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- Rouran 400–554
- First Göktürk 552–630
- Tang rule 630–682
- Second Göktürk 682–744
- Uyghur 744–840
- Kirghiz 840–924
- Huns 370–469
- Western Göktürk 552–659
- Türgesh 699–766
- Karluk 766–800
- Khazar 650–969
The Yujiulü were the house that ruled the Rouran Khaganate for a century and a half. They were the first house of the steppe to hold the title khan. Their refusal of a daughter to Bumin led to the founding of the First Göktürk Khaganate. The Wei Shu gives the genealogy and the name of the house in one story. The ancestor was a slave without a name, whom his master called Mugulü, “bald head”. Mugulü and Yujiulü sound alike, and the descendants took the second for their clan name.[1] The story has its own article under Mugulü.
The name
Three names are in play, and they do not mean the same thing.
Yujiulü 郁久閭 is the clan name, and the Wei Shu derives it from the ancestor’s nickname. A Tuoba raiding party took a slave whose hair hung to his eyebrows. The slave had forgotten his own surname and given name. His master styled him Mugulü 木骨閭, which means bald head. Mugulü and Yujiulü sound alike, and the descendants took the second as their clan name.[1] The name of the dynasty is a homophone of a slave’s nickname. The source does not wish to flatter the dynasty, and the Wei Shu opens the chapter that way on purpose.
Rouran 柔然 is what the people called themselves. Mugulü’s son Cheluhui was strong and warlike. He was the first to have a following of his own, and he styled himself Rouran while remaining a subject of the Tuoba state.[1]
Ruru 蠕蠕 is what the Tuoba called them afterwards, and the Wei Shu says outright why. The emperor Shizu, that is Taiwu, held them to be ignorant and thought their appearance resembled insects. He therefore changed their designation to Ruru, wriggling worms.[1] The chapter is headed with that word and uses it throughout. Therefore the standard Chinese account of the house is written under a name that the court which fought the Rouran imposed as an insult. The Wei Shu also calls them descendants of the Eastern Hu.[1]
From fugitive to khan
The rise of the house took five generations and a murder.
Mugulü was freed from slavery and made a cavalry trooper. Under the emperor Mu he was sentenced to be beheaded for missing a muster. He fled into the desert valleys, gathered a hundred and more fugitives, and attached himself to the Hetulin tribe.[1] His son Cheluhui paid the Tuoba a yearly tribute of horses, livestock and furs. He moved with the season, south of the desert in winter and back to the north of it in summer.[1] Tunugui, Bati and Disuyuan follow. At Disuyuan’s death the people split between his two sons, Pihouba in the east and Yunhedi in the west.[1]
Shelun was Yunhedi’s son. He abandoned his father in flight and took refuge with his cousin Pihouba. Pihouba settled him on the southern edge of his country, five hundred li from the court, and set four of his sons to watch him.[1] Shelun seized the four and revolted. Then he released them and sent them back. The Wei Shu says he meant to gather the whole family and destroy it at once. He then raised troops in secret and killed Pihouba.[1] The branch that murdered the other branch founded the khaganate. The Wei Shu states the intention as well as the act.
Shelun’s reforms
Shelun feared a Wei punitive army. He plundered west of Wuyuan and crossed the great desert northward. In the north the house became a state.[1] Three things are recorded of the change, and each says something about the house that ruled afterwards.
He moved to the Ruoluo river and laid down a military law, the first on that steppe that the Chinese record. A thousand men made an army under one commander. A hundred made a banner under one chief. The man who charged first was given what he took. The man who fell back in cowardice had his head beaten in with a stone, or was flogged on the spot.[1]
He had no writing. The commanders reckoned the number of their troops roughly with sheep droppings. Only later did they learn to cut notches in wood as a record.[1] A state that could muster by the thousand and could not write was in the exact condition that the Göktürk inscriptions would end two centuries later.
He took the title. At the Egen river he beat the Xiongnu remnant of the chief Bayeji and absorbed it. Then he styled himself Qiudoufa Khan. The Wei Shu glosses the words for its own readers: Qiudoufa is as the Wei say driving and opening out, and Khan is as the Wei say emperor.[1] That equation, 可汗猶魏言皇帝也, is the earliest Chinese statement of what the title meant. The Chinese wrote it of this house.[1] The title has its own article.
Titles of the house
The Wei Shu records a rule about naming that separates the Yujiulü sharply from the Chinese dynasties they dealt with. According to the text, the ruler and the great ministers among the Ruru take a designation from their conduct and their ability, in the way China establishes a posthumous name. Once a man is dead, the designation is not conferred again.[1]
A Yujiulü khan therefore wore his epitaph while he lived. Qiudoufa, Aikugai, Mouhan Heshenggai, Chilian, Chu, Shouluobuzhen, Fugudun, Houqifudaikuzhe, Tahan, Douluofubadoufa and Chiliantoubingdoufa are each a judgement passed on a living man. The Wei Shu glosses most of them.[1] For this reason the list of khans below can show a title for almost every khan, while the Göktürk khans are often known by a Chinese transcription alone.
The Wei view of the house
The founder of the Northern Wei left a judgement on what the Yujiulü had become, and the chapter preserves it. He told his minister Cui Xuanbo that the Ruru had always been called stupid and obstinate. When they came raiding, they would yoke a cow that had just calved and drive the bullock along behind. The cow would lie down and could not go on. A man of another tribe told them to exchange the one for the other. They answered that if the mother could not walk, still less could the calf. They did not exchange, and so the enemy took them. Now Shelun had learned from China, set up laws and drawn up battle order, and had ended as a scourge of the frontier. The Daoists say that when the sage is born the great robber arises, the emperor concluded, and it is true.[1]
The passage expresses contempt and alarm together, and the alarm is the more informative. What the Wei court found dangerous in the house was not its numbers but its organisation. The Wei Shu says the house copied that organisation.
Chiefs before the khaganate
From Mugulü the Wei Shu counts Cheluhui, who first called the people Rouran and served the Tuoba as a subject; Tunugui; Bati; and Disuyuan, under whose sons the people divided, Pihouba in the east and Yunhedi in the west.[1] The Wei emperor Daowu broke both branches in the Dengguo years, and among the prisoners were Yunhedi’s sons, one of them Shelun.[1] None of these chiefs bore the title khan.[1]
Khans
The Wei Shu gives the sequence as a list, with each khan’s title and its Wei gloss:[1]
- Shelun, Qiudoufa Khan, about 402 to 410, founder of the khaganate; died in flight before the emperor Mingyuan.
- Hulü, Aikugai Khan, 410 to 414, his brother; deposed by his nephew’s intrigue and sent to the Northern Yan.
- Buluzhen, 414, the nephew; strangled within the year by Datan.
- Datan, Mouhan Heshenggai Khan, 414 to 429, son of Shelun’s youngest uncle; died of illness after Taiwu’s campaign.
- Wuti, Chilian Khan, 429 to the 440s, his son; married a Wei princess.
- Tuhezhen, Chu Khan, before 449 to 464, his son; a letter of 450 in the Song Shu has him die in that year.[2]
- Yucheng, Shouluobuzhen Khan, 464 (or 450) to 485, his son; the first to proclaim a reign era.
- Tulun, Fugudun Khan, 485 to 492, his son; killed with his mother by his people after the Gaoche secession.
- Nagai, Houqifudaikuzhe Khan, 492 to about 506, Tulun’s uncle, chosen by acclamation.
- Futu, Tahan Khan, about 506 to 508, his son; killed by the Gaoche king Mi’etu.
- Chounu, Douluofubadoufa Khan, 508 to 520, his son; killed by his mother and ministers.
- Anagui, Chiliantoubingdoufa Khan, 520 to 552, his brother; the last khan, dead by his own hand after Bumin’s victory.
- Poluomen, Mi’oukesheju Khan, 521, Anagui’s cousin, khan for some months during Anagui’s exile; died a Wei prisoner in 524.
After 552 the Zhou Shu names two more rulers of the remnant: Anagui’s uncle Dengshuzi and his son Anluochen. Neither bears a khan’s title in the sources, and both were dead within two years.[3] Another version makes Dengshuzi a son of Anagui. The Zhou Shu calls him the uncle.[4]
Succession
The throne passed from father to son six times in a row, from Datan to Tulun. Outside that run it passed by every other route the steppe knew. It went to a brother when the sons were young, to a nephew by intrigue, to a cousin by force, and to an uncle by acclamation after the people had killed the khan. It went to a brother after the mother and ministers had killed the khan, and to a cousin during the khan’s exile.[1] Their own people killed three khans of the house: Buluzhen, Tulun and Chounu. One, Hulü, was sold to a neighbour. The Wei Shu records no assembly and no rule of election, only the deed.[1] The women of the house appear at the turning points. Hulü’s daughter was the one whose betrothal cost him the throne. The Houlüling widow of Tulun was married by Futu and bore Chounu and Anagui. She then had Chounu’s shamaness strangled and joined in killing Chounu. Anagui married daughters to Gao Huan and the Eastern Wei.[1] The Göktürks, who took over the khaganate, took over none of this. The Töre of the Ashina laid down a lateral succession, and the Zhou Shu’s Bumin, Issik and Mukan follow it.
Marriages
The house married outward at every generation the Wei Shu records. Shelun made a marriage alliance with Yao Xing of the Later Qin, and Hulü with Feng Ba of the Northern Yan. Wuti married a Wei princess while his sister became a Wei consort. Yucheng sued for a Wei marriage for ten years. Poluomen’s three sisters became wives of the Hephthalite ruler. Anagui’s daughters went to Gao Huan and the Eastern Wei emperor, and a Wei princess went to Anagui himself.[1] Bumin’s request for a Rouran bride in 546 imitates the policy of marital ties that the Rouran had been pursuing with the dynasts of northern China. Anagui’s refusal was a refusal to let the blacksmith into a house that had married kings.[5]
End
The end of the house is the end of the khaganate, and the khaganate’s article and Anagui’s article tell it. The greater part of the house fled to the Northern Qi, who made it their instrument. Issik beat Dengshuzi, and the Western Wei handed him over with three thousand of his people to be killed outside the Qingmen gate of Chang’an. The Qi set up Anluochen at the end of 553. By the third month of 554 he was in revolt against them, and he was beaten twice. The last Göktürk victory over the remnant came in January 554.[3] A second group, twenty thousand of the nobility, went west. From them most likely came the khagans and the ruling nobility of the Avars.[6][7]
Family table
- Chounu Khanr. 508–520married toDiwan
No descent recorded for Shelun Khan, Hulü Khan, Buluzhen Khan, Poluomen Khan, Mugulü.
Drawn from the kinship given in each article: fathers and sons, daughters, wives and husbands, those from other houses in their own colour. A dashed box stands where a grandparent is named but no parent; a dot marks a place taken from a brother.
References
Sources
- Wei Shu, juan 103
- Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
- Song Shu, juan 95
Literature
- Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
- Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
- Peter B. Golden, Some Notes on the Avars and Rouran (2013)
- Guido Alberto Gnecchi-Ruscone et al., Ancient Genomes Reveal Origin and Rapid Trans-Eurasian Migration of 7th Century Avar Elites (2022)
What links here7
- States
- Rouran Khaganate
- Battles & Events
- Rise of Anagui Khan
- Peoples
- Rouran · The Great Empires of the Steppe
- Sources
- Wei Shu
Cite this article
Yavuz, Emre-E. “Yujiulü.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/lineages/yujiulu/
Last revised: 8 November 2026
