Embassies of Maniakh and Zemarchus: the Turks ally with Byzantium

With the fall of the Hephthalites the Sogdians, the merchant people of the Silk Road, became subjects of the Turks. According to Menander Protector, they asked their ruler, whom he calls Dizabul — usually identified with Istämi — to let them sell silk in Persia. Khosrow I received their embassy, led by Maniakh, but on the advice of Katulph, a Hephthalite who had gone over to the Persians, bought the silk and burned it before the envoys’ eyes; a second, Turkic embassy was poisoned, and only three or four of its members survived. Maniakh then urged Dizabul to sell the silk to the Romans, who used more of it than anyone else, and offered to go himself. Crossing many lands and finally the Caucasus, he reached Constantinople at the beginning of the fourth year of Justin II’s reign, the end of 568, and presented a letter in “Scythian” writing, read by interpreters, and gifts of silk. The envoys told the emperor that the Turks were divided into four realms under Dizabul, that they had subjugated the Hephthalites and taken their cities, and that some 20,000 Avars had escaped their rule; Maniakh swore a great oath of friendship.

In August 569 Justin sent back with him the Cilician Zemarchus, whom Menander calls general of the eastern cities. In Sogdiana Turks said to be able to ward off misfortune — exorcists, or shamans — purified the Romans and their baggage with fire, a bell and a drum and made Zemarchus pass through the flames. He was then taken to the khagan in a valley of the mountain the Turks called Ektag, the “Golden Mountain” — whether in the Altai or the Tian Shan is disputed. Menander describes Dizabul in a tent hung with coloured silks, seated on a golden two-wheeled throne that a single horse could draw; a gilded couch borne by four golden peacocks; and wagons laden with silver vessels and silver figures of animals. Dizabul took Zemarchus and twenty attendants with him on a campaign against Persia; at Talas they met a Persian embassy, and the khagan, seating the Romans in the place of honour, heaped reproaches on the Persians. By another account, the envoys were received by the supreme khagan Muqan, while Istämi led the campaign against Persia.

Maniakh died meanwhile, and Zemarchus returned with a new Turkic envoy, Tagma Tarkhan, and Maniakh’s young son. Sending a courier ahead by the shortest, waterless road, he travelled for twelve days along the sandy shores of a great lake, crossed the rivers Ikh, Daikh and Attila (the Volga), avoided the Persian ambushes he was warned of on the Kuban and near Suania, and came through the land of the Alans to the Black Sea, Trebizond and Constantinople. His journey is dated to 569–570 or 569–571. The alliance promised joint war on Persia and a direct silk trade, and in 572 Justin II went to war with Persia; but the friendship soon cooled, and when the envoy Valentinus reached the Turks in 576 he was met with open hostility.