The tuğ was the standard of a steppe ruler and the visible half of his authority. Kut, the fortune Heaven granted him, could not be seen. The tuğ could be seen, and it went where he went. On the march it went before him. In camp it stood over his tent. In battle it stood at the head of his wing, and at the assembly beside him.[1] The Töre said what a ruler might do. Kut said why he might do it. The tuğ told everyone within sight of it that he was doing it now.

Construction and rank

The standard was built on a pole. At the top sat a spear-point or a metal finial. Below it hung horse tails, ribbons or panels of cloth. Metal ornament and fringe were added, both for durability and for the look of the thing.[1] The number of tails marked the rank of the man it belonged to. Anyone who knew the code could therefore read a standard at a distance, and the ruler’s own was the one everyone knew.[1] For the Göktürk period nothing is known about the number of standards or tails.[2] Later sources count in two ways. A Karakhanid khan is counted by standards, at most nine, and for Genghis Khan one white standard with nine tails is named.[3] Bright and contrasting colours (red, black, white, yellow) were used deliberately. The finials of the steppe standards carry stylised animals: eagles, lions, bulls, and sometimes creatures that exist only in the telling.[1] The Zhou Shu says that a golden wolf’s head was set on the standards of the Göktürks.[4] The Sui Shu says that a wolf-head standard stood at the gate of the camp, to show that the Göktürks did not forget their origin.[5] Some scholars regard the wolf’s head as an emblem and not as a totem.[6]

A warrior in a fur cap with a round shield, beneath a tall standard with a crescent finial, a crossbar and long streamers, drawn in black and white
A steppe warrior beneath a standard with a metal finial and long streamers, in a modern drawing. Drawing: signed jonele_art.

Pictures from the Turfan oasis show how banners were fixed. On a wall painting of marching warriors from the Manichaean ruin K at Qocho, the red banner cloth is tied to the lance shaft with a simple knot.[7] On a temple banner from Yarkhoto the guardian king Kubera leans on a banner lance. Three animal tails, ringed in black and white, hang from it in place of horse or yak tails. The describer of the banner took the standard for an interesting variant of the tuğ.[8][8] Turkic Atlas dates neither picture.

Each clan and tribe had its tamga, the mark of the house. The Ashina had theirs. The tamga went on the standard, as it went on weapons, on the yurt, on horse gear, on seals, on gravestones and on livestock.[1] A standard therefore said two things at once: what rank its bearer held, and whose man he was.

In war and at the assembly

A standard is a command instrument before it is anything else. Banners and small flags let a commander see where his units stood and answer a change in the line. They marked his headquarters. After a battle the scattered troops re-formed around them.[1] The rest of the meaning follows from this. To lose the standard was to be defeated, because it signalled retreat or the death of the commander. To bring down an enemy’s banner was to end organised resistance, not merely to take a trophy.[1]

Armoured riders at the gallop on a dusty plain; the leader in a pointed helmet and red coat, behind him a pole topped with a wolf’s head and a long patterned banner
Göktürk riders under a standard with a wolf’s head, in a modern painting. The Zhou Shu reports that a golden wolf’s head was set on the Göktürk standards; the armour, the banner and the scene are the painter’s.

Its other place was the assembly. The tuğ carried the blessing of Tengri. Its presence at a battle or at the assembly marked the decisions taken there as legitimate and divinely consented to. It accompanied the ruler, marked the camp, and was held to protect what stood under it.[1] A khan raised on the felt without his standard over him would have been a khan in a private sense only.

The Kutadgu Bilig, written at the Karakhanid court in 1069–1070, counts the banner at the gate and the table in the place of honour as the two things that make a prince’s name. It lists the standard-bearer, the tuğçı, among the court servants under the chamberlain’s eye.[9] When the king makes his vizier, he gives him a standard together with a drum and a seal.[10] The book pictures the sunrise as a ruler’s procession. Nine red standards, tokuz al tuğı, go before the sun.[11]

The standard in the sources

The Han Shu records that in 119 BC the Han general Huo Qubing struck the Left Great General of the Xiongnu and took his banner and drum.[12] An officer in the same campaign took the banner and drum of the Left Worthy King.[13] The Xin Tang Shu says of the Kirghiz khan Are that he set up a single standard, and that all beneath it held red in honour.[14]

Standard and drum served as signals. In 615, when the Göktürk khan Shibi besieged the emperor at Yanmen, the sixteen-year-old Li Shimin advised the commander of the relief army to stretch banners over dozens of li by day and to answer with gongs and drums by night.[15] The Göktürks were to think that a great army had come. Shibi lifted the siege in the ninth month.[15] The ruse was a Chinese one, and it does not show how the Göktürks used their own standards.

The Tang court gave a drum and a standard to rulers as a mark of rank. A Khitan chief received them in the third year of Zhenguan, 629.[16] In 632 Mishe was set up as khan of the western Göktürks with a drum, a standard and ten thousand lengths of silk.[17] Nuohebo, the khan of the Tuyuhun, received them as well.[18] In 638 the court gave a drum and a standard to each of two sons of the Xueyantuo khan and made them little khans, outwardly to honour them and in truth to divide their power.[19]

The Uyghur inscription of Šine Usu names a Türk people “with three standards”, üç tuglug türk budun.[20] Some scholars take this as a term of rank, since the grant of standards marked the recognition of a tribe.[21] The same inscription has a standard-bearer. A rider of the vanguard, who carried the standard, came and said that the enemy was coming.[22]

Mahmud al-Kashgari sets banners and drums together in a verse: “when my banners of war were set up and the drums beat, there the enemy troops were mowed like grain”.[23] According to him, the nine silken standards of a king are orange.[24] He is also said to gloss tuğ as the kettledrum, the drum beaten before the khan, and the standard, and to say that a khan with nine standards never has more than nine.[25][26] A couplet in the preface of the Kutadgu Bilig has the cloud beat the kettledrum and the lightning flash. Some scholars identify the second half with the khan’s standard. Dankoff understands it as the khan’s sword, and the next couplet speaks of one thing brought out of its scabbard, so that the verse is no evidence for a divine drum or standard.[27][28]

Origin

The question of descent is open. Scholars argue it on national lines as much as on evidence. One theory traces a single tradition of standards through the Saka, the Xiongnu and the Göktürks. It interprets the common features (the animal finials, the colours, the sacred function) as continuity. It does not interpret them as the convergence of peoples living the same way in the same country.[1] The tuğ then becomes the archetype of authority in the east. The Göktürk contribution is to have given it a structured, hierarchical and sacred order that the others had only in part.[1]

A second theory traces the earliest banner types of the Eurasian steppe to the Sarmatian era, possibly borrowed from central Asian traditions under Chinese military influence. This would make the steppe standard an adaptation rather than an inheritance.[1] A third theory sets the Turkic word beside the Chinese 纛, a banner with a tail or tuft. Its supporter himself finds the derivation hard to state with certainty.[29] The second and third theories are not fully exclusive. Neither can be settled from the finds now in hand. A pole rots, a horse tail rots, and what survives is the metal at the top.

The argument needs one caution, and its own authors supply it. In Kazakhstan, Turkey and Kyrgyzstan the motifs rooted in Tengrism are reinterpreted as instruments of cultural self-representation and historical legitimation. The literature that presses the continuity thesis says so itself.[1] That does not make the thesis false. It does mean that the thesis is a position with a present-day purpose. The debate on Turkic origins carries the wider pattern.

Assessment

On the best-supported view, the standard was old, it was a steppe object, and it carried the meaning the sources give it among the Göktürks. The line back through the Xiongnu to the Saka is a position and not a finding. The article on the title carries the rest of the regalia of rule, and Kut the claim the standard made visible.

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Sapashev 2025
  2. ^ Ögel 2000, p. 87
  3. ^ Ögel 2000, p. 74–75
  4. ^ Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
  5. ^ Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
  6. ^ Ögel 2000, p. 309
  7. ^ von Le Coq 1913, pl. 2c
  8. ^ a b von Le Coq 1913, pl. 42
  9. ^ Kutadgu Bilig; Dankoff 1983, couplets 2553, 2557
  10. ^ Kutadgu Bilig; Dankoff 1983, couplet 1036
  11. ^ Kutadgu Bilig; Dankoff 1983, couplet 4893
  12. ^ Han Shu, juan 55
  13. ^ Han Shu, juan 54
  14. ^ Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
  15. ^ a b Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 182
  16. ^ Cefu yuangui, juan 974
  17. ^ Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
  18. ^ Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 198
  19. ^ Tang Huiyao (Institutional History of the Tang), juan 94
  20. ^ Šine-Usu inscription; Orkun 1994, p. 166
  21. ^ Ögel 2000, p. 55, 87, 172
  22. ^ Šine-Usu inscription; Orkun 1994, p. 170
  23. ^ Dīvān Lughāt al-Turk
  24. ^ Dīvān Lughāt al-Turk; Dankoff 1983, note 145
  25. ^ Dīvān Lughāt al-Turk
  26. ^ Ögel 2000, p. 27–29, 36
  27. ^ Kutadgu Bilig; Dankoff 1983, couplets 86–87
  28. ^ Ögel 2000, p. 20–22, 38
  29. ^ Ögel 2000, p. 190–195, 318

Sources

Literature

  • Oraz S. Sapashev; Samat K. Samashev, Tradition of Continuity in State Standards and Weaponry of the Saka, Huns and Turks (2025)
  • Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
  • Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
  • Albert von Le Coq, Chotscho. Facsimile-Wiedergaben der wichtigeren Funde der ersten Königlich Preussischen Expedition nach Turfan in Ost-Turkistan (1913)
  • Bahaeddin Ögel, Türk Kültür Tarihine Giriş VI: Türklerde tuğ ve bayrak (2000)
  • Bahaeddin Ögel, Türk Kültür Tarihine Giriş VIII: Türklerde devlet ve ordu mehteri (2000)
  • Hüseyin Namık Orkun, Eski Türk Yazıtları (1994)
  • Robert Dankoff (trans.), Wisdom of Royal Glory (Kutadgu Bilig): A Turko-Islamic Mirror for Princes (1983)

Related

What links here7

Persons
Are Khan
Battles & Events
Li Chengqian's Göktürk Camp
Institutions and Titles
Böri (Guard) · Drums and Banners for the Khans · Warfare of the Steppe Empires
Religions
Asena the She-Wolf (Gök Börü) · Turkic Mythology

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Tuğ.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/institutions/tug/

Last revised: 8 November 2026