1. Origins

The Huns are a steppe people who appeared in Eastern Europe around 375 and play a leading role until 454. A long ago, the historians noted the similarity of their name to that of the mighty Xiongnu of the Mongolian steppes, who faced the empire of the Han dynasty during the last centuries of the pre-Christian era. This observation led to the formation of a theory, which is the prevalent theory today, regarding the relationship between the Huns and the Xiongnu. According to this hypothesis, the northern Xiongnu left for the West in 55-36 BC. Subsequently, during the first century AD, the Xiongnu advanced to the lands of Kanguj and Yancai (the rivers of Ili and Syr Darya, ancient Iaxartes). However, the chronological hiatus between the Xiongnu and the Huns of European sources remains considerable. Specialists have demonstrated the presence of elements originating in Central Asia in the material culture of the Huns of Europe, failing, however, to establish the region and the Central Asian archaeological culture from which these elements came. According to another hypothesis, during the 3rd - 4th centuries the ancestors of the Huns inhabited the lands somewhere to the east of the Lake Aral, in the Syr Darya river or, more widely, within the steppes of southern Kazakhstan and Kirgizia.

2. The Huns in the 4th century

Be that as it may, by the second half of the 4th century the Huns have surged forward into the eastern margins of Europe. From there they advance on the northern Caucasus and the Don, where around 370-375 they crush the Alans, followed by the Ostrogoths in the territory of the modern Ukraine and the Visigoths in present-day Moldova and Rumania. The Huns at the time of their arrival in Europe are accurately described by Ammianus Marcellinus.¹ They are “classic” nomads, moving constantly through the steppe, following their herds. Apart from animal husbandry, war was another important means of subsistence.

3. The archaeological finds

The archaeological finds concerning the nomads of the Hunnic era are isolated graves, sometimes beneath tumuli, that contain, apart from the deceased, the remains of horses, weapons and jewels. The latter are usually of the polychrome style. The weapons are mainly long double-edged swords, bows reinforced by bone brackets and arrows with heavy three-bladed arrowheads that inflicted severe wounds. There is a total lack of horse tack, consisting of strong saddles, spurs and stirrups. The anthropology of the nomadic populations according to their funerary variables has not been well studied so far. Nevertheless, one notes a wide territorial diffusion of the Alano-Sarmatian custom of artificial cranial deformation. Certain skeletons show pronounced Mongol traits. It is very difficult to draw conclusions regarding the language of the Huns. Essentially we know the proper names that can be read based either on the Turkic or the Gothic language. The Huns are more often considered a people of either the Altaic (Turkic, Mongolic etc.) or the Ugric group.

4. Expansion

From the end of the 4th century a vast Hunnic union begins to develop on the borders of the Roman Empire. It is undoubtedly on the Black Sea steppes NE of the Danube delta where the center of power is situated, whence the Hunnic bands conduct their military operations and pillaging expeditions against the Near East and the Balkans. For the years 400-415 we know three Hunnic chiefs, Uldis, who led the Huns to the Lower Danube, Charaton, “first among the Hunnic kings” according to Olympiodorus,² and Donatus, who was apparently subordinate to Charaton. We assume that these last chiefs were the ones who led the Huns to the steppes north of the Black Sea. The first Huns arrived at the Middle Danube in 378, in the ranks of the Gothic and Alan troops of Alatheus and Saphrax. The possibility that the Huns who came from the Black Sea region conducted a new invasion of the steppes of the Carpathian basin around 405-406 cannot be excluded.

In the years 420-430 the Hunnic chief Rua (or Rugila) succeeded in creating a powerful confederation of barbaric peoples of Central and Eastern Europe, at the same time reducing the range of activities of these autonomous bands. Hunnic mercenaries are engaged in Roman service. In 423 a horde of Huns are led into Italy by the Roman general Aetius, to participate in the struggle for the imperial throne. At the death of Rugila, his nephews Attila and Bleda take power and continue his policy. Supported by strong Hunnic troops, Aetius launches a military expedition against Noricum and then, in 436, he destroys the Burgundian kingdom of Worms (ancient Bormetomagus), before attacking the Visigoths of Toulouse. Simultaneously, the Huns launch, through the Caucasus mountain range, a series of attacks against Transcaucasia, the Roman Near East and Iran, in 395, as well as in the years 420-430 and 440-450.

After Bleda’s assassination in 447, Attila entrained the Huns in a series of wars, the most famous of which is the expedition against the Western Roman Empire, with the indecisive battle in the Catalanian Fields, where the Huns confront the foederati army of Alans, Gauls, Burgundians and Visigoths led by the Roman patrician Aetius. After the death of Attila, his sons succeeded him and, lacking sufficient means to pillage Rome and Constantinople, they exercise their pressure on the subject barbarian peoples, which provoked a revolt among the latter. In 454 or 455, at the battle of the Nedao, a river in Pannonia, Attila’s sons are defeated and the Hunnic Empire perishes forever. The victors partition the old heartland of its territories, the Carpathian basin. As for the Huns, they migrate to the steppes of the Black Sea, where their different clans are known during the second half of the 5th - 6th centuries. In the 7th century the Huns are assimilated into the Turko-Bulgar tribes which were the new masters of the steppe at that time.