Bumin, King of Turks

The creation of the Göktürk Empire has been accompanied by many mysteries. Who were the Ashina, the Turkic dynasty that defeated the Rouran Khaganate? Did the Ashina ally themselves with a Chinese Empire to accomplish their goal? And did they, under the title of “Heavenly Turks”, decide to conquer Western Asia afterwards? However, the question that has been a pressing matter for me personally, for at least two years now, is not if but how the Ashina did all of these things. How did they, a steppe people living in a mountain range, ally with the sedentary Chinese? How did they, being splintered into many small tribes, defeat the mighty Rouran armies by themselves? And how did they expand so fast and so wide within Western Eurasia, having established the first steppe empire to do so?
This article is a modified and expended excerpt from my book The Gokturks. In that chapter, I tried to reconstruct the Rise of the Ashina dynasty as detailed as possible – and even tackle some academic assumptions that I classify as being obsolete. In this modified version, I will use new detailed maps that further explain the vastness of Turkic rise to success.

Excerpt from The Gokturks: Origins, Religion and Rapid Rise of the First Turkic Empire by Emre-E. Yavuz, pp. 53-80, modified September ‘22 version.

Pictured on the left: Göktürk Army, led by Bumin (?), arrives at the Kingdom of Kocha in the Tarim Basin in 552 CE.

As so often in history, wars between states or ethnic groups in Asia's late antiquity led to flight and displacement. South of the Altai region is the Taklamakan Desert, an inhospitable place to live. On the northern ring, however, at the transition to the Altai, better living conditions prevailed. From the Tarim Basin to the Gaochang region, this belt was dotted with many oasis towns in which many peoples including Chinese and Indo-Iranians lived and ruled over the millennia. In late antiquity, families that descended from the legendary Xiongnu Huns had say here. In 436 or 439, Chinese dynasties suddenly began to expel these families. In one village, all the family members were killed by the invaders, all except for a ten-year-old boy who managed to escape. However, the boy was injured and didn't get very far. That is when he came across a she-wolf who befriended him. The ruler of the invaders learned of this ordeal and ordered his soldiers to kill the boy as well as the she-wolf, but the she-wolf fled with the boy at inhospitable speed to a mountain, north of the Gaochang region. She housed him at a cave surrounded by a plain with rich vegetation. The she-wolf fed the boy and watched him grow into a man. At some point, the two “merged”, and she gave birth to ten little boys, half-wolf and half-human who then grew into strong men. In adulthood, these ten left the cave area and mingled with the surrounding villages. Each of them in turn had children, and so an extended family of 700 came into being. They all bore the name Ashina in honor of their mother, who was called Asena.[1] The symbol of the wolf has been omnipotent in Turkic literature and in some political circles ever since, but Asena was not a gray wolf at all, unlike the imagination of certain nationalist circles like to claim, but a blue wolf: Gök Börü. Blue because of her fur, which shimmered bluish when the boy saw her. And also because of her connection to Gök Tengri, the ruler of the eternal blue sky, who acting as a god had sent Asena to save the boy on earth and with him the family from extinction.[2]

With new courage, the ten Ashina men studied the art of war – in practise, not on paper – and took revenge on their father's enemies. At this moment, the legend of Asena turns into the legend of Ergenekon. The protective mountain ranges, where the boy and the she-wolf had taken refuge, represented the only protection of the family from the enemies. A blacksmith named Börtecin, presumably one of the ten sons, made a hammer with the help of which the men could smash the mountain range and clear the way. This opened the gate to the outside world and became the moment of the mythical birth of the Turk. So the Turk was literally a wolf's child and had a talent for forging metals, with which weapons could be made.[3] The story is obviously a myth that is supposed to metaphorically explain the origin of the Turkic civilization. Interestingly, it has parallels with the origin stories of the Indo-Aryan[4] Wusun, who lived nearby, and even with that of the Romans. Believe it or not! The city of Rome came into being after orphaned brothers Romulus and Remus were taken in and suckled by a she-wolf. The two grew up to be men, and Romulus stamped out the city named after him. After killing his brother, that is. A fine detail that is extinct from the Tale of Asena. The wolf then played a not insignificant role in the collective consciousness of the Romans as a national animal, along with the eagle. Among the Turks, in turn, the wolf has played a particularly important role in their cosmology ever since; it is certainly one of the original national totem animals of the Turkic peoples alongside the horse, eagle or falcon and the goat. The Gokturks, after founding their empire, introduced the wolf as a totem animal, which from then on was shown as a sign on official standards as observed by Chinese travelers and diplomats.[5]

But this myth is as so often in history indeed based on a real incident. For example, the special units of the Gokturks were called Börü, meaning wolves. Moreover, the rulers of the Gokturks held annual ceremonies in the "Cave of the Ancestor" to commemorate the Ergenekon legend.[6] And the Chinese annals tell us about a historical event that could explain the background of the legend: The last Hun princes in Gaochang, Wuhui and Anzhou, once fled north from an invading army and arrived in the Altai region, where they resettled with their families. They became vassals of the Rouran, though. The Turks, as is well known, had later also become their vassals, and coincidentally appear in the chronologies of Asia at the very time in the Altai, in 439, when the last Huns disappeared from Gaochang.[7] This is the origin of the claim by Chinese scholars that the Turks would be the descendants of the Xiongnu, that is, the ancient Huns.

Clockwise from top right to top left: a female falconer, a male falconer, the Orkhon river in Mongolia, the Altai Mountains in Kazakhstan.

In any case, about a hundred years after the flight to the Altai Mountains the descendants of the she-wolf Asena reappear in history, this time in the context of real events. In the meantime, the clan had joined forces with the surrounding population. There is evidence that the family now comprised far more than a few dozen members and had also integrated other tribes into its sphere of influence. For one, the Chinese chronicles already speak not of one but of "500 (!) families", which are attributed by the authors to the entity of the Ashina. Since the tribe had fled from the Gaochang region towards the Altai mountains in the same period as the Huns (436-439), the assumption that many of these refugees had united upon or after arrival at the Altai is not unfounded. Thus, the Chinese authors were most likely referring to the many small original Ashina families who were literally related to each other and over time merged with the other families to form a larger clan or tribe. Then again, the Ashina are described in both the Book of Sui and the Tongdian as a "mixture of various barbarian" ethnic groups. These Tujue[8], as the Chinese called them, now dwelled with the Ashina being the core tribe in the Altai area. Through the trade routes in the south, they came into contact with the merchants of the oasis cities on the Tarim Basin such as those from Kocha. The later history of the Gokturks shows that they supported these city-states in their fight for survival against the Chinese. The close ties are also evident from the numerous images of Turkic soldiers and nobles form wall paintings in the Kızıl Caves near Aksu. The drawings in Kocha/Hotan, which are supposed to depict the takeover of the city by Bumin's troops, also indicate this. Interestingly, these depictions were made in 552, the same year the transfer of power to the Turks took place. This is very unusual. Therefore, we may assume that already in the early phase of their ethnogenesis, the Ashina were in active exchange with cities such as Aksu, Kashgar, Hotan and Turfan, the neighboring cities in the original homeland of the first Ashina.

Did the Ashina then possibly already have significant influence on the Silk Road before the establishment of their empire? There is no evidence for this yet. All chronicles, excavations, and accounts found so far indicate that the Ashina clan later seized the cities along the Silk Road by force. Provided a city recognized the suzerainty of the Turks, the Ashina refrained from punishing them, added the area to their sphere of influence and moved on. But unlike the western part of the Silk Road, in cities like Samarkand and Bukhara, the eastern part bordering China, Tibet and Mongolia had already come into contact with the Ashina. This possibly facilitated their quick integration into the Gokturk empire.

But the conquest of cities, the incorporation of trade routes and the recognition of local subjects were nothing but a big dream for a certain Ashina Tuwu. Tuwu was a 5th generation descendant of the she-wolf Asena, so the chronicles tell us. His father, Axian, had surrendered to the Rouran Khaganate several decades earlier. The Rouran, who figure prominently in the prologue of my book, were the undisputed lords of the steppe in Tuwu's time as well. They ruled a broad strip from Manchuria in East Asia to Lake Balkash in Kazakhstan in Western Asia. They were later deviously called "wiggly worms" by the Chinese, presumably because they had never been a serious threat to the Chinese states. But for the steppe peoples, there was no escape. It was the Rouran who for the first time called their rulers Khagan and accordingly claimed suzerainty over the entire steppe. The origin of their noble dynasty is unclear. Para-Mongolic origins are not unrealistic, but the claim that the Rouran were definitely ancestors of the Mongols is not proven. Unfortunately, this did not stop generations of historians, including Grousset whom I hold in high esteem, from repeating this claim over and over again.[9] A Mongol influence on the linguistic level is certainly demonstrable, but it is equally likely that at least parts of the Rouran spoke Turkic. This does not make the ruling dynasty Turks, as long as Turkic was not the only mother tongue, as it probably was with the Xiongnu. Instead, we must assume that the Rouran as a whole, like many other ruling dynasties of antiquity, were a product of different ethnicities. "Turco-Mongol" would be a more appropriate term, with the “Mongol” part being larger then the “Turkic” one.

But those Turks and also the verifiable, actual ancestors of the Mongols did not live together with but under the rule of the Rouran at that time. It was not a totally just society, rather a giving on the part of the subjects and a taking by the ruling elite. As was often in world history, I might add. Indeed, we may call the Rouran Khaganate to be the very first actual Steppe Empire. Not a confederation like that of the Xiongnu, but a state with clear political hierarchies. It had most probably been Ashina Axian who reluctantly accepted the vassalization of his clan by the Khagan. We do not know what exactly took place in detail. But since Axian probably ruled around the year 500, and the Turkic Tiele had surprisingly defeated the Rouran during an uprising in 508, I would argue that that at the same time the Ashina also revolted against the Rouran but drew the short straw. From then on, the Ashina were no longer tolerated by the Rouran in their domain but had to be ready for action at any time on the Khagan's command to protect the rulers' interests militarily, with the Altai becoming a dominion of the Khaganate. Tuwu therefore continued to be Yabgu[10] of the Ashina but was officially subject to the Rouran Khaganate. The integration of the Ashina Turks was finalized.[11]

Map of the geopolitical situation in Eurasia, second half of 5th and first half of 6th centuries.

The period in which we find ourselves marks, as you might know, the transition from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. We refer to the years between 300 and 600 more precisely as Late Antiquity, since in Europe the feudal societies we know from the textbooks had not yet been established at all in the year 500 (the "official" beginning of the Middle Ages in European school books). In Asia, the situation was quite different. Practically all states, those of the sedentary and those of the nomadic peoples, were feudalistic in nature.[12] One family held sway, depending on the culture being sometimes more and sometimes less dependent on the favor of the people and the lower nobility. A visitor from Europe could find strict slavery in China as well as watch the Rouran cattle breeders doing their farm labor. But a distinctive feature of late Asian antiquity were the constant migratory movements. While some Indo-Arian or Indo-Iranian groups stayed in the oasis towns at the Tarim, many Turkic-speaking tribes moved continuously westward since at least the end of the Xiongnu. Proponents of the Transeurasian theory even argue that the Turkic peoples had been moving away from their actual homeland in Manchuria since 3000/2000 BCE. In any case, many of them were, in late antiquity, organized in the loose federation of the notorious Tiele who we have mentioned before.[13] And when the leader of the Tiele Federation took up arms against the Rouran, the Ashina were not the only Turks to join the rebellion, it seems. The Turk ethnicity or cultural identity was by now certainly graspable. Only the term still referred to the Ashina clan, its fellow tribes, and all Turkic-speaking allies within their sphere of influence. The Turkic peoples with their respective dialects had risen to become the dominant ethnic group from the Altai to Eastern Europe, and the rebellion of 508 had left a deep impression on the Rouran nobility. Even if the Ashina clan, the Tiele Federation and other Turkic groups such as the Ogur and Kirghiz did not live together under one roof due to geographical distances and political fragmentation, they were firstly all Turkic-speaking, secondly had evidently settled in the mentioned areas permanently and thirdly were not always friends, but indeed rarely enemies against each other. Before the formation of the Gokturk Empire, inner-Turkic wars were rare. A formerly common thesis, according to which the Kyrgyz were originally not Turks and were only Turkized in the 6th century, was vehemently contradicted by some historians. Thus, the appearance of the Kyrgyz, who are described in ancient sources as red-haired and with green eyes, should not be an exclusion criterion for the fact that they were Turkic speakers and belonged to the Turkic cultural sphere. The heterogeneity of the Turkic peoples should not be disregarded.[14] In any case, the coexistence of the tribes implies the existence of a conception regarding the common identity. Besides the Turks, proto-Mongols also lived in the steppes, mainly in Northeast Asia. But they were either subjugated by the Gokturks or driven out completely as we will see in later chapters of my book. In any case, the Turkic-speaking ethnic groups enumerated, and others whose history remains to be told were aware of their commonalities. This cannot have escaped the glances of the rulers of the Rouran Khaganate.

After a long civil war, a certain Anagui ascended the throne of the Rouran in 520, sweeping away the second recorded rebellion of the Tiele.[15] In the meantime, the wounds in the Rouran state had already turned into deep scars. Accordingly, Khagan Anagui ruled with an iron fist from the newly established capital of Mumocheng under his command. He reportedly had the capital fortified with two rows of ramparts and protected by a group of elite bodyguards.[16] For thirty years he was able to consolidate his power in the state and put down any further uprisings. Among others, there had been a rebellion by the Turkic-speaking Dingling. Tuwu was still unable to free the Ashina from bondage. But when his son Bumin was crowned leader of the Ashina in the 530s or 540s, the fate of Anagui and his henchmen had already been sealed.[17] For even if the geopolitical situation in the Eurasian Steppe did not change at first, Bumin's assumption of power was like a domino that set off a long, long chain of events. Almost a century after his ancestors had fled to the Altai, it was to be Bumin who not only took revenge on the old enemies of his ancestors but also led his family to new, previously unimagined power. He was apparently fed up with the Khagan's rule and was driven by his family's lowly position to change something about the predicament. But his path was one of trials and tribulations.[18]

Right: an imagined version of what Bumin might have looked like. This character in its animated form will be part of my upcoming third Gokturk documentary.

But meanwhile, the Ashina clan had already risen to unintended fame. According to the legend of Asena, they had been making their own weapons since their arrival in the Altai. The art of blacksmithing was indeed internalized by the family as they were located in or near the Altai Mountains and could make use of them accordingly. By supplying numerous states, tribes, and possibly even private mercenaries with those very weapons, the Ashina clan earned a reputation as a family of excellent armorers.[19] Consequently, their very existence posed a permanent threat to the continued existence of the Rouran. No other Turkic people of late antiquity was as visceral in the production of weapons and armor as the Ashina. Possibly, despite the de jure political affiliation with the Khagan, the family members continued to live in economic self-sufficiency, as in fact did all the nomads of the steppe before them. Since they were also talented archers and horsemen who could very well take care of themselves in case of war, their military capacities were not bad at all. The Chinese Book of Zhou even records an event in 542 when an army of Turkic warriors attempted to attack northern China. A man named Yuwen, descended from the royal Taizu dynasty, was to make first contact with the Turks of the Ashina clan in the eighth year of his political career as governor of Suizhou[20]. The Book of Zhou, volume 27, tells us:

Every year when the ice on the Wei River froze in winter the Turks came to invade and plunder the area. Yuwen ordered the people of Suizhou to the castles in advance so that they would be protected. In December of that year when the Turks advanced from the valley, fire was set at the place where a lot of firewood was stored. The Turks, fearing the arrival of a large (Chinese) army, fled and trampled each other, leaving their animals and people behind. [...] Ever since the Turks did not dare to come back. It was arranged to establish a garrison to be prepared for them in the future.[22]

The Turks of Bumin had been put to flight – the cited source implies a ruse and not real battle as the reason – but at least became known to the Chinese as a political entity. They acted independently of their liege Anagui. However, the Ashina's numerical inferiority to the Rouran (and other Turkic peoples such as the Tiele) kept Bumin from any further daring adventures. Moreover, his immediate neighbors of the Tiele Federation were once again in revolt against the Rouran. Once again, they were challenging the Khagan's supremacy over the Eurasian Steppe. Instead of joining their revolt, however, Bumin took a different path. He remained neutral at first. We do not know what was going on in his mind and whether he was following a master plan. Given the speed with which Bumin acted in the years that followed, it is not improbable to assume the latter. We are going to reconstruct step by step the course of events in 545 and 552, the period that led to the creation of the Gokturk Khaganate. Instead of merely relying on the findings of historians, which may well be helpful to us, I will make use primarily of Chinese, Korean, and Turkic primary sources and provide a chronological listing of events.[21] Then a classification of all events into the larger framework will follow, which may help us to grasp Bumin's motives and intentions. In the end, you will be able to understand why this first great Turkic empire came into being and how it expanded so rapidly in all directions. It should be noted aid in advance that besides political ambitions and motives such as maintaining power and fame, climatic and consequently socio-economic changes of the 6th century will also play a role. But one step at a time.

To be continued in part 2 where we will detail Bumin’s revolution step by step. Only on TheKhansDen.com and my book The Gokturks: Origins, Religion and Rapid Rise of the First Turkic Empire, available on Amazon and Barnes &/ Nobles.

[1] Hunt, David (2008): The Face of the Wolf is Blessed, or is It? Diverging Perceptions of the Wolf, in Folklore 119 (December 2008): 319-334, p. 323.

[2] Candan, Ergun (2008): Türkler'in Kültür Kökenleri (Origin of Turkish Culture), 77-78.

[3] Öztuna, Yilmaz (1998): Türk Tarihinden Portreler, pp.11-13; Grousset (1970): 130.

[4] Especially in German historiography, the Indo-Aryans, whose settlement area stretched from Central Asia to India (no, not Europe), are referred to as "Indo-Iranians" or even "Indo-Europeans". This is all too understandable given the importance of the term "Aryan" in German history. However, since the majority of the historians whose insights I draw upon in this book have settled on the term Indo-Aryan, and since this work was written for an international audience, I am guided by that term.

[5] Grousset (1970): 130.

[6] Sinor (1996): 329.

[7] Golden, Peter B.: Central Asia in World History, 37.

[8] The correct pronunciation of Tujue is Tü-kü-eh. Interestingly, this coincides with Türkiye, the Turkish name for the modern Republic of Turkey.

[9] Cf. Grousset (1970).

[10] Title of the Ashina Turks, which is possibly of Indian origin and was equivalent to a lesser royal title, one beneath the Khagan later on.

[11] Taşağıl (2013): 127.

[12] Barisitz (2017): 58.

[13] The Tiele are also known as Tölös in Turkish historiography.

[14] Cf. Taşagıl, Ahmet (2016): Eski Türk Boyları Çin Kaynaklarına Göre, Bilge Kültür Sanat, 92-93.

[15] Golden (2011): 37.

[16] Cf. Kim (2019): 28.

[17] The date of Bumin's accession to the throne has not been clarified. The information that his year of birth was 490 is also not provided with sources in certain online forums and encyclopedias and can therefore be dismissed as implausible.

[18] Drompp, Michael R.: Imperial State Formation in Inner Asia. The Early Turkic Empires (6th to 9th centuries),v in: Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae Vol. 58, No. 1, Proceedings of the First International Conference on the Mediaeval History of the Eurasian Steppe: Szeged, Hungary May 11-16, 2004: Part I (2005), pp. 101-111 (11 pages), 103.

[19] Barisitz (2017): 52; Sinor (1996): 331.

[20] A settlement near Chang'an, now Xi'an, which at that time had been the capital of alternating northern Chinese dynasties.

[21] Book of Zhou, Book 27, section on Yuwen Taizu 宇文測.

[22] Frankly, there have been no substantial theories of historiography on this subject. It has often been stated how Bumin became a Khagan, but not why and under what circumstances.