The Zhou Shu tells the origin of the Göktürks twice, and the two accounts do not agree. The first is the wolf legend of the boy in the marsh and the cave near Gaochang. The second account begins in a different place. It opens: “According to another account the ancestors of the Türk came from the state of Suo, which lay north of the Xiongnu.”[1] It is the only place in the Chinese record where the Ashina are given a country of their own before the Altai. The compilers who annotated the text place that country in the north, on the upper Yenisei.
The story
The chief of the tribe was Abangbu. He had seventeen brothers.[2] The Bei Shi writes seventy, which is almost certainly a slip.[3] One of the brothers, Yizhi Nishidu, was born of a she-wolf. Abangbu and his brothers were foolish by nature. Their state was therefore destroyed. A spirit touched Yizhi Nishidu and gave him the power to call down rain and raise the wind.[1] He married two women, who were said to be the daughters of the god of summer and the god of winter. From a single pregnancy four sons were born.[1]
The four sons are the point of the story, because the text gives each of them a place. The first turned into a white swan, in the text a bai hong.[1] One Turkish translation renders the bird as a white stork instead.[2] The second founded a state between the Afu and the Jian river. The state was called Qïrqïz. The third ruled on the Chuzhe river. The fourth, the eldest, lived on Mount Jiansi Chuzheshi, where other branches of Abangbu’s people lived on the heights.[1] The cold there was killing the people. The eldest son made fire and kept them alive. For that they made him their chief and gave him the name Türk.[1] Some scholars take this as a claim of the Göktürks to the discovery of fire, a credit they did not want to give to others.[4] In the Altai epics, by contrast, the creator god Ülgen made fire.[5]
The line then continues with names that the rest of the record knows. Nadulu Shad had ten wives, and his sons took their mothers’ clan names. Ashina was the son of a concubine. When Nadulu died, the sons of the ten mothers gathered under a great tree. They agreed that whichever of them leapt highest toward it should rule. Ashina’s son leapt highest, though he was the youngest. He took the name Axian Shad.[1] From Axian Shad the chapter continues to Tuwu and to Bumin.
The commentators’ identifications
The Chinese commentators identified the four rivers and mountains. These identifications are useful, because they place the second origin story on the map, where the first does not.[6]
| Name in the text | Identified as |
|---|---|
| Jian river (Kien) | the Ulug-Khem on the southern edge of Tannu Tuva, the upper Yenisei |
| Afu | Uvs Nuur; or the Abakan |
| Chuzhe river | the Yenisei |
| Jiansi Chuzheshi mountain | the Qing shan of the Kirghiz chapter of the Xin Tang Shu, taken for the western Sayan, west of the Ulug-Khem |
| Qïrqïz | one of the many Chinese spellings of the Kirghiz |
These identifications form one coherent region, not a scattering of places. The region consists of the upper Yenisei, the Sayan and the Minusinsk country. The seat of the tribe was on the mountain where the eldest son made fire. The story therefore does two things at once. It gives the Ashina a northern homeland in the Yenisei country. It also makes them and the Kirghiz brothers, sons of the same father. This is the only place in the Chinese material where the two houses are joined.[1]
Suo and the Xianbei
The commentary goes one step further. Suo, it says, is the old name of the homeland of the Xianbei. The Tuoba, who counted as Xianbei, were called Suo lu, the Suo barbarians. From this the commentary concludes that the Göktürks must descend from the Xianbei.[6] The same passage attaches a warning to the inference. Genealogies of this kind are not to be believed at once. What they yield is a line of descent claimed, not a descent established.[6]
That warning is justified, and it holds for all such claims. Turkic Atlas sets out why under the ethnogenesis debate. The Zhou Shu’s first story makes the Göktürks a branch of the Xiongnu. Its second story makes them a remnant out of Suo. Its commentators make Suo the Xianbei. The chapter therefore contains three descents. It is the work of a Chinese compiler, written in 636 about a people who had become known a century before.
The legend as evidence
A legend is not a record of where a people lived. It is, however, a record of where they said they came from, and that is valuable in its own right. The first story sends the Ashina to Turfan, a refuge on the edge of the oases. The second sends them to the Yenisei, a homeland in the northern forest. The two claims are of different kinds. The name Türk, moreover, does different work in each. In the first it is taken from the shape of the Altai. In the second it is the title given to a man who kept his people alive. This would make Türk a word of rule before it was a word of place.
Some scholars give the two stories different standing. The wolf-and-cave legend is the account that the state itself recognised. The Suo story is a popular tale, shaped more by religious belief and folk narrative. It also contains two rules of succession. At first the eldest son leads, as the law of the state has it. At the tree the youngest wins, as the law of the people has it.[7]
Turkic Atlas sets the three descents side by side under the Ashina. Turkic Atlas describes the yearly rite that one of them explains under the cave of the ancestors.
References
Sources
- Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
- Bei Shi (History of the Northern Dynasties), juan 99 (after Wei Shu, Zhou Shu and Sui Shu)
Literature
- Liu Mau-tsai, Çin Kaynaklarına Göre Doğu Türkleri (1958, Turkish edition)
- Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
- Bahaeddin Ögel, Türk Mitolojisi (Kaynakları ve açıklamaları ile destanlar) I (1993)
- Bahaeddin Ögel, Türk Mitolojisi (Kaynakları ve açıklamaları ile destanlar) II (1995)
What links here17
- Persons
- Abangbu · Axian Shad · Nadulu Shad · Yizhi Nishidu
- Conflicts
- Mukan's Eastern and Northern Wars
- Lineages
- Ashina
- Religions
- Asena the She-Wolf (Gök Börü) · Fire Worship · Kam (Turkic Shaman) · Turkic Mythology · Ulukayın (Turkic World Tree)
- Controversies
- The Göktürks and the Xiongnu
Cite this article
Yavuz, Emre-E. “Suo.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/polities/suo-state/
Last revised: 8 November 2026
