Attila The Hun || Sword of Gok Tengri || Turan Race || Part 1 || Turks Huns Mongols || Attila
Attila The Hun || Sword of Gok Tengri || Turan Race || Part 1 || Turks Huns Mongols || Attila
The Huns were a confederation of Central Asian equestrian nomads or semi-nomads[1], who had established an empire in Eurasia. The Huns may have stimulated the Great Migration, a contributing factor in the collapse of the Roman Empire.[2]
They were possibly the descendants of the Xiongnu who had been northern neighbors of China[3] and may be the first expansion of Turkic peoples across Eurasia. They moved into Europe in the 4th and 5th centuries. They formed a unified empire under Attila the Hun, which collapsed after his death in the 5th century AD. Their descendants, 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 roughly from the 4th century to the 6th century. Variants of the Hun name are recorded in the Caucasus until the early 8th century.
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.[5] De Guignes focused on the genealogy of political entities and didn't care much for whether the Huns were the physical descendants of the Xiongnu.[6] Yet his idea, which comes in the context of the ethnocentric and nationalistic scholarship of the late 18th and 19th centuries[7], gained traction and was modified over time to encompass the ideals of the Romantics.
Steppe peoples left little written records. Historians have had to rely upon indirect evidence such as Chinese records, ethnography, archaeology and linguistics. A certain passage in the Chinese Book of Wei (Wei-shu) is often cited as definitive proof in the identity of the Huns as the Xiongnu.[6] 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 Yen-Ts'ai (奄蔡), as claimed by the Wei-shu. Similar passages are also found in the Pei-shih and the Chou-shu. Critical analysis of these Chinese texts reveals that certain chapters in the Book of Wei had been copied from the Pei-shih by Song editors, the chapter on the Xiongnu included. The Pei-shih author assembled his text by cherry-picking from earlier sources, the Chou-shu among them. The Chou-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 Yen-Ts'ai as distinct nations. Lastly, the Su-Te have been positively identified as Sogdiana and the Yen-Ts'ai with the Hephthalites.[6]
Other indirect evidence includes the transmission of grip laths for composite bows from Central Asia to the west[8] and the similarity of Xiongnu and Hunnic cauldrons, which were buried on river banks both in Hungary and in the Ordos.[9].
The Huns practiced cranial deformation, while there is no evidence of such practice amongst the Xiongnu.[6] Western sources mention the Huns as having no beards; the Chinese recorded the extermination of a Xiongnu related ethnic group Jie, who were to be recognized by their full beards, around Ye in 349 AD.
The modern context for Hunnic origin lies in recent research that demonstrates that the large steppe confederations of history were not ethnically homogeneous[10] , but rather unions of multiple ethnicities such as Turkic, Yeniseian, Tungusic, Ugric, Iranic, Mongolic, among others. Many clans may also 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.[10] Similarly, Greek or Latin chroniclers may have used "Huns" in a more general sense. "All we can say safely," says Walter Pohl "is that the name Huns, in late antiquity, described prestigious ruling groups of steppe warriors."[10] Randers-Pehrson describes the Huns as "mongrels... those misshapen-head people with their Chinese wagons and cauldrons, their Indian gemstones and Korean saddle ornaments, their Pontic crowns and golden bows, and their Sarmatian mirrors, riding horses branded with Turkish tamgas."[11] Some evidence does favor a political and cultural link between the Huns and the Xiongnu. The Central Asian Bactrian ancient Sogdian letters from the 4th century mention Huns, while the Chinese sources write Xiongnu, in contact with the sacking of Luoyang[12][13]. As Peter Heather writes "The ancestors of our Huns could even have been a part of the (Hsiung-Nu) confederation, without being the 'real' Hsiung-Nu. Even if we do make some sort of connection between the fourth-century Huns and the first century Hsiung-Nu, an awful lot of water has passed under an awful lot of bridges in the three hundred years worth of lost history.[14]
http://www.elektroseyir.com/