Bumın Kagan

BUMIN QAGHAN († 552 ) was the founder of the first Turkish empire in history, the first Turk-Kaganate the Göktürks in late ancient Central Asia . Until the discovery of the Orkhon runes (1889) and the deciphering of the writings on them (1893) by the Danish philologist Vilhelm Thomsen , Bumın Kagan was only known by his Chinese name 土 門 ( T'u-men ), as it is called in Chinese sources has been.

Name variants

In German this ruler is also known as "Bumin Kaghan". In the Turkological transliteration of old Turkish names and texts, the spelling Bumın Kaġan is used , in the traditional German transcription also Bumïn qaγan .

The Turk tribe

According to Zhou shu (one of the historical works written during the reign of the Chinese Tang Dynasty ), Bumın was the son of T'u-wu , grandson of A-hsien-shih and great-grandson of Na-tu-liu (names only known in Chinese transliteration) .

Bumın Kagan came from the noble family of A-shih-na and was the chief of the Turkic tribe (own name turk , in Chinese sources t'u-chüeh ), whose name later became the generic term for all Turkic peoples . The Turk tribe was native to eastern Central Asia on the edge of the Altai and held the strategically important economic point, the intersection of two trade routes on the Altai, under their control. One trade route connected the Orkhon Valley in the east with the Ili Valley in the west. The other trade route led from the upper Yenisei south to the Altai and Tianshan . It is also known about the Turk that they were skilful blacksmiths and also exported their iron products.

The Turkic tribe lived under the suzerainty of the Rouran , who had spread from around 400 and were a large confederation of nomadic tribes. In 520 the Rouran Empire was divided into an eastern and a western part by the Chinese because of a controversy over the throne. A-na-kuei got the east of the Rouran empire, while Po-lo-men was supposed to rule the west. Po-lo-men, however, did not agree with the area assigned to him, so the dispute continued.

The Turkish victory over the Rouran

The probably Turkish Kao-che , as they are called in Chinese sources, wanted to take advantage of the disputes among the Rouran and tried in 546 to free themselves from their supremacy, which they were prevented from by the Turk tribe, the A-na-kuei warned. Probably as a token of gratitude, the leader of this tribe, Bumın, wanted to have A-na-kuei's daughter as his wife, which A-na-kuei refused, however, on the grounds that it was inappropriate for the tribe that served the Federation as blacksmiths' slaves. extradite a princess.

Bumın probably did not accept this insult, because with the same request he turned to the West Wei (a successor state to the North Wei ) and got the princess as his wife. In the period that followed, there was an open revolt of the Turk against the Rouran. In the year 552 Bumın defeated the ruling house of the Rouran and founded the first Turk-Kaganat .

The reign of Bumın Kagan

Bumın Kagan ruled for an extremely short time, as he died that same year. No source informs of his short reign. After a short time the empire was divided into an eastern and a western administrative unit as part of a total federation, with the eastern part forming the hegemonic power over the western part. It is unclear whether this division of the Kaganate of Bumın into two administrative units had come about from the first moment, as it had happened with other Central Asian nomadic empires, or only after Bumın Kagan's death.

Bumın Kagan's successor was Kuo-lo, whose name is only known from Chinese sources and who ruled from 552 to 553. After 553 (to 572) the eldest son Bumın Kagans Muhan ruled the Turkish Empire (de facto he only ruled the eastern part of the empire), while the younger brother Bumın Kagans Iştämi (probably identical with Sizabulos ) as Muhan's representative in the western part until 575 prevailed. In fact, Iştämi ruled the western part of the empire as an independent ruler.

The Orkhon runes mention Bumın's name and the name of his brother Iştämi at the same time and both as rulers, while they do not mention Muhan's name at all, and thus provide an indication that the division could have already occurred in Bumın's time, but that has not yet been done is proven.

Runic inscriptions

In the Köl-Tegin inscription of the Orkhon runes from 732 from the time of the second Turk Kaganat , the following representation can be found about Bumın Kagan:

“When the blue sky was created above and the earth below, human beings were created between these two. My ancestors Bumin Kağan and Iştämi Kağan became rulers over human beings. After becoming rulers, they organized and ruled the state and institutions (traditional laws) of the Turkish people. They had enemies in all four directions. They marched with their armies and conquered the peoples in all four directions and made them subjects. They caused the proud enemies to bow and the mighty to kneel. "

literature

• Rene Grousset: The steppe peoples , Essen 1975
• Ali Kemal Meram: Göktürk İmparatorluğu , Istanbul 1974
• Denis Sinor: Inner Asia. History - Civilization - Language. A syllabus , Bloomington 1969

supporting documents

1. ^ Britannica Online Encyclopedia Orhon inscriptions
2. ↑ Peter B. Golden: An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples: Ethnogenesis and State-Formation in Medieval and Early Modern Eurasia and the Middle East , Wiesbaden 1992, p. 119
3. ↑ Wolfgang-Ekkehard Scharlipp : The early Turks in Central Asia , p. 2, p. 11f., P. 18f., P. 23, p. 25, p. 30