About

This is the story of the old Turkic steppe empires, told from the ancient sources. Who the Göktürks were, where the house of Ashina came from, how a people of smiths in the Altai built an empire from Manchuria to the Volga within a single generation, and who ruled the steppe before and after them. Every episode follows one chapter of that history in three acts. The sources speak for themselves: Chinese annals in the original Chinese, Old Turkic inscriptions in their own words, each in its own voice, with the English translation over them. Nothing is invented: no dialogue, no number, no name that a source does not give. And every episode ends with Set in Stone, where we look at what holds, what is reconstructed, and where the historians still disagree. KHAN’s DEN Podcast is produced by Emre-E. Yavuz. It is the official podcast of his Turkic Atlas, an encyclopedia of the old Turkic steppe empires from the Xiongnu to the Kirghiz of the Yenisei, with the source behind every statement, maps of the empires as they rose and fell, and a chronology year by year. In English, Turkish, German, Spanish and Japanese.

https://turkicatlas.org

Khan's Den: Turkic and Steppe History episodes

Episode 1: Origins of the Türk Ashina: The Wolf’s Children

October 11, 2026•21 minutes

Discover the intriguing origins of the Ashina, the ruling house of the Göktürks. Chinese histories suggest three fascinating tales: a boy nurtured by a she-wolf in a secluded valley near Turfan, the wolf-born siblings from Suo, north of the Xiongnu, and 500 families escaping the Northern Wei in 439 to become Rouran smiths in the Altai. Listen as these stories are narrated directly from the sources in their original Chinese versions and ponder their historical significance.

Key Moments
00:00 The golden wolf on the standard
00:59 Introduction
02:45 Act I: The She-Wolf
06:28 Act II: The Brothers of Suo
10:22 Act III: Five Hundred Families
14:13 The smiths of the Altai
16:44 Set in Stone
19:39 The cave of the forebears
20:43 The Turkic Atlas

Sources Quoted:
Zhou Shu (Book of the Zhou), chapter 50
Sui Shu (Book of the Sui), chapter 84
Bei Shi, chapter 99, and Tongdian, chapter 197
Wei Shu (Book of the Wei), annals of Emperor Taiwu

For further reading, explore Yang et al. (2023), “Ancient genome of Empress Ashina”.

Begin with the Ashina in the Turkic Atlas: https://turkicatlas.org/lineages/ashina/

Narrated by Dan Akers.

#Ashina, #Göktürks, #Chinese histories, #Turfan, #Xiongnu, #Northern Wei, #Rouran, #Turkic Atlas, #she-wolf

Timeline

00:00:The golden wolf on the standard

00:59:Introduction

02:45:Act I: The She-Wolf

06:28:Act II: The Brothers of Suo

10:22:Act III: Five Hundred Families

14:13:The smiths of the Altai

16:44:Set in Stone

19:39:The cave of the forebears

20:43:The Turkic Atlas