Tuyuhun

Tuyuhun
284–670
Asia in 565 CE, showing Tuyuhun and its neighbors.
Capital		Fuqi
Government		Monarchy
Khagan
•	284-317 CE	Murong Tuyuhun
•	635-672 CE	Murong Nuohebo
Historical era		Iron Age
•	Established	284
•	Vassal of Tang China	634
•	Destroyed by the Tibetan Empire	670
Succeeded by Tibetan Empire

Tuyuhun (Chinese: 吐谷渾) (Tibetan: ‘A-zha) was a powerful kingdom established by Eurasian nomads related to the Xianbei in the Qilian Mountains and upper Yellow River valley.

After the disintegration of the Xianbei state, nomadic groups were led by their khagan, Tuyuhun, to the rich pasture lands around Qinghai Lake about the middle of the 3rd century.

Murong Tuyuhun (慕容吐谷渾) was the older brother of the Former Yan's ancestor Murong Hui and elder son of the Chanyu Murong Shegui (慕容涉歸) of the Murong Xianbei who took his people from their original settlements on the Liaodong Peninsula to the region of the Yin Mountains, crossing the Yellow River between 307 and 313, and into the eastern region of modern Qinghai.

The Tuyuhun Empire was established in 284 by subjugating the native peoples referred to as the Qiang, including more than 100 different and loosely coordinated tribes that did not submit to each other or any authority.

After Tuyuhun died in Linxia, Gansu in 317, his sixty sons further expanded the empire by defeating the Western Qin (385-430) and Xia (407-431) kingdoms. The Qinghai Xianbei, Tufa Xianbei, Qifu Xianbei and Haolian Xianbei joined them. They moved their capital 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) west of Qinghai Lake.

After the Jin elevated their status by conferring on their ruler the old Xiongnu title of chanyu in 281, they were ruled, from 285, by Murong Hui for five decades. These Xianbei groups formed the core of the Tuyuhun Empire and numbered about 3.3 million at their peak. They carried out extensive military expeditions westward, reaching as far as Hotan in Xinjiang and the borders of Kashmir and Afghanistan, and established a vast empire that encompassed Qinghai, Gansu, Ningxia, northern Sichuan, eastern Shaanxi, southern Xinjiang, and most of Tibet, stretching 1,500 kilometers from east to west and 1,000 kilometers from north to south. They unified parts of Inner Asia for the first time in history, developed the southern route of the Silk Road, and promoted cultural exchange between the eastern and western territories, dominating the northwest for more than three and half centuries until it was destroyed by the Tibetan Empire. The Tuyuhun Empire existed as an independent kingdom outside China and was not included as part of Chinese historiography.