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Years · 6th century

555

Year of the pig toŋuz yıl

8 entries in Eastern steppe, Western steppe, China and Byzantium.

Map of Asia in 555: the Göktürk Khaganate reaching Lake Balkhash, the Qi campaign to Huaishuo and Woye against the last Rouran, the killing of the Rouran at the Qingmen gate of Chang'an, and the frontier zone between the Göktürks and China — 555: The Qi emperor leaves his baggage at Baidao and breaks the Rouran at Huaishuo and at Woye with 5,000 light horse. He takes more than 20,000 people. At Chang'an the Western Wei hand Dengshuzi and some 3,000 Rouran to Mukan's envoys, who kill them outside the Qingmen gate. In the west Istemi reaches Lake Balkhash, by one reckoning. Modern map. The roads are drawn.

Who ruled

First Göktürk Khaganate Mukan Khan 553–572
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 Gong 554–556
Iran Sasanian Khosrow I 531–579
Korea Goguryeo Yangwon 545–559
Byzantium Justinian Justinian I 527–565

Eastern steppe

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
Istemi's army reaches Lake Balkhash in the Seven Rivers country

Istemi · Tiele

China

The Rouran who fled to the Western Wei are handed to Mukan's envoys at his request; some three thousand are killed outside the Qingmen gate of Chang'an

The Qingmen Executions (555) · Mukan Khan · Rouran Khaganate · Issik Khan · Anagui · Hegemony Wars in Northern China
summer · The Qi emperor rides from the White Road with five thousand light horse, catches the Rouran at Huaishuo and at Woye, and takes more than twenty thousand people

Anluochen · Rouran Khaganate · Northern Qi
Technology · The Qi levy a million eight hundred thousand men and carry the wall from Xiakou north of Youzhou to Hengzhou, over nine hundred li; front and rear the Qi walls run three thousand li

Northern Qi · Issik Khan · First Göktürk Khaganate

The emperor had ridden the frontier himself in 554 to choose the line
The Western Wei seize Dengshuzi and three thousand Rouran at Mukan's request and hand them to the Göktürk envoys

The Qingmen Executions (555) · Western Wei · Yuwen Tai · Dengzhu · Mukan Khan · Mukan's Destruction of Dengshuzi (553–555)

Byzantium

Technology · Byzantium has silkworms of its own, smuggled from the east by two Sogdians through the young khaganate

Istemi