Mugulü

Mugulü is the man from whom the Yujiulü, the ruling house of the Rouran Khaganate, took their name. The story of how they took it is the first thing the Wei Shu says about the Rouran.^[1] It is an origin tale told by an enemy.

Story in the Wei Shu

The Wei Shu begins by calling the Rouran an offshoot of the Donghu. Their clan name was Yujiulü.^[1] At the end of the reign of Shenyuan, the Tuoba ancestor to whom the histories give the years 220 to 277, a raiding party of horsemen captured a slave. The slave’s hair reached only to his eyebrows, and he had forgotten his own name.^[1] His master called him Mugulü, which means “bald head”. Because Mugulü and Yujiulü sound alike, his descendants later took Yujiulü as their clan name.^[1]^[2] When he was grown, he was freed from slavery and made a mounted soldier. Under Mudi, whose reign the histories give as 307 to 316, he was condemned to death for arriving late. He fled and hid among the valleys of the great desert. He gathered more than a hundred fugitives and attached himself to the Hetulin tribe.^[1] His son Cheluhui was strong and bold. Cheluhui was the first to have a following of his own. He called it Rouran and served the Tuoba state as a subject.^[1] A later emperor, Taiwu, held them witless and thought them like insects. Because of this, he changed the name to the graph 蠕蠕, “wriggling”. The chapter is written under that name.^[1]

The chronology does not hold together as one life: a slave taken before 277 and condemned after 307 is at least forty at his flight. The text does not remark on this. A modern study calls the story almost formulaic in its contents for the genesis of Inner Asian nomadic polities, as regional sources reflect them. The Donghu and Xianbei descent that the story implies is the reason the Rouran are presumed to have been Mongolic in speech.^[3] Others see the story as a rare precedent in steppe history. A captive rose in Tuoba service, fled after a crime, and gathered a state around him.^[4] They prefer this account to the view that Mugulü’s band was a movement of outcasts who wished to move freely. Its ground is that steppe tribes did not easily follow a fugitive without extraordinary qualities.^[4] Both are positions on a story whose only witness is the Wei Shu. Two further accounts place the founder among the leaders of nomads who did not come from an aristocratic line. One of them calls him a runaway slave.^[5] The other sees the band that he gathered as men from the margin of the steppe who took refuge in it.^[6] The same tale of a bald ancestor has been found at the head of the Rouran and of the Khitan, and the Khitan name has been explained from a Mongolic word for a bare head.^[2]

A different dating identifies the emperor Mu of the story with the Jin emperor of that name, who reigned from 345 to 361.^[6] The Wei Shu names the emperor Mu after Shenyuan, among the Tuoba rulers, and the histories date the Tuoba Mudi to 307 to 316.^[1]

Descendants

The Wei Shu traces the line from Cheluhui through Tunugui, Bati and Disuyuan. These chiefs paid the Tuoba a yearly tribute of horses, cattle and sable and marten skins. In winter they moved south of the desert, in summer north of it.^[1] The people then divided under Disuyuan’s sons, Pihouba in the east and Yunhedi in the west. The line continues to Shelun, Yunhedi’s grandson, who made the confederation a khaganate.^[1] None of these chiefs bore the title khan. The title begins with Shelun. Turkic Atlas tells its history under the khaganate and under the title.

References

^ a b c d e f g h i j Wei Shu, juan 103
^ a b Ögel 1978, p. 282
^ Golden 1992
^ a b Yıldırım 2024
^ Khazanov 1994, p. 167
^ a b Lattimore 1951, p. 528

Sources

Wei Shu, juan 103

Literature

Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
Kürşat Yıldırım, On the Culture of Rouran Khanate (2024)
Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
Anatoly M. Khazanov, Nomads and the Outside World (1994)
Owen Lattimore, Inner Asian Frontiers of China (1951)
Bahaeddin Ögel, Türk Kültür Tarihine Giriş V: Türklerde giyecek ve süslenme (1978)