Arsilas

Arsilas was the senior ruler of the western Göktürks when the Roman envoy Valentinos came to them in 576.^[1] Menander, the Byzantine historian who preserves the account of the embassy, names him once, as he explains how the Göktürk realm was ordered.^[1]

Valentinos crossed the Crimea and the marshy plains beyond it and came to the war camp of Turxanthos, one of the leaders of the Göktürks.^[1] At this point Menander adds that the ruler of the Göktürk people had divided all the land there into eight parts. The senior ruler of the Göktürks, he says, was named Arsilas.^[1] Turxanthos then sent Valentinos on to his brother Tardush on the mountain Ektel. Arsilas does not appear again.^[1] No ruler of that name is known from the Chinese histories.^[2]

Rank

The Greek calls him τῷ παλαιτέρῳ μονάρχῳ, the “older” or “senior” monarch.^[3] The word can mean that he was the supreme ruler or merely that he was the eldest.^[4] Some scholars make him the supreme ruler of the Göktürks.^[4] Others take him to be the eldest, or the doyen, of the eight leaders.^[2] Menander’s translator prefers the second.^[4] He suggests that in the unsettled years after the death of Istemi such seniority may have given Arsilas a precarious precedence.^[4] A third group takes the eight parts to be eight divisions of the western Göktürk realm alone. Arsilas, the oldest of the eight princes, is then the elder son of Istemi. His father set him as shad over the Göktürk half of the Hephthalite lands, with his seat at Bukhara.^[5]

Name

Arslan*AršilaOld Turkic
ἈρσίλαςGreekMenander Protector

The name has been explained as the Turkic arslan, “lion”.^[2]^[4] One scholar renders Menander’s phrase as “the name of the most ancient monarch of the Türks” and treats Arsilas as the name of the Ashina house itself.^[6] It reconstructs that name as *Aršila. It compares the Tokharian title Âršilâñci and hints at a link with arslan.^[6] The connection is held to be possible, not shown.^[6] The third group adds that Shir-i Kishvar, the name the History of Bukhara gives the Turkish lord’s son in the tale of Abrui, is the Persian rendering of the Turkic Il-arslan. It identifies him with Arsilas.^[7] Menander names Arsilas only together with the eightfold division of the western lands. Nothing that he did is recorded.

References

^ a b c d e Menander Protector; Blockley 1985, fr. 19.1
^ a b c Chavannes 1903, p. 240
^ Menander Protector; Dindorf 1871, p. 85
^ a b c d e Blockley 1985, p. 276
^ Markwart 1938, p. 149–150
^ a b c Golden 1992, p. 121
^ Markwart 1938, p. 148,150

Sources

Menander Protector

Literature

R. C. Blockley, The History of Menander the Guardsman: Introductory Essay, Text, Translation, and Historiographical Notes (1985)
Ludwig Dindorf (ed.), Historici Graeci minores, Bd. II: Menander Protector et Agathias (1871)
Édouard Chavannes, Documents sur les Tou-Kiue (Turcs) occidentaux (1903)
Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
Josef Markwart, Wehrot und Arang. Untersuchungen zur mythischen und geschichtlichen Landeskunde von Ostiran (1938)