Part four of the Huns series!

Following their defeats at the hands of Han & Xianbei armies, many of the Xiongnu fled west, into what is today basically Uzbekistan & Kazakhstan. From here, there are vague records until, after about 200, no more information is really recorded. A few centuries later the Huns expand from this region to menace the Roman Empire, and because the two groups share geographical proximity, it's been theorized that the two groups are connected. However, many scholars of the Roman Empire have described the Huns as being fairly decentralized politically, and have argued that because the Xiongnu had a high degree of political centralization, it's evidence that the Huns could not have been those same Xiongnu.

In this video we go over the political and military situation in Central Asia after the Xiongnu reach it, and before the Huns come out of the region. We talk about the Hephthalite Empire (otherwise known as the White Huns), the Yuezhi foundation of the Kushan Empire, and the language flip the Xiongnu appear to have undergone in the region--changing from a Yeneisian language to a Turkic one.


SOURCES:
The Huns, Kim
Empires of the Silk Road, Beckwith
Rome, Parthia, & India, Grainger
India: A History, Keay


#huns
#attilathehun
#romanempire

свернуть