Göktürks

The Gokturks, or First Turkic Khaganate, were a nomadic empire that arose in Inner Asia after the Turkic leader Bumin Khan overthrew the Rouran, who had been their overlords. The empire stretched across the steppes from Manchuria to the Black Sea at its height, and it controlled much of the Silk Road, working with Sogdian merchants and dealing with China and Byzantium. It soon divided into eastern and western khaganates, which fought each other and were weakened by Chinese diplomacy. The Gokturks left the oldest known inscriptions in a Turkic language, the Orkhon inscriptions, from a later revival. The Tang dynasty conquered the eastern khaganate in the seventh century, and the western part fell to Chinese forces later.

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