In one of our past videos, we outlined the origins of the Hunnic tribes which famously
invaded the Roman Empire, and their relationship with the ancient Xiongnu, whom they probably
considered glorious conquering ancestors. That was not the end of the story, however,
and today we’ll expand on the Huns with a story of their lesser-known branch. While
Attilla and his horde were menacing the Roman Empire, the White Huns bore down on the great
Sassanid Empire and India in the east. But where did these enigmatic horse lords come
from, and how did they impact life in the east?
Much like their cousins, the White Huns were almost definitely a political grouping which
emerged from the old Xiongnu Empire. Moreover, they also used the designation of ‘Hun’
to associate themselves with centuries’ old glories and victory. Those triumphs long
ago gave way to a weakened Xiongnu remnant, which was forced ignominiously back into the
Altai Mountains during the first and second centuries AD, suffering attacks and deprivation
at the hands of more powerful neighbors on all sides.
However, by the fourth century this situation had all changed with the weakening of external
enemies in the south and west, and the strengthening of a new Rouran Khaganate in the east. These
upheavals were not helped by climate degradation in the Altai region during the mid-fourth
century, leading to the Hunnic population movements noted in Greco-Roman sources.
As the European Huns embarked on their westward expansion, another branch of Huns suddenly
pushed south into Central Asia. In the 350s AD, these ‘White Huns’ from the Altai
Mountains emerged in the region of Sogdia, and quickly destroyed what was left of the
Kangju state which had existed for centuries. Now the White Huns started attacking the Sassanid
Empire from the Northeast. Moreover, these new Hunnic invaders played a major role in
toppling the weakened remnants of the Kushan Empire in southern Central Asia and India,
which was unable to resist effectively. By 360AD, the ruling White Hun tribe - the Kidarites
- possessed the prosperous Silk Road nexus of Bactria and its Oxus and Jaxartes Rivers.
The ethnicity of these ruling Kidarites has been a heated debate among historians for
decades with no definitive conclusion, however the main versions are that they were Proto-Mongolic,
Turkic or Iranic. This was influenced by the account of Byzantine historian Procopius during
the sixth-century. He mistakenly thought that ‘White’ was used to distinguishing them
from what he considered the Huns, with more of an Asian appearance. However, we know that
the colour white signified a westerly direction for the Huns, while black meant north, blue
east and red south. Of the four, blue and black were almost always considered superior
in steppe society. This might mean that nomadic groups existing in the north and east - hypothetical
‘Black Huns’ and ‘Blue Huns’- would have possessed seniority over their western
counterparts. The origins of such tradition can be speculated to have begun during the
revered Xiongnu Empire, which was in the east. Kidarite usage of earlier symbolism of the
Kushans in their coinage led some historians to designate an Iranian identity to them,
but it’s becoming evident that, instead, they were Hunnic invaders who occupied eastern
Iran, becoming Iranised after the conquest. We also know that in some proto-Turkic dialects
the word “Kidirti” meant the “West”. According to the Chinese source Bei shi, a
Kidarite king called Kidara conquered territory north and south of the Hindu Kush and, before
410, had subjected the entire Gandhara region to Hunnic domination. Even with their now
formidable Indian domains, the Kidarites weren’t content, and now came up against a truly formidable
imperial power - the Gupta Empire, with its capital at the old Mauryan heartland of Pataliputra.
During the four-decade long reign of the Gupta King Kumaragupta I, mounted hordes of White
Hun warriors launched an assault into the Punjab, and an inscription from a pillar created
later tells of how the attacks of these ‘Huna’ almost destroyed the empire. The Indians did
manage to hold on desperately and, in the year 455, the beleaguered Kumaragupta abdicated
the throne and control of his defeated army to a more martially inclined son, Skandagupta.
However, even this new leader had troubles with the Hun menace. Further inscriptions
describe how Skandagupta had to ‘reestablish his lineage’ which had been ‘made to totter’
by the invasions. During particularly bad times, the Gupta ruler even had to spend a
night ‘sleeping on the bare earth’. While boasting by the king claims that he vanquished
the Hun threat and conquered the whole world, this is a fantasy. After this devastating
series of raids and invasions, the Kidarites controlled most of the Punjab, and the Guptas
permanently lost their western lands. The driving force behind these relentless
conquests doesn’t seem to have just been desire for plunder, however; necessity probably
had something to do with it. Over the course of the later fifth and early sixth-centuries,
the Kidarites came under attack from another new dynasty of nomadic warriors, the Hephthalites,
who had begun to push the Kidarites south into the Indus region.
The Sassanid Empire to the west, led by Yazdegerd II, halted payments to the weakening Kidarites
by 442 after being subject to Hunnic raids for a century. By the year 450, Persian forces
were even launching attacks into Bactria. The Kidarites were now surrounded from the
west and north and, smelling blood in the water, Yazdegerd demanded tribute from them.
The Kidarites refused and the subsequent military engagement between the two powers was a decisive
Persian defeat, reversing all of the empire’s gains over the last decade.
Even at their weakest point, these Huns were capable of trouncing the armies of a settled
empire. What made matters even more grave was a dynastic civil war in Sassanid lands
which erupted shortly after Yazdegerd’s death in 457. An elder child Hormizd ascended
to the throne, but he was opposed by Peroz, a younger sibling who had the support of a
few Persian nobles. The latter managed to gain victory primarily
because he had an army of Hephthalite mercenaries at his disposal, indicating the first of many
times that this new ruling caste of White Huns intervened in Persia. As we might expect,
this assistance wasn’t free of charge, and in return Peroz I was forced to relinquish
the easternmost Sassanid possessions in Central Asia.
Despite suffering increasing attacks by their Hephthalite kin, the Kidarites were not totally
extinct just yet. Sensing Persian weakness, they began attacking once again and, in 464,
the desperate Shah Peroz was even forced to ask the Byzantines for financial assistance
against them. When the Romans declined this request, Peroz instead attempted to placate
the nomads by offering his sister in marriage to the Kidarite king Khunkhas - steppe warlords
often gained prestige by marrying princesses of large empires.
However, Peroz unsuccessfully tried to deceive Khunkhas by sending a lowborn woman instead.
When this was discovered, 300 Persian officials were invited to the Kidarite realm and were
subsequently executed or mutilated to humiliate the Shah. Peroz wasn’t going to take the
murder of his people quietly and war was quickly resumed.
The balance of power between the Kidarites and Sassanids was initially relatively even,
but was tipped in Persia’s favour when the now-mighty Hephthalites intervened again.
The allied armies crushed a Kidarite force and then wrenched Balkh from their control,
after which they never recovered. Any remaining Kidarite forces retreated south into their
Gandharan lands where they were later crushed by the Hephthalites.
The victorious alliance between the Sassanids and Hephthalites predictably broke apart,
as after the Kidarites had been crushed, their Hephthalite cousins seized all of their territory
that the Persians wanted for themselves, and essentially assumed command of the White Hun
state. When the Sassanid Shah tried to take these prosperous eastern lands back from his
erstwhile nomadic allies, the Persians were trounced by a Hephthalite army, led by a Hunnic
king known as Khushnavaz, at Gorgan in 469. While Peroz managed to escape the first time,
he was captured by the Huns on two later occasions, but managed to escape execution both times
by paying a massive tribute. In 471, insulted by Khushnavaz’s letters,
Peroz, supported by his Iberian and Albanian vassals attacked the Hephthalites again, but
was defeated somewhere in modern Turkmenistan, and was forced to send his heir Kavad to the
Hephthalite court as a hostage. This doesn’t appear to have made Peroz think
twice about attacking the Huns again and, according to Procopius, the Shah was finally
killed in a catastrophic battle at Herat in 484, in which almost the entire Persian army
was annihilated by the fearsome White Huns. What ensued was a two-year chaotic interlude
during which the land-holding Persians nobles elected Peroz’s brother Balash to the throne.
The Hephthalites intervened after this and instead seated Kavad I on the throne, marrying
him to the daughter of their reigning king. After around a decade of his rule, Kavad was
forced to seek sanctuary with his Hunnic backers due to a noble revolt against him, the details
of which we’ll probably go into in a future video. After this, however, he managed to
convince the Hephthalites to supply him 30,000 troops to take back his kingdom. Though he
managed to regain the Sassanid Empire, the price was massive. Kavadh was forced to give
away more lands in the east to the Huns and burdened the treasury by agreeing to pay an
increased tribute. Coins from the Sassanid Empire during this period were even countermarked
with a Hephthalite symbol, indicating the dominance of the nomads.
Worse was the literal dominance White Hun kings claimed over the entirety of Iran. They
proclaimed legitimate rule over the lands of Iran, while the Sassanids were mere vassals.
This subjugation would continue for almost a century, until the eventual reign of Khosrow
I. With Persia now under their dominion, the
Hephthalites turned east just as the Kidarites had, but on a larger scale. In the last decade
of the fifth century, the valuable Tarim Basin cities of Kashgar and Khotan, which had centuries
before been under the Chinese rule, were taken by the Huns. Between 497 and 509, the city
of Karashahr and region of Urumchi were seized. Chinese historical records such as the Liangshu
lists among the Hephthalite domains: Persia, Kashmir, Karashahr, Kucha, Kashgar and Khotan.
Nearly all of the lands of Western and Eastern Turkestan were now under Hunnic rule.
In India, as we mentioned before, the Hephthalites finally managed to root out the Kidarite remnant
in Gandhara and the rest of northwest India during the late fifth-century, a development
which turned out to be incredibly destructive to the Guptas. With its now relatively weak
Kidarite buffer now wiped out, the Indians began to suffer Hephthalite attacks during
the reign of their king Budhagupta, whose realm was in terminal decline by the turn
of the sixth-century. As the 500s began and the White Hun state
reached the very zenith of its power, the Hephthalites appointed a sub-king known as
Toramana to their domains in India. Such sub-kings were common in steppe societies, ruling almost
autonomous regions under the overall overlordship of a higher ruler. The Indians knew Toramana
rather grandiosely as ‘the boundlessly famed ruler of the earth’, who conquered Western
and Central India as far east as modern Bhupal and subjected those areas in the west to total
domination. His son, known by the name Mihirakula, expanded
the Hephthalite sub-kingdom in India even more, and eventually came to rule over the
entire north, with his capital at Sakala. Unfortunately for the natives of the land,
it is said that their Hun overlord was an incredibly cruel and brutal man, destroying
buddhist holy sites and temples, mercilessly killing monks, and putting monasteries to
the torch. Eventually, the Indians revolted against Mihirakula,
captured and then replaced him with a brother. This Indian steppe domain was only whole for
around two decades before it was retaken by a Gupta reconquest. Nevertheless, by the middle
of the sixth-century, the White Hun empire ruled by the Hephthalites was almost definitely
the most territorially extensive and influential in the entire world. It extended from the
Eastern Tarim Basin in the east and the steppe of Kazakhstan in the north to the prosperous
lands of India in the south and the borders of Byzantium in the west through its Persian
vassals. From the very peak of their power, the Hephthalites
would soon suffer the fate of their Kidarite predecessors as a new, extremely powerful
nomadic group rose in the east - the Gökturks - who had conquered the old Rouran Khaganate
by the middle of the fifth-century. Half a century later, they sought to expand their
realm by subjugating the Hephthalites as well. Sensing an opportunity to rid his empire of
the hated Hunnic yoke, formerly tribute-bearing Sassanid Shah Khosrow I formed an alliance
with the Gökturks against his Hun overlords. The Turkish Khagan reacted quickly to this
request and crossed the border, capturing the Hephthalite-occupied city of Tashkent
in the western Tarim Basin, and then advancing to Bukhara.
Outside the city, a titanic eight-day long conflict took place between the Western Khagan
Istami and the Hephthalite king Gatfar. In this bitter clash of steppe warlords, the
Gökturks were victorious and the White Huns were utterly crushed, their military might
severely diminished. The victors pushed south almost unimpeded and occupied Transoxiana.
Though the defeated Hunnic armies fled south as the Kidarites had before them, they were
trapped between their rising nomadic conquerors and the resurgent Persians. It was the end
for the Hephthalite dynasty, and its last great ruler surrendered to Shah Khosrow sometime
between 560 and 563. Though they are mostly forgotten in popular
imagination when compared to the European Huns of Attila, the impact of the White Huns
in Persia and India was just as profound as that of Attila in the west. For centuries,
the great Sassanid dynasty had asserted its legitimacy over Iran by emphasizing their
victories against a traditional enemy which had unleashed terrible destruction in Persian
lands for centuries - the Romans. However, military defeat and humiliation at the hands
of Hephthalite Hun warlords rendered this obsolete, meaning that new claims to the throne
had to be found. What eventually took its place was an almost
nationalistic history of the Sassanids constructed around the great deeds of an almost certainly
mythologised precursor to the ruling dynasty - the Kayanians of Zoroastrian legend. These
quasi-infallible ancient monarchs had undergone similar hardships against a conquering enemy,
and had eventually triumphed, a parallel which helped to excuse the devastating Hun-inflicted
defeats of Sassanid Persia. This strengthening of Persian identity, enflamed
by Hunnic domination during the fifth and sixth-centuries, possibly saved native Iranian
culture in the end. When the Sassanid dynasty fell and the Islamic caliphate swallowed the
ancient lands of Cyrus and Darius, Persia’s enduring traditions would defy total assimilation,
and remain a distinct entity in the Islamic world, proud of its ancient past.
In the lands of India, invasions of the so-called Huna led to the creation of an entirely new
political order. Fragmented, mysterious and possible Hun-led states of Northwestern India
such as the Turk Shahi dynasty and the Sindh-based Gurjara-Pratihara dynasty, effectively served
as a bulwark, shielding the subcontinent from Muslim attack for centuries. In the process
of stopping Islamic military expansion in this way, they guarded India’s polytheistic
Hindu religion and culture from Islamisation. Though the Muslims eventually broke through
beginning in the tenth-century, martial conversions were mostly a thing of the past by this point,
allowing traditionally Indian ways of life to continue into the future. Some of the militaristic
Huns may have been instrumental in the future creation of the Rajputs, a people who would
become known for their own warlike traditions, feats of bravery and valour and especially
their skills as cavalrymen. We will continue talking about Steppe civilizations,
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