Chur

Chur was a rank of command that stood below the princes of the Ashina and above the chiefs of ordinary tribes. It appears in the office lists of the khaganate, in the standing titles of the western tribal chiefs, and inside the names of khans.^[1]

The rank in the lists

The Jiu Tang Shu describes the Göktürk order in a short paragraph. The khan is what the Xiongnu shanyu was, and his wife is the katun. The sons and brothers of the house are tegins, and those of the separate divisions who command troops are all called shad. Then come the great offices: Külüg Chur first, then apa, then ilteber, then tudun, then irkin. They were held in succession within a family and with no fixed number of holders. When a father or elder brother died, a son or younger brother took the place.^[1] The Xin Tang Shu runs the same names into a list of twenty-eight grades.^[2]

The chur therefore sits at the head of the offices that were not reserved to the ruling house. It was inherited, and it was not counted out in fixed posts.^[1]

The five churs of the Duolu

In the western khaganate the rank became the name of a wing. The realm was divided into ten divisions, each with one man over it and one arrow given to each. The five Duolu divisions east of Suyab were set under five great churs, and the five Nushibi divisions west of it under five great irkins. Each arrow below them was called a division, and the whole was the Ten Surnames.^[2] The Xin Tang Shu names the five churs one by one: Chumukun Lü Chur, Huluwu Que Chur, Shesheti Tun Chur, Türgesh Heluoshi Chur and Shunishi Chuban Chur.^[2]

The five titles show the structure of the Ten Arrows. One of them carries the name of the Türgesh. Within two generations the Türgesh would take the whole western steppe for themselves.^[2]

The title inside a name

Three well-known figures of the later steppe carry the rank in the name their neighbours knew them by. The Tang chapters call Kapgan Khan Mochuo, which the literature understands as a Turkic title rather than a personal name.^[1] The second Uyghur khan is Moyanchuo in Chinese and Bayanchur in the turkological reconstruction.^[3] The minister who poisoned Bilge Khan is Meilu Chuo, a buyruk and a chur in one name.^[1]

Before İltiriš rose, his family held a hereditary tudun-chur rank under the Chinese protectorate.^[1] A rank that could be combined with another rank, inherited, and worn by a khan had stopped describing a particular job.

The Kül Tegin inscription has the word itself, not only the Chinese transcription of it. In the account of Kül Tegin’s first battle, against the Chinese general Čača Seŋün, three horses were killed under him. The first was the grey horse of Tadık Čor, and the word stands there in the genitive.^[4]

The Tonyukuk inscription has the word in Turkic as well. Osman Fikri Sertkaya reads it čor. He bases this on Brahmi and Tibetan texts that write it çor, and he takes it for a rank below that of the khan.^[5] It is argued whether Kapgan is the man’s name or a style that he took after his raids on China.^[6] The same editor restores the damaged first line of the east face of the second stone to say that Kapgan was a čor until his twenty-seventh year and became khan after that.^[7]

The word in short texts on rock

Short runiform texts on rock carry the word as well. Their readings are uncertain. Two rock texts in Bayankhongor, at Deed Tsokhiot and at Havtsgaityn Havtsal (rock inscriptions found in Mongolia, 2018 to 2021), have been read as naming a Qar Chur and a Qarlïγ Chur. The texts do not show whether chur is a title there or part of a name.^[8] Among the painted texts of the Tayhar rock at Hoyto Tamir, one has been read with the name İbris Apa Çor and another with Tarduš Köl-İç-Çor.^[9] At the Kuru-Bakayır pass in Kyrgyzstan, one of two inscriptions found in 1981 is transcribed kutçor.^[10]

Turkic Atlas sets the ranks out together under the title of khan.

References

^ a b c d e f Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
^ a b c d Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 215
^ Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 195
^ Erdal 2004, p. 168
^ Sertkaya 1986, p. 59–60
^ Sertkaya 1986, p. 60–61
^ Sertkaya 1986, p. 61
^ Badam 2024, p. 29–30
^ Sertkaya 2000, p. 324, 337
^ Çetin 2000, p. 71

Sources

Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194, 195
Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 215 (after Jiu Tangshu)

Literature

Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
Édouard Chavannes, Documents sur les Tou-Kiue (Turcs) occidentaux (1903)
Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
Colin Mackerras, The Uighur Empire According to the T'ang Dynastic Histories (1972)
Marcel Erdal, A Grammar of Old Turkic (2004)
Osman Fikri Sertkaya, Göktürk tarihinin meseleleri: Tonyukuk kitâbesinin ikinci taşının doğu yüzü hakkında bazı yeni görüşler (1986)
Çumagulov, Çetin, Göktürk Harfli Yazıtların Kırgızistan’daki Araştırılması, Muhafazası ve Bugünkü Durumu (2000)
Osman Fikri Sertkaya; Sartkocaulı Harcavbay, Hoyto Tamir (Moğolistan)’dan yeni yazıtlar (ön neşir) (2000)
Azzaya Badam, Moğolistan’da 2018–2021 Yılları Arasında Bulunan Runik Yazıtlar (2024)