Chorpan Tarkhan is recorded by

Moses of Kalankatuyk Movses Kaghankatvatsi ( hy, Մովսէս Կաղանկատուացի ''Movses Kaġankatvac’i''), or Movses Daskhurantsi ( ''Movses Dasxuranc’i'') is the reputed author (or authors) of a tenth-century Classical Armenian historiographical work on C ...

as a

Khazar The Khazars ; he, כּוּזָרִים, Kūzārīm; la, Gazari, or ; zh, 突厥曷薩 ; 突厥可薩 ''Tūjué Kěsà'', () were a semi-nomadic Turkic people that in the late 6th-century CE established a major commercial empire coverin ...

general, who conquered

Armenia Armenia (), , group=pron officially the Republic of Armenia,, is a landlocked country in the Armenian Highlands of Western Asia.The UNbr>classification of world regions places Armenia in Western Asia; the CIA World Factbook , , and ...

in April 630 CE. He was most likely an officer in the army of the Western Gokturks led by

Böri Shad Böri Shad (fl. c. 627) ( otk, 𐰋𐰇𐰼𐰃𐱁𐰑, böri šad, , "Wolf governor") was a Turkic prince or general who fought the Persians south of the Caucasus during the Third Perso-Turkic War. In this war the Western Turkic Khaganate was ...

in the wake of

Ziebel Tong Yabghu Qaghan (r. 618–628 or 630) (also known as T'ung Yabghu, Tong Yabghu Khagan, and Tong Yabğu, Traditional Chinese 統葉護可汗, Simplified Chinese: 统叶护可汗, pinyin ''Tǒng Yèhù Kěhán'', Wade-Giles: ''T'ung Yeh-hu K'o-h ...

's (or Tong Yabghu Khagan's) victory in the Third Persian-Turkic War. Chorpan Tarkhan ambushed and killed a 10,000-strong Persian cavalry force sent by

Shahrbaraz Shahrbaraz (also spelled Shahrvaraz or Shahrwaraz; New Persian: ), was shah (king) of the Sasanian Empire from 27 April 630 to 9 June 630. He usurped the throne from Ardashir III, and was killed by Iranian nobles after forty days. Before usur ...

to contain the invasion.

References

Peter B. Golden Peter Benjamin Golden (born 1941) is an American historian who is Professor Emeritus of History, Turkish and Middle Eastern Studies at Rutgers University. He has written many books and articles on Turkic and Central Asian Studies, such as ''An ...

. ''Khazar Studies: An Historio-Philological Inquiry into the Origins of the Khazars.'' Budapest: Akademia Kiado, 1980. *

Lev Gumilev Lev Nikolayevich Gumilyov (russian: Лев Никола́евич Гумилёв; 1 October 1912 – 15 June 1992) was a Soviet historian, ethnologist, anthropologist and translator. He had a reputation for his highly unorthodox theories o ...

. ''The Gokturks''. Moscow, 1967. {{Khazaria Khazar generals 630 7th-century military personnel 7th century in Armenia 7th-century Turkic people