Katulph

Katulph was a Hephthalite noble of the sixth century.^[1] He counselled the king of the Hephthalites and went over to the Göktürks, and then to Persia. At the Persian court he gave the advice that ended the trade between the Göktürks and Persia.^[2] Everything known of him comes from the fragments of Menander.^[3]

At the Hephthalite court

In one fragment Katulph dissuades the Hephthalite ruler from advancing further. He uses a proverb that Menander calls barbaric but persuasive: one dog on its home ground is mightier than ten strangers.^[4] The context of the fragment is lost, and it is not known against whom the advance was meant.^[5] Katulph was then one of the ruler’s closest advisers. He and his wife lived at the king’s court.^[1]

Change of sides

The king raped Katulph’s wife.^[6] Katulph betrayed his people to the Göktürks. Meanwhile he had left them and joined the Persians.^[6] Menander does not say which Göktürks he joined.^[6] The Hephthalites bordered on the western wing. Katulph therefore probably went to Istemi’s court.^[5] His betrayal falls in the years when the Göktürks, still allied with Persia, attacked the Hephthalite state.^[7] Menander gives no reason for his second change of sides.^[6] A maxim among Menander’s sentence fragments names no one. It says that a man wronged by his ruler turns his anger on the whole commonwealth.^[8] Modern accounts have referred the maxim to Katulph.^[5]^[9]

One reconstruction of the war makes him a counsellor of the Hephthalite king Gatfar. In this version he advised against war and, insulted, went straight over to Khosrow.^[10] Menander has him go to the Göktürks first.^[6]

At the Persian court

Maniakh led the Sogdian embassy to Persia to ask for free trade in silk. Khosrow I put off his answer and called a council.^[6] Katulph advised him not to return the silk but to buy it at a fair price and burn it before the envoys’ eyes. The king would then not seem to act unjustly, and it would be plain that he wanted no silk from the Göktürks.^[6] The silk was burned, and the envoys went home.^[6]

A second Göktürk embassy followed.^[6] The king decided with the Persian high officials and with Katulph that friendship with the Göktürks was against Persia’s interest. The Scythians could not be trusted.^[6] Relations between Persia and the Göktürks broke down, and the two powers drifted towards war.^[3] Istemi turned to Constantinople instead.^[6] Katulph was already at the Persian court when Maniakh arrived. His defection therefore falls before 567.^[7] Menander does not mention him again, and no other source names him.^[3]

Name

ΚάτουλφοςGreekMenander Protector
CatulfusLatin

The origin of the name is open. One proposal joins the Iranian kath, town, to a Mongolian word.^[3] Kath, however, stands only at the end of place names, and the Mongolian word is attested only from the fourteenth century.^[11] A second proposal emends the Greek to a Turkic Kutlug, fortunate.^[9] A third takes it as an Old Turkic participle meaning mixed.^[11] A Hephthalite coin legend of the fourth century has been interpreted as the same name. It belongs, however, to a king two centuries earlier.^[12]

Not the last king

A line of older scholarship made Katulph the last king of the Hephthalites. The identification passed into works of reference.^[1] It rested on a passage ascribed to Theophanes of Byzantium.^[13] The summary of his history that survives in Photios does not name Katulph.^[14] The statement probably goes back to a study of 1877 that cites no source for it.^[13] The last king appears under other names: Ghatfar in Firdausi, Warz in Tabari, Axšunwāz in al-Masʿudi.^[12] Menander’s Katulph is a noble, not a king. There is only one Katulph of the sixth century.^[1]

He was not a victim of the fall of the Hephthalites but one of the men who brought it about.^[1]

References

^ a b c d e Felföldi 2001, p. 199
^ Menander Protector; Blockley 1985, fr. 4.3, 10.1
^ a b c d Felföldi 2001, p. 195
^ Menander Protector; Blockley 1985, fr. 4.3
^ a b c Felföldi 2001, p. 193
^ a b c d e f g h i j k Menander Protector; Blockley 1985, fr. 10.1
^ a b Felföldi 2001, p. 194
^ Menander Protector; Blockley 1985, fr. 4.1
^ a b Blockley 1985, p. 252
^ Kurbanov 2010
^ a b Felföldi 2001, p. 196
^ a b Felföldi 2001, p. 197
^ a b Felföldi 2001, p. 198
^ Theophanes of Byzantium; Müller 1851, p. 270–271

Sources

Literature

Szabolcs Felföldi, A prominent Hephthalite: Katulph and the fall of the Hephthalite Empire (2001)
R. C. Blockley, The History of Menander the Guardsman: Introductory Essay, Text, Translation, and Historiographical Notes (1985)
Karl Müller (ed.), Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, Bd. IV (darin: Menandri Protectoris fragmenta, griechisch mit lateinischer Übersetzung) (1851)
Aydogdy Kurbanov, The Hephthalites: Archaeological and Historical Analysis (2010)