Kök Teŋri

Kök Teŋri, the Eternal Blue Sky, was judge and source of life, eternal and supreme. His oldest recorded form is the Chinese transcription Cheng-li, used of the Xiongnu in the fourth century BC.

He was the chief god of the steppe ruling classes in the sixth to ninth centuries. The Orkhon inscriptions of the early eighth century say that Tengri creates death, and a khagan called himself ‘Tengri-like, Tengri-born’. The Uighur khagans’ adoption of Manichaeism in the eighth century cost his cult its place at court.