The Zhou Shu lists the weapons of the Göktürks in one sentence: bows and arrows, whistling arrows, armour, lances, sabres and swords.[1] It adds that at the belt they also wore an ornament it calls futu.[1] One rendering makes the futu a dagger.[2] A second rendering takes it for ornaments worked in hollow and relief.[3]

The Sui Shu gives nearly the same list and calls the bows horn bows.[4] It adds that the Göktürks were skilled at riding and shooting.[4] The Bei Shi and the Tongdian copy the list from these two.[5]

The horn bow is rendered in two ways. One rendering is a bow of horn.[6] A second is a bow decorated with horn.[7] A bow named after its horn points to the composite bow of the steppe, which has a layer of horn on its belly.

A Chinese verdict of 564

A Chinese commander who had fought beside the Göktürks thought little of their equipment. In 563 the Zhou general Yang Zhong marched against the Qi together with the army of Mukan Khan. Early in 564 the joint attack on Jinyang failed.[1] Afterwards Yang Zhong told the emperor that the Göktürks’ armour and weapons were poor, their ranks and rewards light, and their chiefs many and without laws.[1] The Zhou envoys, he said, had talked up the Göktürks’ strength for their own gain.[1] The emperor did not follow his advice.[1]

Foreign observers

At the court of Tong Yabgu near Suyab, the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang saw the khan’s troops. They carried lances, standards and bows and were mounted on camels and horses.[8]

Theophylact Simocatta, the historian of the Byzantine emperor Maurice, says that the Göktürk realm had grown rich on payments from Persia.[9] In his words they “hammered out gold couches, tables, goblets, thrones, pedestals, horse-trappings, suits of armour”, and everything that the intoxication of wealth could devise.[10] The Persians defeated them. The thrones, tables and couches of gold and the horse-trappings then went to Persia as booty.[11] The defeat is the war of 588 and 589.

The Armenian History of the Caucasian Albanians describes the northern army that fell upon Partaw in Albania in 628, during the Caucasus campaign. It calls this army Khazar.[12] The defenders trembled at “their bent and well-aimed bows”, whose arrows “rained down upon them like heavy hailstones”.[13] In the camp of the northern ruler’s son, soldiers with shield and spear kept watch over his court.[14]

The inscriptions

The Göktürks’ own inscriptions speak of weapons in the telling of battles. The Kül Tegin inscription describes the fight against the Chinese general Čača Seŋün, when Kül Tegin was twenty-one. More than a hundred arrows struck his armour and his coat, and none touched his face or his head: yarakıŋa yalmasıŋa yüz artuk okun urtı.[15] The battle belongs to the wars of the Second Khaganate.

Painted arms of the Turfan oasis

The Berlin expedition took from a Manichaean ruin at Qocho the fragment of a wall painting of marching warriors, sixty-five centimetres high. Each warrior carries a long black-shafted lance with a banner tied to it, a strung bow on the left and a very large quiver on the right. He wears high boots. No striking weapon is visible.[16] A paper drawing from Yarkhoto near Turfan shows an armoured rider. He wears a helmet with a winged ornament, a neck guard of long plates and trousers of plates trimmed with leopard skin, and he carries a banner lance with a five-pointed pennant. A black case for bow and arrows, marked with the yin-yang sign, hangs over his left leg. Below it hangs a short sword, straight or barely curved, with an oval guard.[17] The helmet recalled to its describer the Sasanian winged helmet. The drawing is a late East Asian version of a legendary scene known from older paintings of the oasis cities. It therefore shows a legend and not an army.[17] Neither picture is securely dated, and neither is a Göktürk work.

Scholarly views

The Göktürks may have fought both as mounted cavalry and at close quarters with spears and lances.[18] The Ashina, as smiths, may also have supplied weapons and armour to the Rouran and to others. This links the arms of the Göktürks to their ironworking.[19]

None of these passages describes the shape or the size of a weapon. What they give is the names of the arms, a Zhou general’s critical opinion of them, and the arrows in Kül Tegin’s armour.

The Kutadgu Bilig, written at the Karakhanid court in 1069–1070, names a warrior’s arms as sword, battle-axe (baldu), bow and arrow.[20] Its advice to the commander of the army sets an order of fighting. Arrows come from a distance, spears at closer range, then sword and battle-axe in the press, with the archers dismounted.[21] These are rules for an army of the eleventh century, not a description of the Göktürks.

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
  2. ^ Mau-tsai 1958, Turkish edition, p. 21
  3. ^ Julien 1864, p. 333
  4. ^ a b Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
  5. ^ Bei Shi (History of the Northern Dynasties), juan 99; Tongdian, juan 197
  6. ^ Julien 1864, p. 351
  7. ^ Mau-tsai 1958, Turkish edition, p. 63
  8. ^ Life of Xuanzang, juan 2; Beal 1911, p. 42
  9. ^ Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, iii.6.10–11, pp. 80–81
  10. ^ Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, iii.6.11, p. 81
  11. ^ Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, iii.6.14, p. 81
  12. ^ Movsēs Dasxurancʿi; Dowsett 1961, II.11, p. 83
  13. ^ Movsēs Dasxurancʿi; Dowsett 1961, II.11, p. 84
  14. ^ Movsēs Dasxurancʿi; Dowsett 1961, II.14, p. 100
  15. ^ Kül Tegin inscription
  16. ^ von Le Coq 1913, pl. 2c
  17. ^ a b von Le Coq 1913, pl. 48
  18. ^ Yavuz 2025, p. 220
  19. ^ Yavuz 2025, p. 210
  20. ^ Kutadgu Bilig; Dankoff 1983, couplet 2055
  21. ^ Kutadgu Bilig; Dankoff 1983, couplets 2370, 2376–2377

Sources

Literature

  • Stanislas Julien, Documents historiques sur les Tou-kioue (Turcs) (1864)
  • Liu Mau-tsai, Çin Kaynaklarına Göre Doğu Türkleri (1958, Turkish edition)
  • Samuel Beal (trans.), The Life of Hiuen-Tsiang by the Shaman Hwui Li (1911)
  • Michael Whitby, Mary Whitby (trans.), The History of Theophylact Simocatta (1986)
  • Charles J. F. Dowsett (trans.), The History of the Caucasian Albanians by Movsēs Dasxuranci (1961)
  • Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
  • Albert von Le Coq, Chotscho. Facsimile-Wiedergaben der wichtigeren Funde der ersten Königlich Preussischen Expedition nach Turfan in Ost-Turkistan (1913)

Related

What links here4

Institutions and Titles
Khazar Mail and the Armourers of the Caucasus · Raw Materials and Trade among the Turkic Peoples · Warfare of the Steppe Empires
Customs & Pastimes
Mounted Archery

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Göktürk Weapons.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/institutions/gokturk-weapons/

Last revised: 8 November 2026