Yi Khan, 遺可汗, was a form of address among the great families of the Göktürks. The Tongdian says that some great families living at home called one another yi khan.[1] The Göktürks called a house yi, so the title meant house khan.[1] The passage belongs to the Tongdian’s account of the early ranks of the khaganate.[1]
One translation takes the families living at home to be families that held no office, and gives eb as the Turkic word for house.[2] A second view counts the house khans among the members of the Ashina who bore the title of khan, and gives them largely sacral functions.[3] The Tongdian names no house khan.[1]
References
Sources
- Tongdian, juan 197 (after Sui Shu and Zhou Shu)
Literature
- Liu Mau-tsai, Çin Kaynaklarına Göre Doğu Türkleri (1958, Turkish edition)
- Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
What links here1
- Institutions and Titles
- The Twenty-Eight Ranks
Cite this article
Yavuz, Emre-E. “Yi Khan.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/institutions/yi-khan/
Last revised: 8 November 2026
