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Hun (hŭn) 
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[From Late Latin Hunnī, the Huns, from Turki Hunyü.]
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Military History Companion:
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The reputation of the Huns as a warlike people is due to perceptions of their impact upon the late Roman empire. Under their greatest leader, Attila, they threatened to create an empire in 5th-century Europe. Contemporaries wrote of them with fear and loathing, characterizing their culture as primitive, and their behaviour as bestial. This image had a lasting impact on the Western imagination. Even in the 20th century the Germans of WW I were characterized as ‘The Hun’ for propaganda purposes. Yet surprisingly little is known for certain about a people whose natural habitat was the Asian steppe, impacting on China, India, and Persia, and whose supremacy in Europe lasted barely a century.
Steppe nomads had always been a threat to the settled agrarian societies. The Romans had been aware of the Huns at least as early as ad 200, when the geographer Pliny describes them; but it was not until the late 4th century that they had an impact on the empire. In the early 370s, Hunnic attacks on the previously all-conquering Goths on the Eurasian steppe led to their king, Ermaneric, committing suicide in despair. The Goths then sought refuge over the Danube within the Roman empire, but were so badly treated that they rebelled and destroyed the army sent to pacify them at Adrianople in 378. In the years that followed, Huns were found co-operating with other barbarian armies in looting an empire riven by civil war. They also served as mercenary troops for the Emperor Theodosius in 388, before ravaging the Balkans again in the 390s. As nomadic herdsmen, accompanied by their wives and families, they moved around continually seeking the best opportunities for grazing and plunder, but probably only numbered a few thousand. In 395, larger numbers of Huns attacked Persia, impelled by the loss of their herds through drought, and then drifted westward. By c.404, Hunnic leaders were negotiating with Emperor Honorius in Rome, and after 409 Huns served regularly in the Roman army. They then disappear from history until 423 when Ruga is named as their king. He ruled for some ten to fifteen years and may have been ceded lands in Pannonia (modern Hungary) where the grasslands suited a nomadic lifestyle. It is only when Attila appears on the scene that the Huns seem to become a serious threat. In 441, the Huns broke into the western Balkan provinces and took Sirmium in 442. In 447, they devastated Thrace and threatened Constantinople. Outbreaks of plague were the only things to check their progress. Yet Attila was no world ruler along the lines of the later Mongols, he ruled a defined territory from the mouth of the Danube west to Slovakia. In 451, the Huns crossed into Italy taking Aquileia, Milan, and Pavia, but were forced north of the Alps into Gaul by a combination of plague and Roman resistance led by the magister militum Aetius. He offered battle on the ‘Catalaunian Fields’ (Châlons), both sides relying upon German support. Aetius drew up with his Visigothic allies on his right flank, who, despite the loss of their king, overran the Ostrogoths opposing them and gained control of a strategically placed hill. Meanwhile Aetius' Romans held off fierce Hunnic attacks on their own positions. Staring defeat in the face, Attila fell back into his camp, and allegedly prepared to die on a pyre of saddles, although his men's arrows kept the pursuing Romans at bay. Unable to sustain his strategic position, Attila withdrew to Pannonia and died in 435. No successor proved capable of creating such formidable force.
As warriors, the Huns were mounted archers, but this does not mean that they were necessarily dressed in skins or lightly equipped as is so often represented. Their equipment would have been much like other steppe-dwellers of whom evidence is available. Iron Spangenhelm (segmented) helmets, and lamellar (scale) armour coats, reaching to waist or knee, with tall leather boots would be standard. The bow was composite, made of wood, bone, and sinew (in a way that anticipated fibreglass), and very powerful, though probably most effective at relatively short ranges. They may have carried the long, two-handed lance also found on the steppe, but if not then their German subject warriors certainly did and acted in concert with the horse archers. The Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus describes their impact in 392: ‘when provoked they fight singly, but they enter battle in ordered units … they are lightly equipped for swift movements, … they purposely divide suddenly into scattered bands and attack, rushing about in disorder here and there dealing terrific slaughter.’ Clearly it was the rapidity and unpredictability of their manoeuvres which made the Huns so feared, combined with the showers of arrows with which they wound and kill. Ammianus also points out that they were not frightened of close combat though, fighting with swords ‘regardless of their own lives’ and also using lassos to entangle their enemies.
Whatever their individual fighting skills, from a military point of view, the Huns' lasting impact was the introduction of steppe fighting styles to the European theatre. The German tribes with which they first came into contact had already from another steppe culture, that of the Sarmatians, learnt to fight mounted in heavy armour, carrying a long lance (kontos). When used in conjunction with massed infantry this was a powerful formation (see also Vandals). The Huns' contribution to the tactical mix was the well-armoured, mobile horse archer. The Romans had encountered heavily armoured, cataphract bowmen in the armies of Sassanid Persia from the 2nd century onwards; but these were generally deployed defensively. Contact with the Huns taught eastern Romans to develop a native cavalry which was both bow-and lance-armed, mobile and aggressively inclined. Such troops were the core of the armies sent out by Justinian I under his general Belisarius to reconquer the western empire in the mid-6th century.
Bibliography
— Matthew Bennett
Classical Literature Companion:
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Huns nomadic people, formidable horsemen, originating in central Asia, described by the contemporary historian Ammianus Marcellinus as savages who drank the blood of their slaughtered enemies. Their advance westward in the fourth century AD to the area north of the Black Sea caused terror and the widespread migration of barbarian peoples across the frontiers of the Roman empire; see FALL OF ROME, GOTHS, VANDALS. The Huns subsequently occupied the area of modern Hungary, Rumania, and south Russia. Under their leader Attila they sacked Italy in 452, but spared Rome. After Attila's death in 453 his empire was broken up among his sons and thereafter ceased to play an important role in history.
Archaeology Dictionary:
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Nomadic people from Asia forming one of the barbarian tribes which destroyed the Gothic kingdoms of southern Russia in the last quarter of the 4th century ad. United briefly in the 440s ad and early 450s by Attila, the Huns invaded Gaul and Italy but were driven back to their homelands in Hungary and soon afterwards split up into small tribal units, amalgamating with other nomadic peoples.
Russian History Encyclopedia:
Huns |
The Huns (the word means "people" in Altaic) were a confederation of steppe nomadic tribes, some of whom may have been the descendants of the Hsiung-nu, rulers of an empire by the same name in Mongolia. After the collapse of the Hsiung-nu state in the late first century C.E., the Huns migrated westward to Central Asia and in the process mixed with various Siberian, Ugric, Turkic, and Iranian ethnic elements. Around 350, the Huns migrated further west and entered the Ponto-Caspian steppe, from where they launched raids into Transcaucasia and the Near East in the 360s and 370s. Around 375, they crossed the Volga River and entered the western North Pontic region, where they destroyed the Cherniakhova culture and absorbed much of its Germanic (Gothic), Slavic, and Iranian (Sarmatian) ethnic elements. Hun movement westward initiated a massive chain reaction, touching off the migration of peoples in western Eurasia, mainly the Goths west and the Slavs west and north-northeast. Some of the Goths who escaped the Huns' invasion crossed the Danube and entered Roman territories in 376. In the process of their migrations, the Huns also altered the linguistic makeup of the Inner Eurasian steppe, transforming it from being largely Indo-European-speaking (mainly Iranian) to Turkic.
From 395 to 396, from the North Pontic the Huns staged massive raids through Transcaucasia into Roman and Sasanian territories in Anatolia, Syria, and Cappadocia. By around 400, Pannonia (Hungary) and areas north of the lower Danube became the Huns' staging grounds for attacks on the East and West Roman territories. In the 430s and 440s, they launched campaigns on the East Roman Balkans and against Germanic tribes in central Europe, reaching as far west as southern France.
The Huns' attacks on territories beyond the North Pontic steppe and Pannonia were raids for booty, campaigns to extract tribute, and mercenary fighting for their clients, not conquests of their wealthy sedentary agricultural neighbors and their lands. Being pastoralists, they wielded great military powers, but only for as long as they remained in the steppe region of Inner Eurasia, which provided them with the open terrain necessary for their mobility and grasslands for their horses. Consequently, Hun attacks west of Pannonia were minor, unorganized, and not led by strong leaders until Attila, who ruled from about 444 or 445 to 453. However, even he continued the earlier Hun practice of viewing the Roman Empire primarily as a source of booty and tribute.
Immediately after Attila's sudden death in 453, the diverse and loosely-knit Hun tribal confederation disintegrated, and their Germanic allies revolted and killed his eldest son, Ellac (d. 454). In the aftermath, most of the Huns were driven from Pannonia east to the North Pontic region, where they merged with other pastoral peoples. The collapse of Hun power can be attributed to their inability to consolidate a true state. The Huns were always and increasingly in the minority among the peoples they ruled, and they relied on complex tribal alliances but lacked a regular and permanent state structure. Pannonia simply could not provide sufficient grasslands for a larger nomadic population. However, the Hun legacy persisted in later centuries. Because of their fierce military reputation, the term "Hun" came to be applied to many other Eurasian nomads by writers of medieval sedentary societies of Outer Eurasia, while some pastoralists adopted Hun heritage and lineage to distinguish themselves politically.
Bibliography
Christian, David. (1998). A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia, Vol. 1: Inner Asia from Prehistory to the Mongol Empire. Oxford: Blackwell.
Golden, Peter B. (1992). An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples. Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz Verlag.
Maenchen-Helfen, O. J. (1973). The World of the Huns: Studies in Their History and Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Sinor, Denis. (1990). "The Hun Period." In The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, ed. Denis Sinor. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
—ROMAN K. KOVALEV
Columbia Encyclopedia:
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Bibliography
See T. Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, Vol. I (rev. ed. 1892, repr. 1967); W. M. McGovern, Early Empires of Central Asia (1939); E. A. Thompson, A History of Attila and the Huns (1948); F. Teggart, China and Rome (1969, repr. 1983); J. D. Maenchen-Helfen, The World of the Huns (1973).
The people who invaded the eastern Roman Empire around 372-453 C.E. and were particularly ruthless and effective in their war campaigns under the leadership of Attila. Modern day Hungarians claim ancestry dating back to the Huns.
Ancient historians recorded legends that grew out of the severe stress the Huns created in all those whom they fought against. They credited the Huns with a supernatural origin. The Huns were referred to as "children of the devil," because it was said that they were born of a union between demons and hideous witches, the latter cast out of their own country by Philimer, king of the Goths, and his army. The old writers state that the Huns were of horrible deformity and could not be mistaken for anything but the children of demons. The German historian C. Besoldus (1577-1638) claimed that their name came from a Celtic or barbaric word signifying "great magicians." Many stories are told of their magic prowess and of their raising specters to assist them in battle.
Sources:
Manchen-Helfen, Otto. The World of the Huns: Studies in Their History and Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973.
History Dictionary:
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A tribe from western Asia who conquered much of central and eastern Europe during the fifth century. The Huns were known for their cruelty and destructiveness.
Wikipedia:
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The Huns were a group of nomadic pastoral people who, appearing from beyond the Volga, migrated into Europe c. 370 CE and built up an enormous empire in Europe. Since De Guignes linked them with the Xiongnu who had been northern neighbours of China three hundred years before[1], considerable scholarly effort has been devoted in investigating such a connection. However, there is no evidence for a direct connection between the Xiongnu and the Huns.[2] The relationships of the language of the Huns have been the subject of debate for centuries. The leading current theory is that it was a Turkic language.[3][4][5][6] However, numerous other languages were spoken within the Hun pax including East Germanic[7]. Their main military technique was mounted archery.
The Huns may have stimulated the Great Migration, a contributing factor in the collapse of the Roman Empire.[8] They formed a unified empire under Attila the Hun, who died in 453; their empire broke up the next year. Their descendants, or successors with similar names, are recorded by neighbouring populations to the south, east, and west as having occupied parts of Eastern Europe and Central Asia roughly from the 4th century to the 6th century. Variants of the Hun name are recorded in the Caucasus until the early 8th century.
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All surviving accounts were written by enemies of the Huns, and none describe the Huns as attractive either morally or in appearance.
Jordanes, a Goth writing in Italy in 551, a century after the collapse of the Hunnic Empire, describes the Huns as a "savage race, which dwelt at first in the swamps,--a stunted, foul and puny tribe, scarcely human, and having no language save one which bore but slight resemblance to human speech.
"They made their foes flee in horror because their swarthy aspect was fearful, and they had, if I may call it so, a sort of shapeless lump, not a head, with pin-holes rather than eyes. Their hardihood is evident in their wild appearance, and they are beings who are cruel to their children on the very day they are born. For they cut the cheeks of the males with a sword, so that before they receive the nourishment of milk they must learn to endure wounds. Hence they grow old beardless and their young men are without comeliness, because a face furrowed by the sword spoils by its scars the natural beauty of a beard. They are short in stature, quick in bodily movement, alert horsemen, broad shouldered, ready in the use of bow and arrow, and have firm-set necks which are ever erect in pride. Though they live in the form of men, they have the cruelty of wild beasts."[9]
Jordanes also recounted how Priscus had described Attila the Hun, the Emperor of the Huns from 434 - 453, as: "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."[10]
The Huns kept herds of cattle, horses, goats, and sheep.[11] Their other sources of food consisted of wild game and the roots of wild plants. For clothes they had round caps, trousers or leggings made from goat skin, and either linen or rodent skin tunics. Ammianus reports that they wore these clothes until the clothes fell to pieces. Priscus describes Attila's clothes as different from his men only in being clean.[12] In warfare they utilized the bow and javelin. The arrowheads and javelin tips were made from bone. They also fought using iron swords and lassos in close combat. The Hun sword was a long, straight, double-edged sword of early Sassanian style.[13] These swords were hung from a belt using the scabbard-slide method, which kept the weapon vertical. The Huns also employed a smaller short sword or large dagger which was hung horizontally across the belly. A symbol of status among the Huns was a gilded bow.[13] Sword and dagger grips also were decorated with gold.
With the arrival of the Huns, a separate tradition of composite bows arrived in Europe. Each siyah was stiffened by two laths, as in the longstanding Levantine tradition, and the grip by three. Therefore, each bow possessed seven grip and ear laths, compared with none on the Scythian and Sarmatian bows and four (ear) laths on the Middle Eastern Yrzi bow.[14] There is no evidence that the Huns used bows in any way superior to those of their contemporaries.
Ammianus mentions that the Huns had no kings but were instead led by nobles. For serious matters they formed councils and deliberated from horseback.
Jordanes and Ammianus report that the Huns practiced scarification, slashing the faces of their male infants with swords to discourage beard growth. Another custom of the Huns was to strap their children's noses flat from an early age, in order to widen their faces, as to increase the terror their looks instilled upon their enemies. Certain Hun skeletons have shown evidence of artificially deformed skulls that are a result of ritual head binding at a young age.[15]
Traditionally historians have associated the Huns who appeared on the borders of Europe in the 4th century with the Xiongnu who migrated out of the Mongolia region in the 1st century AD. However the evidence for this has not been definitive (see below), and the debates have continued ever since Joseph de Guignes first suggested it in the 18th century. Due to the lack of definitive evidence, a school of modern scholarship in the West instead uses an ethnogenesis approach in explaining the Huns' origin. Jordanes attributes their origins to the intercourse of Gothic witches and unclean spirits.[17]
There are no historical records that definitively answer where the Huns in Europe of the 4th century came from. Ammianus reported that they arrived from the north, near the 'ice bound ocean', prompting suggestions of Finno-Ugrian roots.[18] Modern understanding[19] suggests that the large steppe confederations of history were not ethnically homogeneous[19] , but rather unions of multiple ethnicities such as Turkic, Yeniseian, Tungusic, Ugric, Iranic,[20] Mongolic, among others. This likely suggests the same was true for the Huns.[19] Many clans may have claimed to be Huns simply based on the prestige and fame of the name or it was attributed to them by outsiders describing their common characteristics, believed place of origin, or reputation.[19] Similarly, Greek or Latin chroniclers may have used "Huns" in a more general sense, similar to the use of "barbarian".
Because of these factors – no ethnic homogeneity among comparable groups; and association with the Hunnic name by outside chroniclers – many modern historians have turned to an ethnogenetic approach in explaining the origins of the Huns. An ethnogenetic approach does not assume that a group is a linguistically or genetically homogeneous tribe, that has a single place of origin or a single tribal history. Rather, small groups of aristocratic warriors may have carried ethnic traditions from place to place and generation to generation. Followers would coalesce or disband around these nuclei of tradition. Hunnic ethnicity would then require acceptance into these groups but no requirement to have been born into a "tribe". "All we can say safely," says Walter Pohl, "is that the name Huns, in late antiquity (4th century), described prestigious ruling groups of steppe warriors."[19]
Debate about the Asian origin of the Huns has been ongoing since the 18th century when Joseph de Guignes first suggested that the Huns should be identified as the Xiongnu of Chinese sources.[11] De Guignes focused on the genealogy of political entities and gave little attention to whether the Huns were the physical descendants of the Xiongnu.[21] Yet his idea, which comes in the context of the ethnocentric and nationalistic scholarship of the late 18th and 19th centuries[22], gained traction and was modified over time to encompass the ideals of the Romantics.
Other indirect evidence includes the transmission of grip laths for composite bows from Central Asia to the west[14] and the similarity of Xiongnu and Hunnic cauldrons, which were buried on river banks both in Hungary and in the Ordos.[23].
The Central Asian Bactrian ancient Sogdian letters from the 4th century mention Huns, while the Chinese sources write Xiongnu, in the context of the sacking of Luoyang[24][25]. However there is a historical gap of 300 years between the Chinese and later sources. As Peter Heather writes "The ancestors of our [4th Century European] Huns could even have been a part of the [1st century] Xiongnu confederation, without being the 'real' Xiongnu. Even if we do make some sort of connection between the fourth-century Huns and the first century Xiongnu, an awful lot of water has passed under an awful lot of bridges in the three hundred years worth of lost history."[26] In other words, we simply have no idea what happened to the Xiongnu for three hundred years and thus associating them with the 4th century Huns is speculative.
Skeletal remains from Kazakhstan (Central Asia), excavated from different sites dating between the 15th century BCE to the 5th century CE, have been analyzed for the hypervariable control region and haplogroup diagnostic single nucleotide polymorphisms of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) genome. The distribution of east and west Eurasian lineages through time in the region is concordant with the available archaeological information: prior to the 13th - 7th century BCE; all samples belong to European lineages. Later an arrival of East Asian sequences that coexisted with the previous genetic substratum was detected.[27]
The Huns practiced artificial cranial deformation, while there is no evidence of such practice amongst the Xiongnu.[21] Ammianus and Jordanes mention the Huns as scarifying infant's faces to prevent the later growth of beards; the Chinese recorded General Ran Min having led a military campaign against a faction of the Xiongnu Confederation called the Jie, who were described as having full beards, around Ye in 349 CE.
A specific passage in the Chinese Book of Wei (Wei-shu) is often cited as definitive proof in the identity of the Huns as the Xiongnu.[21] It appears to say that the Xiongnu conquered the Alans (Su-Te 粟特) around the same time as recorded by Western sources. This theory hinged upon the identity of the Su-Te as the Yan-Cai (奄蔡), as claimed by the Wei-shu. Similar passages are also found in the Bei-Shi and the Zhou-Shu. Critical analysis of these Chinese texts reveals that certain chapters in the Book of Wei had been copied from the Bei-Xi by Song editors, the chapter on the Xiongnu included. The Bei-Shi author assembled his text by making selections from earlier sources, the Zhou-Shu among them. The Zhou-Shu does not mention the Xiongnu in its version of the chapter in question. Additionally, the Book of the Later Han (Hou-Han-Shu) treats the Su-Te and the Yan-Cai as distinct nations. Lastly, Su-Te has been positively identified as Sogdiana and the Yan-Cai with the Hephthalites.[21]
The literary sources, Priscus and Jordanes, preserve only a few names and three words of the language of the Huns, which have been studied for more than a century and a half. Our sources do not give the meaning of any of the names, only of the three words. These words (medos, kamos, strava) do not seem to be Turkic.[28]
The standard discussion remains Pritsak 1982, "The Hunnic Language of the Attila Clan."[29]. On the basis of the existing sparse name records, a number of scholars suggest that the Huns spoke a Turkic language of the Oghur branch, which also includes Bulgar, Avar, Khazar and Chuvash languages.[30] English scholar Peter Heather called the Huns "the first group of Turkic, as opposed to Iranian, nomads to have intruded into Europe".[31] The inscription on the Khan Diggiz plate is interpreted by Mukhamadiev as giving the name of a known Hunnic king, son of Attila, in a form of Turkish.[32]
Other schools of thought came to the conclusion that "To judge by the tribal names, a great part of the Huns must have spoken a Turkish language." - Otto Maenchen-Helfen.[4]
A variety of languages were spoken by the subjects of the Huns. "Being a mixture of peoples, in addition to their own languages they cultivate Hunnic or Gothic or (in the case of those who have dealings with the Romans) Latin."[33]
By 139 CE, the European geographer Ptolemy writes that the "Chuni" (Χοῦνοι or Χουνοἰ) are between the Bastarnae and the Roxolani in the Pontic area under the rule of Suni. He lists the beginning of the second century, although it is not known for certain if these people were the Huns. It is possible that the similarity between the names "Chuni" (Χοῦνοι) and "Hunnoi" (Ουννοι) is only a coincidence considering that while the West Romans often wrote Chunni or Chuni, the East Romans never used the guttural Χ at the beginning of the name.[11] The 5th century Armenian historian Moses of Khorene, in his "History of Armenia," introduces the Hunni near the Sarmatians and describes their capture of the city of Balkh ("Kush" in Armenian) sometime between 194 and 214, which explains why the Greeks call that city Hunuk.
The Huns first appeared in Europe in the 4th century. They show up north of the Black Sea around 370. The Huns crossed the Volga river and attacked the Alans, who were then subjugated. Jordanes reports that the Huns were led at this time by Balamber while modern historians question his existence, seeing instead an invention by the Goths to explain who defeated them.[11] The Huns and Alans started plundering Greuthungic settlements.[11] The Greuthungic king, Ermanaric, committed suicide and his great-nephew, Vithimiris, took over. Vithimiris was killed during a battle against the Alans and Huns in 376. This resulted in the subjugation of most of the Ostrogoths.[11] Vithimiris' son, Viderichus, was only a child so command of the remaining Ostrogothic refugee army fell to Alatheus and Saphrax. The refugees streamed into Thervingic territory, west of the Dniester.
With a part of the Ostrogoths on the run, the Huns next came to the territory of the Visigoths, led by Athanaric. Athanaric, not to be caught off guard, sent an expeditionary force beyond the Dniester. The Huns avoided this small force and attacked Athanaric directly. The Goths retreated into the Carpathians. Support for the Gothic chieftains diminished as refugees headed into Thrace and towards the safety of the Roman garrisons.
In 395 the Huns began their first large-scale assault on the East Roman Empire.[11] Huns attacked in Thrace, overran Armenia, and pillaged Cappadocia. They entered parts of Syria, threatened Antioch, and swarmed through the province of Euphratesia. Emperor Theodosius left his armies in the West so the Huns stood unopposed until the end of 398 when the eunuch Eutropius gathered together a force composed of Romans and Goths and succeeded in restoring peace.
During their momentary diversion from the East Roman Empire, the Huns appear to have moved further west as evidenced by Radagaisus' entering Italy at the end of 405 and the crossing of the Rhine into Gaul by Vandals, Sueves, and Alans in 406.[11] The Huns do not then appear to have been a single force with a single ruler. Many Huns were employed as mercenaries by both East and West Romans and by the Goths. Uldin, the first Hun known by name[11], 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. Gainas' head was given to the East Romans for display in Constantinople in an apparent exchange of gifts.
The East Romans began to feel the pressure again in 408 by Uldin's Huns. Uldin crossed the Danube and captured a fortress in Moesia named Castra Martis. The fortress was betrayed from within. Uldin then proceeded to ravage 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.
Alaric's brother-in-law, Athaulf, appears to have had Hun mercenaries in his employ south of the Julian Alps in 409. These were countered by another small band of Huns hired by Honorius' minister Olympius. Later in 409, the West Romans stationed ten thousand Huns in Italy and Dalmatia to fend off Alaric, who then abandoned plans to march on Rome.
Under the leadership of Attila the Hun, the Huns achieved hegemony over several rivals using the composite bow and their horsemanship in traditional mounted archery tactics. Supplementing their wealth by plundering and raising tribute from Roman cities to the south, the Huns maintained the loyalties of a number of tributary tribes including elements of the Gepids, Scirii, Rugians, Sarmatians, and Ostrogoths. The only lengthy first-hand report of conditions among the Huns is by Priscus, who formed part of an embassy to Attila.
After Attila's death, his son Ellac overcame his brothers Dengizich and Ernakh (Irnik) to become king of the Huns. However, former subjects soon united under Ardaric, leader of the Gepids, against the Huns at the Battle of Nedao in 454. This defeat and Ellac's death ended the European supremacy of the Huns, and soon afterwards they disappear from contemporary records. The Pannonian basin then was occupied by the Gepids, whilst various Gothic groups remained in the Balkans also.
Later historians provide glimpses of the dispersal and renaming of Attila's people. According to tradition, after Ellac's loss and death, his brothers ruled over two separate, but closely related hordes on the steppes north of the Black Sea. Dengizich is believed to have been king (khan) of the Kutrigur Bulgars, and Ernakh king (khan) of the Utigur Bulgars, whilst Procopius claimed that Kutrigurs and Utigurs were named after, and led by two of the sons of Ernakh. Such distinctions are uncertain and the situation is not likely to have been so clear cut. Some Huns remained in Pannonia for some time before they were slaughtered by Goths. Others took refuge within the East Roman Empire, namely in Dacia Ripensis and Scythia Minor. Possibly, other Huns and nomadic groups retreated to the steppe. Indeed, subsequently, new confederations appear such as Kutrigur, Utigur, Onogur / (Onoghur), Sarigur, etc., which were collectively called "Huns". Similarly, the 6th century Slavs were presented as Hun groups by Procopius.
However, it is likely that Graeco-Roman sources habitually equated new barbarian political groupings with old tribes. This was partly due to expectation that contemporary writers emulate the ‘great writers’ of preceding eras. Apart from exigencies in style was the belief that barbarians from particular areas were all the same, no matter how they changed their name.[34]
Chroniclers writing centuries later often mentioned or alluded to Huns or their purported descendants. These include:
Mediaeval Hungarians continued this tradition (see Gesta Hunnorum et Hungarorum, Chronicon Pictum, Gesta Hungarorum).
Memory of the Hunnic conquest was transmitted orally among Germanic peoples and is an important component in the Old Norse Völsunga saga and Hervarar saga and in the Middle High German Nibelungenlied. These stories all portray Migration Period events from a millennium earlier.
In the Hervarar saga, the Goths make first contact with the bow-wielding Huns and meet them in an epic battle on the plains of the Danube.
In the Nibelungenlied, Kriemhild marries Attila (Etzel in German) after her first husband Siegfried was murdered by Hagen with the complicity of her brother, King Gunther. She then uses her power as Etzel's wife to take a bloody revenge in which not only Hagen and Gunther but all Burgundian knights find their death at festivities to which she and Etzel had invited them.
In the Völsunga saga, Attila (Atli in Norse) defeats the Frankish king Sigebert I (Sigurðr or Siegfried) and the Burgundian King Guntram (Gunnar or Gunther), but is later assassinated by Queen Fredegund (Gudrun or Kriemhild), the sister of the latter and wife of the former.
During a 16th-century peasant revolt in southern Norway, the rebels claimed, during their trial, that they expected the "Hun king Atle" to come from the north with a great host.
Many realms (and nations) have tried to assert themselves as ethnic, or cultural successors to the Huns. For instance, the Nominalia of the Bulgarian Khans may indicate that they believed themselves to have descended from Attila. A number of similarities between Hunnic and Bulgar cultures, for instance, the practice of artificial cranial deformation, as well as other archaeological evidence, suggest a strong continuity between the two. The most characteristic weapons of the Huns and early Bulgars (a particular type of composite bow and a long, straight, double edged sword of the Sassanid type, etc.) are virtually identical in appearance. Some scholars have hypothesized that the Chuvash language, (which is believed to be a descendant of the Bulgar language), is the closest surviving relative of the Hunnic language.[35]
The Magyars (Hungarians) in particular lay claim to Hunnic heritage. Although Magyar tribes only began to settle in the geographical area of present-day Hungary in the very end of the 9th century, some 450 years after the dissolution of the Hunnic tribal confederation, Hungarian prehistory includes Magyar origin legends, which may have preserved some elements of historical truth. The Huns who invaded Europe represented a loose coalition of various peoples, so some Magyars might have been part of it, or may later have joined descendants of Attila's men, who still claimed the name of Huns. Despite the lack of any concrete historical or archeological evidence, the national anthem of Hungary describes the Hungarians as "blood of Bendegúz'" (the medieval and modern Hungarian version of Mundzuk, Attila's father). Attila's brother Bleda is called Buda in modern Hungarian. The city of Buda has been said to derive its name from him. Until the early 20th century, many Hungarian historians believed that the Székely people were the descendants of the Huns, but that is no longer the scholarly consensus.
In 2005, a group of about 2,500 Hungarians petitioned the government for recognition of minority status as direct descendants of Attila. The bid failed, but gained some publicity for the group, which formed in the early 1990s and appears to represent a special Hun(garian)-centric brand of mysticism. The self-proclaimed Huns are not known to possess any distinctly Hunnic culture or language beyond what would be available from historical and modern-mystical Hungarian sources.[36]
After the disintegration of the Hun Empire, they never regained their lost glory. One reason was that the Huns never fully established the mechanisms of a state, such as bureaucracy and taxes, unlike Bulgars, Magyars or the Golden Horde. Once disorganized, the Huns were absorbed by more organized polities. Like the Avars after them, once the Hun political unity failed there was no way re-create it, especially because the Huns had become a multiethnic empire under Attila. The Hun Empire included, at least nominally, a great host of diverse peoples, each of whom may be considered 'descendants' of the Huns. However, given that the Huns were a political creation, and not a consolidated people, or nation, their defeat in 454 marked the end of that political creation. Newer polities which later arose might have consisted of people formerly in the Hun confederacy, and carrying the same steppe cultures, but they were new political creations.
On July 27, 1900, during the Boxer Rebellion in China, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany 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 [Etzel] won a reputation of might that lives on in legends, so may the name of Germany in China [sic: be asserted] such that no Chinese will even again dare so much as to look in askance at a German."[37]
This speech gave rise to later use of the term "Hun" for the Germans during World War I. The comparison was helped by the Pickelhaube or spiked helmet worn by German forces until 1916, which was reminiscent of images depicting ancient Hun helmets. An alternative reason sometimes given for the use of the term was the motto Gott mit uns (God with us) on German soldiers' belt buckles during World War I. It is suggested that the word uns was mistaken for Huns. This usage, emphasising the idea that the Germans were barbarians, was reinforced by Allied propaganda throughout the war. The French songwriter Theodore Botrel described the Kaiser as "an Attila, without remorse", launching "cannibal hordes".[38]
The usage of the term "Hun" to describe a German resurfaced during World War II. For example Winston Churchill referred in 1941 to the invasion of the Soviet Union as "the dull, drilled, docile brutish masses of the Hun soldiery, plodding on like a swarm of crawling locusts."[39]. Nevertheless, its use was less widespread than in the previous war. British and American WWII troops more often used the term "Jerry" or "Kraut" for their German opponents.
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Translations:
Hun |
Nederlands (Dutch)
Hun, Mof, vandaal
Français (French)
n. - Hun, Boche (arch) (injur)
Deutsch (German)
n. - Hunne, Teutone
Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (ιστ., εθνολ.) Ούνος
Italiano (Italian)
unno, distruttore
Português (Portuguese)
n. - huno (m)
Español (Spanish)
n. - huno, alemán
Svenska (Swedish)
n. - hun, tysk (neds.), barbar
中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
匈奴, 破坏者, 野蛮人
中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 匈奴, 破壞者, 野蠻人
한국어 (Korean)
n. - 훈족, 파괴자, 독일 군인
日本語 (Japanese)
n. - フン族の人, 野蛮人, 破壊者
العربيه (Arabic)
(الاسم) الهوني واحد الهون وهم شعب مغلوي مترحل سيطر على جزء كبير من أوروبا الوسطى والشرقيه, بقيادة آتيلا حوالي عام 450 ب م, شخص محب للتدمير الالماني وبخاصه الجندي الالماني
עברית (Hebrew)
n. - הוני, גרמני, פרא הגורם חורבן
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