the turkic tribes 375The Turkic Tribes.
The Eastern Turks
The Turks are the people who gave their name to their entire lan-
guage family. The Chinese called them T’u-chüeh. Until 552, they
had been a subject tribe of the Juan-juan, but that year they crushed
their masters, and their chief T’u-men (Bumin) assumed the title of
qaghan. His successors soon expanded the Turkish empire until it
streched from the border of Manchuria to that of Persia. In the early
580’s, it divided into two qaghanates, that of the Eastern Turks, also
called the Northern, in what now is Inner and Outer Mongolia, and
that of the Western Turks. Both were hostile to each other and also
riven internally by factions and, at times, competing qaghans. These
tensions were fomented and exploited by the Chinese.^1
When the Sha-po-lüeh Qaghan of the Eastern Turks died in 587,
he was briefly succeeded by a brother and then by a son who became
the Hsieh-chia-shih-to-na-tu-lan Qaghan or Tu-lan for short. The lat-
ter sent envoys to the Sui court and was presented with 3000 items
of objects (Sui shu 84:8b, 9b).
The stepmother of the new qaghan was Chinese. In 579, the last
ruler of Northern Chou, Emperor Ching, had agreed to a marriage
alliance with the Eastern Turks and had enfeoffed a lady of his impe-
rial house as Princess of Ch’ien-chin. She was a granddaughter of
Yü-wen T’ai, father of the first emperor of Northern Chou. In 580,
she was escorted to the Turks, where she became the qatun of the
Sha-po-lüeh Qaghan. After the overthrow of the Northern Chou
(^1) The Chinese sources distinguish as a rule between the Eastern and Western
Turks. Thus Sui shu 84:1a-14b, Pei shih 99:1a-16a, Chiu T’ang shu 194A, Hsin T’ang
shu 215A and 215B:1a-3a, T’ung-tien 197:39a-198:44a, and Wen-hsien t’ung-k’ao 343:
6b-344:11a are devoted to the Eastern Turks, and Sui shu 84:14b-18a, Pei shih 99:
16a-19b,Chiu T’ang shu 194B, Hsin T’ang shu 215B:3a-10a, T’ung-tien 199:44a-46a,
andWen-hsien t’ung-k’ao 344:11b-13b to the Western Turks. However, one entry in
the imperial annals of Sui shu and a number of entries in Ts’e-fu yüan-kuei and Tzu-chih
t’ung-chien do not specify whether the Turks are eastern or western. Where internal
evidence does not settle the matter, I have below marked the doubtful cases by an
asterisc, i.e Turks or Turkish.