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Huns

April 17, 2023

"Hun" redirects here. For other uses, see Hun (disambiguation).

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;[1] the Huns' arrival to Europe is associated with the migration westward of an Iranian people, the Alans.[2] By 370 AD, the Huns had arrived on the Volga, and by 430, they 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, they 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 the death of Attila in 453, the Huns ceased to be a major threat to Rome and lost much of their empire following the Battle of Nedao (c. 454). Descendants of the Huns, or successors with similar names, are recorded by neighboring 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.

Huns
370s–469
Territory under Hunnic control circa 450 AD
Common languages
GovernmentTribal Confederation
King or chief 
• 370s?
Balamber?
• c. 395 – ?
Kursich and Basich
• c. 400–409
Uldin
• c. 412 – ?
Charaton
• c. 420s–430
Octar and Rugila
• 430–435
Rugila
• 435–445
Attila and Bleda
• 445–453
Attila
• 453–469
Dengizich and Ernak
• 469–?
Ernak
History 
• Huns appear north-west of the Caspian Sea
pre 370s
• Conquest of the Alans and Goths
370s
• Attila and Bleda become co-rulers of the united tribes
437
• Death of Bleda, Attila becomes sole ruler
445
451
• Invasion of northern Italy
452
454
• Dengizich, son of Attila, dies
469

In the 18th century, French scholar Joseph de Guignes became the first to propose a link between the Huns and the Xiongnu people, who lived in northern China from the 3rd century BC to the late 1st century AD.[3] Since Guignes' time, considerable scholarly effort has been devoted to investigating such a connection. The issue remains controversial, but recent archaeogenetic studies suggest their Xiongnu origin from Mongolia as well as admixture with Scythian and Germanic peoples.[4] Their relationships with other entities, such as the Iranian Huns and the Huna people of South Asia, have 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 is 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 numerous languages, and some 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.[5] 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.[6] Modern culture generally associates the Huns with extreme cruelty and barbarism.[7]

Origin

class=notpageimage|
The Eurasian Steppe Belt (in   on the map), and main contemporary continental Asian polities circa 400 CE. Towards the east of the Steppe Belt, the rise of the powerful Rouran Khaganate may have encouraged the migration of the Huns to the west.[8]

The origins of the Huns and their links to other steppe people remain uncertain:[9] 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.[1] Most typically, Roman writers' attempts to elucidate the origins of the Huns simply equated them with earlier steppe peoples.[10] Roman writers 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.[11] Jordanes' Getica relates that the Goths held the Huns to be offspring of "unclean spirits"[12] and Gothic witches.[13]

Relation to the Xiongnu and other peoples called Huns

Further information: Origin of the Huns
 
Domain and influence of Xiongnu under Modu Chanyu around 205 BC, the believed place of Huns' origin.

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 numerous Central Plain polities from the Mongolian Plateau between the 3rd century BC and the 2nd century AD.[3] After the devastating defeat by the Han dynasty, the northern branch of the Xiongnu retreated north-westward; their descendants may have migrated through the Eurasian Steppe and consequently they may have some degree of cultural and genetic continuity with the Huns.[14] 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.[15]

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.[16] Since Maenchen-Helfen's work, the identification of the Xiongnu as the Huns' ancestors has become controversial.[17] Additionally, several scholars have questioned the identification of the "Iranian Huns" with the European Huns.[18] 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 H(s)iung-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.[19]

 
Location of Xiongnu and other steppe nations in 1 AD

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,[20] and that the various "Iranian Huns" were similarly identified with the Xiongnu.[21] Kim believes that the term Hun was "not primarily an ethnic group, but a political category"[22] and argues for a fundamental political and cultural continuity between the Xiongnu and the European Huns,[23] as well as between the Xiongnu and the "Iranian Huns".[24]

Etymology

The name Hun is attested in classical European sources as Greek Οὖννοι (Ounnoi) and Latin Hunni or Chuni.[25][26] John Malalas records their name as Οὖννα (Ounna).[27] Another possible Greek variant may be Χοὖνοι (Khounoi), although this group's identification with the Huns is disputed.[28] 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.[29]

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 (to grow), qun (glutton), kün, gün, a plural suffix "supposedly meaning 'people'",[30] qun (force), and hün (ferocious).[30] Maenchen-Helfen dismisses all of these Turkic etymologies as "mere guesses"[31] and proposes an Iranian etymology, from a word akin to Avestan hūnarā (skill), hūnaravant- (skillful). He suggests that it may originally have designated a rank rather than an ethnicity.[32] Robert Werner has advanced an etymology from Tocharian ku (dog), suggesting—as 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.[33] 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".[34] Christopher Atwood dismisses this possibility on phonological and chronological grounds.[35] 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.[36]

Physical appearance

 
Picture of White Hun king from a 5th-century seal. The Hephthalites are considered related to the European Huns, if not the same people, by a part of modern historians, though consensus has yet to be reached.[37][38][39][40] Contemporary scholar Procopius described them as of the "same stock".[41]

Most of the ancient descriptions of the Huns stress their strange appearance from a Roman perspective. These descriptions typically caricature the Huns as monsters.[42] Jordanes stresses that the Huns were short of stature, had tanned skin and round and shapeless heads.[43] Various writers mention that the Huns had small eyes and flat noses.[44] 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."[45]

Many scholars take these to be unflattering depictions of East Asian ("Mongoloid") racial characteristics.[46] 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.[47] He notes that archaeological finds of presumed Huns suggest that they were a racially mixed group containing only some individuals with East Asian features.[48] Kim similarly cautions against seeing the Huns as a homogenous racial group,[49] while still arguing that they were "partially or predominantly of Mongoloid extraction (at least initially)."[50] Some archaeologists have argued that archaeological finds have failed to prove that the Huns had any "Mongoloid" features at all,[51] and some scholars have argued that the Huns were predominantly "Caucasian" in appearance.[52] Other archaeologists have argued that "Mongoloid" features are found primarily among members of the Hunnic aristocracy,[53] which, however, also included Germanic leaders who were integrated into the Hun polity.[54] 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 (451), "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.[55]

Genetics

See also: Rouran Khaganate § Genetics, Xianbei § Genetics, Xiongnu § Genetics, Donghu people § Genetics, Scythians § Archaeogenetics, Pannonian Avars § Genetics, and Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin § Genetic evidence

As of 2023, there is little genetic data from the Carpathian basin from the Hunnic period (5th century), and the population living there during the Hunnic period shows a variety of genetic signatures.[56]

In a genetic study of individuals from the around the Tian Shan mountains of central Asia dating from the late second century CE, Damgaard et al. 2018 found that these individuals represented a population of mixed East Asian and West Eurasian origin. They argued that this population descended from Xiongnu who expanded westward and mixed with Iranian Sakas.[57] This population in the Tian Shan mountains may be connected to the European Huns by individual burials that contains objects stylistically related to those used by the European Huns, although this could be a sign of the exchange of goods and the connections between elites rather than a sign of migration.[58]

Neparáczki et al. 2019 examined the remains of 3 males from three separate 5th century Hunnic cemeteries in the Pannonian Basin; on the basis of their Y-chromosomes, the authors determined these individuals to have mixed European and East Asian ancestry.[59] Using Neparáczki et al.'s data, Keyser et al. 2020 argued that the y-chromosones of 52 Xiongnu-era individuals showed a connection to these European remains, and, furthermore, that the Xiongnu were descended from the Scytho-Siberians.[60] In an interdisciplinary study published earlier that year, Savelyev & Jeong 2020 found no clear evidence of continuity between the Xiongnu and the Huns, concluding that the evidence of continuity is "very weak, largely because of the overall scarcity of an eastern Eurasian component in the interdisciplinary profile of the Huns", noting that "the eastern steppe heritage is extremely limited in their archeological record, and surprisingly no ancient genome from the Hunnic period Carpathian basin has been reported to test the eastern Eurasian genetic connection".[61]

Gnecchi-Ruscone et al. 2021 found that the genetics of an individual found in an elite Hun-period burial with Y-DNA haplogroup R1a1a1b-Z645 from mid-4th century Hungary closely clustered with a same century Hun-period individual from western Kazakhstan and the Xianbei Hun-period individual from Berel with ancient northeast Asian groups.[62] The next year, Gnecchi-Ruscone et al. 2022 examined a 5th-century Hun-period male from Hungary, he belonged to paternal R1a1a1b2a2b2-Y57 and maternal haplogroup H5, and mostly had West Eurasian origin.[63] Maróti et al. 2022 sequenced 9 skeletal remains from 4-5th century Hungary, two out of seven men carried R1a1a1b2a2a3c-Z94 while others R1a1a1b1a2b3a1-FGC13709 and R1a1a1b2a2b2-Y57 (Eastern Europe), R1b1a1b1a1a1c2b2b1a-S1746 and R1b1a1b1b3a1a1-CTS9219 (North-Western Europe).[64] According to it, the genetic data is in accordance with interdiciplinary sources as confirmed Xiongnu origin from Mongolia and their subsequent mixing with Scythians/Sarmatians and Germanic/Goths after traveling toward Europe.[64]

History

Main article: History of the Huns

Before Attila

 
A suggested path of the Huns' movement westwards (labels in German)

The Romans became aware of the Huns[a] 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.[67] 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.[68] In 395 the Huns began their first large-scale attack on the Eastern Roman Empire.[69] Huns attacked in Thrace, overran Armenia, and pillaged Cappadocia. They entered parts of Syria, threatened Antioch, and passed through the province of Euphratesia.[70] 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.[70]

During their brief diversion from the Eastern Roman Empire, the Huns may have threatened tribes further west.[71] Uldin, the first Hun identified by name in contemporary sources,[72] 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.[73]

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.[74] In 433 some parts of Pannonia were ceded to them by Flavius Aetius, the magister militum of the Western Roman Empire.[75]

Under Attila

 
A nineteenth century depiction of Attila. Certosa di Pavia – Medallion at the base of the facade. The Latin inscription tells that this is Attila, the scourge of God.

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,[76] 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.[77] 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.[78] 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 their armies continued westward, 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 fought the Huns at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains.

 
Raphael's The Meeting between Leo the Great and Attila depicts Pope Leo I, escorted by Saint Peter and Saint Paul, meeting with the Hun emperor outside Rome

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 Attila died of a haemorrhage on his wedding night.[47]

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 Germanic coalition to overthrow Hunnic imperial authority. The Amali Goths would revolt the same year under Valamir, allegedly defeating the Huns in a separate engagement.[79] 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.[80]

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.[81] His campaigning was also met with dissatisfaction from Ernak, ruler of the Akatziri Huns, who wanted to focus on the incoming Oghur speaking peoples.[80] Dengizich 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.[82] In 469, Dengizich was defeated and killed in Thrace.[83]

After Dengizich's death, the Huns seem to have been absorbed by other ethnic groups such as the Bulgars.[83] Kim, however, argues that the Huns continued under Ernak, becoming the Kutrigur and Utigur Hunno-Bulgars.[80] 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.[84] 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.[85]

Lifestyle and economy

Pastoral nomadism

The Huns have traditionally been described as pastoral nomads, living off of herding and moving from pasture to pasture to graze their animals.[86] Hyun Jin Kim, however, holds the term "nomad" to be misleading:

[T]he term 'nomad', if it denotes a wandering group of people with no clear sense of territory, cannot be applied wholesale to the Huns. All the so-called 'nomads' of Eurasian steppe history were peoples whose territory/territories were usually clearly defined, who as pastoralists moved about in search of pasture, but within a fixed territorial space.[50]

Maenchen-Helfen notes that pastoral nomads (or "seminomads") typically alternate between summer pastures and winter quarters: while the pastures may vary, the winter quarters always remained the same.[87] This is, in fact, what Jordanes writes of the Hunnic Altziagiri tribe: they pastured near Cherson on the Crimea and then wintered further north, with Maenchen-Helfen holding the Syvash as a likely location.[88] Ancient sources mention that the Huns' herds consisted of various animals, including cattle, horses, and goats; sheep, though unmentioned in ancient sources, "are more essential to the steppe nomad even than horses"[89] and must have been a large part of their herds.[88] Additionally, Maenchen-Helfen argues that the Huns may have kept small herds of Bactrian camels in the part of their territory in modern Romania and Ukraine, something attested for the Sarmatians.[90]

Ammianus Marcellinus says that the majority of the Huns' diet came from the meat of these animals,[91] with Maenchen-Helfen arguing, on the basis of what is known of other steppe nomads, that they likely mostly ate mutton, along with sheep's cheese and milk.[88] They also "certainly" ate horse meat, drank mare's milk, and likely made cheese and kumis.[92] In times of starvation, they may have boiled their horses' blood for food.[93]

Ancient sources uniformly deny that the Huns practiced any sort of agriculture.[94] Thompson, taking these accounts at their word, argues that "[w]ithout the assistance of the settled agricultural population at the edge of the steppe they could not have survived".[95] He argues that the Huns were forced to supplement their diet by hunting and gathering.[96] Maenchen-Helfen, however, notes that archaeological finds indicate that various steppe nomad populations did grow grain; in particular, he identifies a find at Kunya Uaz in Khwarezm on the Ob River of agriculture among a people who practiced artificial cranial deformation as evidence of Hunnic agriculture.[97] Kim similarly argues that all steppe empires have possessed both pastoralist and sedentary populations, classifying the Huns as "agro-pastoralist".[50]

Horses and transportation

 
Huns by Rochegrosse 1910 (detail)

As a nomadic people, the Huns spent a great deal of time riding horses: Ammianus claimed that the Huns "are almost glued to their horses",[98][99] Zosimus claimed that they "live and sleep on their horses",[100] and Sidonius claimed that "[s]carce had an infant learnt to stand without his mother's aid when a horse takes him on his back".[101] They appear to have spent so much time riding that they walked clumsily, something observed in other nomadic groups.[102] Roman sources characterize the Hunnic horses as ugly.[99] It is not possible to determine the exact breed of horse the Huns used, despite relatively good Roman descriptions.[103] Sinor believes that it was likely a breed of Mongolian pony.[104] However, horse remains are absent from all identified Hun burials.[104] Based on anthropological descriptions and archaeological finds of other nomadic horses, Maenchen-Helfen believes that they rode mostly geldings.[105]

Besides horses, ancient sources mention that the Huns used wagons for transportation, which Maenchen-Helfen believes were primarily used to transport their tents, booty, and the old people, women, and children.[106]

Economic relations with the Romans

The Huns received a large amount of gold from the Romans, either in exchange for fighting for them as mercenaries or as tribute.[107] Raiding and looting also furnished the Huns with gold and other valuables.[108] Denis Sinor has argued that at the time of Attila, the Hunnic economy became almost entirely dependent on plunder and tribute from the Roman provinces.[109]

 
1910 Rochegrosse depiction of Roman villa in Gaul sacked by the hordes of Attila the Hun

Civilians and soldiers captured by the Huns might also be ransomed back, or else sold to Roman slave dealers as slaves.[110] The Huns themselves, Maenchen-Helfen argued, had little use for slaves due to their nomadic pastoralist lifestyle.[111] More recent scholarship, however, has demonstrated that pastoral nomadists are actually more likely to use slave labor than sedentary societies: the slaves would have been used to manage the Huns' herds of cattle, sheep, and goats.[112] Priscus attests that slaves were used as domestic servants, but also that educated slaves were used by the Huns in positions of administration or even architects. Some slaves were even used as warriors.[113]

The Huns also traded with the Romans. E. A. Thompson argued that this trade was very large scale, with the Huns trading horses, furs, meat, and slaves for Roman weapons, linen, and grain, and various other luxury goods.[114] While Maenchen-Helfen concedes that the Huns traded their horses for what he considered to have been "a very considerable source of income in gold", he is otherwise skeptical of Thompson's argument.[115] He notes that the Romans strictly regulated trade with the barbarians and that, according to Priscus, trade only occurred at a fair once a year.[116] While he notes that smuggling also likely occurred, he argues that "the volume of both legal and illegal trade was apparently modest".[116] He does note that wine and silk appear to have been imported into the Hunnic Empire in large quantities, however.[117] Roman gold coins appear to have been in circulation as currency within the whole of the Hunnic Empire.[118]

Connections to the Silk Road

Christopher Atwood has suggested that the purpose of the original Hunnic incursion into Europe may have been to establish an outlet to the Black Sea for the Sogdian merchants under their rule, who were involved in the trade along the Silk Road to China.[119] Atwood notes that Jordanes describes how the Crimean city of Cherson, "where the avaricious traders bring in the goods of Asia", was under the control of the Akatziri Huns in the sixth century.[119]

Government

Hunnic governmental structure has long been debated. Peter Heather argues that the Huns were a disorganized confederation in which leaders acted completely independently and that eventually established a ranking hierarchy, much like Germanic societies.[120][121] Denis Sinor similarly notes that, with the exception of the historically uncertain Balamber, no Hun leaders are named in the sources until Uldin, indicating their relative unimportance.[74] Thompson argues that permanent kingship only developed with the Huns' invasion of Europe and the near-constant warfare that followed.[122] Regarding the organization of Hunnic rule under Attila, Peter Golden comments "it can hardly be called a state, much less an empire".[123] Golden speaks instead of a "Hunnic confederacy".[124] Kim, however, argues that the Huns were far more organized and centralized, with some basis in organization of the Xiongnu state.[125] Walter Pohl notes the correspondences of Hunnic government to those of other steppe empires, but nevertheless argues that the Huns do not appear to have been a unified group when they arrived in Europe.[126]

Ammianus wrote that the Huns of his day had no kings, but rather that each group of Huns instead had a group of leading men (primates) for times of war .[127] E.A. Thompson supposes that, even in war, the leading men had little actual power.[128] He further argues that they most likely did not acquire their position purely hereditarily.[129] Heather, however, argues that Ammianus merely meant that the Huns didn't have a single ruler; he notes that Olympiodorus mentions the Huns having several kings, with one being the "first of the kings".[120] Ammianus also mentions that the Huns made their decisions in a general council (omnes in commune) while seated on horseback.[130] He makes no mention of the Huns being organized into tribes, but Priscus and other writers do, naming some of them.[95]

The first Hunnic ruler known by name is Uldin. Thompson takes Uldin's sudden disappearance after he was unsuccessful at war as a sign that the Hunnic kingship was "democratic" at this time rather than a permanent institution.[131] Kim, however, argues that Uldin is actually a title and that he was likely merely a subking.[132] Priscus calls Attila "king" or "emperor" (βασιλέυς), but it is unknown what native title he was translating.[133] With the exception of the sole rule of Attila, the Huns often had two rulers; Attila himself later appointed his son Ellac as co-king.[134][135] Subject peoples of the Huns were led by their own kings.[136]

Priscus also speaks of "picked men" or logades (λογάδες) forming part of Attila's government, naming five of them.[137] Some of the "picked men" seem to have been chosen because of birth, others for reasons of merit.[138] Thompson argued that these "picked men" "were the hinge upon which the entire administration of the Hun empire turned":[139] he argues for their existence in the government of Uldin, and that each had command over detachments of the Hunnic army and ruled over specific portions of the Hunnic empire, where they were responsible also for collecting tribute and provisions.[140] Maenchen-Helfen, however, argues that the word logades denotes simply prominent individuals and not a fixed rank with fixed duties.[141] Kim affirms the importance of the logades for Hunnic administration, but notes that there were differences of rank between them, and suggests that it was more likely lower ranking officials who gathered taxes and tribute.[142] He suggests that various Roman defectors to the Huns may have worked in a sort of imperial bureaucracy.[143]

Society and culture

Art and material culture

Further information: Hunnic art
 
A Hunnish cauldron
 
Detail of Hunnish gold and garnet bracelet, 5th century, Walters Art Museum
 
A Hunnish oval openwork fibula set with a carnelian and decorated with a geometric pattern of gold wire, 4th century, Walters Art Museum

There are two sources for the material culture and art of the Huns: ancient descriptions and archaeology. Unfortunately, the nomadic nature of Hun society means that they have left very little in the archaeological record.[144] Indeed, although a great amount of archaeological material has been unearthed since 1945, as of 2005 there were only 200 positively identified Hunnic burials producing Hunnic material culture.[145] It can be difficult to distinguish Hunnic archaeological finds from those of the Sarmatians, as both peoples lived in close proximity and seem to have had very similar material cultures. Kim thus cautions that it is difficult to assign any artifact to the Huns ethnically.[146] It is also possible that the Huns in Europe adopted the material culture of their Germanic subjects.[147] Roman descriptions of the Huns, meanwhile, are often highly biased, stressing their supposed primitiveness.[148][149]

Archaeological finds have produced a large number of cauldrons that have since the work of Paul Reinecke in 1896 been identified as having been produced by the Huns.[150] Although typically described as "bronze cauldrons", the cauldrons are often made of copper, which is generally of poor quality.[151] Maenchen-Helfen lists 19 known finds of Hunnish cauldrons from all over Central and Eastern Europe and Western Siberia.[152] He argues from the state of the bronze castings that the Huns were not very good metalsmiths, and that it is likely that the cauldrons were cast in the same locations where they were found.[153] They come in various shapes, and are sometimes found together with vessels of various other origins.[154] Maenchen-Helfen argues that the cauldrons were cooking vessels for boiling meat,[155] but that the fact that many are found deposited near water and were generally not buried with individuals may indicate a sacral usage as well.[156] The cauldrons appear to derive from those used by the Xiongnu.[157][158] Ammianus also reports that the Huns had iron swords. Thompson is skeptical that the Huns cast them themselves,[159] but Maenchen-Helfen argues that "[t]he idea that the Hun horsemen fought their way to the walls of Constantinople and to the Marne with bartered and captured swords is absurd."[160]

Both ancient sources and archaeological finds from graves confirm that the Huns wore elaborately decorated golden or gold-plated diadems.[161] Maenchen-Helfen lists a total of six known Hunnish diadems.[162] Hunnic women seem to have worn necklaces and bracelets of mostly imported beads of various materials as well.[163] The later common early medieval practice of decorating jewelry and weapons with gemstones appears to have originated with the Huns.[164] They are also known to have made small mirrors of an originally Chinese type, which often appear to have been intentionally broken when placed into a grave.[165]

Archaeological finds indicate that the Huns wore gold plaques as ornaments on their clothing, as well as imported glass beads.[166] Ammianus reports that they wore clothes made of linen or the furs of marmots and leggings of goatskin.[89]

Ammianus reports that the Huns had no buildings,[167] but in passing mentions that the Huns possessed tents and wagons.[160] Maenchen-Helfen believes that the Huns likely had "tents of felt and sheepskin": Priscus once mentions Attila's tent, and Jordanes reports that Attila lay in state in a silk tent.[168] However, by the middle of the fifth century, the Huns are also known to have owned permanent wooden houses, which Maenchen-Helfen believes were built by their Gothic subjects.[169]

Artificial cranial deformation

 
Landesmuseum Württemberg deformed skull, early 6th century Allemannic culture.

Various archaeologists have argued that the Huns, or the nobility of the Huns, as well as Germanic tribes influenced by them, practiced artificial cranial deformation, the process of artificially lengthening the skulls of babies by binding them.[170] The goal of this process was "to create a clear physical distinction between the nobility and the general populace".[171] While Eric Crubézy has argued against a Hunnish origin for the spread of this practice,[51] the majority of scholars hold the Huns responsible for the spread of this custom in Europe.[172] The practice was not originally introduced to Europe by the Huns, however, but rather with the Alans, with whom the Huns were closely associated, and Sarmatians.[173] It was also practiced by other peoples called Huns in Asia.[174]

Languages

Further information: Hunnic language

A variety of languages were spoken within the Hun Empire. Priscus noted that the Hunnic language differed from other languages spoken at Attila's court.[175] He recounts how Attila's jester Zerco made Attila's guests laugh also by the "promiscuous jumble of words, Latin mixed with Hunnish and Gothic."[175] Priscus said that Attila's "Scythian" subjects spoke "besides their own barbarian tongues, either Hunnish, or Gothic, or, as many have dealings with the Western Romans, Latin; but not one of them easily speaks Greek, except captives from the Thracian or Illyrian frontier regions".[176] Some scholars have argued that Gothic was used as the lingua franca of the Hunnic Empire.[177] Hyun Jin Kim argues that the Huns may have used as many as four languages at various levels of government, without any one being dominant: Hunnic, Gothic, Latin, and Sarmatian.[178]

As to the Hunnic language itself, only three words are recorded in ancient sources as being "Hunnic," all of which appear to be from an Indo-European language.[179] All other information on Hunnic is contained in personal names and tribal ethnonyms.[180] On the basis of these names, scholars have proposed that Hunnic may have been a Turkic language,[181] a language between Mongolic and Turkic,[182] an Eastern Iranian language,[183] or a Yeniseian language.[184] However, given the small corpus, many hold the language to be unclassifiable.[185]

Marriage and the role of women

The elites of the Huns practiced polygamy,[186] while the commoners were probably monogamous.[187] Ammianus Marcellinus claimed that the Hunnish women lived in seclusion; however, the first-hand account of Priscus shows them freely moving and mixing with men.[188] Priscus describes Hunnic women swarming around Attila as he entered a village, as well as the wife of Attila's minister Onegesius offering the king food and drink with her servants.[189] Priscus was able to enter the tent of Attila's chief wife, Hereca, without difficulty.[190]

Priscus also attests that the widow of Attila's brother Bleda was in command of a village that the Roman ambassadors rode through: her territory may have included a larger area.[190] Thompson notes that other steppe peoples, such as the Utigurs and the Sabirs, are known to have had female tribal leaders, and argues that the Huns probably held widows in high respect.[190] Due to the pastoral nature of the Huns' economy, the women likely had a large degree of authority over the domestic household.[186]

Religion

Almost nothing is known about the religion of the Huns.[191][192] Roman writer Ammianus Marcellinus claimed that the Huns had no religion,[193] while the fifth-century Christian writer Salvian classified them as Pagans.[194] Jordanes' Getica also records that the Huns worshipped "the sword of Mars", an ancient sword that signified Attila's right to rule the whole world.[195] Maenchen-Helfen notes a widespread worship of a war god in the form of a sword among steppe peoples, including among the Xiongnu.[196] Denis Sinor, however, holds the worship of a sword among the Huns to be apocryphal.[197] Maenchen-Helfen also argues that, while the Huns themselves do not appear to have regarded Attila as divine, some of his subject people clearly did.[198] A belief in prophecy and divination is also attested among the Huns.[199][200][197] Maenchen-Helfen argues that the performers of these acts of soothsaying and divination were likely shamans.[b] Sinor also finds it likely that the Huns had shamans, although they are completely unattested.[202] Maenchen-Helfen also deduces a belief in water-spirits from a custom mentioned in Ammianus.[c] He further suggests that the Huns may have made small metal, wooden, or stone idols, which are attested among other steppe tribes, and which a Byzantine source attests for the Huns in Crimea in the sixth century.[204] He also connects archaeological finds of Hunnish bronze cauldrons found buried near or in running water to possible rituals performed by the Huns in the Spring.[205]

John Man argues that the Huns of Attila's time likely worshipped the sky and the steppe deity Tengri, who is also attested as having been worshipped by the Xiongnu.[206] Maenchen-Helfen also suggests the possibility that the Huns of this period may have worshipped Tengri, but notes that the god is not attested in European records until the ninth century.[207] Worship of Tengri under the name "T'angri Khan" is attested among the Caucasian Huns in the Armenian chronicle attributed to Movses Dasxuranci during the later seventh-century.[202] Movses also records that the Caucasian Huns worshipped trees and burnt horses as sacrifices to Tengri,[202] and that they "made sacrifices to fire and water and to certain gods of the roads, and to the moon and to all creatures considered in their eyes to be in some way remarkable."[202] There is also some evidence for human sacrifice among the European Huns. Maenchen-Helfen argues that humans appear to have been sacrificed at Attila's funerary rite, recorded in Jordanes under the name strava.[208] Priscus claims that the Huns sacrificed their prisoners "to victory" after they entered Scythia, but this is not otherwise attested as a Hunnic custom and may be fiction.[209][197]

In addition to these Pagan beliefs, there are numerous attestations of Huns converting to Christianity and receiving Christian missionaries.[210][211] The missionary activities among the Huns of the Caucasus seem to have been particularly successful, resulting in the conversion of the Hunnish prince Alp Ilteber.[197] Attila appears to have tolerated both Nicene and Arian Christianity among his subjects.[212] However, a pastoral letter by Pope Leo the Great to the church of Aquileia indicates that Christian slaves taken from there by the Huns in 452 were forced to participate in Hunnic religious activities.[213]

Warfare

 
Huns in battle with the Alans. An 1870s engraving after a drawing by Johann Nepomuk Geiger (1805–1880).

Strategy and tactics

Hun warfare as a whole is not well studied. One of the principal sources of information on Hunnic warfare is Ammianus Marcellinus, who includes an extended description of the Huns' methods of war:

They also sometimes fight when provoked, and then they enter the battle drawn up in wedge-shaped masses, while their medley of voices makes a savage noise. And as they are lightly equipped for swift motion, and unexpected in action, they purposely divide suddenly into scattered bands and attack, rushing about in disorder here and there, dealing terrific slaughter; and because of their extraordinary rapidity of movement they are never seen to attack a rampart or pillage an enemy's camp. And on this account you would not hesitate to call them the most terrible of all warriors, because they fight from a distance with missiles having sharp bone, instead of their usual points, joined to the shafts with wonderful skill; then they gallop over the intervening spaces and fight hand to hand with swords, regardless of their own lives; and while the enemy are guarding against wounds from the sabre-thrusts, they throw strips of cloth plaited into nooses over their opponents and so entangle them that they fetter their limbs and take from them the power of riding or walking.[214]

Based on Ammianus' description, Maenchen-Helfen argues that the Huns' tactics did not differ markedly from those used by other nomadic horse archers.[99] He argues that the "wedge-shaped masses" (cunei) mentioned by Ammianus were likely divisions organized by tribal clans and families, whose leaders may have been called a cur. This title would then have been inherited as it was passed down the clan.[215] Like Ammianus, the sixth-century writer Zosimus also emphasizes the Huns' almost exclusive use of horse archers and their extreme swiftness and mobility.[216] These qualities differed from other nomadic warriors in Europe at this time: the Sarmatians, for instance, relied on heavily armored cataphracts armed with lances.[217] The Huns' use of terrible war cries are also found in other sources.[218] However, a number of Ammianus's claims have been challenged by modern scholars.[219] In particular, while Ammianus claims that the Huns knew no metalworking, Maenchen-Helfen argues that a people so primitive could never have been successful in war against the Romans.[160]

Hunnic armies relied on their high mobility and "a shrewd sense of when to attack and when to withdraw".[220] An important strategy used by the Huns was a feigned retreat—pretending to flee and then turning and attacking the disordered enemy. This is mentioned by the writers Zosimus and Agathias.[99] They were, however, not always effective in pitched battle, suffering defeat at Toulouse in 439, barely winning at the Battle of the Utus in 447, likely losing or stalemating at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains in 451, and losing at the Battle of Nedao (454?).[221] Christopher Kelly argues that Attila sought to avoid "as far as possible, [...] large-scale engagement with the Roman army".[221] War and the threat of war were frequently-used tools to extort Rome; the Huns often relied on local traitors to avoid losses.[222] Accounts of battles note that the Huns fortified their camps by using portable fences or creating a circle of wagons.[223]

The Huns' nomadic lifestyle encouraged features such as excellent horsemanship, while the Huns trained for war by frequent hunting.[224] Several scholars have suggested that the Huns had trouble maintaining their horse cavalry and nomadic lifestyle after settling on the Hungarian Plain, and that this in turn led to a marked decrease in their effectiveness as fighters.[225][226]

The Huns are almost always noted as fighting alongside non-Hunnic, Germanic or Iranian subject peoples or, in earlier times, allies.[227] As Heather notes, "the Huns' military machine increased, and increased very quickly, by incorporating ever larger numbers of the Germani of central and eastern Europe".[147] At the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains, Attila is noted by Jordanes to have placed his subject peoples in the wings of the army, while the Huns held the center.[228]

A major source of information on steppe warfare from the time of the Huns comes from the 6th-century Strategikon, which describes the warfare of "Dealing with the Scythians, that is, Avars, Turks, and others whose way of life resembles that of the Hunnish peoples." The Strategikon describes the Avars and Huns as devious and very experienced in military matters.[229] They are described as preferring to defeat their enemies by deceit, surprise attacks, and cutting off supplies. The Huns brought large numbers of horses to use as replacements and to give the impression of a larger army on campaign.[229] The Hunnish peoples did not set up an entrenched camp, but spread out across the grazing fields according to clan, and guarded their necessary horses until they began forming the battle line under the cover of early morning. The Strategikon states the Huns also stationed sentries at significant distances and in constant contact with each other in order to prevent surprise attacks.[230]

According to the Strategikon, the Huns did not form a battle line using the method that the Romans and Persians used, but in irregularly-sized divisions in a single line, and keeping a separate force nearby for ambushes and as a reserve. The Strategikon also states the Huns used deep formations with a dense and even front.[230] The Strategikon states that the Huns kept their spare horses and baggage train to either side of the battle line at about a mile away, with a moderate sized guard, and would sometimes tie their spare horses together behind the main battle line.[230] The Huns preferred to fight at long range, utilizing ambush, encirclement, and the feigned retreat. The Strategikon also makes note of the wedge-shaped formations mentioned by Ammianus, and corroborated as familial regiments by Maenchen-Helfen.[230][215][231] The Strategikon states the Huns preferred to pursue their enemies relentlessly after a victory and then wear them out by a long siege after defeat.[230]

Peter Heather notes that the Huns were able to successfully besiege walled cities and fortresses in their campaign of 441: they were thus capable of building siege engines.[232] Heather makes note of multiple possible routes for acquisition of this knowledge, suggesting that it could have been brought back from service under Aetius, acquired from captured Roman engineers, or developed through the need to pressure the wealthy silk road city states, and carried over into Europe.[233] David Nicolle agrees with the latter point, and even suggests they had a complete set of engineering knowledge including skills for constructing advanced fortifications, such as the fortress of Igdui-Kala in Kazakhstan.[234]

Military equipment

The Strategikon states the Huns typically used mail, swords, bows, and lances, and that most Hunnic warriors were armed with both the bow and lance and used them interchangeably as needed. It also states the Huns used quilted linen, wool, or sometimes iron barding for their horses and also wore quilted coifs and kaftans.[235] This assessment is largely corroborated by archaeological finds of Hun military equipment, such as the Volnikovka and Brut Burials.

A late Roman ridge helmet of the Berkasovo-Type was found with a Hun burial at Concesti.[236] A Hunnic helmet of the Segmentehelm type was found at Chudjasky, a Hunnic Spangenhelm at Tarasovsky grave 1784, and another of the Bandhelm type at Turaevo.[237] Fragments of lamellar helmets dating to the Hunnic period and within the Hunnic sphere have been found at Iatrus, Illichevka, and Kalkhni.[236][237] Hun lamellar armour has not been found in Europe, although two fragments of likely Hun origin have been found on the Upper Ob and in West Kazakhstan dating to the 3rd–4th centuries.[238] A find of lamellar dating to about 520 from the Toprachioi warehouse in the fortress of Halmyris near Badabag, Romania, suggests a late 5th- or early 6th-century introduction.[239] It is known that the Eurasian Avars introduced lamellar armor to the Roman army and migration-era Germanic people in the mid 6th century, but this later type does not appear before then.[236][240]

It is also widely accepted that the Huns introduced the langseax, a 60 cm (24 in) cutting blade that became popular among the migration era Germanics and in the Late Roman army, into Europe.[241] It is believed these blades originated in China and that the Sarmatians and Huns served as a transmission vector, using shorter seaxes in Central Asia that developed into the narrow langseax in Eastern Europe during the late 4th and first half of the 5th century. These earlier blades date as far back as the 1st century AD, with the first of the newer type appearing in Eastern Europe being the Wien-Simmerming example, dated to the late 4th century AD.[241] Other notable Hun examples include the Langseax from the more recent find at Volnikovka in Russia.[242]

The Huns used a type of spatha in the Iranic or Sassanid style, with a long, straight approximately 83 cm (33 in) blade, usually with a diamond-shaped iron guard plate.[243] Swords of this style have been found at sites such as Altlussheim, Szirmabesenyo, Volnikovka, Novo-Ivanovka, and Tsibilium 61. They typically had gold foil hilts, gold sheet scabbards, and scabbard fittings decorated in the polychrome style. The sword was carried in the "Iranian style" attached to a swordbelt, rather than on a baldric.[244]

The most famous weapon of the Huns is the Qum Darya-type composite recurve bow, often called the "Hunnish bow". This bow was invented some time in the third or second centuries BC with the earliest finds near Lake Baikal, but spread across Eurasia long before the Hunnic migration. These bows were typified by being asymmetric in cross-section between 145 and 155 cm (57 and 61 in) in length, having between 4–9 lathes on the grip and in the siyahs.[245] Although whole bows rarely survive in European climatic conditions, finds of bone Siyahs are quite common and characteristic of steppe burials. Complete specimens have been found at sites in the Tarim Basin and Gobi Desert such as Niya, Qum Darya, and Shombuuziin-Belchir. Eurasian nomads such as the Huns typically used trilobate diamond-shaped iron arrowheads, attached using birch tar and a tang, with typically 75 cm (30 in) shafts and fletching attached with tar and sinew whipping. Such trilobate arrowheads are believed to be more accurate and have better penetrating power or capacity to injure than flat arrowheads.[245] Finds of bows and arrows in this style in Europe are limited but archaeologically evidenced. The most famous examples come from Wien-Simmerming, although more fragments have been found in the Northern Balkans and Carpathian regions.[246]

Legacy

In Christian hagiography

 
Martyrdom of Saint Ursula, by Hans Memling. The turbaned and armored figures represent Huns.

After the fall of the Hunnic Empire, various legends arose concerning the Huns. Among these are a number of Christian hagiographic legends in which the Huns play a role. In an anonymous medieval biography of Pope Leo I, Attila's march into Italy in 452 is stopped because, when he meets Leo outside Rome, the apostles Peter and Paul appear to him holding swords over his head and threatening to kill him unless he follows the pope's command to turn back.[247] In other versions, Attila takes the pope hostage and is forced by the saints to release him.[248] In the legend of Saint Ursula, Ursula and her 11,000 holy virgins arrive at Cologne on their way back from a pilgrimage just as the Huns, under an unnamed prince,[249] are besieging the city. Ursula and her virgins are killed by the Huns with arrows after they refuse the Huns' sexual advances. Afterwards, the souls of the slaughtered virgins form a heavenly army that drives away the Huns and saves Cologne.[250] Other cities with legends regarding the Huns and a saint include Orléans, Troyes, Dieuze, Metz, Modena, and Reims.[251] In legends surrounding Saint Servatius of Tongeren dating to at least the eighth century, Servatius is said to have converted Attila and the Huns to Christianity, before they later became apostates and returned to their paganism.[252]

In Germanic legend

 
The Huns (outside) set fire to their own hall to kill the Burgundians. Illustration from the Hundeshagen Codex of the Nibelungenlied.

The Huns also play an important role in Germanic heroic legends, which frequently convey versions of events from the migration period and were originally transmitted orally.[253] Memories of the conflicts between the Goths and Huns in Eastern Europe appear to be maintained in the Old English poem Widsith as well as in the Old Norse poem "The Battle of the Goths and Huns", which is transmitted in the thirteenth-century Icelandic Hervarar Saga.[254][255] Widsith also mentions Attila having been ruler of the Huns, placing him at the head of a list of various legendary and historical rulers and peoples and marking the Huns as the most famous.[256] The name Attila, rendered in Old English as Ætla, was a given name in use in Anglo-Saxon England (e.g. Bishop Ætla of Dorchester) and its use in England at the time may have been connected to the heroic kings legend represented in works such as Widsith.[257] Maenchen-Helfen, however, doubts the use of the name by the Anglo-Saxons had anything to do with the Huns, arguing that it was "not a rare name."[258] Bede, in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, lists the Huns among other peoples living in Germany when the Anglo-Saxons invaded England. This may indicate that Bede viewed the Anglo-Saxons as descending partially from the Huns.[259][260]

The Huns and Attila also form central figures in the two most-widespread Germanic legendary cycles, that of the Nibelungs and of Dietrich von Bern (the historical Theoderic the Great). The Nibelung legend, particularly as recorded in the Old Norse Poetic Edda and Völsunga saga, as well as in the German Nibelungenlied, connects the Huns and Attila (and in the Norse tradition, Attila's death) to the destruction of the Burgundian kingdom on the Rhine in 437.[261] In the legends about Dietrich von Bern, Attila and the Huns provide Dietrich with a refuge and support after he has been driven from his kingdom at Verona.[262] A version of the events of the Battle of Nadao may be preserved in a legend, transmitted in two differing versions in the Middle High German Rabenschlacht and Old Norse Thidrekssaga, in which the sons of Attila fall in battle.[262] The legend of Walter of Aquitaine, meanwhile, shows the Huns to receive child hostages as tribute from their subject peoples.[263] Generally, the continental Germanic traditions paint a more positive picture of Attila and the Huns than the Scandinavian sources, where the Huns appear in a distinctly negative light.[264]

In medieval German legend, the Huns were identified with the Hungarians, with their capital of Etzelburg (Attila-city) being identified with Esztergom or Buda.[265] The Old Norse Thidrekssaga, however, which is based on North German sources, locates Hunaland in northern Germany, with a capital at Soest in Westphalia.[266] In other Old Norse sources, the term Hun is sometimes applied indiscriminately to various people, particularly from south of Scandinavia.[266][267] From the thirteenth-century onward, the Middle High German word for Hun, hiune, became a synonym for giant, and continued to be used in this meaning in the forms Hüne and Heune into the modern era.[268] In this way, various prehistoric megalithic structures, particularly in Northern Germany, came to be identified as Hünengräber (Hun graves) or Hünenbetten (Hun beds).[269][270]

Links to the Hungarians

See also: Hungarian prehistory and Origin of the Székelys
 
'Feast of Attila'. Hungarian romantic painting by Mór Than (1870).
 
Attila (right) as a king of Hungary together with Gyula and Béla I, Illustration for Il costume antico e moderno by Giulio Ferrario (1831).

Beginning in the High Middle Ages, Hungarian sources have claimed descent from or a close relationship between the Hungarians (Magyars) and the Huns. The claim appears to have first arisen in non-Hungarian sources and only gradually been taken up by the Hungarians themselves because of its negative connotations.[271][272][273] The Anonymous Gesta Hungarorum (after 1200) is the first Hungarian source to mention that the line of Árpádian kings were descendants of Attila, but he makes no claim that the Hungarian and Hun peoples are related.[274][275] The first Hungarian author to claim that Hun and Hungarian peoples were related was Simon of Kéza in his Gesta Hunnorum et Hungarorum (1282–1285).[276] Simon claimed that the Huns and Hungarians were descended from two brothers, named Hunor and Magor.[d] These claims gave the Hungarians an ancient pedegree and served to legitimize their conquest of Pannonia.[278][279][280]

Modern scholars largely dismiss these claims.[281][282][258][283] Regarding the claimed Hunnish origins found in these chronicles, Jenő Szűcs writes:

The Hunnish origin of the Magyars is, of course, a fiction, just like the Trojan origin of the French or any of the other origo gentis theories fabricated at much the same time. The Magyars in fact originated from the Ugrian branch of the Finno-Ugrian peoples; in the course of their wanderings in the steppes of Eastern Europe they assimilated a variety of (especially Iranian and different Turkic) cultural and ethnic elements, but they had neither genetic nor historical links to the Huns.[284]

Generally, the proof of the relationship between the Hungarian and the Finno-Ugric languages in the nineteenth century is taken to have scientifically disproven the Hunnic origins of the Hungarians.[285] Another claim, also derived from Simon of Kéza,[286] is that the Hungarian-speaking Székely people of Transylvania are descended from Huns, who fled to Transylvania after Attila's death, and remained there until the Hungarian conquest of Pannonia. While the origins of the Székely are unclear,[287] modern historians and archaeologists do not consider the Székelys to be of Hunnic origin due to a lack of evidence.[288] László Makkai notes as well that some archaeologists and historians believe Székelys were a Hungarian tribe or an Onogur-Bulgar tribe drawn into the Carpathian Basin at the end of the 7th century by the Avars (who were identified with the Huns by contemporary Europeans).[289] Unlike in the legend, the Székely were resettled in Transylvania from Western Hungary in the eleventh century.[290] Their language similarly shows no evidence of a change from any non-Hungarian language to Hungarian, as one would expect if they were Huns.[291][292] While the Hungarians and the Székelys may not be descendants of the Huns, they were historically closely associated with Turkic peoples.[293] Pál Engel notes that it "cannot be wholly excluded" that Arpadian kings may have been descended from Attila, however, and believes that it is likely the Hungarians once lived under the rule of the Huns.[281] Hyun Jin Kim supposes that the Hungarians might be linked to the Huns via the Bulgars and Avars, both of whom he holds to have had Hunnish elements.[294]

While the notion that the Hungarians are descended from the Huns has been rejected by mainstream scholarship, the idea has continued to exert a relevant influence on Hungarian nationalism and national identity.[295] A majority of the Hungarian aristocracy continued to ascribe to the Hunnic view into the early twentieth century.[296] The Fascist Arrow Cross Party similarly referred to Hungary as Hunnia in its propaganda.[297] Hunnic origins also played a large role in the ideology of the modern radical right-wing party Jobbik's ideology of Pan-Turanism.[298] Legends concerning the Hunnic origins of the Székely minority in Romania, meanwhile, continue to play a large role in that group's ethnic identity.[299] The Hunnish origin of the Székelys remains the most widespread theory of their origins among the Hungarian general public.[300]

20th-century use in reference to Germans

See also: List of terms used for Germans § Hun (pejorative)

On 27 July 1900, during the Boxer Rebellion in China, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany in a speech gave the order to act ruthlessly towards the rebels: "Mercy will not be shown, prisoners will not be taken. Just as a thousand years ago, the Huns under Attila won a reputation of might that lives on in legends, so may the name of Germany in China, such that no Chinese will even again dare so much as to look askance at a German."[301] This comparison was later heavily employed by Allied anti-German war propaganda during World War I, and to a lesser extent during World War II, in order to paint the Germans as savage barbarians.[302]

See also

Endnotes

  1. ^ There is a misconception, e.g. as expressed by World History Encyclopedia,[65] that Tacitus (c. 56 – c. 120 CE) had first mentioned the Huns in 91 CE. However, T. D. Barnes (1977) already pointed out that Tacitus had not at all mentioned the Huns; and that Orosius (c. 375/385 – c. 420 CE) did not ascribe knowledge about the Huns to Tacitus, but simply identified the contemporary Alans, Goths, and Huns with the Scythians whom Tacitus and Justin had already mentioned.[66]
  2. ^ He argues for the existence of Hunnic shamans on the basis of the presence of the element kam in the Hunnic names Atakam and Eskam, which he derives from the Turkic qam, meaning shaman.[201]
  3. ^ He derives this belief from a Hunnic custom, attested in Ammianus, that the Huns did not wash their clothes: among later steppe peoples, this is done to avoid offending the water-spirits.[203]
  4. ^ Szűcs argues that the name Hunor as a Hungarian ancestor is genuinely reflective of the Magyar oral legends, but that it actually derives from the name Onogur; Simon therefore merely used the resemblance of Hunor to Hun to support his theory.[277]

Citations

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  5. ^ Sinor 1990, p. 177; Heather 1995, p. 16.
  6. ^ Szűcs 1999, p. xliv; Engel 2001, p. 2; Lendvai 2003, p. 7; Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 386.
  7. ^ Sinor 1990, p. 177.
  8. ^ Haug, Robert (27 June 2019). The Eastern Frontier: Limits of Empire in Late Antique and Early Medieval Central Asia. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 64. ISBN 978-1-78831-722-1. the Róurán Khāqānate, a nomadic confederation that had ruled Mongolia from the mid-fourth until the mid-sixth century and whose rise to power may have initiated the Hunnic migrations of the fourth century.
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  18. ^ Schottky 2004; Sinor 1990, p. 200.
  19. ^ Pohl 1999, pp. 501–502.
  20. ^ de la Vaissière 2015, pp. 178–180.
  21. ^ de la Vaissière 2015, pp. 181–183.
  22. ^ Kim 2015, p. 46.
  23. ^ Kim 2013, p. 31; Kim 2015, pp. 6–8.
  24. ^ Kim 2015, pp. 39, 44–53.
  25. ^ Doerfer 1973, p. 8.
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  27. ^ Atwood 2012, p. 31.
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  34. ^ Atwood 2012, p. 30.
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External links

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Huns.
  • Dorn'eich, Chris M. 2008. Chinese sources on the History of the Niusi-Wusi-Asi(oi)-Rishi(ka)-Arsi-Arshi-Ruzhi and their Kueishuang-Kushan Dynasty. Shiji 110/Hanshu 94A: The Xiongnu: Synopsis of Chinese original Text and several Western Translations with Extant Annotations. A blog on Central Asian history.
  • www.history.com/topics/ancient-china/huns
  • Eliot, Charles Norton Edgcumbe (1911). "Huns" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 13 (11th ed.). pp. 932–933.

April 17, 2023
huns, redirects, here, other, uses, disambiguation, were, nomadic, people, lived, central, asia, caucasus, eastern, europe, between, century, according, european, tradition, they, were, first, reported, living, east, volga, river, area, that, part, scythia, ti. Hun redirects here For other uses see Hun disambiguation 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 1 the Huns arrival to Europe is associated with the migration westward of an Iranian people the Alans 2 By 370 AD the Huns had arrived on the Volga and by 430 they 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 they 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 the death of Attila in 453 the Huns ceased to be a major threat to Rome and lost much of their empire following the Battle of Nedao c 454 Descendants of the Huns or successors with similar names are recorded by neighboring 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 Huns370s 469Territory under Hunnic control circa 450 ADCommon languagesHunnic Gothic Various tribal languagesGovernmentTribal ConfederationKing or chief 370s Balamber c 395 Kursich and Basich c 400 409Uldin c 412 Charaton c 420s 430Octar and Rugila 430 435Rugila 435 445Attila and Bleda 445 453Attila 453 469Dengizich and Ernak 469 ErnakHistory Huns appear north west of the Caspian Seapre 370s Conquest of the Alans and Goths370s Attila and Bleda become co rulers of the united tribes437 Death of Bleda Attila becomes sole ruler445 Battle of the Catalaunian Plains451 Invasion of northern Italy452 Battle of Nedao454 Dengizich son of Attila dies469Preceded by Succeeded byAlansGreuthungiThervingiPannonia GepidsRugilandOstrogothic KingdomKingdom of the Suebi Danube In the 18th century French scholar Joseph de Guignes became the first to propose a link between the Huns and the Xiongnu people who lived in northern China from the 3rd century BC to the late 1st century AD 3 Since Guignes time considerable scholarly effort has been devoted to investigating such a connection The issue remains controversial but recent archaeogenetic studies suggest their Xiongnu origin from Mongolia as well as admixture with Scythian and Germanic peoples 4 Their relationships with other entities such as the Iranian Huns and the Huna people of South Asia have 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 is 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 numerous languages and some 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 5 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 Szekely ethnic group in particular are descended from the Huns However mainstream scholarship dismisses a close connection between the Hungarians and Huns 6 Modern culture generally associates the Huns with extreme cruelty and barbarism 7 Contents 1 Origin 1 1 Relation to the Xiongnu and other peoples called Huns 1 2 Etymology 1 3 Physical appearance 1 4 Genetics 2 History 2 1 Before Attila 2 2 Under Attila 2 3 After Attila 3 Lifestyle and economy 3 1 Pastoral nomadism 3 2 Horses and transportation 3 3 Economic relations with the Romans 3 4 Connections to the Silk Road 4 Government 5 Society and culture 5 1 Art and material culture 5 2 Artificial cranial deformation 5 3 Languages 5 4 Marriage and the role of women 5 5 Religion 6 Warfare 6 1 Strategy and tactics 6 2 Military equipment 7 Legacy 7 1 In Christian hagiography 7 2 In Germanic legend 7 3 Links to the Hungarians 7 4 20th century use in reference to Germans 8 See also 9 Endnotes 10 Citations 11 References 12 External linksOrigin 400ROURAN KHAGANATEKyrgyzsGaojuTurksHYMYAREASTERNJINNORTHERNWEIGOGU RYEOWESTERNSATRAPSVAKA TAKASGUPTA EMPIREKIDARITESXIONITESAFRIGHIDSSASANIANEMPIREBYZANTINEEMPIREHUNSTOCHARIANSTUYUHUNN LIANGPaleo SiberiansSamoyedsTungusMEROEAKSUM class notpageimage The Eurasian Steppe Belt in on the map and main contemporary continental Asian polities circa 400 CE Towards the east of the Steppe Belt the rise of the powerful Rouran Khaganate may have encouraged the migration of the Huns to the west 8 The origins of the Huns and their links to other steppe people remain uncertain 9 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 1 Most typically Roman writers attempts to elucidate the origins of the Huns simply equated them with earlier steppe peoples 10 Roman writers 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 11 Jordanes Getica relates that the Goths held the Huns to be offspring of unclean spirits 12 and Gothic witches 13 Relation to the Xiongnu and other peoples called Huns Further information Origin of the Huns Domain and influence of Xiongnu under Modu Chanyu around 205 BC the believed place of Huns origin 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 numerous Central Plain polities from the Mongolian Plateau between the 3rd century BC and the 2nd century AD 3 After the devastating defeat by the Han dynasty the northern branch of the Xiongnu retreated north westward their descendants may have migrated through the Eurasian Steppe and consequently they may have some degree of cultural and genetic continuity with the Huns 14 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 15 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 16 Since Maenchen Helfen s work the identification of the Xiongnu as the Huns ancestors has become controversial 17 Additionally several scholars have questioned the identification of the Iranian Huns with the European Huns 18 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 H s iung 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 19 Location of Xiongnu and other steppe nations in 1 AD Recent scholarship particularly by Hyun Jin Kim and Etienne de la Vaissiere has revived the hypothesis that the Huns and the Xiongnu are one and the same De la Vaissiere argues that ancient Chinese and Indian sources used Xiongnu and Hun to translate each other 20 and that the various Iranian Huns were similarly identified with the Xiongnu 21 Kim believes that the term Hun was not primarily an ethnic group but a political category 22 and argues for a fundamental political and cultural continuity between the Xiongnu and the European Huns 23 as well as between the Xiongnu and the Iranian Huns 24 Etymology The name Hun is attested in classical European sources as Greek Oὖnnoi Ounnoi and Latin Hunni or Chuni 25 26 John Malalas records their name as Oὖnna Ounna 27 Another possible Greek variant may be Xoὖnoi Khounoi although this group s identification with the Huns is disputed 28 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 29 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 on ona to grow qun glutton kun gun a plural suffix supposedly meaning people 30 qun force and hun ferocious 30 Maenchen Helfen dismisses all of these Turkic etymologies as mere guesses 31 and proposes an Iranian etymology from a word akin to Avestan hunara skill hunaravant skillful He suggests that it may originally have designated a rank rather than an ethnicity 32 Robert Werner has advanced an etymology from Tocharian ku dog suggesting as 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 33 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 34 Christopher Atwood dismisses this possibility on phonological and chronological grounds 35 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 36 Physical appearance Picture of White Hun king from a 5th century seal The Hephthalites are considered related to the European Huns if not the same people by a part of modern historians though consensus has yet to be reached 37 38 39 40 Contemporary scholar Procopius described them as of the same stock 41 Most of the ancient descriptions of the Huns stress their strange appearance from a Roman perspective These descriptions typically caricature the Huns as monsters 42 Jordanes stresses that the Huns were short of stature had tanned skin and round and shapeless heads 43 Various writers mention that the Huns had small eyes and flat noses 44 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 45 Many scholars take these to be unflattering depictions of East Asian Mongoloid racial characteristics 46 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 47 He notes that archaeological finds of presumed Huns suggest that they were a racially mixed group containing only some individuals with East Asian features 48 Kim similarly cautions against seeing the Huns as a homogenous racial group 49 while still arguing that they were partially or predominantly of Mongoloid extraction at least initially 50 Some archaeologists have argued that archaeological finds have failed to prove that the Huns had any Mongoloid features at all 51 and some scholars have argued that the Huns were predominantly Caucasian in appearance 52 Other archaeologists have argued that Mongoloid features are found primarily among members of the Hunnic aristocracy 53 which however also included Germanic leaders who were integrated into the Hun polity 54 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 451 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 55 Genetics See also Rouran Khaganate Genetics Xianbei Genetics Xiongnu Genetics Donghu people Genetics Scythians Archaeogenetics Pannonian Avars Genetics and Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin Genetic evidence As of 2023 there is little genetic data from the Carpathian basin from the Hunnic period 5th century and the population living there during the Hunnic period shows a variety of genetic signatures 56 In a genetic study of individuals from the around the Tian Shan mountains of central Asia dating from the late second century CE Damgaard et al 2018 found that these individuals represented a population of mixed East Asian and West Eurasian origin They argued that this population descended from Xiongnu who expanded westward and mixed with Iranian Sakas 57 This population in the Tian Shan mountains may be connected to the European Huns by individual burials that contains objects stylistically related to those used by the European Huns although this could be a sign of the exchange of goods and the connections between elites rather than a sign of migration 58 Neparaczki et al 2019 examined the remains of 3 males from three separate 5th century Hunnic cemeteries in the Pannonian Basin on the basis of their Y chromosomes the authors determined these individuals to have mixed European and East Asian ancestry 59 Using Neparaczki et al s data Keyser et al 2020 argued that the y chromosones of 52 Xiongnu era individuals showed a connection to these European remains and furthermore that the Xiongnu were descended from the Scytho Siberians 60 In an interdisciplinary study published earlier that year Savelyev amp Jeong 2020 found no clear evidence of continuity between the Xiongnu and the Huns concluding that the evidence of continuity is very weak largely because of the overall scarcity of an eastern Eurasian component in the interdisciplinary profile of the Huns noting that the eastern steppe heritage is extremely limited in their archeological record and surprisingly no ancient genome from the Hunnic period Carpathian basin has been reported to test the eastern Eurasian genetic connection 61 Gnecchi Ruscone et al 2021 found that the genetics of an individual found in an elite Hun period burial with Y DNA haplogroup R1a1a1b Z645 from mid 4th century Hungary closely clustered with a same century Hun period individual from western Kazakhstan and the Xianbei Hun period individual from Berel with ancient northeast Asian groups 62 The next year Gnecchi Ruscone et al 2022 examined a 5th century Hun period male from Hungary he belonged to paternal R1a1a1b2a2b2 Y57 and maternal haplogroup H5 and mostly had West Eurasian origin 63 Maroti et al 2022 sequenced 9 skeletal remains from 4 5th century Hungary two out of seven men carried R1a1a1b2a2a3c Z94 while others R1a1a1b1a2b3a1 FGC13709 and R1a1a1b2a2b2 Y57 Eastern Europe R1b1a1b1a1a1c2b2b1a S1746 and R1b1a1b1b3a1a1 CTS9219 North Western Europe 64 According to it the genetic data is in accordance with interdiciplinary sources as confirmed Xiongnu origin from Mongolia and their subsequent mixing with Scythians Sarmatians and Germanic Goths after traveling toward Europe 64 HistoryMain article History of the Huns Before Attila A suggested path of the Huns movement westwards labels in German The Romans became aware of the Huns a 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 67 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 68 In 395 the Huns began their first large scale attack on the Eastern Roman Empire 69 Huns attacked in Thrace overran Armenia and pillaged Cappadocia They entered parts of Syria threatened Antioch and passed through the province of Euphratesia 70 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 70 During their brief diversion from the Eastern Roman Empire the Huns may have threatened tribes further west 71 Uldin the first Hun identified by name in contemporary sources 72 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 73 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 74 In 433 some parts of Pannonia were ceded to them by Flavius Aetius the magister militum of the Western Roman Empire 75 Under Attila A nineteenth century depiction of Attila Certosa di Pavia Medallion at the base of the facade The Latin inscription tells that this is Attila the scourge of God 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 76 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 77 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 78 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 their armies continued westward passing both Paris and Troyes to lay siege to Orleans Flavius Aetius was given the duty of relieving Orleans by Emperor Valentinian III A combined army of Roman and Visigoths then fought the Huns at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains Raphael s The Meeting between Leo the Great and Attila depicts Pope Leo I escorted by Saint Peter and Saint Paul meeting with the Hun emperor outside Rome 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 Attila died of a haemorrhage on his wedding night 47 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 Germanic coalition to overthrow Hunnic imperial authority The Amali Goths would revolt the same year under Valamir allegedly defeating the Huns in a separate engagement 79 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 80 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 81 His campaigning was also met with dissatisfaction from Ernak ruler of the Akatziri Huns who wanted to focus on the incoming Oghur speaking peoples 80 Dengizich 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 82 In 469 Dengizich was defeated and killed in Thrace 83 After Dengizich s death the Huns seem to have been absorbed by other ethnic groups such as the Bulgars 83 Kim however argues that the Huns continued under Ernak becoming the Kutrigur and Utigur Hunno Bulgars 80 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 84 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 85 Lifestyle and economyPastoral nomadism The Huns have traditionally been described as pastoral nomads living off of herding and moving from pasture to pasture to graze their animals 86 Hyun Jin Kim however holds the term nomad to be misleading T he term nomad if it denotes a wandering group of people with no clear sense of territory cannot be applied wholesale to the Huns All the so called nomads of Eurasian steppe history were peoples whose territory territories were usually clearly defined who as pastoralists moved about in search of pasture but within a fixed territorial space 50 Maenchen Helfen notes that pastoral nomads or seminomads typically alternate between summer pastures and winter quarters while the pastures may vary the winter quarters always remained the same 87 This is in fact what Jordanes writes of the Hunnic Altziagiri tribe they pastured near Cherson on the Crimea and then wintered further north with Maenchen Helfen holding the Syvash as a likely location 88 Ancient sources mention that the Huns herds consisted of various animals including cattle horses and goats sheep though unmentioned in ancient sources are more essential to the steppe nomad even than horses 89 and must have been a large part of their herds 88 Additionally Maenchen Helfen argues that the Huns may have kept small herds of Bactrian camels in the part of their territory in modern Romania and Ukraine something attested for the Sarmatians 90 Ammianus Marcellinus says that the majority of the Huns diet came from the meat of these animals 91 with Maenchen Helfen arguing on the basis of what is known of other steppe nomads that they likely mostly ate mutton along with sheep s cheese and milk 88 They also certainly ate horse meat drank mare s milk and likely made cheese and kumis 92 In times of starvation they may have boiled their horses blood for food 93 Ancient sources uniformly deny that the Huns practiced any sort of agriculture 94 Thompson taking these accounts at their word argues that w ithout the assistance of the settled agricultural population at the edge of the steppe they could not have survived 95 He argues that the Huns were forced to supplement their diet by hunting and gathering 96 Maenchen Helfen however notes that archaeological finds indicate that various steppe nomad populations did grow grain in particular he identifies a find at Kunya Uaz in Khwarezm on the Ob River of agriculture among a people who practiced artificial cranial deformation as evidence of Hunnic agriculture 97 Kim similarly argues that all steppe empires have possessed both pastoralist and sedentary populations classifying the Huns as agro pastoralist 50 Horses and transportation Huns by Rochegrosse 1910 detail As a nomadic people the Huns spent a great deal of time riding horses Ammianus claimed that the Huns are almost glued to their horses 98 99 Zosimus claimed that they live and sleep on their horses 100 and Sidonius claimed that s carce had an infant learnt to stand without his mother s aid when a horse takes him on his back 101 They appear to have spent so much time riding that they walked clumsily something observed in other nomadic groups 102 Roman sources characterize the Hunnic horses as ugly 99 It is not possible to determine the exact breed of horse the Huns used despite relatively good Roman descriptions 103 Sinor believes that it was likely a breed of Mongolian pony 104 However horse remains are absent from all identified Hun burials 104 Based on anthropological descriptions and archaeological finds of other nomadic horses Maenchen Helfen believes that they rode mostly geldings 105 Besides horses ancient sources mention that the Huns used wagons for transportation which Maenchen Helfen believes were primarily used to transport their tents booty and the old people women and children 106 Economic relations with the Romans The Huns received a large amount of gold from the Romans either in exchange for fighting for them as mercenaries or as tribute 107 Raiding and looting also furnished the Huns with gold and other valuables 108 Denis Sinor has argued that at the time of Attila the Hunnic economy became almost entirely dependent on plunder and tribute from the Roman provinces 109 1910 Rochegrosse depiction of Roman villa in Gaul sacked by the hordes of Attila the Hun Civilians and soldiers captured by the Huns might also be ransomed back or else sold to Roman slave dealers as slaves 110 The Huns themselves Maenchen Helfen argued had little use for slaves due to their nomadic pastoralist lifestyle 111 More recent scholarship however has demonstrated that pastoral nomadists are actually more likely to use slave labor than sedentary societies the slaves would have been used to manage the Huns herds of cattle sheep and goats 112 Priscus attests that slaves were used as domestic servants but also that educated slaves were used by the Huns in positions of administration or even architects Some slaves were even used as warriors 113 The Huns also traded with the Romans E A Thompson argued that this trade was very large scale with the Huns trading horses furs meat and slaves for Roman weapons linen and grain and various other luxury goods 114 While Maenchen Helfen concedes that the Huns traded their horses for what he considered to have been a very considerable source of income in gold he is otherwise skeptical of Thompson s argument 115 He notes that the Romans strictly regulated trade with the barbarians and that according to Priscus trade only occurred at a fair once a year 116 While he notes that smuggling also likely occurred he argues that the volume of both legal and illegal trade was apparently modest 116 He does note that wine and silk appear to have been imported into the Hunnic Empire in large quantities however 117 Roman gold coins appear to have been in circulation as currency within the whole of the Hunnic Empire 118 Connections to the Silk Road Christopher Atwood has suggested that the purpose of the original Hunnic incursion into Europe may have been to establish an outlet to the Black Sea for the Sogdian merchants under their rule who were involved in the trade along the Silk Road to China 119 Atwood notes that Jordanes describes how the Crimean city of Cherson where the avaricious traders bring in the goods of Asia was under the control of the Akatziri Huns in the sixth century 119 GovernmentHunnic governmental structure has long been debated Peter Heather argues that the Huns were a disorganized confederation in which leaders acted completely independently and that eventually established a ranking hierarchy much like Germanic societies 120 121 Denis Sinor similarly notes that with the exception of the historically uncertain Balamber no Hun leaders are named in the sources until Uldin indicating their relative unimportance 74 Thompson argues that permanent kingship only developed with the Huns invasion of Europe and the near constant warfare that followed 122 Regarding the organization of Hunnic rule under Attila Peter Golden comments it can hardly be called a state much less an empire 123 Golden speaks instead of a Hunnic confederacy 124 Kim however argues that the Huns were far more organized and centralized with some basis in organization of the Xiongnu state 125 Walter Pohl notes the correspondences of Hunnic government to those of other steppe empires but nevertheless argues that the Huns do not appear to have been a unified group when they arrived in Europe 126 Ammianus wrote that the Huns of his day had no kings but rather that each group of Huns instead had a group of leading men primates for times of war 127 E A Thompson supposes that even in war the leading men had little actual power 128 He further argues that they most likely did not acquire their position purely hereditarily 129 Heather however argues that Ammianus merely meant that the Huns didn t have a single ruler he notes that Olympiodorus mentions the Huns having several kings with one being the first of the kings 120 Ammianus also mentions that the Huns made their decisions in a general council omnes in commune while seated on horseback 130 He makes no mention of the Huns being organized into tribes but Priscus and other writers do naming some of them 95 The first Hunnic ruler known by name is Uldin Thompson takes Uldin s sudden disappearance after he was unsuccessful at war as a sign that the Hunnic kingship was democratic at this time rather than a permanent institution 131 Kim however argues that Uldin is actually a title and that he was likely merely a subking 132 Priscus calls Attila king or emperor basileys but it is unknown what native title he was translating 133 With the exception of the sole rule of Attila the Huns often had two rulers Attila himself later appointed his son Ellac as co king 134 135 Subject peoples of the Huns were led by their own kings 136 Priscus also speaks of picked men or logades logades forming part of Attila s government naming five of them 137 Some of the picked men seem to have been chosen because of birth others for reasons of merit 138 Thompson argued that these picked men were the hinge upon which the entire administration of the Hun empire turned 139 he argues for their existence in the government of Uldin and that each had command over detachments of the Hunnic army and ruled over specific portions of the Hunnic empire where they were responsible also for collecting tribute and provisions 140 Maenchen Helfen however argues that the word logades denotes simply prominent individuals and not a fixed rank with fixed duties 141 Kim affirms the importance of the logades for Hunnic administration but notes that there were differences of rank between them and suggests that it was more likely lower ranking officials who gathered taxes and tribute 142 He suggests that various Roman defectors to the Huns may have worked in a sort of imperial bureaucracy 143 Society and cultureArt and material culture Further information Hunnic art A Hunnish cauldron Detail of Hunnish gold and garnet bracelet 5th century Walters Art Museum A Hunnish oval openwork fibula set with a carnelian and decorated with a geometric pattern of gold wire 4th century Walters Art Museum There are two sources for the material culture and art of the Huns ancient descriptions and archaeology Unfortunately the nomadic nature of Hun society means that they have left very little in the archaeological record 144 Indeed although a great amount of archaeological material has been unearthed since 1945 as of 2005 there were only 200 positively identified Hunnic burials producing Hunnic material culture 145 It can be difficult to distinguish Hunnic archaeological finds from those of the Sarmatians as both peoples lived in close proximity and seem to have had very similar material cultures Kim thus cautions that it is difficult to assign any artifact to the Huns ethnically 146 It is also possible that the Huns in Europe adopted the material culture of their Germanic subjects 147 Roman descriptions of the Huns meanwhile are often highly biased stressing their supposed primitiveness 148 149 Archaeological finds have produced a large number of cauldrons that have since the work of Paul Reinecke in 1896 been identified as having been produced by the Huns 150 Although typically described as bronze cauldrons the cauldrons are often made of copper which is generally of poor quality 151 Maenchen Helfen lists 19 known finds of Hunnish cauldrons from all over Central and Eastern Europe and Western Siberia 152 He argues from the state of the bronze castings that the Huns were not very good metalsmiths and that it is likely that the cauldrons were cast in the same locations where they were found 153 They come in various shapes and are sometimes found together with vessels of various other origins 154 Maenchen Helfen argues that the cauldrons were cooking vessels for boiling meat 155 but that the fact that many are found deposited near water and were generally not buried with individuals may indicate a sacral usage as well 156 The cauldrons appear to derive from those used by the Xiongnu 157 158 Ammianus also reports that the Huns had iron swords Thompson is skeptical that the Huns cast them themselves 159 but Maenchen Helfen argues that t he idea that the Hun horsemen fought their way to the walls of Constantinople and to the Marne with bartered and captured swords is absurd 160 Both ancient sources and archaeological finds from graves confirm that the Huns wore elaborately decorated golden or gold plated diadems 161 Maenchen Helfen lists a total of six known Hunnish diadems 162 Hunnic women seem to have worn necklaces and bracelets of mostly imported beads of various materials as well 163 The later common early medieval practice of decorating jewelry and weapons with gemstones appears to have originated with the Huns 164 They are also known to have made small mirrors of an originally Chinese type which often appear to have been intentionally broken when placed into a grave 165 Archaeological finds indicate that the Huns wore gold plaques as ornaments on their clothing as well as imported glass beads 166 Ammianus reports that they wore clothes made of linen or the furs of marmots and leggings of goatskin 89 Ammianus reports that the Huns had no buildings 167 but in passing mentions that the Huns possessed tents and wagons 160 Maenchen Helfen believes that the Huns likely had tents of felt and sheepskin Priscus once mentions Attila s tent and Jordanes reports that Attila lay in state in a silk tent 168 However by the middle of the fifth century the Huns are also known to have owned permanent wooden houses which Maenchen Helfen believes were built by their Gothic subjects 169 Artificial cranial deformation Landesmuseum Wurttemberg deformed skull early 6th century Allemannic culture Various archaeologists have argued that the Huns or the nobility of the Huns as well as Germanic tribes influenced by them practiced artificial cranial deformation the process of artificially lengthening the skulls of babies by binding them 170 The goal of this process was to create a clear physical distinction between the nobility and the general populace 171 While Eric Crubezy has argued against a Hunnish origin for the spread of this practice 51 the majority of scholars hold the Huns responsible for the spread of this custom in Europe 172 The practice was not originally introduced to Europe by the Huns however but rather with the Alans with whom the Huns were closely associated and Sarmatians 173 It was also practiced by other peoples called Huns in Asia 174 Languages Further information Hunnic language A variety of languages were spoken within the Hun Empire Priscus noted that the Hunnic language differed from other languages spoken at Attila s court 175 He recounts how Attila s jester Zerco made Attila s guests laugh also by the promiscuous jumble of words Latin mixed with Hunnish and Gothic 175 Priscus said that Attila s Scythian subjects spoke besides their own barbarian tongues either Hunnish or Gothic or as many have dealings with the Western Romans Latin but not one of them easily speaks Greek except captives from the Thracian or Illyrian frontier regions 176 Some scholars have argued that Gothic was used as the lingua franca of the Hunnic Empire 177 Hyun Jin Kim argues that the Huns may have used as many as four languages at various levels of government without any one being dominant Hunnic Gothic Latin and Sarmatian 178 As to the Hunnic language itself only three words are recorded in ancient sources as being Hunnic all of which appear to be from an Indo European language 179 All other information on Hunnic is contained in personal names and tribal ethnonyms 180 On the basis of these names scholars have proposed that Hunnic may have been a Turkic language 181 a language between Mongolic and Turkic 182 an Eastern Iranian language 183 or a Yeniseian language 184 However given the small corpus many hold the language to be unclassifiable 185 Marriage and the role of women The elites of the Huns practiced polygamy 186 while the commoners were probably monogamous 187 Ammianus Marcellinus claimed that the Hunnish women lived in seclusion however the first hand account of Priscus shows them freely moving and mixing with men 188 Priscus describes Hunnic women swarming around Attila as he entered a village as well as the wife of Attila s minister Onegesius offering the king food and drink with her servants 189 Priscus was able to enter the tent of Attila s chief wife Hereca without difficulty 190 Priscus also attests that the widow of Attila s brother Bleda was in command of a village that the Roman ambassadors rode through her territory may have included a larger area 190 Thompson notes that other steppe peoples such as the Utigurs and the Sabirs are known to have had female tribal leaders and argues that the Huns probably held widows in high respect 190 Due to the pastoral nature of the Huns economy the women likely had a large degree of authority over the domestic household 186 Religion Almost nothing is known about the religion of the Huns 191 192 Roman writer Ammianus Marcellinus claimed that the Huns had no religion 193 while the fifth century Christian writer Salvian classified them as Pagans 194 Jordanes Getica also records that the Huns worshipped the sword of Mars an ancient sword that signified Attila s right to rule the whole world 195 Maenchen Helfen notes a widespread worship of a war god in the form of a sword among steppe peoples including among the Xiongnu 196 Denis Sinor however holds the worship of a sword among the Huns to be apocryphal 197 Maenchen Helfen also argues that while the Huns themselves do not appear to have regarded Attila as divine some of his subject people clearly did 198 A belief in prophecy and divination is also attested among the Huns 199 200 197 Maenchen Helfen argues that the performers of these acts of soothsaying and divination were likely shamans b Sinor also finds it likely that the Huns had shamans although they are completely unattested 202 Maenchen Helfen also deduces a belief in water spirits from a custom mentioned in Ammianus c He further suggests that the Huns may have made small metal wooden or stone idols which are attested among other steppe tribes and which a Byzantine source attests for the Huns in Crimea in the sixth century 204 He also connects archaeological finds of Hunnish bronze cauldrons found buried near or in running water to possible rituals performed by the Huns in the Spring 205 John Man argues that the Huns of Attila s time likely worshipped the sky and the steppe deity Tengri who is also attested as having been worshipped by the Xiongnu 206 Maenchen Helfen also suggests the possibility that the Huns of this period may have worshipped Tengri but notes that the god is not attested in European records until the ninth century 207 Worship of Tengri under the name T angri Khan is attested among the Caucasian Huns in the Armenian chronicle attributed to Movses Dasxuranci during the later seventh century 202 Movses also records that the Caucasian Huns worshipped trees and burnt horses as sacrifices to Tengri 202 and that they made sacrifices to fire and water and to certain gods of the roads and to the moon and to all creatures considered in their eyes to be in some way remarkable 202 There is also some evidence for human sacrifice among the European Huns Maenchen Helfen argues that humans appear to have been sacrificed at Attila s funerary rite recorded in Jordanes under the name strava 208 Priscus claims that the Huns sacrificed their prisoners to victory after they entered Scythia but this is not otherwise attested as a Hunnic custom and may be fiction 209 197 In addition to these Pagan beliefs there are numerous attestations of Huns converting to Christianity and receiving Christian missionaries 210 211 The missionary activities among the Huns of the Caucasus seem to have been particularly successful resulting in the conversion of the Hunnish prince Alp Ilteber 197 Attila appears to have tolerated both Nicene and Arian Christianity among his subjects 212 However a pastoral letter by Pope Leo the Great to the church of Aquileia indicates that Christian slaves taken from there by the Huns in 452 were forced to participate in Hunnic religious activities 213 Warfare Huns in battle with the Alans An 1870s engraving after a drawing by Johann Nepomuk Geiger 1805 1880 Strategy and tactics Hun warfare as a whole is not well studied One of the principal sources of information on Hunnic warfare is Ammianus Marcellinus who includes an extended description of the Huns methods of war They also sometimes fight when provoked and then they enter the battle drawn up in wedge shaped masses while their medley of voices makes a savage noise And as they are lightly equipped for swift motion and unexpected in action they purposely divide suddenly into scattered bands and attack rushing about in disorder here and there dealing terrific slaughter and because of their extraordinary rapidity of movement they are never seen to attack a rampart or pillage an enemy s camp And on this account you would not hesitate to call them the most terrible of all warriors because they fight from a distance with missiles having sharp bone instead of their usual points joined to the shafts with wonderful skill then they gallop over the intervening spaces and fight hand to hand with swords regardless of their own lives and while the enemy are guarding against wounds from the sabre thrusts they throw strips of cloth plaited into nooses over their opponents and so entangle them that they fetter their limbs and take from them the power of riding or walking 214 Based on Ammianus description Maenchen Helfen argues that the Huns tactics did not differ markedly from those used by other nomadic horse archers 99 He argues that the wedge shaped masses cunei mentioned by Ammianus were likely divisions organized by tribal clans and families whose leaders may have been called a cur This title would then have been inherited as it was passed down the clan 215 Like Ammianus the sixth century writer Zosimus also emphasizes the Huns almost exclusive use of horse archers and their extreme swiftness and mobility 216 These qualities differed from other nomadic warriors in Europe at this time the Sarmatians for instance relied on heavily armored cataphracts armed with lances 217 The Huns use of terrible war cries are also found in other sources 218 However a number of Ammianus s claims have been challenged by modern scholars 219 In particular while Ammianus claims that the Huns knew no metalworking Maenchen Helfen argues that a people so primitive could never have been successful in war against the Romans 160 Hunnic armies relied on their high mobility and a shrewd sense of when to attack and when to withdraw 220 An important strategy used by the Huns was a feigned retreat pretending to flee and then turning and attacking the disordered enemy This is mentioned by the writers Zosimus and Agathias 99 They were however not always effective in pitched battle suffering defeat at Toulouse in 439 barely winning at the Battle of the Utus in 447 likely losing or stalemating at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains in 451 and losing at the Battle of Nedao 454 221 Christopher Kelly argues that Attila sought to avoid as far as possible large scale engagement with the Roman army 221 War and the threat of war were frequently used tools to extort Rome the Huns often relied on local traitors to avoid losses 222 Accounts of battles note that the Huns fortified their camps by using portable fences or creating a circle of wagons 223 The Huns nomadic lifestyle encouraged features such as excellent horsemanship while the Huns trained for war by frequent hunting 224 Several scholars have suggested that the Huns had trouble maintaining their horse cavalry and nomadic lifestyle after settling on the Hungarian Plain and that this in turn led to a marked decrease in their effectiveness as fighters 225 226 The Huns are almost always noted as fighting alongside non Hunnic Germanic or Iranian subject peoples or in earlier times allies 227 As Heather notes the Huns military machine increased and increased very quickly by incorporating ever larger numbers of the Germani of central and eastern Europe 147 At the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains Attila is noted by Jordanes to have placed his subject peoples in the wings of the army while the Huns held the center 228 A major source of information on steppe warfare from the time of the Huns comes from the 6th century Strategikon which describes the warfare of Dealing with the Scythians that is Avars Turks and others whose way of life resembles that of the Hunnish peoples The Strategikon describes the Avars and Huns as devious and very experienced in military matters 229 They are described as preferring to defeat their enemies by deceit surprise attacks and cutting off supplies The Huns brought large numbers of horses to use as replacements and to give the impression of a larger army on campaign 229 The Hunnish peoples did not set up an entrenched camp but spread out across the grazing fields according to clan and guarded their necessary horses until they began forming the battle line under the cover of early morning The Strategikon states the Huns also stationed sentries at significant distances and in constant contact with each other in order to prevent surprise attacks 230 According to the Strategikon the Huns did not form a battle line using the method that the Romans and Persians used but in irregularly sized divisions in a single line and keeping a separate force nearby for ambushes and as a reserve The Strategikon also states the Huns used deep formations with a dense and even front 230 The Strategikon states that the Huns kept their spare horses and baggage train to either side of the battle line at about a mile away with a moderate sized guard and would sometimes tie their spare horses together behind the main battle line 230 The Huns preferred to fight at long range utilizing ambush encirclement and the feigned retreat The Strategikon also makes note of the wedge shaped formations mentioned by Ammianus and corroborated as familial regiments by Maenchen Helfen 230 215 231 The Strategikon states the Huns preferred to pursue their enemies relentlessly after a victory and then wear them out by a long siege after defeat 230 Peter Heather notes that the Huns were able to successfully besiege walled cities and fortresses in their campaign of 441 they were thus capable of building siege engines 232 Heather makes note of multiple possible routes for acquisition of this knowledge suggesting that it could have been brought back from service under Aetius acquired from captured Roman engineers or developed through the need to pressure the wealthy silk road city states and carried over into Europe 233 David Nicolle agrees with the latter point and even suggests they had a complete set of engineering knowledge including skills for constructing advanced fortifications such as the fortress of Igdui Kala in Kazakhstan 234 Military equipment The Strategikon states the Huns typically used mail swords bows and lances and that most Hunnic warriors were armed with both the bow and lance and used them interchangeably as needed It also states the Huns used quilted linen wool or sometimes iron barding for their horses and also wore quilted coifs and kaftans 235 This assessment is largely corroborated by archaeological finds of Hun military equipment such as the Volnikovka and Brut Burials A late Roman ridge helmet of the Berkasovo Type was found with a Hun burial at Concesti 236 A Hunnic helmet of the Segmentehelm type was found at Chudjasky a Hunnic Spangenhelm at Tarasovsky grave 1784 and another of the Bandhelm type at Turaevo 237 Fragments of lamellar helmets dating to the Hunnic period and within the Hunnic sphere have been found at Iatrus Illichevka and Kalkhni 236 237 Hun lamellar armour has not been found in Europe although two fragments of likely Hun origin have been found on the Upper Ob and in West Kazakhstan dating to the 3rd 4th centuries 238 A find of lamellar dating to about 520 from the Toprachioi warehouse in the fortress of Halmyris near Badabag Romania suggests a late 5th or early 6th century introduction 239 It is known that the Eurasian Avars introduced lamellar armor to the Roman army and migration era Germanic people in the mid 6th century but this later type does not appear before then 236 240 It is also widely accepted that the Huns introduced the langseax a 60 cm 24 in cutting blade that became popular among the migration era Germanics and in the Late Roman army into Europe 241 It is believed these blades originated in China and that the Sarmatians and Huns served as a transmission vector using shorter seaxes in Central Asia that developed into the narrow langseax in Eastern Europe during the late 4th and first half of the 5th century These earlier blades date as far back as the 1st century AD with the first of the newer type appearing in Eastern Europe being the Wien Simmerming example dated to the late 4th century AD 241 Other notable Hun examples include the Langseax from the more recent find at Volnikovka in Russia 242 The Huns used a type of spatha in the Iranic or Sassanid style with a long straight approximately 83 cm 33 in blade usually with a diamond shaped iron guard plate 243 Swords of this style have been found at sites such as Altlussheim Szirmabesenyo Volnikovka Novo Ivanovka and Tsibilium 61 They typically had gold foil hilts gold sheet scabbards and scabbard fittings decorated in the polychrome style The sword was carried in the Iranian style attached to a swordbelt rather than on a baldric 244 The most famous weapon of the Huns is the Qum Darya type composite recurve bow often called the Hunnish bow This bow was invented some time in the third or second centuries BC with the earliest finds near Lake Baikal but spread across Eurasia long before the Hunnic migration These bows were typified by being asymmetric in cross section between 145 and 155 cm 57 and 61 in in length having between 4 9 lathes on the grip and in the siyahs 245 Although whole bows rarely survive in European climatic conditions finds of bone Siyahs are quite common and characteristic of steppe burials Complete specimens have been found at sites in the Tarim Basin and Gobi Desert such as Niya Qum Darya and Shombuuziin Belchir Eurasian nomads such as the Huns typically used trilobate diamond shaped iron arrowheads attached using birch tar and a tang with typically 75 cm 30 in shafts and fletching attached with tar and sinew whipping Such trilobate arrowheads are believed to be more accurate and have better penetrating power or capacity to injure than flat arrowheads 245 Finds of bows and arrows in this style in Europe are limited but archaeologically evidenced The most famous examples come from Wien Simmerming although more fragments have been found in the Northern Balkans and Carpathian regions 246 LegacyIn Christian hagiography Martyrdom of Saint Ursula by Hans Memling The turbaned and armored figures represent Huns After the fall of the Hunnic Empire various legends arose concerning the Huns Among these are a number of Christian hagiographic legends in which the Huns play a role In an anonymous medieval biography of Pope Leo I Attila s march into Italy in 452 is stopped because when he meets Leo outside Rome the apostles Peter and Paul appear to him holding swords over his head and threatening to kill him unless he follows the pope s command to turn back 247 In other versions Attila takes the pope hostage and is forced by the saints to release him 248 In the legend of Saint Ursula Ursula and her 11 000 holy virgins arrive at Cologne on their way back from a pilgrimage just as the Huns under an unnamed prince 249 are besieging the city Ursula and her virgins are killed by the Huns with arrows after they refuse the Huns sexual advances Afterwards the souls of the slaughtered virgins form a heavenly army that drives away the Huns and saves Cologne 250 Other cities with legends regarding the Huns and a saint include Orleans Troyes Dieuze Metz Modena and Reims 251 In legends surrounding Saint Servatius of Tongeren dating to at least the eighth century Servatius is said to have converted Attila and the Huns to Christianity before they later became apostates and returned to their paganism 252 In Germanic legend The Huns outside set fire to their own hall to kill the Burgundians Illustration from the Hundeshagen Codex of the Nibelungenlied The Huns also play an important role in Germanic heroic legends which frequently convey versions of events from the migration period and were originally transmitted orally 253 Memories of the conflicts between the Goths and Huns in Eastern Europe appear to be maintained in the Old English poem Widsith as well as in the Old Norse poem The Battle of the Goths and Huns which is transmitted in the thirteenth century Icelandic Hervarar Saga 254 255 Widsith also mentions Attila having been ruler of the Huns placing him at the head of a list of various legendary and historical rulers and peoples and marking the Huns as the most famous 256 The name Attila rendered in Old English as AEtla was a given name in use in Anglo Saxon England e g Bishop AEtla of Dorchester and its use in England at the time may have been connected to the heroic kings legend represented in works such as Widsith 257 Maenchen Helfen however doubts the use of the name by the Anglo Saxons had anything to do with the Huns arguing that it was not a rare name 258 Bede in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People lists the Huns among other peoples living in Germany when the Anglo Saxons invaded England This may indicate that Bede viewed the Anglo Saxons as descending partially from the Huns 259 260 The Huns and Attila also form central figures in the two most widespread Germanic legendary cycles that of the Nibelungs and of Dietrich von Bern the historical Theoderic the Great The Nibelung legend particularly as recorded in the Old Norse Poetic Edda and Volsunga saga as well as in the German Nibelungenlied connects the Huns and Attila and in the Norse tradition Attila s death to the destruction of the Burgundian kingdom on the Rhine in 437 261 In the legends about Dietrich von Bern Attila and the Huns provide Dietrich with a refuge and support after he has been driven from his kingdom at Verona 262 A version of the events of the Battle of Nadao may be preserved in a legend transmitted in two differing versions in the Middle High German Rabenschlacht and Old Norse Thidrekssaga in which the sons of Attila fall in battle 262 The legend of Walter of Aquitaine meanwhile shows the Huns to receive child hostages as tribute from their subject peoples 263 Generally the continental Germanic traditions paint a more positive picture of Attila and the Huns than the Scandinavian sources where the Huns appear in a distinctly negative light 264 In medieval German legend the Huns were identified with the Hungarians with their capital of Etzelburg Attila city being identified with Esztergom or Buda 265 The Old Norse Thidrekssaga however which is based on North German sources locates Hunaland in northern Germany with a capital at Soest in Westphalia 266 In other Old Norse sources the term Hun is sometimes applied indiscriminately to various people particularly from south of Scandinavia 266 267 From the thirteenth century onward the Middle High German word for Hun hiune became a synonym for giant and continued to be used in this meaning in the forms Hune and Heune into the modern era 268 In this way various prehistoric megalithic structures particularly in Northern Germany came to be identified as Hunengraber Hun graves or Hunenbetten Hun beds 269 270 Links to the Hungarians See also Hungarian prehistory and Origin of the Szekelys Feast of Attila Hungarian romantic painting by Mor Than 1870 Attila right as a king of Hungary together with Gyula and Bela I Illustration for Il costume antico e moderno by Giulio Ferrario 1831 Beginning in the High Middle Ages Hungarian sources have claimed descent from or a close relationship between the Hungarians Magyars and the Huns The claim appears to have first arisen in non Hungarian sources and only gradually been taken up by the Hungarians themselves because of its negative connotations 271 272 273 The Anonymous Gesta Hungarorum after 1200 is the first Hungarian source to mention that the line of Arpadian kings were descendants of Attila but he makes no claim that the Hungarian and Hun peoples are related 274 275 The first Hungarian author to claim that Hun and Hungarian peoples were related was Simon of Keza in his Gesta Hunnorum et Hungarorum 1282 1285 276 Simon claimed that the Huns and Hungarians were descended from two brothers named Hunor and Magor d These claims gave the Hungarians an ancient pedegree and served to legitimize their conquest of Pannonia 278 279 280 Modern scholars largely dismiss these claims 281 282 258 283 Regarding the claimed Hunnish origins found in these chronicles Jeno Szucs writes The Hunnish origin of the Magyars is of course a fiction just like the Trojan origin of the French or any of the other origo gentis theories fabricated at much the same time The Magyars in fact originated from the Ugrian branch of the Finno Ugrian peoples in the course of their wanderings in the steppes of Eastern Europe they assimilated a variety of especially Iranian and different Turkic cultural and ethnic elements but they had neither genetic nor historical links to the Huns 284 Generally the proof of the relationship between the Hungarian and the Finno Ugric languages in the nineteenth century is taken to have scientifically disproven the Hunnic origins of the Hungarians 285 Another claim also derived from Simon of Keza 286 is that the Hungarian speaking Szekely people of Transylvania are descended from Huns who fled to Transylvania after Attila s death and remained there until the Hungarian conquest of Pannonia While the origins of the Szekely are unclear 287 modern historians and archaeologists do not consider the Szekelys to be of Hunnic origin due to a lack of evidence 288 Laszlo Makkai notes as well that some archaeologists and historians believe Szekelys were a Hungarian tribe or an Onogur Bulgar tribe drawn into the Carpathian Basin at the end of the 7th century by the Avars who were identified with the Huns by contemporary Europeans 289 Unlike in the legend the Szekely were resettled in Transylvania from Western Hungary in the eleventh century 290 Their language similarly shows no evidence of a change from any non Hungarian language to Hungarian as one would expect if they were Huns 291 292 While the Hungarians and the Szekelys may not be descendants of the Huns they were historically closely associated with Turkic peoples 293 Pal Engel notes that it cannot be wholly excluded that Arpadian kings may have been descended from Attila however and believes that it is likely the Hungarians once lived under the rule of the Huns 281 Hyun Jin Kim supposes that the Hungarians might be linked to the Huns via the Bulgars and Avars both of whom he holds to have had Hunnish elements 294 While the notion that the Hungarians are descended from the Huns has been rejected by mainstream scholarship the idea has continued to exert a relevant influence on Hungarian nationalism and national identity 295 A majority of the Hungarian aristocracy continued to ascribe to the Hunnic view into the early twentieth century 296 The Fascist Arrow Cross Party similarly referred to Hungary as Hunnia in its propaganda 297 Hunnic origins also played a large role in the ideology of the modern radical right wing party Jobbik s ideology of Pan Turanism 298 Legends concerning the Hunnic origins of the Szekely minority in Romania meanwhile continue to play a large role in that group s ethnic identity 299 The Hunnish origin of the Szekelys remains the most widespread theory of their origins among the Hungarian general public 300 20th century use in reference to Germans See also List of terms used for Germans Hun pejorative On 27 July 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion in China Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany in a speech gave the order to act ruthlessly towards the rebels Mercy will not be shown prisoners will not be taken Just as a thousand years ago the Huns under Attila won a reputation of might that lives on in legends so may the name of Germany in China such that no Chinese will even again dare so much as to look askance at a German 301 This comparison was later heavily employed by Allied anti German war propaganda during World War I and to a lesser extent during World War II in order to paint the Germans as savage barbarians 302 See alsoAmal dynasty List of rulers of the Huns Nomadic empire Huna people List of HunsEndnotes There is a misconception e g as expressed by World History Encyclopedia 65 that Tacitus c 56 c 120 CE had first mentioned the Huns in 91 CE However T D Barnes 1977 already pointed out that Tacitus had not at all mentioned the Huns and that Orosius c 375 385 c 420 CE did not ascribe knowledge about the Huns to Tacitus but simply identified the contemporary Alans Goths and Huns with the Scythians whom Tacitus and Justin had already mentioned 66 He argues for the existence of Hunnic shamans on the basis of the presence of the element kam in the Hunnic names Atakam and Eskam which he derives from the Turkic qam meaning shaman 201 He derives this belief from a Hunnic custom attested in Ammianus that the Huns did not wash their clothes among later steppe peoples this is done to avoid offending the water spirits 203 Szucs argues that the name Hunor as a Hungarian ancestor is genuinely reflective of the Magyar oral legends but that it actually derives from the name Onogur Simon therefore merely used the resemblance of Hunor to Hun to support his theory 277 Citations a b de la Vaissiere 2015 p 177 Sinor 1990 p 180 a b de la Vaissiere 2015 p 175 180 Saag Lehti Staniuk Robert 11 July 2022 Historical human migrations From the steppe to the basin Current Biology 32 13 38 41 doi 10 1016 j cub 2022 05 058 PMID 35820383 S2CID 250443139 Retrieved 31 July 2022 Many migrations during human history have made the Carpathian Basin the melting pot of Europe New ancient genomes confirm the Asian origin of European Huns Avars and Magyars and huge within group variability that is linked with social structure Sinor 1990 p 177 Heather 1995 p 16 Szucs 1999 p xliv Engel 2001 p 2 Lendvai 2003 p 7 Maenchen Helfen 1973 p 386 Sinor 1990 p 177 Haug Robert 27 June 2019 The Eastern Frontier Limits of Empire in Late Antique and Early Medieval Central Asia Bloomsbury Publishing p 64 ISBN 978 1 78831 722 1 the Rouran Khaqanate a nomadic confederation that had ruled Mongolia from the mid fourth until the mid 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Damgaard et al 2018 pp 369 371 Brosseder 2018 p 184 Neparaczki et al 2019 pp 5 7 Keyser et al 2020 pp 1 7 9 Savelyev amp Jeong 2020 Gnecchi Ruscone et al 2021 We observe an intensification of the new eastern Eurasian influx described above among the individuals from the early 1st millennium CE Xianbei Hun Berel 300CE as well as the later 7th to 11th millennium CE individuals Karakaba 830CE and Kayalyk 950CE They are scattered along PC1 from the main IA Tasmola Pazyryk cluster toward the ANA groups Fig 2C The two individuals associated with Hun elite burials dated from the third century CE one from the site of Kurayly in the Aktobe region in western Kazakhstan and the other from Budapest Hungary Hun elite 350CE cluster closely together along this cline Fig 2C and figs S1 to S3 Gnecchi Ruscone et al 2022 a b Maroti et al 2022 Mark Joshua J 2018 Huns World History Encyclopedia Retrieved 23 November 2022 Barnes 1977 p 225 Heather 2005 pp 153 154 Heather 2005 pp 151 152 Thompson 1996 pp 30 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10 1007 s00439 020 02209 4 PMID 32734383 S2CID 220881540 Retrieved 29 September 2020 Kim Hyun Jin 2015 The Huns Routledge ISBN 9781138841758 Kim Hyun Jin 2013 The Huns Rome and the Birth of Europe Cambridge University Press ISBN 9781107009066 Kiss Attila P 2014 Huns Germans Byzantines The Origins of the Narrow Bladed Long Seaxes Acta Archaeologica Carpathica 49 131 164 Kowalczyk Michal 2017 Hungarian Turanism From the Birth of the Ideology to Modernity an Outline of the Problem Historia i Polityka 20 27 49 63 doi 10 12775 HiP 2017 011 Lafferton Emese 2007 The Magyar moustache the faces of Hungarian state formation 1867 1918 Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 38 4 706 732 doi 10 1016 j shpsc 2007 09 006 PMID 18053929 Lendvai Paul 2003 The Hungarians A Thousand Years of Victory in Defeat Translated by Major Ann Princeton NJ Princeton University Press ISBN 9781400851522 Lenski Noel 2015 Captivity 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10 1016 j cub 2022 04 093 PMID 35617951 S2CID 246191357 Miks Christian 2009 RELIKTE EINES FRUHMITTELALTERLICHEN OBERSCHICHTGRABES Uberlegungen zu einem Konvolut bemerkenswerter Objekte aus dem Kunsthandel Jahrbuch des Romisch Germanischen Zentralmuseums Mainz 56 395 538 Montgomery Scott B 2010 St Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins of Cologne Relics Reliquaries and the Visual Culture of Group Sanctity in Medieval Europe Oxford et al Peter Lang Molnar Monika Janos Istvan Szucs Laszlo Szathmary Laszlo April 2014 Artificially deformed crania from the Hun Germanic Period 5th 6th century AD in northeastern Hungary historical and morphological analysis Journal of Neurosurgery 36 4 E1 doi 10 3171 2014 1 FOCUS13466 PMID 24684322 Neparaczki Endre et al 12 November 2019 Y chromosome haplogroups from Hun Avar and conquering Hungarian period nomadic people of the Carpathian Basin Scientific Reports Nature Research 9 16569 16569 Bibcode 2019NatSR 916569N doi 10 1038 s41598 019 53105 5 PMC 6851379 PMID 31719606 Nicolle David 2006 Attila and the Nomad Hordes Oxford Osprey Publishing Neidorf Leonard 2013 The Dating of Widsid and the Study of Germanic Antiquity Neophilologus 97 1 165 183 doi 10 1007 s11061 012 9308 2 ISSN 0028 2677 S2CID 163940868 Pohl Walter 2015 Migrations Ethnic Groups and State Building In Maas Michael ed The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Attila Cambridge University Press pp 246 263 ISBN 978 1 107 63388 9 Pohl Walter 1999 Huns In Bowersock G W Brown Peter Grabar Oleg eds Late Antiquity A Guide to the Postclassical World The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press pp 501 502 ISBN 978 0 674 51173 6 Pritsak Omeljan 1982 The Hunnic Language of the Attila Clan PDF Harvard Ukrainian Studies Cambridge Massachusetts Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute IV 4 428 476 ISSN 0363 5570 Archived from the original PDF on 13 December 2016 Retrieved 22 November 2015 Radjush Oleg Scheglova Olga 2014 The Buried Treasure of Volnikovka Horse and Rider Outfit Complex First Half of the V Century AD Collection Catalogue Moscow Reisinger Michaela R 2010 New Evidence About Composite Bows and Their Arrows in Inner Asia The Silk Road 8 42 62 Rona Tas Andras 1999 Hungarians and Europe in the Early Middle Ages An Introduction to Early Hungarian History Budapest Central European University Press Schottky Martin 2004 Huns Encyclopaedia Iranica Sinor Denis 1997 Studies in Medieval Inner Asia Hampshire Ashgate ISBN 978 0860786320 Sinor Denis 1990 The Hun Period In Sinor Denis ed The Cambridge history of early Inner Asia 1 publ ed Cambridge u a Cambridge Univ Press pp 177 203 ISBN 9780521243049 Sinor Denis 2005 Hun Religion In Jones Lindsay ed Encyclopedia of Religion Vol 6 2nd ed Macmillan Reference pp 4228 4229 ISBN 9780028657332 OCLC 56057973 Sommer Ulrike 2017 Archaeology and nationalism In Moshenska Gabriel ed Key Concepts in Public Archaeology London UCL Press pp 166 186 doi 10 2307 j ctt1vxm8r7 16 ISBN 978 1 911576 41 9 JSTOR j ctt1vxm8r7 16 Szucs Jeno 1999 Theoretical Elements in Master Simon of Keza s Gesta Hungarorum 1282 1285 In Veszpremy Laszlo Schaer Frank eds Simon of Keza The Deeds of the Hungarians Budapest Central European University Press pp xxix cii Thompson E A 1996 Heather Peter ed The Huns Blackwell Publishers ISBN 978 0 631 15899 8 Thompson E A 1946 Christian Missionaries among the Huns Hermathena 67 73 79 Uecker Heiko 1972 Germanische Heldensage Stuttgart Metzler ISBN 978 3476101068 Savelyev Alexander et al 7 May 2020 Early nomads of the Eastern Steppe and their tentative connections in the West Evolutionary Human Sciences Cambridge University Press 2 e20 doi 10 1017 ehs 2020 18 PMC 7612788 PMID 35663512 Xiong Victor Cunrui 2000 Sui Tang Chang an A Study in the Urban History of Late Medieval China Michigan Monographs in Chinese Studies U of M Center for Chinese Studies ISBN 0892641371 de la Vaissiere Etienne 2015 The Steppe World and the Rise of the Huns In Maas Michael ed The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Attila Cambridge University Press pp 175 192 ISBN 978 1 107 63388 9 Werner Robert 1967 Das fruheste Auftreten des Hunnennamens Yue ci und Hephthaliten Jahrbucher fur Geschichte Osteuropas 15 4 487 558 Wolfram Herwig 1990 History of the Goths University of California Press ISBN 978 0 5200 6983 1 Wolfram Herwig 1997 The Roman Empire and Its Germanic Peoples University of California Press p 142 ISBN 978 0 5200 8511 4 Wright David Curtis 2011 The history of China 2nd ed Santa Barbara Greenwood ISBN 978 0 313 37748 8 Vajda Edward J 2013 Yeniseian Peoples and Languages A History of Yeniseian Studies with an Annotated Bibliography and a Source Guide Oxford New York Routledge Zahariade Mihail 2009 Late Roman Pieces of Military Equipment from Halmyris Thraco Dacica 24 125 130 External links Wikimedia Commons has media related to Huns Dorn eich Chris M 2008 Chinese sources on the History of the Niusi Wusi Asi oi Rishi ka Arsi Arshi Ruzhi and their Kueishuang Kushan Dynasty Shiji 110 Hanshu 94A The Xiongnu Synopsis of Chinese original Text and several Western Translations with Extant Annotations A blog on Central Asian history www wbr history wbr com wbr topics wbr ancient china wbr huns Eliot Charles Norton Edgcumbe 1911 Huns Encyclopaedia Britannica Vol 13 11th ed pp 932 933 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Huns amp oldid 1145816880, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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