The Huns Between the Altai and the Aral Sea
While the memory of the Huns in Europe is preserved through numerous and vivid accounts by Greek and Latin authors, there is almost no information regarding the arrival of new nomadic conquerors from the East in Central Asia. Archaeological evidence is also extremely scarce. The accounts of Syrian and Byzantine chroniclers regarding the “White Huns”—the Hionites and the Hephthalites (4th–6th centuries)—by no means indicate a genetic kinship between these peoples and the Huns of Central Asia. Nevertheless, a partial reconstruction of the “Hunnic period” in the history of the nomadic peoples who lived in the territory between the Altai and the Aral Sea is possible.
The Huns’ westward advance began as early as the reign of Shanyu Maodun, with the war for political dominance in East Turkestan. A letter sent by Maodun in 176 BCE to the Han Emperor Wendi describes in detail the defeat of the Yuezhi and the subjugation of other tribes in the west: “Thanks to the grace of Heaven, the commanders and soldiers were in good condition, and the horses were strong, which allowed me to destroy the Yuezhi, who were either exterminated or surrendered. I subdued the Loulan, the Usuni, the Huze, and twenty-six neighboring territories, all of which came to belong to the Xiongnu.”
Mao Dun clearly exaggerates his successes—neither the Yuezhi nor the Wusun were defeated and subjugated at that time, although they may have suffered heavy losses. But this letter marks the first mention of the Xiongnu’s invasion of East Turkestan and their advance to the borders of Kazakhstan. The political authority of the Xiongnu shanyu in the Western Region (as the Han Empire referred to East Turkestan and Central Asia) was immense for nearly a century. A Han chronicler notes: “Whenever an envoy of the Xiongnu arrived in one of the states [of the Western Region] bearing credentials from the shanyu, he was escorted on his journey from state to state, supplied with provisions, and no one dared to detain him or hinder him.”
Territories dependent on the Huns soon appeared not only in the Tarim River basin but also much further west. One of them is mentioned by a Chinese historian in connection with events of the mid-1st century BCE. The son of the heir to the Xiongnu throne was married to the daughter of the ruler of Uchanmu, about whom it is said: “Uchanmu was originally the ruler of a small domain lying between the lands of the Usuns and the domains of Kangpo. He was repeatedly subjected to attacks and oppression by his neighbors, and therefore, at the head of his people (warriors?) numbering several thousand, he defected to the Huns. Shanyu Hulugu… ordered [him] to continue ruling his people and to live in the western lands.”
Thus, in the Northwestern Semirechye (between the Usuns and the Kangyu), there exists a small principality whose ruler, having entered into a marital alliance with the royal house of the Huns, secured the protection and patronage of his powerful relative on terms of vassalage. Somewhat later, the son-in-law of the ruler of Uchanmu, Prince Jihouxian, after a failed attempt to claim the vacant throne, flees with his horde to his father-in-law’s domain. This is the earliest mention of the migration of the Huns into the territory of present-day Kazakhstan. The awe that the Shanyu’s power inspired in their western neighbors compelled the rulers of the states of the Western Frontier to recognize the suzerainty of the Hun rulers and to safeguard their interests. This situation persisted until the collapse of the Hun Empire and the submission of the Shanyu of the “southern” Huns, Huhanye, to the authority of the Han emperor (53 BCE).
Huhanye’s younger brother, Zhizhi Shanyu, having taken the lead of the “northern” Huns, soon moved his headquarters to Dzungaria. It is with him that the first intervention of the Huns in the war between Kangju and the Usuns, as recorded in the sources, is associated; this intervention culminated in the relocation of Zhizhi Shanyu and part of his forces to the Talas Valley. In 42 BCE, the Huns and Kangyu forces razed the Usun capital—a city in the Valley of the Red Rocks, on the shores of Issyk-Kul. Shortly thereafter, Zhizhi launched a campaign into Fergana. Fearing for the security of the border, the command of the Chinese troops in the Western Region sent an expeditionary force to Kangyu. The fortress where Zhizhi’s headquarters was located was taken by storm, and he and his companions were killed.
At the beginning of the 1st century CE, the “northern” Huns restored their political influence in East Turkestan, but as early as 73–94 CE, they were forced to wage a fierce struggle against the Han forces. The Huns suffered a particularly heavy defeat in 90–91 CE in the Eastern Tien Shan. The camps of the “northerners,” led by the noble Hoyan clan, were located between Lake Barkul and the Altai Mountains. It was here that the army of two Han generals—Dou Xian and Geng Kui—overwhelmed them, after which, according to a Chinese historian, “the terrified Shanyu, throwing on felt garments and afraid to breathe from fear, fled to the lands of the Usuni. The land north of the desert was depopulated.”
Thus, at the end of the 1st century, following defeats in the struggle for Dzungaria and the Eastern Tien Shan, a large number of “northern” Xiongnu tribes migrated to the “lands of the Usuni,” that is, to the Semirechye region and Eastern Kazakhstan, which bordered their former territories. There is no information in the sources about their return to Dzungaria, although unsuccessful attempts to establish diplomatic relations with the Han court, for example in 104–105, were made. Between 120 and 150 CE, the Huns launched raids from their new lands on the oases of the Tarim Basin, but their military successes were often followed by major defeats. Thus, in 137, the ruler of Dunhuang routed a Hun detachment at Lake Barkul, and in 151, a Hun attack on Hami ended in a hasty retreat before troops sent from Dunhuang. The Xianbei invasion in the 70s of the 2nd century finally drove the northerners out of Dzungaria and pushed them back beyond the Tarbagatai Mountains. The Huns began a gradual conquest of the lands in the steppes between the Tarbagatai Mountains and the Caspian Sea region.
The only state entity established by the Huns at that time north of Lake Balkhash was named Yueban in Chinese sources. According to the authors of the Bei Shi, the “northern” shanyu, fleeing from Dou Xian’s troops, “crossed the Yin-wei-shan Range (Tarbagatai)” and retreated westward to Kangyu, toward the Syr Darya and the Aral Sea. However, part of his horde (200,000 people) remained behind the Tarbagatai Mountains, being “weak.” It was they who established a new Xiongnu state, whose ruler adopted the traditional title of Shanyu. It still existed in the 5th century, exchanged embassies with one of the northern Chinese states, and even concluded a military alliance with it against the Ruanruan. The Chinese describe these nomads as exceptionally unkempt, which is said to have been the motive for the hostility between the Yueban shanyu and the Rouran khagan.
The source recounts the following story, heard from a Yueban envoy: “The [Yueban] ruler had [previously] been on friendly terms with the Rouran (Zhuang-Zhuang). Once, he entered Rouran territory with several thousand men, wishing to meet with [Kagan] Datang (d. 429). Upon entering his territory, he had not yet traveled a hundred li (about 50 km) when he saw that the men did not wash their clothes, did not tie their hair, did not wash their hands, and the women licked their dishes with their tongues. He turned to his nobles and said, “You are mocking me for having undertaken a journey to this dog’s state!” And so he rode back to his domain. Datan sent cavalry in pursuit of him, but they did not catch up. From that time on, they became enemies and waged war against each other several times.”
The most significant aspect of the reports on the Yueban is the mention that the language of the people of this state, descendants of the “northern” Huns, was identical to that of the Gaogui, i.e., the language of the ancient Turkic tribes. Thus, a well-informed source, whose information is drawn from reports of personal communications between Chinese officials of the Northern Wei dynasty and Yueban envoys, records a very specific linguistic affiliation—namely, Turkic—of the population of one of the ancient states that existed on the territory of Kazakhstan and Dzungaria in the 2nd–5th centuries. It can be stated with certainty that from this time onward, across the vast expanse of the Kazakh steppes, alongside the tribes of the “northern” Huns, a population emerged that spoke an ancient language (or languages?) from the Turkic language family.