Tudun

A tudun was the man a khan left behind in a country he had beaten. He did not replace its ruler. He stood next to the ruler, watched him and saw that the tribute came in.^[1]

The rank

The Zhou Shu puts the office fifth in the order of the great offices: yabgu, shad, tegin, ilteber, tudun. It adds that there were twenty-eight grades in all and that every one of them was hereditary.^[2] The Bei Shi and the Sui Shu repeat the sequence.^[3] The Xin Tang Shu gives a longer list of the twenty-eight. It sets the tudun between the ilteber and the irkin.^[1]

The office at work

The clearest description is of the western khaganate at its height. Tong Yabgu subdued the Tiele and brought Persia and Kapisa under him. He put together an army of several hundred thousand bows and moved his court to the Thousand Springs north of Chach. He then gave the kings of the western countries the title of ilteber. He set one tudun over them to supervise them and to press in the revenue.^[1] The local dynasties stayed on their thrones. The tudun stood beside them as the khan’s overseer.^[1]

The same arrangement reached the other end of the steppe. The Sui Shu has Ishbara Khan send a tudun named Pan Die to govern the Khitan. The Khitan were then living in ten divisions north of Liaoxi and deciding their wars in a council of chiefs. The Sui Shu also says that the Göktürks regularly kept three tuduns over the Shiwei, who had no rulers of their own at all.^[4] A people with a ruler got one overseer. A people without rulers got three.^[4]

The tudun as ruler

An office built to watch other men’s governments will sooner or later govern. In the Ten Arrows, the Tong Tudun attacked his own khan. He drove the khan out of the western steppe and joined the chiefs who set up a rival. The khan recovered his lands only when the tudun was killed.^[1] A generation later, the ruler of the Duolu sent the tudun of Chach against the Yabgu Khan of the western half. The tudun killed the Yabgu Khan and annexed his country.^[1]

The eastern steppe shows the office from the other side. The Tang chapters trace İltiriš to the following of a frontier chief under the Chinese protectorate, whose family had held a hereditary tudun-chur rank. The man who brought back the khaganate in 682 came out of the administration that had replaced it.^[5]

Later use

At Bezeklik, at the door of the cella of temple 9, the name tablet of the foremost of three painted men is read, with doubt, buyra s(a)li tutug, “the tutug Buyra of the family Sali”. The reader regards Sali as a family that flourished long at Qocho.^[6] The decipherment is doubtful. The source does not say whether the word is the Göktürk tudun. The date of the painting is uncertain.^[6]

Origin of the word

Modern accounts disagree on whether the title is Turkic or borrowed. The proposals run from an Iranian derivation to a term taken over from an older steppe administration. The evidence on every side is the shape of the word. Three other titles of the inscriptions are taken to be borrowings from Chinese: tutuk, from the governor’s title 都督; çigşi, from the prefect’s title 刺史; and saŋun, from the general’s title 將軍.^[7]

Turkic Atlas sets the ranks out together under the title of khan. Under the bridle-and-halter prefectures, Turkic Atlas describes the Chinese institution that did the same work from the other direction.

References

^ a b c d e f Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 215
^ Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
^ Bei Shi (History of the Northern Dynasties), juan 99
^ a b Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
^ Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
^ a b von Le Coq 1913, pl. 30
^ Erhan 2011, p. 14, 18, 21

Sources

Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
Bei Shi (History of the Northern Dynasties), juan 99 (after Wei Shu, Zhou Shu and Sui Shu)
Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 215 (after Jiu Tangshu)

Literature

Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
Édouard Chavannes, Documents sur les Tou-Kiue (Turcs) occidentaux (1903)
Albert von Le Coq, Chotscho. Facsimile-Wiedergaben der wichtigeren Funde der ersten Königlich Preussischen Expedition nach Turfan in Ost-Turkistan (1913)
Aydın, Erhan, Yenisey Yazıtlarında Geçen Unvanlar ve Unvan Niteleyicileri (2011)