousand.[5] The Shiji records one case in which it knew the difference between a count and a claim. The Hunye King went over to the Han with his people, and they numbered more than forty thousand and were called a hundred thousand.[1] The figures for the Xiongnu are therefore the figures of Chinese writers who counted from the other side of the frontier.

The Göktürks: offices that commanded troops

The Göktürks ordered the army through the same offices that ordered the realm. The Xin Tang Shu names those who commanded the troops of the separate divisions as shad, the khan’s sons and brothers as tegin, and the great ministers as yabgu, külüg chur, apa and others. It counts twenty-eight grades, all of them hereditary and without a fixed number of holders.[8] The Jiu Tang Shu gives the same account of the shad and the tegin.[9] The Zhou Shu and the Sui Shu name the yabgu first, then the shad, the tegin, the ilteber and the tutun-fa, and they count the same twenty-eight grades.[10] The ranks are treated in The Twenty-Eight Ranks, the offices in Shad and Yabgu.

The case of Ashina Simo shows the rule from the other side. Shibi Khan and Chula Khan doubted that he belonged to the Ashina stock. Under Chula and under Ilig, therefore, he stayed a tegin and never received a command of troops as shad.[11] The command of a division thus went to men whom the khans counted as Ashina.

Wings and princely commands

The inscriptions place the division of the realm into wings at the foundation of the Second Khaganate. İlteriš organised the Tölis and the Tarduš, the inscription says, and gave them a yabgu and a shad.[12] Bilge Khan says that he himself was shad over the Tarduš when his uncle was khan.[13] The two peoples are understood as the eastern and the western half of the realm; see Tölis and Tardush.

The Chinese histories show the same division in the sixth century. Taspar Khan made Ishbara a khan who governed the eastern side. He made a nephew a khan who lived in the west.[14] When Shibi Khan died, his son was too young to rule. He was made Nibu Shad and placed on the eastern flank, facing the country north of Youzhou.[9] The second throne of the khaganate is described under Lesser Khan.

The western Göktürks took the division furthest. Soon after 635 the khan Ishbara Tolis divided the realm into ten parts.[15] A man led each part, and each man received an arrow, so that the parts were called the Ten Arrows.[15] The ten were split into a left wing and a right wing of five arrows each. Five great chuo led the five arrows of the left, and five great irkin led those of the right.[9] The left lay east of Suyab and the right west of it.[9] See On-Oq and Tally Sticks and the Golden Arrow.

A khan who faced a rebel called on other khans. Theophylact Simocatta says that when Turum, a kinsman of the khan, rose against him and won a battle, the khan sent an embassy to three other great khans. Their whole array assembled at the Ikar, the usurper fell, and the khan became master of his land again.[16]

Offices and wings of the Göktürk realmKhanKhatun · Lesser khan (second throne)Zhou Shu 50 · Sui Shu 84YabguShadTeginIlteberTudun-falesser offices28 grades, hereditaryTongdian 197 · Jiu Tang Shu 194Tegin: sons and brothers of the khanShad: leads separate divisionsKülüg ChurApaIlteberTudunIrkin · hereditary, no fixed numberXin Tang Shu 215Shad (leads troops of divisions)TeginYabguKülüg ChurApaTudun · Irkin and others28 grades, hereditaryThree lists, three orders: the sources do not agree on one ranking.THE TWO WINGS (8th century)TölisTardušİlteriš “gave a yabgu and a shad” (Kül Tegin E13–14); Bilge was shad over the Tarduš (E17).Tölis as east and Tarduš as west is a modern reading.THE TEN ARROWS (West, soon after 635)Left wing · five arrowsDulu: five great chur, east of SuyabRight wing · five arrowsNushibi: five great irkin, west of SuyabSuyabGuard fuli (“wolf”), wolf-head standard at the gate of the court© Emre-E Yavuz 2026
Offices and wings of the Göktürk realm as the sources list them. A modern diagram after the Chinese histories and the Kül Tegin inscription; the three columns are kept apart because the sources rank differently. Diagram: Turkic Atlas.

The khan’s guard

The Zhou Shu names the men who stood guard around the khan fuli, 附離. It says that in Chinese the word means wolf.[17] The Xin Tang Shu says the guards were called fuli, and that a standard with a golden wolf’s head stood at the gate of the khan’s court on Mount Dujin.[8] The Sui Shu says that a wolf-head standard stood at the gate of the khan’s tent.[14] The histories give the guard neither a number nor a commander.[18] The inscriptions mention no guard.[19] They place the buyruks directly after the khan. See Böri (Guard) and Buyruk.[19]

The inscriptions on the size of armies

The Göktürk inscriptions count armies by the hundred, the thousand and the tümen, the unit of ten thousand. They say that the Second Khaganate began with seventeen men, and that these became seventy and then seven hundred.[20] The Tonyukuk inscription gives the same figure of seven hundred and adds that two parts of them were mounted and one part on foot. A shad led them.[21] Tonyukuk then fought an Oguz host with two thousand men.[22] Of the Göktürks of that time the inscription says: “We were two thousand, and we had two armies.”[23] Later a messenger told the Göktürk commanders that ten tümen, a hundred thousand men, had assembled on the Yarısh plain against them.[24] The Kül Tegin inscription counts a Chinese army that came against the Göktürks at five tümen.[25]

The inscriptions also count campaigns. İlteriš campaigned forty-seven times and fought twenty battles.[26] Bilge Khan says that he and his uncle campaigned twenty-five times and fought thirteen battles.[27] Bilge Khan, once on the throne, says that he sent out a great army twelve times, against the Oguz in the north, the Kitan and Tatabı in the east and the Chinese in the south.[28]

Numbers in the Chinese histories

The Sui Shu gives several hundred thousand archers for Taspar Khan and four hundred thousand for Ishbara in his war with the Sui.[14] The Jiu Tang Shu gives more than a million for Shibi Khan and four hundred thousand for Kapgan Khan.[9] These figures are estimates made at a distance.

Where a Chinese writer saw the army, the figures are smaller or more careful. In 563 the Zhou general Yang Zhong marched with ten thousand men, and Mukan Khan came to meet him with a hundred thousand horse.[17] After the campaign Yang Zhong told the emperor that the Zhou envoys had talked up the Göktürks’ strength.[17] In 641 Ashina Simo led more than a hundred thousand people across the Yellow River.[8] Forty thousand of them were fighting men, and they brought ninety thousand horses.[8] The Jiu Tang Shu gives a hundred thousand people and forty thousand fighting men and does not mention the horses.[9] Chebi Khan, in the north of the Golden Mountain, had thirty thousand fighting men.[15]

The Uyghurs

The Jiu Tang Shu describes the Uyghur army through the tribes. The Uyghurs had nine tribes, and each tribe had one military governor, dudu. The first tribe was the Yaluoge, the clan of the khan. After the conquest of the Basmil and the Karluk, one tribe from each was added, and the Uyghurs had eleven.[29] On every march and in every battle the two added tribes served as the vanguard.[29] The empire is treated under Uyghur Khaganate, the peoples under Basmil and Karluk.

The Uyghurs before their empire are counted at a hundred thousand people. The Xin Tang Shu says that half of them were fighting men. The Jiu Tang Shu gives fifty thousand fighting men.[30] In the first years of the Zhenguan era their chief Pusa beat a Göktürk army of a hundred thousand horse, which Ilig Khan had sent under his son Yukuk Shad. Pusa led five thousand riders.[31] The histories do not say how the two figures were obtained.[31]

The Tang saw the Uyghur army at close range in the 750s and 760s. In 757 the Uyghur crown prince, who bore the title yabgu, brought more than four thousand troops to the Tang.[29] In 762 the Tang envoy Liu Qingtan reported that a hundred thousand Uyghur troops were moving on the frontier.[32] Another envoy, Yao Ziang, met the khan at Taiyuan and counted about four thousand fighting men, more than ten thousand children and weak, and forty thousand horses. The khan came with his khatun.[32] Therefore the Uyghur army was a people on the move, and its horses were ten to each fighter.[32]

A Byzantine view

The Strategikon, a handbook for Roman officers from the late sixth or early seventh century, treats the Turks and the Avars together as the “Scythians”. It says that of all these peoples only the Turks and the Avars concern themselves with military organisation, and that this makes them stronger in pitched battles.[33] The Turks, it says, are very numerous and independent, and the Scythian nations have monarchs who punish mistakes cruelly.[33] The Avars and Turks, it says, form up in divisions, droungoi and moirai, in two and sometimes three lines, with the units set in depth.[34] In the chapter on the Scythians it adds that they do not form in three parts, as the Romans and Persians do. They form in several units of irregular size, joined closely so as to look like one long line.[35] They keep a force apart from the main body, to send out as an ambush or to hold as a reserve. They keep spare horses close behind the line, and the baggage train a mile or two away to one side under a moderate guard.[35]

The translator identifies these Turks with the western Göktürks, east of the Black Sea and north of Persia.[36] The handbook describes a type of nomad army and does not name Göktürk offices or units.[37] It is the one source from outside the steppe that sets down how such an army stood on the field, and its account agrees with the others on the points they share: the bow, the herds of spare horses, the scouts and the sudden attack. These are treated in Warfare of the Steppe Empires. The handbook also warns its officers that most people cannot judge an army of more than twenty or thirty thousand men, least of all one of Scythians, who are mostly horsemen.[38]

Limits of the evidence

No source gives a table of organisation for a Göktürk army. The Xiongnu have a decimal order, the Göktürks have offices, wings and arrows, and the Uyghurs have tribes with governors. No source names a Göktürk unit below the wing, a rule of precedence in the line or a regular size for a command.[39] Where the sources give figures, the figures belong to the writer’s estimate, the inscription’s boast or the envoy’s count, and they should be read as such.

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Shiji, juan 110
  2. ^ Shiji, juan 110; Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
  3. ^ Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194; Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
  4. ^ Shiji, juan 110; Han Shu, juan 94
  5. ^ a b Han Shu, juan 94
  6. ^ Miller 2014, p. 6
  7. ^ Miller 2014, p. 6–7
  8. ^ a b c d Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 215
  9. ^ a b c d e f Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
  10. ^ Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50; Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
  11. ^ Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194; Tongdian, juan 197
  12. ^ Kül Tegin inscription
  13. ^ Kül Tegin inscription
  14. ^ a b c Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
  15. ^ a b c Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194; Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 215
  16. ^ Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, VII.8.8–10, p. 190
  17. ^ a b c Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
  18. ^ Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50; Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84; Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 215
  19. ^ a b Kül Tegin inscription
  20. ^ Kül Tegin inscription
  21. ^ Tonyukuk inscription
  22. ^ Tonyukuk inscription
  23. ^ Tonyukuk inscription
  24. ^ Tonyukuk inscription
  25. ^ Kül Tegin inscription
  26. ^ Kül Tegin inscription
  27. ^ Kül Tegin inscription
  28. ^ Kül Tegin inscription
  29. ^ a b c Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 195; Tang Huiyao (Institutional History of the Tang), juan 98
  30. ^ Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217; Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 195
  31. ^ a b Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 195; Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
  32. ^ a b c Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
  33. ^ a b Pseudo-Maurikios late 6th/early 7th c., p. 116; Dennis 1984, p. 116
  34. ^ Pseudo-Maurikios late 6th/early 7th c., p. 23; Dennis 1984, p. 23
  35. ^ a b Pseudo-Maurikios late 6th/early 7th c., p. 117; Dennis 1984, p. 117
  36. ^ Dennis 1984, p. 116
  37. ^ Pseudo-Maurikios late 6th/early 7th c., p. 116–117; Dennis 1984, p. 116–117
  38. ^ Pseudo-Maurikios late 6th/early 7th c., p. 103; Dennis 1984, p. 103
  39. ^ Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50; Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84; Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194; Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 215; Kül Tegin inscription; Tonyukuk inscription

Sources

Literature

  • Bryan K. Miller, Xiongnu “Kings” and the Political Order of the Steppe Empire (2014)
  • Pseudo-Maurikios, Strategikon (late 6th/early 7th c.)
  • George T. Dennis (trans.), Maurice's Strategikon: Handbook of Byzantine Military Strategy (1984)
  • Michael Whitby, Mary Whitby (trans.), The History of Theophylact Simocatta (1986)

Related

What links here1

Institutions and Titles
Warfare of the Steppe Empires

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Army of the Steppe Empires.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/institutions/army-of-the-steppe-empires/

Last revised: 8 November 2026