Tardu Shad was the eldest son of the Yabgu Khan of the western Göktürks and lord of Huo in Tokharistan.[1] He is known from the biography of the pilgrim Xuanzang. Xuanzang found him ill at Huo and stayed there through the mourning after his death.[1] Some scholars identify the Yabgu Khan of the biography with Tong Yabgu.[2]

At Huo

After his visit to the Yabgu Khan, Xuanzang passed the Iron Gate and crossed the Oxus. He came to Huo, where the khan’s eldest son had his seat.[1] Huo is the later Kunduz.[3] Tardu Shad was married to a younger sister of the king of Gaochang. The king had given the pilgrim a letter for him.[1] Some scholars make the princess the king’s daughter.[2]

When Xuanzang arrived, the princess, the katun, had already died. Tardu Shad himself was ill.[1] He heard that the pilgrim came from Gaochang. He received the letter and wept with his sons and daughters.[1] He asked Xuanzang to rest there a while and promised to take him to India himself if he recovered.[1] An Indian monk came and recited spells over him. The illness slowly left him.[1]

Then the shad married again.[1] His new katun was young. At the prompting of his son by an earlier wife, she poisoned him.[1] The son of the Gaochang princess was still small. Therefore the elder son, a tegin, seized his father’s rank of shad and married his stepmother.[1] The mourning kept the pilgrim at Huo for more than a month.[1] One translation makes the second wife the younger sister of the dead princess.[3] The new shad told Xuanzang that Balkh lay within his lands. The pilgrim went on there.[1]

In modern accounts

One modern account calls him Tardush. It makes him, as the son of Tong Yabgu, the first ruler of a new Göktürk state in Bactria.[4] In that account the state replaced the last remnant of the realm of the Hephthalites.[4] He is not the same man as Tardush, the khan of the civil war at the end of the sixth century.[4]

An older account sees in the shad of Huo a Göktürk prince. He governed all the small kingdoms south of the Iron Gate about 630 and so stood in the place of the Hephthalite king.[5] In that account his son and successor took the higher title of yabgu in 643 or 644. This fits the yabgu whom Xuanzang met at Huo on his way home.[6]

Name

The biography writes his name 呾度設 and explains that shad is the title of an official.[1] The name has been rendered Tardu Şad.[7]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Life of Xuanzang, juan 2
  2. ^ a b Chavannes 1903, p. 194
  3. ^ a b Beal 1911, p. 47
  4. ^ a b c Yavuz 2025, p. 372
  5. ^ Markwart 1938, p. 44–45
  6. ^ Markwart 1938, p. 45
  7. ^ Kaiyrken 2026, p. 17

Sources

Literature

  • Samuel Beal (trans.), The Life of Hiuen-Tsiang by the Shaman Hwui Li (1911)
  • Édouard Chavannes, Documents sur les Tou-Kiue (Turcs) occidentaux (1903)
  • Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
  • Tursynkhan Zakonuly Kaiyrken; Abdulvahap Kara, Xuan Zang'ın Seyahat Notlarında Batı Göktürk Kağanı Tong Yabgu'nun Devlet Adamı Portresi (2026)
  • Josef Markwart, Wehrot und Arang. Untersuchungen zur mythischen und geschichtlichen Landeskunde von Ostiran (1938)

Related

What links here6

States
Yabgus of Tokharistan
Battles & Events
Xuanzang's visit to Tong Yabgu
Places
Gaochang · Huo
Institutions and Titles
Shad
Sources
Life of Xuanzang

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Tardu Shad.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/persons/tardu-shad/

Last revised: 8 November 2026