Tuoba
The Tuoba (Chinese) or Tabgatch (Old Turkic: š±š°š°š°², TabĪ³aÄ), also known by other names, was an influential Xianbei clan in early imperial China.
As part of this process, in 496, the Emperor Xiaowen changed the imperial clan's surname from Tuoba to Yuan (å ).
Some of these Tangut Tuobas later adopted the surname Weiming (嵬å), with this branch eventually establishing and ruling the Western Xia in northwestern China from 1038 to 1227.
[2][3] The name is also attested as Tufa (ē¦æé«®, TÅ«fĆ or TÅ«fĒ),[11] whose Middle Chinese pronunciation has been reconstructed as *tŹ°uwk-pjot,[citation needed] *T'ak-bwat, or *T'ak-buat.
[3][4] According to Hyacinth (Bichurin), an early 19th-century scholar, the Tuoba and their Rouran enemies descended from common ancestors.
The Tuoba states of Dai and Northern Wei also claimed to possess the quality of earth in the Chinese Wu Xing theory.
A branch of the Tuoba in the west known as the Tufa also ruled the Southern Liang dynasty from 397 to 414 AD during the Sixteen Kingdoms period.
The Northern Wei started to arrange for Chinese elites to marry daughters of the Xianbei Tuoba royal family in the 480s.
[41] One of Emperor Xiaowu of Northern Wei's sisters was married to Zhang Huan, a Han Chinese, according to the Book of Zhou (Zhoushu).
"[44] Zhou (2014) obtained mitochondrial DNA analysis from 17 Tuoba Xianbei, which indicated that these specimens were, similarly, completely East Asian in their maternal origins, belonging to haplogroups D, C, B, A and haplogroup G.[45] As a consequence of the Northern Wei's extensive contacts with Central Asia, Turkic sources identified Tabgach, also transcribed as Tawjach, TawÄ”aÄ, Tamghaj, Tamghach, Tafgaj, and Tabghaj, as the ruler or country of China until the 13th century.
[48]In the 11th century text, the DÄ«wÄn LughÄt al-Turk ("Compendium of the languages of the Turks"), Turkic scholar Mahmud al-Kashgari, writing in Baghdad for an Arabic audience, describes Tawjach as one of the three components comprising China.
į¹¢Ä«n [i.e., China] is originally three fold: Upper, in the east which is called TawjÄch; middle which is KhitÄy, lower which is BarkhÄn in the vicinity of Kashgar.
