Rouran epochGöktürk epochUyghur epochKirghiz epoch
RouranFirst GöktürkTang ruleSecond GöktürkUyghurKirghizHunsWestern GöktürkTürgeshKarlukKhazar
  • 400
  • 500
  • 600
  • 700
  • 800
  • 900

The war is the turning point of the western half of the First Khaganate. Before it, the Göktürks in the west were a power on the Ili and the Chu. After it, they were on the Oxus, holding the trade of Sogdiana and dealing directly with Persia and Constantinople.

The Hephthalite realm before the war

The Hephthalites had held the country on both sides of the Oxus for a century. In that time they had twice decided who sat on the Sasanian throne. Peroz took the crown with their help and died fighting them in 484. Kavad regained his throne with their assistance and may have had to acknowledge their overlordship for it. For decades after that, at least into the first years of Khosrow’s reign, the Sasanians paid them tribute. It was large enough to move a great part of the Persian silver supply into Central Asia.

They had taken Sogdiana in 509.[1] No written source says so. The date rests on the abrupt replacement of Sogdian by Hephthalite embassies at the Chinese court in that year, and on the walls and the temple of Panjikent. These were destroyed and at once repaired, and a three-storey barracks for a permanent garrison was built against the outer wall.[1] At its height, about 520, the realm ran nominally from Merv to Turfan and Gandhara. Sogdians who lived in China had Hephthalite kings drawn on their tombs. On the sarcophagus of Shi Jun, buried at Xi’an in 580, a king sits in a yurt. He wears a winged crown that modern accounts identify as the crown of a Hephthalite ruler.[2]

This is the power the Göktürks attacked within a few years of founding their own state.

The alliance

Two powers destroyed the Hephthalites, acting at the same time from opposite directions: Istemi from the north and Khosrow I from the south.[3]

The Arabic tradition names the Göktürk partner Sinjibu and the Hephthalite king Wrz. Another Arabic writer has Akhshunwaz.[4] Tabari gives two versions of the victory. In the first version, the khan Sinjibu killed Wrz and took the Hephthalite land, except for the parts that had fallen to Khosrow.[4] In the second, Khosrow had first allied himself with the khan by marriage and asked him to march as well. Khosrow then killed the Hephthalite king himself and pressed on beyond Balkh.[5] Some scholars regard the second version as the clearest statement that this was a joint undertaking rather than two separate wars.[6] A marriage sealed the compact. Khosrow took a daughter of Istemi to wife, in 554 by one reckoning and only after the victory by another.[7]

There is a warning attached to the Persian testimony. In the same Sasanian material, the word for the enemy of Peroz is Turk, and the enemy is the Hephthalites. The passage stands in Tabari.[8] Anything in the Persian tradition that says Turk before the 550s has to be tested before it can be taken to mean Göktürks. The Arabic writers use the word loosely as well. Masʿudi counts the Tibetans among the Turks, and Biruni calls the kings of Kabul Turks. Some scholars hold that for the Arabs, the nomadic way of life counted more than descent.[9]

The course of the campaign

The fullest account of the fighting is a modern reconstruction. It is assembled out of the Persian epic, Ṭabarī, Dīnawarī and the Greek writers, and no single source gives it as a narrative.[7]

A manuscript page with six columns of Persian verse in black ink between red rules, framed in gold
A page of a Shahnama made in Baghdad about 1299, from the reign of Nushirwan (Khosrow I): the war between the Khan of Chin, the khan of the Turks in the Persian epic, and the Haitalians, the Hephthalites. The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1944.480.2.b, CC0.

On that reconstruction, the Göktürks reached the Aral Sea and the Hephthalite border in 555.[7] The first collision took place in the same year under Mukan. The second took place in 558 under Istemi.[7] The Hephthalite king Gatfar had a counsellor named Katulph, who advised against war. Katulph was insulted and went over to Khosrow.[7] Menander tells it otherwise. In his account, Katulph’s king had forced himself on Katulph’s wife. Katulph betrayed his own people to the Göktürks. Only afterwards did he emigrate to Persia and serve Khosrow.[10] Then a Göktürk embassy passing through Sogd was killed, except for one man. After that, the war could not be avoided.[7] In another version, the envoys of the khagan to Iran were killed in Hephthalite territory at the command of the Hephthalite king.[11]

The Göktürks took Chach and crossed the Chirchik. Gatfar drew troops from Balkh, Shughnan, Termez and the rest of the realm and gathered them near Bukhara. He refused battle on the open plain and fought in the hills at Nesef. The Göktürks won there after eight days.[7] Some scholars regard the battle of Bukhara as the decisive engagement. Where it was fought is itself disputed.

The survivors did not continue the war. They chose Faganish, the ruler of Chaghaniyan. He submitted to the Sasanians.[7][12] On the survey’s account, this ended the Hephthalite state in Central Asia, and small Hephthalite principalities in the Zerafshan valley went on paying tribute to the Göktürks.[12]

The date

The year is not fixed. The spread is not the work of a careless copyist. The Chinese, Arabic, Persian and Greek traditions each date by their own reigns, and none of them makes the war the centre of its account.

There are three reckonings. The first puts the destruction in 557.[13] The second places the fall about 560. It has Istemi conclude the alliance with Khosrow only shortly before the invasion.[14] The third reviews the proposals in the field. The years 557, 558, 563 and 565 have all been argued. This reckoning sets the end between 563 and 567. Its ground is that the envoys who reached Constantinople in 568 could answer the emperor’s question whether they had subjected all the Hephthalites with the one word “all”.[7][15] The difference of a decade lies where four chronologies meet. A survey of the period puts the joint action of the Göktürks, probably led by Istemi, and Khosrow I between 557 and 561.[16] The same work dates the sequence from the killing of the envoys to the submission of Faganish to the years 560 to 563.[12] One further survey dates the alliance of Mukan and Istemi with Khosrow to 566, and puts the defeat of the Hephthalite khans after it. In another place it dates the fall of the Hephthalite state to after 563.[17]

The partition

The settlement gave the Göktürks the country north of the Oxus and Persia the country south of it.[18] According to some scholars, the Göktürks took at first only the parts of the Hephthalite realm north of the Iron Gate. They occupied the southern half, which the Persians had taken when the realm broke up, only afterwards. The Göktürk viceroy at Huo, a shad and later a yabgu, would belong to that second stage.[19] In the detail of the reconstruction, Khosrow took the land beyond the Amu Darya to the south. The Göktürks took Sogd, Chach, Ferghana and eastern Turkistan. Northern Tokharistan stayed Hephthalite as a buffer and paid its tribute to the Göktürks. One reckoning dates the agreement to 566 and another to 571.[7]

The Sui Shu records one Göktürk act in the country itself. When the Hephthalite realm fell into disorder, the Göktürks sent a Tong Shad to take it by force.[20] The text adds the two characters 字詰. Some scholars take them together as his name, Zijie.[21] In the same chapter, however, the word zi 字 introduces the name of a foreign ruler. By that usage, his name would be Jie alone.[20]

That line on the river divided the two victors. Within a decade they were enemies.

Consequences

Two things came directly out of the partition. The first is the silk embassy. With Sogdiana under Göktürk overlordship, the Sogdian merchants wanted Persia to let their silk through. Khosrow refused and burned the goods on the advice of the Hephthalite Katulph. Maniakh then led the embassy that went to Constantinople instead.[10] The second is the enmity that followed the quarrel over the silk. It took the form of Istemi’s campaign against Persia of 569 or 570 and the first great Göktürk–Persian war of 588. Both were fought across the same river over the same line.

For the Hephthalites the collapse ended the last of the War-Hun confederations. Remnants stayed in Bactria as Göktürk vassals and fought beside them against the Sasanians. Part of the nobility, by contrast, passed under Persian rule.

The war that made the Göktürks and the Persians neighbours also made them enemies. Istemi rode against Persia within a decade of the partition. The first great war came about thirty years after it.

© Emre-E Yavuz 2026 The Rouran and the Göktürks, 402–584, in thirteen time slices. Modern map on a base of Natural Earth; coastlines and rivers of the present day, the Aral Sea as before 1960. The legend gives the basis of every area, line and place. Rouran Northern Wei Karashahr Pingcheng Rouran Northern Wei Wei, 429 Karashahr Pingcheng RouranAshina Northern Wei Karashahr RouranGaocheAshina Northern Wei Gaoche, 487 Gaochang RouranTieleAshina Northern WeiAlans Anagui, 525 Wuchuan Woye Huaihuang RouranTieleAshina Western WeiEastern WeiHephthalitesSasanian PersiaAlans Ötüken RouranTieleAshina Western WeiEastern WeiHephthalitesSasanian PersiaAlans Tiele, 546Bumin, 546 Ötüken Turfan GöktürksRouran Western WeiNorthern QiHephthalitesSasanian Persia Dzungaria, 552Huaihuang, 552 Huaihuang Ötüken Göktürks Western WeiNorthern QiHephthalitesSasanian Persia Istemi, 553–555 Mount Mulai Ötüken GöktürksFrontier zoneNorthern Zhou Northern ZhouNorthern QiSasanian PersiaKirghizKhitan Istemi, c. 560Khosrow I Wall of the Qi, 556 Samarkand Bukhara Chach Nasaf Balkh Ötüken Kashgar Aksu Kucha Turfan Khotan Jade Gate Xiazhou Lingzhou GöktürksFrontier zoneNorthern Zhou Northern ZhouNorthern QiSasanian PersiaByzantium Wall of the Qi, 556 Ektag? Ektag? Samarkand Ötüken Kashgar Aksu Kucha Turfan Khotan Jade Gate Xiazhou Lingzhou GöktürksFrontier zoneNorthern Zhou Northern ZhouNorthern QiSasanian PersiaByzantium Wall of the Qi, 556 Bosporos Ötüken Kashgar Aksu Kucha Turfan Khotan Jade Gate Xiazhou Lingzhou GöktürksFrontier zoneSui SuiSasanian PersiaByzantium Wall of the Qi, 556east | west Dzungarian Gate Ötüken Bosporos Kashgar Aksu Kucha Turfan Khotan Jade Gate Xiazhou Lingzhou

  1. c. 402 Shelun takes the title khagan

    Shelun, a fugitive who gathered a following in the Gobi, defeats the Tiele and takes the title khagan. The Wei Shu draws his realm in four directions: in the west the country of Karashahr, in the east the country of Korea, in the north across the desert to the Hanhai, in the south to the great desert. The line between these points is drawn, not recorded.

  2. 429 Taiwu crosses the Gobi

    The Northern Wei emperor Taiwu leaves Pingcheng, crosses the Gobi and scatters the Rouran of Datan at the Li river; his armies sweep five thousand li from east to west. The route is drawn after the Wei Shu; the rivers it names are not located with certainty.

  3. 460 The Tölös subjected

    In the west the Rouran subject the Tölös, that is the Tiele. That their reach then extended to Lake Balkhash and the Seven Rivers is the extent the modern literature gives; the sources do not state it. The Ashina, five hundred families, settle on the southern slope of the Altai as the smiths of the Rouran.

  4. 487 The Gaoche break away

    More than a hundred thousand Gaoche tents under Afuzhiluo leave the khaganate and found a kingdom of their own north-west of Gaochang. The Rouran khan Tulun pursues them, is beaten again and again, and leads his people east.

  5. 525 Anagui fights for the Wei

    In 520 Anagui has brought the Tiele under Rouran rule again; after the Chinese histories their lands reach as far as the Caspian and the Alans. In 523, in a year of hunger, Anagui raids the Six Garrisons on the Wei frontier. In 525, after the garrisons have risen themselves, he leads a hundred thousand men from Wuchuan west towards Woye against the rebels, on the Wei's behalf.

  6. 545 The Rouran at their height

    The Rouran rule the eastern and central steppe; the Ashina in the Altai and the Tiele of Dzungaria are their subjects, and the Tiele range, after the Chinese histories, as far as the Caspian. The frontier drawn here, from the Khingan to the Seven Rivers and from Lake Baikal to the frontier of the Wei, is the extent the modern literature gives.

  7. 546 Bumin defeats the Tiele

    In 546 the Tiele of Dzungaria move against the Rouran. Bumin, chief of the Ashina, intercepts them on the march and defeats them, and more than fifty thousand Tiele tents submit to him. The Ashina are still subjects of the Rouran, but now a power of their own.

  8. 552 Bumin destroys the Rouran

    Early in 552 a Rouran army is beaten in Dzungaria and a second destroyed north of Huaihuang; Anagui dies. The Göktürks take the steppe, and a Rouran remnant holds out in the east. The extent of the new khaganate follows the modern estimate.

  9. 553–555 The last Rouran; Istemi marches west

    Issik breaks the Rouran of Dengshuzi at Mount Mulai north of Woye, and the remnant in the Northern Qi is destroyed by its hosts in 554. In the west Istemi marches from 553 and, by one reckoning, reaches the Seven Rivers by 555.

  10. c. 560 The Hephthalites destroyed

    Istemi destroys the Hephthalites and takes the trade of Sogdiana. One reading has him act with the Persian king Khosrow I and divide their lands along the Oxus, in 557 or 560. The route drawn follows one modern reconstruction: the Göktürks take Chach, cross the Chirchik and win after eight days in the hills at Nasaf; a second reading has the decisive fight at Bukhara itself. Khosrow comes up from the south as far as Balkh. In the east Mukan takes the Kirghiz on the Yenisei and the Khitan.

  11. 568–569 Embassies to Constantinople

    Persia shuts its markets to the Sogdian silk. Istemi sends the Sogdian Maniakh to Constantinople, and the Roman envoy Zemarchos reaches him in 569 at a mountain called Ektag. Where Ektag lay is disputed: the Altai and the Tian Shan are both proposed.

  12. 576 Bosporos

    In the year of Istemi's death a Göktürk army takes Bosporos in the Crimea, the western limit of the expansion into Europe. That the western wing then reached the Volga and the northern Caucasus is inferred.

  13. 581–584 The realm divides

    Taspar dies in 581 with the khaganate at what is inferred to be its greatest extent. The succession divides the house, and Ishbara, Apa and Tardush go to war while the Sui take sides. The line between the eastern and the western wing is reconstructed as running from the Altai through Dzungaria to the Dzungarian Gate.

  • Place named in a source (position as commonly identified)
  • Position disputed or approximate
  • Area or line drawn from a description in the sources
  • Area as the modern literature gives it
  • Subject people or its range (dashed outline)
  • Frontier zone between the steppe and China, held by neither side (hatched)
  • Movement named in a source (route drawn)
  • Route after a modern reconstruction
The Rouran and the Göktürks, 402–584, in thirteen time slices. Modern map on a base of Natural Earth; coastlines and rivers of the present day, the Aral Sea as before 1960. The legend gives the basis of every area, line and place.

References

  1. ^ a b de la Vaissière 2005a
  2. ^ Kageyama 2007, p. 12
  3. ^ Tabari
  4. ^ a b Tabari; Nöldeke 1879, p. 158–159
  5. ^ Tabari; Nöldeke 1879, p. 167
  6. ^ Nöldeke 1879, p. 167
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Kurbanov 2010
  8. ^ Nöldeke 1879, p. 128
  9. ^ Markwart 1938, p. 102–103
  10. ^ a b Menander Protector
  11. ^ Litvinsky 1996, p. 146
  12. ^ a b c Litvinsky 1996, p. 147
  13. ^ Golden 1992
  14. ^ Yavuz 2025
  15. ^ Markwart 1938, p. 148,151
  16. ^ Litvinsky 1996, p. 327
  17. ^ Rásonyi 1993, p. 96, 73
  18. ^ Herrmann 1925, p. 565
  19. ^ Markwart 1938, p. 44–45,148
  20. ^ a b Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 83
  21. ^ Markwart 1938, p. 148

Sources

Literature

  • Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
  • Aydogdy Kurbanov, The Hephthalites: Archaeological and Historical Analysis (2010)
  • Theodor Nöldeke, Geschichte der Perser und Araber zur Zeit der Sasaniden. Aus der arabischen Chronik des Tabari übersetzt und mit ausführlichen Erläuterungen und Ergänzungen versehn (1879)
  • Étienne de la Vaissière, Sogdian Traders: A History (2005)
  • Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
  • Etsuko Kageyama, The Winged Crown and the Triple-crescent Crown in the Sogdian Funerary Monuments from China: Their Relation to the Hephthalite Occupation of Central Asia (2007)
  • Josef Markwart, Wehrot und Arang. Untersuchungen zur mythischen und geschichtlichen Landeskunde von Ostiran (1938)
  • Albert Herrmann, Die Hephthaliten und ihre Beziehungen zu China (1925)
  • B. A. Litvinsky; Zhang Guang-da; R. Shabani Samghabadi (ed.), History of Civilizations of Central Asia, Vol. III (1996)
  • László Rásonyi, Tarihte Türklük (1993)

Related

What links here12

Persons
Khosrow I
States
Northern Zhou · Sasanian Persia
Conflicts
Göktürk Expansion along the Silk Road · Göktürk Expansion into Europe · Mukan's Eastern and Northern Wars · The Göktürk–Sasanian Trade Conflict
Battles & Events
Flight of the Avars (557) · Music of Empress Ashina (568)
Places
Sogdiana · Transoxiana
Sources
Procopius

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “The Göktürk–Hephthalite war, 555–563.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/conflicts/gokturk-hephthalite-war/

Last revised: 8 November 2026