Two kinds of goods appear in the sources on the Turkic peoples. Iron, salt, ore, furs and musk came from their own lands. Silk, jade and cloth came from outside. The sources describe the second kind far better than the first.

Iron

Main articles: Göktürk Ironworking, Göktürk Weapons, Chinese Bans on the Export of Iron

The Ashina enter the Chinese histories as smiths. The Zhou Shu says that they lived on the southern slope of the Golden Mountain as ironworkers of the Rouran.[1] The Golden Mountain is the Altai.[2] In 546 Anagui, the Rouran khan, answered Bumin’s request for a marriage with the words “You are my smith slave”.[1] The Altai is one of the richest ore provinces of inner Asia, with copper, tin, gold and iron.

In 569 Göktürks in Sogdiana offered iron for sale to the Roman envoy Zemarchos.[3] Menander thought that they wished to show that they had iron mines, since iron was said to be hard to come by among them.[3]

The Xin Tang Shu describes iron in the country of the Kirghiz. There is gold, iron and tin, and after every rain iron is found. The Kirghiz make weapons of it.[4] The notice adds that this iron was regularly delivered to the Göktürks.[4] The notice is a patchwork of reports from different periods, and the delivery belongs to the time before 840.[5]

The sources name the Ashina as smiths and record an offer of iron. They describe no Göktürk forge.

Salt

Main articles: Salt among the Turkic Peoples, Tuz Köl of the Karluks

The Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam of 982 says that seven Karluk tribes took their salt from a lake called Tuz Köl.[6] Which lake it was is disputed.[7] In Tuva, a deposit of rock salt at Dus-Dag, north of Uvs Nuur, has been known “since time immemorial”.[8] Marvazī says that the Kimak had no salt of their own. Merchants brought it, and for a maund of it they obtained a fox and sable skin.[9]

No source of the Göktürk age reports salt-working, and none names a salt mine of the Ashina. Salt-working in the lands round the Altai in Bumin’s time is possible. It is not recorded.

Gold, silver and copper

Main articles: Altai, Caucasus Campaign, Gold and Silver in the Orkhon Inscriptions, Türgesh and Karluk Coinage

Gold and tin are named in the country of the Kirghiz.[4] The Altai holds copper, tin and gold. No source describes a Göktürk mine.

Gold and silver reach the Göktürks in other ways. In the Kül Tegin inscription the khan says that the Chinese give gold and silver, raw silk and figured silk in such quantity, and without being asked.[10] Theophylact Simocatta says that the Göktürk realm had grown rich on payments from Persia.[11] In his words the Göktürks “hammered out gold couches, tables, goblets, thrones, pedestals, horse-trappings, suits of armour”.[12]

The Albanian chronicle of Movses Dasxuranci tells of a northern army in the Caucasus.[13] In the second year of the Persian king Artashir, it says, the prince of the north sent his officials to the craftsmen skilled in gold, silver, wrought iron and copper. He also exacted heavy tribute from the merchants and the fishers of the Kur and the Araxes.[13] The chronicle calls the northern army Khazar. Its relation to the Göktürks is disputed.

In the sources quoted here, gold and silver reach the Göktürks as gifts, payments, booty and tribute. None of them records gold or silver mined by the Göktürks.

Silk and horses

Main articles: Border Markets, Uyghur Horse-Silk Trade, Tea among the Uyghurs

The Göktürks first appear at the Chinese frontier as traders. The Zhou Shu says that under Bumin they began to come to the frontier for silk and floss.[1] The Northern Zhou, bound to the khaganate by marriage, gave it a hundred thousand pieces of silk every year.[1] The payments were made in silk, and money or gold seldom entered them.[14]

The Göktürks gave horses in return. In 573 and again in 574 Taspar Khan sent horses to the Zhou.[15] Their value was only a fraction of the value of the Chinese presents.[14] The Göktürks of the sixth century may have had more livestock than their own herds needed. Their gifts of “the products of their land” were horses, sheep and camels, for which the courts paid in silk.[16] Under Tulan Khan the chiefs of the tribes sent the Sui ten thousand horses, twenty thousand sheep, five hundred camels and five hundred cattle. Soon afterwards they asked for markets on the frontier.[17] In 727 the Tang granted Bilge Khan a market at the western city of Shouxiang.[18] Every year several hundred thousand bolts of silk were sent to the frontier there as gifts to the Göktürks.[18]

The Uyghurs sold horses to the Tang for silk.[19] The Jiu Tang Shu says that from 758 to 760 they came every year and took forty pieces of silk for each horse, often for tens of thousands of horses.[19] On average the Tang bought 7,500 horses a year for 300,000 rolls of raw silk.[20] Tea was among the other goods that Uyghur traders bought.[21]

Furs and musk

Main article: Furs and Musk among the Turkic Peoples

The Ḥudūd lists musk and furs for the Toghuzghuz, the Tukhs and the Kirghiz, and sable-martens for the Kimak.[22] The inscription of Bilge Khan names black sables and blue squirrels among the goods that the khan won for his people.[23] In 647 the Tiele tribes were to pay the Tang a yearly tax in sable skins.[24] The Xin Tang Shu says that the levy of the Kirghiz was paid in sable and squirrel skins.[4]

Jade

Main articles: Rudan Tegin, Khotan

Jade did not come from the steppe. The Han Shu says that the country of Khotan had much jade.[25] Under Tulan Khan, the prince Rudan Tegin came to the Sui court with a staff of Khotan jade, and the emperor gave him Chinese rank and a title.[17] In 843 a white sable fur and a jade ring, which the Kirghiz had presented to the Tang throne, were sent to Princess Taihe at Taiyuan.[26] In the period of the Five Dynasties the Uyghurs of Ganzhou usually came to China to sell horses.[27] The jade they brought went to the county magistrates, and anyone who bought it against the rule was usually punished.[27]

Felt and cloth

Main article: Felt

Felt is wool matted by moisture, heat and pressure. It covers the tent, forms the floor inside it, lines the coat and serves as the saddle blanket. The Sui Shu says that the Göktürks lived in domed tents of felt.[17][1]

Woven cloth came from outside. The Xin Tang Shu says that Kirghiz women wore wool, brocade, woollen fabric and twill, which Anxi, Beiting and the Arabs sold them.[4]

Merchants and routes

Main articles: Sogdians, The Göktürk–Sasanian Trade Conflict

The Sogdians stood beside the Göktürk khans from the beginning.[28] They administered the commercial interests of the khaganate and pushed it towards Constantinople, the final market of the silk that the Göktürks drew out of China.[29] In the 560s Khosrow I of Persia refused the silk of the Göktürks and their envoys.[30] The Göktürks answered by sending their silk and their envoys around Persia to Constantinople.[31]

In the country of the Karluks, the Ḥudūd names Mirki as a village visited by merchants, and Kirminkath as a large village where merchants from everywhere reside.[32]

The sources describe the exchange of goods far better than their production. The mines, quarries and salt works of the Göktürks, if they existed, are not described.

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
  2. ^ Golden 1992, p. 120
  3. ^ a b Menander Protector; Blockley 1985, fr. 10.3, p. 117
  4. ^ a b c d e Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
  5. ^ Golden 1992, p. 178
  6. ^ Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam; Minorsky 1970, p. 54,98
  7. ^ Minorsky 1970, p. 28,184
  8. ^ Mongush 2016, p. 67
  9. ^ al-Marwazī early 12th c., p. 32; Minorsky 1942, p. 32
  10. ^ Kül Tegin inscription
  11. ^ Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, iii.6.10–11, pp. 80–81
  12. ^ Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, iii.6.11, p. 81
  13. ^ a b Movsēs Dasxurancʿi; Dowsett 1961, II.16, p. 104
  14. ^ a b Sinor 1990, p. 307
  15. ^ Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50; Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 5
  16. ^ Ecsedy 1968, p. 138,141
  17. ^ a b c Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
  18. ^ a b Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
  19. ^ a b Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 195
  20. ^ de la Vaissière 2005a, p. 309
  21. ^ Mackerras 1972, p. 47–48
  22. ^ Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam; Minorsky 1970, p. 94,96,99
  23. ^ Bilge Khan inscription
  24. ^ Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217; Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 198
  25. ^ Han Shu, juan 96
  26. ^ Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 83
  27. ^ a b Jagchid 1989, p. 168
  28. ^ Golden 1992, p. 122
  29. ^ Golden 1992, p. 128
  30. ^ Menander Protector; Dindorf 1871, p. 46–47
  31. ^ Menander Protector; Dindorf 1871, p. 47–49
  32. ^ Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam; Minorsky 1970, p. 97,98

Sources

Literature

  • Sharaf al-Zamān Ṭāhir al-Marwazī, طبائع الحيوان Ṭabāʾiʿ al-Ḥayawān (early 12th c.)
  • Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
  • Denis Sinor (ed.), The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (1990)
  • Ildikó Ecsedy, Trade-and-War Relations between the Turks and China in the Second Half of the Sixth Century (1968)
  • Étienne de la Vaissière, Sogdian Traders: A History (2005)
  • Colin Mackerras, The Uighur Empire According to the T'ang Dynastic Histories (1972)
  • R. C. Blockley, The History of Menander the Guardsman: Introductory Essay, Text, Translation, and Historiographical Notes (1985)
  • Charles J. F. Dowsett (trans.), The History of the Caucasian Albanians by Movsēs Dasxuranci (1961)
  • Michael Whitby, Mary Whitby (trans.), The History of Theophylact Simocatta (1986)
  • Ludwig Dindorf (ed.), Historici Graeci minores, Bd. II: Menander Protector et Agathias (1871)
  • V. Minorsky, Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam, "The Regions of the World": A Persian Geography 372 A.H. – 982 A.D., translated and explained, with the preface by V. V. Barthold, 2nd ed. (1970)
  • V. Minorsky, Sharaf al-Zamān Ṭāhir Marvazī on China, the Turks and India (1942)
  • Andrei A. Mongush (Андрей Александрович Монгуш), О геологическом значении некоторых топонимов Тувы (O geologicheskom znachenii nekotorykh toponimov Tuvy; On the geological roots of some toponyms in Tuva) (2016)
  • Sechin Jagchid; Van Jay Symons, Peace, War, and Trade Along the Great Wall. Nomadic-Chinese Interaction through Two Millennia (1989)

Related

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History of the Turkic peoples
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The Economy of the Steppe Empires · Trade Routes of the Steppe

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Raw Materials and Trade among the Turkic Peoples.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/institutions/raw-materials-and-trade-among-the-turkic-peoples/

Last revised: 8 November 2026