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Khatun

Turkic and Mongol female title of nobility

Wikipedia contributorsAdapted for Fathomly · View authors
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Source updated August 28, 2026

Khatun (/xəˈtuːn/ khə-TOON) is a title of the female counterpart to a khan or a khagan.

01Etymology and history

Before the advent of Islam in Central Asia, "khatun" was the title of the queen of Bukhara. According to the Encyclopaedia of Islam, "Khatun [is] a title of Sogdian origin borne by the wives and female relatives of the Göktürks and subsequent Turkic rulers".

According to Bruno De Nicola in Women in Mongol Iran: The Khatuns, 1206-1335, the linguistic origins of the term "khatun" are unknown, though possibly of Old Turkic or Sogdian origin. De Nicola states that prior to the spread of the Mongols across Central Asia, Khatun meant lady or noblewoman and is found in broad usage in medieval Persian and Arabic texts.

Peter Benjamin Golden observed that the title qatun appeared among the Göktürks as the title for the khagan's wife and was borrowed from Sogdian xwāten "wife of the ruler". Earlier, British orientalist Gerard Clauson (1891-1974) defined xa:tun as "lady and the like" and said there was "no reasonable doubt that it is taken from Sogdian xwt'yn (xwatēn)", with "Sogdian xwt'y (lord, ruler) and xwt'yn (lord's or ruler's wife)" being "precisely the meaning of xa:tun in the early period".

Valide Hatun was the title held by the mother of an Ottoman sultan before the 16th century. By the beginning of the 16th century, the hatun title for imperial princesses, the sultan's mother and the sultan's chief consort was replaced by sultan. This usage underlines the Ottoman conception of sovereign power as family prerogative. Consequently, the valide hatun title turned into valide sultan.

Modern usage

In Uzbek, the language spoken in modern-day Bukhara, Uzbekistan, the word is spelled xotin and has come to simply refer to any woman. In Turkish, it is written hatun. The general Turkish word for woman, kadın, is a doublet derived from the same origin.

02Notable khatuns

03Given name

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Sources and credits

This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Khatun”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.

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