The First Turkic Khaganate (552-630)

In 552 Bumin Khagan of the Ashina clan defeated the Rouran Khaganate and founded a new state. Its name, Türk, later became the common name of all Turkic peoples. Its political heart was the Ötüken highland and the Orkhon valley in today's Mongolia.

Bumin's son Muqan Khagan (553-572) pushed the frontier east to Manchuria. Bumin's brother Istemi Yabghu ruled the western wing: together with Sasanian Iran he defeated the Hephthalites and carried the border to the Caspian. In 568 Istemi's envoy Maniakh travelled to Constantinople and an alliance with Byzantium followed. A large part of the Great Silk Road was under the khaganate's control.

After the civil wars of 582-603 the state split into Eastern and Western khaganates. In 630 an army of the Tang emperor Taizong captured Illig Khagan of the Eastern Turks, and for the next fifty years the Turkic tribes lived under Tang rule. The Kül Tigin inscription remembers these as bitter years when Turkic nobles gave up their own titles for foreign ones.