Kül Tegin

Kül Tegin was the younger son of Ilterish Khan. He was seven years old when his father died. For the rest of his life he was the foremost warrior of the Second Göktürk Khaganate.^[1] He was the prince who charged first in every battle that his brother’s inscription records. At his uncle’s death he killed the cousins who stood between his brother and the throne. He commanded the army until he died in 731.^[1] Bilge Khan raised a monument for him on the Orkhon the next year. It is the reason his name is the best known of his dynasty.^[2] The Tang history watched him from the other side. It called him “bold, warlike and skilled in battle; nothing stands before him”.^[2]

Name

Köl TiginOld Turkic
闕特勒ChineseJiu Tangshu 194
左賢王ChineseJiu Tangshu 194

The first part of the name is read Kül by some scholars and Köl by others.^[3] Among those who read Köl, one scholar takes the word for an addition to the title, as in the Yenisei epitaph of Küç Köl Tutuk.^[3] The case for Kül rests on the Mongol word otçigin, “fire prince”, and on the nearness of the name to the verb köny-, “to burn”.^[3]

Under Kapgan Khan

His father died about 691, and his uncle Kapgan took the throne. The inscription says: “by the good fortune of my mother the katun, who is like Umay, my younger brother Kül Tegin got a man’s name”.^[4] His wars begin at sixteen. He fought the Six Čub Sogdians of the Ordos and a Chinese army of fifty thousand under a governor named Oŋ Tutuk. He took the governor’s brother-in-arms with his own hand.^[5] At twenty-one he fought the Chinese general Čača Seŋün. Three horses were killed under him in three charges, “and they struck his armour and his coat with more than a hundred arrows, and not one of them touched his face or his head”.^[6] If he was born about 684, that battle falls in 705. In that year, according to the Tang history, Kapgan defeated the general Shazha Zhongyi at Mingsha, with six thousand Chinese dead. The two names correspond to each other, and the two dates coincide. The equation therefore stands as an inference.

Then came the Bayirku under Ulug Irkin, whom he beat at Lake Türgi Yargun.^[7] At twenty-six came the winter crossing of the Kögmen. The Kirghiz khan was killed in the Soŋa forest.^[8] In the same year came the Altai, the Irtysh and the Türgesh. At Bolchu he rode the grey with the blaze and took the Türgesh khan’s minister with his own hand.^[1] Then came the march to the Iron Gate and the Black Türgesh. At thirty came the Karluk at the Holy Spring of Tamag, and at thirty-one the Az at the Black Lake.^[9] The Tonyukuk inscription tells the Kirghiz and Türgesh campaigns from the commander’s side. It does not name him.^[10]

Coup of 716

A straggler of the Bayirku killed Kapgan. After that, Kül Tegin “gathered the old followers, killed Mochuo’s son the Lesser Khan and his brothers and his trusted men almost to a man, and set up his own elder brother Mojilian, Prince of the Left, as khan”.^[2] Bilge offered him the throne. He refused it and took the army, as Prince of the Left in the Chinese account.^[2] Of Kapgan’s court he spared one man, Tonyukuk. His daughter was the new khan’s wife.^[2] His own monument says of these events only that he fought the Izgil and lost the white Alp Šalčı under him, “when my uncle the khan’s realm was in turmoil, and when the people and the realm had split into two”.^[9]

Under Bilge Khan

The north face of his inscription records the wars of Bilge Khan’s reign as they fell to him.^[1] There were five battles in one year against the Nine Oguz, at the town of Togu, at Košulgak against the Ediz, at Bo[lču], at the head of the Čuš and at Ezginti Kadız. The Oguz went over to China and were brought back. The winter was spent at the fortress of Amga.^[1] One day the Oguz fell on the royal camp while the khan was away with the army. Kül Tegin, on the white horse Ögsüz, ran nine men through and did not give up the camp. “If Kül Tegin had not been there, all of you would have died.”^[11] In 725 the Tang chancellor named him, beside his brother and Tonyukuk, as one of the three men who made the Göktürk dangerous.^[2]

Death and monument

Kül Tegin “flew away on the seventeenth day of the Year of the Sheep”, which was in 731. The funeral was held on the twenty-seventh of the ninth month, and his age came to forty-seven.^[12] When the Tang court heard of it, it sent the general Zhang Quyi and the secretary Lü Xiang. They brought a sealed letter of condolence and a stele whose text the emperor had composed himself.^[2] A shrine was built. A statue was carved in stone, and his battles were painted on the four walls.^[2] By the inscription’s own dating, craftsmen finished the tomb, the carving and the inscribed stone on the twenty-seventh of the seventh month of the Year of the Monkey, 732. The Chinese emperor had sent them at Bilge’s request.^[12] The monument contains Bilge’s grief, his address to the people, and the earliest Turkic-language account of the founding of the khaganate. Turkic Atlas gives it in full under the inscription. The literature is divided on which of the two brothers was the elder. The Tang history and the inscription’s ages make Bilge the elder by a year. That is the likelier view.

References

^ a b c d e Kül Tegin inscription
^ a b c d e f g h Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
^ a b c Erhan 2011, p. 16–17
^ Kül Tegin inscription; Tekin 1968, p. 391
^ Kül Tegin inscription; Tekin 1968, p. 360, 398
^ Kül Tegin inscription; Tekin 1968, p. 368, 398
^ Kül Tegin inscription; Tekin 1968, p. 310, 352
^ Kül Tegin inscription; Tekin 1968, p. 351, 369, 398
^ a b Kül Tegin inscription; Tekin 1968, p. 270
^ Tonyukuk inscription
^ Kül Tegin inscription; Tekin 1968, p. 271
^ a b Kül Tegin inscription; Tekin 1968, p. 272

Sources

Kül Tegin inscription
Bilge Khan inscription
Tonyukuk inscription
Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 215 (after Jiu Tangshu)

Literature

Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
Talât Tekin, A Grammar of Orkhon Turkic (1968)
Aydın, Erhan, Yenisey Yazıtlarında Geçen Unvanlar ve Unvan Niteleyicileri (2011)