Rouran epochGöktürk epochUyghur epochKirghiz epoch
RouranFirst GöktürkTang ruleSecond GöktürkUyghurKirghizHunsWestern GöktürkTürgeshKarlukKhazar
  • 400
  • 500
  • 600
  • 700
  • 800
  • 900

The Northern Wei was the state against which the Rouran khaganate defined itself. After 534 its two halves were the states against which the Göktürks defined themselves. It was not Chinese in origin. Its ruling house, the Tuoba, was a branch of the Xianbei. The Göktürks called the whole of China after the Tuoba. In the Orkhon inscriptions, Tabġač is the Tuoba’s name.[1] In the Greek form Taugast, the name was still in use in the Middle Ages.[2] The Tuoba may have been Turkic and Mongolic families. They slowly took over the political affairs of northern China and adopted parts of its political culture and dress, while their nobles kept their non-Chinese personal names.[3] In that case the Tuoba were Turko-Mongol. Under the Xianbei, Turkic Atlas treats the question.[3] Three scholars have called the Tuoba Turkic, probably Turkic and largely Turkic. Others find it more likely that they were a conglomerate of clans of several origins.[2] One count lists thirty Tuoba clans by origin: twenty Xianbei, three Xiongnu and seven Gaoche.[2]

Rise

Tuoba Gui, the emperor Daowu, founded the Wei in 386. By the middle of the fifth century the Wei had brought all of northern China under one rule.[4] The zenith came under Taiwu, who reigned from 423 to 452. He defeated the Rouran in 429 and extended his authority to Inner Mongolia and eastern Turkistan.[4] The Wei Shu tells the early wars with the Rouran from the Wei side. Daowu pursued the divided Rouran across the desert in the Dengguo years. Shelun was captured among the prisoners, but escaped.[5] Daowu’s verdict on Shelun was that he had learned from China to make laws and battle lines. Daowu also judged that Shelun had become a danger to the frontier.[5] The khaganate and the Wei came into being within fifteen years of each other. Each was the other’s principal foreign enemy for a century. Under the Tuoba, slaves worked in production, and some herded on the great pastures.[6]

Wars with the Rouran

The pattern was set under Datan. First came a Rouran raid, then an imperial campaign across the desert. The khan fled and could not be caught.[5] Datan’s horsemen surrounded the young Taiwu at Yunzhong in 424. In 425 Taiwu went out on five roads and found no one.[5] In 429, against the counsel of his ministers, he crossed the Gobi. He scattered Datan’s people at the Li river and took the surrender of more than three hundred thousand and a million horses and captives.[5] He resettled the eastern Gaoche in their hundreds of thousands south of the desert. There they learned to eat grain. They also made horses and sheep cheap in the Wei.[5] The campaign has its own article. Under Wuti came the first marriage alliance in 434: a Wei princess went to the khan, and the khan’s sister went to the emperor. The alliance collapsed in 436.[5] Under Tuhezhen came a pursuit of nine days and nights in 449. After it, the chapter says, the frontier ceased to sound the alarm.[5] Under Yucheng came the emperor Xianwen’s victory at the Nü river in 470. Fifty thousand were dead, and a hymn was carved in stone.[5] The Wei never held the steppe. The Rouran never held a Chinese province. The wars were raids and pursuits on both sides.

The war that mattered most for the Göktürks was fought elsewhere. In 439 Taiwu destroyed the Northern Liang of the Juqu in Gansu.[7] According to the Sui Shu, the Ashina fled with five hundred families to the Rouran. They became the Rouran’s ironworkers.[8] One reconstruction takes them first to Gaochang and then into the Altai.[9] The Wei made them exiles, and the Rouran made them subjects. A century later, the First Göktürk Khaganate arose out of what the two had done.

Sinicisation and the Six Garrisons

Xiaowen reigned from 471 to 499. Under him, sinicisation became compulsory. The Tabgach language, names and dress were banned, and the capital moved to Luoyang. The fall of the dynasty was the estrangement of a sinicising court from its own tribesmen. Under the Hegemony Wars, Turkic Atlas gives that account.[4] The court left the frontier to the Six Garrisons, the fortified line along the great bend of the Yellow River. It was there that the state broke. In 523, a year of hunger, Anagui raided the garrisons.[5] In 524 the garrison soldier Poliuhan Baling rose at Woye. The garrisons rose with him.[5] In 525 the Wei asked Anagui for help. The khan came from Wuchuan west to Woye with a hundred thousand men. He won battle after battle.[5] The emperor thanked him with a decree. Anagui need not be announced by name at audience, nor call himself subject in his letters. No khan had had such honours from a Chinese court.[5] The revolt spread into China proper. The dynasty did not survive it.

Division (534)

In 534 the Wei split into the Eastern Wei under Gao Huan and the Western Wei under Yuwen Tai. The Northern Qi and the Northern Zhou would replace these two states. Anagui married his daughters into both.[5] The last entry of the Wei Shu’s Rouran chapter is a marriage. Anagui saw Gao Huan’s power grow daily and asked to give him his favourite daughter.[5] The Eastern Wei emperor ordered Gao Huan to take her, “and from then on there was no dust beyond the frontier”.[5] Within twenty years the Western Wei had turned from Anagui to Bumin. The Göktürks had learned from the Wei’s two halves the trade in princesses and silk that the Hegemony Wars describe.

Sources

Wei Shou compiled the Wei Shu and presented it in 554. It is the dynasty’s own history and the principal Chinese account of the Rouran. Its chapter 103 is the source of nearly everything above.[5] Chapter 9, the annals of Xiaoming, records the rising at Woye in 524. It also records Anagui’s victory over its leader in 525.[10] The Sui Shu is the other Chinese witness that touches the Wei here. It gives an account of the Ashina’s flight from Gansu.[8]

Relations with other states

Red is war, blue alliance, gold trade. Where several held at once, the line shows what prevailed; alliance and trade can run side by side. Each line rests on an article. Point at a state to see its weightiest relation, select it to see its events. The slider shows what stood in a given year, and Play runs through the years.

  1. Rouran Khaganate402 to 523

References

  1. ^ Kül Tegin inscription
  2. ^ a b c Rásonyi 1993, p. 75
  3. ^ a b Yavuz 2025
  4. ^ a b c Golden 1992
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Wei Shu, juan 103
  6. ^ Parlatır 1983, p. 808
  7. ^ Wei Shu, juan 4
  8. ^ a b Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
  9. ^ Golden 1992, p. 121
  10. ^ Wei Shu, juan 9

Sources

Literature

  • Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
  • Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
  • László Rásonyi, Tarihte Türklük (1993)
  • İsmail Parlatır, Türk sosyal hayatında kölelik (1983)

Related

What links here39

Persons
Gao Huan · Poliuhan Baling · Tanshihuai
States
Eastern Wei · Former Yan · Later Yan · Northern Qi · Rouran Khaganate · Western Wei
Conflicts
Hegemony Wars in Northern China · Revolt of the Six Garrisons · The Rouran–Wei wars, 402–449 · The Zhou–Qi war, 557–577
Battles & Events
The Flight of the Ashina (439) · The Great Sacrifice of the Gaoche
Places
Huaihuang · Jiuquan · Ordos · Pingliang · Woye · Yunzhong
Peoples
Eurasian Nomads · History of the Turkic peoples · The Great Empires of the Steppe · Tuoba · Xianbei · Yueban
Lineages
Fufuluo · Murong · Tufa
Institutions and Titles
Drums and Banners for the Khans · Six Garrisons
Religions
Ancestor Cult
Customs & Pastimes
Mounted Archery · Seating at the Feast · The Battue
Sources
Song Shu · Tongdian · Wei Shu

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Northern Wei.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/polities/northern-wei/

Last revised: 8 November 2026