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The yabgus of Tokharistan were Göktürk princes of the Ashina house. They ruled the old Hephthalite country south of the Oxus from a seat at Huo, near the later Kunduz.[1] The Tang histories call the country Tuhuoluo and say that its king bears the title yabgu.[2] The first of the line was Tardu Shad, a son of Tong Yabgu, whom the pilgrim Xuanzang found at Huo about 630.[3] In 661 the Tang made the seat an area command and named the king its governor.[4] Later yabgus asked the Tang for troops against the Arabs and against a neighbour allied with Tibet.[5][6] The last embassy in the Chinese record dates from 759.[7]

Sources

The main written record is Chinese. The Xin Tang Shu has a notice on Tuhuoluo, the Tang Huiyao names several of the yabgus, and the Cefu yuangui lists the embassies year by year.[8] All three rest on Tang court records. They name a yabgu when he sent an embassy or received a title. The Sui Shu describes the country at the time of the Sui. The Record of the Western Regions describes it about 630.[9] Xuanzang’s biographer Huili adds the ruler’s household at Huo, on the way out and on the way home.[3][10] Coins of the yabgus and Bactrian documents give the local side, and both are treated below.

Origins

After the fall of the Hephthalite kingdom, the Göktürks held Sogdiana. The Sasanians took most of the country to its south, Tokharistan included.[11] The Hephthalite principalities that remained accepted Göktürk supremacy and became vassals of the western khan.[12] The Sui Shu records one early intervention. When the Hephthalite country fell into disorder, the Göktürks sent the Tong Shad Zijie to take command of it by force.[13]

About 625 Tong Yabgu is said to have advanced to the Indus.[14][15] He took the main cities and replaced the Hephthalite dynasties with Göktürk rulers.[14] Xuanzang crossed the country about 630.[16] He reports that the royal line of Tokharistan had died out centuries before, and that each chieftain had made himself lord of a valley or a stronghold. The country was divided into twenty-seven states, and all of them were subject to the Göktürks.[16] The Xin Tang Shu adds that Antarava, Khost and Huo lay in the old land of Tokhara. Their lords were Göktürks as well, and they ruled the peoples south of the Iron Gate.[2]

The first yabgus

Tardu Shad held Huo about 630.[3] His young wife poisoned him, and his son, a tegin, took his rank of shad.[3] When Xuanzang came back, the ruler of Tokharistan called himself yabgu.[17] One reckoning dates the return to 643 or 644.[18] The translations of the Life make this ruler a nephew of the Yabgu Khan.[17] He may be the tegin who had seized his father’s rank, a grandson of Tong Yabgu.[18][19] The passage on Huo gives no name for him.

The Chinese record notes the country from 635.[20] The Cefu yuangui has an embassy from Tuhuoluo in the fifth month of the ninth year of Zhenguan, which is 635.[20][21] It has another in the first month of 645, in a list that names a Tuhuoluo yabgu and a Shabolo yabgu. Shabolo may be the personal name of the Tokharian yabgu.[20][22] A third embassy followed in 648.[20]

A reconstruction from coins names Tardu Shad’s successor Ishbara and gives him the first coinage. Coins of his type carry regnal years up to the twentieth.[1]

The western khans and Tokharistan

The Jiu Tang Shu lists Tokharistan among the lands that took orders from Irbis Ishbara Yabgu Khan, who held the Southern Court of the western Göktürks.[23] His rival Üç Tuğlu Khan attacked Tokharistan and broke it.[24] After his own people deserted him, he fled to Tokharistan. The Tang Huiyao dates the flight to 642.[25] None of these texts says what the yabgu of Tokharistan did in these wars.

The Tang area command

In 650 Tokharistan sent a great bird, seven feet tall, that the Chinese called the camel bird.[26] The Tang Huiyao dates the accession of the yabgu Wujingbo to 652, when he sent a memorial to announce it.[21] Two years later he sent his son to court.[21]

The Xin Tang Shu says that in the Xianqing years the Tang made A-huan, the city of the yabgu, the seat of the Yuezhi Area Command. It cut twenty-four prefectures from the smaller towns and named the Ashina king governor.[2] A-huan is, according to some scholars, the Arabic War-wālīz, near Kunduz.[27] The Tang Huiyao puts the memorial in 652 and the investiture in 661.[21] In that year it makes Wujingbo commissioner of twenty-five prefectures and governor of Yuezhi.[21] The Tongdian dates the large settlement to 661 as well.[28] Wang Mingyuan, the envoy sent to set up prefectures in Tokharistan, presented a chart of the western regions. He proposed sixteen area commands between Khotan and Persia, and a stele in Tokharistan to record the imperial virtue. The emperor agreed.[28] In 665 Wujingbo’s brother Zuhunduo brought two agate lamp trees, each over three feet high.[21]

In 705 King Nadunili sent his younger brother Puluo to court, where he stayed with the guard.[2] In 718 Puluo petitioned the Tang court about his rank.[29] He was a tegin, he wrote, and the Tang had made him an officer of the fourth rank.[29] In the same petition he gave the weight of his house. His elder brother, the yabgu of Tokharistan, had under him two hundred and twelve kings, governors and prefects.[29] The kings of Zabul and of Kapisa commanded two hundred thousand soldiers and horsemen each.[29] Ten more kings, among them those of Khuttal, Chaganiyan, Shuman, Shignan, the Hephthalites, Wakhan, Gozgan, Bamiyan, Kobadian and Badakhshan, commanded fifty thousand each.[29][1] The numbers are the petitioner’s own, in a request for a higher rank.

In 719 the Tang Huiyao names the yabgu Zhihanna Dishe, who sent a man learned in the heavens to the court.[21][7] Some scholars take him for the king of Chaganiyan, who followed Nadunili as yabgu.[30] In 729 the Tang invested Gutuluo Dunda du as yabgu of Tokharistan and king of the Hephthalites.[4] The second title shows that the yabgu stood over the Hephthalite principalities.

Wars with the Arabs and the Tibetans

Under the year 654 the Cefu yuangui reports that the Arabs defeated Persia and killed Yazdgird.[31] His son Peroz fled to Tokharistan and sent word to the Tang. Gaozong judged the way too far to send troops. The Arabs then withdrew, and the Tokharians sent troops to set Peroz on his throne.[32] The throne may have stood in Seistan.[33]

The Arab advance reached Tokharistan itself. The advance guard of the Arab governor ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿĀmir took Merv-i Rud and the whole of Tokharistan in 652 or 653 and agreed terms with Balkh.[33] Under Muʿāwiya, Balkh and Kabul were retaken by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Samura, but Arab rule did not last.[33] By 705 the yabgu had withdrawn to Badakhshan, because Balkh and the central lands were in Arab hands.[33] The mints at Shuburgan, Khusp and Herat were lost, and the coinage ceased early in the eighth century.[33] The first campaign of Qutayba ibn Muslim across the Oxus, in 705, counted the ruler of Balkh among its troops.[34]

The yabgus answered with appeals to China. In 719 the king of Kumedh told the Tang court that Tokharistan, Bukhara, Chach and Ferghana had all submitted to the Arabs.[35] In 727 the yabgu of Tokharistan wrote that the Arabs had put his father in chains and laid heavy taxes on him.[5] He asked the Tang emperor for a part of his forces.[5] Without them, he wrote, he could no longer guard the emperor’s western gate.[5]

A second threat came from the east. In 749 the yabgu Shilimangjialuo reported that a neighbouring ruler, Jieshi, had joined the Tibetans and threatened the road to Bolor.[4][6] He asked for troops from Anxi.[4] The Tang sent them, and they defeated Jieshi.[2] In 758 Tokharistan and nine other western states sent soldiers against the rebel An Lushan, and Suzong attached them to the Shuofang army.[4]

Coins and documents

The yabgus struck coins in the western part of their lands. One classification dates three types. The earliest bears the name of Ishbara yabgu on a crown with two wings and a bull’s head. Its mints were Khusp, Herat and Shuburgan.[1] A second type, in the second half of the seventh century, names Sem, and a third names Gün Ishpara.[33] Sem may be the Wushibo of the Chinese record.[33] A medal with the legend “The glory increased, jeb, King of Kings” is thought to have been struck by Tardu Shad in honour of Tong Yabgu.[14]

The Bactrian documents of northern Afghanistan contain Old Turkic words and phrases.[36] The earliest documents date from the first half of the seventh century.[36] The Old Turkic word tapaglïg, “revered”, appears in documents of 640, 679 and 682.[37] A document of 711 names a Khalaj princess with the Turkic title kïnžuy, “consort”.[36] They are linked to the rule of the western Göktürks after they and the Sasanians had overthrown the Hephthalites.[36]

Yabgus named in the sources

The Chinese texts name the following yabgus and kings of Tokharistan.

  • Tardu Shad, eldest son of the Yabgu Khan and lord of Huo about 630.[3]
  • His son, the former tegin, who was yabgu when Xuanzang came back.[17] The Life gives no name.
  • Wujingbo, named from 652 to 665. He announced his accession in 652.[21] He became governor of Yuezhi in 661.[21] A Cefu yuangui entry for the third year of Yonghui, which is 652, names an Ashina Wushibo, whom some scholars take for the king of the notice.[7]
  • Nadunili, king in 705, who sent his brother Puluo to court.[2] The petition of 718 names the yabgu in a form that is understood as the same name.[38]
  • Zhihanna Dishe, yabgu in 719.[21]
  • Gutuluo Dunda du, invested as yabgu in 729.[39] The name has been restored as Qutluγ Ton Tardu.[30]
  • Shilimangjialuo, yabgu in 749.[2]

The last embassy in the Chinese list is that of 759.[7] The texts used here name no later yabgu, and they do not record where the line ended.

Rulers

  1. Tardu Shad—Shad

Relations with other states

Red is war, blue alliance, gold trade. Where several held at once, the line shows what prevailed; alliance and trade can run side by side. Each line rests on an article. Point at a state to see its weightiest relation, select it to see its events. The slider shows what stood in a given year, and Play runs through the years.

  1. Tang635 to 759

    • Embassy635 to 759embassies and titles; area command from 661

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Litvinsky 1996, p. 363
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 221
  3. ^ a b c d e Life of Xuanzang, juan 2
  4. ^ a b c d e Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 221; Tang Huiyao (Institutional History of the Tang), juan 99
  5. ^ a b c d Chavannes 1903, p. 206–207
  6. ^ a b Chavannes 1903, p. 214–215
  7. ^ a b c d e Chavannes 1903, p. 157
  8. ^ Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 221; Tang Huiyao (Institutional History of the Tang), juan 99; Cefu yuangui, juan 970
  9. ^ Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 83; Record of the Western Regions, juan 1
  10. ^ Life of Xuanzang; Beal 1911, p. 195–196
  11. ^ Litvinsky 1996, p. 359
  12. ^ Litvinsky 1996, p. 360
  13. ^ Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 83
  14. ^ a b c d e Litvinsky 1996, p. 362
  15. ^ a b c Yavuz 2025, p. 372
  16. ^ a b Record of the Western Regions, juan 1
  17. ^ a b c Life of Xuanzang; Beal 1911, p. 196
  18. ^ a b Chavannes 1903, p. 196
  19. ^ Markwart 1938, p. 44–45
  20. ^ a b c d e Cefu yuangui, juan 970
  21. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Tang Huiyao (Institutional History of the Tang), juan 99
  22. ^ Chavannes 1903, p. 156
  23. ^ Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194; Tongdian, juan 199
  24. ^ Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
  25. ^ Tang Huiyao (Institutional History of the Tang), juan 94
  26. ^ Cefu yuangui, juan 970; Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 221
  27. ^ Chavannes 1903, p. 155
  28. ^ a b Tongdian, juan 193
  29. ^ a b c d e Chavannes 1903, p. 200–202
  30. ^ a b Litvinsky 1996, p. 365
  31. ^ Cefu yuangui, juan 995
  32. ^ Cefu yuangui, juan 995; Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 221
  33. ^ a b c d e f g Litvinsky 1996, p. 364
  34. ^ Litvinsky 1996, p. 453
  35. ^ Chavannes 1903, p. 204
  36. ^ a b c d Erdal 2004, p. 4
  37. ^ Erdal 2004, p. 92
  38. ^ Chavannes 1903, p. 200
  39. ^ Tang Huiyao (Institutional History of the Tang), juan 99; Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 221

Sources

Literature

  • B. A. Litvinsky; Zhang Guang-da; R. Shabani Samghabadi (ed.), History of Civilizations of Central Asia, Vol. III (1996)
  • Édouard Chavannes, Documents sur les Tou-Kiue (Turcs) occidentaux (1903)
  • Samuel Beal (trans.), The Life of Hiuen-Tsiang by the Shaman Hwui Li (1911)
  • Josef Markwart, Wehrot und Arang. Untersuchungen zur mythischen und geschichtlichen Landeskunde von Ostiran (1938)
  • Marcel Erdal, A Grammar of Old Turkic (2004)
  • Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)

Related

What links here2

States
Turk Shahi of Kabul and Kapisa
Peoples
Nezak Shahs

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Yabgus of Tokharistan.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/polities/yabgus-of-tokharistan/

Last revised: 8 November 2026