Ashina

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Ashina (also Asen or Asena), the ruling dynasty of the ancient Turks, according to Xin Tangshu they were related to the northern tribes from Xiongnu, though four theories were already established prior to the present under Zhoushu, Suishu and Youyang Zazu from as early as the 7th-century.Four proposal for the origin of Ashina:

One of the ten sons descended from a female grey wolf.
Descendant from a male from Suo nation, north of Xiongnu, who mother is a wolf, and a season goddess.
Mixture stocks from the Pingliang prefecture of middle Gansu.
Descendant from a skilled archer named Shemo, who once fallen in love on a sea goddess and ended in tragedy.

Take note that the first and second sources came from Zhoushu, 50, the third from Suishu, 84, the fourth from Youyang Zazu, 04. The Ashina rose to prominence in the mid 500s when their leader, Bumin Khan, revolted against the Juan Juan. The two main branches of the family, one descended from Bumin and the other from his brother Istemi Khagan, ruled over the eastern and western parts of the Gokturk empire, respectively.

After the collapse of the Gokturk empire, branches of the Ashina clan seized control of the Khazars and possibly other nomadic peoples. To Marquart, the Ashina clan constituted a noble caste throughout the steppes. Similarly, the Tatar historian Zeki Validi Togan described them as a "desert aristocracy" that provided rulers for a number of Eurasian nomad states.

Accounts of the Gokturk and Khazar khaganates suggest that the Ashina clan was accorded sacred, perhaps quasi-divine status in the shamanic religion practiced by the steppe nomads of the first millennium CE.

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