Togu Balık

Togu Balık is the town at which the Göktürks fought the first battle of the war that the Kül Tegin inscription counts as five battles in one year against the Nine Oguz.^[1] The word balık means a town. The place is named in both the Kül Tegin and the Bilge Khan inscription.^[1]

In the two inscriptions

The Kül Tegin inscription puts the town first: eŋ ilki togu balıkda süŋüşdimiz, “the first time we fought at the town of Togu.” Kül Tegin rode the white horse Azman and charged. He ran six men through, and in the clash of the armies he put a seventh to the sword.^[2]

The Bilge Khan inscription tells the same year in the first person and counts four battles where the Kül Tegin inscription counts five. It also puts the town first: eŋ ilki Toğu Balıkda süŋüşdüm. It adds that the army crossed the river Toğla by swimming.^[3] The Toğla is the Tola, the river east of the Orkhon.

The stones give no year for the battles. One account places them in 714, and a second places the revolt of the Nine Oguz after the death of Kapgan in 716.^[4]^[5]

The name

togu balıkToğu BalıkOld TurkicKül Tegin inscription · Bilge Khan inscription
Doğu BalıkTurkish

There are two explanations of the name. The first takes balık as a town and concludes that the Nine Oguz had a town called Togu.^[6] The second takes togu as “east”, so that the town would have lain east of the Oguz. The study that proposes this calls its own interpretation probable and gives no further proof.^[7]

The Orkhon texts do not say who built the town or whether it had walls. Under Ordu-Balık, the Uyghur capital, Turkic Atlas takes up the question whether Togu was a built town and so an earlier one.

The site

The inscriptions do not name the site. The river Toğla points to the country of the Tola.

References

^ a b Kül Tegin inscription; Bilge Khan inscription
^ Kül Tegin inscription
^ Bilge Khan inscription
^ Taşağıl 2004, p. 39
^ Sümer 1972, p. 15–17
^ Ögel 2000, p. 181, 185
^ Baykara 1990, p. 27

Sources

Literature

Tuncer Baykara, Göktürk Yazıtlarının Türk İskân (Yerleşme) Tarihindeki Yeri (1990)
Namsrai Gerelmaa, Költegin Yazıtı’nda Kalıplaşmış Bazı Kelimelerin Moğolca Esasında Yorumu (2011)
Bahaeddin Ögel, Türk Kültür Tarihine Giriş I: Türklerde köy ve şehir hayatı (2000)
Ahmet Taşağıl, Gök-Türkler, Bd. III (2004)
Faruk Sümer, Oğuzlar (Türkmenler). Tarihleri, boy teşkilâtı, destanları (1972)