The steppe empires did not make everything for themselves. They got craftsmen by capture, by invitation and by the settlement of foreign communities.[1] The sources name these practices in a few passages and hardly ever name a craftsman.

The view from the study of nomads

One general study holds that the nomads never managed to organize handicraft production in their own society in proper quantity and quality. At best they reached palliatives, and these too came with direct or indirect help from outside.[2] In trade with settled societies the nomads were as much interested in craft goods as in grain.[3] The same study names the ways to a craft sector of the nomads’ own. They moved craftsmen and farmers from conquered countries onto their territory, or they used captured slaves in that role, and this was very widespread among the nomads of the Eurasian steppe. In other cases they attracted craftsmen who were interested in the work, and these were in a better position, though still dependent.[1] These statements are general, and the sections below show how far the sources confirm them for the empires of this atlas.

Captives and deserters of the Xiongnu

The Xiongnu built a craft sector in part with Chinese prisoners and deserters.[4] The Han text on the Xiongnu quotes Chinese border people who lamented their hard life and said that people spoke of an easy life among the Xiongnu. Some of them ran away, even though the border was guarded.[5]

The best-known case is Wei Lü, a man of Hu descent who grew up in the Han empire and went over to the Xiongnu.[6] When the young chanyu Huyandi had just come to the throne, Wei Lü advised him to dig wells, to build walls and to raise towers to store grain, and to have Chinese guard them. The Xiongnu dug several hundred wells and felled several thousand timbers. Then someone objected that the Hu could not defend a wall and that the grain would only feed the Han army. Wei Lü gave the plan up.[6] The plan shows what a Chinese adviser could offer the Xiongnu court.

The excavations of the Xiongnu fort of Ivolga show the result. The site contained a workshop with a smelting furnace, and the crafts at the settlement included pottery, bone carving, and iron and bronze work.[7] In the Khanui valley iron was also smelted at open seasonal camps, so that metalwork was not confined to a workshop in a fort.[8] These crafts are treated in the articles on Xiongnu pottery and bone and horn working.

The Xianbei, the Rouran and the settled specialists

A people that did not practise a craft could still move one. The Chinese history of the later Han says that the Xianbei ruler Tanshihuai found that the fish in a river of his land could not be caught. When he heard that the people of Wo were skilled in netting fish, he attacked their country, took more than a thousand households and settled them at the river, with the order to catch fish for food.[9] The case is one of fishers and not of craftsmen. It shows the method of the transfer of a skilled community.

The UNESCO history says that under the Xianbei the culture of the steppe declined against the time of the Xiongnu. Many towns and settlements died out, and craft production fell.[10] The same history holds that the Xianbei did not consider crafts at all.[11] For the Rouran it records that they built a first town in 511, Mumochen, with inner and outer walls, and that they sent the Chinese court a Buddhist image decorated with pearls.[12] The Rouran did not need to master every craft. They had the Ashina as their ironworkers.[13]

The Göktürks and the Sogdians

The Göktürks took a different road from the Xiongnu. The aristocracy of the khaganate wanted agriculture and crafts in its society, as the Xiongnu aristocracy had done, but it encouraged the voluntary settlement of large Sogdian colonies that engaged in agriculture, crafts and trade and even founded towns.[14] The khans gained from this because the Sogdians could sell the booty and the tribute, above all the silk.[14]

At the Orkhon the court asked the Tang for craftsmen. Bilge Khan says that he brought carvers from the Chinese khan, and that the Chinese khan did not refuse the request and sent the carvers of his own court.[15] The Chinese court in turn records six painters sent to the Göktürks, who were escorted home by a Göktürk envoy at the end of 733.[16] The story is told in its own article.

The Uyghurs

The Uyghurs built walled seats and roofed them with tiles made on the spot by Chinese methods.[17] The stone of Šine-Usu has the khan order Chinese and Sogdians to build the city of Bay Balïq.[18] The tiles are treated in their own article.

The Avars

The Avar khagan too had foreign specialists brought in. Byzantine mechanics and architects were meant to build a palace and baths for Baian, and the Lombard king Agilulf gave the khagan shipbuilders. Avar goldsmiths worked with Byzantine techniques.[19] The case of the Avars is treated in its own article.

Silences of the sources

The sources name the transfer of craftsmen in a few passages and almost never name a craftsman. Wei Lü is a counsellor and not a craftsman, and the carvers of the Orkhon are nameless. We do not know whether captured craftsmen were free, how they were paid or whether they could leave.

References

  1. ^ a b Khazanov 1994, p. 225–226
  2. ^ Khazanov 1994, p. 203
  3. ^ Khazanov 1994, p. 202
  4. ^ Khazanov 1994, p. 254
  5. ^ Khazanov 1994, p. 226
  6. ^ a b Han Shu, juan 94
  7. ^ Houle 2011, p. 138
  8. ^ Houle 2011, p. 150
  9. ^ Hou Han Shu, juan 90
  10. ^ Litvinsky 1996, p. 314
  11. ^ Litvinsky 1996, p. 315
  12. ^ Litvinsky 1996, p. 317
  13. ^ Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
  14. ^ a b Khazanov 1994, p. 256
  15. ^ Kül Tegin inscription; Tekin 1968, p. 281
  16. ^ Pelliot 1929, p. 247–248
  17. ^ Arden-Wong Oktober 2015, p. 1, 48
  18. ^ Sinor 1990, p. 321,337
  19. ^ Pohl 2018, p. 248

Sources

Literature

  • Anatoly M. Khazanov, Nomads and the Outside World (1994)
  • Jean-Luc Houle; Lee G. Broderick, Settlement Patterns and Domestic Economy of the Xiongnu in Khanui Valley, Mongolia (2011)
  • B. A. Litvinsky; Zhang Guang-da; R. Shabani Samghabadi (ed.), History of Civilizations of Central Asia, Vol. III (1996)
  • Walter Pohl, The Avars: A Steppe Empire in Central Europe, 567–822 (2018)
  • Denis Sinor (ed.), The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (1990)
  • Paul Pelliot, Neuf notes sur des questions d'Asie Centrale (1929)
  • Talât Tekin, A Grammar of Orkhon Turkic (1968)
  • Lyndon A. Arden-Wong; Irina A. Arzhantseva; Olga N. Inevatkina, Reflecting on the Rooftops of the Eastern Uighur Khaganate: A Preliminary Study of Uighur Roof Tiles (Oktober 2015)

Related

What links here1

Institutions and Titles
The Economy of the Steppe Empires

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Craftsmen in the Steppe Empires.” Turkic Atlas, revised 7 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/institutions/craftsmen-in-the-steppe-empires/

Last revised: 7 November 2026