“The Steppe World and the Rise of the Huns” ― Étienne de la Vaissière (2015)

The text delves into the origins of the Huns and their ties to the Eurasian steppe world. It explores the significance of the Huns’ name and its association with the link to the Xiongnu empire, two nomadic groups that played pivotal roles in the political landscape of Inner and Central Asia. The text further investigates the evidence supporting the Huns’ potential migration routes. It examines the relationship between the European Huns and the Inner Asian Xiongnu, outlining the three stages of their history: the imperial Xiongnu, their northern descendants, and the subsequent groupings resulting from their migrations in Europe as well as Central Asia.

The author contends that the Huns, who entered Europe in the fourth century, identified themselves with the name “Xiongnu” as indicated in Chinese sources. The text also touches upon the misconception of three successive waves of Huns in Central Asia, providing evidence of their presence from the onset of the Hunnic invasions. Additionally, the text confirms the identification of the Chionites as Huns in both Western and Chinese accounts.

Dynastic histories, notably the Weishu, offer crucial insights into the political history of Inner Asia. The Kidarites and Hephthalites emerged as prominent nomadic dynasties in Central Asia during the 4th and 5th centuries, with the Hephthalites possibly originating as vassals of a northern power, such as the Avars. Archaeological findings, such as the distinctive bell-shaped cauldrons, suggest a north Altaic origin for the Hunnic groups that invaded Central Asia and Europe.

Moreover, the text explores the continuity of rituals and culture from the Minusinsk region to Hungary, supported by archaeological evidence and textual sources. It underscores the significance of the Altai region as the starting point for the Hunnic migration to Central Asia and the West, with climate change potentially influencing this movement.

Étienne de la Vaissière “The Steppe World and the Rise of the Huns,” in The Cambridge Companion to THE AGE OF ATTILA, 2015.

The origin of the Huns in the steppe is a topic that has occupied historians for hundreds of years. In 1776, Joseph de Guignes wrote, at the beginning of the preface to his Histoire générale des Huns, des Turcs, des Mogols, et des autres Tartares occidentaux: “I propose to present in this work the history of an almost unknown people, which at different times established powerful kingdoms in Asia, Europe, and Africa. The Huns... who originated in a country in the North of China, between the rivers Irtish and Amur, gradually took control of all of Great Tartary.” The argument of this founding father of Orientalism was based on nothing more than the similarity of the lifestyle of the European Huns, who invaded Roman Europe in the first half of the fifth century, and the nomadic Xiongnu, the chief enemy of the Qin and Han Chinese dynasties. The great nomadic empire formed by the Xiongnu in the Ordos region and Mongolia lasted from the third century BCE until the first century CE, before its ultimate defeat in Mongolia in 155 at the hands of other nomads, the Xianbei (map 2). The far eastern provenance of the Huns was also of great interest to intellectuals in the nineteenth century, who thought in terms of nation, people, bloodlines, and language. Through detailed analyses of Chinese sources, these scholars tried to find more precise parallels between the name Hun and Xiongnu. They sought to pinpoint some of their tribal names, to identify their language, and to reconstruct the trajectory of their movement from Asia to Europe. In the face of this quest for origins, the study of the Huns who established themselves on the Hungarian plain in Europe, and especially what archaeology could reveal about them, seemed less important.

In reaction to this situation, O. Maenchen-Helfen, a Sinologist with a deep knowledge of Soviet archaeology and ethnology, tried after the Second World War to change the approach of research on the Huns of Europe. He strongly criticized the philological character of previous scholarship and its emphasis on names as well as its lack of interest in archaeological realities. He sought to create a new field of Hunnic studies that was disengaged from the question of origins.[1]

[1] Otto Maenchen-Helfen, “The Legend of the Origin of the Huns,” Byzantion 17 (1945) 244–251; Maenchen-Helfen, “Pseudo-Huns,” Central Asiatic Journal 1 (1955) 101–106; Maenchen-Helfen, “The Ethnic Name Hun,” in Studia Serica Bernhard Karlgren Dedicata, ed. Soren Egerod (Copenhagen, 1959) 223–238. In distinguishing the question of origins from that of the organization of Attila’s empire, this Companion to the Age of Attila validates Maenchen-Helfen’s approach.

In the following pages, while I acknowledge the force of Maenchen-Helfen’s arguments, I offer a primarily political hypothesis that addresses the still open question of origins and of whether or not the Xiongnu in any way were connected to Attila’s empire.[2] I argue that a group of Hunnic tribes, once part of the former Xiongnu Empire, actually migrated westward in the middle of the fourth century, two centuries after the Xiongnu state collapsed in Mongolia. This does not mean that the Huns who arrived in Europe had not changed considerably in the course of their long migration. The complexity and fluid character of ethnogenesis is an accepted fact, seen especially in the formation of confederations on the steppe. The language of the Huns might have changed, too; Maenchen-Helfen was right that we cannot prove that their spoken tongue remained the same. What I will try to show in this chapter, however, is that in the course of their migration the Huns kept their name as a political reference point, and that this perceived connection is of great historical importance for understanding the Hunnic domination of the tribes of the Pontic steppe. Precise evidence from the early medieval steppe shows that migrating tribes made use of their prestigious name with its powerful reference to the imperial past to rule over smaller tribes less blessed by fortune and history.[3]

[2] On this point see Hyun Kim, The Huns, Rome, and the Birth of Europe (Cambridge, 2013).
[3] See the famous story narrated by Theophylact Simocatta on the fleeing Avars in the middle of the sixth century: Michael Whitby and Mary Whitby, ed. and trans., The History of Theophylact Simocatta: An English Translation with Introduction and Notes (Oxford, 1986) 189–190.

The origins of the Huns and their links to the world of the steppe are pertinent political questions that scholars have approached differently. I will attempt to clarify their conflicting opinions, first regarding events in the fourth century and the arrival of the Huns in Europe, and then moving on to the links of the Europe-based Huns to the Central Asian steppe in the fifth century.

Did they come from beyond the Volga?

The first challenge is to prove that the Huns did indeed arrive from beyond the Volga, and that they did so in Late Antiquity, not earlier. The classical sources place the origins of the Huns beyond the Sea of Azov but say very little more, and one might easily envisage a local ethnogenesis or at least a very ancient arrival in the region. Some Soviet scholars took this position.[4] The fourth-century historian Ammianus Marcellinus places the Huns far to the Northeast (31.2.1): “The people of the Huns, but little known from ancient records, dwelling beyond the Maeotic [Azov] Sea near the ice-bound ocean.” He adds, furthermore, that the Huns went as far as the lands of the Alans North of the River Don (31.2.12–13), “which divides Europe from the measureless wastes of Scythia [the steppe].” Jordanes, writing two centuries later in Constantinople, also placed the Huns’ origin to the East of the Sea of Azov, between the Volga and the Don Rivers (Get. 5). But Ammianus, notably, adds: “This race of untamed men, without encumbrances, aflame with an inhuman desire for plundering others’ property, made their violent way amid the rapine and slaughter of the neighbouring peoples as far as the Halani [Alans],” and defines some limits to the North of the Alans: “The river Tanaïs [Don], which separates Asia from Europe. On the other side of this river the Alans... inhabit the measureless wastes of Scythia” (Amm. 31.2.12–13). The Huns clearly arrived in the Don-Volga region and were not native to it. No classical source contradicts Ammianus’ assertion that the Huns were completely unknown to the Mediterranean world before the 370s, and that they appeared quite suddenly. The date conventionally assigned to their crossing of the Volga is around 370, but it could have been somewhat earlier. It is not known how much time the Huns spent in the region between the rivers Volga and Don, but it was undoubtedly less than a generation. No source, however, explains the reasons for their advance into the West. We may conclude that the Huns arrived in the Volga-Don region, having come from somewhere far to the East unknown to the Greek, Latin, and Syrian observers of the fourth century.

[4] Otto Maenchen-Helfen, The World of the Huns (Berkeley, 1973) 447 n. 21.

We may know the region where the Huns arrived, but not their point of origin or the path they took to reach the West. I believe that the Huns had an origin in Inner Asia, and more precisely from the regions surrounding the Altai Mountains; all the archaeological and textual evidence points in this direction, as we will see. They could have taken any number of routes to reach the Don-Volga area from their far-eastern point of origin. Perhaps, they crossed the Turgai Plateau if they came via Central Asia. (map 2.) An alternate route could have brought them down the Volga from the North, a detour from their point of origin in Asia. In this scenario, the Huns left the Altai, traversed the northern steppe, crossed the Ural Mountains where the city of Yekaterinburg now lies, and then pushed South along the Volga.[5] Their steppe way of life, however, precludes a northern origin in the forest zone. We turn now to eastern evidence for their eastern origins and their relation to the empire of the Xiongnu.

[5] Miklòs Erdy, “An Overview of the Xiongnu Type Cauldron Finds of Eurasia in Three Media, with Historical Observations,” in The Archaeology of the Steppes, ed. Bruno Genito (Naples, 1994) 379–438.

The Huns and the Xiongnu: The Central Asian Evidence

To address the question of the connection between the Huns known to Europeans in the West and the Xiongnu, we must examine two fundamental texts, written in the region of Dunhuang and Gansu on the borders between Central Asia and regions populated by Chinese (Han) people at the end of the third century and beginning of the fourth, by two direct witnesses, Zhu Fahu and Nanaivande.

The first text is a translation, composed by Zhu Fahu (his Chinese name), also known as Dharmarakṣa (his Indian name), a Buddhist monk and one of the main translators of Buddhist texts in China in the third century.[6] Zhu Fahu’s family, which had come from Bactria (northern Afghanistan) and had lived in Dunhuang for generations, was typical of the wealthy merchants who had established Buddhism in China. Zhu Fahu moved to central China and participated fully in Chinese culture but maintained very close ties to Central Asia. He knew many of the languages of the region and regularly returned to Dunhuang.

[6] Emil Zürcher, The Buddhist Conquest of China (Leiden, 1972) 65–70.

In two of his translations into Chinese of canonical Indian texts, Zhu Fahu renders the name of the Huṇa people as “Xiongnu” (Taisho Tripitaka, 11.310, 3.186).[7] “Huṇa” was not a common word in any Indian language, and his two mentions of it are the oldest known. The name reappears later in inscriptions that designate invaders from the Northwest who attack India in the fifth century, and in literary texts such as the Mahābharata. In one of Zhu Fahu’s texts, the Tathāgataguhyasutrā, the Huṇa are cited in a list that identifies the major peoples of Asia and those neighboring India: the Saka (from Seistan), Parthians, Tokharians (from Bactria), Greeks, Kamboja (mountain people of the Hindu Kush), Khasa (mountain people of the Himalayas), Huṇa, Chinese, Dards (from the Upper Indus), and others. The rest of the list enumerates ever more imaginary peoples. The structure of this list is absolutely clear. It begins by cataloguing all the foreign peoples that the Indian authors whom Zhu Fahu was translating could name. At the end of the list, these groups are juxtaposed with others who were either imagined or who came from a far distant and semilegendary past. The Huṇa would not have been placed in the first part of the list if they were not a people with an ethnic and geographic reality on the order of the Parthians, Bactrians, Greeks, and Chinese. The text indicates that the Huṇa were among the great peoples at the time of the list’s original composition, which can be dated to the first century BCE or slightly thereafter. The list places the Huṇa among the political powers that bordered the Chinese in this period. Could they be the Xiongnu?

[7] See Sylvain Lévy, “Notes chinoises sur l’Inde, V: Quelques documents sur le bouddhisme indien dans l’Asie centrale,” Bulletin de l’École Française d’Extrême-Orient 5 (1905) 253–305, esp. 289. See also Étienne de la Vaissière, “Huns et Xiongnu,” Central Asiatic Journal 49.1 (2005) 3–26, esp. 11–13.

As noted above, Zhu Fahu used the word “Xiongnu” to translate the term “Huṇa” into Chinese. This is not a vague, generic Chinese formulation. All the terms in the Indian text are rendered word for word, either by translation or transcription.[8] Zhu Fahu did not consider Huṇa a generic name; he could easily have placed them further down the list, among the semihistoric peoples. He also could have simply transcribed the name, as he did the name of the Dards, or eliminated it and replaced it by another, as he did with many names. On the contrary, the use of the name Huṇa in these texts has a precise political reference to the Xiongnu and the period when they were the great nomadic adversaries of China and the principalities of Central Asia. It was perfectly logical for the Indian writers to include them in their lists, and perfectly normal for Zhu Fahu to render the name as “Xiongnu.”

[8] Only the names exclusively connected to the Indian way of looking at things are replaced by others: just as the Pahlava are replaced by the Arsacid Parthians (Anxi), the Tukhara by the Yuezhi (the invaders of Bactria), the Yavana by the Greeks (Daqin, roughly eastern Roman Empire, in other words, the Hellenistic world), and the Chinese by the Qin.

The second text is a letter written by a Sogdian merchant named Nanaivande, who, like Zhu Fahu, came from the circle of Central Asian merchants who traded between China, the steppe, and India. The Sogdian traders came from Sogdiana, an Iranian-speaking land of settled peoples located between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers, and were the main merchants on the Silk Road from the fourth to the ninth century.[9] The letter allows us to equate one name with another, as in Zhu Fahu’s text, though this time in reverse. In 1948, the Iranologist W. Henning published a copy of a letter dated to 313, which was sent by Nanaivande on the route from Gansu to Samarkand. This letter describes in apocalyptic terms the raids by Xwn (the accurate Sogdian transcription of what the western sources called Hun) on the main towns of northern China, ruining its economy and trade. Henning demonstrates beyond all possible doubt that the Xwn raiders from North China described in the letter were those that contemporary Chinese texts called Xiongnu, the very people who were at that time destroying the Qin dynasty.[10] We see, then, that around the year 300, “Xiongnu” was only the Chinese transcription of the name Hun used by the extremely well-informed members of the Central Asian mercantile communities who traveled the length and breadth of Asia.[11] “Hun/Xwn/Huṇa” were the exact transcriptions of the name that the Chinese, always eager to play on words and to condemn their great enemies from the North, had rendered as “Xiongnu,” “howling slaves.”

[9] Étienne de la Vaissière, Sogdian Traders: A History (Leiden, 2005).
[10] Walter B. Henning, “The Date of the Sogdian Ancient Letters,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 12.3–4 (1948) 601–615. Nicholas Sims-Williams and Frantz Grenet, “The Historical Context of the Sogdian Ancient Letters,” in Transition Periods in Iranian History, ed. Philippe Gignoux (Paris 1987) 101–122; La Vaissière, Sogdian Traders, chap. 2.
[11] On these mercantile and monastic communities, see La Vaissière, Sogdian Traders, chap. 3.

All the contemporary sources agree that the Huns of Europe of the fourth and fifth centuries were called Huns by everyone who encountered them, and that they used this name to refer to themselves. Furthermore, the name Hun never changes among all the populations affected by the extremely rapid advance of the Huns, whether in Europe or South of the Caucasus, proving that it was the Huns themselves who diffused the name. If the contemporary sources are correct, the Huns of Europe arrived there bearing the name that the Chinese transcribed as “Xiongnu,” that is, “Hun.”

Huns and Xiongnu: Some Attempted Counterarguments

Only a reinterpretation of the use of the word “Xwn” by the Bactrian monk Zhu Fahu and the Sogdian merchant Nanaivande could sever the link between the Xiongnu and the Huns. Some commentators have tried to do so by invoking the accident of phonology[12], or the bad conservation of manuscripts.[13] Others have claimed that the word “Hun” was simply a generic term that had lost all precise meaning, because it was applied to so many tribes.[14] The examples of generic use that these scholars cite, however, all come from sources written after the great invasion and so obviously cannot be used to refute earlier texts. While it is true that the term “Hun” became generic after the fifth century, that does not mean that it was so before then. Only the Iranologist H. Bailey has proposed a coherent line of refutation of the thesis that there was a link between the Huns and the Xiongnu.[15] He advances the hypothesis that the Sogdian “Xwn” was a name for the Hyaona, who were an enemy people mentioned in the Avesta, the sacred texts of Zoroastrianism. Bailey’s idea is attractive, but lacks a philological basis. His thesis, nonetheless, was elaborated recently by S. Parlato.[16] According to her, the word had a literary, epic character, and was spread through the steppe by the bards from the Parthian empire. In the steppe world, she claims, the term was received with enthusiasm and served as a generic term for any nomadic and demonic enemy. In other words, it was not the Huns who migrated, but a generic name that spread across the steppe in the context of a culture that spoke Iranian languages.

[12] Paolo Daffinà, “Chih-chih Shan-Yü,” Rivista degli Studi Orientali 44.3 (1969) 199–232.
[13] Maenchen-Helfen, “Pseudo-Huns.”
[14] Denis Sinor, “The Hun Period,” in The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, ed. Denis Sinor (Cambridge, 1990) 177–205, here 179.
[15] Harold Bailey, “Harahuna,” in Asiatica: Festschrift Friedrich Weller (Leipzig, 1954) 12–21.
[16] Sandra Parlato, “Successo euroasiatico dell’etnico ‘Unni,’” in La Persia e l’Asia Centrale da Alessandro al X secolo (Rome, 1996) 555–566.

This hypothesis is not convincing, however. The steppe was not Zoroastrian, and it is hard to see how a secondary figure in the Avestic literature could have acquired such a presence. The theory overestimates the influence of these hypothetical Parthian minstrels wandering across the steppe in causing a name derived from Hyaona to be adopted from Asia to Europe. Moreover, if “Hun” was a generic term of Iranian origin, why would the Huns of Europe use it to refer to themselves? If one thing is clear, as Maenchen-Helfen showed years ago,[17] it is that the Huns did not speak Iranian languages. “Hun,” then, cannot be a generic Iranian term.

[17] Maenchen-Helfen, “The World of the Huns,” 376ff. and 443.

I have demonstrated thus far that the Huns who arrived in Europe from 370 onward called themselves by the name transcribed in Chinese as “Xiongnu.” Maenchen-Helfen cautioned against such reasoning on several occasions, because it relied entirely on the evidence of names to establish identity. He argued instead that only ethnographic and archaeological evidence should be taken into account. His thesis is unacceptable, however. The political implications of a name must never be ignored; otherwise, one would have to dismiss as negligible a good part of the history of political ideas. If the Rhomaioi of Byzantium could claim to be the political heirs of the Romans, then the Huns could equally claim to be the heirs of the Xiongnu. The steppe has the right to have political ideas and history, and we must not deny the Huns those important aspects of their identity.

In Central Asia

The Hunnic period of Central Asia’s history lasted until Turks achieved preeminence in the 560s, and the details of this period’s political history remain very confused. In this section, I argue against the long-held belief that there were three successive waves of Huns in Central Asia, that of the Chionites in the 350s, the Kidarites in either the 370s or much more probably the 420s,[18] and the Hephthalites, whom Procopius calls the White Huns, around 450 (Proc. 1.3.2–8). Instead, Chinese textual evidence shows that these groups had in fact been in Central Asia from the beginning of the great Hunnic invasions of the fourth century, and that some of them had stayed there for a generation before they crossed the Volga, while others stayed for a while to the North of the Caspian Sea. I will consider each group in turn.

[18] Pace Joe Cribb, “The Kidarites, the Numismatic Evidence,” in Coins, Art and Chronology, vol. 2: The First Millennium CE in the Indo-Iranian Borderlands, ed. Michael Alram (Vienna, 2010) 91–146.

The Chionites. In the 350s, the great Persian king Shapur II (r. 309–379) probably fought invading nomads at the Amu Darya river, which marked the Northeast frontier of the Sasanian empire. That, at least, is what is implied by Ammianus Marcellinus, who was always attentive to the whereabouts of the Persian king of kings. At the same time, the dynasty of Kushanshah, a vassal of the Sasanids based in the territory of modern-day Afghanistan, came to an abrupt end. In 356, Ammianus gave the name Chionites to these eastern enemies of the Persians. In 359, however, after the Chionites had changed sides and made a new arrangement with the Persians, Shapur brought a force of them under the command of their king Grumbates to the siege of Amida, modern-day Diyarbakir (Amm. 16.9, 17.5, 18.6, 19.1).

The name “Chionites” is an Iranian plural form (with final -t) of “Hyon,” a deformation of “Xwn” influenced by the name “Hyaona” mentioned earlier. In a similar manner, western writers in medieval times gave the name “Tartars” to the Tatars, the dominant element in the armies of the Mongol Empire, confusing them with the name of the ancient river of Hell from which they seemed to have emerged.

Chinese sources confirm the identification of Chionite and Hun. The dynastic histories, and especially the history of the northern Wei, called the Weishu, are the key to understanding what went on in Inner Asia in the middle of the fourth century. The northern Wei, who were themselves of nomadic origin, took special interest in Mongolia and Central Asia. Although the original chapter of the Weishu devoted to the Western neighbors of China was lost and later reconstituted from various quotations in Chinese historical literature by imperial scholars, some additional data from the original Weishu have been preserved in other works, especially an encyclopedia published in 801, the Tongdian. The Weishu mentions the conquest of Samarkand by the Xiongnu three generations before 457, which – if we use the traditional Chinese calculation of thirty years to a generation – places this conquest around 367, the same time that the Persians were fighting the Chionites (Weishu, 102.2270).

The Armenian historian Faustus of Byzantium tells us that Shapur II renewed the fighting against Chionite Huns on the eastern front in 368, using Armenian troops, and that he was strenuously attacked on several occasions by a “king of the Kushans” who reigned over the Bactrians (Faustus 5.7, 5.37).[19] Another Armenian text mentions the combat of the Armenian prince Babik of Syunik, sent by Shapur very probably also into Central Asia against a Hun called Honagur.[20]

[19] Translated in Nina Garsoïan, The Epic Histories Attributed to P’awstos Buzand (Buzandaran Patmut’iwnk) (Cambridge, Mass., 1989) 187–198 and 217–218.
[20] Movsês Daskhurants’i (or Kałankatvats’i), in The History of the Caucasian Albanians by Movses Dasxuranci, trans. Charles J. F. Dowsett (Oxford, 1961) 63–64; also Stephannos Orbelian, trans. in Marie-Félicité Brosset, Histoire de la Siounie par Stephannos Orbelian (St. Petersburg, 1864–1866) 24–25.

The Kidarites: While some numismatists would like to place them in the 370s,[21] it is very clear from the combination of the Chinese and classical sources that the Kidarites were the dominant nomadic dynasty in Central Asia from the 420s to the 470s.[22] Even while maintaining their Hunnic identity, the Kidarites engaged and promoted the local past of the sedentary people they ruled, and they built cities on the Hippodamian grid plan in their empire. They also revived the title of king of the Kushans, assuming it for themselves.[23] We find this title on a seal bearing the inscription “King of the Oghlar Huns, king of the Kushans, prince of Samarkand”[24] that was made some decades after their installation in Central Asia.

[21] Most recently Cribb, “The Kidarites.”
[22] Kazuo Enoki, “On the Date of the Kidarites (I),” Memoirs of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko 27 (1969) 1–26.
[23] Frantz Grenet, “Regional Interaction in Central Asia and North-West India in the Kidarite and Hephtalite Period,” in Indo-Iranian Languages and Peoples, ed. Nicholas Sims-Williams (London, 2002) 203–224.
[24] Ahmad ur Rahman, Frantz Grenet, and Nicholas Sims-Williams, “A Hunnish Kushan-Shah,” Journal of Inner Asian Art and Archaeology 1 (2006) 125–131, here 128.

The Hephthalites: The Tongdian also tells us that another group of Huns, the Hephthalites, arrived from the Altai Range sometime after the year 360.[25] They were destined to play an important role in the political history of Central Asia between 450 and 560. The Hephthalites and their subordinate confederation of tribes seem to have been more oriented to the nomadic world than the Kidarites. At least until the 520s, the Hephthalites continued to live as nomads in the high plateaus of what is now Northwest Afghanistan. The Alkhon tribes, who dominated the southern wing of the Hephthalite confederation, lived mostly in southern Afghanistan and in Northwest India. They issued coins showing their leaders with cranial deformation, their skulls elongated into a dome shape, presumably to distinguish themselves from other local peoples.[26] It is possible that the name Alkhon, if one accepts “Al-” as the Turkic for scarlet, means “the red Huns,” those of the South, as opposed to the White Huns of the East (the Hephthalites), in a geographic scheme of colors native to the world of the steppe.

[25] Étienne de la Vaissière, “Is There Any ‘Nationality of the Ephthalites’?,” in Hephthalites, ed. Madhuvanti Ghose and Étienne de la Vaissière, Bulletin of the Asia Institute 17 (2007) 119–137.
[26] On the Alkhon, see Klaus Vondrovec, The Coinage of the Iranians Huns and Their Successors from Bactria to Gandhara (4th to 8th Century CE), Studies in the Aman ur Rahman Collection, vol. 4, Vienna, forthcoming.

Thus, we see on the basis of the Tongdian and other materials that the Hephthalites, far from being a new wave of nomads, had been one of several groups of Huns that had been in Central Asia from the middle of the fourth century at the beginning of the great invasions. There are, therefore, no grounds for arguing in terms of successive waves; what we have are dynasties or tribal groupings coming to power in succession among the nomads who arrived in Central Asia during the second half of the fourth century. There was just one massive single episode of migration in the years 350–370, perhaps followed by some more limited movement during the fluid circumstances of the following decades.[27]

[27] La Vaissière, “Is There Any Nationality?”

Between Central Asia and Europe

Our sources locate these different groups (Chionites, Kidarites, Hephthalites, and others) in Central Asia, but say almost nothing about the connections that the Huns may have retained with the steppe, North of sedentary Central Asia, in modern Kazakhstan, or with the Huns of Europe. The Kidarites are mentioned unreliably by Priscus as being on the eastern shore of the Caspian around 468 (Prisc. 51). Moreover, nothing is known of the northern reach of the Hephthalite empire. That it included Sogdiana, between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers, is certain, but we do not know if the empire controlled the nomadic groups of present-day Kazakhstan. One trace of a northern connection dates reliably to the years 440–460 and shows that the Hephthalites were originally subjects of a power from the North, probably the Avars. We learn this from Chinese texts that mention an incursion into Central Asia made by the Rourans, the dominant power of Mongolia in the fifth century and the early sixth, where they fought against Kidarites and subjected the Hephthalites (Weishu, 102.2275, 2277; Beishi, 97.3210; Liangshu, 54.812). An Armenian geographer refers to this same episode when he mentions the Hephthalites, the Warkhons, and the Alkhons not far from the Zeravshan River, on which the Sogdian capital Samarkand was situated. If the Alkhons lived further to the South in Afghanistan, the Warkhons are very probably the Rourans – the “Avars” of later sources. Byzantine writers of the second half of the sixth century call them Ouarchonitai or Varchonites (Menander 19.1).

Another piece of evidence from the same period makes a connection between Central Asia and the Pontic steppe. In 463, after the disintegration of Attila’s empire, new tribal groups began to appear in the steppes. One of these groups passed through Central Asia. The fifth-century historian Priscus (Prisc. 40) writes: “At this time, the Saragurs, Urogs and the Onogurs sent envoys to the eastern Romans. These tribes had left their native lands when the Sabiri attacked them. The latter had been driven out by the Avars who had in turn been displaced by the tribes who lived by the shore of the Ocean.” Theophylact Simocatta, the early seventh-century Byzantine historian, mentions an Onogur city named Bakath, which was destroyed by an earthquake. Since Bakath is a Sogdian name, we may infer that the Onogurs had spent some time in Central Asia.

The different groups of Huns were firmly based in Central Asia at the middle of the fourth century. Thus, they bring a unity of time and place to the question of the origins of the Huns of Europe. To summarize my argument so far, I have demonstrated that around 350, a group bearing the name Huns was active in the Kazakh steppe, some of whom moved South and others West, and that a Chinese text precisely ascribes to the Altai the origin of the migration of some of these tribes.

In the Altai Mountains and the Minusinsk Basin: The Question of Cauldrons

We have seen that one Chinese source on Central Asia, the Tongdian, wrote that among those making the great migration of the 350s, the Hephthalites at least originated in the Altai region. It is, thus, logical to search in that region to see if these Chinese texts can be confirmed by archaeology or other texts.

The archaeological evidence from Central Asia is woefully meager. Hunnic cemeteries are poorly known,[28] and very little other material survives. Given the current state of knowledge, the Weishu text can neither be confirmed nor invalidated. The archaeological aspect of Hunnic/Xiongnu settlement in Central Asia is simply missing.[29]

[28] See, however, Daniel Schlumberger, “La nécropole de Shakh tépé près de Qunduz,” Comptes-rendus des séances de l’année: Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres 108.2 (1964) 207–211.
[29] On Xiongnu archaeology, see most recently Ursula Brosseder and Bryan K. Miller, eds., Xiongnu Archaeology: Multidisciplinary Perspectives of the First Steppe Empire in Inner Asia (Bonn, 2011).

The archaeological evidence for the Huns of Europe is quite different, however, and permits us to draw important inferences about their origin in East Asia. The chief evidence comes from the cauldrons that the Huns may have used for cooking, ritual purposes, or both. People of the steppe had used cauldrons since much earlier times, but the Hunnic vessels are quite distinctive, constituting a true archaeological marker.[30] They are bell-shaped and crudely made, with squared handles surmounted by ornaments in the shape of mushrooms. This evidence shows clear links to Inner Asia (that is the Altai Mountains, Mongolia, southern Siberia, and the northern part of China). A concentration of similar cauldrons occurs on the northern flank of the Altai Mountains and the Minusinsk Basin (map 2). In the Minusinsk region, furthermore, there are petroglyphs depicting the cauldrons, with the same protuberances on the handles, though these are rounded not squared. In Hungary as well as Asia, these cauldrons were buried near springs or rivers, indicating a continuity of ritual and culture from the Minusinsk region to Hungary.[31]

[30] Toshio Hayashi, “Hunnic Cauldrons,” in Studies on Ancient Cauldrons: Cultic or Daily Vessels in the Eurasian Steppes (Tokyo, 2011) 341–382.
[31] Erdy, “An Overview.”

In the absence of a complete typology of the evolution of the cauldrons’ forms and their archaeological contexts, however, these observations must remain inconclusive albeit extremely suggestive. When the archaeological evidence is augmented by textual material to which we now turn, the case becomes virtually certain. This archaeological evidence, supported by the text that has the Hephthalites coming from the Altai, indicates a North Altaic provenance of the Hunnic groups who invaded Central Asia and Europe from 350 onward.

The Text of the Weishu

One other passage in the Weishu mentions that at the beginning of the fifth century, “remains of the descendants of the Xiongnu” (Weishu, 103.2290) were to be found far Northwest of the Rouran, that is, in the area of the Altai. The quality of this information is beyond question. The Weishu is very parsimonious in its use of the term “Xiongnu,” and these Xiongnu are the only ones in a list of neighbors of the Rouran. There are about forty occurrences of the term “Xiongnu” in the text, the greatest number of which are related to the Xiongnu of the South who settled in China, or to rhetorical comparisons with the Han Chinese. Mentions of contemporary Xiongnu still in the Altai as opposed to those in China are extremely rare. In chapters 102 and 103, which are dedicated to the countries of the West and North, that is the whole of the Xiongnu Empire, there are only three mentions in all. One is the text cited above; the second is found in the famous passage on the conquest of Samarkand by the Xiongnu (Weishu, 102.2270); and the third describes the struggles between a Kidarite king in Bactria and the Xiongnu (Weishu, 102.2277).[32] The fact that the Weishu mentions “remains of the descendants of the Xiongnu” is an extremely important piece of information. It had been argued that the Xiongnu identity totally disappeared in Inner Asia after their defeat of the second century, so that the European Huns could not have come from these regions, but this passage of the Weishu proves that this argument is false. The Xiongnu did indeed survive to the far North, albeit beyond the range of vision of the Chinese sources. That they did not form an empire, and were no more than weakened descendants of the ancient Xiongnu matters little; they had conserved their tribal identity.

[32] In this case, the Xiongnu here are probably the Warkhon mentioned in the Armenian geographical treatise, that is the Rouran/Avars, who incorporated the Xiongnu into their confederation.

We see, then, that three facts (the genetic connection between the cauldrons, the texts on the Hephthalites, and the text on descendants of the Xiongnu) all point to the Altai region as the starting point of the Huns’ migration to Central Asia and to the West starting in the middle of the fourth century. This conclusion is supported by some entirely independent scientific data that shows that during this period the Altai was the place of dramatic climatic change.

The Climate Hypothesis

Recently published findings regarding accumulations of pollen in the lakes of the Altai Range tell of a sharp drop in temperatures combined with a rise in humidity that lasted from the middle of the fourth century through the sixth, causing significant change in the vegetation. Likewise, from 340, glaciers advanced in the valleys.[33] The accumulated snow destroyed herds of the high plateaux; although the Mongolian horse is able to dig through the snow to feed, this capacity is strictly limited by the depth of the snow cover, and contemporary ethnography has shown the enormous impact that prolonged winters and their blizzards can have on herds of horses – eight million horses, 20 percent of the stock, died for this reason in Mongolia in the winter of 2010. Chinese sources report Hun invasions from the Altai happening exactly in the middle of the fourth century, without giving any reason for their incursions. For a long time scholars specializing in nomad studies have postulated a major climatic event as the explanation of the size of the Hun migrations. We now see that such an event is well supported by rigorous paleoclimatological studies conducted quite independently of the work of historians. Quite plausibly, additional factors contributed to the destabilization of Hun societies in the Altai region, but little is known of them. The North slope of the Altai was beyond the reach of knowledge for the Chinese observers, the only exception being the Weishu text mentioned above.

[33] Frank Schlütz and Frank Lehmkuhl, “Climatic Change in the Russian Altai, Southern Siberia, Based on Palynological and Geomorphological Results, with Implications for Climatic Teleconnections and Human History since the Middle Holocene,” Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 16 (2007) 101–118.

We know, meanwhile, that the Rouran/Avar kaghanate became active in the fourth century, even if its power only truly began to develop at the end of that century. We may interpret the passage from Priscus quoted above as a brief summary of the history of Inner Asia in the fourth century: the Sabiri could be the Xianbei (from Chinese characters pronounced *Sarbi at the time), chased out of Mongolia by the developing power of the Rouran/Avars, and chasing in their turn the tribes further West.[34] In this case, the Hunnic groups cited by Priscus (Saraguri, Urogi, and Onoguri) paused in the Kazakh steppe before moving further westward in the middle of the fifth century.

[34] An idea already put forward by Omelian Pritsak, “From the Säbirs to the Hungarians,” in Hungaro-Turcica: Studies in Honour of Julius Németh, ed. Gyula Káldy-Nagy (Budapest, 1976) 22 and 28–30. Many thanks to Peter Golden for this reference.

It is, thus, likely that we can recapitulate the historical trajectory of the Huns in the same way. The Huns were a confederation of peoples fleeing from their ancestral homeland, whose incursions into the West would disrupt the old patterns of the distribution of the nomadic tribes throughout the entire Kazakh steppe, creating a new nomadic landscape under the leadership of the Hunnic tribes. They left the North Altai in a context of major climatic change that caused distress among local societies and which undoubtedly would have had political consequences of which we have not even the most basic knowledge. Absorbing other tribal groups that they encountered along the way, the Huns bore down on the Kazakh steppe in the mid-fourth century. While one part of them, Chionites, Kidarites, Oghlar, Hephthalites, and Alkhon, established themselves in Sogdiana and Bactriana, other groups followed a route to the West and reached the Volga. Still others perhaps, remained in the steppe and did not reach the West until the middle of the fifth century. The admittedly tenuous evidence permits us to conclude that throughout this migration from the Altai to Europe they carried the old name of the most prestigious empires of the eastern steppe, the empire that the Chinese called Xiongnu.

The Huns and the Shattered Empire

The problem, then, has shifted from the relationship of the Huns and the Xiongnu in the fourth century to the relationship of the fourth-century Xiongnu to the second-century Xiongnu. We possess a coherent set of independent textual and archaeological set of proofs for the fact that the Huns came from Inner Asia and bore the name transcribed by the Chinese as “Xiongnu.” Whether they were the direct descendants of the Xiongnu of antiquity, as they claimed, is another question that historians have barely touched upon. What was the relationship between these fourth-century Xiongnu/Huns North of the Altai to the Xiongnu/Hun empire of antiquity? They called themselves Xiongnu/Huns, and that is how they were known by their neighbors in the Altai; it must be stressed that the extreme paucity of documentation does not allow us to go much beyond this. Very little information is available on the tribal reorganizations of Inner Asia after the final defeat of the Xiongnu/Huns in 155 by the Xianbei. The Xianbei, who were for over a century the dominant group on the steppe, are known to have incorporated Xiongnu/Huns into their ranks.[35] Likewise, the dominant power from the fourth century onward, the Rouran, justifiably bore a double name in the Byzantine sources as we have seen; they were the Varkhon, that is, the Avar Huns. Apparently, the break-up of the Xiongnu empire led to the inclusion of its tribal groups in the multiple political entities that succeeded them in the region. The Rouran khaganate was such an entity, associating Xiongnu/Hun tribes with War/Avar tribes. The name Xiongnu had not become generic in Inner Asia in the third or fourth century but in this case belongs to this specific historical moment. It is not surprising that some groups refused to be included in the larger groupings, but kept the name Xiongnu for themselves. We do not yet know how these Xiongnu established themselves and maintained their identity in a zone of settlement on the North slopes of Altai and in the Minusinsk Basin, that is to say, quite far to the Northwest of what had been the heart of their ancient empire. These are understudied historical questions. Only careful research into the archaeology of the two centuries of history on the Mongolian steppe that separated the end of the Xiongnu Empire and the Hun migration will be able to show how this happened.

[35] Peter Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (Wiesbaden, 1992) 69ff.

A Three-Stage History

Some clans or tribes of actual Xiongnu origin politically dominated the Huns of Europe – Attila’s Huns – but they had long been chased from the Xiongnu homeland in Mongolia and the Ordos region to the Northwest, to the Altai region. It is only this point of separation in time – these “missing” two centuries – that prevents us from identifying them directly with the imperial Xiongnu of an earlier era. We must conceptualize a history in three stages: first there were the imperial Xiongnu, whose empire ended in the second century; next, we must distinguish these imperial Xiongnu from their northern descendants, who were based in the secondary core of the Altai Mountains and the Minusinsk Basin in the fourth century; third, we must in turn distinguish these northern Xiongnu from the groupings that resulted from the migration from there and established themselves in Central Asia and in the West. Despite all of the internal cultural developments and recombination of tribes and peoples implicit in this movement, we can be certain of political and to some extent cultural continuity among the Xiongnu-Huns.

“The Huns in Central Asia” ― Hyun Jin Kim (2013)

Although the Huns underwent a transformation during their westward migration, they were the descendants of the Xiongnu of Inner Asia after all. This chapter describes the connections between the Huns in the West and the Xiongnu in the East, emphasizing the continuity in their practices and traditions.

The chapter also explores the sophisticated organizational systems of nomadic societies in Eurasia, highlighting their complex hierarchies and governmental structures. It challenges misconceptions about the Huns by emphasizing their advanced statecraft, which they inherited from predecessors such as the Xiongnu. This suggests that the Huns were not simply a marauding horde, but had complex governmental structures and organizational systems. The narrative extends to the White Huns, Turkic peoples, and the Vars/Avars, exploring their historical connections and influences.

By discussing the political landscape of Inner and Central Asia before and during the Hunnic expansion, the text reveals the power dynamics and interactions with neighboring tribes and empires. This insight helps in understanding the complex geopolitical environment of the time.

The major weakness of this chapter is that the author gives too much credence to Pulleyblank and Vovin’s infamous pure speculation that the original Xiongnu may have had a Yeniseian core tribal elite who spoke Yeniseian, without any credible evidence. He says he is inclined to believe them. Why is that?

Eight years later, in 2021, in a book entitled Rome and China-Points of Contact, he is absolutely certain that they did indeed speak Yenisean:

“The language spoken by the Jie tribe of the Xiongnu confederacy was, it seems, without doubt a Yenseian [sic] language based on the analysis of the transliteration of a Jie Xiongnu song in the Chinese historical source Jin Shu (95.2486).”

This time he also refers to a 2016 article by Vovin, Vajda, and La Vaissière.

This is silly and unscientific to say the least. Some common sense is required. This topic will be covered in another blog in the future.

Another weakness is the transliteration of Hua in Early Middle Chinese. In a private correspondence with the author, La Vaissière suggested an alternative reading to Pulleybank’s Var that would make Hua in Early Middle Chinese correspond to Ghor, a region of Afghanistan inhabited by the Hephtalites. Why? No explanation is given.

Overall, however, the chapter is a very good and detailed explanation of the supposedly missing two centuries of Hun history, “The So-called ‘Two-Hundred Years Interlude’.”

The chapter is like a booklet in itself. The text and 282 endnotes are 48 pages long, with dozens of references cited in full in the extensive bibliography, which itself is 56 pages long and not included here.

Hyun Jin Kim “Chapter 3: The Huns in Central Asia,” in Huns, Rome and the Birth of Europe, 2013.

Inner Asian Empires Before the Fourth Century ad

Introduction

The altering of the strategic balance across Rome’s European borders in the fourth century ad, which should rightfully be examined in the broader Eurasian context of Hunnic expansion across the entire landmass of Eurasia, has until now been analysed with an excessive focus on the Germanic migrations or Roman internal collapse. The Huns, more barbarous and primitively organized than the Germanic tribes, so we are told, have at best been allotted a peripheral role in what was arguably the single most important event in the formation of Western Europe.[1] They are never considered as the prime agents of the cataclysmic changes that they brought about.

It is the argument of this and subsequent chapters that the events of the fourth and fifth centuries ad in Western Eurasia, from Central Asia to the Atlantic, can only be accurately understood if we place the Huns at the centre of the debate and analyse historical developments from a Central Eurasian perspective. The diminution or neglect of the Hunnic Empire in modern historiography largely stems from the myths concerning their society and culture spread through the absurdly literal reading (now often rejected, it is true, but nonetheless so internalized in our understanding of the Huns that it prevents a more objective assessment of Hunnic political organization) of the mythological account on the Huns written by Ammianus Marcellinus. Famously in Ammianus, our principal source (sadly) for the early history of the Huns in Europe, the Huns are mythologized to the extent that they become practically unidentifiable in the real world. They are the most primitive savages conceivable who, instead of resorting to ‘normal’ food for their sustenance, eat roots of wild plants and half-raw meat of any kind of animal, use bone tips instead of iron for their arrowheads,[2] and most importantly lack any rudimentary form of kingship. According to Ammianus, they improvise policy on the spot as a common body under the disorderly leadership of their important men and are, therefore, at the lowest possible level of social evolution:

Et deliberatione super rebus proposita seriis, hoc habitu omnes in commune consultant. Aguntur autem nulla severitate regali, sed tumultuario primatum ductu contenti, perrumpunt quicquid inciderit.

And when deliberation is called for about weighty matters, they all consult as a common body in that fashion. They are subject to no royal restraint, but they are content with the disorderly government of their important men, and led by them they force their way through every obstacle.[3]

The obvious inadequacy of this distorted representation, that was taken rather literally many years earlier by Thompson, who envisaged the absurdity of the Huns conquering the Goths and Alans without sufficient iron weaponry,[4] has often been pointed out. Maenchen-Helfen has already identified clearly anachronistic and outright mythical elements in Ammianus’ account.[5] It is surely amazing that his analysis, though always acknowledged in passing, is not taken up as seriously as it should be in the latest works that discuss the Huns. On another level, the lack of enthusiasm among many historians of late Roman history for comparative research and for Central Asian historical data already available (concerning what is arguably the single most important shift in strategic balance across the Eurasian continent, which heralded the millennium of dominance of steppe empires), has caused immense difficulties in accurately assessing the real impact of the Huns. A more in-depth comparative analysis that critically examines both late Roman history and Central Asian history can shed new light on the much distorted and misunderstood nature of Hun society and its political and social organization. It will be argued henceforth that the Huns, contrary to Ammianus’ mythical account, possessed a highly sophisticated state or ‘early state’ structure originating from state or ‘early state’ models already available in the steppe region since the time of imperial entities, such as the Royal Scythians and more importantly the great, universal steppe empire of the Xiongnu.

Before we progress any further, however, it is necessary to address the argument that early steppe empires such as the Xiongnu, which, it will be argued, provided the political models on which the Huns later built their empire, were super-complex chiefdoms or tribal confederacies with imperial dimensions rather than supra-tribal state entities.[6] No historian with specialist knowledge of steppe empires, to my knowledge, now contests the reality of the existence of political complexity within steppe empires. However, the need to accurately define what exactly constitutes a ‘state’ has created a slight divergence in opinions as to how exactly steppe polities before and after the Huns should be defined. Kradin has applied the most rigorous criteria in his definition of what exactly a state should be and claims a state should have the following characteristics: (1) access to managerial positions by a form of merit-based, extra-clan and non-kin-based selection; (2) regular taxation to pay wages to officials; (3) a special judicial power separate from political power; (4) a ‘class’ of state functionaries engaged in running a state machinery consisting of services for the administration of the whole political community. Kradin argues that the earliest steppe empire of the Xiongnu only fulfilled these requirements at best at an embryonic level and, therefore, cannot be defined as a state.[7]

This view is, however, quite erroneous, and, as Di Cosmo points out, the Xiongnu Empire even by Kradin’s definition was much closer to a state than to a chiefdom. As we shall see shortly, the Xiongnu state administration possessed distinct military and civilian apparatuses separate from kin-based hierarchies (1). Top commanders and functionaries received their wages (in various forms) from a political centre headed by the Xiongnu emperor (Shanyu/Chanyu) (2), who was also in charge of ceremonies and rituals that were meant to include the entire political community. The incredibly complex organization of Xiongnu armies, its imperial rituals, government structure and politically centralized functions of trade and diplomacy all bear witness to a political machinery and supratribal, imperial ideology.[8] Kradin himself acknowledges that special judicial manpower (i.e., judges) was also available in the Xiongnu Empire (3), and that there were special state functionaries (Gu-du marquises) who assisted the emperor in the overall administration of the empire (4).[9] In short, even on the basis of the scant information we do have on Xiongnu political organization, it is possible to argue that the Xiongnu Empire in all likelihood met the definition for a state or an ‘early state.’[10]

Also, there is absolutely no doubt at all that the Xiongnu constituted an empire, ‘a political formation that extended far beyond its original territorial or ethnic confines and embraced, by direct conquest or by the imposition of its political authority, a variety of peoples and lands that may have had different types of relations with the imperial centre, constituted by an imperial clan and by its charismatic leader.’[11] It is difficult to see how without even a rudimentary state structure and state institutions of some sort the Xiongnu could have accumulated the political ability and military power to create a vast empire and maintain it for centuries. The same principle applies also to the later Huns,[12] who, as I will demonstrate, possessed very similar organization to the Xiongnu, which they, in all probability, inherited directly from the Xiongnu. It is logical to assume, therefore, that the Xiongnu Empire was a state or an ‘early state.’ The comparative analysis which follows will offer an explanation as to why the Huns alone of all the ‘barbarians’ north of the Danube managed to provide a political system that integrated all the peoples in barbaricum and to pose a persistent political as well as a military threat to the Roman Empire.[13]

The question is, how can one even contemplate governing an empire that stretches from Gaul to the Volga without sophisticated political structures even for a single generation (i.e., Attila’s reign, the length of time many scholars erroneously grant for the life-span of the Hunnic Empire)? This is obviously impossible. Has any state even tried to govern nearly half of Europe for nearly eighty years without any advanced apparatus of government? This is, however, the picture that is created if we accept what many historians up until now have been suggesting. Yet, the Huns held their empire together for a substantial length of time in non-Roman Europe, where, especially in Germania, there was simply no precedent for imperial, political unity. We will elaborate on the organization of the Hunnic Empire later, but what is clear is that former models proposed for the nature of the Hunnic Empire are vastly misleading and wrong.

[1] Heather (1995a) of course argues that the ‘Hunnic revolution’ was the indirect strategic cause for the fall of the West, but even he attributes only a subsidiary role to the Huns in the process, and views Hunnic expansion solely from the perspective of the Goths and other Germanic tribes. In the minds of most scholars, the Huns were in no way part of the process of the transformation of the Western world, simply the annoying nuisance that set the process in motion from a distance. I will argue henceforth that the Hunnic revolution featured not the Germans as the main actors, but the Huns themselves.
[2] Ammianus Marcellinus 31.2.3; 31.2.9. Not surprisingly, all archaeological discoveries from Hunnic tombs have yielded arrowheads made of iron, not bone. See Maenchen-Helfen (1973), 13; Matthews (1989), 338. The use of bone-tipped arrows occasionally as cheap substitutes for iron-tipped arrows is certainly not out of the question. However, Ammianus exaggerates their usage to create the overall impression of primitive barbarism. Although it is not explicitly stated, Ammianus deliberately creates the false impression that the Huns lack basic metal tools due to their ‘technological backwardness.’ In fact, earlier Roman writers compliment the excellent quality of the arms produced by Central Asian ‘nomads.’ Quintus Curtius Rufus (4.9.3) makes reference to coats of mail (of course made of iron) and Arrian (3.13.4) was impressed by Central Asian cataphract horsemen carefully covered with coats of mail and armed with various iron weaponry.
[3] Ammianus Marcellinus 31.2.7. The translation is from the Loeb Classical Library edition by J. C. Rolfe.
[4] Thompson (1948), 41–3. The Massagetae who inhabited the Kazakh steppe and the Sarmatians (among whom the Alans are often included) who inhabited the Pontic steppe before the Huns, used metal armour including coats of iron mail and helmets. In fact, iron goods were common throughout the entire steppe region by the fourth century bc, Christian (1998), 146, 188. To envisage the Huns even getting out of Central Asia without advanced iron weapons is absurd.
[5] Maenchen-Helfen (1973), 6–20. See also Alemany (2000), 32–8, Kürsat-Ahlers (1994), 42, and Kelly (2009), 22, 26.
[6] Kradin (2002).
[7] Kradin (2002), 368–88. See also his 2011 article, in particular p. 82, where he reiterates his stated position and calls the Xiongnu a centralized imperial confederation, a stateless empire. See also p. 94. A much looser definition of the state provided by Krader (1978), 93–108, who argues convincingly that all steppe empires were state-level polities, is more sensible. However, in order to avoid any confusion or accusations of inaccurate generalization, I will adhere to Kradin’s definition.
[8] Di Cosmo (2011), 44–5.
[9] Kradin (2011), 94–5, number of functionaries were limited he argues.
[10] For discussion on what constitutes an ‘early state,’ see Claessen and Skalnik (1978b), 22–3, and also Scheidel (2011), 114. The majority of Xiongnu experts – Pritsak (1954c), Dorzhsüren (1961), Taskin (1973), Davydova (1975), Khazanov (1984), Sükhbaatar (1980), Kürsat-Ahlers (1994), Kychanov (1997), Di Cosmo (2002, 2011) – are in agreement that a form of early statehood for the Xiongnu polity is beyond any doubt.
[11] Di Cosmo (2011), 44–5. On this, Kradin is also in agreement (2011).
[12] Kradin (2011), 80, defines the Hunnic Empire in Europe as a quasi-imperial nomadic statehood formation that was smaller than an empire. It will be argued later that the Hunnic state was not a quasi-imperial entity, but a full-fledged empire.
[13] Kelly (2009), 28 and 47, recognizes the possibility that the Huns may have been better organized and economically more advanced than Ammianus suggests, but he does not go far enough in his analysis of Central Asian history, and thus characterizes the Huns as a highly mobile, loose (i.e., politically primitive) confederation of clans. He characterizes even the later Hunnic Empire under Attila as a ‘protection racket on a grand scale,’ and sees an administrative void in the Hunnic realm.

The Xiongnu, the Scythians and the Sarmatians

The mistaken assumptions regarding the organization of steppe societies have led to the persistence of these many myths concerning the Huns and their empire. When we observe, however, the level of administrative sophistication achieved among the Xiongnu and the Scythians[14] long before the appearance of the Huns in Europe, such myths can be swiftly dispatched. Many historians and literary critics, who simply ignore Central Asian history in their analysis of Classical texts that discuss steppe nomads, typically assume that ‘a nomad power is something inconceivable: if it is a power, it cannot be nomad.’[15] Such an assumption derives from the mistaken presupposition that nomadism is an insurmountable obstacle to sophisticated social organization and centralization of authority.

Yet, many Classical authors, even as early as the historian Herodotus, had no such presuppositions. Herodotus, in his discourse on the Scythians, mentions the existence of a nomarch in each province of the Scythian kingdom (4.66). In Book 4.62.1, he also mentions the nomes. This is all the more important in that the same word is used to denote administrative units of Egypt and Persia.[16] To many critics, who refuse to believe that the Scythians could have developed such a level of organization, this is simply an example of Herodotus observing the principle of symmetry between Egypt and Scythia and explaining Scythian practices in Egyptian terms. However, the level of administrative sophistication achieved by the Eastern Xiongnu,[17] (Early Middle Chinese (EMC), pronounced Hun-nu[18]) in Mongolia and Turkestan, whose empire co-existed with that of the Scythians, should radically alter our interpretation of Herodotus’ early account of Scythian administrative organization.[19]

The Xiongnu (匈奴, as a united imperial entity third century bc – 48 ad [20]), despite their ‘nomadism,’ managed to achieve an astonishing degree of centralization and pioneered the classic model of imperial rule for later steppe empires to imitate.[21] Their society was essentially quasi-feudal,[22] characterized by a complex hierarchy, which is outlined in detail by the first-century bc Han Chinese historian Sima Qian:

Under the Shan-yü[23] are the Wise Kings of the Left and Right, the left and right Lu-li kings, left and right generals, left and right commandants, left and right household administrators, and left and right Ku-tu marquises. The Hsiung-nu word for ‘wise’ is ‘t’u-ch’i,’ so that the heir of the Shan-yü is customarily called the ‘T’u-ch’i King of the Left.’ Among the other leaders, from the wise kings on down to the household administrators, the more important ones command ten thousand horsemen and the lesser ones several thousand, numbering twenty-four leaders in all, though all are known by the title ‘Ten Thousand Horsemen.’ The high ministerial offices are hereditary, being filled from generation to generation by the members of the Hu-yen and Lan families, and in more recent times by the Hsüpu family. These three families constitute the aristocracy of the nation. The kings and other leaders of the left live in the eastern sector, the region from Shang-ku east to the land of the Hui-mo and the Ch’ao-hsien peoples. The kings and leaders of the right live in the west, the area from Shang province west to the territories of the Yüeh-chi and Ch’iang tribes. The Shan-yü has his court in the region of Tai and Yün-chung. Each group has its own area, within which it moves about from place to place looking for water and pasture. The Left and Right Wise Kings and the Lu-li kings are the most powerful, while the Ku-tu marquises assist the Shan-yü in the administration of the nation. Each of the twenty-four leaders in turn appoint his own ‘chiefs of a thousand,’ ‘chiefs of a hundred,’ and ‘chiefs of ten,’ as well as his subordinate kings, prime ministers, chief commandants, household administrators, chü-ch’ü officials and so forth. (Shiji 110:9b–10b)[24]

From what is known about the Xiongnu, we can deduce the following about their administrative system. The supreme power rested in the hands of the Shanyu/Chanyu (單于, meaning ‘emperor,’ likely to have been pronounced dàn-wà, representing darγwa in EMC[25]) who was assisted in his duties by the Gu-du (Ku-tu in the Wade–Giles transliteration above) marquises who ran the central imperial government and co-ordinated the affairs of the empire. As in the contemporary Parthian–Sassanian system to the West mentioned in the previous chapter, in the Xiongnu Empire in the East, flanking the central government there seem to have been four principal, regional governorships in the East and West (later called in the Hou Hanshu, ‘the four horns’ or ‘angles’[26]): the Worthy King of the Left and the Luli King of the Left in the East and the Worthy King of the Right and the Luli King of the Right in the West. Each of these four governorships had its own government bureaucracy[27] and the kings (sons or brothers of the reigning Shanyu) constituted the highest ranking aristocrats in the empire.[28] The Xiongnu also possessed (or perhaps gradually added after 97 bc to the system described in the Shiji above) six more eminent aristocratic titles (the six horns or angles,[29] perhaps by coincidence (?) slightly reminiscent (though with obvious differences) of the system of six great aristocratic families in the Parthian Empire), consisting of the Rizhu kings of the Left and Right (titles reserved also for the sons and younger brothers of the Shanyu),[30] Wenyuti kings of the Left and Right, and the Zhanjiang Kings of the Left and Right.[31]

Below these top-ranking nobles or including them there were the so-called twenty-four imperial leaders/ministers[32] (each titled Ten Thousand Horsemen), who acted as imperial governors for the major provinces of the empire and were (and this will also have important ramifications for the Hunnic political system later on) usually close relatives of the Shanyu or members of the Xiongnu aristocracy (probably related to the royal house).[33] These princes and senior nobles were divided into Eastern and Western groups (dualism)[34] and the successor to the throne was usually appointed the Wise King of the Left, i.e., the ruler of the Eastern half of the empire (again we will see echoes of this in the Hun system later on). All the appointments were made by the Xiongnu central government under the direction of the Shanyu.

At the bottom of the administrative hierarchy was a large class of subordinate or vassal tribal leaders (sub-kings, prime ministers, chief commandants, household administrators, chü-ch’ü officals etc.) who were under the command of the twenty-four imperial governors, but enjoyed a level of local autonomy.[35] A non-decimal system of ranks was used for the political administration of tribes and territory within the empire, which included groups of many different sizes.[36] However, a more rigid system of decimal ranks (thousands, hundreds, tens) was used in times of war when large armies were formed from troops drawn from different parts of the steppe under a single command structure.[37] A census was also taken to determine the empire’s reserves of manpower and livestock.[38]

It is highly probable that Herodotus was in fact referring to a similar organization among the Scythians.[39] The nomarchs are likely to have been division commanders of the kind found among the Xiongnu. The Scythian legend of their origin, which divides their nation into three parts (Hdt. 4.7), may also reflect a similar tripartite division of power among the leading tribes/clans which characterized the Xiongnu form of government.[40] Ivantchik notes that the element -xais with which all three names of the brothers in the Scythian foundation legend end (Lipoxais, Arpoxais and Colaxais), is etymologically connected to the Iranian word xsaya (king).[41] He also suggests quite plausible etymologies, which would connect the names Cola, Arpo and Lipo with the Iranian words for sun, water, and mountain.[42] The names are probably indicative of the division of the world into three levels, which is one of the principal ideas of Indo- Iranian cosmology found in various Vedic and Zoroastrian texts and traditions.[43] The three levels may correspond to the three castes mentioned in various Indian and Iranian texts (priest, farmer and warrior).[44] The Scythians of Herodotus, therefore, probably possessed a highly stratified, politically organized state[45] and as Bichler puts it ‘sehr festen herrschaftlichen Institutionen.’[46]

At the pinnacle of the Scythian political structure was the king whose power, contrary to what critics like Hartog believe, was in all probability very real and certainly not a mere product of the narrative constraint, which imposes the need to assign a king to every non-Greek power.[47] Among the Xiongnu, to use once again the same analogy, the political power wielded by the Shanyu was truly formidable. Chinese sources report that Modun, the Shanyu, could boast of having subjugated twenty-six states and reduced them to obedience as a part of the Xiongnu nation.[48] In war, the Shanyu could reputedly mobilize an army of 140,000 men from among his subjects.[49] Herodotus portrays the Scythian king in a similar way. As the head of the so-called Royal Scythians[50] who held supremacy over all other groups of Scythians the king, like the Shanyu, was the military leader in times of war, as is demonstrated by Idanthyrsus’ direction of the war against the Persians. In times of peace, the king was also apparently the distributor of justice and presided over duels between relatives (4.65.2). Furthermore, the taking of the census by King Ariantes (4.81) and the punishment he used to enforce his decree (4.81.5) reveal the substantive nature of royal power, which turned Scythia into a real state with the necessary means to impose order and control.[51] In fact, archaeological excavations from Arzhan in Tuva, northwest of Mongolia, from the Scythian period (eighth century bc), have revealed the existence of highly organized steppe polities in Central Asia that corroborate Herodotus’ observations. A huge Scythian or rather Saka type tomb that included 70 chambers and 160 saddle horses buried with the king, who obviously ruled a large and powerful steppe confederacy, was brought to light. That he ruled over a more or less typical steppe hierarchical state/quasi-state entity is confirmed by the fact that subordinate princes or nobles were buried to the north, south and west of the king and his wife.[52]

One startling difference between the Xiongnu and the Scythians, though, was the degree to which they absorbed the political institutions of their sedentary neighbours. The Scythians do not seem to have adopted any institutional features from either the Greeks (highly disorganized in any case) or even the Persians (that is, unless their organization mentioned above in some way can be seen as an imitation of Achaemenid administrative ideas).[53] The Xiongnu, in contrast, seem to have absorbed some of the sophistication of their Chinese neighbours when it came to state organization and administration.[54] The essentially ‘feudal’ character of their empire with its hierarchy of kings and marquises, the highest ranks of which were reserved exclusively for members of the royal clan and the lesser ranks for leaders of other leading clans that intermarried with the royal clan (of immense significance for our later examination of the Hunnic Empire and its successor kingdoms in Europe),[55] has obvious analogies with the kingdoms and marquisates of the Han Empire, but with clear differences in functions. The Xiongnu territorial divisions which favoured the left, i.e., the East (when viewed with orientation towards the South in the Chinese manner or right when viewed with orientation towards the North in the steppe manner[56]), over the West may also reflect the influence of Chinese ideas of rulership, which identified the left (East) with the yang (as in yinyang) forces of generation and growth. The use of colours as symbolism for territory, blue for East, white for West, black for Nrth and red for South, correspond to the symbolism of Chinese cosmology (Wuxing, five elements theory).[57]

In the West, the Scythian political tradition was to some extent continued by the Sarmatians and Alans (considered a branch of the Sarmatians,[58] who seem to have been somewhat more fragmented in comparison to other steppe nomadic peoples further to the east[59]), later conquered by the Huns upon their entry into Europe.[60] According to Strabo,[61] the Sarmatians at one stage in their history (possibly from the late second century bc to c. 60 bc), before they fragmented, possessed tighter organization and a ruling royal tribe who were situated in the centre of the Sarmatian tribal confederacy/ empire and surrounded by a protective ring of vassal tribes (Iazyges to the South, Urgi to the North and the Roxolani to the East).[62] The Alans further to the East, like the Scythians and western Sarmatians in the second century bc, also possessed a royal clan[63] and regiments of professional warriors in the Scythian manner (presumably in the usual decimal system).[64] The kings, like the Scythian Ariantes of old, carried out a general census of male warriors (Martyrdom of Sukuasyants[65]) and even built royal palaces[66] and city fortifications. An inscription at Olbia also bears witness to their observance of the steppe custom of collective or joint rule among brothers who are referred to as the ‘greatest kings of Aorsia’.[67] Furthermore, the Alans apparently possessed a ranking system, in much the same way as the Scythians and the Xiongnu. The kings used a royal title similar to the Scythian ksais, local princes or chiefs were titled ardar (literally ‘holding in a hand,’ perhaps related to sceptre holders mentioned in Tacitus Annals 6.33) and were distinguished from the class of slaves called čagar.[68] We also learn that the Alans used colour to designate segments of their tribal confederation in the same way as the Xiongnu. Thus, we find Ptolemy making reference to white (hapax) Alans.[69]

Even if we were to discount the Alans, who may well have possessed similar though obviously more haphazard political and social institutions in comparison to the Xiongnu, it is nonetheless clear that in the territory from which the Huns derived there were already historical precedents for highly sophisticated organization, both social and military, that facilitated the emergence time and again in the steppe region of formidable empires. Han Chinese administrative and political practices, more complex than even the Roman model,[70] also seem to have had a profound effect on the early Huns/Xiongnu. If so, then what is the evidence for the possibility of this organization being transmitted to the Huns in the fourth century ad?

[14] For an in-depth discussion on the name and location of the various Scythian peoples (Saka) in both Europe and Asia see Szemerényi (1980), 4–46.
[15] Hartog (1988), 202.
[16] Hartog (1988), 19.
[17] A Sogdian source, which we will discuss in detail shortly, from the fourth century ad suggests that the Xiongnu (modern Chinese reading of the glyphs representing their name, which in its EMC reading was in all probability the same as the name Hun, see note below) were actually called Huns. Their connection with the European Huns has always been a highly contentious issue, but there are compelling reasons for assuming that this identification is accurate. See first Torday (1997), 172.
[18] Golden (2009b), 83.
[19] See Melyukova (1990), 101–2, and Torday (1997), 88. See also Golden (1982), 50 ff., for a later example of state formation, social hierarchy and administration of the Turkish Khaganate.
[20] The empire in that year was divided by civil war into two warring factions, the Northern Xiongnu and the Southern Xiongnu.
[21] Barfield (1981), 59. As Tapper (1991), 525, in his analysis of nomads in Safavid and Qajar Iran points out, nomadism by no means implies lack of fixed boundaries or less organizational capacity. If anything, the existence of well-defined territories and regular movements under an authoritative leader was essential for the survival of the nomadic tribal community in a very fragile ecological environment. For an in-depth study of the agro-pastoral conditions under which historical steppe polities emerged, the capacity of these states to control large territories, and the importance and durability of the political tradition that was initiated by the Xiongnu, see Honeychurch and Amartuvshin (2006a), 255–78, in particular p. 262.
[22] De Crespigny (1984), 178; Pritsak (1954a), 239.
[23] The supreme ruler and the equivalent of the Turco-Mongol Khagan. For discussion see Kürsat-Ahlers (1994), 268–70.
[24] Watson (1961), vol. ii, 163–4.
[25] Pulleyblank (2000a), 64, also the origin of the Turkic title Tarkhan and the Mongol Daruga.
[26] The designation ‘horns’ or ‘angles’ appears only later in the Hou Hanshu (covering the history of the later Han dynasty (ad 25–220)) and not the Shiji passage quoted above. The designation and possibly also the six further titles called the six horns (angles) that do not appear in the Shiji, but, according to Mori, were only gradually created after 97 bc (the date of the completion of the Xiongnu liezhuan in the Shiji), may only have been firmly established in the Xiongnu political system by the time of the Southern Xiongnu. See Mori (1973), 22–3. However, Mori’s view, as he himself points out (p. 34), has not been proven beyond doubt and has been criticized. Mori acknowledges G. Uchida’s valid critique of his views and concedes that there are grounds for uncertainty, since the slight differences in the titles given in the Hou Hanshu and the earlier Shiji and Hanshu could simply be an indication that the Han Chinese of the Hou Han period observed Xiongnu government practices more correctly than their predecessors in the earlier Qian Han period. Thus, the possible differences in titles may or may not be indicative of reforms in the governmental organization of the Xiongnu over time. See also Kradin (2011), 89.
[27] Christian (1998), 194.
[28] De Crespigny (1984), 176–7. The concept of four pre-eminent sub-kings is also found among the later Volga Bulgars (Hunnic descendents in Europe), Pritsak (1954b), 379, and also among the Göktürks who succeed the Huns and Rouran as masters of the steppe, Pritsak (1954c), 186.
[29] See note 26 above. See also Kradin (2011), 92.
[30] Hou Hanshu 79. 2944. According to Mori (1973), 30–1, the office was later passed from the hands of the Chanyu’s family to those of the Huyan clan who were related to the Chanyu through marriage.
[31] de Crespigny (1984), 177. The hierarchy and political ranks of aristocratic and royal clans, as mentioned above, may have changed somewhat among the Southern Xiongnu whose political organization after the Xiongnu civil war that split the empire in two informed much of the details we find in the Hou Hanshu. In other words, there may have been regional developments or changes over time that altered the political fabric of Southern Xiongnu society and made it slightly different from the former Xiongnu political system. However, it is clear that even these later developments, if they were of any significance, derived from the political traditions of the original Xiongnu Empire, see Brosseder and Miller (2011a), 20.
[32] Pritsak’s(1954c) extended discussion on the twenty-four lords is criticized quite mercilessly by Daffinà (1982), and should be read with caution. See also Kürsat- Ahlers (1994), 276.
[33] See Ishjamts (1994), 158, and Kollautz and Miyakawa (1970), 44, though it is also clear that some former rulers of conquered peoples were allowed to remain kings/chiefs as well under appropriate Xiongnu overlordship and over-kings. For the government of the more distant Western regions, the Xiongnu created the office of the ‘Commandant in charge of Slaves’ (Yü 1990, 127), which under the aegis of the Xiongnu Ri-zhu king had the power to tax states such as Karashar and Kalmagan and to conscript corvée labour (pp. 127–8). Also, certain Chinese defectors were appointed kings, e.g., Wei Lu as king of the Ding Ling and Lu Wan of the Donghu. However, the upper echelons of power and positions of political, administrative and military importance close to the Shanyu and key strategic areas, were almost exclusively reserved for members of the imperial clan and a few select Xiongnu aristocratic families. See also Golden (2009b), 110. For the later Mongol system of provincial administration and state organization in Central Asia, which closely resembles the Xiongnu model, see Biran (2009), 61.
[34] Ishjamts (1994), 158. Kradin (2011), 93, argues that originally there was a tripartite administrative system within the Xiongnu Empire that gradually by the time of the civil war that split the Xiongnu into two rival groups had evolved into a dual system.
[35] Barfield (1981), 48–9.
[36] See Markley (forthcoming), 22, for a discussion on Xiongnu quasi-‘feudalism.’ See also Kollautz and Miyakawa (1970), 44. For the notion of the tribe functioning as a territorial unit in its allocated place within the confederacy of a steppe empire, see Cribb (1991), 54–5.
[37] Barfield (1981), 49. For archaeological evidence of a highly sophisticated social hierarchy among the Xiongnu, see Honeychurch and Amartuvshin (2006a), 264–5. Kürsat-Ahlers (1994), 289–90, argues for a Xiongnu bureaucracy in the form of a military organization.
[38] Christian (1998), 194.
[39] See Pulleyblank (2000a), 53, for the possible Scythian impact on early Xiongnu culture.
[40] Khazanov (1984), 178. The Xiongnu would develop three aristocratic clans linked via family/marriage ties to the Shanyu: the Huyan, Lan and Xubu (the imperial clan was the Xulianti/Luanti clan which descended from the early Shanyus Touman and Modun, Kollautz and Miyakawa (1970), 44), which formed the ruling, upper stratum of Xiongnu society. See also Pulleyblank (2000a), 68. These ruling clans, along with the royal family, led separate subdivisions of nomads. See also Kürsat-Ahlers (1996), 138, and Golden (1992), 64–6, for discussion on the nature of the Xiongnu state.
[41] Ivantchik (1999a), 145.
[42] Ivantchik (1999a), 145–7.
[43] Ivantchik (1999a), 160.
[44] See Ivantchik (1999a), 164–5 where he gives a detailed account of the legend of the three sons of Zoroaster. The eldest son became the priest, the second the farmer and the third the warrior. This corresponds perfectly with the etymologies suggested for the names of the three sons of Targitaus, as in Indo-Iranian cosmology the sky (soleil) is identified with the warrior caste (Colaxais, the youngest), the earth (montagne) with the priestly caste (Lipoxais, the eldest), and the underworld (l’eau) with the productors/farmers (Arpoxais, the second son), p. 158. See also Corcella (1993), 232; Abetekov and Yusupov (1994), 28.
[45] Khazanov (1978), 425–40; Kürsat-Ahlers (1996), 139.
[46] Bichler (2000), 97. For an in-depth analysis of the capacity of steppe pastoralists to rapidly mobilize and organize complex military and political structures that can influence vast territories see Christian (1998), 85–9.
[47] Hartog (1988), 200. For the depiction of royal power in Scythian art, see Bader, Gaibov and Koshelenko (1998), 25.
[48] Yü (1990), 123.
[49] Yü (1990), 124.
[50] See Harmatta (1970), 14.
[51] Bichler (2000), 90. See Abetekov and Yusupov (1994), 25–6 for the analysis of archaeological evidence which supports the existence of an aristocratic elite and political hierarchy among the Scythians. See also Kürsat-Ahlers (1994), 179–93, 198–227.
[52] Christian (1998), 129–31.
[53] There is some evidence of Persian influence in the Saka steppe of Central Asia. Persian goods do appear occasionally in areas such as Eastern Kazakhstan in the Altai region. See Christian (1998), 167.
[54] The putative Chinese influence on the Xiongnu is contested by Di Cosmo (2011), 47–8, who regards resemblances and similarities in administrative and cultural practices to be largely the result of a shared set of associations that may go back to a more ancient cultural stratum.
[55] Kollautz and Miyakawa (1970), 45. For Xiongnu elite governance and feudalism see McGovern (1939), 118; Yü (1990), 135–6.
[56] For details, see Pritsak (1954b), 377–9; (1955b), 256–9. Amazingly, this north–south orientation is also evident in the placement of human remains in a Hunnic grave discovered in the Crimean steppe, see de Vingo (2000), 156.
[57] Pulleyblank (2000a), 70. This will also be of significance for the Huns in Europe, as we shall see later in the book.
[58] See Melyukova (1990), 110–17, for a short discussion on the Sarmatians. For a more detailed treatment, see Batty (2007), 225–36.
[59] Wendelken (2000), 202. See also Batty (2007), 368–72.
[60] Though in their heyday, Strabo would report that king Spadinus of the Aorsi could field an army of 200,000 men (Strabo 11.5.8). An exaggeration no doubt.
[61] Geography 7.3.17. See also Ptolemy 5.9.16.
[62] Harmatta (1970), 12, 14–15. We will see a mirror image of this later in the Hunnic Empire where the core of the empire is also surrounded by a protective ring of vassal tribes.
[63] Lucian, Toxaris 51; Moses Khorenatsi, History of the Armenians 2.50, 58; see Thomson (1978), 191. See also Alemany (2000), 287–9.
[64] P’austos Buzand, History of the Armenians 3. 6–7.
[65] Yatsenko (2003), 93.
[66] Tacitus Ann. 12.17–18.
[67] Yatsenko (2003), 93. For further references to Alan rulers and the special status of queens in Alan society, see Dio Chrysostom, Or. 36.3.5; Polyaenus, Strat. 8.56.
[68] Yatsenko (2003), 94.
[69] Ptolemy 3.15.3, see Alemany (2000), 8.
[70] Scheidel (2009), 18.

The Hun–Xiongnu connection

To fully understand the nature of our European Huns, it is necessary first of all to re-examine their possible links to the above-mentioned Xiongnu. The now almost legendary work of Deguignes, Histoire générale des Huns, des Turcs, des Mogols et des autres Tartares occidentaux (1756–1824), sparked a debate that has raged for centuries. Were the European Huns the political and physical descendants of the imperial Xiongnu? Deguignes with remarkable intuition asserted that they were, but later scholarship tended to voice scepticism concerning this link between Huns and Xiongnu. Renowned and distinguished historians of the Huns and Central Asia openly rejected any links other than possible cultural affinities between the Huns and the Xiongnu.[71] For our purposes, cultural links, and in particular the preservation of political institutions, are obviously of greater importance and sufficient for the argument that the Huns were politically organized. However, it is possible to strengthen this cultural link with actual physical, ‘genetic’ links between the later Huns and the earlier Xiongnu.

In 1948, Henning published a remarkable text from the year ad 313, a letter sent by a Sogdian merchant by the name of Nanaivandak from Gansu in China concerning the fall of the Chinese capital of Luoyang to the Southern Xiongnu in ad 311. In the letter, without a shadow of a doubt, the Xiongnu are called Huns.[72] The response to this amazing discovery has been equally amazing. Sinor suggests that this only proves that the name Hun was a general term used by Sogdians for all nomads.[73] Bailey for his part, believing the Xiongnu to be Iranians, not Turkic like the western Huns presumably were,[74] argues that the name Hun derives from the term Hyaona, a designation used in the Avesta to denote a hostile people. This he assumes was used by the Sogdian merchant to refer to the Xiongnu, as a generic term for nomads.[75]

However, as La Vaissière points out, both Sinor and Bailey are wrong to attribute the use of the name Hun as a general designation for all nomads before the time of the great Hunnic invasions.[76] It was only after the fourth- and fifth-century exploits of the Huns, which made their name famous, that historians in the West would start to use their name in a generic sense to designate nomads. There is no evidence whatsoever that their name was used as a generic term for nomads before the sixth century ad. It is also highly problematic to treat the name Hun as a fourth-century pan-Iranian term for steppe nomads. For starters the ‘h’ in the Avestic initial ‘hy-’ (as in Hyaona) disappears in Sogdian, and words that derive from Avestic with the ‘hy-’ initial prefix never commence with ‘X’ in Sogdian, with which the name Hun begins in the letter of Nanaivandak.[77] In other words, there are formidable linguistic problems with associating the term Hyaona with the Huns.

Another problem with the Iranian theory is that the term Hun was without a doubt the self-designation adopted by the Huns themselves. Hyaona may possibly be a Zoroastrian term applied to hostile enemies, but it by no means designated exclusively nomads, who were more often referred to as the Tuirya.[78] If so, why on earth would the Huns adopt this name as their own ethnonym, and why would non-Zoroastrian Sarmatians and Goths refer to the Huns in this manner? And, we must also take note of the fact that there were plenty of other nomadic tribes in eastern Turkestan at the time when Nanaivandak travelled through it, who were not called Huns, but referred to themselves as the Dingling, Var, Xianbei etc. Are we to assume that Nanaivandak, who was an eye-witness to the events of ad 313, was ignorant of the proper name of the invading horde? This surely cannot be right, and it is totally unacceptable to dismiss primary evidence like this in a cavalier manner.

In fact, recently further evidence has come to light, this time from India and Tibet, which in my view renders the identification of the name Hun with Xiongnu highly probable, if not certain. Two texts, the Tathagataguhya-sutra and Lalitavistara, translated into Chinese by Zhu Fahu, a monk from Dunhuang, by origin of Bactrian descent (translations ad 280 and ad 308 respectively, i.e., roughly contemporaneous with Nanaivandak’s letter), identify the Huna (Huns), then a distant people to the Indians, with the Xiongnu, as a specific political entity adjacent to China.[79] There is no indication at all that the use of the term Xiongnu for Huna here is generic in any sense. Given this contemporary evidence, it seems quite natural to agree with La Vaissière and Pulleyblank that the imperial Xiongnu and the European Huns had the same name.[80]

Having the same name is a start, but this certainly does not prove that the Huns and the Xiongnu were culturally linked. Archaeological evidence, however, in this case supports the link and leaves no doubt as to the cultural connections between the European Huns and the old territory ruled by the Xiongnu. Most serious scholars of the Huns and Xiongnu are in agreement that Hunnic cauldrons, an archaeological marker of Hunnic presence, derive from Xiongnu cauldrons in the Ordos region in Inner Mongolia.[81] Remarkably, the placement of the Xiongnu and Hunnic cauldrons are virtually the same, on the bank of rivers, a fact which proves that the continuity between the old Xiongnu and the European Huns is not only artistic or technological, but also cultural.[82] Furthermore, both the Huns and the Xiongnu practised a very similar sword cult (in Xiongnu the cult of the kenglu).[83] In other words, even if one were to reject an ethnic/genetic link between Huns and Xiongnu,[84] it is impossible to deny a cultural continuity or affinity between the Xiongnu and the Huns. Of course, it might be possible that the Huns residing in Kazakhstan (from where they would in the fourth century ad move into Europe)[85] had no blood links with the Xiongnu of Mongolia, though how this could be given the history of prolonged Xiongnu presence, migration to and rule of the very regions occupied by the Huns, is problematic to say the least.[86]

It must, however, be recognized that the Hunnic confederation that entered Europe, despite having the same name as the Xiongnu and also very likely a similar mix of ethnic groups (at least initially) and cultural traditions to those which characterized the latter, was not the exact replica of the old Xiongnu Empire. During their migration West, the Xiongnu (Huns) seem to have undergone a transformation. Whereas the original Xiongnu in Mongolia, according to Pulleyblank and Vovin, may have had a Yeniseian core tribal elite[87], which ruled over various Iranian and Altaic (Turco-Mongol) groups,[88] if the names of Hunnic tribes and rulers are a rough guide to ethnicity[89] (poor indicators at best in the steppe region), the Huns seem to have had a core Turkic element, ruling over initially a large Turco-Iranian population (in the East) and then after their conquests in Europe a largely Germanic population in the western half of their empire.

The heavier concentration of Turkic peoples[90] in the western half of the old Xiongnu Empire is likely to have contributed to this shift from a Yeniseian core language group to a Turkic one.[91] A very similar transformation can be noted in the later history of the steppe in the Golden Horde and the Chagatai Khanate where the Mongol ruling elite from the East rapidly adopted the Turkic language, which was the dominant spoken language of the tribes that made up the bulk of their armies in the West.[92] The Xiongnu who migrated West are likely to have done the same.

Yet, the fact that the Huns chose to hold on to the name of the imperial Xiongnu as their own ethnonym or state name, even after the probable Turkification of the elite, is a clear indication that they regarded this link with the old steppe tradition of imperial grandeur as valuable and significant, a sign of their original identity and future ambitions no doubt. The preservation of Xiongnu cultural identity (as the preservation of Xiongnu-type cauldrons all the way from the eastern steppe to the Danube shows) among the western Huns suggests also that a culturally dominant inner core of Xiongnu/Huns remained intact through their long migration from Inner Asia to Europe.[93] The old Xiongnu confederation was in any case highly heterogeneous,[94] a polyglot empire containing Yeniseian, Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Iranian and even Chinese elements. The name Xiongnu/Hun could also refer to either a specific ethnic entity or more frequently to all dwelling within the political entity established under the name Hun.[95] The later descendant of this imperial confederacy, the Hun Empire would, following the old traditions of the Xiongnu, be equally heterogeneous, containing mainly Turkic, Iranian and Germanic elements, but also Slavic, Baltic, Finno-Ugric and even Greco-Roman minorities.[96]

This heterogeneity of the Hunnic state in Europe has led numerous scholars (most recently Heather) to make the unverifiable assertion that the official language of the Hunnic Empire was Gothic due to the rather disputable assumption that the names of three Attila era kings – Ruga (or Roga/Rua/Rugila), Bleda and Attila – are Gothic.[97] Naturally, we also have more probable Turkic etymologies for these names, especially for those of Attila and Bleda.[98] However, even if they were Germanic or Germanicized Turkic names,[99] this does not allow us to make any hasty assumptions about the official language of the empire, if it ever existed. What Heather ignores is the fact that we have convincing or highly probable Turkic etymologies for the names of many of the other Hunnic kings and nobles before and after Attila, e.g. Mundzuk[100] (Attila’s father, from Turkic Munčuq = ‘pearl/jewel’), Oktar/Uptar (Attila’s uncle, Öktär = ‘brave/powerful’), Oebarsius (another of Attila’s paternal uncles, Aïbârs = ‘leopard of the moon’), Karaton (Hunnic supreme king before Ruga, Qarâton = ‘blackcloak’), Basik (Hunnic noble of royal blood, early fifth century, Bârsiğ = ‘governor’), Kursik (Hunnic noble of royal blood, from either Kürsiğ, meaning ‘brave or noble,’ or Quršiq meaning ‘belt-bearer’).[101] All three of Attila’s known sons have probable Turkic names: Ellac, Dengizich, Hernak, and Attila’s principal wife, the mother of the first son Ellac, has the Turkic name Herekan, as does another wife named Eskam (Ešqam = ‘companion of the Shaman’).[102]

It seems highly likely, then, from the names that we do know, most of which seem to be Turkic, that the Hunnic elite was predominantly Turkic-speaking. [103] However, in the western half of the empire, where most of their subjects spoke Germanic languages, the Huns may have used both Hunnic (Oghuric Turkic[104]) and Gothic. Thus, fief holders and royal family members in the West who ruled Germanic tribes often bore Germanic or Germanicized titles (of great significance, as we will discover later on in the book), e.g., Laudaricus and Ardaric.[105] Priscus, who is our only reliable source, being an actual eye-witness, tells us that at the Hunnic court Hunnic, Gothic and Latin were spoken, but with Hunnic always mentioned before Gothic. All three languages were apparently understood by the elite to some degree,[106] so much so that Zercon the Moor could provoke laughter by jumbling all three together at a Hunnic banquet in the presence of Attila.[107] There is, however, no indication anywhere that any of these three languages was the lingua franca.

It is highly probable that like the later Ottoman Turkish Empire, in which Persian was used for administration, Arabic for religion and Turkic for the army, and as in the contemporary Hunnic Kidarite Empire in Central Asia, which used Sogdian, Bactrian, Middle Persian and Brahmi on different occasions for administrative purposes,108] the Hunnic Empire used three (possibly four: Hunnic, Gothic, Latin, Sarmatian (i.e., Alanic)) languages at various levels in order to govern its vastly polyglot army and population.[109] All levels of Hunnic society are also likely to have been heavily mixed through inter-marriage. Some of that mixing would have taken place as far back as old Xiongnu times.[110] Thus, to refer to Hun–Xiongnu links in terms of old racial theories or even ethnic affiliations simply makes a mockery of the actual historical reality of these extensive, multiethnic, polyglot steppe empires.[111] It is, nonetheless, clear that the ancestors, if they need to be mentioned at all, of the Hunnic core tribes (mostly Turkic and Iranian) were part of the Xiongnu Empire and possessed a strong Xiongnu element, and that the ruling elite of the Huns, as their very name indicates, claimed to belong to the political tradition of this imperial entity.

However, as many historians have pointed out, there is a historical gap of about two centuries between the final defeat of the Northern Xiongnu confederation at the hands of the Xianbei[112] and the Hunnic invasions of the mid fourth century ad.[113] The Hou Han-shu (89.2953–4) records that the last known Shanyu (emperor) of the Northern Xiongnu in ad 91 either disappeared in the West or moved to the territory of the Wusun in modern day eastern Kazakhstan.[114] The Wei Shu (102.2268) indicates that he moved further West to Kangju (Tashkent region) and that the Yueban (悅般, Weak Huns, East of the Kangju) who dominated the old territory of the Wusun in the fifth century ad were Xiongnu/Hun remnants.[115] The Xianbei under their leader Tian Shi-huai,[116] however, defeated the remaining Xiongnu feudatories in the Tarim basin c. ad 153.[117] After this, due to the decline of Chinese interest in the West, nothing more is heard of the western Huns until the fourth century. Some might question whether the western Huns, despite their pretensions to Xiongnu heritage, could still have had the capacity after this lull to create an imperial structure with the sophisticated social and military organization that was the distinguishing feature of the early Xiongnu polity.

[71] Maenchen-Helfen (1944–5); (1961); (1973), 367, and Sinor (1997), 5.
[72] See Henning (1948), 601–45. Altheim (1959), 37, argues that the Huns were a branch of the Xianbei, and that the Chinese references to them as Xiongnu in the fourth century ad are anachronistic. This is highly unlikely.
[73] Sinor (1990c), 179.
[74] Maenchen-Helfen (1973), 441.
[75] Bailey (1954), 12–21.
[76] La Vaissière (2005), 7.
[77] La Vaissière (2005), 8.
[78] La Vaissière (2005), 9.
[79] La Vaissière (2005), 11–15.
[80] Pulleyblank (2000a), 60–1, agrees on the basis of phonetic evidence that there is no alternative but to accept that the European Huns had the same name as the Xiongnu. So does de Crespigny (1984), 174. See also Wright (1997) and Hill (2009), 73–4, for further information on phonetic and other evidence in favour of Xiongnu–Hun identification.
[81] Hambis (1958), 262; Maenchen-Helfen (1973), 330–1; La Vaissière (2005), 17; Bona (1991), 140; Érdy (1995), 5–94. See Czeglédy (1983), 91, for a more sceptical approach.
[82] La Vaissière (2005), 17.
[83] See La Vaissière (2007), 129. For evidence of the existence of the same cult also among the White Huns in Central Asia, which could be another indicator of the common origins of the European and Central Asian Huns, see the same reference.
[84] Extremely difficult to reject in fact, given the abundant archaeological evidence which clearly suggests cultural and religious continuities between the Xiongnu and the Huns, see Érdy (1995), 7.
[85] Their expansion seems to have been as follows: (1) Altai region to northeastern Kazakhstan and Southern Siberia (a very gradual absorption of Oghuric Turkic speaking Dingling/Oghurs and perhaps Ugrian speakers) by the late third century ad; (2) conquest of the Kangju and Wusun in Uzbekistan and the Ili Basin, respectively, by the mid fourth century ad; (3) conquest of the Alans (Volga Region and the Kuban Steppe) and Bactria (from the Sassanian Kushanshahs), 460–70s ad. The Oghurs left behind in western Kazakhstan after the Hunnic departure into Europe seem to have become the Saraghurs, Urogs (a Byzantine scribal error for Ugor/Ogur/Uigur says Hamilton (1962), 34) and Onoghurs (Priscus fr. 40) who would later cause trouble for the Huns in the 460s. The original Hunnic territory stretching from the Altai region to southwestern Siberia seems to have been occupied by the mid fifth century ad at the latest by the Sabirs who were perhaps under pressure from the Rouran further to the east. This forced the remaining Huns (the Weak Huns: Chuban Huns) in the area to relocate to the Ili basin (former Wusun lands) and physically separated the European Huns from the Asian Huns. Then, a further incursion by the Avars in the mid fifth century ad triggered the flight of the Sabirs and the various Oghurs into Europe.
[86] Defeated Xiongnu groups migrated West into Dzungaria and Kazakhstan in successive waves from the first century ad onwards following the collapse of Xiongnu power in Mongolia. The first such migration actually took place even earlier in the first century bc. Han-shu pu-chu B, 1a, 10–2a, 1, records that supporters of a pretender to the Xiongnu throne fled in 57–6 bc to the northwest to an area northeast of Kangju, see Daffinà (1982), 32 (see also Czeglédy (1983), 55–6; Golden (2009a), 83, for further discussion on early Xiongnu movements into Kazakhstan and Dzungaria in the late first century bc). The Wusun (in the Zhetysu region) were also subjected to repeated Xiongnu attacks during this early migration. In ad 91, the Shanyu of the Northern Xiongnu fled to the Ili valley and the Altai region where later the Huns and also the so-called Weak Huns (Yueban/Chuban) would originate. See Yü (1990), 147. See also Golden (1992), 62–3, and Hambis (1958), 251.
[87] Pulleyblank (1962); (2000a), 62–5; Vovin (2000). This is questioned by Benjamin (2007), 49, who sees the Xiongnu as either Proto-Turks or Proto-Mongols, who spoke a language related to the clearly Turkic Dingling further West.
[88] This Yeniseian element seems to have retained a dominant role in the Southern Xiongnu, who were geographically closer to the heartland of the Chinese Empire in Shaanxi (Northern China), right into the fourth century ad. That is if Vovin’s (2000), 92, identification of the language of the Southern Xiongnu (in particular the Jie tribe which constituted one of the core tribes of the confederation), preserved in the form of a Xiongnu poem found in the Jin Shu (95.2486), with Yeniseian, is correct. However, although the Jie tribe is certainly part of the Xiongnu nation that invaded the Chinese Empire, it is unclear whether they were part of the original Xiongnu governing elite. So, whether their language reflects the old Xiongnu language of the elite is uncertain. A different argument is provided by Pritsak (1976b), 480–2, that the name of the tribe Jie itself is Hunno-Bulgar in origin, not Yeniseian. I tend to agree with Pulleyblank and Vovin to the extent that the original Xiongnu ruling elite do not seem to have spoken either an Iranian or a Turkic language, but it is equally uncertain whether they spoke a Yeniseian language, and there is no firm consensus on the matter. The tribe’s name, Jie, also suggests that it originated in the area around the city of Tashkent in the far West of the Xiongnu empire (Pritsak (1976b), 479).
[89] Proper names and etymologies are, however, often inaccurate guides to the genetic affiliation of a people or a historical personality. If they were, anyone bearing a Hebrew name in Western Europe would become Jewish, thereby vastly inflating the number of Jews in the world, or the Hungarians with a national name deriving from the Turkic Onoghurs (see Szádeczky-Kardoss (1990), 224) would become Turks, not Magyars.
[90] For the presence of the Turkic Dingling within the Northern Xiongnu federation in the West see Yü (1990), 148, Golden (2009a), 87, and Duan (1988), 111–13. For the possibility that the Hu-chieh, West of the Wusun in central Kazakhstan, conquered by Modun in the second century bc, were from the reconstruction of Early Middle Chinese pronunciation and transliteration Oghur/Oghuz (i.e., Turks), see Torday (1997), 220–1.
[91] According to the Weilue = Sanguozhi 30.863–4, some Turkic tribes (Dingling) were definitely present in the Kazakh steppe, north of the Kangju and west of the Wusun by the third century ad. See also Golden (2006–7), 27;(2009a), 87. For their presence among the Southern Xiongnu, see Pulleyblank (1990a), 21. The Dingling from the fourth century onwards would be known as the Gaoche (highcarts)/Chile or Tiele (see Czeglédy (1983), 62–4, and Duan (1988), 16–18, 197), enemies of the nascent Rouran Empire in Mongolia. Their political disunity would make them vulnerable to first Xiongnu/Hun and then Rouran conquest. See Pulleyblank (1990b), 22–5. Their foundation legend, as it is preserved in the Wei Shu 103.2307, or the myth regarding their elite, tells of a union between the daughter of the Xiongnu/Hun Shanyu and a wolf that produced the Gaoche, indicative of the conquest or influence that the Huns had over the Dingling in previous centuries. See de Groot (1910), 266, and Sinor (1990b), 295. The Wei Shu also tells us that the Xiongnu spoke the same language as the Gaoche/Dingling (Turkish), which is problematic since the original Xiongnu probably spoke Kettic. It may well be a reference to the complete Turkification of contemporary Xiongnu/Huns, e.g., the Yueban Xiongnu (Wei Shu 102.2268) who by the fifth century, when information later noted down in the Wei Shu was being gathered, had the same customs and language as the Gaoche. By the fifth century, the Gaoche, too, would centralize their political system to produce a supreme ruler who bore the title ulug bägräg (Great Lord/Prince), see Pulleyblank (1990a), 25.
[92] Golden (2006b), 31.
[93] Érdy (1995), 53.
[94] Hambis (1958), 258; Brosseder and Miller (2011a), 30; Di Cosmo (2011), 40–2.
[95] See Brosseder and Miller (2011a), 26–7, 30–1, and de Crespigny (1984), 174.
[96] See also Christian (1998), 227. He suggests not only ethnic, but strong cultural influences from China, Iran and Central Asia on the Huns while they were still in Kazakhstan.
[97] Heather (2006), 330. Maenchen-Helfen (1973), 386–9, also thinks that these names are the Germanic or Germanicized names of Turkic Huns. However, there is no consensus on the matter among scholars. Golden (1992), 90, citing Pritsak (1956), 404–19, argues that the name Attila derives from the Turkic word for the river Volga, which was Atil (referred to as Attilan in Menander Protector fr. 10.4, Blockley (1985), 124). Shippey (1982), 66–7, has also argued that the assertion that the name Attila is Gothic is a product of nineteenth-century Germanic romantic, philological revisionism.
[98] Bona (1991), 35, argues that the name Bleda is Turkic, Bildä/Blidä meaning ‘wise ruler,’ and bears only superficial resemblance to the Gothic Blaedila. The name of Attila is also likely to be a title deriving from the Turkic name for the river Volga (Atil), meaning literally ‘great river’ (Pritsak (1956), 415), implying ‘universal, oceanic ruler’ (p. 419). See also Alemany (2000), 183.
[99] Maenchen-Helfen (1973), 389.
[100] For an in-depth discussion of the Hunnic rather than Germanic origin of this name in particular, see Schramm (1960), 139–40.
[101] The last two names are likely to be titles of offices held by these two men, not real names. For all these etymologies see Bona (1991), 33.
[102] Maenchen-Helfen (1973), 392–415. See also Bona (1991), 33–5; Pritsak (1956), 414; La Vaissière (2007), 129. Most known Hunnic tribal names are also Turkic, Maenchen-Helfen (1973), 427–41, e.g., Ultincur, Akatir etc. The -cur suffix in many of these names is a well-known Turkic title and as Beckwith (1987), 209, points out the To-lu or Tardus tribes (Hunnic in origin) of the western Turkish On Oq were each headed by a Cur (noble). Zieme (2006), 115, adds the fact that the title ‘cur’ belongs to a pre-Turkic Tocharian stratum of the Turkic language, again highlighting the heterogeneity of Central Asian peoples and even languages. See also Aalto (1971), 35.
[103] See also Sinor (1990c), 202.
[104] For Oghuric Turkic, see Czeglédy (1983), 113, and Golden (2006/7), 28.
[105] More on this later.
[106] For the frequent bilingualism among steppe peoples, see Golden (2006–7), 19, and Moravcsik and Jenkins (1967), 172.
[107] Priscus, fr. 13.3, Blockley, (1983), 289. Iranian, though not mentioned by Priscus, was also certainly spoken in the empire, and was 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.
[108] Zeimal (1996), 132.
[109[ See Pritsak (1976c), 22, for the polyglot, multilingual nature of all nomadic empires. See also Hdt. 4.24, where Herodotus discusses the use of seven different languages and a corresponding number of interpreters in Scythia for mutual comprehension among the various ethnic groups.
[110] Markley (forthcoming), 16.
[111] There were tribes within the Xiongnu federation even in the Far East that possessed Caucasian facial features, e.g., the Jie soldiers in the Southern Xiongnu confederation who had high noses and full beards. See Maenchen-Helfen (1973), 372, n.94.
[112] Kürsat-Ahlers (1994), 305. For a brief summary of the history of the Xianbei state and its absorption of nearly 100,000 Xiongnu families, see Ishjamts (1994), 155–6. The name Xianbei in its EMC form Sirbi/Serbi is also probably connected with the name Sabir (Pritsak 1976a, 22, 28–9), which we shall see later.
[113] Biswas (1973), 9; Golden (1992), 63.
[114] Czeglédy (1983), 64–5.
[115] The Yueban or Chuban Huns would conclude a military alliance with the northern Wei (ad 448) against the Rouran, indicating that they were in the mid fifth century still a military force to be reckoned with in western Turkestan. See Hambis (1977), 17–18, and Czeglédy (1983), 65. The Wei Shu 102.2268, indicates that the forebears of the Yueban were a horde of the northern Shanyu of the Xiongnu. When the northern Xiongnu were defeated by the Han imperial armies they fled westward, but the weak elements among them were left in the area North of Qiuci. Afterwards, this weak group of Xiongnu is said to have moved further and subjected the land of the Wusun to form the state of Yueban. The stronger group were the Huns who erupted into Central Asia and Europe. See Yu (2004), 240, 286–7. Yu argues that the Yueban moved into Europe sometime after ad 448, under pressure from the Rouran (287). This, however, does not seem likely since the Yueban Huns were separated from Europe by the dominion of the Sabirs.
[116] See de Crespigny (1984), 329–37, for the career of Tian Shi-huai.
[117] Pulleyblank (2000a), 59–60; Holmgren (1982), 7–9. However, dynasties with Xiongnu origins would still rule in the Tarim basin. The famous Chü-ch’ü dynasty of Kocho would survive until their destruction at the hands of the Rouran in ad 460. See Sinor (1990b), 294.

The Yuezhi (Kushans), Kangju and the Wusun

In order to address this issue, it is first necessary to observe the political situation in Inner Asia before and at the time of the Hunnic onslaught on the Alans and Goths. During the so-called two-hundred-year gap in our records, we find in close proximity to the Xiongnu residing in the Altai (from where the European Huns would start their long trek West), not immediately adjacent, but to their southwest from the Tarim basin[118] to Northern India, the formidable empire of the Kushans founded by the five Da Yuezhi (大月支) tribes.[119] The Yuezhi[120] were steppe nomads driven out of Chinese Turkestan by the Xiongnu c. 162 bc.[121] Their migration West,[122] according to the Han Shu, caused a chain reaction, which drove the Sai (Saka[123])[124] into the Greco-Bactrian kingdom[125] and then even further West into Parthia.[126] In the end, the Yuezhi migration resulted in the permanent conquest of Bactria by the Yuezhi[127] (Tochari[128] led by the Asiani/Asi[129]) and the establishment of Scythian/Saka states all over Afghanistan and northwestern India. The Parthian kings Phraates II (Justin 42.1.5) and Artabanus II (Justin 42.2.2, combating the Tochari) were killed by the invading ‘Scythians’[130], and only in the reign of Mithradates II (beginning c. 124 bc, Justin 42.2.4–5) could the Parthians contain the Saka in Sistan.[131]

The Yuezhi would later in the first and second centuries ad struggle with other Tocharians, ‘Scythians’ and even the Han Empire in Central Asia. The Chinese interestingly refer to the five xihou or Lords of the Yuezhi who rule the five tribes of their imperial confederation.[132] According to Pulleyblank, this xihou corresponds in the EMC pronunciation to what would later become the Turkic title yabgu[133], and this originally Yuezhi royal title appears on the coins of the greatest of the Yuezhi rulers, Kujula Kadphises, as ‘IAPGU/yavuga’.[134] Of the five Yabgus,[135] the Lord of the Guishuang/Kushan tribe[136] would become the ruling power under the above mentioned Kujula.[137]

These rulers of steppe origin, who on their coins proudly depicted themselves wearing the typical Central Asian/Scythian peaked headdress and long boots,[138] fascinatingly possessed political institutions that closely resemble the Xiongnu and later Hunnic models. Like the Xiongnu, the Yuezhi had a political and ceremonial centre even when they were ruled by the five Yabgus.[139] In ad 90, we learn that a fu-wang (sub-king) called Xie was sent out by the Kushan king to attack the Han Chinese military commander in the Tarim basin, Ban Chao.[140] Another Kushan ruler Vima Kadphises, the father of the famous Kanishka,[141] would appoint a general to supervise the administration of the Upper Indus Valley,[142] which is probably a demonstration of the overlapping of military and civilian administration so typical of the Xiongnu system of government. Kushan inscriptions also show that officials with titles, such as dandanayaka and mahadandanayaka, performed both civil and military functions throughout India.[143]

Even more revealingly, we learn that among the Kushans collateral succession to the throne and some form of joint rulership and association of sub-kings in the imperial administration were persistently practised right up to the end of the empire in the third century ad.[144] By way of example, Kaniska I was succeeded by Huviska, but Vasiska and Kaniska II appear to have been associated with them, respectively, as joint rulers and used the same imperial titles.[145] Thus, as among the Xiongnu and later steppe empires, the Yuezhi/Kushans may have practised dualism and collective rule and possessed an elaborate hierarchy of sub-kings and officials. The Kushans even practised the custom of artificial cranial deformation, which would later be introduced into Europe by the Huns and Alans and was also practised by the Hephtalite Huns.[146]

Kushan power in Central Asia (Transoxiana and the Tarim Basin[147]) southwest of the Northern Xiongnu/Huns in the Altai would fade under Sassanian pressure in the mid third century ad (Shapur I, r. ad, 240–70, would dissolve the Kushan Empire), but their remnants would continue to rule in various capacities as Kushanshahs[148] under Sassanian overlordship until the Hunnic conquest in the fourth century.[149] The Yuezhi Kushans, however, were by no means the only Inner Asian steppe people (possibly of Tocharian origin[150]) to possess an elaborate political structure during the second and third centuries ad. We also know that the Dayuan (大宛, perhaps pronounced in EMC as Taxwār[151]), who were situated in Ferghana,[152] and the Kangju (康居, in modern Uzbekistan around Tashkent, south of the Dingling (as mentioned earlier, probably Oghuric Turks in Kazakhstan who were gradually absorbed by the Huns some time during the so-called two-hundred-year gap[153])), who may have been ruled by an elite called the Asi[154], also possessed state-level organization.

The Dayuan would submit to the Han Empire and then later to the Kushans,[155] but the Kangju would become a power to be reckoned with in the first century ad[156] and would also subjugate the Yancai (later the Alans[157]) further West and keep them in that state until at least the second century ad and possibly even the third century ad.[158] The Kangju were also ruled by a Yabgu like the Kushans with whom they were dynastically related by marriage[159], and at least during the Early Han Period, they possessed a system of five ‘lesser kings,’[160] indicating that they too had very similar political institutions to their southern neighbours.[161] In ways reminiscent of the Xiongnu/Huns, the Kangju would impose their ruling elite upon the conquered Alans. Thus, we find among the western and Caucasian Alans the ruling clan/tribe of the Dukhs-As (Asi).[162] These Kangju were in direct contact with the Xiongnu (Huns) who had moved West, and in the first century bc, we hear of the migration of a Xiongnu Chanyu called Zhizhi who went West with his people to the Kangju and borrowed troops from them with which he attacked the Wusun.[163] Zhizhi would be killed by the Han Chinese in 36 bc, but the Xiongnu of the Altai (the later Huns of Central Asia and Europe) in the second–fourth centuries ad, as they gradually absorbed the Dingling (Oghuric Turks) in northern and central Kazakhstan, came to share a common boundary with the Kangju and continuously interacted with them.[164]

The Wusun (direct neighbours of the Huns to the southwest in the Ili basin),[165] who had earlier in the second century bc expelled the Yuezhi/ Kushans from the Ili basin[166] and whose territory the Xiognu/Huns would later absorb in their expansion West and South in the fourth century ad, also possessed a highly developed political structure. Their political structure was apparently modelled after that of the Xiongnu.[167] There was a hereditary king who was assisted by a council of elders, which could also act as a restraint on the powers of the sovereign. There was likewise a fairly developed administrative apparatus consisting of sixteen graded officials, who were recruited from the ruling nobility. Social stratification and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a small elite class, some of whom possessed as many as 4,000–5,000 horses in a pastoral economy, evidently caused social tensions among the Wusun,[168] noted by Chinese visitors. The officials and nobles of the realm maintained themselves by taxes/tribute collected from subordinate tribes, war booty and profits from trading activities (much the same as the Hunnic elite, as we shall see later). The Kunmo or the Great king[169] and his two sons, the rulers of the left and right domains (again in exactly the same way as the Xiongnu), each commanded a personal force of 10,000 horsemen.[170] The remnants of the Wusun seem to have survived until ad 436 (that is, unless this is an anachronistic reference to the Yueban (Weak Huns), who occupied their former lands[171]). Most of the Wusun, however, seem to have been either absorbed or assimilated by the Xiongnu/Huns.

It is unclear as to exactly when the Kangju disintegrated,[172] but they too like the remnants of the Kushans and the Wusun were caught up in the Hunnic expansion West and South. Until then, the Kangju for several centuries ruled over a large political entity stretching from the steppes of western Kazakhstan to the borders of the Huns and Wusun in eastern Kazakhstan with its core situated around Tashkent in modern Uzbekistan. The sophisticated inhabitants of this empire, many of whom were actually urban dwellers or only semi-nomadic[173] like the later Yueban (Weak Huns to the East, who were surprisingly enough deemed to be the most civilized people among the barbarians by the Chinese in the fifth century ad), were under heavy Xiongnu/Hun influence.[174] Is it possible, then, to defend the illogical idea of a primitive Hun society with no political organization whatsoever, when in fact the peoples and states conquered or vassalized by the Huns while they were still in Central Asia possessed high levels of civilization and sophisticated political structures?

In the first and second centuries ad, the Xiongnu/Huns were indeed at the nadir of their political and military fortunes. They were practically under siege in the Altai region. To the West and South, the Dingling, Kangju and Wusun exerted pressure. To the East, the powerful Xianbei and the Han Empire had expelled them from their eastern domains. However, remarkably after the third century ad, these menaces disappeared one after the other. To the East, the Han Empire descended into civil war following the Yellow Turban revolt. The Xianbei who had earlier exerted such pressure on the Huns during the second century ad were divided into feuding tribes, and their confederacy would completely disintegrate by ad 350.[175] To the West and Southwest, the Kangju state was slowly disintegrating.[176] Is it, then, an accident that we find the Huns up in arms and expanding West and South in the fourth century? In fact, archaeological evidence from the Ural region seems to point to the expansion of the Huns into that area by the early fourth century ad,[177] suggesting that the nations between the Altai and the Urals had succumbed to Hunnic conquest by the early fourth century. This was then followed by Hunnic thrusts in two directions, one into Kangju and Wusun territories to the South and the other into Alan territory to the West. What is clear from all this is that during the so-called gap between references to the Huns in our sources (of c. 200 years), the Xiongnu/Huns were in constant contact with imperial and state-level (or early-state-level) entities (in particular, the Kangju and the Wusun), all of whom possessed elaborate political structures.

[118] For possible Kushan expansion into the Tarim basin during the second century ad and heavy cultural influence on the area as a whole, see Hitch (1988), 190–1.
[119] For an overview of the Yuezhi conquest of Daxia (Bactria), see Yu (2004), 12–14.
[120] Enoki, Koshelenko and Haidary (1994), 172, argue that Yuezhi in EMC should be read zguja i.e., Scythians. However, in private correspondences with the author, Professor Sam Lieu pointed out that this reading, though on the surface highly attractive, is unlikely. I agree with his opinion.
[121] Shiji 123.3162, tells us that the Xiongnu Shanyu had the skull of the defeated Yuezhi king turned into a drinking cup; Benjamin (2007), 72–3; Narain (1990), 155; Hill (2009), 312–18.
[122] See Liu (2001), 261–92.
[123] For discussion on this identification, see Benjamin (2007), 97–100, and Hill (2009), 537. For a good discussion on the Saka in Eastern Turkestan, see Debaine-Francfort (1990), 81–95.
[124] Han Shu 61 4b. Pulleyblank (1970), 158–60, thinks that these descriptions of Yuezhi collisions with the Sai and also the Wusun are ‘arbitrary embellishments.’ However, this is probably excessive, given the fact that the Saka invasions are also corroborated by our Greek sources. See also Rapin (2007), 50–1.
[125] Strabo 11.8.4.
[126] Benjamin (2007), 181–4.
[127] Han Shu 61 5A.
[128] Bivar (1983a), 192, identifies the Yuezhi of the Chinese sources with the Tochari of our Greek sources. This seems to be confirmed by the fact that Pompeius Trogus Prologue 41 talks about the conquest of Bactria and Sogdia (i.e., the region conquered by the Yuezhi in our Chinese sources) by the Asiani with whom the Tochari are closely associated. See, however, Benjamin (2007), 185–7, for an alternative reading of Trogus and the argument that the Asiani were none other than the Wusun who raided Bactria (Han Shu 61 5A) and should not be identified with the Tochari (Yuezhi), who came later.
[129] Pompeius Trogus Prologue 42 states ‘Reges Tocharorum Asiani.’
[130] The Scythians who killed Phraates were likely to have been the Saka who had overrun Bactria. Those that killed Artabanus were possibly the Yuezhi or included the Yuezhi. See Czeglédy (1983), 28, and VanWickevoort Crommelin (1998), 270.
[131] For the later collisions between the Parthians and the ‘Scythians,’ see Strabo (11.9.2). See also Enoki et al. (1994), 181–2.
[132] Hill (2009), 29. See also Frye (1996), 134.
[133] For the Turkic appropriation of Iranian and Tocharian titles, see Golden (2006b), 21. Iranian, Sogdian and Tocharian titles, such as Sad (Middle Iranian/Sogdian/Saka for ‘prince’), Beg (Iranian and Sogdian for ‘Lord’), Isbara (Sanskrit and Tocharian for ‘prince’ or ‘lord’) were used by the Göktürks who also employed a large number of Sogdians in their imperial bureaucracy (p. 19). In fact, the multicultural nature of all steppe empires allowed such heterogeneity to flourish. Of the fifty or so names of Turkish rulers in Chinese sources, only a few have genuinely Turkic names. See Sinor (1990b), 290, and Beckwith (2009), 411. The Huns also undoubtedly included a strong Iranian element, given the appearance of Iranian names and cultural practices in their ruling elite, as we shall see later.
[134] Pulleyblank (1995), 425; (1966), 28; Hill (2009), 587–90; Benjamin (1998), 37–8.
[135] On the five yabgus, see Grenet (2006).
[136] Bivar (1983a), 192–3, argues that the Kushans were none other than the Asiani mentioned earlier who became kings of the Tochari.
[137] See Grenet (2006), 339–40, Puri (1994a), 248–9, and Hill (2009), 29, 329–32.
[138] See Narain (1990), 165, and Pugachenkova, Dar, Sharma, Joyenda, and Siddiqi (1994), 372. See also Wink (2001), 221, and Cribb (2007), 366, who notes the link between imperial Kushan coinage and nomad/Inner Asian identity.
[139] Christian (1998), 211.
[140] Yu (2004), 165–6.
[141] See Sims-Williams (2008), 56–7.
[142] Hill (2009), 31.
[143] Puri (1994a), 263. See also Tapper (1991), 507, for an excellent discussion on the proclivity of tribal groups in Iran in later contexts to develop into powerful militaristic confederacies and restructure themselves into a community with what he calls a ‘feudalistic’ class structure. Conditions in the steppe were obviously more conducive to the formation of military leagues and confederacies that gave rise time and again to steppe empires. The Kushan case is, however, closer to the later Iranian models of state formation in that, like the later Afshars, Zands and Qajars, there is a dominant steppe/pastoral aristocracy (military tribal confederation) that imposes a form of centralized quasi-feudal order upon the conquered sedentary population. See also Frye (1996), 141–4.
[144] A very similar system of government is also found among the contemporary Sakas (also from Inner Asia) and the Pahlavas (Indo-Parthians) in India. Among the Saka rulers of Mathura in western India, a senior king was assisted in his duties by a junior king in a highly developed system of joint rule, and this is made manifest in the concept of dvairajya (double kingship) among them. The Saka and Parthian rulers of India also inherited the system of governing major districts through satraps from the Achaemenids, the ksatrapas (satraps) and mahaksatrapas. See Puri (1994b), 199–200.
[145] Narain (1990), 167.
[146] Czeglédy (1983), 91; Sinor (1990c), 202–3; Kollautz and Miyakawa (1970), 210–12; Narain (1990), 172–3.
[147] For information on Kushan expansion into the Tarim Basin in the second century ad, see Hitch (1988) and Bivar (1983a), 208–9.
[148] See Litvinsky et al., (1994), 479–80. See also Hill (2009), xxi, and Bivar (1983a), 203, 209.
[149] Narain (1990), 169.
[150] For the debate, see Hill (2009), 311–12. See also Benjamin (1998), 33, Wood (2002), 64, and Abdullaev (2007), 75, who identifies the Asiani as the rulers of the Tochari mentioned in Justin’s Prologue to Pompeius Trogus and then links them to the Kushans.
[151] Pritsak (1976c), 6.
[152] Pulleyblank (1995), 425, argues for a different location for Dayuan, but most scholars now accept the identification of Ferghana with Dayuan, see Benjamin (2007), 137.
[153] The Kangju also later controlled much of Sogdia, Benjamin (2007), 137; Hill (2009), 373. See also Daffinà (1982), 323–4, for a discussion on the location of the Kangju.
[154] Czeglédy (1983), 32. Trogus (Prol. 41, 7). See also Alemany (2000), 17. Hill (2009), 149, 152, suggests the possibility of linking the Asi with the Wusun, due to phonetic similarity in their names. The identification is also made by Tolstov (1961), 83. Sims-Williams (2002a), 240, argues that the Kushans were the royal family of the Asi.
[155] Yu (2004), 1–6, and Czeglédy (1983), 46; the Kangju would also intermittently control areas north of the Oxus, Yu (2004), 6.
[156] Hill (2009), 173.
[157] See Hill (2009), 33, 175, 381. Alemany (2000), 400–2, is more cautious about the identification. The fact that the Kangju subdued or merged with the Alans seems, however, to be substantiated by the Old Turkic runic inscriptions of Kül Tigin (ad 732), where we find the name Kängäräs (Kängär (Kangju) + As (Alans)), Pritsak (1976c), 7–8.
[158] Pulleyblank (1995), 427; Czeglédy (1983), 50; Zadneprovskiy (1994), 463, 466–7; Alemany (2000), 398; Kyzlasov (1996), 316. Professor La Vaissière in private correspondence with the author confirmed that it is entirely plausible that the Kangju exercised a degree of control over the Alans. To what extent is not entirely clear. On the possibility of Kangju domination over neighbouring Khwarezm, he also expressed a carefully guarded affirmative opinion. However, he also pointed out that there is as yet insufficient evidence to prove any Kangju domination over Khwarezm.
[159] Benjamin (2007), 155–6; Hill (2009), 182.
[160] Grenet, Podushkin and Sims-Williams (2007), 1026; Benjamin (2007), 150–1; Hill (2009), 175; Hulsewé and Loewe (1979), 130–1; Daffinà (1982), 324.
[161] Rapin (2007), 53, calls the Kangju a broadly ‘nomad’ empire with a system of fortified cities and capitals.
[162] Czeglédy (1983), 52; Sims-Williams (2002a), 240. Rapin (2007), 59–62, argues for the deep Central Asian origins of the Alans and notes that Chinese mirrors were used by the Alans. He also identifies the Asi and Asiani as Alans who formed a part of the Kangju Empire or a subdivision of it in southwestern Kazakhstan. See also Grenet and La Vassière (2005), 79–81. If Bivar’s (1983a), 192–3, identification of the Asiani/Asi with the Kushans is also correct, then we have the same or a related ruling clan or tribe ruling the Kushan Empire, Kangju Empire and the Alans. See also Vernadsky (1951), 345.
[163] Hill (2009), 173; Hulsewé and Loewe (1979), 47.
[164] Signs of Kangju–Xiongnu contacts can be seen in the discovery of a Xiongnu (Hunnic) style silver belt plaque at Kultobe in Kazakhstan, a site identified as belonging to the Kangju. See Grenet et al. (2007), 1019.
[165] For a discussion on the location of the Wusun, see Daffinà (1982), 326. For a general introduction on the Wusun, see Yu (2004), 25–32. See also Gardiner-Garden (1986).
[166] Han Shu 96b 1B; Benjamin (2007), 115. As a consequence, part of the population ruled by the Wusun kings were Yuezhi (p. 120).
[167] For the often-strained relationship between the Xiongnu Huns and the Wusun, originally vassals of the Xiongnu, see Benjamin (2007), 114–19.
[168] This type of pastoral economy and social stratification has been termed correctly by Cribb (1991), 42, as pastoral ‘feudalism,’ where a small, powerful elite own vast numbers of animals that they farm out to ‘tenant’ households. Somewhat reminiscent of the structure of medieval European feudal society.
[169] There also seems to have been at various stages a dual kingship of the Greater Kunmo and Lesser Kunmo, a typical feature of Inner Asian kingship. See Yu (2004), 40–1, 47–8, and Giele (2011), 60.
[170] Zadneprovskiy (1994), 460. See also Yu (2004), 33.
[171] Zadneprovskiy (1994), 461. The presence of the Yueban/Chuban kingdom, which is without a doubt Xiongnu in origin in eastern Kazakhstan in the fifth century, is further proof that the Huns were indeed Xiongnu in origin. See also Kyzlasov (1996), 320, and McGovern (1939), 364–5. See Sinor (1990b), 294, for further information on the Chuban alliance with the Toba Wei against the Rouran between ad 444 and 450.
[172] c. ad 350 suggests Czeglédy (1983), 62. Around ad 300 at the hands of the Kidarite Huns suggests Zeimal (1996), 120. Grenet et al. (2007), 1030, suggest that the fragmentation of the Kangju state may have begun as early as the late second or early third century ad.
[173] More on this shortly.
[174] Zadneprovskiy (1994), 463, 470. The Kangju were at various times vassals of the Yuezhi to the South and the Xiongnu to the East. See Zeimal (1983), 243, and Hill (2009), 177.
[175] Czeglédy (1983), 99.
[176] Grenet et al. (2007), 1030.
[177] Érdy (1995), 22.

Contemporary Inner Asian Empires (Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Centuries ad)

The White Huns (Chionites, Kidarites and Hephtalites)

The eventful fourth century ad, as already pointed out towards the beginning of this book, opened with the Southern Xiongnu/Hun sack of the capital of the Chinese Jin Empire in ad 311. The Southern Xiongnu power in China (Earlier/Later Zhao Empire[178]) quickly collapsed as other ethnic groups (The Murong Xianbei, Chiang etc.) and Chinese resistance drove them from their domains.[179] In the meantime, in the steppe further North and Northwest, new nomadic confederations called the Rouran (situated later firmly in Mongolia, possibly the Avars[180]) and Hua (EMC either Var or Ghor[181]), originally vassals of the Rouran,[182] were gradually taking shape. The Liangshu (54.812) provides evidence that would link the latter confederation (Hua) to the Hephtalites[183] of the fifth century ad who ruled the White Hun Empire. If the name Hua was transliterated as Var and not Ghor in EMC, the Hua may also be considered as the forerunners of the later Eurasian Avars.[184]

Czeglédy, regarding the Hua to be Vars (Avars), argued that a migration wave of Vars/Avars may have reached western Turkestan in the middle of the fourth century ad, and this may have had some kind of an impact on the Hun migration West.[185] More recently, it has been proposed that the Huns started moving West out of the Altai in the fourth century ad, not because of renewed military pressure from the East, but because of radical climate deterioration in the Altai region in that century.[186] Neither explanation is satisfactory, since the Hunnic expansion West may have commenced well before the fourth century. Érdy, on the basis of archaeological evidence provided by Hunnic cauldrons, has argued for a Hunnic presence in the Tobol, Irtish, Middle Ob region already in the third century ad.[187] However, the drastic change in climate in the fourth century may have had something to do with the sudden thrust of the Huns remaining in the Altai region in an opposite direction into Central Asia. As La Vaissière shows in his excellent analysis of the Chinese sources on the early migration of the Hephtalites, the Huns from the Altai suddenly moved South in the 350s ad.[188] The invasion of these Huns would have dire consequences for the Kangju (based in Tashkent and Sogdia), the Sassanians and Kushan remnants in Central Asia.

The Kidarite[189] Huns[190] appear on the scene sometime in the middle of the fourth century and are in firm possession of Bactria by ad 360.[191] According to an embassy from Sogdia that visited the Toba Wei court in ad 457, the Huns (called Xiongnu in the Wei Shu, proving without a shadow of a doubt that the White Huns (Central Asian Huns) at least were Xiongnu, and that the people whom our sources call Huns and Hunas in Central Asia and India are Xiongnu in origin[192]) conquered Transoxiana in the mid fourth century ad (three generations before the embassy).[193] These Huns, whom the Persians would call collectively Chionites,[194] at a later stage in the fifth century ad,[195] under the name White Huns (or Western Huns), were all ruled by a new royal clan named the Yeda/Yanda (嚈噠)[196] or Hephtalites[197] (sometimes also identified with the Eurasian Avars[198]).

There is general consensus among historians that the Chionites and the Huns were one and the same.[199] In ad 350, the Sassanian King Shapur II had to call off the siege of Nisibis to deal with a grim threat developing to the East. In fact, this was an eight-year-long conflict (ad 350–8) that brought the Persian Empire to the brink of destruction.[200] After somehow managing to forge an uneasy alliance with them, Shapur used Hunnic allies to augment his army in the siege of Amida in ad 360. There, Grumbates, the king (probably a sub-king) of the Chionites (his name being possibly Kurumpat: Turkish, ‘ruling prince’),[201] lost his son.[202] The subsequent reign of Bahram IV saw the Sassanids losing almost all of their East Iranian lands taken earlier from the Kushans[203] to the western Huns. Later incursions, especially those during the reigns of Bahram V (421–38), Yazdegard (438–57) and Peroz (457–84)[204], in other words at exactly the same time when the European Huns were menacing the Romans under Rua, Bleda and Attila, reduced the mighty Persians to tributary status to the Huns.[205]

In ad 454, a year after the death of the European Hunnic King, the Hephtalites (by now having more or less displaced the previous reigning dynasty, the Kidarites,[206] except in Gandhara and India[207]) won a decisive victory over the Sassanians. The next Sassanian King to reign, Peroz, was placed on the Persian throne by a Hephtalite army.[208] Later, Peroz bravely tried to free himself of Hephtalite dominance and tried his luck against them. He was defeated by a Hephtalite king called Akhshunwar by Tabari and Khushnavaz by Firdausi.[209] He escaped death on that occasion (ad 469), but according to Procopius, he was afterwards slain with most of his army in another encounter with the Huns (ad 484),[210] who placed his only surviving son Kubad on the throne as a vassal king.[211] In ad 487, Kubad was temporarily dethroned, and again with Hephtalite support he was able to regain his kingship.[212] However, the price was high, and in order to pay the required annual tribute to the Huns, he asked the Romans, with whom Persia had good relations for about half a century (largely due to Hunnic pressure, which prevented the Persians from upsetting the Romans and vice versa the Romans the Persians due to the European Hunnic threat), for loans. The Roman refusal would later, in ad 502, lead to renewal of ancient hostilities between the two empires.[213]

The Chinese historical records mention the vast extent of the Hephtalite Hunnic Empire. The Liangshu 54 lists among their domains Persia, Kashmir, Karashahr, Kucha, Kashgar and Khotan, and the Bei Shi 97: Kangju (Sogdia), Khotan, Kashgar and Persia.[214] More than thirty lands of the west are seen as being subject to the White Huns in our sources.[215] The Hephtalites by the yearad500 would also deal the death blow to the Indian Gupta Empire.[216]

In India, the terrified Indians identified two branches of the Hunnic nation: the Sveta Huna (White Huns, i.e, the Hephtalite Huns) and the Hara Huna (possibly Black Huns), the word Hara, according to some scholars, being a corruption of the Turkic word Kara (black).[217] Although it is far from certain, it has been speculated that the Hara Huna is a reference to Attila’s Huns in Europe.[218] All sorts of bizarre ideas have been put forward by historians from Procopius onwards about this identification: white and black. Procopius notes that the Hephtalites were ruled by a king and were guided by a lawful constitution,[219] i.e., that they had a sophisticated state structure comparable to those of the Sassanians whom they had vassalized. But, he, then, misinterprets the appellation ‘white’ to mean that the Hephtalites were white and not swarthy like the European Huns supposedly were.[220] As Pulleyblank[221] points out, white was symbolic of West among the steppe nomads. Black signified North and red the South, hence the existence also of Red Huns (Kermichiones).[222]

As Pritsak points out, in steppe societies the colour black signifying North and the colour Blue signifying east, both of which carried connotations of greatness and supremacy,[223] always had precedence over white (West) and red (South). Thus, whoever the Hara Huna were, they are likely to have had precedence over their formidable cousins the White Huns, at least initially. The fact that the term kara suggested elevated status among the European Huns too, as it did among other Inner Asian Turkic peoples, seems to be confirmed by the report in Olympiodorus that the supreme king of the Huns was called Karaton.[224]

The examination of the Chionite and later Hephtalite conquests also shows clearly that these White Hunnic conquerors (claiming Hunnic heritage like Attila’s Hun), who according to the Wei Shu[225] (103. 2290; 102.2278–9[226]) originated from exactly the same area as the European Huns (from the Altai region[227]) in the same time period c. ad 360,[228] possessed a military and social structure that matched those of the Xiongnu in the past. Without them, it is impossible to explain how they managed to defeat formidable opponents such as the Sassanians and the Guptas. The Wei Shu, as mentioned above, even specifically states that the fifth-century rulers of Sogdia,[229] i.e., the White Huns, are Xiongnu in origin (102.2270), thereby confirming the link between Central Asian Huns and the Xiongnu of old, and calls the country wen-na-sha, pronounced ‘Huna sha’ in EMC, i.e., King of the Huns.[230]

A fifth-century Chinese geographical work, called the Shi-san zhou ji by a certain Gan Yin preserved in Sung Shu 98, furthermore insists, on the basis of information derived probably from Sogdian merchants,[231] that the Alans of Europe and the Sogdians (whom the Chinese had just learned had been conquered by the Huns three generations earlier) were under different rulers. As Pulleyblank notes, the need to clarify this implies the misapprehension that both peoples were ruled by the same ruler. In fact, this is only natural given the fact that both had been conquered within the space of some ten years by the same people called Huns.[232] Also, in ways remarkably similar to the European Huns, the succession to the Hephtalite throne could pass from uncle to nephew[233], and artificial cranial deformation was practised among their elite, as among the European Huns and Alans.[234] They also practised the Xiongnu system of appointing vassal kings, e.g., the king of Zabulistan who held an autonomous fief within the empire and was instrumental in spearheading the Hephtalite thrust into India,[235] and collective governance of the empire was practised by several high-ranking yabgus and tegins.[236] In India, the Kidarites and then the Hephtalite Huns also introduced the rule of multiple rajas and rajputs who held territories in ‘fief’ to their overlord the Hunnic supreme king. Thus, a form of quasi-feudalism was introduced to India, and a transformation in the administration of revenues took place.[237] In subsequent chapters, we will see very similar transformations occurring in Europe after the Hunnic arrival.

[178] Golzio (1984), 22–3.
[179] See Holmgren (1982), 65–9.
[180] More on this later.
[181] Pulleyblank (1983), 453, has argued that in EMC Hua was pronounced Var, and he further suggests that these Var are identical with the Wuhuan, a branch of the Donghu confederation (including also the Xianbei (Serbi or Sirvi in EMC) conquered by the Xiongnu. Wuhuan in EMC, he suggests, was Agwan, which due to the absence of the sound r in EMC was the contemporary rendering of Agwar or Avar. See also Czeglédy (1983), 95. However, Professor La Vaissière, in private correspondence with the author, has suggested an alternative reading, which would make Hua EMC for Ghor, a region of Afghanistan inhabited by the Hephtalites, rather than Var. As of today, there is no consensus on the transliteration of Hua in EMC.
[182] See Sinor (1990b), 298.
[183] See La Vaissière (2007), 125. Sinor (1990b), 298, argues that the Hephtalites were the ruling dynasty of the Hua. The Hua were originally under Rouran overlordship, but later seem to have broken free from Rouran control according to the Liangshu cited above.
[184] See Theophylact Simocatta, Historiae 7.7–8, ed. C. de Boor, 256.23–262.17,full text and translation in German in Haussig (1953), 281–90. Theophylact identifies the two leading tribes of the Oghurs (either the Hephtalite-controlled Turkic tribes in Kazakhstan or members of the Tiele (Chile) tribal confederacy in the same region) as Var and Khunni (i.e., Huns, see Haussig (1953), 347).
[185] Czeglédy (1983), 34–5. The Rouran, probably in origin the Wuhuan (Avars?) from further East in Inner Mongolia, were found in the vicinity of Dunhuang, in close proximity to Turpan when they began their extraordinary rise under Shelun Khagan in the late fourth century, Christian (1998), 237. There is yet no evidence whatsoever that the Rouran expanded further West before Shelun’s rise in the late fourth century ad, i.e., they appear too late on the scene to have been responsible for putting pressure on the Huns in the mid fourth century ad. The Hua or the Hephtalites, as noted above, became their vassals presumably some time in the late fourth century ad, but the Hua-Hephtalites are taken by La Vaissière (2007), 121, to be Oghuric Turkic Huns who were part of the Hunnic migration wave, not the Avars or Vars. The first Avar movement into what is now modern Kazakhstan (the original territory of the European Huns in the fourth century ad) should perhaps be dated to the time of the Toba Wei alliance with the Chuban Huns in the fifth century, which will be discussed further shortly.
[186] Schlütz and Lehmkuhl (2007), 114.
[187] Érdy (1995), 45. The presence of a group identified as Khunnoi by Ptolemy (3.5.10) already in the second century ad in the vicinity of the Sarmatian Bastarnae and Roxolani (situated in the Nogai steppe), also suggests strongly that the Hunnic expansion West commenced much earlier than their famous fourth-century eruption into the Pontic steppe recorded by Ammianus. The absorption of the Dingling or Oghuric Turkic tribes in Kazakhstan is likely to have been a long drawn-out process.
[188] See La Vaissière (2007), 121. See also p. 124 for the text and translation of the crucial passages in the Tongdian, 5259, which provide the definite date for the southward migration of the Huns from the Altai. The passages are based on the much earlier Wei Shu.
[189] Could just be a reference to western Huns, see Kononov (1977), 62, 75, for the old Turkic runic term kidirti meaning West.
[190] Whether the Kidarite dynasty was originally Hunnic or Iranian is disputed. Tremblay (2001), 188, thinks that they and the later Hephtalites, who overthrew them, are Iranians. Grenet (2002), 203–24, thinks likewise. However, it does seem more likely that they were part of the initial Hunnic wave into eastern Iran who became Iranian in culture after their conquest and claimed to be the heirs to the Kushan legacy (see Zeimal (1996), 120, 127, Frye (1996), 175, and La Vaissière (2007), 123). Priscus, fr. 33 and fr. 41, Blockley (1983), 336, 346, and 348, calls them Huns and mentions the Kidarite king Khunkas. Tremblay notes that the etymology for this name has to be X(y)on-qan, i.e., Hun Khan (Khan of the Huns), (2001), 188; Grenet (2002), 209. See also Biswas (1973), 15, Bivar (1983a), 212, and Frye (1975b), 38, who agree that they are Huns, though Frye is of the opinion that the Hephtalites had a powerful Iranian element in their ruling elite, which is likely to be true. Altheim (1959), 32–3, suggests probably correctly that the name Kidarite is an old Turkish designation for West (i.e., the western wing of the Hunnic polity, thus meaning exactly the same thing as White Huns (white being the colour designation for West in the steppe)). The Kidarites were pushed out of Sogdia in the fifth century and then destroyed in the Gandhara region by the Hephtalites towards the end of the fifth century, sometime between ad 477 (the date of their last embassy to the Toba Wei) and ad 520 (when Gandhara is definitely under Hephtalite control according to a Chinese pilgrim). See Enoki (1959), 27.
[191] Bivar (1983a), 212. An Armenian source, P’austos Buzand, tells us that the Hon (Huns) under the Kidarite dynasty conquered the region before ad 367. See also Czeglédy (1983), 71, 84.
[192] Wei Shu 102.2270. See Pritsak (1954a), 239. See also Érdy (1995), 21, for archaeological evidence (Hunnic–Xiongnu type cauldron found near the Amu Darya valley in the Khiva area and two Hunnic funerary cauldrons made of clay in the delta of the Syr Darya) that points to the Xiongnu identity of the White Huns. Related artefacts have also been found in the areas controlled by the European Huns which all point to the same conclusion that both the European and Central Asian Huns were Xiongnu in origin.
[193] Czeglédy (1983), 73–4.
[194] See Bivar (1983a), 211, and also Pritsak (1954a), 243.
[195] After ad 437 at the earliest suggests Sinor (1990b), 299.
[196] Chinese rendition of their name in the Liangzhigongtu. The Liangshu 54 calls them Yandaiyilituo/Hephtalite.
[197] The Hunnic origin or self-identification of the Hephtalite dynasty is reflected in the form OIONO or HIONO, which appears in their coinage. See Golden (1992), 81. The Liangshu, as noted above, calls them or their country Hua (Var or Ghor). The most reliable analysis of the Hephtalite dynasty and its origins is that of La Vaissière (2007), 119–124. La Vaissière refutes much of the erroneous views on the Hephtalites held by Enoki (1959); (1963), 12–32. See also Kollautz and Miyakawa (1970), 95. The Iranian origin of the Hephtalites vouched for by many scholars (most prominently Enoki), has now been largely discredited due to the discovery that the so-called Hephtalite language with Iranian affinities, used to justify the Iranian theory, was not introduced by the Hephtalites themselves, but was the indigenous language of the region conquered by the Hephtalites. See Sims-Williams (2002a), 234.
[198] The Hephtalites are one of the two peoples sometimes identified with the Eurasian Avars (Vars) mentioned in our Byzantine sources. Theophylact 7.7 (Whitby and Whitby 1986, 189) would name the Var (Avars?) and Huns as Lords of the Oghurs. If the Hua-Hephtalites were Var (uncertain), this could possibly be a reference to the Hephtalite/Var conquest of the Oghurs (meaning ‘tribes’ in Oghuric Turkic) in what is now Kazakhstan, who had earlier been dominated by the Huns, hence the reference to the overlordship of the Vars and Huns over the Oghurs. Menander Protector refers to the Varkunites (Var-Huns, Menander fr. 19.1, Blockley (1985), 174), as does Pseudo-Moses of Chorene who calls them Walxon (again Var and Hun), Szádeczky-Kardoss (1990), 207. See also Czeglédy (1983), 92 ff. The Rouran Khaganate, however, which we will meet shortly, could also have been the Vars/Avars mentioned by our Byzantine sources. See Golden (2000), 284.In any case, the Vars and the Huns seem to have been closely related, if not ethnically then at least culturally. We can note for instance the fact that one of the last Khagans of the Rouran, Anagui (ad 520–52) had the same name as a sixth-century Utigur Hun prince who lived around the same time, Anagaios (Menander Protector fr. 43, Alemany (2000), 187), Kollautz and Miyakawa (1970), 57.
[199] Enoki (1959), 24, probably correctly connects them to the Hun-na-sha (king of the Huns) state/dynasty, who, according to Chinese sources, controlled Sogdia in the late fourth and early fifth centuries ad. See also Frye (1975b), 38 and Bivar (1983a), 211 on the Chionites.
[200] Bivar (1983a), 211; Czeglédy (1983), 79.
[201] Tremblay (2001), 188, thinks that the name is Iranian. It is also similar to the name of the later Bulgar Khan Krum. Haussig (2000), 273.
[202] Ammianus Marcellinus 16.9.3–4; 19.1.7.
[203] Altheim (1959), vol. 4, 28.
[204] For details, see Altheim (1959), vol. 2, 258–9.
[205] Procopius 1. 4.35. See also Kollautz and Miyakawa (1970), 102.
[206] The change from the Kidarites to the Hephtalites was a political upheaval among the White Hunnic migrants already in western Central Asia, not another invasion wave arriving from Inner Asia, see La Vaissière (2007), 123–4.
[207] Kidarite expansion South into Gandhara and India occurred probably prior to ad 410, Zeimal (1996), 122. By the middle of the fifth century, they were invading the territories of the Indian Gupta Empire, and despite the triumphant rhetoric of victory found in Gupta records, the Kidarite Huns wrested control of the Punjab away from the Guptas (p. 124). Similar empty rhetoric of non-existent victories will also be encountered later on in the Romans’ records of their interactions with the European Huns.
[208] Kollautz and Miyakawa (1970), 102, and Christian (1998), 220.
[209] Bivar (1983a), 214; Litvinsky (1996b), 139–40.
[210] Procopius 1.3.1–22; 1.4.1–14. See also Frye (1984), 148, and Rubin (2000), 642. Agathias 4.27.3–4, Frendo (1975), 130, provides much the same information and emphasizes that the Hephtalites are a Hunnic people.
[211] Frye (1984), 149.
[212] Procopius 1.6.10; Theophanes,am 5968, Mango and Scott (1997), 189–91.
[213] Procopius 1.7.1–3.
[214] See La Vaissière (2007), 125, and also discussion on the extent of the Hephtalite state in Biswas (1973), 25.
[215] Kollautz and Miyakawa (1970), 98. See also Miller (1959), 11–12.
[216] Litvinsky (1996b), 142; Chakrabarti, K. (1996), 188; Wiet et al. (1975), 35–6.
[217] Marquart (1901); Biswas (1973), 26; Pulleyblank (2000b), 93.
[218] See Czeglédy (1983), 77. Considered dubious by some.
[219] Procopius 1.3.2–7.
[220] Procopius 1.3.4. There is endless, fruitless debate on whether the Hephtalites were mainly Turco-Mongol (Mongoloid) or Iranian (Caucasoid) in ethnic composition. Marquart (1901) and Grousset (1939) think they were Mongols. McGovern (1939) and La Vaissière (2007) argue for the Turks, which is likely to be correct, and Enoki (1959) for an Iranian origin. Humbach (1966–7), 30 and (1969), 33–52, esp. 34–6, argues that they were a combination of Alans and Huns. See Alemany (2000), 345–6 for further details. Alemany himself is cautious. As mentioned earlier, they claimed to be Huns themselves. The confusion results largely from the multiple and conflicting origin theories provided by our Chinese sources (Wei Shu 102.2278–9, for instance, suggests both an Iranian origin via the Yuezhi and a Turkish alternative via Gaoche). Even if we were to just dismiss the reference to the Yuezhi as an anachronism, the confusion in the Chinese sources is in all likelihood actually indicative of the real ethnic heterogeneity of the Hephtalite state and even its elite. All the steppe empires of Eurasia were, in fact, made up of numerous ethnic groups. It is likely that the Hephtalite Empire included all three linguistic groups with perhaps a Turkic military elite. Hephtalite personal names, however, as Tremblay (2001) argues, for the most part seem to be Iranian, indicating a high degree of cultural and probably ethnic fusion. The same heterogeneity ism of course, a characteristic feature of the Xiongnu and also our European Huns.
[221] Pulleyblank (1983), 452–3, also speculates that the Var (Hua) tribes, which along with the Huns may have constituted the ruling core of the Hephtalite state (Golden (1992), 80; Czeglédy (1983) 117–20), were connected to the Wuhuan confederacy of Inner Mongolia. For similarities in headdress and hairstyles between the Wuhuan and the Hephtalites, see Pulleyblank (2000b), 92. If his observations and transliterations are true, this would make the Hephtalites, at least in part, Mongol speakers. Bivar (1983a), 213, on the other hand, argues for an aristocracy that spoke Turkish, pointing out that the last Hephtalite ruler to be recorded in history, a certain Nezak who ruled in the region of Badghis (Northeast of Herat), bore the Turkic title of Tarkhan, Bivar (1983a), 215 (but Tarkhan was originally a Xiongnu (possibly non-Turkic) title, Golden (2006–7), 30; Grenet (2002), 214). The fact that the Hephtalites referred to themselves as Huns argues against an Iranian, sedentary origin in Badakhstan. However, the Iranization of the Hephtalites and the presence of an Iranian element in their confederacy from very early on are certainly possible. See also Bona (1991), 30, who argues that most European Huns were actually Caucasoid and that less than 20–25 per cent were Mongoloid.
[222] Pulleyblank (2000b), 92. See Theophanes 446.21, Moravcsik (1958), vol. ii, 158–9. Dani, Litvinsky, and Zamir Safi (1996), 169, identify the Hara (Kara) Huns with the red Huns (Kermichiones). Golden (1992), 81, and Sinor (1990b), 300–1, also agree that the designation white and black are common to nomadic confederations. It is, as mentioned above, indicative of the territorial divisions of the steppe polity and has nothing to do with skin complexion. Procopius was relying on hearsay like most Classical authors, and his information on the Hephtalites ‘expresses an antiquarian, somewhat Herodotean spirit’ that is not always reliable, Matthews (1989), 62.
[223] Pritsak (1954b), 382; (1955b), 259.
[224] Olympiodorus fr. 19 (80, 173). See also Moravcsik (1958), vol. 2, 341.
[225] See Holmgren (1982), 14–18, for a good, critical discussion on the Wei Shu.
[226] The Wei Shu 103.2290, tells us that towards the beginning of the fifth century to the northwest of the Rouran there were in the vicinity of the Altai the remaining descendents of the Xiongnu. In 102.2278–9, as mentioned above, it gives details about the Yeda (i.e., Hephtalites, who are described as being either of the race of the Yuezhi or a branch of the Gaoche (Dingling Turks)) migration from the Altai mountains to the southwest into Central Asia. The Hephtalites became the ruling dynasty of the White Huns.
[227] Hunnic archaeological remains have been found in this region from the first century ad onwards. See Pritsak (1954a), 243. Pritsak also argues that the core territory of these western Xiongnu/Huns before their great push further West into Iran and Europe in the fourth century was the Talas river and the area around the Issyk-kul. He also argues that a Hunnic Kurgan, dating to the first or second century ad, was discovered in the Volga region, seemingly confirming the presence of some Huns this far West already in the second century ad. More on this question in Chapter 4. Whether or not the Huns had really advanced this far West in the second century ad is still uncertain, but the Hunnic domination of the Zhetysu region (the territory usually assigned to the Wusun) before the fourth century vouched for by Pritsak needs some further consideration. The Weilue (Sanguozhi 30.863–4) seems to allocate this region in the third century ad to the Wusun, and the area to the West of this area and North of the Kangju to the Dingling. The Wusun and the Kangju are said to have neither expanded nor shrunk since Han times. Daffinà (1982), 327, notes that according to the Wei Shu 102, 9b, 5–6 = Bei Shi 97, 14b, 7–8, the remnants of the Wusun were forced to relocate to the Pamirs by ad 437/8. See also Zadneprovskiy (1994), 461. By then, the Zhetysu region was firmly in the hands of the Weak Huns (Yueban/Chuban). This would seem to suggest that the Huns only managed to conquer the Wusun and also the Kangju some time in the mid fourth century shortly before their expansion into Alan and Kushan/Sassanian territories to the West and South. Earlier Hunnic presence in neighbouring Dzungaria and continued presence in the region is confirmed by the discovery of a Hunnic cauldron (dated to the second century ad) in that area, see Érdy (1995), 45–6. The bulk of the Hunnic nation, however, seems to have been situated in the Altai region and certain elements also in areas further West corresponding to modern northern/northeastern Kazakhstan, Irtysh and Middle Ob region in the third century ad, Érdy(1995), 45, so bordering the Alans and Kangju to the West and Southwest and the Wusun to the South.
[228] La Vaissière (2005), 21.
[229] For discussion, see Hirth (1901), 91 (now certainly outdated); Shiratori (1923), 100–1; Enoki (1955), 43–62; Wright (1997), 96; Pulleyblank (2000b), 93.
[230] See Pulleyblank (2000b), 91–2; Maenchen-Helfen (1944–5), 225–31; Miller (1959), 12.
[231] Pulleyblank (2000b), 93–4.
[232] Pulleyblank (2000b), 94. Pseudo-Styliten also identifies the European Huns as the same people as the western Huns who invaded Persia (Hephtalites), which suggests at the very least a close affinity between the two groups and most likely the common origins of both from the former Hunnic empire in Central Asia, Altheim (1959), 39.
[233] Kollautz and Miyakawa (1970), 98.
[234] Frye (1996), 176, and Grenet (2002), 210.
[235] Czeglédy (1983), 78.
[236] Grenet (2002), 212. The title tegin is likely to be Mongolic (i.e., Wuhuan/ Xianbei) in origin, which would make perfect sense if we considered the Var element in the Hephtalite ruling elite to be Wuhuan. See Sims-Williams (2002a), 234, his discussion on Pulleyblank’s early observations.
[237] Dani et al.(1996), 172–3; Chakrabarti (1996), 189. Possible Kushan (also Inner Asian in origin) precedents for this quasi-feudal structure that the Huns probably built on cannot be denied (p. 194).

The Rouran Khaganate

However, this is not yet the whole story. Some forty years before Attila ascended the throne of the Huns in Europe, in the East in Mongolia and Turkestan another mightier and even more formidable empire was being created by a Chinggis Khan-like figure, Shelun Khagan of the Rouran.[238] The Rouran like the Hephtalites and the European Huns contained a strong element of Huns (Xiongnu remnants[239]) who collaborated with certain Xianbei tribes to form the Khaganate under Shelun.[240] In ad 394, Shelun broke free from vassalage under the Toba Xianbei Empire (also steppe nomads) whose centre of power had begun to shift South away from Mongolia after the Toba conquest of Northern China.[241] In just six to eight years, Shelun subdued almost twelve powerful, nomadic tribal confederacies or states in the vast region stretching from the borders of Koguryo (Korea) in the East to Dzungaria in the West (the original homeland of the White Huns and the European Huns). Even the great Hephtalites were for a while vassals of the Rouran Empire.[242]

As Kradin points out, the Rouran Empire was very much a typical steppe empire. Its organization and hierarchical structure was almost a complete replica of former Xiongnu practices. The empire, like that of the Xiongnu, was divided into two wings in a dual system with the ruler of the East holding greater prestige and overall authority,[243] though later the western ruler seems to have reversed the equation, thus mirroring a similar process among the Huns under Attila, who overthrew his Eastern overlord Bleda.[244] The empire had a core Rouran tribe leading ethnically related tribes as vassals and holding in servitude conquered tribes like the Uighurs under Zhi-paye-zhi.[245] Shelun enforced in the Xiongnu manner a compulsory registration of all warriors, who were instructed to follow strict rules of conduct in battle. Disobedience was punished with severe penalties which mirror the policies of the Great Xiongnu Shanyu Modun.[246]

The entire nation was organized in a decimal system, again exactly like the Xiongnu. The 1,000 formed the detachment (run/military head) and 100 the banner (Zhuang commanded by the Shawu/leader or commander). In all in times of full mobilization, between 100,000 and 300,000 horsemen could be raised for military service (again approximating the size of earlier Xiongnu armies).[247] Political power was concentrated in the hands of a charismatic, ruling clan. The ruler, Khagan, was chosen usually from among the direct male heirs of the previous ruler or from a collateral line within the royal family. The closest relatives of the Khagan were given fiefs, usually in the form of large military units with the title of Xielifa.[248] Under them were the leader of the 1,000 and 100, usually tribal chiefs and clan elders of different levels. Among them were chosen the dachen, the grandees of the empire, classed as high and low ranking with titles distributed at the will of the Khagan. ‘It was a complex hierarchical multi-level system.’[249]

The succession to the Rouran throne also shows the features that we discover in Hunnic contexts. The ruling Khagan would always try to pass on his throne to his sons. However, if a close relative had greater prestige, this could lead to a succession struggle, which in most cases ended without bloodshed,[250] though there were notable exceptions. Thus, out of sixteen Khagans, eight were collateral members of the royal family, nephews who, like Attila and Bleda, inherited the throne from an uncle. Under the rule of Doulun Khagan, however, the system could not prevent bloodshed. The Uighurs under a Rouran ruler Abuzhiluo (we see here the typical steppe practice, also found among the Xiongnu and later the Huns and Göktürks as well, of appointing a member of the royal clan or a close subordinate from the ruling tribe, Rouran, Hun or Turk, as the ruler of a vassal horde[251]), 100,000 tents in all, revolted and had to be suppressed (the constant Hun demands to the Romans for the return of fugitives comes to mind and also the destruction of the horde of fugitive Goths under Radagaisus by Uldin in ad 406).[252] In the process, two armies were raised to suppress the rebellion. One was led by the Khagan, the other by his uncle Nagai. The Khagan suffered defeat, but Nagai had success. This was interpreted by Rouran troops to be a sign that heaven’s favour had left the Khagan and passed to Nagai. Nagai murdered the Khagan and ascended the throne in a coup,[253] demonstrating the extraordinary importance attached to military success in steppe politics, which as we shall see later, explains a lot of the behaviour of Hunnic kings in Europe.[254]

We also hear that a Rouran Khagan Anagui[255] later built a capital city, Mumocheng, encircled with two walls (Liangshu 54), and hired Chinese defectors as clerks to maintain written records (Song Shu 95). We are no doubt reminded of Attila’s Roman secretaries Orestes (the father of the last Roman emperor Romulus Augustulus) and possibly also Onegesius.[256] The Khagan was also guarded by a staff of bodyguards (which mirror the institution of intimates (epitēdeioi) among the Huns of which the Hun king of the Sciri, Edeco, was a member) who watched over the person of the ruler in shifts.[257] This Rouran institution would be inherited by the Turks who overthrew them in the sixth century. Curiously, these guards would be referred to as the böri (wolves), the wolf being the traditional sacred totemic symbol of the Turco-Mongol peoples.[258] The Ashina ruler of the Göktürks and the later Mongols all held the wolf in reverence.[259] What is intriguing is that the son of Attila’s bodyguard, Edeco, was called Hunoulphus (‘the Hun wolf’). It is to be wondered whether this name is suggestive of his father’s association with the imperial bodyguard.[260]

[238] See Kyzlasov (1996), 321, for the career of this remarkable figure.
[239] Duan (1988), 118–20, the Xiongnu survived in Mongolia as the Bayeqi until the early fifth century when they were fully incorporated into the Rouran Khaganate. See also Kyzlasov (1996), 322.
[240] Golden (1992), 77. See also Pulleyblank (2000b), 84.
[241] Pulleyblank (2000b), 79–82.
[242] McGovern (1939), 407; Enoki (1959), 1; Biswas (1973), 34; Golden (1992), 79–80.
[243] Kradin (2005), 154. This dualism would surface again and again in states ruled by steppe peoples. For the political division and organization of the Göktürk Khaganate into eastern and western halves in the sixth century and its maintenance until the eighth century, after the collapse of the Rouran in the sixth, see Golden (1992), 127 ff., and Sinor (1990b), 304–5. The Turkish empires of the Karakhanids of Central Asia in the ninth to twelfth centuries (Golden (1992), 125, and Soucek (2000), 84) and the contemporaneous Seljuk Sultanate in the Middle East before its sedentarization under Malik Shah, would also practise dualism and clan rule (Golden 1992, 219), as would the Pecheneg tribes of the western steppe in the ninth to twelfth centuries in the same region inhabited previously by the Huns (p. 266). The Pechenegs, according to Constantine Porphyrogenitus, consisted of eight tribes/themata (provinces), four tribes situated on each side of the Dnieper river. Three of the eight tribes called the Kangar (Chabouxingyla, Iabdiertim and Kouartzitzour) ranked higher than the rest and the Iabdiertim reigned supreme. The eight tribes were in turn subdivided into forty districts. Each tribe would be associated with a colour (usually that of a horse) and their rulers would bear different titles indicating rank. Much the same as the Huns and the Turks before them (p. 266). See also Curta (2006), 182–3.
[244] Kradin (2005), 155.
[245] Exactly the same structure is found also in the Göktürk Khaganate that replaced the Rouran Khaganate in the mid sixth century and also among the later Khazars who controlled southern Russia and the Ukraine from the seventh to the tenth centuries as successors of the Western Turks, see Findley (2005), 43, 50. The Rouran and Göktürks also taxed tributary sedentary populations, and the same system is also found among the western Huns.
[246] See the anecdotes concerning Modun’s punishment of the slightest infringements among his followers in Shiji 110.2888.
[247] See Kradin (2005), 162, and also Kollautz and Miyakawa (1970), 63 and 89.
[248] Kollautz and Miyakawa (1970), 89. Imperial governors in the succeeding Göktürk Ashina dynasty that replaced the Rouran also consisted entirely of members of the ruling dynasty. These governors were allocated ‘fiefs’ in the familiar appanage system, which we find in the preceding Xiongnu and Rouran Empires. See Findley (2005), 44–5.
[249] Kradin (2005), 162.
[250] A similar system of succession is also noted among the later Turkic Pechenegs in the Pontic steppe. According to Constantine Porphyrogenitus, the Pecheneg kings had no right to determine the succession, which usually resulted in collateral succession within the same royal clan. No one, however, could succeed to the throne from outside the royal family. See Khazanov (1984), 179, and Golden (1992), 11. The Mongol Kuriltai (a diet of royals, nobles and worthies) would later in the thirteenth century elect a new Khan in a similar way to the Pechenegs, but with greater authority being given to the reigning Khagan depending on his prestige in a manner identical to earlier Rouran practice. For the Mongol law of succession, see Bacon (1958), 56–7.
[251] The Göktürks who replaced the Rouran as masters of their former empire would also adopt exactly the same policy towards their subjects and appointed members of the ruling Ashina clan as rulers or governors of important tribes, e.g., the Basmils. See Golden (1992), 142–3, 146, and Tekin (1968), Bilga Kagan Inscription, p. 275 for Basmils and p. 278 for governors. See also Kürsat-Ahlers (1994), 352–3, who notes that the Turks imposed Ashina (royal clan) members as rulers on Karluks, Basmils, On Ok, Khazars and the Pechenegs (in their case a son-in-law, reminiscent of Aradaric, related by marriage to Attila, and vassal king of the Gepids in the Hunnic Empire, as we shall see later). The Göktürk Empire, which stretched from the Black Sea to the borders of Korea, possibly at one point even as far as the Pacific, created a Pax Turcica that allowed for the free trade of goods between East and West, a forerunner to the grander empire of the Mongols in the thirteenth century. The Uighurs who supplanted the Göktürks also imposed governors on conquered tribes, the Basmils and Qarluks, Golden (2006–7), 33.
[252] Kradin (2003), 80, points out correctly that the political structure of the nomadic steppe empire and the militarization of the entire population, which was its distinctive feature, could frequently lead to insurrection and desertion among disaffected tribes who enjoyed a degree of internal autonomy under the hegemony of the ruling tribe. Proximity to an agrarian, sedentary civilization, which could finance such revolts or desertions and accommodate runaway fugitives from the steppe empire, could exacerbate tensions within it. In the earlier Xiongnu Empire, there were also cases of desertions of tribes who fled West to escape Xiongnu rule, e.g., the Yuezhi who fled into Bactria (Han Shu 96a: 14b–15a) and the Wusun into Kazakhstan (Shiji 123:9a–10a). Political dissidents also fled to Han China like the Hun-yeh king who defected with his entire tribe in 121 bc (Shiji 123: 9b–10a). See Barfield (1981), 49–50. It is also in such a context that we should interpret the saga of Radagaisus and also probably the Alans of ad 405–6 who departed the Danubian plains for Roman territory, away from Hunnic domination.
[253] Kwanten (1979), 19–20.
[254] The overriding importance of military success among steppe nomads as the instrument of legitimization is clearly brought to light in the steppe notion of charisma deriving from heavenly ordained good fortune – Iranian farnah and Turkic kut. See Frye (1989), 135–40, and Khazanov (2003), 43, for more details. This notion of charisma (i.e., the right to rule) deriving from good fortune (military success) was intimately linked to the ideology of divine kingship and the theory of the mandate of heaven. Ruling clans like the Xiongnu ruling house, the Turkic Ashina clan and the Mongol Chinggisids (Di Cosmo, Frank and Golden (2009), 1) all claimed the divine mandate to rule the earth bestowed by heaven on their chosen clan. The Ashina clan would even claim divine origin (see Golden 1982, 37–76, for an excellent discussion on imperial ideology among pre-Mongol steppe peoples), and a similar claim to a heavenly mandate can even be seen in the much earlier case of the Scythian royal horde, which in its foundation legend claimed for its ancestor the heavenly gift of burning gold objects that fell from the sky, which he alone could access due to divine favour (Hdt. 4.5). Attila would, of course, also lay claims to divine favour by the discovery of the sword of Mars (God of war), Jordanes, Getica 35.183.
[255] His name, as mentioned earlier, is the same as that of the sixth-century near contemporary Utigur Hunnic king Anagai in the Pontic steppe, Menander Protector, fr. 19.1, Blockley (1985), 172.
[256] More on the origins of Onegesius and Orestes later.
[257] Kradin (2005), 163.
[258] For the importance of the wolf in early southern Siberian art, especially Altaian art and iconography in the first and second centuries ad (the region fromw which the Huns would later begin their long trek West), see Rice (1965a), 37–8.
[259] Golden (2001a), 39.
[260] More on this in the next chapter.

Sedentarism among steppe peoples

Another important aspect of steppe empires contemporaneous with and prior to the Huns is the presence of a sedentary, agrarian element in their polities.[261] The early Iranian-speaking ‘nomads’ collectively named the Scythians/Saka in our sources were often by no means pure nomads.[262] In the fifth century bc, Herodotus claimed that certain Scythians had become settled farmers (4.17–18), and this observation has been proved correct by archaeology.[263] Herodotus relates that the Budinians, who are part Greek and part Scythian, had established a town called Gelonus (4.108.1), which was later burned down by Darius (4.123.1). According to Rolle, archaeologists have discovered ‘more than a hundred – fortified settlements – in the forest steppe region’[264], which closely resemble the wooden town described by Herodotus.[265] Some scholars even believe that they have found in the large ancient settlement of Bel’sk the town of Gelonus.[266] There is evidence of craft industry, agriculture and even horticultural activity in this town.[267] The Xiongnu, who are often viewed as quintessential nomads,[268] also possessed a strong sedentary element. Modern archaeology has shown that, like the Scythians, part of the Xiongnu had become settled or was from the very beginning sedentary and engaged in agriculture and craft production.[269]

The steppe confederations and empires originating from Central Asia were particularly hybrid in the sense that their economy had always been sustained from very early on by a combination of pastoralism and irrigated agriculture,[270] which was introduced into southern Central Asia as early as the middle of the first millennium bc. The combination of nomadic conquerors and agriculturalists triggered the rise of the first political federations or empires in Central Asia around the seventh century bc.[271] Following in their footsteps, the steppe empires of the Yuezhi (Kushans) and the Kangju (overlord of the Alans), in fact, presided over the highest level of development in Central Asian irrigation systems.[272] The Kangju (which intermittently controlled Sogdia) and also the neighbouring state of Khwarezm,[273] were hybrid polities that contained both pastoral elements and long-established communities (some dating back to the fifth century bc) with irrigation systems, agriculture, mining and manufacturing centers.[274]

Although their military power was dependent upon the nomadic population in the steppe, the elite of the Kangju spent their winters in a capital city and their culture shows a considerable level of sophistication.[275] The neighbouring Wusun, whose territory would be seized by the Xiongnu/Huns, also possessed a walled capital city, which functioned as the political and administrative centre of their state. They also practised agriculture to supplement their semi-nomadic pastoral economy.[276] This symbiosis of pastoralism[277] and sedentary agriculture would continue to be a regular feature of steppe polities in the Middle Ages.[278] The European Avars, who displaced the Hunnic Empire in the sixth century in the western steppe, were noted by the Romans for their grain-producing capacity, which distinguished them from Germanic federates of earlier centuries. The Avars on several occasions supplied defeated Roman armies and populace with food and deported Roman civilians (270,000 (!) in c. 619 alone, so we are told[279]) to areas North of the Danube in order to augment their agricultural base.[280] Mahmud al-Kashgari, a member of the Karakhanid Turkish dynasty that ruled Transoxiana (centred around modern Uzbekistan) in the eleventh century,[281] who wrote the famous Diwan Lugat at-Turk (written c. ad 1075), in his overview of medieval Turkish tribes, also alerts us to the fact that of the twenty Turkic tribes, ten were sedentary.[282] Thus, the domination of a core of steppe pastoralists was by no means a hindrance to co-existence/symbiosis with a subject sedentary population, and the steppe political system was structurally not incompatible with stable tributary administration. The longevity and essential stability of steppe-based empires like the Xiongnu and steppe-derived entities, such as the Parthian Empire, are a telling reminder that the myth of political anarchy and rampant disorder that dominates our perception of Central Asian steppe societies requires a radical re-evaluation.

[261] Di Cosmo (1994), 1092–1126; Markley (forthcoming), 15; Beckwith (2009), 341–2; Soucek (2000), 43; Christian (1998), 91, 128. See also Czeglédy (1983), 119, for the co-existence of urbanized and nomadic Hephtalites.
[262] The strict dichotomy of nomads and sedentary peoples leads to all kinds of misunderstandings and confusions. The divide is not as clear-cut as is often believed. For a good definition of nomadic pastoralism see Cribb (1991), 15–20. Cribb also provides good examples of later Turkic and Kurdish tribal confederacies that possessed both nomadic and sedentary elements integrated into a single entity (26–7). See also Batty (2007), 31, and Gorbunova (1992), 33.
[263] Archibald (2002), 56 ff. and Sulimirsky (1985), 152, 182–3.
[264] Rolle (1989), 117, and Christian (1998), 140.
[265] See also Minyaev (1996), 81.
[266] Rolle (1989), 119.
[267] Rolle (1989), 119, and Tsetskhladze (2007), 48. The Apasiakoi Saka of the Syr Darya delta, closer to the original home of the European Huns, were also sedentarizing pastoralists who engaged in agriculture and may even have built large towns and fortified settlements. The Saka may also have been instrumental in introducing urban culture to the Tarim basin further East in the first millennium bc. See Christian (1998), 132 and 139. See also Abetekov and Yusupov (1994), 30, for evidence of ceramic production in the steppe region.
[268] In fact, as Golden (2009a), 91, points out, pastoral nomadism itself probably ‘evolved in agricultural communities in which animal husbandry became the dominant economic activity.’
[269] See Lubo-Lesnichenko (1989), 47, and also Minyaev (2001), 3, who provide a description of the Ivolga complex near Ulan Ude which shows signs of agriculture and fortifications. See also Ishjamts (1994), 156–8, Honeychurch and Amartuvshin (2006a), 266–7, Brosseder and Miller (2011b), 27, and Batsaikhan (2011), 122–3.
[270] For this symbiosis between farmers and pastoralists, see Tapper (1991), 528.
[271] See Dandamaev (1994), 41 and Diakonoff (1985), 129–31.
[272] Mukhamedjanov (1994), 270. For urban development under the Kushans, see Litvinsky (1994), 299 ff.
[273] For the astonishing sophistication of the sedentary, Khwarezmian civilization with which the Huns were geographically adjacent before their irruption into Europe, see Helms (1998), 77–96. See also Rapoport (1996), 161–185.
[274] See Negmatov (1994), 444–451. See also Abdullaev (2007), 83–6, for evidence on ‘nomad’ city sites in Central Asia, such as Kala-i Zakhoki Maron in the neighbourhood of Karshi in Uzbekistan, an area later absorbed by the Huns.
[275] For the increasing importance of the sedentary element in the Kangju state, see Grenet et al. (2007), 1027. See also Zadneprovskiy (1994), 464.
[276] Zadneprovskiy (1994), 460.
[277] For the surprising ‘immobility’ of many steppe pastoralists and so-called ‘nomads’ and their presence in a fixed locality over long, extended periods of time, a phenomenon which for centuries coincided with massive migrations across the Eurasian steppe, see Frachetti (2008), 8.
[278] For the difficulty involved in defining what is urban, sedentary and what is pastoral, nomad in Central Asia, given the frequent existence of pastoral activity in the same area with agriculture and farming, e.g., in the Chaganian region, see Stride (2007), 115.
[279] Fine (1983), 44–5.
[280] Curta (2006), 65. John of Ephesus, Ecclesiastical History 5.32.256.
[281] Kashgari would write his famous work in Arabic for the benefit of his Arab audience in Baghdad. The Diwan is dedicated to the Abbasid Caliph al- Muqtadi (1075–94) whose reign coincided with the Seljuk (Oghuz) Turkish takeover of Iraq and Iran from the Shiite Persian Buwayid dynasty. The Arabs were eager to learn about their new masters and Kashgari obliged their curiosity. See Dankoff (1972), 23.
[282] Dankoff (1972), 30–1.