The Huns were a nomadic people who lived in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe
between the 4th and 6th century AD. According to European tradition, they were first reported
living east of the Volga River, in an area that was part of Scythia at the time; the
Huns' arrival is associated with the migration westward of an Iranian people, the Alans.
By 370 AD, the Huns had arrived on the Volga, and by 430 the Huns had established a vast,
if short-lived, dominion in Europe, conquering the Goths and many other Germanic peoples
living outside of Roman borders, and causing many others to flee into Roman territory.
The Huns, especially under their King Attila, made frequent and devastating raids into the
Eastern Roman Empire. In 451, the Huns invaded the Western Roman province of Gaul, where
they fought a combined army of Romans and Visigoths at the Battle of the Catalaunian
Fields, and in 452 they invaded Italy. After Attila's death in 453, the Huns ceased to
be a major threat to Rome and lost much of their empire following the Battle of Nedao
. Descendants of the Huns, or successors with similar names, are recorded by neighbouring
populations to the south, east, and west as having occupied parts of Eastern Europe and
Central Asia from about the 4th to 6th centuries. Variants of the Hun name are recorded in the
Caucasus until the early 8th century.
In the 18th century, the French scholar Joseph de Guignes became the first to propose a link
between the Huns and the Xiongnu people, who were northern neighbours of China from the
3rd century BC to the late 1st century AD. Since Guignes' time, considerable scholarly
effort has been devoted to investigating such a connection. The issue remains controversial.
Their relationships with other entities such as the Iranian Huns and the Indian Huna people
has also been disputed.
Very little is known about Hunnic culture and very few archaeological remains have been
conclusively associated with the Huns. They are believed to have used bronze cauldrons
and to have performed artificial cranial deformation. No description exists of the Hunnic religion
of the time of Attila, but practices such as divination are attested, and the existence
of shamans likely. It is also known that the Huns had a language of their own, however
only three words and personal names attest to it. Economically, they are known to have
practiced a form of nomadic pastoralism; as their contact with the Roman world grew, their
economy became increasingly tied with Rome through tribute, raiding, and trade. They
do not seem to have had a unified government when they entered Europe, but rather to have
developed a unified tribal leadership in the course of their wars with the Romans. The
Huns ruled over a variety of peoples who spoke various languages and some of whom maintained
their own rulers. Their main military technique was mounted archery.
The Huns may have stimulated the Great Migration, a contributing factor in the collapse of the
Western Roman Empire. The memory of the Huns also lived on in various Christian saints'
lives, where the Huns play the roles of antagonists, as well as in Germanic heroic legend, where
the Huns are variously antagonists or allies to the Germanic main figures. In Hungary,
a legend developed based on medieval chronicles that the Hungarians, and the Székely ethnic
group in particular, are descended from the Huns. However, mainstream scholarship dismisses
a close connection between the Hungarians and Huns. Modern culture generally associates
the Huns with extreme cruelty and barbarism. Origin
The origins of the Huns and their links to other steppe people remain uncertain: scholars
generally agree that they originated in Central Asia but disagree on the specifics of their
origins. Classical sources assert that they appeared in Europe suddenly around 370. Most
typically, Roman writers' attempts to elucidate the origins of the Huns simply equated them
with earlier steppe peoples. Roman writers also repeated a tale that the Huns had entered
the domain of the Goths while they were pursuing a wild stag, or else one of their cows that
had gotten loose, across the Kerch Strait into Crimea. Discovering the land good, they
then attacked the Goths. Jordanes' Getica relates that the Goths held the Huns to be
offspring of "unclean spirits" and Gothic witches.
Relation to the Xiongnu and other peoples called Huns
Since Joseph de Guignes in the 18th century, modern historians have associated the Huns
who appeared on the borders of Europe in the 4th century AD with the Xiongnu who had invaded
China from the territory of present-day Mongolia between the 3rd century BC and the 2nd century
AD. Due to the devastating defeat by the Chinese Han dynasty, the northern branch of the Xiongnu
had retreated north-westward; their descendants may have migrated through Eurasia and consequently
they may have some degree of cultural and genetic continuity with the Huns. Scholars
also discussed the relationship between the Xiongnu, the Huns, and a number of people
in central Asia who were also known as or came to be identified with the name "Hun"
or "Iranian Huns". The most prominent of these were Chionites, the Kidarites, and the Hephthalites.
The campaigns of the Huns under Attila in Europe, leading to their defeat at the Catalaunian
Plains in 451 AD, occur at roughly the same time as the conflicts between the Kidarites
and the Sasanian Empire and the Gupta Empire in Southern Asia. The Sasanian Empire temporarily
lost to the Kidarites in 453 AD, falling into a tributary relationship, while the Gupta
Empire repelled the Kidarites in 455 AD, under emperor Skandagupta. It is almost as if the
imperialist empire and the east and west had combined their response to a simultaneous
Hunnic threat across Eurasia. In the end, Europe succeeded in repelling the Huns, and
their power there quickly vanished, but in the east, both the Sasanian Empire and the
Gupta Empire were left much weakened.
Otto J. Maenchen-Helfen was the first to challenge the traditional approach, based primarily
on the study of written sources, and to emphasize the importance of archaeological research.
Since Maenchen-Helfen's work, the identification of the Xiongnu as the Huns' ancestors has
become controversial. Additionally, several scholars have questioned the identification
of the "Iranian Huns" with the European Huns. Walter Pohl cautions that
none of the great confederations of steppe warriors was ethnically homogenous, and the
same name was used by different groups for reasons of prestige, or by outsiders to describe
their lifestyle or geographic origin. It is therefore futile to speculate about identity
or blood relationships between Hiung-nu, Hephthalites, and Attila's Huns, for instance. All we can
safely say is that the name Huns, in late antiquity, described prestigious ruling groups
of steppe warriors.
Recent scholarship, particularly by Hyun Jin Kim and Etienne de la Vaissière, has revived
the hypothesis that the Huns and the Xiongnu are one and the same. De la Vaissière argues
that ancient Chinese and Indian sources used Xiongnu and Hun to translate each other, and
that the various "Iranian Huns" were similarly identified with the Xiongnu. Kim believes
that the term Hun was "not primarily an ethnic group, but a political category" and argues
for a fundamental political and cultural continuity between the Xiongnu and the European Huns,
as well as between the Xiongnu and the "Iranian Huns".
Name and etymology The name Hun is attested in classical European
sources as Greek Οὖννοι and Latin Hunni or Chuni. John Malalas records their name
as Οὖννα . Another possible Greek variant may be Χοὖνοι , although this group's
identification with the Huns is disputed. Classical sources also frequently use the
names of older and unrelated steppe nomads instead of the name Hun, calling them Massagetae,
Scythians and Cimmerians, among other names.
The etymology of Hun is unclear. Various proposed etymologies generally assume at least that
the names of the various Eurasian groups known as Huns are related. There have been a number
of proposed Turkic etymologies, deriving the name variously from Turkic ön, öna , qun
, kün, gün, a plural suffix "supposedly meaning 'people'", qun , and hün . Otto Maenchen-Helfen
dismisses all of these Turkic etymologies as "mere guesses". Maenchen-Helfen himself
proposes an Iranian etymology, from a word akin to Avestan hūnarā , hūnaravant- , and
suggests that it may originally have designated a rank rather than an ethnicity. Robert Werner
has suggested an etymology from Tocharian ku , suggesting based on the fact that the
Chinese called the Xiongnu dogs that the dog was the totem animal of the Hunnic tribe.
He also compares the name Massagetae, noting that the element saka in that name means dog.
Others such as Harold Bailey, S. Parlato, and Jamsheed Choksy have argued that the name
derives from an Iranian word akin to Avestan Ẋyaona, and was a generalized term meaning
"hostiles, opponents". Christopher Atwood dismisses this possibility on phonological
and chronological grounds. While not arriving at an etymology per se, Atwood derives the
name from the Ongi River in Mongolia, which was pronounced the same or similar to the
name Xiongnu, and suggests that it was originally a dynastic name rather than an ethnic name.
Physical appearance Ancient descriptions of the Huns are uniform
in stressing their strange appearance from a Roman perspective. These descriptions typically
caricature the Huns as monsters. Jordanes stressed that the Huns were short of stature,
had tanned skin and round and shapeless heads. Various writers mention that the Huns had
small eyes and flat noses. The Roman writer Priscus gives the following eyewitness description
of Attila: "Short of stature, with a broad chest and a large head; his eyes were small,
his beard thin and sprinkled with grey; and he had a flat nose and tanned skin, showing
evidence of his origin."
Many scholars take these to be unflattering depictions of East Asian racial characteristics.
Maenchen-Helfen argues that, while many Huns had East Asian racial characteristics, they
were unlikely to have looked as Asiatic as the Yakut or Tungus. He notes that archaeological
finds of presumed Huns suggest that they were a racially mixed group containing only some
individuals with East Asian features. Kim similarly cautions against seeing the Huns
as a homogenous racial group, while still arguing that they were "partially or predominantly
of Mongoloid extraction ." Some archaeologists have argued that archaeological finds have
failed to prove that the Huns had any "Mongoloid" features at all, and some scholars have argued
that the Huns were predominantly "Caucasian" in appearance. Other archaeologists have argued
that "Mongoloid" features are found primarily among members of the Hunnic aristocracy, which,
however, also included Germanic leaders who were integrated into the Hun polity. Kim argues
that the composition of the Huns became progressively more "Caucasian" during their time in Europe;
he notes that by the Battle of Chalons , "the vast majority" of Attila's entourage and troops
appears to have been of European origin, while Attila himself seems to have had East Asian
features.
Genetics Damgaard et al. 2018 found that the Huns were
of mixed East Asian and West Eurasian origin. The authors of the study suggested that the
Huns were descended from Xiongnu who expanded westwards and mixed with Sakas.
Neparáczki et al. 2019 examined the remains of three males from three separate 5th century
Hunnic cemeteries in the Pannonian Basin. They were found to be carrying the paternal
haplogroups Q1a2, R1b1a1b1a1a1 and R1a1a1b2a2. In modern Europe, Q1a2 is rare and has its
highest frequency among the Székelys. The Haplogroup Q is common in Native American,
Samoyedic and Yeniseian populations. All of the Hunnic males studied were determined to
have had brown eyes and black or brown hair, and to have been of mixed European and East
Asian ancestry. The results were consistent with a Xiongnu origin of the Huns.
In an interdiciplinary study, Savelyev & Jeong 2020 found no clear evidence of continuity
between the Xiongnu and the Huns, and concluded that no genetic evidence suggest that the
steppe component of the Huns was derived from the Xiongnu or other populations of the eastern
steppe.
Keyser et al. 2020 found that the Xiongnu shared certain paternal and maternal haplotypes
with the Huns, and suggested on this basis that the Huns were descended from Xiongnu,
who they in turn suggested were descended from Scytho-Siberians.
History Before Attila
The Romans became aware of the Huns when the latter's invasion of the Pontic steppes forced
thousands of Goths to move to the Lower Danube to seek refuge in the Roman Empire in 376.
The Huns conquered the Alans, most of the Greuthungi or Eastern Goths, and then most
of the Thervingi or Western Goths, with many fleeing into the Roman Empire. In 395 the
Huns began their first large-scale attack on the Eastern Roman Empire. Huns attacked
in Thrace, overran Armenia, and pillaged Cappadocia. They entered parts of Syria, threatened Antioch,
and passed through the province of Euphratesia. At the same time, the Huns invaded the Sasanian
Empire. This invasion was initially successful, coming close to the capital of the empire
at Ctesiphon; however, they were defeated badly during the Persian counterattack.
During their brief diversion from the Eastern Roman Empire, the Huns may have threatened
tribes further west. Uldin, the first Hun identified by name in contemporary sources,
headed a group of Huns and Alans fighting against Radagaisus in defense of Italy. Uldin
was also known for defeating Gothic rebels giving trouble to the East Romans around the
Danube and beheading the Goth Gainas around 400–401. The East Romans began to feel the
pressure from Uldin's Huns again in 408. Uldin crossed the Danube and pillaged Thrace. The
East Romans tried to buy Uldin off, but his sum was too high so they instead bought off
Uldin's subordinates. This resulted in many desertions from Uldin's group of Huns. Uldin
himself escaped back across the Danube, after which he is not mentioned again.
Hunnish mercenaries are mentioned on several occasions being employed by the East and West
Romans, as well as the Goths, during the late 4th and 5th century. In 433 some parts of
Pannonia were ceded to them by Flavius Aetius, the magister militum of the Western Roman
Empire.
Under Attila From 434 the brothers Attila and Bleda ruled
the Huns together. Attila and Bleda were as ambitious as their uncle Rugila. In 435 they
forced the Eastern Roman Empire to sign the Treaty of Margus, giving the Huns trade rights
and an annual tribute from the Romans. When the Romans breached the treaty in 440, Attila
and Bleda attacked Castra Constantias, a Roman fortress and marketplace on the banks of the
Danube. War broke out between the Huns and Romans, and the Huns overcame a weak Roman
army to raze the cities of Margus, Singidunum and Viminacium. Although a truce was concluded
in 441, two years later Constantinople again failed to deliver the tribute and war resumed.
In the following campaign, Hun armies approached Constantinople and sacked several cities before
defeating the Romans at the Battle of Chersonesus. The Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius II gave
in to Hun demands and in autumn 443 signed the Peace of Anatolius with the two Hun kings.
Bleda died in 445, and Attila became the sole ruler of the Huns.
In 447, Attila invaded the Balkans and Thrace. The war came to an end in 449 with an agreement
in which the Romans agreed to pay Attila an annual tribute of 2100 pounds of gold. Throughout
their raids on the Eastern Roman Empire, the Huns had maintained good relations with the
Western Empire. However, Honoria, sister of the Western Roman Emperor Valentinian III,
sent Attila a ring and requested his help to escape her betrothal to a senator. Attila
claimed her as his bride and half the Western Roman Empire as dowry. Additionally, a dispute
arose about the rightful heir to a king of the Salian Franks. In 451, Attila's forces
entered Gaul. Once in Gaul, the Huns first attacked Metz, then his armies continued westwards,
passing both Paris and Troyes to lay siege to Orléans. Flavius Aetius was given the
duty of relieving Orléans by Emperor Valentinian III. A combined army of Roman and Visigoths
then defeated the Huns at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains.
The following year, Attila renewed his claims to Honoria and territory in the Western Roman
Empire. Leading his army across the Alps and into Northern Italy, he sacked and razed a
number of cities. Hoping to avoid the sack of Rome, Emperor Valentinian III sent three
envoys, the high civilian officers Gennadius Avienus and Trigetius, as well as Pope Leo
I, who met Attila at Mincio in the vicinity of Mantua, and obtained from him the promise
that he would withdraw from Italy and negotiate peace with the emperor. The new Eastern Roman
Emperor Marcian then halted tribute payments, resulting in Attila planning to attack Constantinople.
However, in 453 he died of a haemorrhage on his wedding night.
After Attila After Attila's death in 453, the Hunnic Empire
faced an internal power struggle between its vassalized Germanic peoples and the Hunnic
ruling body. Led by Ellak, Attila's favored son and ruler of the Akatziri, the Huns engaged
the Gepid king Ardaric at the Battle of Nedao, who led a coalition of Germanic Peoples to
overthrow Hunnic imperial authority. The Amali Goths would revolt the same year under Valamir,
allegedly defeating the Huns in a separate engagement. However, this did not result in
the complete collapse of Hunnic power in the Carpathian region, but did result in the loss
of many of their Germanic vassals. At the same time, the Huns were also dealing with
the arrival of more Oghur Turkic-speaking peoples from the East, including the Oghurs,
Saragurs, Onogurs, and the Sabirs. In 463, the Saragurs defeated the Akatziri, or Akatir
Huns, and asserted dominance in the Pontic region.
The western Huns under Dengizich experienced difficulties in 461, when they were defeated
by Valamir in a war against the Sadages, a people allied with the Huns. His campaigning
was also met with dissatisfaction from Ernak, ruler of the Akatziri Huns, who wanted to
focus on the incoming Oghur speaking peoples. Dengzich attacked the Romans in 467, without
the assistance of Ernak. He was surrounded by the Romans and besieged, and came to an
agreement that they would surrender if they were given land and his starving forces given
food. During the negotiations, a Hun in service of the Romans named Chelchel persuaded the
enemy Goths to attack their Hun overlords. The Romans, under their General Aspar and
with the help of his bucellarii, then attacked the quarreling Goths and Huns, defeating them.
In 469, Dengizich was defeated and killed in Thrace.
After Dengizich's death, the Huns seem to have been absorbed by other ethnic groups
such as the Bulgars. Kim, however, argues that the Huns continued under Ernak, becoming
the Kutrigur and Utigur Hunno-Bulgars. This conclusion is still subject to some controversy.
Some scholars also argue that another group identified in ancient sources as Huns, the
North Caucasian Huns, were genuine Huns. The rulers of various post-Hunnic steppe peoples
are known to have claimed descent from Attila in order to legitimize their right to the
power, and various steppe peoples were also called "Huns" by Western and Byzantine sources
from the fourth century onward.