The Göktürk khans sent word by envoys, letters, spoken messages, signs and relay horses. The sources show each of these in passing. Most of what is known comes from Chinese and Greek reports of embassies, from the stone inscriptions of the eighth century and from one Sogdian stone of the sixth. In the sources used here, no text describes a Göktürk post as an institution.

Envoys

In 545 the Western Wei chose a Sogdian, An Nuopantuo, to lead its embassy to Bumin.[1] Sogdian merchants held the routes between China and the steppe, and the choice reflects that. Istemi’s own envoy to Constantinople was the Sogdian Maniakh.[2] He carried greetings, a gift of raw silk and a letter.[2] After his death the envoy was Tagma, who held the rank of tarkan, and Maniakh’s young son, who had inherited his father’s rank, came next after him.[3]

Rome answered with its own envoy. On the edge of Sogdiana, Göktürk men led Zemarchos through a fire and swung burning branches over his baggage.[4] Menander’s report of the embassy of Zemarchos is the only description of a Göktürk rite by a man who stood in it.

Göktürk envoys came to stay. When Valentinos set out for the Göktürks in 576, he took with him 106 Göktürks who had lived in Constantinople for a long time.[5] They had come with earlier embassies.[5] The first Göktürk leader he met, Turxanthos, asked why the Romans took his envoys to Byzantium through the Caucasus, as though there were no other road.[5]

A messenger could also carry an insult. Anagui sent a man to call Bumin his blacksmith slave. Bumin killed the messenger and broke with the Rouran.[1]

The inscriptions treat the coming of an envoy as a sign of obedience. Bilge Khan says of the Tatabı, who had gone over to the Chinese khan, that their envoy did not come with his good news and his requests, and he campaigned against them in the summer.[6] The word for the envoy is yalabaç.[6]

The Kül Tegin stone lists the delegations that came to his funeral. It names a general for the Khitan and the Tatabı and an envoy of the Chinese khan with silk, gold and silver.[7] It names a delegate of the Tibetan khan, a general and a tarkan for the peoples of the west, two seal-keepers of the khan of the Türgesh and a delegate of the khan of the Kirghiz.[7] The Chinese khan’s nephew, a general, came to build the tomb and to make the carving and the inscribed stone.[7] The Tang court sent a general and a secretary with a sealed letter of condolence and a stele whose text the emperor had composed himself.[8]

Chinese envoys went to the khans with the emperor’s letters. In 584 Yu Qingze brought a letter to Ishbara.[9] Ishbara received him seated, and in the end knelt, took the letter and placed it on his head.[9] The embassy of Yu Qingze is the fullest account of such a reception. In 608 Cui Junsu brought a letter to Heshana, who at first would not rise to receive it.[10] At the court of the western khan that Xuanzang visited, envoys of China and of Gaochang were brought in with their letters and gifts, and the khan looked them over himself.[11]

Letters

In the sources used here, no letter of a Göktürk khan survives in the language in which it was written. The letters come in retellings, in Greek and in Chinese.

The letter that Maniakh brought to Justin II was written in what Menander calls Scythian. An interpreter read it to the emperor.[2] The language is argued. The letter may have been written in Old Turkic.[12] Or Scythian is Menander’s loose word for the languages of Central Asia, and Sogdian is more likely.[13]

A later letter of a Göktürk khan to the emperor Maurice survives in Greek in the history of Theophylact. Its salutation runs: “To the king of the Romans, the Chagan, the great lord of seven races and master of seven zones of the world.”[14] The letter to Maurice lists the khan’s conquests.[15]

Ishbara’s letter to the Sui emperor of 584 opens with a date, the year chen, then the khan’s full style and the words with which he writes to the emperor.[16] It answers what the Sui envoy Xu Pinghe had told him in words.[16] The Sui Shu gives the letter in Chinese and does not say in which language or script the khan sent it.[16] Earlier, Ishbara’s wife, the princess Qianjin, had written to the emperor and asked to be counted as one of his children.[16] In 585 Ishbara sent a memorial, and his seventh son Kuhanzhen carried it to the Sui court.[16] The letters belong to the submission of Ishbara.

Letters also served as safe-conducts. The king of Gaochang wrote twenty-four letters for the countries along the road of the pilgrim Xuanzang.[17] In his letter to the western khan he asked that the countries of the west pass the pilgrim on with relays of horses.[18] In the account of the visit to the western khan, the khan had a young man found who knew Chinese and the languages of other countries. He had him write letters of commendation to the countries on the way and escort the pilgrim as far as Kapisa.[19]

Scripts and languages

The Zhou Shu says that the written characters of the Göktürks resembled those of the Hu.[1] The Sui Shu says that they had no writing and cut notches in wood to make their agreements.[16] The debate on the origin of the Old Turkic script weighs the two notices.

The one monument of the sixth century is the Bugut inscription of about 584, cut in Sogdian script and in the Sogdian language.[20] The script was in official use in the khaganate in the last quarter of the sixth century.[20] The stone is the plainest evidence of what the Sogdians gave the Göktürk state: writing, and with it a chancery.[21]

The oldest known runiform text is the Çoyren inscription, dated between 688 and 691, and the great monuments are of the eighth century.[22] The inscriptions call a piece of writing bitig and the act of writing biti-.[7] The Kül Tegin stone closes with a colophon in the words of its writer: Yollug Tegin, the nephew of Kül Tegin, wrote all of it, sitting twenty days at the stone and the wall.[7] On the Bilge Khan stone the same man writes that he sat a month and four days.[6] Bilge Khan may have composed the text beforehand and given it to Yollug Tegin to write on the stones.[23] Tonyukuk says in his inscription that he had the text written.[24] For the carving, Bilge Khan asked the Chinese khan for craftsmen, and the Chinese khan sent the carvers of his own court.[6]

Writing on paper in this script is known from the Uyghur age. The Irk Bitig is the one long text in the runiform script on paper, in the form of a book.[25] Its colophon names the scribe, the man he wrote for and the day.[25]

Seals

The word for the seal is older than the Kutadgu Bilig. Among the delegations of the Kül Tegin stone are two tamgaçı, the men who bear the royal seal and use it.[26] They came from the khan of the Türgesh.[7] The tamga is a mark that says whose a thing is, and a seal can carry it.

The Kutadgu Bilig of 1069 to 1070 is too late to say what a Göktürk seal-keeper did. It shows the word at a later court. There the tamğa is the seal of office, the king hands it to his vizier, and letters are sealed with it.[27]

The Chinese court sealed what it sent. The Sui emperor’s letter that Ishbara placed on his head was a sealed letter.[9] The Tang court sent a sealed letter of condolence after Kül Tegin’s death.[8]

Signs and notched wood

The Zhou Shu says that the Göktürks cut notches in wood to record the number of troops, horses or livestock they levied. An arrow with a head of jin, gold or metal, went with the wood, and the whole was sealed with wax as a token of trust.[1] It is a record that needed no script. The evidence is given under tally sticks and the golden arrow. The Wei Shu says that the Rouran, before them, counted their troops at first with sheep droppings and later learned to notch wood as a record.[28]

In the west an arrow became the sign of a command. The western khan Ishbara Tolis gave an arrow to each of the ten men he set over the parts of his realm, and so the ten were called the Ten Arrows.[29] Centuries later the Arabic writer an-Nadim was told that when “the great Turkish king” wished to write to a lesser king, he used characters traced on an arrow.[30]

Messages in war

The Tonyukuk inscription shows messages passing in war. News reaches the Göktürks through a kürüg. The word has been read as spy, as messenger and, in the latest reading, as fugitive.[31] The first man brings word that a khan has seated himself over the Nine Oguz and has sent men to the Chinese and to the Khitan.[24]

On the march to Bolchu three fugitives came one after another with the same word: their khan had led out his army, and the army of the Ten Arrows had set out to the last man. Tonyukuk sent word of this to the khan. The khan sent word back: stay where you are, do not ride out, keep a good watch.[24] To Apa Tarkan he sent a secret message against Tonyukuk.[24] After the victory the Göktürks sent word that same night to the peoples of the defeated. The begs of the Ten Arrows came in with all their people and bowed.[24] In these passages word is sent, and no carrier is named.[24]

Relay horses

Xuanzang asked the new shad at Kunduz for envoys and for post horses, which his biography writes wuluo.[32] Pelliot reads the word as the oldest recorded form of the Turkic ulaq, the relay horse.[33] A Turkish handbook adds that the change of horses at fixed stations was a system known in the Göktürk state.[34] The biography does not describe the stations.[32]

Zemarchos found help from Göktürk dependants on his way home. The leader of the Ugurs, who acted as the principal deputy of the Göktürk ruler west of the Volga, warned the embassy of an ambush and gave it water-skins for the desert.[35][36] From the lake beyond the river Oekh a courier named George rode ahead with twelve Göktürks by a shorter road through waterless desert.[37] After the sea voyage Zemarchos rode the Roman public post to Constantinople.[38]

The Tang built a post of its own on the steppe road. When the Tiele chiefs, the Uyghurs among them, had submitted to the Tang, the emperor ordered sixty-eight post stations set up south of the desert and stocked with horses, milk and meat for the envoys.[39] The Zizhi tongjian calls the road the Road for Paying Court to the Heavenly Khan.[40] The occasion was the banquet of the Wine Fountain.

Under the Uyghurs a relay post is recorded on the steppe. The account of Tamim ibn Bahr, who travelled to the Uyghur capital probably in 821, shows relays and a postal service set up north of the Tian Shan.[41] Only the men of the relay service lived along the road, in tents.[42] The fastest means of travel was a relay of horses, which the cold allowed for six months of the year.[43]

Limits of the evidence

The sources used here show envoys, letters, seals and horses. They do not show the rules behind them. No source names a Göktürk office for the post, a number of stations, a rank for riders or a form of the khan’s order.

One line of the undated Jabogan stone has the words bitig belde, “the letter is at the waist”. A scholar proposed that the whole text could be about the medieval post.[44] The stone has no date, and the proposal cannot be used for the Göktürk age.

References

  1. ^ a b c d Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
  2. ^ a b c Menander Protector; Blockley 1985, fr. 10.1
  3. ^ Menander Protector; Dindorf 1871, p. 53
  4. ^ Menander Protector; Blockley 1985, fr. 10.3
  5. ^ a b c Menander Protector; Blockley 1985, fr. 19.1
  6. ^ a b c d Bilge Khan inscription
  7. ^ a b c d e f Kül Tegin inscription
  8. ^ a b Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
  9. ^ a b c Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84; Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 176
  10. ^ Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84; Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 181
  11. ^ Life of Xuanzang, juan 2; Beal 1911, p. 43
  12. ^ Yavuz 2025, p. 285
  13. ^ Blockley 1985, p. 263
  14. ^ Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, p. 188
  15. ^ Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, p. 188–191
  16. ^ a b c d e f Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
  17. ^ Life of Xuanzang, juan 1; Beal 1911, p. 30
  18. ^ Life of Xuanzang, juan 1; Beal 1911, p. 30–31
  19. ^ Life of Xuanzang, juan 2; Beal 1911, p. 44
  20. ^ a b Golden 1992, p. 151
  21. ^ de la Vaissière 2005a
  22. ^ Golden 1992, p. 152
  23. ^ Tekin o. J., p. 13–14
  24. ^ a b c d e f Tonyukuk inscription
  25. ^ a b Tekin 1993
  26. ^ Erdal 2004, p. 148
  27. ^ Kutadgu Bilig; Dankoff 1983, couplets 1036, 2902, 3275, 4046
  28. ^ Wei Shu, juan 103
  29. ^ Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194; Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 215
  30. ^ Golden 1992, p. 173
  31. ^ Tekin 1994, p. 5, 13, 14, 32; 102, 110, 112; Orkun 1994, p. 5, 13, 14, 32; 102, 110, 112
  32. ^ a b Life of Xuanzang, juan 2
  33. ^ Pelliot 1929, p. 220
  34. ^ Ögel 2000, p. 340
  35. ^ Menander Protector; Dindorf 1871, p. 55
  36. ^ Golden 1992, p. 130
  37. ^ Menander Protector; Dindorf 1871, p. 54
  38. ^ Menander Protector; Dindorf 1871, p. 56
  39. ^ Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217; Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 198
  40. ^ Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 198
  41. ^ de la Vaissière 2005a, p. 311
  42. ^ Sinor 1990, p. 337
  43. ^ Sinor 1990, p. 339
  44. ^ Nevskaya 2012, p. 46–47

Sources

Literature

  • R. C. Blockley, The History of Menander the Guardsman: Introductory Essay, Text, Translation, and Historiographical Notes (1985)
  • Ludwig Dindorf (ed.), Historici Graeci minores, Bd. II: Menander Protector et Agathias (1871)
  • Michael Whitby, Mary Whitby (trans.), The History of Theophylact Simocatta (1986)
  • Samuel Beal (trans.), The Life of Hiuen-Tsiang by the Shaman Hwui Li (1911)
  • Étienne de la Vaissière, Sogdian Traders: A History (2005)
  • Marcel Erdal, A Grammar of Old Turkic (2004)
  • Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
  • Denis Sinor (ed.), The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (1990)
  • Paul Pelliot, Neuf notes sur des questions d'Asie Centrale (1929)
  • Bahaeddin Ögel, Türk Kültür Tarihine Giriş I: Türklerde köy ve şehir hayatı (2000)
  • Robert Dankoff (trans.), Wisdom of Royal Glory (Kutadgu Bilig): A Turko-Islamic Mirror for Princes (1983)
  • Irina Nevskaya, An Old Turkic Inscription Found in the Vicinity of the Village Jabogan of the Republic Altai: Its Paleographic Analisys and Reading (türkisch: Altay Cumhuriyeti Jabogan Kasabası Çevresinde Bulunan Eski Türkçe Bir Yazıt: Metin ve Paleografik İnceleme) (2012)
  • Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
  • Talat Tekin, Irk Bitig: The Book of Omens (1993)
  • Talât Tekin, Orhon Yazıtları. Kül Tigin, Bilge Kağan, Tunyukuk (o. J.)
  • Talât Tekin, Tunyukuk Yazıtı (1994)
  • Hüseyin Namık Orkun, Eski Türk Yazıtları (1994)

Related

What links here4

Battles & Events
Xuanzang's visit to Tong Yabgu
Institutions and Titles
Tally Sticks and the Golden Arrow · Trade Routes of the Steppe
Sources
Jabogan inscription

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Post and Communication.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/institutions/post-and-communication/

Last revised: 8 November 2026