Külüg Chur

Külüg Chur is the first of the great offices of the Göktürks in the Tongdian and the Jiu Tang Shu.^[1] The Chinese write it 屈律啜, quluchuo.^[1]

The office in the sources

The Tongdian and the Jiu Tang Shu describe the order in nearly the same words.^[1] The khan’s sons and younger brothers are tegins. The men who lead the troops of a separate division are shads.^[1] Then come the great offices: first the quluchuo, then the apa, the xielifa, the tudun and the sijin.^[1] The Jiu Tang Shu adds that these offices passed down the generations and had no fixed number of holders.^[2] When a father or an elder brother died, a son or a younger brother took his place.^[2]

The Xin Tang Shu orders the great ministers differently.^[3] It names the yabgu first and the quluchuo second. The list runs on to the dagan and a total of twenty-eight grades, all hereditary.^[3] For the western Göktürks the Jiu Tang Shu writes the title 屈利啜, quli chuo, and names it after the yijin.^[2] The Tongdian gives the same western list.^[4]

Reconstruction of the title

The third character, 啜, renders the rank chur.^[5] The first two, 屈律, have been reconstructed in more than one way. One reconstruction renders the whole title Kül Chur.^[5] A second, Külüg Chur, takes the first part to be külüg, “famous”, the word with which the Kül Tegin inscription praises the founding khans.^[6] The Chinese write külüg as chü-lu in the name of the Uyghur general Külüg Baga.^[7] An earlier attempt to match the titles of the Tang lists with Turkic words left the title among those too doubtful to identify.^[8]

The inscriptions also know a title kül čur.^[9] The Bilge Khan inscription names a Kül Čur at the head of the Tardush begs when Bilge Khan came to the throne.^[9]^[10] No source says whether that title and 屈律啜 are one.