For the Göktürks the Western Wei, the court at Chang’an, was the first Chinese court that treated them as a power in their own right.[1] Its chancellor Yuwen Tai sent an envoy to Bumin in 545. In 551 he gave Bumin a Wei princess.[1] Later he handed the last Rouran fugitives to the envoys of Mukan. He also sent a general to fight beside Mukan against the Tuyuhun.[1] The alliance lasted until the Western Wei gave way to the Northern Zhou in the first days of 557. The new dynasty carried it on as the Göktürk–Zhou alliance.

Before the alliance

The Göktürks enter the records of the western court as raiders.[2] In the biography of Yuwen Ce, governor of Suizhou on the northern frontier, the Zhou Shu records that every year, once the Yellow River had frozen, the Göktürks came raiding.[2] In the twelfth month of 542 they came in by Liangu. Yuwen Ce lit hundreds of piles of firewood at once.[2] The Göktürks took the fires for a great army. They fled, leaving their livestock and baggage behind. That was the raid of 542.[2]

The embassy of 545

Three years later the court at Chang’an sought the Göktürks out. By 545 Bumin’s people had grown. They first came to the frontier to buy silk and floss, wishing for relations with China. In that year Yuwen Tai sent An Nuopantuo, a Hu of Jiuquan, as his envoy.[1] The Göktürks congratulated one another: the envoy of a great state had come, and their state would rise.[1] In 546 Bumin sent an embassy with the products of his country in return.[1] The embassy of 545 made a Chinese state a party to the affairs of the Ashina for the first time.

The marriage of 551

In the same year Bumin fell on a rising of the Tiele against the Rouran. He took the surrender of more than fifty thousand tents.[1] Then he asked the Rouran khan Anagui for a wife. Anagui sent a man to revile him as his blacksmith slave.[1] Bumin killed the messenger. He broke with the Rouran.[1] He asked the Wei instead. Yuwen Tai agreed.[1] In the sixth month of 551 the Wei princess Changle was married to Bumin.[1] When Emperor Wen died that year, Bumin sent an envoy to mourn him. He also sent a gift of two hundred horses.[1] The Zhou Shu says “that year”, but the Wei emperor died in the spring, in the third month, three months before the princess’s wedding date.[3] Some scholars therefore place the Göktürk request for a princess, the promise and the horses of condolence before the emperor’s death. They take the sixth month of 551 as the day the princess set out.[4]

In the first month of the Chinese year 552 Bumin destroyed the Rouran north of Huaihuang. Anagui killed himself.[1] The Zhou Shu dates the victory by the Wei calendar, to the first year of the deposed emperor.[1] No source records a Wei army at Bumin’s side in 552.[1] The Wei had given Bumin standing rather than troops. A Chinese court had received him as a party in his own right while he was still the Rouran’s smith. It had given him a princess after a Rouran one was refused with an insult.[1] For the Wei the gain was a power on the far side of the Rouran. At that moment the Rouran had joined the eastern court.

Horses and the Rouran remnant (553–555)

In the third month of 553 Bumin’s son and successor, Issik Khan, sent fifty thousand horses.[1] The horses of the Göktürks and the silk of the Chinese courts formed the two sides of an exchange that lasted some thirty years.[5]

The last Rouran came to the Wei themselves.[6] The Göktürks broke the Rouran again and again. A remnant of more than a thousand households fled into Guanzhong under Dengshuzi, an uncle of Anagui.[7] Mukan, who was now khan, asked for their deaths. The Göktürks sent envoy after envoy to ask that all of them be killed.[8] The Bei Shi gives the reason. The Göktürks trusted in their strength and in their friendship with the Western Wei. They feared that the survivors would find a great state to lean on.[6] Yuwen Tai put the request to his council. He agreed.[6] The Wei seized Dengshuzi and some three thousand of his people and handed them to the Göktürk envoys. They were killed outside the Qingmen gate of Chang’an, in the Qingmen executions.[1] The Zhou Shu gives the handover no year. The Bei Shi sets the flight into Guanzhong in 555.[8] The compilers of the Zhou Shu set the deed beside the storming of Jiangling as acts of expediency that ran against virtue.[9]

The campaign against the Tuyuhun (556)

The Tuyuhun of the Qinghai lake raided the Wei frontier. They also sent their envoys to the Qi.[1] Mukan asked leave to pass through Liangzhou to fall on them. Yuwen Tai ordered the governor of Liangzhou, Shi Ning, to follow him with his horsemen.[10] On Shi Ning’s advice they divided the army. Mukan took the northern road to Hezhen. Shi Ning made for Shudun.[10] Shi Ning took Shudun and gave all the captives and treasure to the Göktürks. Mukan took Hezhen and captured the wife and children of the Tuyuhun ruler.[10] At the Qinghai lake Mukan took Shi Ning’s hand. He gave him the horse he rode and walked beside him on foot to see him off.[10] The Göktürk–Wei campaign against Tuyuhun was the one war the Göktürks and the Western Wei fought side by side.

End of the alliance

Yuwen Tai died in the tenth month of 556.[9] In the twelfth month of 556, which falls in January 557, the Western Wei gave way to the Northern Zhou under the house of Yuwen.[11] Mukan had promised a daughter to Yuwen Tai in the reign of the last Wei emperor, 554 to 556. The contract was not settled when Yuwen Tai died. The promise passed to his son, the later Emperor Wu.[1] In those years the Wei and the Qi vied in gifts for the khan’s daughter. Mukan sent envoys to both.[12] The marriage that sealed the next alliance went back to the friendship of these twelve years.

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
  2. ^ a b c d Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 27
  3. ^ Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 2; Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
  4. ^ Ecsedy 1968, p. 154,155
  5. ^ de la Vaissière 2005a, p. 210
  6. ^ a b c Bei Shi (History of the Northern Dynasties), juan 98
  7. ^ Bei Shi (History of the Northern Dynasties), juan 98; Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
  8. ^ a b Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50; Bei Shi (History of the Northern Dynasties), juan 98
  9. ^ a b Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 2
  10. ^ a b c d Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 28
  11. ^ Bei Qi Shu (Book of Northern Qi), juan 4
  12. ^ Ecsedy 1968, p. 134,174

Sources

Literature

  • Étienne de la Vaissière, Sogdian Traders: A History (2005)
  • Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
  • Ildikó Ecsedy, Trade-and-War Relations between the Turks and China in the Second Half of the Sixth Century (1968)

Related

What links here5

States
Northern Zhou · Western Wei
Conflicts
The Göktürk–Rouran Wars
Battles & Events
Göktürk–Wei Campaign against Tuyuhun (556) · The Göktürk–Zhou alliance

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “The Göktürk–Wei alliance.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/events/gokturk-wei-alliance/

Last revised: 8 November 2026