Huns During Wei-Jinn Time Periods

Huns During Wei-Jinn Time Periods  
 
By the time of Three Kingdoms Period (AD 220-280), Cao Cao [Ts'ao Ts'ao], the nominal protector of Latter Han emperor, around AD 210s, ordered the Eastern Huns (who were called 'Southern Huns' at that time, descendants of 'Huhanye Chanyu') to settle down in today's Taiyuan area, Shanxi Province. Cao Cao reorganized thirty thousand Hun tribes into five tribal groups and further divided the leftside tribal group into two subgroups, to be led by Zuoxianwang (leftside virtuous king) and Youxianwang (rightside virtuous king). Ts'ao Ts'ao designated an official called 'marshal' for each of the five tribes and assigned a Chinese 'sima' to supervise them.
 
Ts'ao later negotiated with Zuoxianwang for the release of Cai Wenji, the daughter of a Han Chinese minister. Lady Cai was grabbed by the Huns in an earlier raid, and lived with the Huns for twelve years, with two children born with the Hunnic king. Historians had blamed Ts'ao for introducing the Huns back to the ancestral land of the Huns, and it would be in this area that the Huns mutiplied into a huge threat to later dynasty of Western Jinn.(AD 265-316) The truth is that the Southern Huns had stayed in this area for one hundred years already and they were given privileges of tax exemption by Han Dyansty.
 
By the end of Ts'ao Wei Dynasty, the title of 'marshal' was changed to 'captain ['duwei']. Leftside Tribe 'duwei' was allowed to control 10,000 households and they dwelled in Cishi County, Taiyuan; Leftside Tribe, 6,000 households, Qixian County; Southside Tribe, 3,000 households, Puzi County; Northside Tribe, 4,000 households, Xingxin Couny; and Central Tribe, 6,000 households, Daling County. After Jinn Dynasty was founded in AD 265, the Huns outside of the border suffered flooding, and hence 20,000 more households of Huns from Saini and Heinan were relocated to Yiyang, west of the Yellow River Bend. In AD 284, 29,300 Huns, led by Hutai Ah'hou, submitted to Jinn Chinese. The second year, another group of Huns, 11,500 Huns in total, came to Jinn China. History of Jinn Dynasty recorded that altogether 19 Hunnic tribal affiliations came to China. Among them, the Tuge tribal affiliation was the most elite, and the Hunnic 'chanyu' would be selected out of this group. The Huns enjoyed 4 big family names, Huyan, Po, Lan, and Qiao. Huyan could assume the title of leftside or rightside 'sun chasing kings', Po the title of leftside or rightside 'juqu', Lan leftside or rightside 'danghu', and Qiao leftside or rightside 'duhou'. Around 295s AD, the Huns began to rebel against Jinn Chinese authorities, killing officials and looting.
 
Reading records throughout the Former and Latter Han Dynasties, one conclusion could be reached for the Huns. This group of people is a unique one which used the name Hun thoughtout history. They are a stubborn or persistent nomadic people who is bent on fighting the Chinese. It will be understandable to know that it was Qin's emperor who had driven the Huns away from Hetao area in the first place. At the time, there are more than two dozens of small nomadic kingdoms and/or tribal states in Gobi, Mongolia and and today's New Dominion areas, but the Huns never settled down as a static county or state or city like the other nomads. They are constantly on the move. The only reason that they did not succeed in overthrowing Chinese dynasty would lie in what Chen Shou said in San Guo Zhi, namely, the Han emperors had conducted constant raids into the fertile lands of the Gobi and Mongolia, which played a role of disrupting the growth or multiplicity of the Huns. What the Huns had been doing for hundreds of years was in fact engaged in the seesaw warfare with the Chinese for the control of the western territories. Both the Han Chinese and the Huns constantly dispatched the emissaries to the small nomadic states and/or tribal states, either requesting tributes or threatening the tribal statlets with force in demanding them sever diplomatic relations or suzerainty with the opposite parties. When one state and/or tribal state surrendered to the Han Chinese or the Huns, the Huns and the the Han Chinese would send expeditions to attack the traitor state or tribal statelet as a punishment. It's the small state and/or tribal statelet sanwiched in between that suffered the most.
 
The weakened Huns provided a vaccum for the Xianbei (or Hsien-pei in Wade-Giles) to move in in the middle of 1st century AD. The Xianbei were the northern branch of the Donghu (or Tung Hu, the Eastern Hu), a proto-Tunguz group mentioned in Chinese histories as existing as early as the fourth century B.C. By the first century, two major subdivisions of the Donghu had developed: the Xianbei in the north and the Wuhuan in the south. The Xianbei expanded their territories, and they took over most of the northern territories held by the Huns previously. There appeared a Xianbei chieftan called Tanshikui (reign AD 156-181) who established a Xianbei alliance by absorbing dozens of thousands of Huns. By the time of Three Kingdoms Period (AD 220-280), the Wuhuan nomads had taken control of today's Hebei Province and Peking areas. Ts'ao Ts'ao broke a new Xianbei alliance by sending an assasin to kill a Xianbei chieftan called Kebineng. Warlord Yüan Shao campaigned against the Wuhuans and controlled three prefectures of Wuhuan nomads. After Ts'ao Ts'ao defeated Yuan Shao, Yüan's two sons, Yüan Shang and Yüan Xi fled to the refuge with the Wuhuans. Ts'ao Ts'ao campaigned against the Wuhuans, killed a chieftan called Datu (with same last character as Hunnic Chanyu Motu), and took over the control of southern Manchuria. The Xianbei nomad, with major tribes of Murong, Yuwen, Duan as well as the Koreans, would take the place of the Wuhuans. They would establish many successive states, which, although short-lived, gave rise to numerous tribal states along the Chinese frontier. Among these states was that of the Toba (T'o-pa in Wade-Giles), a subgroup of the Xianbei, in modern China's Shanxi Province. The Xianbei and the Wuhuan used mounted archers in warfare, and they had been good mercenaries for the Han Chinese and the Wei Chinese. Among General Ts'ao Ts'ao columns of army against the Shu State during the three Kingdoms Period (AD 220-280), many would be the Xianbei nomads wearing stirups.

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