Ishad was an

Old Turkic Old Siberian Turkic, generally known as East Old Turkic and often shortened to Old Turkic, was a Siberian Turkic language spoken around East Turkistan and Mongolia. It was first discovered in inscriptions originating from the Second Turkic Kh ...

word used to designate the highest-ranking Göktürk generals (e.g., Buri-sad). It is also used in some

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

sources to describe the Khagan Bek of the

Khazars The Khazars ; 突厥可薩 ''Tūjué Kěsà'', () were a nomadic Turkic people who, in the late 6th century CE, established a major commercial empire covering the southeastern section of modern European Russia, southern Ukraine, Crimea, a ...

. Brook, citing Golden,{{cite book , last1=Golden , first1=Peter B. , title=Khazar Studies: An Historio-Philological Inquiry into the Origins of the Khazars , publisher=Akadémiai Kiadó , year=1980 , volume=1 , page=208 proposes that Ishad is a variant of

Shad The Alosidae, or the shads, are a family (biology), family of clupeiform fishes. The family currently comprises four genera worldwide, and about 32 species. The shads are Pelagic fish, pelagic (open water) schooling fish, of which many are anadr ...

, a Turkic title of Iranian origin.

Notes

References

* Kevin Alan Brook. ''The Jews of Khazaria.'' 3rd ed.

Rowman & Littlefield Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group is an American independent academic publishing company founded in 1949. Under several imprints, the company offers scholarly books for the academic market, as well as trade books. The company also owns ...

Publishers, 2018. * Douglas M. Dunlop. ''The History of the Jewish Khazars,'' Princeton, N.J.:

Princeton University Press Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large. The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial ...

, 1954. * Peter B. Golden. ''Khazar Studies: An Historio-Philological Inquiry into the Origins of the Khazars.'' Budapest:

Akadémiai Kiadó Akadémiai Kiadó (, ) is the publishing house of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. It is one of Hungary's most important publishers of scientific books and journals. Its majority-owner is the Amsterdam-based publishing conglomerate Wolters Klu ...

, 1980. * Norman Golb and

Omeljan Pritsak Omeljan Yosypovych Pritsak (; 7 April 1919 – 29 May 2006) was the first Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of History of Ukraine, Ukrainian History at Harvard University and the founder and first director (1973–1989) of the Harvard Ukrainian Rese ...

, ''Khazarian Hebrew Documents of the Tenth Century.'' Ithaca:

Cornell University Press The Cornell University Press is the university press of Cornell University, an Ivy League university in Ithaca, New York. It is currently housed in Sage House, the former residence of Henry William Sage. It was first established in 1869, maki ...

, 1982. Khazar titles Titles of the Göktürks