Turkic Period (555–840)

Turkic Khaganate (552–630), (682-744), Tang China (630-682)

Gökturk Khaganate, 551–572 AD

Northern Wei was disintegrating rapidly because of revolts of semi-tribal Tuoba military forces that were opposed to being sinicized, when disaster struck the flourishing Rouran Khaganate. The Altai Turkics (Orkhon Turkics, Göktürks), known as Tujue to Chinese chroniclers, were subjects to the Rouran and served as blacksmiths for them. In 552 AD the Göktürks revolted against their Rouran rulers. The uprising began in the Altai Mountains, where many of the Türk were serfs working the iron mines. Therefore, the revolt of the Turkics of 552 is often called the "Blacksmiths' rebellion". The uprising was headed by Buman, who became the founder of the Göktürk Khaganate. Thus, from the outset of their revolt, they had the advantage of controlling what had been one of the major bases of Rouran power. Between 546 and 553, the Türks overthrew the Rouran and established themselves as the most powerful force in Central Asia.

Kul Tigin Monument inscribed in Old Turkic alphabet

The Chinese dynasties Qi and Zhou surrendered in 570 and began paying tribute to the Göktürks. However, the newly established Sui dynasty in China (581) stop and so constant war between Sui and the Turkic Khaganate began. Turk was partitioned in 583 into an Eastern and Western Turkic Khaganates by the plot made by Sui dynasty of China . Finally in 584 Eastern Turk recognised Sui Suzerainty. Turkic Khaganate began to revolt and hasten the border in 615 after Emperor of Sui's failure expedition in Koguryo. The internal struggle between the Turkic nobles lead to their defeat by the Tang dynasty of China in 630. From 629 to 648, a reunited China—under the Tang dynasty (618-906) --destroyed the power of the Eastern Türk north of the Gobi; established suzerainty over the Khitan, a semi-nomadic Para-Mongolic people who lived in areas that became the modern Chinese provinces of Heilongjiang and Jilin; and established the Anbei Protectorate in the Mongolian Steppes. Uyghurs khagan was installed as Anbei protector, who inhabited the region between the Altai Mountains and Khitan's land. Between 641 and 648, the Tang conquered the Western Türk, reestablishing Chinese sovereignty over Xinjiang and exacting tribute from west of the Pamir Mountains. The Göktürks continuously struggled against the subjugation by the Tang dynasty started in 679. An uprising of 682 under the leadership of Kutuluk and Tonyukuk led to restoration of the Turkic Khaganate.

For a brief period at the beginning of the 7th century, a new consolidation of the Türk, under the Western Türk ruler Tardu, again threatened China. In 601 Tardu's army besieged Chang'an (modern Xi'an), then the capital of China. Tardu was turned back, however, and, upon his death two years later, the Türk state again fragmented. The Eastern Türk nonetheless continued their depredations, occasionally threatening Chang'an. In the early 8th century, an invading army of 450,000 soldiers headed by Tang dynasty's Empress Wu Zetian was defeated and chased back by Mojo khagan.^[20] The Türk empire finally ended in 744 by the joint Chinese, Uighur and other nomadic forces.

Rouran state (330–555)

Rouran Khaganate

Asia in 400 AD, showing the Rouran Khaganate, Tuoba's Northern Wei, Xianbei's Tuyuhun Kingdom, Southern Liang, Later Yan and Xiongnu's Üeban and Northern Liangstates

Rouran Khaganate circa 500 AD

A branch of the Xianbei, the Rouran (also known as Nirun) were consolidated under Mugulyu. In the late 5th century, the Rouran established a powerful nomadic empire spreading generally farther north of Northern Wei. It was probably the Rouran who first used the title khan. The Rouran ruled Mongolia, eastern Kazakhstan, part of Gansu, northern Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, parts of Northeastern China and southern Siberia. The Hephthalite Empire was a vassal state to the Rouran for 100 years.^[21] Shelun assumed the title of Khagan in 402 landmarking the establishment of the state of the Rouran Khaganate. The Tuoba waged long wars against the Rouran Khaganate. The Altai Turkics that were subjects of the Rouran revolted in 552 establishing the Turkic Khaganate. The Rouran Khaganate was finally defeated by the Turkics in 555. Part of the Rouran left the present territory of Mongolia. A number of historians maintain that they established the Avarian Kaganate between the river Danube and the Carpathian Mountains.^[22] The Rourans that stayed in Mongolia became the ancestors of the Tatar tribes.^[20]The Tatars and other Mongol tribes lived in the eastern part Mongolia during the Turkic period. Other Mongols that migrated east returned in the 8th century.

Xianbei state (147–234)

Xianbei state

Although the Xiongnu finally had been split into two parts in AD 48, the Xianbei (or Hsien-pei in Wade–Giles) had moved (apparently from the east) into the region vacated by the Xiongnu. The Xianbei were the northern branch of the Donghu (or Tung Hu, the Eastern Hu), a proto-Mongol group mentioned in Chinese histories as existing as early as the 4th century BC. The language of the Donghu is believed to be proto-Mongolic to modern scholars. The Donghu were among the first peoples conquered by the Xiongnu. Once the Xiongnu state weakened, however, the Donghu rebelled. By the 1st century AD, two major subdivisions of the Donghu had developed: the proto-Mongolic Xianbei in the north and the Wuhuan in the south.

The Xianbei gained strength beginning from the 1st century AD and were consolidated into a state under Tanshihuai in 147. He expelled the Xiongnu from Jungaria, and pushed the Dingling to the north of the Sayans, thus securing domination of the Mongolic elements in what is now Khalkha and Chaharia.^[19] The Xianbei successfully repelled an invasion of the Han dynasty in 167 and conquered areas of northern China in 180.

There are various hypotheses about the language and ethnic links of the Xianbei and most widely accepted version suggests that the Xianbei were a Mongolic ethnic group and their branches are the ancestors of many Mongolic peoples such as the Rouran, Khitan and Menggu Xibei, who are suggested to be the proto-Mongols.^[20] The ruler of the Xianbei state was elected by a congress of the nobility. The Xianbei used woodcut tallies called Kemu as a form of non-verbal communication. Besides extensive livestock husbandry, the Xianbei were also engaged on a limited scale in farming and handicraft. The Xianbei fractured in the 3rd century.

The Xianbei established an empire, which, although short-lived, gave rise to numerous tribal states along the Chinese frontier. Among these states was that of the Toba (T'o-pa in Wade–Giles), a subgroup of the Xianbei, in modern China's Shanxi Province.

The Wuhuan also were prominent in the 2nd century, but they disappeared thereafter; possibly they were absorbed in the Xianbei western expansion. The Xianbei and the Wuhuan used mounted archers in warfare, and they had only temporary war leaders instead of hereditary chiefs. Agriculture, rather than full-scale nomadism, was the basis of their economy. In the 6th century, the Wuhuan were driven out of Inner Asia into the Russian^{[clarification needed]} steppe.

Chinese control of parts of Inner Asia did not last beyond the opening years of the 2nd century AD, and, as the Eastern Han dynasty ended early in the 3rd century AD, suzerainty was limited primarily to the Gansu corridor. The Xianbei were able to make forays into a China beset with internal unrest and political disintegration. By 317 all of China north of the Yangtze River (Chang Jiang) had been overrun by nomadic peoples: the Xianbei from the north; some remnants of the Xiongnu from the northwest; and the Chiang people of Gansu and Tibet (present-day China's Xizang Autonomous Region) from the west and the southwest. Chaos prevailed as these groups warred with each other and repulsed the vain efforts of the fragmented Chinese kingdoms south of the Yangtze River to reconquer the region.

Tuoba, a faction of the Xianbei, established the Tuoba Wei empire beyond Mongolia proper in northern China in 386. By the end of the 4th century, the region between the Yangtze and the Gobi, including much of modern Xinjiang, was dominated by the Tuoba. Emerging as the partially sinicized state of Dai between AD 338 and 376 in the Shanxi area, the Tuoba established control over the region as the Northern Wei (AD 386-533). Northern Wei armies drove back the Rouran (also referred to as Ruru or Juan-Juan by Chinese chroniclers), a newly arising nomadic Mongol people in the steppes north of the Altai Mountains, and reconstructed the Great Wall. During the 4th century also, the Huns left the steppes north of the Aral Sea to invade Europe.^{[dubious – discuss]} By the middle of the 5th century, Northern Wei had penetrated into the Tarim Basin in Inner Asia, as had the Chinese in the 2nd century. As the empire grew, however, Tuoba tribal customs were supplanted by those of the Chinese, an evolution not accepted by all Tuoba. Tuoba Wei existed until 581.

Xiongnu state (209 BC–93 AD

The identity of the ethnic core of Xiongnu has been a subject of varied hypotheses and some scholars, including Paul Pelliot and Byambyn Rinchen,^[10] insisted on a Mongolic origin.The establishment of the Xiongnu empire in Mongolia in the 3rd century BC marks the beginning of statehood on the territory of Mongolia.

The first significant appearance of nomads came late in the 3rd century BC, when the Chinese repelled an invasion of the Xiongnu (Hsiung-nu in Wade–Giles romanisation) across the Yellow River from the Gobi. A Chinese army, which had adopted Xiongnu military technology—wearing trousers and using mounted archers with stirrups—pursued the Xiongnu across the Gobi in a ruthless punitive expedition. Fortification walls built by various Chinese warring states were connected to make a 2,300-kilometre Great Wall along the northern border, as a barrier to further nomadic inroads.

The founder of the Xiongnu empire was Toumen. He was succeeded violently by his son Modu Shanyu, who then conquered and unified various tribes. At the peak of its power, the Xiongnu confederacy stretched from Lake Baikalin the north to the Great Wall in the south and from the Tian Shan mountains in the west to the Greater Khingan ranges in the east. In the 2nd century BC the Xiongnu turned their attention westward to the region of the Altai Mountains and Lake Balkash, inhabited by Indo-European-speaking nomadic peoples, including Yuezhi (Yüeh-chih in Wade–Giles), who had relocated from China's present-day Gansu Province as a result of their earlier defeat by the Xiongnu. Endemic warfare between these two nomadic peoples reached a climax in the latter part of the 3rd century and the early decades of the 2nd century BC; the Xiongnu were triumphant. The Yuezhi then migrated to the southwest where, early in the 2nd century, they began to appear in the Oxus (the modern Amu Darya) Valley, to change the course of history in Bactria, Iran, and eventually India.

In 200 BC, the Han dynasty of China launched a military campaign into the territory, attempting to subjugate the Xiongnu. However the Xiongnu forces ambushed and encircled the Han Emperor Gao at Baideng for seven days. Emperor Gao was forced to submit to the Xiongnu, and a treaty was signed in 198 BC recognising all the territories to the north from the Great Wall should belong to the Xiongnu, while the territory to the south of the Great Wall should belong to the Han. In addition, China was obliged to marry princesses and pay annual tribute to the Xiongnu. This "marriage alliance" was far from peaceful, as Xiongnu raids into the fertile southern land never ceased. During the period of Emperor Wen, Xiongnu raids advanced into China Proper, ravaged and even besieged near its capital Chang'an. This continued for 70 years until the reign of Emperor Wu, whose massive counteroffensives devastated the Xiongnu and sent them towards the road of decline.

The Xiongnu again raided northern China about 200 BC, finding that the inadequately defended Great Wall was not a serious obstacle. By the middle of the 2nd century BC, they controlled all of northern and western China north of the Yellow River. This renewed threat led the Chinese to improve their defences in the north, while building up and improving the army, particularly the cavalry, and while preparing long-range plans for an invasion of Mongolia.

By 176 BC, domain of the Xiongnu was 4,030,000 km² (1,560,000 sq mi) in size.^[11] Xiongnu capital (Luut; Dragon) located on the beach Orkhon River, Central Mongolia.^[12]

Between 130 and 121 BC, Chinese armies drove the Xiongnu back across the Great Wall, weakened their hold on Gansu Province as well as on what is now Inner Mongolia, and finally pushed them north of the Gobi into central Mongolia. Following these victories, the Chinese expanded into the areas later known as Manchuria, Mongolia, the Korean Peninsula, and Inner Asia. The Xiongnu, once more turning their attention to the west and the southwest, raided deep into the Oxus Valley between 73 and 44 BC. The descendants of the Yuezhi and their Chinese rulers, however, formed a common front against the Xiongnu and repelled them.

During the next century, as Chinese strength waned, border warfare between the Chinese and the Xiongnu was almost incessant. Gradually the nomads forced their way back into Gansu and the northern part of what is now China's Xinjiang. In about the middle of the 1st century AD, a revitalized Eastern Han dynasty (AD 25-220) slowly recovered these territories, driving the Xiongnu back into the Altai Mountains and the steppes north of the Gobi. During the late 1st century AD, having reestablished the administrative control over southern China and northern Vietnam that had been lost briefly at beginning of this same century, the Eastern Han made a concerted effort to reassert dominance over Inner Asia. The concept of Mongolia as an independent power north of China is seen in the letter sent by Emperor Wen of Han to Laoshang Chanyu in 162 BC (recorded in the Hanshu):

The Emperor of China respectfully salutes the great Shan Yu (Chanyu) of the Hsiung-nu (Xiongnu)...When my imperial predecessor erected the Great Wall, all the bowmen nations on the north were subject to the Shan Yu; while the residents inside the wall, who wore the cap and sash, were all under our government: and the myriads of the people, by following their occupations, ploughing and weaving, shooting and hunting, were able to provide themselves with food and clothing...Your letter says:--"The two nations being now at peace, and the two princes living in harmony, military operations may cease, the troops may send their horses to graze, and prosperity and happiness prevail from age to age, commencing, a new era of contentment and peace." That is extremely gratifying to me...Should I, in concert with the Shan Yu, follow this course, complying with the will of heaven, then compassion for the people will be transmitted from age to age, and extended to unending generations, while the universe will be moved with admiration, and the influence will be felt by neighbouring kingdoms inimical to the Chinese or the Hsiung-nu...As the Hsiung-nu live in the northern regions, where the cold piercing atmosphere comes at an early period, I have ordered the proper authorities to transmit yearly to the Shan Yu, a certain amount of grain, gold, silks of the finer and coarser kinds, and other objects. Now peace prevails all over the world; the myriads of the population are living in harmony, and I and the Shan Yu alone are the parents of the people...After the conclusion of the treaty of peace throughout the world, take notice, the Han will not be the first to transgress.^[13]

The identity of the ethnic core of Xiongnu has been a subject of varied hypotheses and some scholars, including A.Luvsandendev, Bernát Munkácsy, Henry Howorth, Rashpuntsag,^[14] Alexey Okladnikov, Peter Pallas, Isaak Schmidt, Nikita Bichurin and Byambyn Rinchen,^[15] insisted on a Mongolic origin.

There are many cultural similarities between the Xiongnu and Mongols such as yurt on cart, composite bow, board game, horn bow and long song.^[16] Mongolian long song is believed to date back at least 2,000 years.^[17] Mythical origin of the long song mentioned in "Book of Wei (Volume 113).

In 48 AD, the Xiongnu empire was weakened as it was divided into the southern and northern Xiongnu. The northern Xiongnu migrated to the west. They established Üeban state (160–490) in modern Kazakhstan and Hunnic Empire (370s–469) in Europe. The Xianbeithat were under the Xiongnu rebelled in 93 AD, ending the Xiongnu domination in Mongolia.

Recent excavations of Xiongnu graves at the site Gol Mod in the Khairkhan of Arkhangai province, discovered bronze decorations with images of a creature resembling the unicorn and images of deities resembling the Greco-Roman deities. These discoveries lead to a hypothesis that the Xiongnu had relations with the Greco-Roman world 2000 years ago.^[18]

Prehistoric Mongolia and Proto-Mongols

The climate of Central Asia became dry after the large tectonic collision between the Indian Plate and the Eurasian Plate. This impact threw up the massive chain of mountains known as the Himalayas. The Himalayas, Greater Khingan and Lesser Khingan mountains act like a high wall, blocking the warm and wet climate from penetrating into Central Asia. Many of the mountains of Mongolia were formed during the Late Neogene and Early Quaternary periods. The Mongolian climate was more humid hundreds of thousands of years ago. Mongolia is known to be the source of priceless paleontological discoveries. The first scientifically confirmed dinosaur eggs were found in Mongolia during the 1923 expedition of the American Museum of Natural History, led by Roy Chapman Andrews.

During the middle to late Eocene Epoch, Mongolia was the home of many Paleogene mammals with Sarkastodon and Andrewsarchus being the most prominent of them.

Homo erectus possibly inhabited Mongolia as much as 800,000 years ago but fossils of Homo erectus have not yet been found in Mongolia. Stone tools have been found in the southern, Gobi, region, perhaps dating back as much as 800,000 years.^[2] Important prehistoric sites are the Paleolithic cave drawings of the Khoid Tsenkheriin Agui (Northern Cave of Blue) in Khovd province,^[3] and the Tsagaan Agui (White Cave) in Bayankhongor Province.^[4] A neolithic farming settlement has been found in Dornod Province. Contemporary findings from western Mongolia include only temporary encampments of hunters and fishers. The population during the Copper Age has been described as paleomongolid in the east of what is now Mongolia, and as europid in the west.^[3]

The Slab Grave culture of the late Bronze and early Iron Age, related to the proto-Mongols, spread over northern, central and eastern Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, Northwest China (Xinjiang, Qilian Mountains etc.), Manchuria, Lesser Khingan, Buryatia, Irkutsk Oblast and Zabaykalsky Krai. ^[5] This culture is the main archaeological find of the Bronze Age Mongolia.

The geographic area the Slab Grave culture covered

Deer stones (also known as reindeer stones) and the omnipresent kheregsüürs (small kurgans) probably are from this era; other theories date the deer stones as 7th or 8th centuries BC. Deer stones are ancient megaliths carved with symbols that can be found all over central and eastern Eurasia but are concentrated largely in Siberia and Mongolia. Most deer stones occur in association with ancient graves; it is believed that stones are the guardians of the dead. There are around 700 deer stones known in Mongolia of a total of 900 deer stones that have been found in Central Asia and South Siberia. Their true purpose and creators are still unknown. Some researchers claim that deer stones are rooted in shamanism and are thought to have been set up during the Bronze Age around 1000 BC, and may mark the graves of important people. Later inhabitants of the area likely reused them to mark their own burial mounds, and perhaps for other purposes. In Mongolia, the Lake Baikal area, and the Sayan and Altai Mountains, there are 550, 20, 20, and 60 known deer stones respectively. Moreover, there are another 20 deer stones in Kazakhstan and the Middle East (Samashyev 1992) and 10 further west, specifically in the Ukraine and parts of the Russian Federation, including the provinces of Orenburg and the Caucasus, and near the Elbe River (Mongolian History 2003). According to H.L. hlyenova, the artistic deer image originated from the Sak tribe and its branches (Chlyenova 1962). Volkov believes that some of the methods of crafting deer stone art are closely related to Scythians (Volkov 1967), whereas Mongolian archaeologist D. Tseveendorj regards deer stone art as having originated in Mongolia during the Bronze Age and spread thereafter to Tuva and the Baikal area (Tseveendorj 1979).

A vast Iron Age burial complex from the 5th-3rd century, later also used by the Xiongnu, has been unearthed near Ulaangom.^[3]

Before the 20th century, some scholars assumed that the Scythians descended from the Mongolic people.^[6] The Scythian community inhabited western Mongolia in the 5-6th century. In 2006 the mummy of a Scythian warrior, which is believed to be about 2,500 years old was a 30-to-40-year-old man with blond hair, and was found in the Altai Mountains, Mongolia.^[7]

In historical times Eurasian nomads were concentrated on the steppe lands of Central Asia.^[8] Furthermore, it is assumed that the Turkic peoples have always inhabited the western, the Mongols the central, and the Tungusic peoples the eastern portions of the region.^[8]

By the eighth century BCE, the inhabitants of the western part of Mongolia evidently were nomadic Indo-European migrants, either Scythians ^[9] or Yuezhi. In central and eastern parts of Mongolia were many other tribes that were primarily Mongol in their ethnologic characteristics.^[9]

With the appearance of iron weapons by the 3rd century BCE, the inhabitants of Mongolia had begun to form Clan alliances and lived a hunter and herder lifestyle. The origins of more modern inhabitants are found among the forest hunters and nomadic tribes of Inner Asia. They inhabited a great arc of land extending generally from the Korean Peninsula in the east, across the northern tier of China to present-day Kazakhstan and to the Pamir Mountains and Lake Balkash in the west. During most of recorded history, this has been an area of constant ferment from which emerged numerous migrations and invasions to the southeast (into China), to the southwest (into Transoxiana—modern Uzbekistan, Iran, and India), and to the west (across Scythia toward Europe).

Ancient period[edit source]

The area of modern Mongolia has been inhabited by groups of nomads since ancient times. The ancient population had a nomadic and hunter lifestyle and lived a fairly closed life.^{[citation needed]} While most of Central Asia had a fairly similar nomadic lifestyle where moving in and around national boundaries and mixing with different settlements was common, the situation in the Mongolian steppes was unique because migration was limited by natural barriers such as the Altai Mountains in the west, the Gobi Desert in the south and the freezing wastelands of Siberia in the north, all unsuitable for nomadic-based living. These greatly limited migration, although they also kept out invaders. The clans in Mongolia only allied with other Mongolian clans, with which they shared the same language, religion and way of life. This would later be a huge advantage in uniting the people in Mongolia against the threat of the expanding Chinese empires. There were repeated conflicts with the Chinese dynasties of Shang and especially Zhou, which had begun conquering and enslaving the Mongolic people in an expansive drift. By the time of the Warring States Period in China, the northern Dynasties of Zhao, Yan, and Qin had begun to encroach and conquer into Southern Mongolia. By the time the Qin dynasty had united all of China's kingdoms into one empire, the Sahun Kingdom (Xiongnu) had been formed in the Mongolian plains, transforming all of the independent clans into one single state and reassured the safety and independence from an expanding Qin

.