The camel was the pack animal of the steppe road, and the sources count it as a gift more often than as a herd. The Chinese words do not say whether an animal had one hump or two, and the sources of this article do not settle it.

Among the Xiongnu

The Shiji lists the camel first among the Xiongnu’s unusual livestock, before the donkey, the mule and the three kinds of equid.[1] In 72 BC the officer Chang Hui took camels with the horses, cattle, sheep, donkeys and mules of the Right Guli King.[2] In AD 50 the Southern Chanyu sent two camels and ten decorated horses to the Han court with his memorial.[3] At the assembly at which the chanyu sacrificed, the Xiongnu amused themselves with races of horses and camels.[3] The races are told in The horse and camel races of the Xiongnu.

As a gift

Camels travelled in the gifts of the steppe rulers to China. Under the Northern Wei the Gaoche king Mi’etu sent seven horses and ten camels with a gold square, a silver square and two gold sticks.[4] In the time of Tulan Khan the Göktürk chiefs sent the Sui court ten thousand horses, twenty thousand sheep, five hundred camels and five hundred cattle.[5] The Uyghurs sent camels with the bride-price of Princess Taihe in 821, a thousand of them with twenty thousand horses.[6] The Tang Huiyao names fifty camels in the Uyghur gifts of the same year, with a thousand horses.[7] The two accounts count different gifts.

The Tang court needed camels as well. In 769 it had to send a princess and 20,000 rolls of silk to the Uyghur khan, and it was short of money.[6] It taxed its officials for mules and camels to carry the party.[6][8]

As transport

A road with camels is the usual picture of the Silk Road, and the sources give figures. In 780 the Tang commander at Zhenwu killed the Uyghurs and the hu who travelled with them on their way home, and he seized several thousand camels and horses and 100,000 pieces of silk.[6] The journey from the camp of the Kirghiz khan to the Uyghur camp took forty days by camel.[6] Ibn Fadlan’s embassy bought Turkic camels in Khwarezm in February 922 and had folding boats made of camel hide for the rivers.[9]

Countries without camels

Marvazi writes that the Kimek had plenty of cattle and sheep and no camels. A camel did not live in their country longer than a year.[10] He also reports that the farthest parts of the Turkic lands had steppes where wild camels and other wild animals lived.[11] The Hudud al-Alam names no camel in the wealth of any of the Turkic peoples it lists.

Camels in the Oghuz exchange

Camels were part of the wealth that changed hands among the Oghuz. A suitor could pay the bride-price in camels or horses.[12] A Muslim merchant could leave camels that he could not take with him in the care of his Oghuz friend and take others from him.[13]

Gaps in the sources

The Kirghiz kept camels with their cattle and sheep.[6] The sources give no price for a camel and no size for a camel herd of a steppe people.

References

  1. ^ Shiji, juan 110; Han Shu, juan 94
  2. ^ Han Shu, juan 94
  3. ^ a b Hou Han Shu, juan 89
  4. ^ Wei Shu, juan 103
  5. ^ Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
  6. ^ a b c d e f Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
  7. ^ Tang Huiyao (Institutional History of the Tang), juan 98
  8. ^ Jagchid 1989, p. 160
  9. ^ Ibn Fadlan; Canard 1958, p. 63
  10. ^ Marvazī (Ṭabāʾiʿ al-ḥayawān); Minorsky 1942, p. 32
  11. ^ Marvazī (Ṭabāʾiʿ al-ḥayawān); Minorsky 1942, p. 31
  12. ^ Ibn Fadlan; Canard 1958, p. 70
  13. ^ Ibn Fadlan; Canard 1958, p. 71–72

Sources

Literature

  • V. Minorsky, Sharaf al-Zamān Ṭāhir Marvazī on China, the Turks and India (1942)
  • M. Canard, La relation du voyage d'Ibn Fadlān chez les Bulgares de la Volga (1958)
  • Sechin Jagchid; Van Jay Symons, Peace, War, and Trade Along the Great Wall. Nomadic-Chinese Interaction through Two Millennia (1989)

Related

What links here1

Institutions and Titles
The Economy of the Steppe Empires

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Camels.” Turkic Atlas, revised 7 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/institutions/camels/

Last revised: 7 November 2026