Nomadic empire

Some nomadic empires consolidated by establishing a capital city inside a conquered sedentary state and then exploiting the existing bureaucrats and commercial resources of that non-nomadic society.

Nomads were generally unable to hold onto conquered territories for long without reducing the size of their cavalry forces because of the limitations of pasture in a settled lifestyle.

They lived on the Mongolian Plateau between the 3rd century BCE and the 460s CE, their territories including the modern-day northern China, Mongolia, southern Siberia.

Relations between early Central Plain dynasties and the Xiongnu were complicated and included military conflict, exchanges of tribute and trade, and marriage alliances.

When Qin Shi Huang drove them away from the south of the Yellow River, he built the Great Wall to prevent the Xiongnu from returning.

It spread to encompass much of modern-day Afghanistan,[16] and then the northern parts of the Indian subcontinent at least as far as Saketa and Sarnath near Varanasi (Benares), where inscriptions have been found dating to the era of the Kushan emperor Kanishka the Great.

[19] The Hephthalites, Ephthalites, Ye-tai, White Huns, or, in Sanskrit, the Sveta Huna, were a confederation of nomadic and settled[20] people in Central Asia who expanded their domain westward in the 5th century.

[21] At the height of its power in the first half of the 6th century, the Hephthalite Empire controlled territory in present-day Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, India and China.

Appearing from beyond the Volga River some years after the middle of the 4th century, they conquered all of eastern Europe, ending up at the border of the Roman Empire in the south, and advancing far into modern day Germany in the north.

The Bulgars (also Bulghars, Bulgari, Bolgars, Bolghars, Bolgari,[24] Proto-Bulgarians[25]) were Turkic semi-nomadic warrior tribes that flourished in the Pontic–Caspian steppe and the Volga region during the 7th century.

[26] During their westward migration across the Eurasian steppe the Bulgars absorbed other ethnic groups and cultural influences, including Hunnic and Indo-European peoples.

[27][28][29][30][31][32] Modern genetic research on Central Asian Turkic people and ethnic groups related to the Bulgars points to an affiliation with Western Eurasian populations.

[35] They preserved the military titles, organization and customs of Eurasian steppes,[36] as well as pagan shamanism and belief in the sky deity Tangra.

[43][44] The Bulgars became semi-sedentary during the 7th century in the Pontic-Caspian steppe, establishing the polity of Old Great Bulgaria c. 635, which was absorbed by the Khazar Empire in 668 CE.

In c. 679, Khan Asparukh conquered Scythia Minor, opening access to Moesia, and established the First Bulgarian Empire, where the Bulgars became a political and military elite.

Under the leadership of Bumin Khan and his sons they established the First Turkic Khaganate around 546, taking the place of the earlier Xiongnu as the main power in the region.

It was founded by Yelü Abaoji (Emperor Taizu of Liao) around the time of the collapse of the Tang dynasty and was the first state to control all of Manchuria.

The Oghuz Turks sought a proper homeland that includes vast pastures for their herdes, and consistently fought against Kara-Khanid Khanate, Ghaznavids and Eastern Roman Empire.

The grandsons of Seljuk, Tughril and Chagri Begs decisively defeated Ghaznavids in the Battle of Dandanaqan, gained the power in the Khorasan.

The Mongol Empire was founded by Genghis Khan in 1206, and at its height, it encompassed the majority of the territories from East Asia to Eastern Europe.

At its zenith, the Timurid Empire included the whole of Central Asia, Iran and modern Afghanistan, as well as large parts of Mesopotamia and the Caucasus.

In 1756, this last nomadic power was dissolved due to the Oirat princes' succession struggle and costly war with the Qing dynasty.

[58] The cognates Sushen or Jichen (稷真) again appear in the Shan Hai Jing and Book of Wei during the dynastic era referring to Tungusic Mohe tribes of the far northeast.

[70] Hunting, archery on horseback, horsemanship, livestock raising, and sedentary agriculture were all practiced by the Jianzhou Jurchens as part of their culture.

For political reasons, the Jurchen leader Nurhaci chose variously to emphasize either differences or similarities in lifestyles with other peoples like the Mongols.

They gathered ginseng root, pine nuts, hunted for came pels in the uplands and forests, raised horses in their stables, and farmed millet and wheat in their fallow fields.

These Jurchens who lived in the north-east's harsh cold climate sometimes half sunk their houses in the ground which they constructed of brick or timber and surrounded their fortified villages with stone foundations on which they built wattle and mud walls to defend against attack.

Nurhaci who was hosting Sin Chung-il was uniting all of them into his own army, having them adopt the Jurchen hairstyle of a long queue and a shaved fore=crown and wearing leather tunics.

Since the 2nd century BCE, the growing number of Turkic nomads and invaders among them, who adopted their horse-riding, metallurgy, technologies, clothing, and customs caused them to be also often confused with the latter, which mostly occurred in the case of the Scythians (Śaka, Sarmatians, Skolotoi, Iazyges, etc.).

In India, the Śaka, although known earlier as Śakya or Kambojas, formed now the Kushan Empire but were confused with the Xionites invading them and were called Mleccha.