First Turkic Khaganate | |||||||||||||
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552–603 | |||||||||||||
Status | Khaganate (Nomadic empire) | ||||||||||||
Capital | |||||||||||||
Common languages | |||||||||||||
Religion | Tengrism, Buddhism | ||||||||||||
Demonym(s) | Türük Türk | ||||||||||||
Qaghan | |||||||||||||
• 552 | Bumin Qaghan (first) | ||||||||||||
• 599–603 | Tardu (last) | ||||||||||||
Yabgu | |||||||||||||
• 552–575 | Istämi (first) | ||||||||||||
• 575–599 | Tardu (last) | ||||||||||||
Historical era | Post-classical | ||||||||||||
• Bumin Qaghan revolts against Rouran Khaganate | 542 | ||||||||||||
• Established | 552 | ||||||||||||
581 | |||||||||||||
• Brief re-unification | 603 | ||||||||||||
• Division of Western and Eastern Turkic Khaganates | 603 | ||||||||||||
Area | |||||||||||||
557[8][9] | 6,000,000 km2 (2,300,000 sq mi) | ||||||||||||
Population | |||||||||||||
• 6th century[10] | 3 million | ||||||||||||
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The First Turkic Khaganate, also referred to as the First Turkic Empire,[11] the Turkic Khaganate or the Göktürk Khaganate, was a Turkic khaganate established by the Ashina clan of the Göktürks in medieval Inner Asia under the leadership of Bumin Qaghan (d. 552) and his brother Istämi. The First Turkic Khaganate succeeded the Rouran Khaganate as the hegemonic power of the Mongolian Plateau and rapidly expanded their territories in Central Asia. The khaganate became the first Central Asian transcontinental empire from Manchuria to the Black Sea.[4]: 49 [12]
Although the Göktürks spoke a Siberian Turkic language directly antecedent to the Orkhon Turkic of the Second Turkic Khaganate, the First Khaganate's early official texts and coins were written in Sogdian.[5][6] It was the first Turkic state to use the name Türk politically.[13] The Old Turkic script was invented at the first half of the sixth century.[14][15]
The Khaganate collapsed in 603, after a series of conflicts and civil wars which separated the polity into the Eastern Turkic Khaganate and Western Turkic Khaganate. The Tang China conquered the Eastern Turkic Khaganate in 630 and the Western Turkic Khaganate in 657 in a series of military campaigns. The Second Turkic Khaganate emerged in 682 and lasted until 744, when it was overthrown by the Uyghur Khaganate.
The first people to use the ethnonym Turk to refer to themselves were the Turuk people of the Gokturk Khanate in the mid sixth-century