THE HUNS

The Huns are the immortal topic of human pioneering spirits. They are the first Asiatic nomads to make the trans-continental expeditions, precursors to the Turks and the Mongols. Their impact was felt in ancient Rome as well as in ancient China. They were a group of intriguing people as could be seen in the claim by Charles Hucker (China's Imperial Past, page 129) that some Roman legionaries could be found in the ranks of the Zhizhi Chanyu Huns who relocated to Jiankun Statelet in 51 BC. The name 'Hun', however, could be just a categorical designation of early Asian nomadic people, and there is no definite link between the Huns in Asia and their compatriots in Europe. In China, a Hunnic King, Liu Yuan of Eastern Huns, taking advantage of the rebellion by Xianbei nomads in AD 304, left the Jinn Chinese court to organize anti-Xianbei forces on behalf of Jinn and then proclaimed himself emperor of the Hunnic Han Dynasty in AD 308. Hunnic Han Dynasty, also known as Anterior Zhao Dynasty, was centered around today's Henan and Shanxi-Shaanxi provinces. As to the so-called Western Huns, they, in the second half of the 4th Century, attacked the Alans between the Volga and the Don Rivers, went on to conquer the Ostrogoths and drive the Visigoths westwards, triggering the chain reaction that led to the demise of the Roman Empire. In 5th century, the Huns pushed into Western Europe, and Attila the Hun fought the Battle of Châlons in Gaul in 451 AD, rerouted towards Italy in 452 AD, crossed over the Alps and swept through Milan and Northern Italy.  
 
Who are the Huns? What do they look like? And what language do they speak? While today's Mongolian Mongols and Uygur Turks both claim that they are the descendants of the Huns, they could be both right or both wrong. In 1991, the Mongolians celebrated the 2000 year-anniversary of the first Hun (Hsiung-nu) state, established in 209 BC. The Mongolian claim could be built on basis of the nomadic tribal groups which never left the Mongolian plateau. Chingiz Khan or Genghis Khan, after defeating Naimans, Keraits, Merkits and Tatars in central Mongolia, would obtain the vassalage of two tribes of Kirgizs of the Yenisei River in AD 1207, the vassalage of the Karluks in AD 1209 and the vassalage of the Uygurs in AD 1211. Earlier, in 10th century, the Kirghiz people were defeated by the Khitans who at one time appealed to Huihe (Uygur) in returning the land of Mongolia. The Khitans, in 9-10th centuries, had conquered Dadan, Tanguts, Bohai [Palhae] & Shiwei Tribes, of which the Mengwu Shiwei subtribe would be Genghis Khan's ancestors. Before Khitan's replacement of Kirghiz, the Kirghiz expelled the Huihe (Uygurs) from Mongolia in AD 840. The Huihe, and the Turks whom the Huihe had defeated even earlier, were recorded to be the descendants of the Huns. The name "Mongols", however, did not come about till the time of Khubilai Khan. Both Genghis Khan's Mongols and the Uygurs, and the Tatars and the Kirghiz, are nomadic peoples active in Mongolia, from the Altai Mountains to Lake Bajkal and the Siberian forests, the same ground where the Huns had existed hundreds of years earlier.
 
The Uygur claim could be built on basis of their ancestor (Huihe)'s membership in the Tiele Tribes, a group of people sanwiched between the Huns/Turks and the original dwellers of Xinjiang or Chinese Turkistan. Uygurs claimed they descended from 'Chunwei', the son of Last Xia Dynasty Lord Jie. Xia originally meant for the land of southern Shanxi Prov, but later appropriated to northern Shanxi/Shenxi areas. After the Hunnic Han/Zhao statelets, there appeared this statelet called 'Xia' set up by Helian Bobo of Tie-fu Huns, AD 407-431, which derived its name from the fact that the Huns were recorded to be of Xiahou origin, namely, Xia Dynasty descendants. Helian Bobo, in his eulogy about the founding of Xia, traced his ancestors to Da Yu or Lord Yu. Later, the Tanguts, who were of Tuoba & Qiangic heritage, established their Western Xia in the same place (around West and north Yellow River Bends) and in the same name.
 
The Huns are a group of people who constantly preyed on the Chinese to the south, the tribal states in western China and the Asia Minor, and the Eastern Hu nomads to the east. Below, we will trace the Huns to a group of people driven out of Hetao area by Qin Emperor Shihuangdi and detail the history of the Rong & Di(2) barbarians as recorded in ancient China.
 
Hunnic Successors
The distinctiveness of early Huns from other groups of people (Yuezhi, for example) is clear. The Hunnic ancestry & successors, however, pose some ambiguity. Before touching on the origin of the Huns, we will have some discussion of the successors of the Huns. The successors will include the Ruruans, Gaoche, the Tiele Tribes and the Turks etc. Most European history books pointed out that the Ruruans (Juan-juan or Rouran) were 'Mongolian', and they claimed that the Genghis Mongols were descendants of the Ruruans. This false claim could be built on basis of one comment in History Of Toba Wei Dynasty, namely, the founder of Ruruan might have origin in Eastern Hu nomads, i.e., a group of people related to the Tunguzic people of Manchuria and eastern Mongolia. My research into various records, however, shows that the Ruruans were more Hunnic than anything else. After the Ruruan founder fled to the Altai Mountains, he conquered and absorbed remnant Hunnic tribes and Gao-che people. Toba Wei Dynasty, claiming heritage from a son of China's Huangdi (i.e., the Yellow Lord or Emperor), had united northern China in AD 386. Toba (Tuoba) treated the Ruruans as the descendants of the Huns and commented that "though Ruruans were Hinnic in nature but their ancestry was hard to corroborate". Both Ruruan founder and Toba originated from the east of Mongolia. The Hunnic relationship with the Ruruans would be explored in the section on Hunnic Split of AD 89, a time when Northern Huns, under the attack of General Dou Xian and Dou's Southern Hun allies, fled westward to the ancient Kang-chu territory. The Ruruans, after being defeated by the Turks, were said to have migrated towards the west to become the ancestors of the Avars (? no record in Chinese chronology). Ruruans who stayed behind in Mongolia and the Altai Mountains were absorbed by the Turks. Numerous Hunnic rebels rose up against the Toba, but the two states which ultimately replaced both Western Toba Wei and Eastern Toba Wei were not Hunnic in nature, but Xianbei. The Huns merely played the role of contributing to the decline and disintegration of Toba's Wei Dynasty. Some of the Huns would be relocated to Hebei Province by the Tobas in AD 523. After Toba, the Huns lost its prominence, and would be difficult to trace for the five-six hundreds between Toba Wei Dynasty and Genghis Khan's Mongols.
 
During early Toba period, Toba Wei Emperor Daowudi (reign 386-409) launched numerous western / northwestern campaigns against the Ruruans as well as the Gaoche people. Chinese history put Gaoche (descendants of Chidi or Red Di people, also known as Dingling, who once resided in central China during the Zhou Dynasty time period), in a different category from the dozens of tribal states in Chinese Turkistan. Record showed that the Gaoche people had similar traits as the early Huns and they were called the 'nephews' of the Huns. Among the Gaoche would be family names like Hulü. The words Gao-che mean "high wheeled carts" which was to point out that the Gaoche people liked to ride in high-wheeled carts. Gao-che had zigzag wars with the Ruruans, and there was a similar story about using the skull of a dead chieftan as drinking utensil [i.e., wine vessel]. (The earliest reference to skull as a utensil for holding wine could be traced to Zhao Xiang-zi's killing the opponent Zhi-bo during the Warring States time period. See Sima Qian's Shi Ji, Section On Assassins.)
 
During late Toba Wei Dynasty, there appeared many references to the 'Tiele' or 'Chile' tribes and their rebellions against the Toba. History said that Tiele Tribes derived from the Gaoche people. The Tiele Tribes, with many of later familiar Huihe family names, were recorded to have spread everywhere, i.e, north of the Luo River, west of Yiwu & north of Yanqi, southwest of the Altai Mountains, and north of ancient Kangju Statelet.
 
Turks were said to be an alternative race of the Huns, and they originally sought protection with the Ruruan by fleeing to the Altai and worked for the Ruruan as iron miners (or iron smith). The hint here is to link the ancestors of Turks to the Huns under Juqu's Northern Liang Dynasty. The Turks later took advantage of Tiele's wars against Ruruans, attacked the Tiele Tribes from the rear, and absorbed 50,000 Tiele households to become a powerful entity. Turks, after their proposal for inter-marriage with their Ruruan master was rejected, would attack the Ruruans and kill the Ruruan khan. After the son of Ruruan khan fled to Northern Qi, the uncle of Ruruan khan was to become the new Ruruan khan. Turks then drove the new Ruruan Khan into Northern Zhou territories, and they defeated the Ye-tai in the west, the Khitans in the east and the Qigu in the north.
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