Shad

A shad commanded a wing of the realm or a subject people. He was a prince of the Ashina.^[1] The office sits second in the Göktürk order, below the yabgu. It is the rank at which the men who later became khans are usually first met.^[2]

The office in the sources

The Zhou Shu lists it second among the great offices, after the yabgu and before the tegin, in a hierarchy of twenty-eight hereditary grades.^[2] The Sui Shu gives the same sequence.^[3] Gerard Clauson’s interpretation of the Ongi inscription stands against this. He holds that among the Göktürks šad named an office and was not a rank handed from father to son. He suggests governor-general and commander-in-chief as the nearest modern equivalent.^[4]

The Kül Tegin inscription names the shad in the founding formula of the restored state. İltiriš set the Tölis and the Tarduš in order there, and gave them a yabgu and a shad.^[5] The two offices are the two wings, east and west. They are established in the same breath as the people they govern.^[1]

The Ongin inscription shows the office from the side of one family. The speaker’s father receives the title shad from a khan in the course of a war.^[6] Later the stone calls him “my father the shad” when it gives his words to the khan.^[6] The Tariat inscription of the Uyghur steppe empire lists the tribes under a shad. On its north face the third line names the tribes under the yabgu and the fourth line those under the shad.^[7]

The rank of an heir

Bilge Khan tells his own case, and it is the clearest statement of what the office was for. When his uncle became khan, he became tegin. Because Heaven willed it, at fourteen he was set as shad over the Tarduš people.^[8] He then spent the next years campaigning at the head of that wing and came to the throne out of it.

A boy of fourteen does not command an army, and the point of the appointment was not that he should. A shadship gave a prince of the house a people, a following and a name of his own. It did so early enough that by the time a succession fell open he had a record. The office is therefore a piece of dynastic machinery as much as a military one. It was the place where the house tested its young men in public.

Shads in the west

The rank travelled with the western command. Tardu Shad held it under Tong Yabgu. Börü Shad, the yabgu’s nephew, led the army that came through the Caspian gates in the campaign of 627. The Armenian account calls him by the title and not by a name.^[9] Movses Dasxuranci names the commander of the whole force Jebu Xak’an, which is two Turkic titles and no name at all, yabgu and khagan. His second is simply Šad.^[9] The Armenian text makes that Šad his son. The Chinese tradition makes the Shad of 627 a nephew of the yabgu. The two do not agree. A commander known to a foreign chronicler only as “the shad” is a fair measure of how far the rank carried. A neighbour recognised it without needing the man behind it explained.

At the other end of the khaganate’s life the office still does the same work, and does it badly. When the Second Khaganate fell, the state was split between a boy khan, his mother, and two shads commanding east and west. The shads were the men with the troops. An office designed to give princes of the house a command becomes, in a weak reign, the mechanism by which the house comes apart.

South of the Iron Gate another shad sat at Huo. About 630 the eldest son of Tong Yabgu held the rank there and governed the small states of the country. When he was poisoned, his son seized the rank.^[10]^[11] In one account, that son took the higher title of yabgu in 643 or 644.^[12] Earlier, when the Hephthalite country fell into disorder, the Göktürks had sent a Tong Shad to take it by force. The Sui Shu does not say in which year or by whose order.^[13]

Origin of the word

Whether the title is Turkic or borrowed is argued, and an Iranian derivation is the commonest proposal. Gerard Clauson, in his interpretation of the Ongi inscription, regards šad as an Iranian word of the same stem as shah.^[4] The evidence is thin on both sides. It consists of the shape of the word rather than of any attested transfer. One feature of the shape is plain: the word begins with š, which the language took in at the start of words largely through borrowings. Šad stands among those words already in the inscriptions.^[14] Two inscriptions of the Uyghur steppe empire, Tariat and Tes, spell it with č instead, a replacement found with other foreign words that begin with a sibilant. The Orkhon inscriptions count it in the ordinary way: eki šad, “two shads”.^[15]^[16]

Turkic Atlas sets out the ranks together under the title of khan, and what governed who could hold them under the Töre.

References

^ a b Kül Tegin inscription
^ a b Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
^ Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
^ a b Clauson 2011 (translation); original 1957, p. 35
^ Kül Tegin inscription; Tekin 1968, p. 373, 385
^ a b Ölmez 2016, p. 52–53
^ Aydın 2013, p. 18
^ Bilge Khan inscription
^ a b Movsēs Dasxurancʿi
^ Life of Xuanzang, juan 2
^ Markwart 1938, p. 44
^ Markwart 1938, p. 45
^ Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 83
^ Erdal 2004, p. 103
^ Erdal 2004, p. 103,388
^ Tekin 1968, p. 373, 390

Sources

Literature

Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
Fikret Turan, Eski Türkçeden Orta Türkçeye Askeri Rütbe ve Unvanlar / Military Ranks and Titles From Old Turkic to Middle Turkic (2018)
Marcel Erdal, A Grammar of Old Turkic (2004)
Talât Tekin, A Grammar of Orkhon Turkic (1968)
Josef Markwart, Wehrot und Arang. Untersuchungen zur mythischen und geschichtlichen Landeskunde von Ostiran (1938)
Mehmet Ölmez, Ongi Yazıtı, Sorunlar ve Çözüm Önerileri (2016)
Erhan Aydın, Tariat Yazıtı’nın kuzey yüzünün 5. satırı üzerine yeni okuma ve anlamlandırma önerileri (2013)
Gerard Clauson; übersetzt von F. Yelda Şahin, Ongin Yazıtı (2011 (translation); original 1957)