Tong Yabgu ruled the western Göktürks for a dozen years, from 618 to 630. In that decade the western khaganate was for the last time a great power.[1] He reunited the quarrelling west. He brought the Tiele to full submission and extended his rule over Afghanistan as far as Gandhara.[1] From his capital at the Thousand Springs east of the Talas he established an orderly government. He kept good relations with the new Tang dynasty.[1] He was the ally of the emperor Heraclius. He sent an army through Derbent into the Caucasus, where it took Tiflis with the Romans.[2] His paternal uncle murdered him and made himself khan. The west fell into a civil war.[3] Out of it the west emerged as the Ten Arrows.[1] He and Ilig were the two equally talented, ambitious and reliable men who led the two Göktürk states in the 620s. They were close kin and probably never met.[4]

Names and dates

The Jiu Tang Shu and the Tongdian call him Tong Yabgu Khan, 統葉護可汗.[5] Huili’s biography of the pilgrim Xuanzang and the Cefu yuangui call him simply the Yabgu Khan.[6] The meaning of Tong is unexplained. Kashgari gives “tiger” in the eleventh century. Gerard Clauson gives “hero” in the twentieth. The man had earned both.[7] According to the Chinese histories he was the younger brother of Shegui. He succeeded him at his death.[3]

The western sources know a Göktürk ruler of the same years under other names. The Armenian history of the Albanians calls Heraclius’s ally Jebu Xak’an, viceroy of the king of the north and second to him in kingship.[8] Theophanes calls him Ziebel, second in rank after the Chagan.[9] Sebeos speaks of a Chepetukh under the great Khak’an, king of the regions of the north, whose army passed the Pass of Chor to help the king of the Greeks.[10] Jebu Xak’an is understood as Yabgu Khagan. It is equated with the Sir Yabgu of the Greek sources, the same title Istemi had borne.[11] Chepetukh is taken for a garbled form of the same title.[12] Some scholars identify this yabgu with Tong Yabgu himself.[11] Others take him for a chief of the Khazars. The Khazars may have depended on the western Göktürks, but they are not to be confused with them.[13] The Georgian chronicle names a Djibghou at Tiflis, but as an eristav whom Heraclius left behind to take the citadel.[14]

The reign is dated 618 to 630. Whether it began in 618 or in 619 is not settled.[1] The Zizhi Tongjian already names Tong Yabgu Khan among the rulers whose envoys brought tribute to Chang’an in the seventh month of 619.[15] The end of the reign is disputed. It falls between 627 and 630.

Reunification of the west

From 611, Shegui had extended the western lands to the Altai in the east and to the sea in the west. He had set his court on the Sanmi mountain north of Kucha.[3] The states west of the Jade Gate were subject to him. The west was once more the rival of the east.[3] His reign paved the way for his younger brother.[1] The Jiu Tang Shu calls Tong Yabgu brave, resourceful and skilled in war.[5] He annexed the Tiele in the north and reached Persia in the west and Jibin in the south. All of them came over to him.[5] He commanded several hundred thousand archers and was master of the Western Regions. He controlled the old land of the Wusun.[5] The Tang Huiyao gives his archers as a hundred thousand.[16] He extended his sway to Afghanistan as far as Gandhara.[1]

He moved his court to the Thousand Springs, north of Chach.[5] Xuanzang, who passed through, describes the place. It was some two hundred li square, with snow mountains to the south and level land on the other three sides.[17] It was well watered and wooded, bright with flowers in late spring, and full of springs and pools, a thousand of them, which gave it its name.[17] The Göktürk khan came there every year to escape the summer heat.[17] Tame deer wearing bells and rings moved among the springs. The khan liked them and had it proclaimed that whoever killed one would die without pardon.[17] West of the Thousand Springs lay Talas.[17]

To the kings of the western countries he gave the title ilteber. Over each he set one tudun to supervise him and oversee the collection of taxes.[5] The Jiu Tang Shu adds that the western peoples had never been so powerful.[3] Bactria was lost to Persia after the second Göktürk–Persian war of 606 and 607. It was recovered under him, eight years after a Sasanian general had beaten the Göktürks’ Hephthalite vassals near Balkh.[18] In 625 he campaigned against the Hephthalites, who recognised his rule only in part. He pushed as far as the Indus, subdued most of Bactria and returned to Suyab.[19] The first ruler of the new Göktürk state in Bactria was his son Tardu.[19]

His rule reached into Sogdiana by marriage as well. The Jiu Tang Shu says that under the Sui emperor Yangdi, before 618, Qushuzhi, king of Kang, the country of Samarkand, married a daughter of the Yabgu Khan of the western Göktürks and so became their subject.[20] The Xin Tang Shu says only that he married a woman of the western Göktürks.[21]

Relations with the Tang

Tong Yabgu took up the contact with China that the fall of the Sui had cut.[22] In the seventh month of 619 his envoys and those of the king of Gaochang came to Chang’an together.[23] The Cefu yuangui lists further embassies of the Yabgu Khan in 620 and 621, two in 622, one with lion skins and one with famous horses, and two in 626.[24] In 620 his envoys brought the giant eggs of Tiaozhi.[5]

At that time the eastern Göktürks were harrying the Tang. The emperor Gaozu courted Tong Yabgu and proposed that they join forces against the north.[5] Tong Yabgu agreed to march in the winter of 622.[5] As the armies were about to set out, Ilig, the eastern khan, heard of it and took fright.[5] He made peace with Tong Yabgu. The two agreed not to attack each other.[5]

Tong Yabgu then asked for a Tang princess.[3] The Cefu yuangui records a first request in 622 and a second in the fourth month of 625, when his envoys were feasted at court.[25] Gaozu asked his ministers what a people so far away could do for China.[26] The answer was to befriend the distant and attack the near. That meant granting the marriage for the time being, so as to overawe the northern barbarians, and thinking again in a few years, when China was strong.[26] The Jiu Tang Shu and the Tongdian put the advice in the mouth of Feng Deyi. The Zizhi Tongjian, the Tang Huiyao and the Cefu yuangui give it to Pei Ju and date it to 625.[27] Gaozu agreed and sent Daoli, Prince of Gaoping, a nephew of the emperor, to Tong Yabgu. Tong Yabgu was greatly pleased.[28] Ilig raided the Tang year after year. The road to the west was closed, and the marriage did not come about.[3]

In 627, the first year of Taizong, Tong Yabgu sent his envoy Zhenzhu Tong Sijin back to Chang’an with Daoli.[29] They brought a golden belt set with ten thousand studs and five thousand horses, to fetch the princess.[29] Ilig did not want the Tang and the west joined by marriage.[3] He sent his troops raiding again. He also sent a message to Tong Yabgu: if he wished to receive a Tang princess, she would have to pass through Ilig’s country.[3] Tong Yabgu was troubled by it. The marriage was never concluded.[3]

Alliance with Heraclius (627–628)

Map of Eurasia in 627: the western Göktürk khaganate under Tong Yabgu from the Caucasus to the Tarim, the march of Jebu Xak'an through Derbent to Tiflis and of Heraclius to the siege of Tiflis, the eastern Göktürk khaganate under Ilig Khan with the revolt of the Tiele, the Tang, Tibet, Sasanian Persia and Byzantium
627: In the west Tong Yabgu's army breaks through Derbent, and before Tiflis Jebu Xak'an meets the emperor Heraclius. In the east the Tiele rise against Ilig Khan, and a great snow kills the herds of his people. Modern map; the borders in the steppe are approximate.
© Emre-E Yavuz 2026

The Byzantine emperor Heraclius had been at war with Persia since 602. By 619 he was driven to the edge of surrender. He turned the war around.[30] He sought the Göktürks as allies to take the Sasanians in a pincer. The Romans were to come from the west through Armenia, and the Göktürks from the north through the Caucasus.[31] In the Armenian history of the Albanians his envoy, a noble named Andre, carried north the promise of immense treasure.[8] The yabgu answered that he would avenge the emperor on his enemies and come to his aid in person with his brave army.[8] To confirm the treaty he sent about a thousand picked horsemen and archers back with the envoy. They swore oaths with the emperor face to face.[8] Some scholars have this armed embassy cross Persian territory to the emperor in Anatolia.[31] The alliance led to the campaign in the Caucasus.[32]

Tong Yabgu ordered his nephew Börü Shad, who had an independent command, to begin.[33] The Armenian history calls the commander the nephew of the king of the north and names him only by his rank, Šat’.[34] In 627 Börü appeared before Derbent with an army the sources call Khazar. Derbent was the fortress between the Caspian and the Caucasus that closed the only road from the steppe to Persia and Mesopotamia.[33] Some scholars give him about forty thousand warriors from Central Asia.[35] The Armenian history sets the great invasion in the thirty-eighth year of Khosrow, the year of his murder. It has the wall the Persian kings had built across the pass destroyed at the very outset.[36] The Göktürks moved on and sacked Partaw. They besieged Tiflis, where the Persian governor refused to change sides.[35] The Armenian historian describes the invaders as a broad-faced mob with flowing hair. In his words, their arrows rained down like hailstones, and they fell on the town like ravenous wolves.[37] The description is exaggerated. It is important all the same.[35]

Heraclius came to Tiflis. The two rulers met in the Göktürk camp before the fortress.[35] The yabgu rode up, dismounted, kissed the emperor’s shoulder and bowed. Heraclius embraced him and called him his son. He crowned him with his own diadem, held a banquet for both armies, gave him earrings, and promised him the hand of his daughter Eudoxia Epiphania.[38] In Theophanes the Göktürk commander kissed the emperor’s neck while the Persians watched from the walls of Tiflis. His whole army lay flat on the ground before the emperor.[9] Nikephoros has the emperor take the crown from his own head and set it on the Göktürk’s. He also has the emperor give him the table plate, an imperial robe and earrings set with pearls.[39] To bind him further, Heraclius showed him a portrait of his daughter Eudokia and promised her to him in marriage.[40] It was probably the first meeting of leaders of the Graeco-Roman and the Turkic worlds since the Huns.[41]

The siege dragged.[42] After two months Tong Yabgu left his nephew and tens of thousands of men before Tiflis and withdrew to Suyab. Heraclius marched on to Nineveh and beat the Persians there.[41] Theophanes has the Göktürk ruler pick forty thousand men for the emperor and go home himself.[9] The Armenian history has Heraclius send his ally home before the summer heat, to come back the following year.[43] The yabgu was encouraged by the news of Nineveh. He returned, took Tiflis with Börü and sacked it.[41] In the Armenian history the king of the north came back with Šat’ and took the city after a siege of two months. His men climbed the wall on one another’s shoulders with their swords raised.[44] He had the Persian governor and the Georgian prince blinded and put to death. He went home with the treasure and left the army to Šat’.[45] The alliance contributed significantly to the Byzantine victory and the collapse of the Sasanian state.[1] The Göktürks took Derbent and the Caucasus and so laid the ground on which the Khazar state would be built. The Armenian historian lived under the Khazars. For that reason he called the Göktürks Khazars.[46]

The Chinese histories know the war with Persia from the other end. The Jiu Tang Shu says that at the end of the Sui the Yabgu Khan of the western Göktürks broke Persia again and again.[20] In its account the Persian king Kusahe was killed by the western Göktürks. His son Shili was set up in his place.[20] The Yabgu Khan then placed his own commanders over Persia to supervise it. Persia became subject to him.[20] When he died, these men made themselves masters in Persia and no longer served the western Göktürks.[20] Kusahe is Khosrow II. Shili is his son Kavadh II. Theophanes has Khosrow deposed and killed by that son, whom he calls Siroes.[47]

Court at Suyab

The Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang, travelling west in 629, was received by him at Suyab.[4] The account of the visit in Huili’s biography of the pilgrim is the fullest description of any Göktürk court.[7] Qu Wentai, king of Gaochang, had sent the pilgrim on with five hundred rolls of damask and silk and two carts of fruit for the khan.[48] In his letter the king called himself the khan’s slave. He asked him to cherish the pilgrim as he cherished the king, and to have the countries of the west pass him on with relays of horses.[48] Suyab, four kilometres across, gathered the merchants of the surrounding peoples.[49] Xuanzang’s own record gives the city a circuit of six or seven li. It says that merchants from many countries lived there together.[17] West of it lay some dozens of towns, each under its own chief. None took orders from another, and all were subject to the Göktürks.[17]

The pilgrim met the khan out hunting, with a great train of horses.[50] The khan wore a robe of green satin. His hair was loose, with a band of white silk some ten feet long wound about his brow and hanging down behind.[50] One rendering makes the ten feet the length of his hair.[51] More than two hundred officers in brocade robes, with braided hair, stood to his right and left.[50] The rest of his army, in furs, felt and fine wool, with lances, standards and bows, and riders on camels and horses, stretched out of sight.[50] The khan was riding off for two or three days. He had one of his officers, Damozhi, take the pilgrim to his camp.[50] On his return he received him in a great tent adorned with golden flowers that dazzled the eye.[50] The officers sat before him in two long rows on mats, in shining brocade. The guards stood behind them.[50] The biography remarks that for a ruler of felt tents he kept a dignified court.[50]

When the pilgrim was thirty paces from the tent, the khan came out to greet him with a bow.[52] The biography explains that the Göktürks worship fire and do not sit on wood, which contains fire, but on thick mats spread on the ground. For the pilgrim they brought an iron folding seat.[53] Envoys from China and Gaochang were then admitted. They presented their letters and gifts, which the khan looked over himself with pleasure.[53] He ordered wine and music for his ministers and the envoys and grape juice for the pilgrim. Then came heaps of boiled lamb and veal, and for the pilgrim cakes, rice, cream, sugar, honey and grapes.[53] Asked to preach, Xuanzang spoke of the ten virtues, of compassion for living things and of the path to deliverance.[54] The khan raised his hands, bowed to the ground, and joyfully accepted the teaching.[54]

He then tried to keep the pilgrim from going to India.[54] He said that the country was so hot that its tenth month was like the fifth at home. He said that its people went naked and black and were not worth seeing.[54] When Xuanzang insisted, the khan had his army searched for someone who knew Chinese. He found a young man who had lived for years in Chang’an.[54] He gave him the title Moduo Daguan. He had him write letters to the countries on the way and escort the pilgrim as far as Kapisa.[54] He gave Xuanzang a robe of red damask and fifty rolls of silk. He rode out with his ministers some ten li to see him off.[54] The scene reads as a developed civilisation navigating between cultural worlds, with a precise protocol that assigned every guest a place and a drink. The pilgrim used the word barbarian only to distinguish Chinese from non-Chinese.[7]

Beyond the Iron Gate, at Huo, the later Kunduz, Xuanzang found the khan’s eldest son, Tardu Shad. He was married to a sister of the king of Gaochang.[55] The princess had just died. The shad lay ill.[55] He married again. His young new wife, at the prompting of his son by an earlier marriage, poisoned him.[55] The princess’s son was still a child. The elder son, a tegin, seized his father’s rank of shad and married his stepmother.[56]

Death and the dissolution of the west

In its entries for 627 the Zizhi Tongjian records that Tong Yabgu’s power was waning. It records that Yinan of the Xueyantuo took his people, more than seventy thousand households, over to Ilig.[57] The Tiele chapter of the Jiu Tang Shu sets the same move after Tong Yabgu’s death.[58] The Jiu Tang Shu gives the reason. Tong Yabgu relied on his strength and showed his people no kindness, so that they all resented him. Many of the Karluks rebelled.[5] The Karluk rising is dated to about 627.[1] He was murdered by his paternal uncle, who made himself khan as Moheduo Hou Quli Sibi Khan.[5] Moheduo had earlier governed part of the Göktürk tribes as a lesser khan. Now he called himself Great Khan, and the people would not follow him.[5]

The account of the western Göktürks in the Jiu Tang Shu gives the murder no year of its own. It tells the murder after the embassy of 627.[3] The Tiele chapter of the same history dates the death of the Yabgu Khan to the second year of Zhenguan, 628. It says that his state fell into great disorder.[58] The Zizhi Tongjian enters the murder at the end of 628. The Cefu yuangui sets Taizong’s mourning for him under the first year of Zhenguan, 627.[59] One reckoning dates Xuanzang’s audience to 630 and finds the usurper reigning in that year. It puts the murder in 630, soon after the pilgrim had passed.[60] A second reckoning keeps 628. It moves the pilgrim’s departure from Chang’an to the autumn of 627, so that the audience falls a year before the murder.[61] Huili’s biography dates the departure to the eighth month of 629.[62] One modern account gives the reign as 618 to 628.[18]

Taizong mourned him and sent jade and silk to be burnt as an offering at the place of his death. His envoys turned back because the country was in turmoil.[63] In Constantinople the news ended the marriage Heraclius had planned.[64] Nikephoros says that the emperor had sent his daughter Eudokia on her way to “the lord of the Turks”, to whom he had betrothed her. He called her back when it became known that “the Turk had been slain”.[64]

The Nushibi tribes put forward Nishu Mohe Shad as khan. He refused.[5] Tong Yabgu’s son Dieli, a tegin, had fled from Moheduo to Kangju, in Sogdiana.[5] Nishu fetched him and raised him as Yipi Boluo Si Yabgu Khan.[5] The two khans fought each other without pause. Both sent to Chang’an for a Tang princess.[65] Taizong refused. Their country was in turmoil, ruler and subjects were unsettled, and it was no time to speak of marriage.[65] The western countries and the Tiele who had served the western Göktürks all fell away, and the land was drained.[3] Si Yabgu, as the son of the old ruler, won the chiefs over. He beat Moheduo and drove him to the Altai, where Nishu killed him.[65] Si Yabgu lost the tribes in his turn, fled to Kangju and died there. Nishu was raised as Duolu Khan. On his death in 634 his brother became khan as Ishbara Tolis.[66] The strife of the next thirty years ended only when the Tang took the last Ashina khan of the west.[67]

Assessment

His reign was the brief flowering of western Göktürk power. His government was orderly, and his alliance had its part in the Byzantine victory over Persia.[1] The reign holds the court that Xuanzang saw, the meeting with Heraclius and the foundation of the Khazars. It ranks him with Ilig as the last great ruler of the first khaganate.[68] At a banquet in 632 Taizong spoke to his ministers. He said that the Sui emperor Yangdi had overawed barbarians and Chinese alike, that Ilig had controlled the northern wastes and Tong Yabgu the Western Regions, and that all of them had perished before their eyes.[69] The Göktürks’ own inscriptions, a century later, remember the west only as the Ten Arrows and the Türgeš, “our own people” who became enemies. Of the yabgu who was crowned by a Roman emperor they say nothing.[70]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Golden 1992, p. 135
  2. ^ Yavuz 2025, p. 361–370
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
  4. ^ a b Yavuz 2025, p. 352
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194; Tongdian, juan 199
  6. ^ Life of Xuanzang, juan 2; Cefu yuangui, juan 970
  7. ^ a b c Yavuz 2025, p. 358
  8. ^ a b c d Movsēs Dasxurancʿi, book II
  9. ^ a b c Theophanes the Confessor
  10. ^ Sebeos, ch. 29
  11. ^ a b Golden 1992, p. 236–237
  12. ^ Howard-Johnston 1999, p. 187
  13. ^ Chavannes 1903, p. 256
  14. ^ Kartlis Tskhovreba
  15. ^ Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 187
  16. ^ Tang Huiyao (Institutional History of the Tang), juan 94
  17. ^ a b c d e f g Record of the Western Regions, juan 1
  18. ^ a b Yavuz 2025, p. 359
  19. ^ a b Yavuz 2025, p. 372
  20. ^ a b c d e Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 198
  21. ^ Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 221
  22. ^ Cefu yuangui, juan 1000
  23. ^ Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 187; Cefu yuangui, juan 970
  24. ^ Cefu yuangui, juan 970
  25. ^ Cefu yuangui, juan 978
  26. ^ a b Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194; Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 191
  27. ^ Tongdian, juan 199; Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 191; Tang Huiyao (Institutional History of the Tang), juan 94; Cefu yuangui, juan 978
  28. ^ Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 191
  29. ^ a b Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194; Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 192
  30. ^ Yavuz 2025, p. 360
  31. ^ a b Yavuz 2025, p. 361
  32. ^ Movsēs Dasxurancʿi, book II
  33. ^ a b Yavuz 2025, p. 362
  34. ^ Movsēs Dasxurancʿi, book II
  35. ^ a b c d Yavuz 2025, p. 368
  36. ^ Movsēs Dasxurancʿi, book II
  37. ^ Movsēs Dasxurancʿi, book II
  38. ^ Yavuz 2025, p. 368–370
  39. ^ Nikephoros
  40. ^ Nikephoros
  41. ^ a b c Yavuz 2025, p. 370
  42. ^ Movsēs Dasxurancʿi, book II
  43. ^ Movsēs Dasxurancʿi, book II
  44. ^ Movsēs Dasxurancʿi, book II
  45. ^ Movsēs Dasxurancʿi, book II
  46. ^ Yavuz 2025, p. 363
  47. ^ Theophanes the Confessor
  48. ^ a b Life of Xuanzang, juan 1
  49. ^ Yavuz 2025, p. 352–353
  50. ^ a b c d e f g h Life of Xuanzang, juan 2
  51. ^ Yavuz 2025, p. 355
  52. ^ Life of Xuanzang, juan 2
  53. ^ a b c Life of Xuanzang, juan 2
  54. ^ a b c d e f g Life of Xuanzang, juan 2
  55. ^ a b c Life of Xuanzang, juan 2
  56. ^ Life of Xuanzang, juan 2
  57. ^ Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 192
  58. ^ a b Mau-tsai 1958, Turkish edition, p. 473
  59. ^ Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 193; Cefu yuangui, juan 974
  60. ^ Chavannes 1903, p. 194–195
  61. ^ Kaiyrken 2026, p. 19–20
  62. ^ Life of Xuanzang, juan 1
  63. ^ Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194; Cefu yuangui, juan 974
  64. ^ a b Nikephoros
  65. ^ a b c Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194; Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 193
  66. ^ Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194; Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 194
  67. ^ Golden 1992, p. 135–136
  68. ^ Yavuz 2025, p. 386
  69. ^ Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 194
  70. ^ Kül Tegin inscription

Sources

Literature

  • Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
  • Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
  • Édouard Chavannes, Documents sur les Tou-Kiue (Turcs) occidentaux (1903)
  • Liu Mau-tsai, Çin Kaynaklarına Göre Doğu Türkleri (1958, Turkish edition)
  • Tursynkhan Zakonuly Kaiyrken; Abdulvahap Kara, Xuan Zang'ın Seyahat Notlarında Batı Göktürk Kağanı Tong Yabgu'nun Devlet Adamı Portresi (2026)
  • R. W. Thomson (trans.), James Howard-Johnston (commentary), The Armenian History attributed to Sebeos (1999)

Related

What links here79

Persons
Bagha Shad · Baghatur Khan · Börü Shad · Chorpan Tarkhan · Damozhi · Duliu · Heraclius · Ishbara Tolis Khan · Moduo Daguan · Niri Khan · Nishu Bagha Shad · Pei Ju · Poshi Tegin · Shegui Khan · Si Yabgu Khan · Tardu Shad · Yinan Khan · Zhenzhu Tong Irkin
States
Byzantium · First Göktürk Khaganate · Khazar Khaganate · Sasanian Persia · Turk Shahi of Kabul and Kapisa · Western Göktürk Khaganate · Xueyantuo Khaganate (Syr Tardush) · Yabgus of Tokharistan
Conflicts
Göktürk Expansion along the Silk Road · Göktürk Expansion into Europe · The Caucasus campaign, 627–629 · The Göktürk Civil War · The Tang conquest of the western Khaganate, 640–659
Battles & Events
Battle of Lake Sevan (629–630) · Maniakh's embassy to Constantinople, 568 · Meeting of Heraclius and Ziebel (627) · Murder of Tong Yabgu (630) · Revolt of the Tiele (627) · Smbat Bagratuni's war with the khan · The Göktürk–Byzantine alliance · Xuanzang's visit to Tong Yabgu
Places
Derbent · Gaochang · Herat · Huo · Issyk-Kul · Partaw · Sanmi Mountain · Suyab · Thousand Springs · Tiflis
Peoples
History of the Turkic peoples · Karluk · On Oq · The Great Empires of the Steppe
Institutions and Titles
Baga · Baghatur · Chepetukh · Daguan · Göktürk Dress and Hair · Göktürk Weapons · Great Khan · Ilteber · Levirate · Shad · Suoge Tudun · Tegin · Tudun · Yabgu
Religions
Fire Worship
Foods
Bread · Grape Wine in Central Asia
Customs & Pastimes
Seating at the Feast · The Göktürk Feast · Turkic Songs at the Tang Court
Sources
Cefu yuangui · Life of Xuanzang · Record of the Western Regions · Sebeos · Theophanes the Confessor · Tongdian

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Tong Yabgu.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/persons/tong-yabgu/

Last revised: 8 November 2026