18 articles

Peoples

Ethnonyms and named peoples.

Avars The people who appeared on the Byzantine frontier in the 550s and founded a khaganate in Pannonia that lasted until 796; their identification with the Rouran nobility that fled west in 552 is argued, argued against, and bound up with the alliance that brought Göktürk envoys to Constantinople.
Basmïl minimal Turkic people of the Beiting country north of the Tianshan, used by the Tang against the Second Göktürk Khaganate in 721 and captured wholesale by Tonyukuk; in 742 they rose against the last Ashina khan, and in 744 they were crushed by the Uyghurs and Karluk.
Bayirku minimal A Tiele people of the Nine Surnames, north-east of the Orkhon toward the Tola and the Kerulen; beaten by Kül Tegin at Lake Türgi Yargun, the northern limit of Bilge Khan's campaigns, and the people whose straggler killed Kapgan Khan in 716.
Göktürk The self-designation of the people ruled by the Ashina, attested in the runiform inscriptions of the eighth century.
Hephthalites The last of the Hunnic powers of Central Asia, a confederation rather than a people, crushed between Istemi and Khosrow I about 560.
Huns The people who entered Europe in the fourth century and whose empire under Attila collapsed after 453; their identification with the Xiongnu is the oldest question of steppe history and is argued from names, archaeology, language and, lately, genomes.
Karluk Turkic tribal group of the Altai region, which revolted against Tong Yabgu about 627, fought the eastern Göktürk in the 720s, moved into the western Göktürk lands about 745 after the Uyghurs took the eastern khaganate, defected to the Arabs on the Talas in 751, and held Suyab and the Ten Arrows from 766.
Khitan minimal Proto-Mongolic people of the eastern steppe toward Manchuria, subjects of the Rouran, conquered by Mukan between 554 and 560, and named among the mourners and enemies in the Göktürk inscriptions.
On Oq The Ten Arrows: the confederation of ten tribes, five Üç Tuğlu east of Suyab and five Nushibi west of it, each chief holding an arrow as the token of his authority, into which the western Göktürk dissolved after the murder of Tong Yabgu in 630.
Rouran The people of the Rouran Khaganate, overlords of the Ashina until 552: Donghu and Xianbei in origin by the Wei Shu, para-Mongolic by the usual classification with Turkic elements argued, known only under the names their enemies gave them and by the titles the Wei glossed.
Sogdians The Iranian-speaking people of the Zarafshan valley, the merchants of Central Asia, who gave the Göktürk their script, their chancellery, their envoys and their silk trade, and whose settlements ran from Samarkand to the Ordos and the Chinese capitals.
Tiele The federation of Turkic groups west of the Altai whose rising Bumin intercepted in 546, and whose fifty thousand made the Ashina a power.
Türgesh Tribe of the Üç Tuğlu wing of the Ten Arrows, in the Ili basin, whose khans ruled the western Göktürk lands from 699 to 744 from Suyab, fought the Tang, the Tibetans, the eastern Göktürk and the Arabs, and were broken at Kharistan in 737 and by the feud of their yellow and black tribes.
Wusun minimal Indo-Iranian-speaking people driven from Gansu by the Xiongnu in the second century BC and settled on the Ili, whose wolf legend resembles the Ashina's.
Xianbei minimal Para-Mongolic people of the eastern steppe who succeeded the Xiongnu there, from whom the Rouran ruling house and the Tuoba of the Northern Wei descended.
Xiongnu The steppe confederation north of Han China from the late third century BC to the end of the first century AD, the first nomadic empire of the eastern steppe; its language, its relation to the later Turkic peoples and its part in the origins of the Göktürk are all unresolved.
Xueyantuo minimal A Tiele people, in Turkic the Sır Tarduš, who broke from the eastern Göktürk in 628 with Tang encouragement, ruled the Orkhon country after 630, and fell to the Tang a decade later.
Yenisei Kirghiz Turkic-speaking people of the upper Yenisei, known for iron and gold, conquered by Mukan in the 550s, and the power that ended the Uyghur khaganate in 840.