“The Huns” ― ‘Introduction’ ― Hyun Jin Kim (2016)

Introduction to the book titled The Huns by Hyun Jin Kim first published in 2016 by Routledge.

INTRODUCTION

The Huns! The name of this ancient people triggers a multiplicity of responses and evokes a number of images (nearly all of them negative). Traditionally in Western Europe the Huns were identified with unspeakable savagery, destruction and barbarism. The name Hun in Western European parlance was a term of abuse, a derogatory epithet that one would use to defame a foreign enemy, such as imperial Germany in World War I which was labelled ‘the Huns’ by the hostile British and American press. The Huns have attained almost legendary status as the quintessential ‘savage’ nation, ‘a parasitic mob’ according to one modern historian, ‘running a vast protection racket.’ Such is their reputation that even in academia there is still today a residue of this image of the ‘cruel savage.’ In the not so distant past, some scholars even argued without hesitation that the Huns contributed nothing to European civilization. All the Huns did was destroy and plunder, so it was claimed.

However, as more evidence on the Huns and their empires came to light via the spectacular research of Inner Asian Studies experts, more recent scholarship on the Huns has begun to adopt a more balanced approach. It acknowledges that the ‘notorious’ Huns and other associated Inner Asian peoples were certainly not the simple ‘savages’ of lore, but a significant historical force not just in ‘Europe.’ but also in ‘Asia.’ The geographical division between Asia and Europe is hardly realistic when discussing a truly pan-Eurasian phenomenon such as the Huns and a pan-Eurasian phenomenon requires an Eurasian approach, which treats ‘Asian’ and ‘European’ history holistically, not as separate disciplines. Only then can one do justice to the striking geopolitical changes brought about by the Hunnic expansion over much of continental Eurasia. We, therefore, need to approach the socio-political, historical and geographical background of the Huns with this understanding in mind.

INNER ASIA: THE HOMELAND OF THE HUNS

In order to understand the real Huns, it is first necessary to discuss the region from which they originate, Inner Asia. Inner Asia is a term coined by modern historians to denote primarily (though not exclusively) the historical geography of peoples whom we commonly label ‘steppe nomads.’ It would be a great mistake, however, to consider Inner Asia to consist of purely grass steppe land or think Inner Asians were solely ‘nomads.’ Inner Asia, as defined by eminent historians such as Denis Sinor and Peter Golden, is a vast region encompassing all of what is today called Central Asia (the five Central Asian republics and Afghanistan), almost all of what is now southern Russia from western Siberia to the Pacific Ocean in the Far East, all of modern Mongolia and large portions of northern and western China. In this vast area, there are extremes of climate, diverse ecosystems and varied topography. Inner Asia contains both regions with near arctic weather conditions and also some of the world’s hottest and most inhospitable deserts. Oases, deserts, many of the world’s highest mountain ranges, temperate forests, taiga, as well as the steppes constitute the physical geography of Inner Asia.

The peoples who historically called Inner Asia home were likewise equally diverse in their way of life. Inner Asia was home to pastoralists (whom we often mistakenly label as nomads), agriculturalists (farmers), hunter-gatherers and urban-dwellers. In many cases, all four categories of peoples were to be found living in the same or adjacent regions in a complicated symbiotic system. A person belonging to one category could just as easily experience the lifestyle of the other categories during his or her lifetime. Many of these peoples also spoke multiple languages belonging to at least three, different, major language families: Altaic (thought to consist of Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic languages: all mutually unintelligible); Indo-European (mainly Iranian and Tocharian languages); Yeniseian (now largely extinct languages spoken by indigenous peoples such as the Kets in central Siberia). The speakers of these three language families were also in frequent contact with other groups bordering Inner Asia who all spoke different languages. To the southeast of Inner Asia, there were the Sino-Tibetan language groups (most prominently Chinese). To the southwest, Inner Asians interacted with Iranian and Semitic language speakers of the Middle East and also at times with the Indo-Iranian languages of South Asia (the Indian sub-continent). To the northwest, they met the Indo-European and Uralic languages of Europe and western Siberia. All these groups and languages influenced Inner Asians and were in turn influenced by Inner Asians.

In this complex world, language did not always automatically led to ethnic identity. Many Inner Asians had multiple identities. For instance, a pastoralist in the fifth century AD living in what is now modern day Uzbekistan on the fringes of the steppe zone near the great urban centres of Samarkand and Bukhara may have spoken primarily a Turkic language when with other pastoralists, but when he frequented the cities to trade his livestock and acquire other much needed commodities he would have conversed just as easily in Sogdian (an East Iranian language). He may have at some stage in his life decided to settle as a city merchant or perhaps chosen the path of a mercenary soldier in the service of the local urban ruler, who may himself have come from the steppes. Equally frequent would have been the journey in the opposite direction. A Sogdian merchant from Bukhara or Samarkand could frequent the pastoralist communities in the neighbourhood, maybe intermarry with his trade-partners and speak with equal proficiency the Turkic language of his in-laws as his native Sogdian. Neither the pastoralist who settled in the city nor the city-dweller who made his home in the steppes would have been regarded as particularly alien by the hosts. In fact, during the fifth century AD, both men would have belonged to the same political community and have been categorized as ‘Huns,’ who were then ruling the region, while preserving also their multiple ethnic/sub-ethnic and linguistic identities. Their transition from one identity to another or conflation of multiple identities would have seemed distinctly normal.

Furthermore, our pastoralist turned urban-dweller and urban merchant turned pastoralist may in their life-times have been exposed to various belief systems: to Turko-Mongol shamanism and Iranian Zoroastrianism from their native regions; Buddhism making inroads from India in the south; Nestorian Christianity and Manichaeism being imported from the Middle East and the Mediterranean; even some doses of Chinese esoteric ideas (e.g. Daoism) from the east. They could have been practitioners of one or several of these different belief systems, quite remarkably without the bloodshed and agonizing conflict that usually accompanied contacts between multiple belief systems in other parts of the world. Even more astonishingly perhaps, they could do what no other Eurasians could do with ease, that is physically travel to the places of origin of all these belief systems and ideas, since their native Inner Asia bordered all the other regions of Eurasia.

What this demonstrates is the pluralism that was inherent to Inner Asian societies during the time of the Huns and also the geographical centrality of Inner Asia. Inner Asia was the critical link that connected all the great civilizations of Eurasia to each other: India, China, Iran and the Mediterranean world. Whatever happened in Inner Asia, therefore, had the potential to affect all the above mentioned adjacent regions of Eurasia.

While the complexity and importance of Inner Asia described above applies equally to Inner Asia of all time periods, the period we shall be focusing on in this book is obviously the Hunnic period, roughly from the third century BC to the end of the sixth century AD, but also extending into later centuries via the brief coverage of the history of the successors to the legacy of the Huns. The history and impact of the Huns on both Inner Asia and the regions adjacent to Inner Asia during these centuries will be examined throughout this book.

NOMADS? THE HUNS, A HETEROGENEOUS AGRO-PASTORALIST SOCIETY

So, the Huns were from Inner Asia and therefore they were Inner Asians. However, what does that mean in practice? When one evokes the image of the Huns, one often imagines a fur-clad, primitive-looking race of nomads (usually of mongoloid extraction) emerging out of the ‘backward’ steppes of Inner Asia. Indeed, the original Huns in Inner Asia were mostly pastoralists, partially or predominantly of Mongoloid extraction (at least initially). However, the term ‘nomad,’ if it denotes a wandering group of people with no clear sense of territory, cannot be applied wholesale to the Huns. All the so-called ‘nomads’ of Eurasian steppe history were peoples whose territory/territories were usually clearly defined, who as pastoralists moved about in search of pasture, but within a fixed territorial space. One should not imagine that ‘nomads’ of the Eurasian steppe region lived in a political and geographical void with no territory and political control. Far from it, the ‘nomads’ such as the Huns operated under tight political organization and like other Inner Asian peoples described briefly above they were in fact hardly homogeneous either in lifestyle or in ethnic composition.

Most steppe confederacies and ‘nomadic’ state or proto-state entities in Eurasian history possessed both pastoralist and sedentary populations and the Huns were certainly no exception to this general rule. These Inner Asian peoples, as already pointed out, were also highly heterogeneous both ethnically/ racially and linguistically. The Huns themselves when they first entered Europe from Inner Asia were in all probability multi-ethnic and multi-lingual, consisting of a mix of a variety of Turkic and Iranian speaking peoples and ethnicities. Therefore, when one talks of the Huns, one should not necessarily assume that they constitute an ethnic group or racial group. Rather what one encounters is a complex political entity that consists of a wide variety of ethnic, racial and religious sub-categories, all in the process of fusion or acculturation, accommodating a great diversity of lifestyles and customs. In other words, we are dealing with a state or proto-state entity of imperial dimensions with a distinct Inner Asian flavour, rather than a simple, primitive ethnic, tribal or clan grouping. In fact the so-called ‘backward’ steppes of Eurasia was far from ‘primitive’ or ‘backward’ and modern archaeology has done wonders in revealing the astonishing sophistication of Inner Asian civilizations prior to the rise of the Huns.

The history of Huns is as intriguing and complex as that of any other ‘great’ ‘civilized’ peoples of the ancient world, be they the Romans or the Greeks. What we encounter in the Huns of Inner Asia is a civilization that has been comparatively neglected by historians, whose contribution to world history has been consistently overlooked and underestimated. This book has the aim of introducing the history and culture of the historical and archaeological (not the mythical, legendary and imaginary) Huns to the wider reading public and in particular to undergraduate students who are learning about the Huns for the first time and who may not be well acquainted with the history of either Inner Asia or Late Antique and Early Medieval Europe. As such, it cannot systematically address all the complex issues and debates pertaining to the Huns. Notes have been reduced to a minimum to facilitate an easy read for the beginner and where greater discussion and extensive citations might be desired by the more academic readers, directions will be given to other major academic publications either by the author or by other experts on the subject. However, the book will nonetheless attempt to present some new innovative perspectives and where necessary will provide essential references and notes to support and illustrate the contention or argument being made for that purpose.

THE QUEST FOR ETHNICITY AND ORIGINS: WHO ARE THE HUNS?

Part of the difficulty with writing a history of a people like the Huns is the perplexing and seemingly endless debate about who they actually were. Where did they come from and with which historically attested group(s) of people or state entities should they be identified or associated with? These are big questions that have often frustrated the attempts at explanation by numerous scholars in the past. Fortunately for us, new literary and archaeological evidence that has accumulated over the past six decades has completely revolutionized our understanding of the Huns, of who they were and has made the entire question regarding their origin and affiliation (ethnic and political) easier to answer.

In the eighteenth century, the remarkable Jesuit priest Deguignes in his now almost legendary work, Histoire generale des Huns, des Turcs, des Mogols et des autres Tartares occidentaux (1756–1824), made quite a spectacular conjecture based on his intuition. He equated the European Huns of the fourth and fifth centuries AD with the earlier powerful and sophisticated Xiongnu people (in what is now Mongolia) who appear in Chinese historical records of the Han dynasty (206 BC–220 AD). This conjecture then triggered a lively debate that has continued unabated for centuries. Historians and experts on the Huns and Inner Asia (most notably the great scholars Maenchen-Helfen and Sinor) tended to voice scepticism about the Hun-Xiongnu connection. They suggested that if any connections existed between the Huns and the Xiongnu, they are only likely to have been cultural affinities of some sort rather than blood connections. However, this very debate regarding the Hun-Xiongnu connection was often based on the erroneous assumption that the Huns and Xiongnu constituted a specific race or a particular ethnic category. As explained above, the Huns and other Inner Asian steppe peoples like the Xiongnu must be viewed as heterogeneous political categories rather than homogenous ethnic groups. The key to understanding the links between the Xiongnu and the Huns is to recognize that the transmission of cultural and political heritage matters far more than potential ‘genetic’ links between the two groups.

Due to the excellent research of La Vaissière and others, we are now more than ever before certain that the name Hun denoted the ancient Xiongnu. The first indication to that effect came in 1948 when Hen-ning published a letter written by a Sogdian merchant named Nanaivande dating to the year 313 AD.

It was a letter sent from the Gansu region of western China relating the fall of the imperial Chinese capi-tal Luoyang to the Southern Xiongnu in 311 AD. In it, Nanaivande without any ambiguity calls the Xiongnu Huns. More recent evidence collected by La Vaissière, the translations of ancient Buddhist sutras Tathagataguhya-sutra and Lalitavistara by Zhu Fahu, a Buddhist monk from the western Chinese city of Dunhuang, who was of Central Asian Bactrian descent, reaffirmed this identification. Zhu Fahu, whose translations are dated to 280 AD and 308 AD, respectively (so roughly contemporaneous with Nanaivande’s letter), identifies again without any ambiguity or generalization the Huna (appellation of the Huns in Indian sources) with the Xiongnu, as a specific political entity adjacent to China.[1]  Therefore, it is now perfectly clear that the imperial Xiongnu of Mongolia and China and the European-Central Asian Huns had exactly the same name.[2] 

The archaeological evidence is more difficult to interpret, since the old practice of identifying archaeological cultures with ethnic groups cannot be seen as completely valid. The evidence available does, nonetheless, support the existence of strong cultural links between the European-Central Asian Huns and the old territory ruled by the Xiongnu. Most Inner Asian scholars now agree that Hunnic cauldrons, one of the key archaeological markers of Hunnic presence, ultimately derive from Xiongnu cauldrons in the Ordos region in Inner Mongolia.[3]  These cauldrons, which clearly had a religious function, were used in the same way in both earlier Xiongnu and later Hunnic contexts, their placement being on the banks of rivers. Cultural and religious continuity can therefore be argued for between the Xiongnu of Mongolia and the Huns in Central Asia and Europe. Naturally, the fact that the Huns and Xiongnu had the same ethnic or rather political name and shared very similar religious and cultural practices does not prove conclusively that the Huns and Xiongnu were genetically related, though it does make the case quite likely. However, the very fixation with identifying genetic/racial affinity is quite absurd when one takes into consideration the nature of the population groups that constituted the Xiongnu and the Huns.

The old territory of the Xiongnu was home to a great variety of ethnic groups and also language groups. Our Chinese sources indicate that the Xiongnu Empire absorbed numerous nations of North Asia includ-ing the Mongolic speaking Dongbu people to the east and the Indo-European speaking Yuezhi people (possibly Tocharians in what is now western China) to the west. There was doubtlessly also a large population of Turkic and Iranian language speakers among the Xiongnu. One of our extant sources furthermore indicates that some of the Xiongnu, in particular the Jie tribe of the wider Xiongnu confederation, spoke a Yeniseian language. The Chinese source Jin Shu (95.2486), compiled in the seventh century AD, gives us a rare transliteration of a Xiongnu Jie song composed in a language most likely related to Yeniseian languages. This fact has led scholars such as Pulleyblank and Vovin to argue that the Xiongnu had a Yeniseian core tribal elite,[4]  which ruled over various Tocharian-Iranian and Altaic (Turco-Mongol) groups. However, whether the Jie tribe and the language they spoke is representative of the core ruling elite of the Xiongnu Empire remains uncertain and other scholars strongly argue in favour of a Turkic,[5]  Mongolic or even Iranian ruling elite.

It seems rather likely that the core language of the Xiongnu was either Turkic or Yeniseian (or maybe even both). However, no definitive conclusions can as yet be made about which linguistic group constituted the upper elite of their empire. The attempt itself may in fact be irrelevant since the Xiongnu were quite clearly a multi-lingual and multi-ethnic hybrid entity. To suggest otherwise would render simply incomprehensible the complexity and heterogeneity of the Xiongnu Empire.

The European Huns were equally as heterogeneous as the Xiongnu of Mongolia. Their core language was very likely to have been Oghuric Turkic given the names of their kings and princes, which are for the most part Oghuric Turkic in origin as the list below shows:

1. Mundzuk (Attila the Hun’s father, from Turkic Muncuq = pearl/jewel)
2. Oktar/Uptar (Attila’s uncle, Öktür = brave, powerful) brave/powerful)
3. Oebarsius (another of Attila’s paternal uncles, Albars = leopard of the moon)
4. Karaton (Hunnic supreme king before Ruga, Qaraton = black-cloak)
5. Basik (Hunnic noble of royal blood early fifth century, Barsig = governor)
6. Kursik (Hunnic noble of royal blood, from either Kürsiğ, meaning brave or noble, or Qursiqmeaning belt-bearer).[6] 

Furthermore, all three of Attila’s known sons have probable Turkic names: Ellac, Dengizich, Ernakh/Hernak, and Attila’s principal wife, the mother of the first son Ellac, has the Turkic name Herekan, as does another wife named Eskam.[7]  The heavy concentration of Turkic peoples in the areas from which the Huns derived before their major expansion into Europe and Central Asia is likely to have led to the consolidation of a Turkic language as the dominant language among the European Huns. A Chinese historical source the Weilue (= Sanguozhi 30.863–4),[8]  for instance, tells us that the Dingling (an ancient Turkic people) were the main inhabitants of what is now the Kazakh steppes, north of the Kangju people (a group who were situated around the city of Tashkent in what is now modern Uzbekistan) and west of the Wusun people (then situated in eastern Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan) by the third century AD.

However, this does not mean that the ethnic composition of the Huns in Central Asia before their entry into Europe in the mid-fourth century AD was exclusively Turkic. There was also an important Iranian element within their ethnic mix and this is borne out by the fact that the Central Asian Huns and the Iranian speaking Alans (the first recorded opponents of the Huns during the Hunnic expansion west into Europe in the mid fourth century AD) shared a very similar material culture. Both groups also practiced the custom of cranial deformation (the origin of which is obscure). Archaeologically, it is often very difficult to make a clear distinction between a Hun, an Alan and later even a Germanic Goth due to the intensity of cultural mixing and acculturation between all the major ethnic groups that comprised the population of the Hun Empire: Oghuric Turkic, Iranian, Germanic, etc. Just as the Xiongnu accommodated Chinese defectors into their empire, the later Huns also provided refuge for Greco-Roman defectors and also forcibly settled Roman prisoners of war in their territory. Priscus, a Roman historian and career diplomat, who visited the court of Attila the Hun as part of a Roman diplomatic mission to the Huns, leaves us with a vivid image of the heterogeneity of Hunnic society. He tells us that at the Hunnic court Hunnic (presumably Oghuric Turkic), Gothic and Latin were all spoken and all three languages were understood by most of the elite to some degree,[9]  so much so that Zercon the Moor, the court jester, could provoke laughter by jumbling all three languages together at a Hunnic banquet in the presence of Attila.[10]  Interestingly, the Hunnic Kidarite Empire in Central Asia, which was contemporaneous with Attila's Hunnic Empire in Europe, also used multiple languages. We know for instance that Sogdian, Bactrian, Middle Persian and Brahmi on different occasions were all used for administrative purposes.[11] 

In other words, any attempt to prove a genetic continuity between the Xiongnu and the Huns and any other political successor group to both empires is bound to produce mixed results, since every level of Xiongnu-Hun society was heterogeneous and most likely also multi-lingual. What matters more is the fact that the Huns of Europe and Central Asia chose to use the name of the imperial Xiongnu as their own ethnonym or state name, which is clearly an indication that they regarded this link with the old steppe, Inner Asian tradition of imperial power and grandeur invaluable and very significant. The preservation of Xiongnu cultural identity (as the preservation of Xiongnu type cauldrons all the way from the eastern steppes to the Danube represents) among the European Huns suggests that the political and cultural heritage of the Xiongnu is the key to understanding the true significance of the connections between the Xiongnu and the Huns, not the supposed racial/genetic connections.

From this point onwards, the book will observe consecutively the various Hunnic political groups that changed the history of Eurasia in China, Central Asia, India and Europe. Until now, most histories on the Huns have tended to focus almost exclusively on the history of the European Huns alone. However, such an approach fails to illuminate sufficiently the Eurasia-wide geopolitical revolution that was the Hunnic expansion of the fourth and fifth centuries AD. Only by examining all these various Hun groups together can we truly appreciate the enormous changes brought about by the Huns to the Ancient World and by extension to the political and cultural future of the Eurasian World as a whole. These various Hunnic groups were not identical to each other culturally and politically. However, all of them could ultimately claim some form of political lineage from the great Xiongnu/Hun Empire of Inner Asia. They shared an ecumenical Inner Asian political tradition and it was primarily this political tradition that they bequeathed to their respective conquests.

Due to the lack of space available, it is not possible to give a detailed summary of all the relevant primary and secondary sources used and consulted in this book. However, where necessary, short explanations will be given to explain the provenance and importance of the most significant primary sources pertaining to the Huns in the individual chapters that follow. Map 0.1 also provides the geographical location of the various regions and peoples affected by the history described in this book. Because of the vast geographical extent of Hunnic Empires in Eurasia, the reader will unfortunately encounter a veritable tsunami of unfamiliar proper names associated with the Huns and their conquests throughout this book. As in this introduction, where relevant in the individual chapters, short descriptions of these unfamiliar names will be provided to help the reader navigate his or her way through the deluge.

NOTES:

[1]La Vaissière (2005), 11–15.

[2]Pulleyblank (2000a). 60–1, upon examination of phonetic evidence concludes that there is no alternative but to accept that the European Huns had the same name as the Xiongnu. De Crespigny (1984), 174, agrees. See also Atwood (2012), 27–52, who via a slightly different interpretation of the available phonetic evidence arrives at the same conclusion that the Huns are the Xiongnu. See also Wright (1997) and Hill (2009). 73–4, for further information on phonetic and other evidence in favour of Xiongnu-Hun identification.

[3]Hambis (1958), 262; Maenchen-Helfen (1973), 330–1; La Vaissière (2005), 17; Bona (1991), 140; Érdy (1995), 5–94.

[4]Pulleyblank (1962); (2000a), 62–5; Vovin (2000).

[5]Benjamin (2007), 49, who sees the Xiongnu as either Proto-Turks or Proto-Mongols, who spoke a language related to the clearly Turkic Dingling people further west.

[6]For all these etymologies, see Bona (1991), 33.

[7]Maenchen-Helfen (1973), 392–415. See also Bona (1991), 33–5 and Pritsak (1956), 414. Most known Hunnic tribal names are also Turkic, Maenchen-Helfen (1973), 427–41.

[8]The Weilue was compiled by a certain Yu Huan in the third century AD, and contains valuable geographical information about contemporary Inner Asian peoples including the Xiongnu.

[9]For the frequent bilingualism among steppe peoples see Golden (2006–7), 19.

[10]Priscus, fr. 13.3, Blockley (1983), 289. Iranian, though not mentioned by Priscus, was also certainly spoken in the Empire, possibly as influential as Hunnic or Gothic, especially in the east. The name of the Hunnic leader who in 465/6 raided Dacia Ripensis and Mediterranea, Hormidas, is Iranian, Maenchen Helfen (1973), 390.

[11]Zeimal (1996), 132.