Status Khanate Capital Mumo city, Orkhon River, Mongolia Common languages Ruanruan, Mongolian, Chinese Religion Tengrism, Shamanism, Buddhism
Khagan
• 330 Yùjiǔlǘ Mùgǔlǘ
• 555 Yujiulü Dengshuzi Legislature Kurultai History
• Established 330
• Disestablished 555 Area 405 2,800,000 km2 Preceded by Xianbei state Succeeded by Turkic Khaganate, Northern Qi, Northern Zhou
Rouran is a Classical Chinese transcription of the endonym of the confederacy. Ruanruan and Ruru remained in usage despite being derogatory. They derived from orders given by the Emperor Taiwu of Northern Wei, who waged war against the Rouran and intended to intimidate the confederacy. According to René Grousset, Ju-juan – an alternate Chinese name for the Rouran – was a "disparaging pun" derived from Juan-Juan: "unpleasantly wriggling insects".
The power of the Rouran was broken in 555 by an alliance of Göktürks, the states of Northern Qi and Northern Zhou, and tribes in Central Asia.
Origin and expansion
The Rouran were a confederation led by Xianbei people who remained in the Mongolian steppes after most Xianbei migrated south to Northern China and set up various kingdoms. They considered the Tuoba and Rourans to be descended from common ancestors.Also some contemporary historians studying the history of Northern Wei, like Kwok Kin Poon, proposed that the Rouran descended specifically from Xianbei of Donghu heritage. They were first noted as having defeated the Tiele and establishing an empire extending all the way to the Hulun, an alliance in eastern Inner Mongolia. During the reign of Yujiulü Shelun (402-410), Rouran became a powerful empire. To the west of the Rouran Khaganate was the Hephthalite Empire (408-670), which was a vassal of the Rouran until the beginning of the 5th century.
Early state formation: Sixteen Kingdoms and the Northern Wei
The 3rd century saw both the fragmentation of the Xianbei in 235 and the branching out of the various Xianbei tribes later to establish six significant empires of their own such as the Former Yan (281-370), Western Yan (384-394), Later Yan (384-407), Southern Yan (398-410), Western Qin (385-430) and Southern Liang (397-414).
Most of them were unified by the Tuoba Xianbei, who established the Northern Wei (386-535), which was the first of the Northern Dynasties (386-581) founded by the Xianbei.
In 534, the Northern Wei split into an Eastern Wei (534-550) and a Western Wei (535-556) after an uprising in the steppes of North China inhabited by Xianbei and other nomadic peoples. The former evolved into the Northern Qi (550-577), and the latter into the Northern Zhou (557-581), while the Southern Dynasties were pushed to the south of the Yangtze River. In 581, the Prime Minister of Northern Zhou, Yang Jian, founded the Sui dynasty (581-618). His son, the future Emperor Yang of Sui, annihilated the Southern Chen (557-589), the last kingdom of the Southern Dynasties, thereby unifying northern and southern China. After the Sui came to an end amidst peasant rebellions and renegade troops, his cousin, Li Yuan, founded the Tang dynasty (618-907); Li led China to develop into one of the most prosperous states in history. Sui and Tang dynasties were founded by Han Chinese generals who also served the Northern Wei dynasty. Through these political establishments, the Xianbei who entered China were largely merged with the Han, examples such as the wife of Emperor Gaozu of Tang, Duchess Dou and Emperor Taizong of Tang's (Li Shimin's) wife, Empress Zhangsun, both have Xianbei ancestries,while those who remained behind in the northern grassland emerged as later powers to rule over China.
Northern Wei administrative divisions as of 464 CE.
Capital Shengle (386-398, capital of former Dai, near modern Huhhot)
Pingcheng
(398-493)
Luoyang (493-534)
Chang'an (534-535) Government Monarchy
Emperor
• 386-409 Emperor Daowu
• 424-452 Emperor Taiwu
• 452-465 Emperor Wencheng
• 471-499 Emperor Xiaowen
• 499-515 Emperor Xuanwu
• 528-530 Emperor Xiaozhuang
• 532–535 Emperor Xiaowu History
• Established 20 February 386
• Emperor Daowu's claim of imperial title 24 January 399
• Unification of northern China
439
• Movement of capital to Luoyang
25 October 493
• Erzhu Rong's massacre of ruling class
17 May 528
• Establishment of Eastern Wei, marking division
8 November 535
• Emperor Xiaowu's death
3 February 535 Area
450 2,000,000 km2
he Northern Wei or the Northern Wei Empire (/weɪ/), also known as the Tuoba Wei (拓跋魏), Later Wei (後魏), or Yuan Wei (元魏), was a dynasty founded by the Tuoba clan of the Xianbei, which ruled northern China from 386 to 534 CE (de jure until 535), during the period of the Southern and Northern Dynasties. Described as "part of an era of political turbulence and intense social and cultural change", the Northern Wei Dynasty is particularly noted for unifying northern China in 439: this was also a period of introduced foreign ideas, such as Buddhism, which became firmly established.
During the Taihe period (477-499) of Emperor Xiaowen, court advisers instituted sweeping reforms and introduced changes that eventually led to the dynasty moving its capital from Datong to Luoyang, in 494. The Tuoba renamed themselves the Han people surname Yuan (元) as a part of systematic Sinicization. Towards the end of the dynasty there was significant internal dissension resulting in a split into Eastern Wei and Western Wei.
Many antiques and art works, both Taoist art and Buddhist art, from this period have survived. It was the time of the construction of the Yungang Grottoes near Datong during the mid-to-late 5th century, and towards the latter part of the dynasty, the Longmen Caves outside the later capital city of Luoyang, in which more than 30,000 Buddhist images from the time of this dynasty have been found.
To resist the threats poised by the Rourans, Northern Wei emperors started to embark on building its own Great Wall, the first since the Han dynasty. In 423, a defence line over 2,000 li(1,080 kilometres (670 mi)) long was built ; its path roughly followed the old Zhao wall from Chicheng County in Hebei Province to Wuyuan County, Inner Mongolia. In 446, 100,000 men were put to work building an inner wall from Yanqing, passing south of the Wei capital Pingcheng, and ending up near Pingguan on the eastern bank of the Yellow River. The two walls of Northern Wei formed the basis of the double-layered Xuanfu–Datong wall system that protected Beijing a thousand years later during the Ming dynasty.
📹 Northern Wei vs Rouran Khaganate #1 (450 AD) (VİDEO)
Northern Wei vs Rouran Khaganate #1 (450 AD) (LINK)
📹 Northern Wei vs Rouran Khaganate #2 (462 AD) (VİDEO)
Northern Wei vs Rouran Khaganate #2 (462 AD) (LINK)
Mulan: Rise of a Warrior
On the film's opening day Beijing Screen, the Chinese government recognized Mulan: In 2011, Mulan earned the 9th Henan province governmental award - movie category of Achieving Five Top Project Prize.
In 450 A.D., the ruling Chinese dynasty is under constant threat from the Rouran tribes. The Chinese army conducts a nationwide draft. A retired soldier named Hua Hu insists on enlisting again to serve his country. Hua Mulan (Zhao Wei), his young daughter, is quite intelligent and skilled in various martial arts. But because she is a woman, she cannot enlist. At night, Mulan takes her father's armor and weapon, disguises herself as a man, and slips out of the house with the family horse. Enlisting with the Wei army in her father's place, she is recognized by her friend Fei Xiaohu "Tiger" (Jaycee Chan), who agrees to keep her secret.
Both Northern Wei and Rouran Khaganate were Xianbei ethnic group, this was a civil war between cousins
A copy of hollywood movie stile. The mongols or people of the steppes never use infantry. They fought with arrows and bows. No way its chinese hollywood !!!
Status Nomadic empire Capital Kunduz (Walwalij, Drapsaka, or Badian) Balkh (Pakhlo) Common languages Middle Bactrian, Gandhari (Gandhara), Sogdian (Sogdiana), Chorasmian, Sanskrit, Turkic Religion Hinduism, Buddhism, Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism Historical era Late Antiquity Established 440s Disestablished 670
The Hephthalites (or Ephthalites) were a people of Central Asia who were militarily important circa 450-560. They were based in Bactria and expanded east to the Tarim Basin, west to Sogdia and south through Afghanistan to northern India. They were a tribal confederation and included both nomadic and settled urban communities. They were part of the four major states known collectively as Xyon (Xionites) or Huna, being preceded by the Kidarites, and succeeded by the Alkhon and lastly the Nezak. All of these peoples have often been linked to the Huns who invaded Eastern Europe during the same period, and/or have been referred to as "Huns", but there is no consensus among scholars about such a connection.
The Sveta Huna who invaded northern India are probably the Hephthalites, but the exact relation is not clear.
The stronghold of the Hephthalites was Tokharistan on the northern slopes of the Hindu Kush, in what is present-day northeastern Afghanistan. By 479, the Hephthalites had conquered Sogdia and driven the Kidarites westwards, and by 493 they had captured parts of present-day Dzungaria and the Tarim Basin in what is now Northwest China. They expanded into northwestern India as well.
The sources for Hepthalite history are poor and historians' opinions differ. There is no king-list and historians are not sure how they arose or what language they spoke.
They seem to have called themselves Ebodalo (ηβοδαλο, hence Hephthal), often abbreviated Eb (ηβ), a name they wrote in the Bactrian script on some of their coins.The origin of the name "Hephthalites" is unknown, possibly from either a Khotanese word *Hitala meaning "Strong" or from postulated Middle Persian*haft āl "the Seven."
The "Hephthalite bowl", NFP Pakistan, 460-479 CE.
The Hephthalites formed in Bactria around 450, or sometime before. In 442 their tribes were fighting the Persians. Around 451 they pushed southeast to Gandhara. In 456 a Hephthalite embassy arrived in China. By 458 they were strong enough to intervene in Persia.
Around 466 they probably took Transoxianan lands from the Kidarites with Persian help but soon took from Persia the area of Balkh and eastern Kushanshahr.
In the second half of the fifth century they controlled the deserts of Turkmenistan as far as the Caspian Sea and possibly Merv.
Probably in the late fifth century they took the western Tarim Basin (Kashgar and Khotan) and in 479 they took the east end (Turfan). In 497–509, they pushed north of Turfan to the Urumchi region. In 509 they took 'Sughd' (the capital of Sogdiana).
Around 565 their empire was destroyed by an alliance of the Göktürks and the Sasanians, but some of them remained as local rulers in the Afghan region for the next 150 years.
Invasion of the Sasanid Empire (7th century)
Circa 600, the Hephthalites were raiding the Sasanian Empire as far as Spahan in central Iran. The Hephthalites issued numerous coins imitating the coinage of Khosrow II, adding on the obverse a Hephthalite signature in Sogdian and Tamgha symbol.
Hephthalite coin with Sasanian-style bust imitating Khavadh I, whom the Hephthalites had helped to the Sasanian throne. Late 5th century CE.
Ethnicity
There are several theories regarding the origins of the White Huns, with the Iranian and Turkic theories being the most prominent.
For many years scholars suggested that they were of Turkic stock. Some have claimed that some groups amongst the Hephthalites were Turkic-speakers. Today, however, the Hephthalites are generally held to have been an Eastern Iranian people speaking an East Iranian language.
“The Ephthalitae Huns, who are called White Huns [...] The Ephthalitae are of the stock of the Huns in fact as well as in name, however they do not mingle with any of the Huns known to us, for they occupy a land neither adjoining nor even very near to them; but their territory lies immediately to the north of Persia [...]”
Religion and culture
They were said to practice Polyandry and Artificial cranial deformation. Chinese sources said they worshiped 'foreign gods', 'demons', the 'heaven god' or the 'fire god'. The Gokturks told the Byzantines that they had walled cities. Some Chinese sources said that they had no cities and lived in tents. Litvinsky tries to resolve this by saying that they were nomads who moved into the cities they had conquered. There were some government officials but central control was weak and local dynasties paid tribute.
White Huns in Southern Central Asia
It is not clear whether the people called Sveta Huna (White Huns) in Sanskrit were the Hephthalites or a related people, the Xionites. In the northwest of the Indian subcontinent, the Hephthalites were not distinguished from their immediate Chionite predecessors; both are known as Huna (Sanskrit: Sveta-Hūna, White Huns). In Ancient India, names such as Hephthalite were unknown. The Hephthalites were apparently part of, or offshoots of, people known in India as Hunas or Turushkas.
Hephthalite customs struck outsiders as unusual. Brothers shared a common wife. Wives placed horns on their headdress to indicate the number of their husbands. The head-binding of infants produced
deformed, elongated skulls. Deliberate cranial deformation was widespread among some steppe peoples. The practice may have produced
seizures in some individuals, which were akin to the hallucinatory
trances of shamans.
— Central Asia in
World History, Peter B. Golden (Oxford University Press, 2011, s. 37).
Xiongnu
The Xiongnu empire (3rd century BCE to 2nd century CE) is the earliest and longest-lasting of the so-called steppe or nomadic empires witnessed in Inner Asia over the past two millennia.
After their previous overlords, the Yuezhi, migrated into Central Asiaduring the 2nd century BC, the Xiongnu became a dominant power on the steppes of north-east Central Asia, centred on an area known later as Mongolia. The Xiongnu were also active in areas now part of Siberia, Inner Mongolia, Gansu and Xinjiang. Their relations with adjacent Chinese dynasties to the south east were complex, with repeated periods of conflict and intrigue, alternating with exchanges of tribute, trade, and marriage treaties.
Attempts to identify the Xiongnu with later groups of the western Eurasian Steppe remain controversial. Scythians and Sarmatians were concurrently to the west. The identity of the ethnic core of Xiongnu has been a subject of varied hypotheses, because only a few words, mainly titles and personal names, were preserved in the Chinese sources. The name Xiongnu may be cognate with that of the Huns or the Huna,although this is disputed. Other linguistic links – all of them also controversial – proposed by scholars include Iranian,Mongolic,Turkic,Uralic,Yeniseian,Tibeto-Burman or multi-ethnic.
Gold stag with eagle's head, and ten further heads in the antlers. From a Xiongnu tomb on the frontier, 4th-3rd century BC.
Xiongnu Empire
URSULA BROSSEDER
University of Bonn, Germany(LINK)
The organization of the unified Xiongnu
polity was based on a decimal structure of
leadership and an appanage system of territories of the “left” (east) and “right” (west). Although scholars have often assumed this
structure reflects Chinese organizational
logics, evidence points more to parallels westward in the Achaemenid Empire (Di Cosmo
2011: 47). At the top of the political order was the supreme ruler, the chanyu, who belonged
to a ruling royal lineage, and the highest political ranks were restricted to this and only
a few other secondary lineages, tied to the
royal lineage by intermarriage. The uppermost ranks consisted of the 24 Great Chiefs, referred to as kings and commanders, which
were hereditary positions at the head of a military decimal system (i.e., the Chiefs of Ten
Thousand Cavalry) and were linked to particular “left” and “right” appanages. These were
followed by several other ranks of kings, highorder generals, commanders, and officials, some of which were open to other lineages.
Each of the Great Chiefs appointed his own
subordinate kings and officials, and such
lower-level leaders within and outside of the
recognized system surely represented significant social forces in the steppe polity (Miller
2014). The Xiongnu sought to replicate their
political and military titles at the local level to
support the hierarchical structures in the
center and thus incorporate the elites of conquered people (Di Cosmo 2013: 34). The elite
ranks also included a group of high-ranking
appointments amidst the Xiongnu nobility, which included foreigners, such as Chinese
defectors, who were directly placed under
the authority of the chanyu, indicating a personal entourage of trusted advisors for the
latter (Di Cosmo 2013: 30–31).
The Xiongnu
The important early Chinese historian Sima Qian (145-90 BCE) gives us one of our earliest glimpses into the lives and culture of the people known to the Han as the Xiongnu. In his Shiji (Record of the Historian), he describes them as a pastoral nomadic people wandering in search of grazing lands for their herds of horses, cows and sheep. He also relates that the Xiongnu had no walled cities and did not engage in agriculture, and that the men were formidable warriors, trained from an early age to hunt on horseback with bow and arrow. Historical records also describe the Xiongnu as skilled charioteers, a characterization supported by the discovery of bronze chariot post filials in archeological excavations.
Originating in the northeastern Ordos region, the Xiongnu Empire was the first of its kind on the Eurasian steppe, and serves as a prototype of sorts for the many empires to follow, including that of the Mongols. The Ordos was an important gathering point for the various pastoral peoples of Inner Mongolia, and it is more accurate to describe the Xiongnu as a confederacy of these various groups rather than a single, unified culture. The founder of the Xiongnu confederation was Maodun, the son of a powerful and influential shanyu (high chieftain) among the nomads of the Ordos. After Maodun rose to the ranks of military commander he assassinated his father, and succeeded in unifying the various nomad groups under his leadership.
From 209 to 128 BCE the Xiongnu were at their most powerful. Under Maodun the confederacy established a firm power base in the Ordos, from where it began to expand in all directions. They retook the lands to the south lost to encroachment by the Qin dynasty, and absorbed the various smaller nomadic groups that roamed Inner Mongolia to the north. In the east they overwhelmed the Eastern Hu. In the west they defeated the Yuezhi (a rival coalition of nomadic peoples), driving them into Central Asia as far as northern Afghanistan. During this western campaign, the Xiongnu also took control over a number of oasis communities that had developed in the Tarim basin. The sub-commander in charge of overseeing these conquered city-states was given the title “general-in-charge-of-slaves”1, which tells us something about the Xiongnu's attitude towards those they conquered. From these agricultural communities they received grain, fruit, and animal feed, and from the nomads they enriched their herds of cattle, sheep, and most importantly, horses.
In 201 BCE, the first Han emperor Gaozu personally led his troops to the northern border in order to chastise a provincial governor who had declared independence. The governor had allied himself with the Xiongnu, and this first military encounter with the confederation of the steppes ended in humiliation for the Han. Unfamiliar with the attack-and-retreat strategy of the Xiongnu, Gaozu allowed himself to be separated from his main army, and was surrounded by the Xiongnu cavalry. Gaozu had no choice but to negotiate, and offered a settlement to win his own release.
Though the Han continued to hold the Xiongnu and their nomadic way of life in disdain (“xiongnu” is a Chinese word that translates roughly into “illegitimate offspring of slaves”), they could not ignore the very real military threat they posed to the Han Empire. To avert continued hostilities, the Han court was forced to maintain marital ties with the shanyu and offer annual tribute of silk, wines, rice and other foodstuffs.
Another Xiongnu demand that the Han were most loathe to recognize was the right to trade with Chinese communities at the frontier, for this would undermine the Han desire to keep a healthy buffer zone between the two empires. The Xiongnu countered this reluctance in the tried and true method: through raids, looting those goods that the Han court denied them purchase. Eventually the right to trade was granted, though the sale of arms and goods that could be used for military purposes was outlawed. This policy forced the Xiongnu to look to Central Asia for such as materials as iron, for which they traded many of the goods they had acquired from the Chinese. In this manner, Han trade policies with the Xiongnu were indirectly responsible for the increase in trade between East and Central Asia along the silk routes.
The Xiongnu was not only the first of the East Asian steppe empires; it was also the longest, lasting almost three hundred years. By 104 BCE the Han had reclaimed much of the northern territory they had lost a century earlier, and had driven the Xiongnu out of the west. They established military outposts as far west as Dunhuang to protect the city-states of the Tarim Basin from Xiongnu incursion, a position that also allowed them to enjoy the revenues generated by increased traffic along the trade routes. In 47 CE the Xiongnu split into northern and southern factions as a result of internal disputes. To protect themselves, the weaker Southerners asked for the protection of the Han Empire. Meanwhile, the northern Xiongnu suddenly found themselves threatened by the nomadic groups to the north, which they had previously dominated.
In 78 the Xianbei (ancestors of the Toba Wei, who would found the Wei dynasty three centuries later) attacked the northern Xiongnu. Seizing this opportunity, the Han court sent a force to join the southern Xiongnu faction to attack the Northerners. By 91 the northern Xiongnu were driven from the Ordos and fled west, their leadership dissipated.
(1) Ma Yong and Sun Yutan, "The Western Regions Under the Hsiung-nu and the Han," from History of Civilizations of Central Asia, vol. II (Paris: UNESCO Publishing), p. 228.
📹 The origin of Tatars — Xiongnu, Huns, Göktürks, Great Bulgaria (VİDEO)
The origin of Tatars — Xiongnu, Huns, Göktürks, Great Bulgaria (LINK)
Montclair State University professor H. Mark Hubey (1998) concludes that ... "The common Turkic branch which includes all the rest can be split into the /c/j/y/ branch and the /x/ġ/w/ branches. Seeing that the 't' to 's' transition is already in Sumerian, and that the Uralic 't' to 's' shift is thought to have occurred 6,000 years ago, we can be reasonably sure that some of the words traced out here certainly belong to quite an ancient age and to the west. This means that the proto-Turks or at least one of their ancestors moved from the Euphrates area north through the Caucasus and then to the steppes, and then eastwards. The historical ‘Turks’ are those moving back towards the west. Since all the branches of Turkic seem to occur in the West (Chuvash, Oguz, Kipchak, Khalaj) there is no reason to look for Turkic homelands beyond the Altays. That was their second home."
📹 Battle of Mobei 119 BC — Han-Xiongnu War (VİDEO)
Since the start of its history, China was in a constant state of war with the neighboring nomadic peoples and no enemy was as fierce as the Xiongnu. In this animated historical documentary, we will describe the Han-Xiongnu war and the battle of Mobei of 119 BC and how this battle influenced the fates of China and the Three Kingdoms period, and the Roman empire when it was attacked by (arguably) the remnants of the Xiongnu the Huns.
The "Hephthalite bowl", NFP Pakistan, 460-479 CE. 
