Steppe rulers conducted their foreign relations through envoys, brides, hostages, titles, gifts and oaths. The same means appear among the Xiongnu of the second century BC, the Göktürks of the sixth and seventh centuries AD, and the Uyghurs and Kirghiz of the eighth and ninth. Their partners were the Han, Sui and Tang courts in China, Sasanian Persia and the Roman Empire. Almost every record of these dealings comes from the partner’s side. The steppe voice survives in a few letters that others copied, in the Orkhon inscriptions, and in the words that Chinese and Greek historians report from khans and their envoys. One study notes that no diplomatic letter of the Göktürks has been found in its original form.[1]

Marriage alliances

The oldest settlement is the Han heqin. After the siege of Baideng in 200 BC the Han emperor sent a princess of the imperial house to the chanyu as his consort.[2] The court also delivered fixed yearly amounts of floss, silk, wine, rice and food, and the two rulers agreed to be elder and younger brother.[2] The Han named the arrangement heqin, “peace and kinship”. The treaties were renewed several times, until the failed ambush at Mayi in 133 BC ended them.[2]

The Göktürks used marriage to win recognition as an equal. In 545 An Nuopantuo, a Sogdian sent by Yuwen Tai of the Western Wei, reached them on the first embassy of a Chinese state to the Ashina.[3] The Göktürks said: “Now that the envoy of a great state has come, our state will rise.”[3] In 546 Bumin asked the Rouran khan Anagui for a bride. Anagui called him a smith slave, and Bumin killed the Rouran envoy and broke off relations.[3] One study reads the request of 546 as a demand to be recognised as an equal.[4] Bumin then turned to the Western Wei, and in the sixth month of 551 the Wei gave him the princess Changle.[3]

Two Chinese courts later competed for a Göktürk bride. Mukan Khan promised a daughter first to Yuwen Tai and then to Yuwen Tai’s son, the later emperor Wu of the Northern Zhou. The Northern Qi asked for her as well and sent rich gifts. Mukan wanted the gifts and was ready to break his word.[3] The Zhou sent envoys who held him to the promise, and he turned the Qi envoys away.[3] The party sent to fetch the bride left in 565 with the ceremonial equipment of an empress and a household of 120 people.[5] It waited at the khan’s camp for years, because Mukan again leaned toward the Qi. Then a storm blew down his tents and went on for ten days. Mukan took it for a sign from Heaven and sent the bride off with full ceremony. She reached the Zhou court in the third month of 568 and became Empress Ashina.[5]

In 579 Taspar Khan asked the Zhou for another heqin marriage.[3] The Zhou emperor gave him Princess Qianjin and asked in return for the Qi pretender Gao Shaoyi, who had found refuge at the khan’s camp. The surrender of Shaoyi and the journey of the bride took until 580.[3] When the Sui replaced the Zhou, Qianjin asked the new emperor to treat her as his daughter. He gave her the surname Yang and the title Princess Dayi.[6] Later the Sui gave the princess Anyi to Yami, whom the Chinese call Qimin Khan. The emperor wanted to divide the northern peoples and therefore made the marriage rites especially generous.[7]

The Tang gave princesses to the Uyghurs. When the emperor Dezong agreed to give one to the Uyghur khan, the khan wrote that he had once been a brother and was now a son-in-law, a half-son. He offered to drive off the emperor’s western enemies with his own troops.[8]

Persia and Byzantium entered the system through marriage and gifts as well. In the Persian tradition Khosrow I became the kinsman of a khagan by marriage before he marched on the Hephthalites, and his son Hormizd IV was the khagan’s grandson.[9] The tradition does not name the khagan. Some scholars make the bride a daughter of Istemi, given about 560 to seal the border on the Oxus.[10] Persia also tried to buy goodwill with captives. After the fall of Dara in 573 Khosrow chose two thousand women from the prisoners and sent them to the Turks as a gift.[11] They drowned themselves in a river before they arrived.[12] About 627 Heraclius met the commander Ziebel of the Göktürk army before Tiflis.[13] Ziebel kissed the emperor’s neck and bowed to him, and his whole army lay flat on the ground.[13] In the patriarch Nikephoros’s account Heraclius called him his son, set his own crown on his head and showed him a portrait of his daughter, whom he would give him in marriage if he helped against Persia.[14] The meeting sealed the alliance in person.

Hostages and attendant sons

A hostage guaranteed a ruler’s word, and the hostage’s own safety depended on that word. Bagatur learned this early. His father Touman wanted to set him aside for a younger son and therefore sent him as a hostage to the Yuezhi. Then Touman attacked the Yuezhi. They were about to kill Bagatur, but he stole one of their best horses and rode home.[2] People taken in war were a second kind of pledge and a frequent subject of bargaining (Captives and the Unfree).

The Han called the sons whom chanyus sent to court “attendant sons”, and its statesmen discussed them as hostages.[15] In 53 BC Huhanye sent his son, the Right Worthy King Zhulouqutang, to enter in attendance, and his rival Zhizhi sent a son as well.[15] The Han had asked for such a pledge earlier, and a chanyu had refused.[2] The envoy Yang Xin told a chanyu that he must give his crown prince as a hostage if he wanted heqin. The chanyu answered: “That is not the old agreement. By the old agreement the Han always sent a princess and gave silk and food in fixed amounts, and the Xiongnu did not trouble the border.”[2] Earlier the chanyu had promised the envoy Wang Wu to send the prince. The Shiji says that he had no intention of doing so.[2]

Han statesmen doubted that hostages would hold a chanyu. Dong Zhongshu proposed to bind the Xiongnu with rich gifts, an oath to Heaven and a beloved son as hostage. Ban Gu, who reports the proposal in the Han Shu, objected that a chanyu who detained Han envoys in revenge whenever a Xiongnu went over to the Han would not give up a beloved son.[15] The risk lay with the hostage. In AD 14 Wang Mang’s envoys told the chanyu Xian that his attendant son Deng was alive, although Wang Mang had had him beheaded. The next year the envoys brought the remains of Deng and of his noble attendants back to the border.[15]

The Göktürks sent sons as well. In 585 Ishbara Khan wrote to the Sui emperor that he would have an attendant son enter the court and would send divine horses every year.[7] He sent the memorial with his seventh son, Kuhanzhen, whom the emperor made a duke and received in the inner palace.[7] A relative at the host’s court could serve as a pledge too. Heshana’s mother, a Chinese woman, lived at the Sui capital in the guest house of the Court of State Ceremonial. In 608 the envoy Cui Junsu told Heshana that she would be executed if he did not kneel to the imperial letter.[7] Heshana wept, bowed twice and knelt.[7]

Other peoples used the same device. In the early second century AD the Han built northern and southern hostage lodgings for the Xianbei, and 120 Xianbei groups each sent a hostage.[16] When Attila listed the fugitives that he claimed from the Romans, he dated them from the time when Carpilio, the son of the general Aetius, had been a hostage at his court.[17] In the tenth century Ibn Faḍlān heard that the son of the king of the Saqaliba was a hostage with the Khazar king. The Saqaliba king had refused the Khazar king his daughter, and the Khazar king took her by force.[18] The same account says that the Khazar king had twenty-five wives, each the daughter of a neighbouring king, whom he took “willingly or by force”.[19] Ibn Faḍlān reports the Khazar court from what he was told.[20]

Titles, seals and investiture

A title from a great court gave a ruler standing and gave the court a claim to rank. In 51 BC the Han received Huhanye with unusual honours. His place was above the Han vassal kings, and he was announced as a subject without his name. The court gave him a gold seal and ribbon, a robe, a sword, horses, cash and eight thousand bolts of silk.[15] Before the audience the court had debated how to receive him. Xiao Wangzhi advised the ritual for a guest and not for a subject.[15] The sums that the Han gave the chanyu rose with later visits, as the bestowals on the chanyu show.[15]

A title could also be pushed on a ruler. In AD 15 Wang Mang’s envoys urged the chanyu Xian to call his people “Respectful Slaves” (Gongnu) and himself “Good” (Shanyu), and they gave him a new seal. Xian wanted Wang Mang’s gold. He gave way, and he raided as before.[15]

The Sui and Tang courts used titles to manage the steppe. In 581 Zhangsun Sheng advised the Sui emperor to ally with the distant and attack the near, and to divide the strong and join the weak.[21] The court sent an envoy to Tardush with the wolf-head banner, the standard of the Göktürks, and with great courtesy. The Sui Shu calls the respect feigned. When Tardush’s envoy came to the Sui court, he was seated above the envoy of Ishbara.[21] In 599 the court made the refugee Yami Qimin Khan and built the city of Daliu for him at Shuozhou.[6] In 607 Qimin came to the emperor Yang at Yulin and asked to take over Chinese dress and customs.[7] The emperor refused: the ancient kings, he wrote, founded states with different customs, and each people should keep what suits it.[7] When the emperor then visited Qimin’s camp, he gave him the honours of Huhanye, a place above the vassal kings and announcement without his name. The imperial edict names Huhanye as its precedent.[7]

The Tang invested khans at altars with a patent, a drum and a banner. After the plot of the thirteenth year of Zhenguan, 639, Ashina Simo was made khan of the Göktürks and received the Tang surname Li.[22] The investiture took place at an altar on the Yellow River.[22] Taizong told the Xueyantuo in a sealed letter that they were to keep the land north of the desert and the Göktürks the land south of it. Whoever crossed would be punished.[23] In 847 Li Ye, president of the Court of State Ceremonial, carried the tally to invest the Kirghiz khan as Yingwu Chengming Khan, a Chinese title with the Turkic word khan.[8] Earlier the court had told a Kirghiz envoy that his country was of the same clan as the Tang and unlike other foreign peoples.[8]

Rome announced its own titles. In 576 Tiberius sent Valentinos to the western Göktürks to tell them that he had been raised to the rank of Caesar and to have the alliance confirmed.[24]

The khans gave titles too. Bilge Khan says of the Kirghiz ruler Bars Beg: “It was we who gave him the title of khan here. We gave him my younger sister as his princess.”[25] The inscription also holds Chinese titles to be a danger. The Turk lords who went over to China “threw away their Turk titles”, took Chinese titles and became subjects of the Chinese khan.[26]

Letters and forms of address

Letters set the relation in words, and their size and wording stood for rank. Han letters to the chanyu were written on tablets one chi and one cun long and opened: “The emperor respectfully asks whether the chanyu is well.” Zhonghang Yue taught the chanyu to answer on tablets one chi and two cun long, with a longer and wider seal, and to open: “The great chanyu of the Xiongnu, born of Heaven and Earth and set up by sun and moon, respectfully asks whether the Han emperor is well.”[2]

Words of kinship did the same work. In 162 BC the Han emperor wrote that he and the chanyu were the father and mother of their peoples.[2] In the covenant sworn under the emperor Yuan the two courts became “one family”.[15] The Göktürks turned the same words to their own use. In 584 Ishbara wrote to the Sui emperor that the emperor was his wife’s father and so his father-in-law.[7] As the emperor’s son-in-law, he wrote, he was like a son. All the sheep and horses of his country were the emperor’s, and all the emperor’s silks were his.[7] The envoy Yu Qingze came to him. Ishbara received him seated and said that his house had bowed to no one. Zhangsun Sheng answered that the katun was the emperor’s daughter and the khan therefore the emperor’s son-in-law. Ishbara said to his officers, “I must bow to my father-in-law”, and knelt.[27] In 585 he wrote as a subject: “Heaven has not two suns, and the earth has not two kings; the emperor of the great Sui is the true emperor.”[7] When he was asked to call himself a subject, he asked what the word meant. His followers told him that in the Sui a subject was what the Göktürks called a slave.[7]

The western courts spoke of friendship. In 568 the envoys of Istemi swore that the Göktürks would be friends of the Romans.[28] By the treaty that Istemi made when Zemarchos came, the friend of the Romans was the friend of the Göktürks, and their enemy was the same.[24] A khan’s letter to the emperor Maurice opened: “To the king of the Romans, the Chagan, the great lord of seven races and master of seven zones of the world.”[29] It is the only message of a Göktürk ruler to Constantinople that survives, and it survives in Greek.

Oaths and treaties

Oaths sealed the agreements, and each side swore in its own way. In 568 Maniakh and his companions raised their hands and swore the greatest oath.[28] They called curses on themselves, on Istemi and on their whole people if they lied.[28] In 626 Taizong had a white horse killed and swore a covenant with Ilig Khan at the Wei river.[23] In the eleventh century Kashgari records an oath on iron. The Kirghiz, the Yabaqu and the Kipchak made alliances by laying an unsheathed sword crosswise before the other party and saying: “May this iron go in blue and come out red.”[30]

The oldest full account is Han. Under the emperor Yuan the envoys Han Chang and Zhang Meng climbed a hill east of the Nuo river with a chanyu and killed a white horse. The chanyu stirred wine with a knife and with a cup made from the skull of the Yuezhi king whom Laoshang had defeated, and they drank the blood together. The oath ran as follows. From now on Han and Xiongnu are one family. Neither will deceive or attack the other. Thieves are reported, punished and the goods repaid. If one is attacked, the other sends troops. Whoever breaks the oath first receives the misfortune of Heaven, and so do his descendants.[15] Officials at the Han court objected that the envoys had no right to bind the Han house to a barbarian oath for all generations. The emperor fined Han Chang and Zhang Meng but left the oath in force.[15]

Treaties fixed frontiers by natural lines. In 585 Ishbara and the Sui took the desert as the border.[7] At Margus on the Danube the Huns and Romans met on horseback, and each side swore to the peace in its ancestral manner. The treaty bound Rome to receive no more fugitives, to hand back those who had fled, to keep the markets open on equal terms, and to pay the Huns seven hundred pounds of gold a year.[31]

The steppe side in the inscriptions

The Orkhon inscriptions give the steppe view of the exchange. Bilge Khan says that he came to terms with the Chinese: “They give gold and silver and raw silk and figured silk in such quantity, and without our having to ask.”[32] Then he warns his people: “The words of the Chinese people are sweet and their silks are soft. With sweet words and soft silks they draw in distant peoples and settle them close.”[32] The speaker takes the gifts and calls them a danger in the same breath.

The inscriptions also show what a khan expected of a neighbour’s envoys. When the Tatabı submitted to the Chinese khan, Bilge Khan said that their envoy, their good word and their request did not come, and he campaigned against them in the summer.[33] Tonyukuk reports what a fugitive told him. The khan of the Nine Oguz had sent one envoy to the Chinese and another to the Kitan, with the proposal that the Chinese strike from the south, the Kitan from the east and the Oguz from the north.[34] The envoys were meant to build a coalition against the Göktürks.

Modern interpretations

Modern accounts disagree on what the exchange of brides, gifts and titles was. Some scholars see it as tribute that the steppe paid or received under Chinese names. Others see it as a subsidy that bought quiet from the nomads. A third group sees it as trade by other means. The records show the forms and the words. They do not settle which interpretation is right. The interpretations are weighed in Tribute Missions and Bestowals and in Heqin.

References

  1. ^ Şahin 2018, p. 140
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Shiji, juan 110
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
  4. ^ Şahin 2018, p. 136
  5. ^ a b Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 9
  6. ^ a b Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 51; Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
  8. ^ a b c Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
  9. ^ Tabari; Nöldeke 1879, p. 167, 252
  10. ^ Yavuz 2025, p. 278–279
  11. ^ John of Ephesus; Smith 1860, p. 387–388
  12. ^ John of Ephesus; Smith 1860, p. 389–390
  13. ^ a b Theophanes the Confessor; Scott 1997, p. 447
  14. ^ Nikephoros; Mango 1990, p. 55–57
  15. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Han Shu, juan 94
  16. ^ Hou Han Shu, juan 90
  17. ^ Priscus; Müller 1851, fr. 8, p. 81
  18. ^ Ibn Fadlan; Canard 1958, p. 115
  19. ^ Ibn Fadlan; Canard 1958, p. 138
  20. ^ Ibn Fadlan
  21. ^ a b Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 51
  22. ^ a b Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194; Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 215
  23. ^ a b Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
  24. ^ a b Menander Protector; Blockley 1985, fr. 19.1
  25. ^ Kül Tegin inscription
  26. ^ Kül Tegin inscription
  27. ^ Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84; Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 176
  28. ^ a b c Menander Protector; Blockley 1985, fr. 10.1, p. 117
  29. ^ Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, p. 188
  30. ^ Dīvān Lughāt al-Turk; al-Kāshgharī 1072–1074, p. 280
  31. ^ Priscus; Müller 1851, fr. 1, p. 72
  32. ^ a b Kül Tegin inscription
  33. ^ Bilge Khan inscription
  34. ^ Tonyukuk inscription

Sources

Literature

  • Maḥmūd al-Kāshgharī, Dīwān Lughat al-Turk (1072–1074)
  • Şahin, Göktürk diplomasisi (552–630) (2018)
  • Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
  • Theodor Nöldeke, Geschichte der Perser und Araber zur Zeit der Sasaniden. Aus der arabischen Chronik des Tabari übersetzt und mit ausführlichen Erläuterungen und Ergänzungen versehn (1879)
  • R. C. Blockley, The History of Menander the Guardsman: Introductory Essay, Text, Translation, and Historiographical Notes (1985)
  • Michael Whitby, Mary Whitby (trans.), The History of Theophylact Simocatta (1986)
  • Cyril Mango, Roger Scott (trans.), The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor: Byzantine and Near Eastern History AD 284–813 (1997)
  • Cyril Mango (ed., trans.), Nikephoros, Patriarch of Constantinople: Short History (1990)
  • Karl Müller (ed.), Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, Bd. IV (darin: Menandri Protectoris fragmenta, griechisch mit lateinischer Übersetzung) (1851)
  • R. Payne Smith (trans.), The Third Part of the Ecclesiastical History of John, Bishop of Ephesus (1860)
  • 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)
  • Ildikó Ecsedy, Trade-and-War Relations between the Turks and China in the Second Half of the Sixth Century (1968)

Related

What links here2

Institutions and Titles
Captives and the Unfree · Envoys and Embassies

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Diplomacy of the Steppe Empires.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/institutions/diplomacy-of-the-steppe-empires/

Last revised: 8 November 2026