Kayen

Kayen was a Göktürk princess, the wife of the Sasanian king Khosrow I. She was the mother of his son and successor Hormizd IV.^[1]^[2] The Armenian history ascribed to Sebeos, written in the seventh century, gives her name.^[1] The Arabic and Persian tradition knows her as the daughter of the khagan of the Turks.^[3]^[2]

The marriage

Tabari, the Arabic historian, says that Khosrow had become the khagan’s kinsman by marriage before he marched against the Hephthalites. He had also asked the khagan to march against them.^[4] In the history of the Persian kings by aṯ-Ṯaʿālibī, the khagan offers Khosrow his daughter in the hope that the king will have children by her.^[5] Khosrow consents. The khagan sends her to him in procession “with countless riches of all that the Turks possessed”.^[5] The Persian epic and some manuscripts of the Persian Tabari tell romantic stories of how the khagan’s daughter was chosen.^[6]

One account makes her a daughter of Istemi.^[7] In 560 Istemi and Khosrow met in Gurgan. They fixed the frontier between the Göktürks and Persia on the Oxus. Istemi gave Khosrow one of his daughters as a bride to seal the agreement.^[7] The daughter was probably called Kayan, and Hormizd IV was most probably her son.^[8] The same account calls her Kayen.^[9] The sources leave her father unnamed. Sebeos calls him the great Khakʿan. Tabari calls him the khagan and once the elder khagan. Aṯ-Ṯaʿālibī calls him the khagan, king of the Turks.^[1]^[10]^[2] Whether he was Istemi is therefore disputed.

Her son

Sebeos opens the reign of Hormizd with his mother: “His mother, called Kayēn, was the daughter of the great Khakʿan, king of the Tʿetals, and the wife of Khosrov his father.”^[1] Hormizd, he adds, was distinguished through his father’s line and even more notable and ferocious on his mother’s side.^[1] The Tʿetals are properly the Hephthalites. The Armenian writers often give their name loosely to the Göktürks, who followed them as Persia’s chief nomad enemy in the east.^[11]

Tabari names Hormizd as Khosrow’s chosen successor, “whose mother was the daughter of the khagan and the khatun”.^[3] The translator of Tabari judges that the high rank of his mother was surely the reason Hormizd was preferred to his brothers.^[12] In aṯ-Ṯaʿālibī, Khosrow chooses “his son Hormoz, born of the daughter of the khagan, the king of the Turks”.^[2] One of Khosrow’s ministers later calls Hormizd “the son of the Turkish woman”.^[13] Despite this kinship Hormizd did not live on good terms with the Turks. The war of 588 was fought in his reign.^[14]

Name

KayēnArmenianSebeos 10
QāqinArabic
KatinFrench

Kayēn is the form of Sebeos.^[1] Masʿudi also names her, but the forms of the name in his text vary greatly.^[15] The translator of Tabari chose Qāqin among them, because the Armenian writer seems to call her Kaiēn.^[15] An older French version of Sebeos rendered the name Katin.^[14] Among the sources, only Sebeos gives her name in a form that can be read with certainty.

References

^ a b c d e f Sebeos, ch. 10; Howard-Johnston 1999, p. 14
^ a b c d aṯ-Ṯaʿālibī; Zotenberg 1900, p. 636
^ a b Tabari; Nöldeke 1879, p. 252
^ Tabari; Nöldeke 1879, p. 167
^ a b aṯ-Ṯaʿālibī; Zotenberg 1900, p. 611
^ Nöldeke 1879, p. 167
^ a b Yavuz 2025, p. 278
^ Yavuz 2025, p. 279
^ Yavuz 2025, p. 293
^ Tabari; Nöldeke 1879, p. 264
^ Howard-Johnston 1999, p. 168
^ Nöldeke 1879, p. 252
^ aṯ-Ṯaʿālibī; Zotenberg 1900, p. 639
^ a b Chavannes 1903, p. 242
^ a b Nöldeke 1879, p. 264

Sources

Literature

R. W. Thomson (trans.), James Howard-Johnston (commentary), The Armenian History attributed to Sebeos (1999)
Theodor Nöldeke, Geschichte der Perser und Araber zur Zeit der Sasaniden. Aus der arabischen Chronik des Tabari übersetzt und mit ausführlichen Erläuterungen und Ergänzungen versehn (1879)
Hermann Zotenberg (ed., trans.), Histoire des rois des Perses par Abou Mansour ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Mohammad ibn Ismaʿil al-Thaʿalibi (1900)
Édouard Chavannes, Documents sur les Tou-Kiue (Turcs) occidentaux (1903)
Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)