In 546 Bumin, the leader of the Ashina, asked the Rouran for a marriage, and Anagui, the Rouran khan, refused him with an insult.[1] Bumin had just intercepted the Tiele on their march against the Rouran. More than fifty thousand of their tents had submitted to him.[2] The sources give the fifty thousand as tribes, as families and as people. Some scholars hold that tribes are impossible. They point out that the Tiele could field about twenty thousand soldiers at their greatest strength, and they prefer the figure of fifty thousand people.[3] Relying on that strength, he sought a marriage with the Rouran.[2] Anagui flew into a rage. He sent a man to revile Bumin: “You are my blacksmith slave; how dare you say such a thing?”[2][3] Bumin was angry in turn. He killed the envoy.[2][3] He broke with the Rouran and asked the Western Wei for a bride instead.[2]

The insult

The word Anagui used was 鍛奴, a slave who forges.[2] The word named a relation that the histories record. The Zhou Shu calls the Ashina ironworkers of the Rouran. The Sui Shu says they were skilled in working iron on the Golden Mountain.[4] They had lived there as Rouran subjects since their flight of 439.[5] The insult may be a statement of rank, in which case Bumin was treated like a serf.[6] It may also be that the word “slave” is political, not literal. The Ashina then stood under the Rouran, and the answer warned Bumin not to reach higher.[7]

The request

The Zhou Shu says only that Bumin sought a marriage with the Rouran. The Bei Shi has him ask the Rouran ruler.[8] He may have asked for Anagui’s daughter. As a son-in-law of the ruling house, he would have come within reach of the Rouran succession.[9] Another explanation sees in the request an imitation of the marriages that the Rouran themselves made with the courts of northern China. It was perhaps meant as a provocation.[10]

Anagui made such marriages. In 546, the fourth year of the Eastern Wei era Wuding, he offered his favourite daughter to Gao Huan. He did so because the power of Gao Huan, the general who held the court of the Eastern Wei, was growing.[11] The Eastern Wei emperor ordered Gao Huan to take her. Anagui sent her to Jinyang with an escort.[11]

The accounts

The histories tell the exchange in four versions. The Zhou Shu places it after Bumin’s embassy to the Western Wei in the twelfth year of Datong, 546. It gives Anagui’s words in direct speech.[2] The Sui Shu, which calls Bumin by his later title Illig Khan, places the Tiele victory and the request at the end of the Later Wei.[5] In its version Anagui sends an envoy to curse Bumin. Bumin beheads the envoy and attacks the Rouran.[5] The Bei Shi carries both the Zhou Shu’s version and the Sui Shu’s.[12] The Tongdian dates the request to the twelfth year of Datong of the Western Wei, 546.[13] It keeps Anagui’s words and passes from them straight to the war. It has neither the Tiele nor the killing of the envoy.[13]

The Zizhi tongjian enters the Tiele victory, the request, the insult, the killing and the Wei marriage together under the sixth month of 551.[14] It names Bumin as the one who asked. By contrast, the Zhou Shu leaves the subject of that sentence unstated.[15] The French translation of 1864 read the Zhou Shu’s sentence with the Tiele as its subject. In that translation, the Tiele seek the marriage and are called vile slaves employed to forge iron.[16] Later translations read Bumin as the subject.[6]

Modern accounts follow one date or the other. Scholars disagree on the date. Some date the Tiele campaign and the request to 546.[17] A second puts the Tiele attack in 551 and the request after it.[10] A third places the incident in 544. A fourth finds 544 much too early, because nearly eight years would then lie between the insult and the rising of 552, and dates the incident between 550 and 551.[18]

After the refusal

Yuwen Tai, the chancellor of the Western Wei, agreed to the request Bumin now made to the Wei.[19] In the sixth month of 551 the Wei gave Bumin the princess Changle as his wife.[2] In the first month of 552 he broke the Rouran north of Huaihuang, and Anagui killed himself.[2] Bumin found in the Western Wei the marriage the Rouran had refused him. The campaign of 552 that decided the war came within a year of it.

References

  1. ^ Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50; Tongdian, juan 197
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
  3. ^ a b c Taşağıl 1995, p. 17
  4. ^ Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50; Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
  5. ^ a b c Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
  6. ^ a b Mau-tsai 1958, Turkish edition, p. 17
  7. ^ Yavuz 2025, p. 223
  8. ^ Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50; Bei Shi (History of the Northern Dynasties), juan 99
  9. ^ Yavuz 2025, p. 222
  10. ^ a b Golden 1992, p. 79
  11. ^ a b Bei Shi (History of the Northern Dynasties), juan 98
  12. ^ Bei Shi (History of the Northern Dynasties), juan 99
  13. ^ a b Tongdian, juan 197
  14. ^ Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 164
  15. ^ Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 164; Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
  16. ^ Julien 1864, p. 329
  17. ^ Yavuz 2025, p. 219-222
  18. ^ Kwanten 1979, p. 307
  19. ^ Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50; Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 164

Sources

Literature

  • Liu Mau-tsai, Çin Kaynaklarına Göre Doğu Türkleri (1958, Turkish edition)
  • Stanislas Julien, Documents historiques sur les Tou-kioue (Turcs) (1864)
  • Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
  • Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
  • Luc Kwanten, Imperial Nomads. A History of Central Asia, 500–1500 (1979)
  • Ahmet Taşağıl, Gök-Türkler, Bd. I (1995)

Related

What links here5

Battles & Events
The Flight of the Ashina (439) · The Göktürk–Wei alliance
Institutions and Titles
Diplomacy of the Steppe Empires · Göktürk Ironworking · Women among the Turkic Peoples

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “The Rouran Marriage Refusal (546).” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/events/rouran-marriage-refusal-546/

Last revised: 8 November 2026