Huns

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 （匈奴 which means 'fierce slaves') (first suggested by Joseph de Guignes in the 18th century); 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.

Hunnish Cavalry.

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.

This article will not discuss the "White Huns" and "Red Huns", since there is no definite evidence that they were related to the classical "Huns".Furthermore, not much is known of their language. However, there is an ongoing research on whether they were closely related to the "Huns" or not.

History

The Hunnic Empire stretched from the steppes of Central Asia into modern Germany, and from the Black Sea to the Baltic Sea.


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 "Chuni" as among the "Sarmatian" White Hun tribes in the second 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

A 14th century chivalric-romanticized painting of "the huns" laying siege to a city. Note anachronistic details in weapons, armor and city type. Hungarian Chronicon Pictum, 1360.

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, 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.

The Huns, led by Attila, invade Italy.

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 family military elite. After Attila's death, some of his Huns eventually settled in Pannonia, but the Empire dissolved after his sons were defeated 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

Locations of Hun successor states in 500 AD.

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.