Rouran Khaganate (jan 1, 330 – jan 1, 555)

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The Rouran Khaganate, also Juan-Juan Khaganate (Chinese: 柔然; pinyin: Róurán), was a tribal confederation and later state founded by a people of Proto-Mongolic Donghu origin. The Rouran supreme rulers are noted for being the first to use the title of "khagan", having borrowed this popular title from the Xianbei. The Rouran Khaganate lasted from the late 4th century until the middle 6th century, when they were defeated by a Göktürk rebellion which subsequently led to the rise of the Turks in world history.

Their Khaganate overthrown, some Rouran remnants possibly became Tatars while others possibly migrated west and became the Pannonian Avars (known by such names as Varchonites or Pseudo Avars), who settled in Pannonia (centred on modern Hungary) during the 6th century. However, this Rouran-Avars link remains a controversial theory. The Avars were pursued into the Byzantine Empire by the Göktürks, who referred to the Avars as a slave or vassal people, and requested that the Byzantines expel them. Other theories instead link the origins of the Pannonian Avars to peoples such as the Uar.

Considered an imperial confederation, the Rouran Khaganate was based on the "distant exploitation of agrarian societies," although many researchers claim that the Rouran had a feudal system, or "nomadic feudalism." The Rouran controlled trade routes, and raided and subjugated oases and outposts such as Gaochang. Their society is said to show the signs of "both an early state and a chiefdom." The Rouran have been credited as "a band of steppe robbers," because they adopted a strategy of raids and extortion of Northern China. The Khaganate was an aggressive militarized society, a "military-hierarchical polity established to solve the exclusively foreign-policy problems of requisitioning surplus products from neighbouring nations and states."

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