Huns

Huns remaining in Asia are recorded by neighboring peoples to the

south, east, and west as having occupied Central Asia roughly from the

4th century to the 6th century, with some surviving in the Caucasus

until the early 8th century.

Origin and identity

Research and debate about the Asian ancestral origins of the Huns has

been ongoing since the 18th century. For example philologists still

debate to this day which ethnonym from Chinese or Persian sources is

identical with the Latin Hunni or the Greek Chounnoi as evidence of the

Huns’ identity.

Hun identity is further complicated by the fame of the name, as

apparently many clans claimed to be Huns for the prestige of the name.

Similarly, Greek or Latin chroniclers may have used "Huns" in a more

general sense, to describe social or ethnic characteristics, believed

place of origin, or reputation."All we can say safely", says Walter

Pohl,"is that the name Huns, in late antiquity, described prestigious

ruling groups of steppe warriors".The older views come in the context

of the ethnocentric and nationalistic scholarship of past generations,

which often presumed that ethnic homogeneity must underlie a socially

and culturally homogeneous people.The modern opinion is that each of

the large confederations of steppe warriors (such as the Scythians,

Xiongnu, Huns, Avars, Khazars, Cumans, Mongols, etc.) were not

ethnically homogeneous, but rather unions of multiple ethnicities such

as Turkic, Tungusic, Ugric, Iranic, and Mongolic peoples.

Evidence from genetic and ethnogenesis research contrasts with

traditional theories based on Chinese records, archaeology, linguistics

and other indirect evidence. These theories contain various elements:

that the name "Hun" first described a nomadic ruling group of warriors

whose ethnic origins were in Central Asia, and was most likely in

present day Mongolia; that possibly they were related to, or part of,

the Xiongnu ; that the Xiongnu were defeated by the Chinese Han Empire;

and that this is why they left Mongolia and moved west, eventually

invading Europe 200 years later. Indirect evidence includes the

transmission of the composite bow from Central Asia to the west.

This narrative is ingrained in western (and eastern) historiography,

but the evidence is often indirect or ambiguous. The Huns left

practically no written records. There is no record of what happened

between the time they left China and arrived in Europe 150 years later.

The last mention of the northern Xiongnu was their defeat by the

Chinese in 151 at the lake of Barkol, after which they fled to the

western steppe at Kangju (centered on the city of Turkistan in

Kazakhstan). Chinese records between the 3rd and 4th century suggest

that a small tribe called Yueban, remnants of northern Xiongnu, was

distributed about the steppe of Kazakhstan.

One recent line of reasoning favors a political and cultural link

between the Huns and the Xiongnu. The Central Asian (Sogdian and

Bactrian) sources of the 4th century translate "Huns" as "Xiongnu", and

"Xiongnu" as "Huns"; also, Xiongnu and Hunnish cauldrons are virtually

identical, and were buried on the same spots (river banks) in Hungary

and in the Ordos.

The Huns may be of Turkic origin. This school of thought emerged when

Joseph de Guignes in the 18th century identified the Huns with the

Xiongnu or (H)siung-nu.It is supported by O. Maenchen-Helfen on the

basis of his linguistic studies.English scholar Peter Heather called

the Huns "the first group of Turkic, as opposed to Iranian, nomads to

have intruded into Europe".Turkish researcher Kemal Cemal bolsters this

assertion by showing similarities in words and names in Turkic and

Hunnic languages, and similarities in systems of governance of Hunnic

and Turkic tribes. Hungarian historian Gyula Nemeth also supports this

view.Uyghur historian Turghun Almas has suggested a link between the

Huns and the Uyghurs, a Turkic speaking people who reside in Xinjiang,

China.

History

2nd-5th centuries

Dionysius Periegetes describes a people who may be Huns living near the

Caspian Sea in the 2nd century. By AD 139, the European geographer

Ptolemy writes that the "Khuni" are next to the Dnieper River and ruled

by "Suni". He lists the century, although [[it is not known for certain

if these people were the Huns. The 5th century Armenian historian Moses

of Khorene]], in his "History of Armenia," introduces the Hunni near

the Sarmatians and describes their capture of the city of Balkh ("Kush"

in Armenian) sometime between 194 and 214, which explains why the

Greeks call that city Hunuk.

Following the defeat of the Xiongnu by the Han, Xiongnu history is

unknown for a century; thereafter, the Liu family of southern Xiongnu

Tiefu attempted to establish a state in western China (see Han Zhao).

Chionites (OIONO/Xiyon) appear on the scene in Transoxiana in 320

immediately after Jin Zhun overthrew Liu Can, sending the Xiongnu into

chaos. Later Kidara came along to lead the Chionites into pressing on

the Kushans.

In the west, Ostrogoths came in contact with the Huns in AD 358. The

Armenians mention Vund c.370: the first recorded Hunnish leader in the

Caucasus region. The Romans invited the Huns east of Ukraine to settle

Pannonia in 361, and in 372 they pushed west led by their king Balimir,

and defeated the Alans. In the east, in the early 5th century, Tiefu

Xia is the last southern Xiongnu dynasty in Western China and the

Alchon / Huna appear in what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan. At this

point deciphering Hunnish histories for the multi-linguist becomes

easier with relatively well-documented events in Byzantine, Armenian,

Iranian, Indian, and Chinese sources.

European Huns

The Huns appeared in Europe in the 4th century, apparently from Central

Asia. They first appeared north of the Black Sea, forcing a large

number of Goths to seek refuge in the Roman Empire; later, the Huns

appeared west of the Carpathians in Pannonia, probably sometime between

400 and 410, perhaps triggering the massive migration of Germanic

tribes westward across the Rhine in December 406.

The establishment of the 5th century Hunnic Empire marks a historically

early instance of horseback migration. Under the leadership of Attila

the Hun, the Huns achieved hegemony over several well-organized rivals

by using superior weaponry such as the composite bow, their highly

maneuverable hit-and-run tactics with their horsemanship, and a

well-organized system of taxation. Supplementing their wealth by

plundering wealthy Roman cities to the south, the Huns maintained the

loyalties of a diverse number of tributary tribes.

Attila’s Huns incorporated groups of unrelated tributary peoples. In

Europe, Alans, Gepids, Scirii, Rugians, Sarmatians, Slavs and Gothic

tribes all united under the Hun by Ardaric’s coalition at the Battle of

Nedao in 454, at modern day Nedava.

Memory of the Hunnish conquest was transmitted orally among Germanic

peoples and is an important component in the Old Norse Völsunga saga

and Hervarar saga, and the Middle High German Nibelungenlied, all of

which portray Migrations period events a millennium before their

written recordings. In the Hervarar saga, the Goths make first contact

with the bow-wielding Huns and meet them in an epic battle on the

plains of the Danube.

In the Nibelungenlied, Kriemhild marries Attila (Etzel in German) after

her first husband Siegfried was murdered by Hagen with the complicity

of her brother, King Gunther. She then uses her power as Etzel’s wife

to take a bloody revenge in which not only Hagen and Gunther but all

Burgundian knights find their death at festivities to which she and

Etzel had invited them. After defending quite successfully for days

against the Huns who outnumber them by an enormous ratio, the remaining

tired Burgundians are finally defeated not by the Huns but by Rüdeger

(Austrian), who dies in the fight too, and Dietrich von Bern

(Helvetic), both being vassals to Etzel and actually very reluctant to

fight against their Burgundian friends but caught in personal dilemmas

forcing them to do so.

In the Völsunga saga, Attila (Atli in Norse and Etzel in German)

defeats the Frankish king Sigebert I (Sigurðr or Siegfried) and the

Burgundian King Guntram (Gunnar or Gunther), but is later assassinated

by Queen Fredegund (Gudrun or Kriemhild), the sister of the latter and

wife of the former.

Successor nations

Many nations have tried to assert themselves as ethnic or cultural

successors to the Huns. For instance, the Nominalia of the Bulgarian

khans may indicate that they believed themselves to have been descended

from Attila. The Bulgars certainly were part of the Hun tribal alliance

for some time, and some have hypothesized that the Chuvash language

(which is believed to have descended from the Bulgar language) is the

closest surviving relative of the Hunnic language.

The Magyars (Hungarians) also have laid claims to Hunnish heritage.

Because the Huns who invaded Europe represented a loose coalition of

various peoples, it is possible that Magyars were part of it. Until the

early 20th century, many Hungarian historians believed that the Székely

people (the Hungarians’ "brother nation" who live in Transylvania) were

the descendants of the Huns.

The names "Hun" and "Hungarian" sound alike, but differ in etymology.

The name "Hungarian" is derived from a Turkish phrase "onogur" which

means "ten tribes", which possibly refers to a tribal covenant between

the different Hungarian tribes that moved into the area of today’s

Hungary at the end of the 9th century.

In 2005, a group of about 2,500 Hungarians petitioned the government

for recognition of minority status as direct descendants of Attila. The

bid failed, but gained some publicity for the group, which formed in

the early 1990s and appears to represent a special Hun(garian)-centric

brand of mysticism. The self-proclaimed Huns are not known to possess

any distinctly Hunnish culture or language beyond what would be

available from historical and modern-mystical Hungarian sources.

While it is clear that the Huns left descendants all over Eastern

Europe, the disintegration of the Hun Empire meant they never regained

their lost glory. One reason was that the Huns never fully established

the mechanisms of a state, such as bureaucracy and taxes, unlike the

Magyars or Golden Horde. Once disorganized, the Huns were absorbed by

more organized polities.

Historiography

The term "Hun" has been also used to describe peoples with no historical connection to what scholars consider to be "Huns".

On July 27, 1900, during the Boxer Rebellion in China, Kaiser Wilhelm

II of Germany gave the order to "make the name ‘German’ remembered in

China for a thousand years, so that no Chinaman will ever again dare to

even squint at a German". This speech, wherein Kaiser Wilhelm invoked

the memory of the 5th-century Huns, coupled with the Pickelhaube or

spiked helmet worn by German forces until 1916, that was reminiscent of

ancient Hun (and Hungarian) helmets, gave rise to later English use of

the term for the German enemy during World War I. This usage was

reinforced by Allied propaganda throughout the war, and many pilots of

the RFC referred to their foe as "The Hun". The usage resurfaced during

World War II.

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