Pofu Katun

She was the daughter of Tonyukuk and the katun of Bilge Khan. The marriage saved her father’s life.^[1] Kül Tegin killed Kapgan’s household in 716. Tonyukuk alone was spared, because his daughter was the new khan’s katun.^[1]

The regency

Bilge Khan was poisoned in 734. His elder son Yiran died within months. The younger son, Tengri Khan, was a child.^[1] The state was run by the boy’s mother and by a minor official named Yinsi Dagan. The Tang history gives the reason why this did not hold in five words: the people would not submit to her.^[1]

The army was elsewhere. It was divided between two of the dead khan’s cousins: the Left Shad in the east and the Right Shad in the west. The best troops were with them.^[1] A regency in the middle held the herds and the seals, and two armies on the wings held the men. The arrangement therefore pointed toward the way it ended.

The killing of the Western Shad

In 740 the Tang invested Tengri Khan a second time.^[1] Soon afterwards the khan and his mother lured the Western Shad to them. They beheaded him and took his people.^[1]

The regency knew it was weak, and this was its move. It decided the end. The Left Shad saw what waited for him. He marched on the court, killed the boy khan and took the throne as Ozmish Khan.^[1] The khaganate did not recover. It was gone in three years.

Afterwards

A woman named Pofu came in to the Tang with her people, and she was made a lady of the court with a yearly allowance. On the likeliest reading, she is the same woman.^[2]

Place in the record

The Göktürk state had katuns who counted, and the inscriptions say so in their own way. In the formula of rule the khan’s mother is named beside him. Heaven is said to have taken khan and katun together by the crown of the head.^[3] Pofu Katun shows the same position without an army behind it. She held the court, the treasury and the child. The men who held the troops took the state from her.