Map of Asia around 542: the Rouran Khaganate across the eastern steppe, with the Ashina in the Altai and the Tiele from Dzungaria to the Caspian as its subjects, beside the Western and Eastern Wei, the Liang, the Tuyuhun, the Tarim Basin, the Hephthalites, the Nezak Huns, Sasanian Persia, the Eastern Roman Empire and Goguryeo
Asia around 542, the year Bumin became yabgu of the Ashina: the Ashina in the Altai and the Tiele as subjects of the Rouran, who rule the eastern steppe, beside the Western and Eastern Wei, the Liang, the Tuyuhun, the Hephthalites, Sasanian Persia and the Eastern Roman Empire. Modern map; the frontiers are approximate.
Plate XIX in the Atlas → © Emre-E Yavuz 2026

Who ruled

And beyond the steppe

  • China Eastern Wei Emperor Xiaojing 534–550 · Western Wei Emperor Wen 535–551
  • Iran Sasanian Khosrow I 531–579
  • Korea Goguryeo Anwon 531–545
  • Byzantium Justinian Justinian I 527–565

Eastern steppe

  • Environment · Extreme weather in the eastern steppe, by the tree rings; one reading takes the six-year length of Bumin's war as a consequence (536–545)

    The Turkic War of Independence

    The same decade is the coldest of two thousand years by the tree rings of the Altai and by the ice cores

  • Environment · Late Antique Little Ice Age: the cold phase the Altai tree rings define from 536 to about 660 (536–660)

    Climate and the steppe empires · First Göktürk Khaganate · Avars

    The coldest decade in the Altai is the 540s

Western steppe

  • Culture · Sogdian colonists found the first towns of Semirech'e, Suyab and Navaket among them, as estates of nobles (450–600)

    Suyab · Sogdians

  • Tuwu dies and Bumin takes hold of the Ashina

    Bumin Khan · Tuwu · Ashina

China

Byzantium

  • Environment · The Justinianic plague breaks out across the eastern Roman empire after the food shortages of the first cold (541–543)

    Climate and the steppe empires