The history of the steppe empires runs from the Xiongnu through the Xianbei, the Rouran, the Huns and the Hephthalites to the Göktürk khaganates and the Uyghur Khaganate. Two states outlived them, the Yenisei Kirghiz and the Khazars. History of the Turkic peoples tells the whole story, with the land, the ways of life and the belief of these peoples.

Xiongnu

Main article: Xiongnu

The Xiongnu were the first nomadic empire of the eastern steppe.[1] Their leader Duman was killed by his son Bagatur in 209 BC.[2] The Han Shu says that the surname of the chanyu was Luandi.[3] The chiefs held their great assembly of the fifth month at Longcheng.[2] The Shiji does not say where Longcheng lay.[2] The empire encompassed Mongolia, southern Siberia and Dzungaria. In the middle of the first century AD a succession struggle divided it into a northern and a southern confederation. The northern confederation was most likely beaten in 89, in the Altai, and went west, at least in part.

Turkic Atlas regards the ruling elite of the Xiongnu as Turkic-speaking, as an inference and not as a finding. Other views exist. One identifies the language as Yeniseian.[4] Another regards the Xiongnu as a mainly Mongolic people.[5] A third holds the language to be Eastern Iranian, and a fourth holds that the material permits no classification.[4] Turkic Atlas sets them out under the language of the Xiongnu.

Xianbei

Main article: Xianbei

The Hou Han Shu says that the remnants of the Xiongnu who stayed behind, more than a hundred thousand tents, all called themselves Xianbei.[6][7] Their chief Tanshihuai set up his court at Mount Danhan on the Chuochou river, more than three hundred li north of Gaoliu.[6] He took the whole of the old Xiongnu country, fourteen thousand li from east to west and seven thousand from north to south.[6][8] From Tanshihuai on, the great chiefs passed their office down by descent.[6] He died about 181. His creation did not long survive him, and the Xianbei went back to the decentralised order they had had before.[9] The Tuoba, one of the Xianbei groups that followed, founded the Northern Wei and through it the Western Wei and the Northern Qi. The Xianbei therefore stand behind both of the powers the Ashina had to deal with in 552, the overlord in the steppe and the courts in the south.

Rouran Khaganate

Main articles: Rouran Khaganate, The Göktürk–Rouran Wars

The Rouran Khaganate is dated from around 400.[10] At that time a fugitive named Shelun gathered a following in the Gobi, defeated the Tiele and took the title khagan.[10] The ruling house, the Yujiulü, is generally classed as para-Mongolic, while Turkic-speaking groups made up much of the confederation beneath it. The seat of power was the Orkhon valley, the region that the Göktürk inscriptions call Ötüken. The Wei Shu draws the extent of the khaganate from the country of Karashahr in the west to the country of Korea in the east.[10] Early in 552 Anagui was dead, by his own hand according to the Chinese account.[11] The Göktürks did not destroy the Rouran state. They took it over, with the khaganal title, the hierarchy beneath it, the Orkhon seat and the claim to rule the whole steppe from there.

The Huns in Europe

Main articles: Huns, Hunnic Empire

From about 376 the Huns stood on the lower Danube.[12] About 445 Attila killed Bleda, with whom he had ruled, and united the whole people under his own rule.[13] Under Attila the empire ruled from the Caucasus to the confines of France and Denmark.[14] Attila’s residence, which Priscus visited, lay in the Hungarian plain, and its exact place cannot be fixed.[15] Attila died early in 453, and the empire broke apart within a year.[16] At the Nedao in 454 the Huns were defeated and Attila’s eldest son Ellac fell.[17][18] Attila’s son Dengizich fell in 469 against a Roman army.[19] The Huns of Europe have been identified with the Xiongnu of Inner Asia since the eighteenth century.[20] The identification is argued, and Turkic Atlas sets the evidence out under the Huns and the Xiongnu.

The Kidarites and the Hephthalites

Main articles: Kidarites, Hephthalites

The expansion of the Kidarites, a Hun dynasty, began at the end of the 420s in Bactria.[21] The dynasty waned from the 470s, and it was gone when the Hephthalites took Sogdiana in 509.[22] The Hephthalites were not a distinct ethnic group but a confederation of nomadic and semi-nomadic groups.[23] The Heftal dynasty and a core of War-Hun tribes held it together.[23] At its height in 520 the realm nominally ran from Merv to Turfan and Gandhara. The Chinese histories name the capital of the Hephthalite king Badiyan.[24] Where Badiyan lay is argued.[25] Istemi destroyed the Hephthalites and took the trade of Sogdiana.[26] The realm fell about 560.[27] One dating puts the destruction in 557, another between 563 and 567.[28]

The First Göktürk Khaganate

Main article: First Göktürk Khaganate

Early in 552 Anagui was dead, and Bumin took the title of khan.[11] His victory made his house, the Ashina, the new imperial power of the steppe.[11] At its founding the khaganate extended from eastern Mongolia through the Altai to Lake Alaköl. Ötüken, in the wooded uplands of the Orkhon region, was the eastern centre of rule, and the later inscriptions present its possession as essential to holding the realm.[29] Taspar, the youngest brother, reigned from 572 to 581 over the khaganate at its greatest extent. Some scholars treat 603 as the final division of the realm into two. In the third month of 630 Zhang Baoxiang took Ilig Khan and sent him to the capital.[30]

The Western Göktürk Khaganate

Main article: Western Göktürk Khaganate

The Xin Tang Shu places Bumin’s younger brother Istemi at the head of the western line.[31] Scholars dispute when the western wing became a polity of its own. In Istemi’s lifetime it reached the Oxus and the Volga. Tardush sat at Suyab on the Chu.[1] Under Tong Yabgu the west had its brief efflorescence.[32] His capital was the Thousand Springs east of the Talas.[32] Tang forces took the last khan, Ashina Helu, in 657, and the west was divided into ten prefectures under Chinese protection. Reckonings of the end of the western khaganate run from the 650s to the 740s.

Under Tang rule, 630–682

Main articles: The Göktürk interregnum, 630–682, Loose-rein prefectures

The Tang court debated what to do with the Göktürks who had surrendered.[30] Wen Yanbo argued that the tribes should be kept whole and serve as a shield, and the emperor took his plan.[30] Ilig’s own territory was divided into six prefectures.[30] Two protectorates, Shanyu and Hanhai, were established over the Göktürks.[30][33] Three of the four khans of the interregnum were Ashina, and all four were unmade. In 680 the tribes fetched Ashina Funian, who surrendered and was beheaded in the East Market at Chang’an.[30] Two years later a distant kinsman of Ilig gathered the men who had scattered and declared himself khan. This was Ilterish.[30] The chiefs who served the Tang as prefects had kept their followings intact.[30]

The Second Göktürk Khaganate

Main article: Second Göktürk Khaganate

The Second Göktürk Khaganate was the state that Ilterish raised in 682.[30] Ilterish was an Ashina and a distant kinsman of Ilig.[30] The monuments call Ötüken the only seat from which the realm can be held.[29] In 699 Kapgan gave the state the form it kept.[30] In the words of Bilge Khan, the armies went eastward to the plain of Shantung and westward to the Iron Gate.[29] Such measures say where the armies had been and draw no border. Under Bilge Khan the state was a power at peace with China and was paid in silk for it.[30] It is the state that carved the Tonyukuk, Kül Tegin and Bilge Khan inscriptions, the earliest texts in a Turkic language. After Bilge was murdered, two shads turned on the throne and on each other, and the subject peoples, the Basmïl, Karluk and Uyghurs, did the rest.[30] A Basmïl khan held the Orkhon for two years. In 744 an Uyghur-led coalition toppled him in turn.[1]

The Uyghur Khaganate

Main article: Uyghur Khaganate

Kutlug Bilge Kül defeated the Basmïl and took the title of khan in 744.[34] The ruling tribe, the Uyghurs, was split into ten clans, the On Uyghur. The Yaglakar was the leading one, and until 795 every khan came from it.[35] The Arab envoy Tamim ibn Bahr described the Uyghur capital Ordu-Balık on the Orkhon as populous and thickly crowded with markets and trades, with villages and cultivated ground close around it.[36] Following the old Turkic custom, the Uyghurs put the Karluk, Telengut, Tatar, Khitan, Kirghiz and others in a position of vassalage and tribute.[37] In 757 the Uyghur troops helped the Tang to retake Chang’an and Luoyang, and they plundered Luoyang for three days.[38] The khan Bögü reigned from 759 to 779 and brought the empire to the height of its power, and to its turning point. After 821 the empire came apart. In 840 the Kirghiz came down from the Yenisei with a hundred thousand horse, killed the khan and burnt the court.[39]

The Yenisei Kirghiz

Main articles: Yenisei Kirghiz Khaganate, Yenisei Kirghiz

The Kirghiz lived on the upper Yenisei in southern Siberia, and the realm of their khans is dated from 840 to about 924.[40] In 840 their khan, whom the Tang histories call Are, led his army to the Uyghur capital on the Orkhon.[41] He burned the camp of the Uyghur khans and took the Tang princess Taihe.[41] Are made his camp at the Blue Mountain, with a palisade instead of a wall and felt tents joined together.[41][42] The Xin Tangshu names no Kirghiz khan after Are.[41] The Kirghiz did not take the Uyghurs’ place on the Orkhon. They stayed centred on their homeland, and their authority over the plateau was brief.[43] How far Kirghiz power reached is argued.[44] The year 924 is a convention for the end of the period, not the date of an event in Kirghiz history.[45]

The Khazars

Main articles: Khazar Khaganate, Khazar Dual Kingship

The Göktürks took the Sabirs and various Oghur tribes into their empire as a subject tribal union under Western Göktürk heads, and this union developed into the Khazar khaganate.[46] By the 670s the Khazars had beaten the Bulgars and controlled the Ponto-Caspian steppe.[47] The house that ruled the Khazars is held to have been the Ashina. According to Masʿūdī, the Khazars moved their capital from Samandar to Atil on the lower Volga. The realm reached from the middle Volga and Kiev to the Crimea, to Bab al-Abwab in the Caucasus and to the Khwarazmian steppe. The Khazar court took up Judaism, and the Khazars are the only steppe power of which that is true. In 965 the Rus, allied with Oghuz, overran Atil and probably Sarkel. A khaganate of a kind survived a few years more, and its end is usually set in 969.

References

  1. ^ a b c Golden 1992
  2. ^ a b c Shiji, juan 110
  3. ^ Han Shu, juan 94
  4. ^ a b Savelyev 2020, p. 4
  5. ^ Kurakichi 1926, p. 9–12, 16, 36–38
  6. ^ a b c d Hou Han Shu, juan 90
  7. ^ Jagchid 1989, p. 34
  8. ^ Jagchid 1989, p. 35
  9. ^ Golden 1992, p. 71
  10. ^ a b c Wei Shu, juan 103
  11. ^ a b c Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
  12. ^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 26
  13. ^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 181, p. 102
  14. ^ Thompson 1948, p. 177
  15. ^ Thompson 1948, p. 221–222
  16. ^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 143–147
  17. ^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 259–262, p. 125–126
  18. ^ Yavuz 2025, p. 104
  19. ^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 164–168
  20. ^ Thompson 1948, p. 1
  21. ^ de la Vaissière 2005a, p. 108
  22. ^ de la Vaissière 2005a, p. 110
  23. ^ a b Kurbanov 2010
  24. ^ Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50; Wei Shu, juan 102
  25. ^ Chavannes 1903, p. 224,43–45; Markwart 1938, p. 224,43–45
  26. ^ Menander Protector
  27. ^ Yavuz 2025
  28. ^ Golden 1992; Kurbanov 2010
  29. ^ a b c Kül Tegin inscription
  30. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
  31. ^ Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 215
  32. ^ a b Golden 1992, p. 135
  33. ^ Taşağıl 1999, p. 48–49
  34. ^ Sinor 1990, p. 317
  35. ^ Sinor 1990, p. 320
  36. ^ Mackerras 1972, p. 14
  37. ^ Khazanov 1994, p. 257
  38. ^ Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 195; Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
  39. ^ Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 195
  40. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 36
  41. ^ a b c d Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
  42. ^ Ögel 2000, p. 19
  43. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 38,197,200
  44. ^ Golden 1992, p. 181
  45. ^ Drompp 2005, p. 203
  46. ^ Sinor 1990, p. 260
  47. ^ Ögel 1984, p. 229, 234, 239–240

Sources

Literature

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  • Denis Sinor (ed.), The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (1990)
  • Alexander Savelyev; Choongwon Jeong, Early Nomads of the Eastern Steppe and Their Tentative Connections in the West (2020)
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  • Sechin Jagchid; Van Jay Symons, Peace, War, and Trade Along the Great Wall. Nomadic-Chinese Interaction through Two Millennia (1989)
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  • Michael R. Drompp, Tang China and the Collapse of the Uighur Empire: A Documentary History (2005)
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Related

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “The Great Empires of the Steppe.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/ethnicities/great-empires-of-the-steppe/

Last revised: 8 November 2026