Who ruled
- First Göktürk Khaganate Mukan Khan 553–572
- Rouran Khaganate Anluochen 553–554
- Sasanian Persia Khosrow I 531–579
- Western Göktürk Khaganate Istemi 552–576
And beyond the steppe
- China Northern Qi Emperor Wenxuan 550–559 · Western Wei Emperor Fei 551–554 · Emperor Gong 554–556
- Iran Sasanian Khosrow I 531–579
- Korea Goguryeo Yangwon 545–559
- Byzantium Justinian Justinian I 527–565
Eastern steppe
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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
China
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third and fourth months · Anlouchen rises against the Qi; the emperor beats him in the third month and takes his wife and children and thirty thousand people in the fourth
Anluochen · Rouran Khaganate · Anagui · Northern Qi · Hegemony Wars in Northern China
Also dated 553 (an earlier reckoning, before the Qi annals were read): September 553, with fifty thousand men; the Bei Qi Shu dates the rising to the third month of 554 and gives no figure for his army.
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20 January · The last Göktürk victory over the Rouran remnant
Rouran Khaganate · Issik Khan · Anagui
The Qi annals have the Qi still destroying Rouran in the summer of 555, which leaves the date of a last Göktürk victory open
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Western Wei armies take Jiangling; the Liang emperor Yuan is killed and more than a hundred thousand people are enslaved
