Tör Apa

Tör Apa is the name on the Begre stele. The stele is a Yenisei epitaph in north-eastern Tuva and is numbered E 11.^[1] It bears the rank ičräki and no tamga.^[1] Turkic Atlas describes it under the Begre inscription.

The text

At fifteen the dead man took part in a campaign against the Tabgach khan. This is the Turkic name for the ruler of China.^[2] He says that he killed seven wolves and did not kill the barïš or the kökmäk.^[3] He died at seventy-seven.^[4]

Name or title

tör apatörü apatörpäOld TurkicBegre inscription

The stone does not show whether Tör Apa is the dead man. One editor first took the dead man for an unnamed ičräki in the service of a chief called Tör Apa and later gave that up. A second reads Tör Apa as the dead man’s own name and finds no title in the text. A third reads tör apa ičräki as the name and rank of one person.^[5] Another edition reads the first word as törü.^[1] A note allows that the two words should be read as the single word törpä, as the edition of 1895 has it.^[3]

Date and the Chinese reports

The stele has no date. Its placements run from the second half of the seventh century to the ninth and later, and the Begre inscription lists them with the stone.^[6] Vladimir Tishin proposes the second half of the ninth century. He sets the stele beside two figures of the Chinese reports on the Kirghiz.^[6] If the dead man is the envoy of 866, the general Yizhi-lianji, or if his chief is the chancellor of 848, Apa, the stele belongs to those years.^[7]

One placement ties the campaign of his fifteenth year to the years 842 to 843.^[6] A man who rode at fifteen in 842 and died at seventy-seven died about 904, in the first years of the tenth century.

Gaps

The study gives him no tribe and no place of birth.^[8] The equation with the Chinese reports fits the stone. Nothing on the stone says it.

References

^ a b c Tishin 2019, p. 200
^ Tishin 2019, p. 200–201
^ a b Tishin 2019, p. 202
^ Tishin 2019, p. 203
^ Tishin 2019, p. 200–202
^ a b c Tishin 2019, p. 201
^ Tishin 2019, p. 201–202
^ Tishin 2019, p. 200–203

Sources

Begre inscription (E 11)

Literature

V. V. Tishin, K datirovke enisejskoj runičeskoj nadpisi Begre (E 11) [К датировке енисейской рунической надписи Бегре (Е 11)] (2019)
Wilhelm Radloff, Die alttürkischen Inschriften der Mongolei (1894–1895, parts 1–3)