- Tumen Il-Qağan
Tumen Il-Qağan 551-553, (Tumen Khan, Bumen, Yili-Qağan, 土門, Il-Khağan, 伊利可汗)
In the ancient Chinese sources, his name means "smoke cloud." Little is known about his life, and most of the information comes from legends in which he gathers a group of Turkic people living in a legendary place called Ergenikon located in the inaccessible valleys of the Altay Mountains.
In 542 he put down a revolt of the Töle (Tieli) tribes against their overlords the Rouran (Avars). In return he asked and was refused the hand of a Rouran princess. His next move was to successfully establish contact with the Wei Kingdom in China. Records show in 545 a diplomatic mission lead by the Sogdian envoy An Nopantuo made an alliance sealed by Tumen's marriage to the princess Wei Chang'le (長樂公主). The beginning of formal diplomatic relations with China gave him the credibility to unite the turkic tribes behind him and crush the Rouran. With their defeat he proclaimed the Gökturk Khanate under his new title Il-Qağan, which means “king-of-kings of the state” at sacred Mt. Ötüken. This empire expanded, in less than one century, to wide territories in Central Asia. He died in the same year he founded his state.
There was a large influx of Sogdian refugees to his territory because of the persecution of the Zurvanites by Shah Anushirvan Khorasau I.
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