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RouranFirst GöktürkTang ruleSecond GöktürkUyghurKirghizHunsWestern GöktürkTürgeshKarlukKhazar
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Theophylact Simocatta wrote the history of the reign of the emperor Maurice, from 582 to 602, in eight books.[1] He was the last of the classicizing historians of late antiquity. He continued the work of Menander.[1] He wrote in the reign of Heraclius, a generation after the events. For the Göktürks the History is the second Greek witness after Menander, and unlike Menander it survives whole.

Author and date

Theophylact came from Egypt and was probably born towards the end of the 580s.[1] He trained in rhetoric and law. By 610 he was in Constantinople, where he spoke in memory of Maurice at the funeral that Heraclius held for his murdered predecessor.[2] The title of the History, preserved by the Byzantine scholar Photius, gives him the rank of a former prefect.[3] His byname Simocatta appears to mean “snub-nosed cat”.[1]

The History was begun after the death of Phocas in 610 and before that of the patriarch Sergius in 638.[4] The latest event it clearly mentions is the death of Khosrow II in 628. The History was probably written towards the end of the 620s.[4] It breaks off with the renewal of war between Rome and Persia in 602 and was never finished.[5]

Sources of the History

Theophylact did not witness what he describes, and he worked from written sources.[6] For the Persian war his main source was the history of John of Epiphania, a lawyer in the service of the patriarch of Antioch who had served on an embassy to Persia in the 590s. Only a few pages of John’s work survive.[6] From the campaign in Suania in 589 onwards the eastern narrative grows fuller. The letters of Bahram Chobin and Khosrow II that Theophylact gives word for word probably come from John.[7] For the Balkans he used an account written under Phocas in favour of the general Priscus, a chronicle of Constantinople and a hagiography of Maurice.[8]

For one chapter on Bahram Chobin Theophylact names his informant: a Babylonian official experienced in the composition of royal letters.[9] The digression on Central Asia in book seven goes back, at some remove, to a diplomatic record of a Göktürk embassy.[10]

The Göktürks in the History

Book three reports a Persian victory over the Göktürks before Bahram Chobin’s campaign in Suania, which Theophylact dates to the eighth year of Maurice. He calls the enemy the Huns of the north-east, “whom it is customary for Persians to call Turks”, and gives the victory to Hormizd IV.[11] In his account the Göktürks had grown rich on Persian payments and broke the treaty by demanding more. They were beaten, made tributary and stripped of their golden couches, tables and thrones.[12] Bahram appears only as the general who had distinguished himself in the Turkish campaign.[12] It is the Greek account of the war of 588 and 589, which the Arabic tradition tells through Tabari and Masʿudi.[13] A later chapter traces Bahram’s revolt to his pride in his victories over the Turks.[14] When Hormizd was deposed in 590, he counted the tribute of the Göktürks among his achievements.[15] Bindoes, a Persian noble, answered that Persian deaths and the courage of generals had won it.[16]

Theophylact uses the word Turks loosely. Of Kavad, the father of Khosrow I, he says that he fled to Hun tribes “whom history has almost universally recognized as Turks”. In the next sentence he names their king as the king of the Hephthalites.[17] When Khosrow II fled from Bahram in 590, some advised him to go to the eastern Scythians, “whom we are accustomed to call Turks”.[18]

Book five tells of the prisoners taken from Bahram’s army in 591, some of them “of the Turkish race”, whom Khosrow II sent to Maurice.[19] On their foreheads they bore the sign of the cross, which their mothers had tattooed there on the advice of Christians during a plague among the eastern Scythians.[20] Some scholars infer from the passage that Nestorian Christianity had spread among the Göktürks. The inference is by no means clear.[21] In the digression of book seven the Göktürks boast that they have never known a plague, which sits ill with the story of the cross.[22]

The digression on Central Asia

Book seven interrupts the Balkan narrative with a digression on the peoples of the east.[23] It opens with the letter that “the Chagan in the east” sent to Maurice, addressed “To the king of the Romans, the Chagan, the great lord of seven races and master of seven zones of the world”.[23] The khagan had defeated the ruler of the Abdeli, that is the Hephthalites, made an alliance with Stembischagan and enslaved the Avars.[23] Stembischagan is identified with Istemi.[24] Some of the defeated Avars fled to Taugast and others to the Mucri.[25] The khagan then subdued the Ogur on the river Til and killed the ruler of the Kolch. Three hundred thousand of that people are said to have fallen.[26]

The digression goes on to the Avars who had reached Europe. Theophylact calls them false Avars, descended from the Var and Chunni, who had taken the name of a people said to be the ablest among the Scythians.[26] He thought the khagan’s victories contemporary with Maurice. The error gave rise to his distinction between true and false Avars.[27] The digression ends with a description of Taugast, whose ruler is called Taisan, “son of god”.[28] Taugast is China.[24]

The civil war passage

After the victories the letter reports a civil war. A man named Turum, a kinsman of the khagan, revolted and gathered great forces. When the rebels gained the upper hand, the khagan called on three other great khagans, Sparzeugun, Kunaxolan and Tuldich.[29] Their armies met the rebels at Ikar, a place in wide plains four hundred miles from the Golden Mountain. Turum fell, and the khagan became master of his land again.[30] The Golden Mountain, the passage adds, is ceded by custom to the most powerful khagan.[31]

The three khagans remain unidentified. One view offers Ishbara Yabgu for Sparzeugun, with a question mark.[32] Artamonov and Gumilev dated the revolt to about 598 and connected it with the flight of Ogur tribes to the Avars in Pannonia. Czeglédy dated it to 581 and 582.[32] A third view holds that the khagan’s letter ends with the suppression of the revolt, about 582, and was sent at the start of Maurice’s reign.[33] The date of the passage thus moves by seventeen years with the reconstruction that is followed.[32]

The Byzantines heard these names from envoys and wrote them in Greek letters. The Chinese heard them from other envoys and wrote them in Chinese characters. Neither set was checked against the other, and the Göktürks themselves left no record from this period.

The religion passage

The description of Göktürk worship is the most quoted part of the digression. Theophylact has the Göktürks honour fire to an extraordinary degree, revere air and water and sing hymns to the earth. They worship and call god only the maker of heaven and earth, and sacrifice horses, cattle and sheep to him. Their priests are those thought able to foretell what is to come.[31] The god without a name is identified as Tengri, the sky god of the steppe peoples.[22]

Taken as ethnography, the passage agrees closely enough with what the inscriptions say of Tengri to be worth having. Taken as a Byzantine text, it also follows a familiar literary pattern: the barbarian who worships one creator god. The agreement may therefore owe something to the pattern rather than to observation.

Value as a witness

Two things make this the most useful Greek text on the Göktürks after Menander, and they pull in opposite directions.

It survives whole. Menander is known only through the excerpts that a tenth-century Byzantine compilation made of him. What survives of him is therefore a selection made three centuries later for purposes of its own. Theophylact’s eight books came down as a book, which means his silences are his and not an excerptor’s.

He is not a witness in the way Menander is. Menander had the embassy reports. Theophylact wrote a generation after the events, under Heraclius, and worked from other men’s material.[6] Where the two overlap, the earlier man has more weight. On the war of 588 he gives Hormizd the credit that the Persian tradition gives Bahram.[11] Some scholars trace this to John of Epiphania’s informants in the entourage of Khosrow II.[34] The diplomatic information of the digression is valuable once it is correctly dated. His own speculations on the origin of the Avars are not.[27]

Later Greek writers drew on him. Theophanes, who wrote his chronicle in the early ninth century, took his account of the Persian war and the reign of Maurice from Theophylact.[35] In the report of the Göktürk war, Theophanes set the Persian victory in Suania. He retold the story of the prisoners with the cross.[36]

Editions and translations

The Greek text was edited by Immanuel Bekker for the Bonn corpus of Byzantine historians, with the Latin translation of Pontanus.[37] The standard edition is that of Carl de Boor, in a revised version of 1972.[38] Michael Whitby and Mary Whitby translated the revised text into English.[39]

The passage

Theophylact Simocatta VII 7: the letter of the Chagan to the emperor Maurice

θέρους ἐνεστῶτος κατὰ τοῦτον δὴ τὸν ἐνιαυτὸν ὁ πρὸς τῇ ἕῳ ὑπὸ τῶν Τούρκων Χαγᾶνος ὑμνούμενος πρέσβεις ἐξέπεμψε Μαυρικίῳ τῷ αὐτοκράτορι, ἐπιστολήν τε συντεταχὼς ἐπινίκια ἐνεχάραττεν ἐν αὐτῇ.

ἡ δὲ τῆς ἐπιστολῆς ἐπιγραφὴ εἶχεν ἐπὶ λέξεως οὕτως “τῷ βασιλεῖ τῶν Ῥωμαίων ὁ Χαγᾶνος ὁ μέγας δεσπότης ἑπτὰ γενῶν καὶ κύριος κλιμάτων τῆς οἰκουμένης ἑπτά.”

τῷ ὄντι γὰρ τὸν ἐθνάρχην τῶν Ἀβδέλων (φημὶ δὴ τῶν λεγομένων Ἐφθαλιτῶν) καταπολεμήσας οὗτος αὐτὸς ὁ Χαγᾶνος ἐνίκησε, τήν τε τοῦ ἔθνους ἀρχὴν περιεβάλετο.

ἐπὶ τῇ νίκῃ τοίνυν εἰς μέγα ἀρθείς, καὶ τὸν Στεμβισχάδαν σύμμαχον ποιησάμενος, τὸ τῶν Ἀβάρων ἔθνος κατεδουλώσατο.

In the summer of this same year the Chagan of the east, whom the Turks praise in song, sent envoys to the emperor Maurice. He had drawn up a letter and recorded victories in it.

The address of the letter read, word for word: “To the king of the Romans, the Chagan, the great master of seven races and lord of seven zones of the inhabited world.”

In fact this Chagan himself had fought down the chief of the nation of the Abdeli (I mean those called Ephthalites) and won, and he had taken over the rule of that nation.

Exalted by this victory, and having made Stembischadan his ally, he enslaved the nation of the Avars.

[40] Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, VII.7.7–9, S. 188

Theophylact Simocatta VII 7: Taugast, the Mucri and the subjection of the Ogur

ἡττηθέντων γοῦν τῶν Ἀβάρων (πρὸς γὰρ τὸν λόγον ἐπάνιμεν) οἱ μὲν πρὸς τοὺς κατέχοντας τὴν Ταυγάστ παραγίνονται.

πόλις ἐπιφανής, τῶν τε λεγομένων Τούρκων ἀπῴκισται χιλίοις πρὸς τοῖς πεντακοσίοις σημείοις· αὕτη ὅμορος καθέστηκε τοῖς Ἰνδοῖς.

οἱ δὲ περὶ τὴν Ταυγάστ αὐλιζόμενοι βάρβαροι ἔθνος ἀλκιμώτατον καὶ πολυανθρωπότατον, καὶ τοῖς κατὰ τὴν οἰκουμένην ἔθνεσι διὰ τὸ μέγεθος ἀπαράλληλον.

ἕτεροι τῶν Ἀβάρων ἐπὶ τὴν ἧτταν πρὸς ταπεινοτέραν ἀποκλίναντες τύχην παραγίνονται πρὸς τοὺς λεγομένους Μουκρί.

τοῦτο δὲ τὸ ἔθνος πλησιέστατον πέφυκε τῶν Ταυγάστ, ἀλκὴ δὲ αὐτῷ πρὸς τὰς παρατάξεις πολλὴ διά τε τὰ ἐκ τῶν γυμνασίων ὁσημέραι μελετήματα διά τε τὴν περὶ τοὺς κινδύνους τῆς ψυχῆς ἐγκαρτέρησιν.

ἐπιβαίνει τοίνυν καὶ ἑτέρου ἐγχειρήσεως ὁ Χαγᾶνος, καὶ τοὺς Ὀγὼρ ἐχειρώσατο πάντας.

ἔθνος δὲ τοῦτο τῶν ἰσχυροτάτων καθίστηκεν διά τε τὴν πολυανδρίαν καὶ τὴν πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον ἔνοπλον ἄσκησιν.

When the Avars had been defeated (for we are returning to our account), some of them came to those who hold Taugast.

It is a famous city, and lies one thousand five hundred miles from those who are called Turks. It borders on the Indians.

The barbarians who camp around Taugast are a most valiant and most populous nation, and without parallel among the nations of the inhabited world because of its size.

Others of the Avars, inclining after their defeat towards a humbler fortune, came to those called Mucri.

This nation is the nearest neighbour of the Taugast. It has great strength for battle, from the exercises it practises every day and from its endurance of spirit in dangers.

The Chagan then embarked on another enterprise as well, and subdued all the Ogur.

This nation is among the strongest, by its large numbers and its armed training for war.

[41] Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, VII.7.10–13, S. 189

Theophylact Simocatta VII 8: the Ikar and the Golden Mountain

τούτων τῶν ἐπινικίων τὴν μήνυσιν διὰ τῶν πρέσβεων ὁ Χαγᾶνος πρὸς τὸν αὐτοκράτορα Μαυρίκιον ἐπεποίητο.

τὸ δὲ Ἰκὰρ τοῦ ὄρους τοῦ λεγομένου χρυσοῦ τετρακοσίοις σημείοις ἀπῴκισται.

τοῦτο δὴ τὸ ὄρος ἐπὶ τὰς ἀνατολὰς ἔχει τὴν ἵδρυσιν, χρυσοῦν δὲ παρὰ τῶν ἐγχωρίων κατονομάζεται τοῦτο μὲν διὰ τὴν δαψίλειαν τῶν ἐν αὐτῷ φυομένων καρπῶν, τοῦτο δὲ καὶ διὰ τὸ θρεμμάτων καὶ νωτοφόρων ζώων εἶναι κατάκομον.

νόμος δὲ Τούρκοις τῷ κρατεστέρῳ Χαγάνῳ τοῦ χρυσοῦ ὄρους παραχωρεῖν.

The Chagan had made the announcement of these victories to the emperor Maurice through his envoys.

The Ikar lies four hundred miles from the mountain called Golden.

This mountain is situated towards the east, and is called golden by the natives, partly because of the abundance of the fruits that grow on it, partly because it is richly stocked with flocks and pack animals.

It is a custom among the Turks to cede the Golden Mountain to the more powerful Chagan.

[42] Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, VII.8.11–12, S. 190 f.

Theophylact Simocatta VII 8: the Turks and plague, earthquakes, fire and the creator of heaven and earth

δυσὶ δὲ μεγίστοις τισὶ τὸ Τούρκων ἔθνος μεγαλαυχεῖ· φασὶ γὰρ ἄνωθεν αὐτοὺς καὶ ἐξ ἀρχῆς μηδέποτε λοιμῶν ἐπιδημίαν θεάσασθαι, τῶν τε σεισμῶν σπάνιν εἶναι κατ᾽ ἐκείνην τὴν χώραν.

τὴν δὲ Βακὰθ ὑπὸ τῶν Οὐννογούρων πάλαι ποτὲ πολισθεῖσαν καταπεσεῖν τοῖς σεισμοῖς, τὴν δὲ Σογδαηνὴν καὶ λοιμῶν καὶ σεισμῶν ἔμπειρον πεφυκέναι.

τιμῶσι τοιγαροῦν οἱ Τοῦρκοι λίαν ἐκτόπως τὸ πῦρ, ἀέρα δὲ καὶ ὕδωρ γεραίρουσιν· ὑμνοῦσι τὴν γῆν.

προσκυνοῦσι δὲ μόνως καὶ θεὸν ὀνομάζουσι τὸν πεποιηκότα τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν.

τούτῳ θύουσιν ἵππους καὶ βόας καὶ πρόβατα,

ἱερεῖς κεκτημένοι, οἳ καὶ τὴν τῶν μελλόντων αὐτοῖς δοκοῦσιν ἐκτίθεσθαι προαγόρευσιν.

The nation of the Turks boasts of two very great things. They say that from of old and from the beginning they have never seen an epidemic of plague, and that earthquakes are rare in that land.

Bakath, founded long ago by the Onogurs, is said to have fallen in the earthquakes, and Sogdiane to have experience of both plagues and earthquakes.

The Turks therefore honour fire to an extraordinary degree, they revere air and water, and they sing hymns to the earth.

But they worship and call god only him who made the heaven and the earth.

To him they sacrifice horses, cattle and sheep,

and they have priests, who, in their opinion, even expound the prediction of what is to come.

[43] Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, VII.8.13–15, S. 191

Theophylact Simocatta VII 8: the revolt of Turum and the gathering at the Ikar

οὕτω δὴ τῆς νίκης τῷ Χαγάνῳ μειδιώσης ἐπιφανῶς, συγκροτεῖται τοῖς Τούρκοις ἐμφύλιος πόλεμος.

ἀνήρ τις Τουρούμ ὀνομαζόμενος, πρὸς γένος καθεστὼς τῷ Χαγάνῳ, νεωτερίσας δυνάμεις μεγάλας συνήθροισεν.

ἐπεὶ δὲ κατὰ τὴν μάχην τὰ τοῦ τετυραννηκότος ἦν ἐγκρατέστερα, πρεσβεύεται ὁ Χαγᾶνος πρὸς ἑτέρους τρεῖς μεγάλους Χαγάνους· ταῦτα δὲ τούτοις ὀνόματα, Σπαρζευγοῦν καὶ Κουναξολὰ καὶ Τουλδίχ.

συναθροισθείσης τοίνυν τῆς ὅλης ἐκτάξεως εἰς τὸ Ἰκὰρ (χῶρος δὲ οὗτος πεδίοις ἐνειλημμένος μεγάλοις),

So, as victory smiled brilliantly on the Chagan, a civil war broke out among the Turks.

A man named Turum, related to the Chagan by birth, rebelled and gathered great forces.

But when, in the battle, the affairs of the usurper were stronger, the Chagan sent an embassy to three other great Chagans. These were their names: Sparzeugun, Kunaxolan and Tuldich.

When the whole array had assembled at the Ikar (this is a place enfolded in great plains),

[44] Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, VII.8.8–10, S. 190

References

  1. ^ a b c d Whitby 1986, xiii
  2. ^ Whitby 1986, xiii-xiv
  3. ^ Whitby 1986, xiv
  4. ^ a b Whitby 1986, xvi
  5. ^ Whitby 1986, xvi-xvii
  6. ^ a b c Whitby 1986, xxi
  7. ^ Whitby 1986, xxii
  8. ^ Whitby 1986, xxiv-xxv
  9. ^ Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, p. 101
  10. ^ Whitby 1986, xxv,188
  11. ^ a b Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, p. 80
  12. ^ a b Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, p. 81
  13. ^ Golden 1992, p. 132
  14. ^ Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, p. 102
  15. ^ Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, p. 109
  16. ^ Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, p. 110
  17. ^ Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, p. 112
  18. ^ Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, p. 116
  19. ^ Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, p. 146
  20. ^ Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, p. 146-147
  21. ^ Golden 1992, p. 150
  22. ^ a b Whitby 1986, p. 191
  23. ^ a b c Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, p. 188
  24. ^ a b Golden 1992, p. 109
  25. ^ Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, p. 189
  26. ^ a b Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, p. 189-190
  27. ^ a b Whitby 1988, p. 317
  28. ^ Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, p. 191-192
  29. ^ Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, p. 190
  30. ^ Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, p. 190-191
  31. ^ a b Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, p. 191
  32. ^ a b c Golden 1992, p. 133
  33. ^ Whitby 1986, p. 188-191
  34. ^ Whitby 1988, p. 238
  35. ^ Scott 1997, lxxxi
  36. ^ Theophanes the Confessor; Scott 1997, p. 385,389
  37. ^ Bekker 1834
  38. ^ Whitby 1986, p. 257
  39. ^ Whitby 1986, xxix
  40. ^ Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, VII.7.7–9, S. 188
  41. ^ Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, VII.7.10–13, S. 189
  42. ^ Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, VII.8.11–12, S. 190 f.
  43. ^ Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, VII.8.13–15, S. 191
  44. ^ Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, VII.8.8–10, S. 190

Sources

Literature

  • Michael Whitby, Mary Whitby (trans.), The History of Theophylact Simocatta (1986)
  • Michael Whitby, The Emperor Maurice and His Historian (1988)
  • Immanuel Bekker (ed.), Theophylacti Simocattae Historiarum libri octo (1834)
  • Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
  • Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
  • Cyril Mango, Roger Scott (trans.), The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor: Byzantine and Near Eastern History AD 284–813 (1997)

Drawn on by

Theophanes the Confessor

Articles resting on this source 58

Animism · Army of the Steppe Empires · Avars · Bahram Chobin · Byzantium · Captives and the Unfree · Diplomacy of the Steppe Empires · Envoys and Embassies · Fire Worship · Flight of the Avars (557) · Flight of the Tarniach and Kotzager · Göktürk Expansion along the Silk Road · Göktürk Expansion into Europe · Göktürk prisoners with the cross (591) · Göktürk Weapons · Göktürk–Persian war, 588–589 · Herat · Hormizd IV · Horse Sacrifice · Ikar · Istemi · Iye · Khan (Khagan) · Kotzager · Kunaxolan · Kutrigurs · Maniakh's embassy to Constantinople, 568 · Menander Protector · Murder of Bahram Chobin · Ogurs · Omens and Divination · Onogurs · Post and Communication · Raw Materials and Trade among the Turkic Peoples · Revolt of Turum · Šāba · Sacred Mountains · Sacrifice and the year · Sasanian Persia · Sparzeugun · Taisan · Tardush · Tarniach · The embassy of Zemarchos, 569 · The Göktürk Civil War · The Göktürk–Byzantine alliance · The Göktürk–Rouran Wars · The khan's letter to Maurice · The origin of the Avars · Tuldich · Turkic Mythology · Turkic Tribes in Europe · Turum · Volga · Warfare of the Steppe Empires · Water Cult · Western Göktürk Khaganate · Zabender

Related

What links here37

Persons
Bahram Chobin · Hormizd IV · Istemi · Kunaxolan · Sparzeugun · Tuldich · Turum
States
Western Göktürk Khaganate
Conflicts
Göktürk Expansion along the Silk Road · Göktürk Expansion into Europe · Göktürk–Persian war, 588–589 · The Göktürk Civil War
Battles & Events
Flight of the Tarniach and Kotzager
Places
Ikar · Volga
Peoples
Avars · Kotzager · Kutrigurs · Ogurs · Onogurs · Tarniach · Turkic Tribes in Europe · Zabender
Institutions and Titles
Army of the Steppe Empires · Göktürk Weapons · Raw Materials and Trade among the Turkic Peoples · Taisan
Religions
Fire Worship · Horse Sacrifice · Iye · Omens and Divination · Sacrifice and the year · Water Cult
Sources
al-Masʿūdī · John of Ephesus · Theophanes the Confessor
Controversies
The origin of the Avars

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Theophylact Simocatta.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/sources/theophylact-simocatta/

Last revised: 8 November 2026