The daughter of Mukan Khan is the only Göktürk woman of the first khaganate with a biography of her own in a Chinese history. Since 2023, she is also the only member of the Ashina whose genome has been read. The Zhou Shu gives her a page in its chapter on the empresses. It is a page about her father.[1]
Marriage negotiation (c. 556–568)
The biography begins with the Göktürks’ destruction of the Rouran. They then held all the land beyond the frontier, with several hundred thousand archers and the ambition to overawe China. Yuwen Tai, then contending with the Qi, sought them as an ally.[1] Mukan first agreed to give a daughter to the Zhou ruler and then regretted it.[2] The Göktürk chapter of the same history adds that he had promised a daughter to Yuwen Tai. The contract was unsettled when Yuwen Tai died, and he then promised another daughter to the emperor Wu.[2] When the Qi also sued for a marriage, he was tempted by their richer gifts. He meant to go back on his word.[2] The emperor Wu sent envoys again and again, and Mukan consented.[1] In the second month of 565 the emperor sent the duke of Chen, Yuwen Chun, the duke of Xu, Yuwen Gui, the duke of Shenwu, Dou Yi, and the duke of Nan’an, Yang Jian, to Mukan’s camp to fetch her.[1] They went with the empress’s regalia and travelling palace and a hundred and twenty women of the six palaces.[1] Mukan had again promised the Qi a marriage and meant to change sides. The envoys stayed at his camp for years without being able to report back. They reasoned with him about good faith, but he would not yield.[1]
Then a great wind and thunder arose. They blew down his tents and did not stop for ten days. Mukan was terrified and took it for Heaven’s punishment. He sent the empress off with full ceremony.[1] The envoys set up the travelling palace, arrayed the feathered insignia, and brought her home. In the third month of 568 she arrived, and the emperor Wu performed the rite of receiving the bride in person.[1] She was beautiful and graceful in her bearing, and the emperor held her in deep respect.[1] The Göktürk chapter tells the same. When the envoys reached him, Mukan was again wavering toward the Qi. The storm came, and he let them take her home. The chapter adds: “the story is in the biography of the empress”.[2] Mukan’s article weighs the storm as a Chinese narrative pattern. It also weighs the three years as the price the Zhou paid for their alliance. Her own biography records neither doubt.
Empress and empress dowager (568–582)
She was empress for ten years. When Xuandi came to the throne in 578, he honoured her as empress dowager.[1] In the second month of 579 the title was changed to Tianyuan empress dowager. In the second month of 580 it was changed to Tianyuan Shang empress dowager.[1] The chapter preserves the patent in full. It praises her “sacred kindness and instruction” and “virtue deep and bright” in the formulas such patents used.[1] When Xuandi died, the child emperor Jingdi honoured her as grand empress dowager.[1] She survived the fall of the house she had married into.[1] Yang Jian took the throne in 581 and founded the Sui. She died in the second year of his reign, 582, aged thirty-two sui.[1] The Sui emperor had the ministries prepare the rites and buried her with her husband in the Xiaoling.[1] For the last year of her life she was a Göktürk princess at the court of the man who had destroyed her husband’s house. Meanwhile her father’s house, under Taspar and then Ishbara, went to war with him for another Zhou princess, Qianjin. That war belongs to the Hegemony Wars.
Genome
Her remains were identified in the Xiaoling mausoleum of the emperor Wu near Xianyang in Shaanxi. A study of 2023 sequenced her genome. It found 97.7 per cent north-east Asian and 2.3 per cent west-Eurasian ancestry. Her closest affinities were among post-Iron Age Tungusic and Mongolic steppe populations. The other ancient Göktürks sampled were heterogeneous. The figure of record is 97.7 per cent, the tomb is the Xiaoling, and the dates are 551 to 582. Where other figures and another tomb have been given, the study and the Zhou Shu agree against them.[3] Turkic Atlas sets out what has been made of the result, for and against a north-east Asian origin of the Ashina, under the ethnogenesis debate.
Assessment
For the Zhou Shu she is the seal on the alliance that let the Zhou destroy the Qi. Her biography is the record of how dearly the Zhou bought it. The alliance cost four dukes, a hundred and twenty women and three years of waiting for a bride whose father was selling her twice. She is also the one Ashina whose body has been read. She is the only one of the first khaganate’s women whom the sources allow to be seen at all.
References
Sources
- Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 9, 50
Literature
- Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
- Yang et al., Ancient genome of Empress Ashina (2023)
What links here20
- States
- First Göktürk Khaganate · Northern Zhou · Sui
- Battles & Events
- Music of Empress Ashina (568) · The Bargain with Mukan (562–563) · The Göktürk–Zhou alliance · The Woye and Luoyang Campaign (564)
- Lineages
- Ashina
- Institutions and Titles
- Diplomacy of the Steppe Empires · Women among the Turkic Peoples
Cite this article
Yavuz, Emre-E. “Empress Ashina.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/persons/empress-ashina/
Last revised: 8 November 2026
