Turks and Poets: From Skulls to Goblets

Shah Ismail, the King of Iran and first of the Safavid line, was the man who dragged Persia by its dusty neck and threw it kicking and screaming across the threshold of the Shiite faith. He was also a man of elegant taste and, evidently, possessed more than a touch of humor.

After Ismail defeated Muhammad Shaybani, Khan of the rising Uzbek Empire, at the Battle of Merv, the Padishah took the trouble to decapitate his rival, hollow out the head, and plate its rim in beaten gold. He thus created an impressive goblet from which he sipped wine at Safavid elite gatherings, even sharing the vintage with his most distinguished guests.

The Shah did not stop there. With a spark of dark wit and a very tangible threat, he sent the gilded head of his eastern enemy to the court of his western rival, the Ottoman Sultan Selim I. If you wonder where this founder of a glorious Persian dynasty—a devotee of the strict Sufis of Azerbaijan—got the chilling idea to sip wine from a fallen foe’s cranium, we should recall that His Safavid Majesty was the direct heir to a magnificent steppe tradition.

Ismail, of course, was not strictly Persian, but a celebrated mixture whose ancestors included Byzantine emperors, Georgian kings, Kurdish Sufi masters, and a fair amount of Turkmen blood. Despite this illustrious pedigree, it seems the latter gave the Shah not only his stubborn military support but also his mannerisms. Fashioning ornate drinking vessels from skulls was apparently one of them.

The practice has a long history. Neolithic findings suggest that ritual skull-drinking existed at the dawn of human religion. Echoes of these practices persist in the Vedic world and its Tantric successors to the north. The use of human skulls as ritual objects continues today in Tibetan Buddhism and among certain Indian ascetics, particularly the ash-clad Aghori. As a powerful Tantric symbol, the *kapala* (Tibetan: *thod-pa*), or skull cup, appears frequently in depictions of deities, especially in the hands of Dharma protectors (*dharmapala*) who receive offerings of food and drink in these bowls during specific ceremonies.

Macabre as it may be, the context for these vessels varies by time and place. Even the alleged cannibalism of the ancient inhabitants of the British Isles may have been a form of mourning and veneration rather than an expression of culinary aggression.

In contrast, fashioning drinking cups from human skulls as a bellicose statement is an ancient steppe tradition, and no one described it better than Herodotus regarding the Scythians:

“With the skulls of their enemies, especially those they particularly detested, they acted thus: after sawing off the lower part below the eyebrows, they cleaned out the interior and covered the exterior with leather. If the owner was poor, he would use it so; but if he was wealthy, he would plate the inside with gold. In any case, the skull was used as a drinking cup.”

(Herodotus)

According to various chroniclers, the use of skulls in the steppe was primarily a martial practice—a distinct marker of total victory. Utilizing the physical seat of a person’s identity for the intimate act of drinking served to constantly reaffirm the defeat of the one while celebrating the life of the other.

Another example of this intimate bond between victor and vanquished is the story of the Byzantine Emperor Nicephorus and the Bulgarian Khan Krum. Their rivalry ended with the Emperor’s skull silver-plated and serving wine at Bulgarian banquets in Pliska. Similar fates befell Svyatoslav of Kyiv at the hands of the Pecheneg Turks, and the Latin Emperor Baldwin I, who failed to learn the lesson that one does not mess with the Bulgarians.

Over the generations, the custom of gilding enemy skulls faded, yet it remained part of regional folklore and a delightful reminder of past terrors. Lord Byron was perhaps indulging in an exaggerated nostalgia when he polished an old skull found in the ruins of an abbey. It was “polished until it resembled a mottled tortoiseshell” and used to serve Bordeaux to his refined friends “after the fashion of the Goths of old.” As the story goes, they concluded their dark drinking rounds with a cheerful blessing:

“When your enemy falls, do not sip.”

Cheers.

In the images:

Shah Ismail defeats Muhammad Shaybani at the Battle of Merv. Safavid miniature.

Kapala (Tibetan: thod-pa) – Tantric skull cup.

Lord Byron’s skull cup (19th century).

Krum, Khan of the Bulgarians, knocking one back in the Byzantine style.

Kali holding a skull cup.

Prehistoric skull for ritual use (?), England.