Buyruk

The buyruk was the man who carried out a khan’s orders, and the word says so. It belongs to the verb buyur-, to command.^[1] In the Old Turkic of the inscriptions and of the Uyghur texts, that verb had been replaced by yarlıgka-. It lives on in nearly all the Turkic languages outside Siberia, and the title comes from it.^[1] In the Orkhon inscriptions the buyruks stand directly after the khan. The inscriptions make a reign good or bad according to what the buyruks were.^[2]

The buyruks in the inscriptions

The account of the founders sets it out in a single line. Bumın and İstemi were wise khans and brave khans. Their buyruks too were wise, their buyruks too were brave. Their lords and their people were in accord, and for that reason they held the realm so long.^[2]

The collapse is told in the same words reversed. After the great khan died, an unwise khan came to the throne, a bad khan came to the throne. His buyruks too were unwise, his buyruks too were bad. Then the lords and the people fell out of accord, and the realm was lost to China for fifty years.^[2] The inscription does not explain the ruin of the state by the khan alone. It explains it by the khan and the men around him, in a sentence built so that the second clause cannot be removed.^[2]

The same pairing is used of an enemy. When the Türgeš khan was destroyed at Bolçu, the text reports that the khan died, and his buyruks and lords died too. The Ten Arrows were left in misery.^[2] A state loses its buyruks when it loses its khan.^[2]

The rank in the order of the court

Bilge Khan opens his testament by naming the audiences he means to reach. The buyruks are among them: his younger brothers and his nephews, his sons, his united clan and people, the Šadapıt lords in the south, the tarkats and buyruk-lords in the north, the Thirty Tatar and the lords and people of the Nine Oguz.^[3] The buyruks are named together with the tarkans and put in a quarter of the realm. This places them among the great men of the state rather than among household servants.^[2]

A buyruk could also be the officer of a subject people. The Kül Tegin account of Bolçu ends with the Türgeš khan’s buyruk, the governor of the Az, taken alive by Kül Tegin’s own hand.^[2]

The word was still current at the Karakhanid court. The Kutadgu Bilig of 1069–1070 quotes a türk buyrukı, a buyruk of the Turks, among its sages.^[4] The book gives the rank no duties.^[5]

Meilu Chuo and the death of Bilge Khan

A buyruk also ended the reign. In 727 Bilge Khan sent his great minister Meilu Chuo to Chang’an with thirty fine horses. The minister carried a letter from Tibet that proposed a joint attack on China. The khan handed the letter over rather than answer it. The Tang emperor feasted the envoy in the Zichen hall and opened a market on the frontier.^[6] Seven years later the same minister poisoned him.^[6] The khan lived long enough to have Meilu Chuo executed and his whole faction destroyed. Then he died.^[6]

The khaganate outlasted him by ten years. The line in his brother’s monument about unwise khans and unwise buyruks had been cut on the stone two years before the poison.

Turkic Atlas sets the ranks out together under the title of khan. It describes the law they were supposed to serve under Töre.