Chepetukh is a title in the Armenian history of Sebeos.[1] The commander of the army of “the great Khakʿan, king of the regions of the north” bears it.[2] An earlier chapter of the same history writes it Chembukh.[3] Both are titles, not personal names, and Chepetukh is a variant of Chembukh.[4]

The Chembukh on the Oxus

The Armenian general Smbat Bagratuni commanded for the Persian king Khosrow II in the north-east. At that time the kings of the Kushans asked the great Khakʿan for help.[5] A host of three hundred thousand came to their support and crossed the Oxus.[5] It put the Persian commander Datoyean to flight and raided as far as the borders of Rey and Isfahan.[3] Then a command came from the great Khakʿan to the Chembukh. The army crossed the river and went home.[3]

Sebeos gives no year for the campaign.[6] It has been dated to 597 and 598.[7] A second date is 614 or 615, and on it the Chembukh is the field commander of the Göktürk army.[8]

The Chepetukh at the Pass of Chor

After the death of Smbat, Sebeos adds a short notice.[2] “They rebelled and submitted to the great Khakʿan, king of the regions of the north, under the Chinese Chepetukh.”[2] They crossed the north from east to west to join the army of that Chepetukh. With many troops they passed the Pass of Chor and went to help the king of the Greeks.[2] The paragraph seems out of place in the history.[9]

The notice may belong to 627, when a Göktürk army came through the pass at Derbent to help Heraclius.[10] The word rendered “Chinese” means China in Armenian, but it also names a people of the Caucasus.[9] If the notice belongs to 627, the epithet may echo the Göktürks’ wars on the Chinese frontier in the decade before.[10]

The title yabgu

Chembukh and Chepetukh may be one title, a mangled form of the title of the second-ranking khagan, the yabgu khagan.[11] The Armenian history of Movses Dasxuranci gives the Göktürk commander of 627 a closer form, Jebu Xakʿan, which joins two Turkic titles, yabgu and khagan.[12] If so, the title crossed two language frontiers before it reached Armenian. It passed from Turkic into Persian, where its forms are Jepik, Jabbu and Sinjepuk, and from Persian into Armenian.[11] Whether the yabgu of the campaign of 627 was Tong Yabgu himself is disputed.

References

  1. ^ Sebeos, ch. 29
  2. ^ a b c d Sebeos, ch. 29; Howard-Johnston 1999, p. 54
  3. ^ a b c Sebeos, ch. 28; Howard-Johnston 1999, p. 51
  4. ^ Howard-Johnston 1999, p. 51, 54
  5. ^ a b Sebeos, ch. 28; Howard-Johnston 1999, p. 50
  6. ^ Sebeos, ch. 28
  7. ^ Chavannes 1903, p. 251
  8. ^ Howard-Johnston 1999, p. 184–185
  9. ^ a b Howard-Johnston 1999, p. 54
  10. ^ a b Howard-Johnston 1999, p. 188
  11. ^ a b Howard-Johnston 1999, p. 187
  12. ^ Movsēs Dasxurancʿi, book II; Dowsett 1961, p. 83

Sources

Literature

  • R. W. Thomson (trans.), James Howard-Johnston (commentary), The Armenian History attributed to Sebeos (1999)
  • Charles J. F. Dowsett (trans.), The History of the Caucasian Albanians by Movsēs Dasxuranci (1961)
  • Édouard Chavannes, Documents sur les Tou-Kiue (Turcs) occidentaux (1903)

Related

What links here1

Battles & Events
Smbat Bagratuni's war with the khan

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Chepetukh.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/institutions/chepetukh/

Last revised: 8 November 2026