Huns- Turkic-speaking people, a union of tribes, formed in the II-IV centuries, by mixing different tribes of the Great Eurasian Steppe, the Volga and the Urals. In Chinese sources, they are referred to as Xiongnu or Xiongnu. A tribal group of the Altai type (Turkic, Mongolian, Tungus-Manchu languages), which invaded in the 70s of the 4th century. n. e. to Eastern Europe as a result of a long advance west of the borders of China. The Huns created a huge state from the Volga to the Rhine. Under the commander and ruler Attila, attempts were made to conquer the entire Romanesque west (mid-fifth century). The center of the territory of the settlement of the Huns was in Pannonia, where the Avars later settled, and then the Hungarians. In the composition of the Hunnic monarchy in the middle of the 5th century. In addition to the Hunnic (Altai) tribes themselves, there were many others, including Germans, Alans, Slavs, Finno-Ugric peoples, and other peoples.
Short story
According to one version, a large association of the Huns (known from Chinese sources under the name "Xiongnu" or "Xiongnu") at the end of the 3rd century BC. e. formed in the territory of Northern China, from the II century AD. e. appeared in the steppes of the Northern Black Sea region. The Xiongnu, according to Chinese chronicles, somewhere at the turn of the eras began their slow march to the west. Archaeological evidence has also been found that along the way they founded their nomadic states either in Northern Mongolia or even further to the west. This information is highly controversial and hypothetical, without archaeological evidence. Traces of the "Xiongnu" west of Northern Kazakhstan were not found. In addition, in the IV-V centuries AD. e. natives of the tribal union "Xiongnu" headed the royal dynasties in Northern China. In the 70s of the 4th century, the Huns conquered the Alans in the North Caucasus, and then defeated the state of Germanarich, which served as an impetus for the Great Migration of Peoples. The Huns subjugated most of the Ogoths (they lived in the lower reaches of the Dnieper) and forced the Visigoths (who lived in the lower reaches of the Dniester) to retreat to Thrace (in the eastern part of the Balkan Peninsula, between the Aegean, Black and Marmara Seas). Then, having passed through the Caucasus in 395, they devastated Syria and Cappadocia (in Asia Minor) and around the same time, having settled in Pannonia (a Roman province on the right bank of the Danube, now the territory of Hungary) and Austria, they raided the Eastern Roman Empire from there (in relation to the Western Roman Empire, until the middle of the 5th century, the Huns acted as allies in the struggle against the Germanic tribes). They imposed tribute on the conquered tribes and forced them to participate in their military campaigns.
The greatest territorial expansion and power of the Hunnic union of tribes (in addition to the Bulgars, it already included the Ostrogoths, Heruli, Gepids, Scythians, Sarmatians, as well as some other Germanic and non-Germanic tribes) reached under Attila (reigned in 434-453). In 451 the Huns invaded Gaul and were defeated in the Catalaunian fields by the Romans and their allies, the Visigoths. After the death of Attila, the strife that arose among the Huns was taken advantage of by the conquered Gepids, who led the uprising of the Germanic tribes against the Huns. In 455, at the Battle of the Nedao River in Pannonia, the Huns were defeated and left for the Black Sea region: a powerful alliance broke up. The attempts of the Huns to break through to the Balkan Peninsula in 469 failed. Gradually, the Huns disappeared as a people, although their name was still met as a common name for the nomads of the Black Sea region for a long time. According to the testimony of the same Jordanes, the tribes that were part of the “Hunnic” union shamelessly occupied both the Western and Eastern parts of the Roman Empire, settling in Thrace, Illyria, Dalmatia, Pannonia, Gaul, and even on the Apennine Peninsula. The last Roman emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was the son of Attila's secretary, Orestes. The first barbarian king of Rome, who overthrew him from the throne, according to Jordan, the “king of the Torquilings” Odoacer, to whom historians for some reason attribute German origin, was the son of Attila’s best commander, skyr, Edecon. Theodoric, the son of Attila's associate of the Ostrogothic king Theodomir, who defeated Odoacer with the help of the Byzantine emperor Zeno, became the first Christian king of the Gothic-Roman kingdom.
Lifestyle
The Huns did not have permanent dwellings, they wandered along with their cattle and did not build huts. They roamed the steppes, entered the forest-steppes. They didn't farm at all. All their property, as well as children and the elderly, they carried in tents on wheels. Because of the best pastures, they fought with neighbors near and far, lining up in a wedge and uttering a formidable howling cry.
In a strange way, completely opposite evidence is contained in the “History of the Goths” by Priscus of Panius, who visited the capital of Attila and described wooden houses with beautiful carvings, in which the "Hunnic" nobles lived, and the huts of local residents - the Scythians, in which the embassy had to spend the night on the road. Priscus' testimony is the exact opposite of Ammian's fiction that the "Huns" are afraid of houses, like cursed tombs, and only feel comfortable in the open air. The same Prisk describes that the army of the "Huns" lived in tents.
The Huns invented a powerful long-range bow, which reached a length of more than one and a half meters. It was made composite, and for greater strength and elasticity, it was reinforced with overlays from bone and animal horns. Arrows were used not only with bone tips, but with iron and bronze ones. They also made whistling arrows, attaching drilled bone balls to them, which emitted a frightening whistle in flight. The bow was put into a special case and attached to the belt on the left, and the arrows were in a quiver behind the warrior on the right. The “Hun bow”, or the Scythian bow (scytycus arcus) - according to the Romans, the most modern and effective weapon of antiquity, was considered a very valuable military booty among the Romans. Flavius Etius, a Roman general who lived for 20 years as a hostage among the Huns, put the Scythian bow into service in the Roman army.
The dead were often burned, believing that the soul of the deceased would fly faster to heaven if the worn-out body was destroyed by fire. With the deceased, his weapons were thrown into the fire - a sword, a quiver with arrows, a bow and a horse harness.
The Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus, "the godfather of the Huns", describes them this way:
… all of them are dense and strong hands and legs, thick necks, and in general such a monstrous and terrible appearance that they can be mistaken for two-legged animals or likened to piles that are roughly hewn when building bridges.
“The Huns never hide behind any buildings, detesting them as tombs… Wandering through the mountains and forests, they learn from the cradle to endure cold, hunger and thirst; and in a foreign land they do not enter dwellings except in dire necessity; they do not even consider it safe to sleep under the roof.
... but on the other hand, as if rooted to their hardy, but ugly-looking horses and sometimes sitting on them like a woman, they do all their usual business; on them, each of this tribe spends the night and day ... eats and drinks, and, bending down to the narrow neck of his cattle, plunges into a deep, light sleep ...
In contrast to Ammianus, the ambassador to the Hunnic king Attila, Priscus of Panius, describes the Huns as follows:
Having crossed some rivers, we came to a huge village, in which, as they say, were the mansions of Attila, more prominent than in any other place, built of logs and well-planed boards and surrounded by a wooden fence that encircled them not in the form of security. but for beauty. Behind the royal mansions stood out the mansions of Onogesius, also surrounded by a wooden fence; but it was not adorned with towers like that of Attila. Inside the fence there were many buildings, some of which were made of beautifully fitted boards covered with carvings, while others were made of logs hewn and scraped to straightness, inserted into wooden circles ...
Since their squad consists of various barbarian peoples, the warriors, in addition to their barbarian language, adopt Hunnic, Gothic, and Italian speech from each other. Italian - from frequent communication with Rome
Having overcome a certain path together with the barbarians, we, by order of the Scythians assigned to us, went to another path, and in the meantime Attila stopped in some city to marry Eski's daughter, although he already had many wives: Scythian law allows polygamy.
Each of those present, according to Scythian courtesy, got up and gave us a full goblet, then, embracing and kissing the drunk, took the goblet back.
Huns and ancient Slavs
Procopius of Caesarea in the 6th century, describing the Slavs and Antes, reports that "essentially they are not bad people and not at all malicious, but they preserve the Hun morals in all their purity." Most historians interpret this evidence in favor of the fact that some of the Slavs were subject to the Huns and were part of the power of Attila. The once widespread opinion (expressed, in particular, by Yur. Venelin) that the Huns were one of the Slavic tribes, modern historians unanimously reject as erroneous.
Of the Russian writers, Attila was declared a Slavic prince by the authors of the Slavophile persuasion - A.F. Veltman (1800-1870), in the book "Attila and Russia of the VI and V centuries", A.S. Khomyakov (1804-1860) in unfinished "Semiramide", P. J. Shafarik (1795-1861) in the multi-volume work "Slavic Antiquities", A. D. Nechvolodov "The Tale of the Russian Land", I. E. Zabelin (1820-1908), D. I. Ilovaisky (1832-1920), Yu. I. Venelin (1802-1839), N. V. Savelyev-Rostislavich.
The rise and fall of the Huns
Origin and name of the people
The origin of the Huns is known thanks to the Chinese, who called the "Xiongnu" (or "Xiongnu") a people who roamed the steppes of Transbaikalia and Mongolia 7 centuries before Attila. The latest reports about the Huns do not concern Attila or even his sons, but a distant descendant of Mundo, who served at the court of Emperor Justinian.
Version of the Turkic origin of the Huns
According to the hypothesis of Joseph de Guignes, the Huns may have been Turkic or proto-Turkic in origin. This version was supported by O. Maenchen-Helfen in his linguistic research. English scientist Peter Heather (Peter Heather) considers the so-called Huns. "the first group of Turks" that invaded Europe. The Turkish researcher Kemal Jemal confirms this version by the facts of the similarity of names and names in the Turkic and Hun languages, this is also confirmed by the similarity of the Hun and Turkic tribal management systems. This version is also supported by the Hungarian researcher Gyula Nemeth. Uyghur researcher Turgun Almaz finds a connection between the Huns and modern Uighurs in China
In 155 AD on the river Idel, a new people appeared who spoke the Turkic language - the Huns. Two hundred years later, in the 370s, they moved further west, conquering and crowding everyone in their path all the way to the Atlantic. This process was called the Great Migration of Peoples and caused the displacement of the Germans from Eastern Europe, as well as the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
The state of the Huns in Europe reached its apogee under Attila in the 5th century AD. However, Attila died in the prime of his life during his wedding night with the Burgundian princess Ildiko in 453. The state of the Huns, after a long mourning, entered a period of civil strife, as a result of which the Huns lost their Western European possessions. The sons of Attila, Irnik and Dengizikh, brought the Huns to the Northern Black Sea region and the North Caucasus, which remained their domain. They managed to preserve the state in the territories from the Volga to the Danube, on which, over the next two hundred years (450-650s AD), with the participation of new arrivals from Asia, the Bulgarian ethnos was formed, and the state began to be called Great Bulgaria.
Part of the population of Great Bulgaria, after the death of Khan Kubrat, fortified itself on the Middle Volga and created its own state - Volga Bulgaria. The population of Volga Bulgaria became the ethnic basis of the modern population of the Republic, the capital of which is Kazan.
Great Bulgaria was the successor of the state of the Huns. After its collapse by the end of the 7th century, these state traditions were preserved by the Danube and Volga Bulgarians.
It is interesting that many Turkic-speaking peoples, who later joined the Bulgarians, were also descendants of other branches of the Huns who passed ethnogenesis to the east, such as the Kypchaks. But the Bulgarians managed to preserve the statehood of the Huns.
Why did the Western Roman Empire not resist the Huns? How could the "barbarian" people conquer all of Europe? The Huns were stronger not only militarily - they were the bearers of the Xiongnu imperial tradition. Statehood is the result of a long and deep development of society and people, it is not acquired in 100-200 years. The principles of statehood brought by the Huns to Europe had deep Asian roots. The Huns had a strong influence on the ethnogenesis and state building of most modern Turkic peoples.
The Eurasian steppe belt (Great Steppe) starts from the Yellow Sea and stretches west to the Danube and the Alps. From ancient times, nomadic peoples migrated to these territories in both directions, not knowing borders. The Huns had their state formations in the eastern part of the Eurasian steppe belt long before the European triumph. They waged constant wars with other nomads and with the Chinese states.
The threat of nomads forced the Chinese to build the Great Wall in the 3rd-2nd century BC. Emperor Qin Shi-Huangdi began building the wall in 215 BC. Great Wall shows the border of the Chinese states of that time - it is clear that the possessions of the nomads dominated and reached the Yellow Sea. The wall passes near Beijing, and the territories to the north of it were controlled by nomads. In addition to wars, there were also peaceful periods of neighborhood, there was a mutual process of assimilation. For example, the mother of Confucius (c.551-479 BC) was a girl from the Turkic people Yan-to.
The Huns of Central Asia and the Bulgarians of the Black Sea region, as well as their descendants - the modern Turkic peoples, are only separate parts of the most ancient Turkic-speaking civilizations. Science does not yet have exact data on the origin of the Huns, but we have received information set forth in ancient Chinese sources, which became available thanks to the fundamental works of N.Ya.Bichurin (1777-1853) .
Some inconvenience is presented by the translation of the sounds of Chinese characters, which do not always coincide with the Turkic phonetics.
“Even before the time of the sovereigns Than (2357 BC) and Yu (2255 BC), there were generations of Shan-jun, Hyan-yun and Hun-yu.” N.Ya. Bichurin also refers to Jin Zhuo, who wrote that the Xiongnu "during the time of Emperor Yao were called Hun-yu, during the Zhey dynasty - Hyan-yun, during the Qin dynasty - Xiongnu".
N.Ya.Bichurin cites evidence from the Historical Notes of Shy-Ji by the chronicler Sima Qian that the ancestor of the Huns was Shun Wei, the son of Jie Khoi, the last king of the first Chinese dynasty of Xia. Jie Khoi, having lost power, died in exile in 1764 BC, and “his son Shun Wei in the same year, with all his family and subjects, went to the northern steppes, and adopted the image of a nomadic life.” Probably, the subjects of Shun Wei met the Turkic-speaking population in the new lands. Chinese sources indicate existence by 2357 B.C. beyond the northern border of the Chinese states of the Turkic-speaking peoples.
The history of the Huns of the eastern period is described in detail in the works of L.N. Gumilyov, so we will only remind readers of the main stages.
The Huns were not the only ones in Central Asia who spoke the languages that later became known as Turkic. Some Turkic peoples were not included in the Xiongnu Union, such as, for example, the Yenisei Kyrgyz.
The question of the relationship between the Turkic-speaking peoples of the Great Steppe with the Scythians, the ancient state of Sumer between the Tigris and Euphrates, with the Mayan peoples, the Incas, the Aztecs and some Indian peoples of North America, the European Etruscans and other peoples, in whose languages many Turkic words were found, has not been fully resolved. . Many Turkic-speaking peoples professed Tengrism, and the word Tengri was also known in the Sumerian language in the same meaning - Heaven.
Linguistically, the nomads of the Eurasian steppe zone of the Xiongnu period can be conditionally divided into Turkic-speaking, Iranian-speaking, Ugrian-speaking and Mongolian-speaking. There were also other nomads, for example, Tibetans-kyans. The Turkic speakers were probably the most numerous. However, with the ruling role of the Huns, their union included the most different nations. Xiongnu archaeological complexes of the 7th-5th centuries. BC. are considered close to Scythian. Scythians is a collective Greek name nomads. Western historians, without going into ethnic subtleties, called them common ethnonyms: Scythians, Huns, Bulgarians, Turks, Tatars.
There are several versions about the ethnic appearance of the Scythian nomadic peoples of the Great Steppe of that time - Yuezhi, Usuns, Rongs and Donghu, etc. A significant part of them were Iranian-speaking, but the general trend of the ethnic processes of that period was gradual assimilation and displacement from the eastern part of the Great Steppe to Central Asia Turkic-speaking Iranian-speaking peoples, hence the difficulty of a clear ethnic identification. One and the same union of peoples could first be generally Iranian-speaking, and then, due to the quantitative advantage, become Turkic-speaking.
The emperor of the Huns was called shanyu, possibly from the Turkic words shin-yu. Shin is truth, Yu is home. The headquarters of the chanyus was in Beishan, then at Tarbagatai.
The strengthening of the Huns occurred under the Shanuys Tuman and Mode (reigned in 209-174 BC), who in the Turkic legends are sometimes called Kara-Khan and Oguz-Khan. The origin of the name of the military unit of 10,000 warriors - tumen - is also connected with the name of the Tuman chanyu of the Huns. The places of camps of tumens received the corresponding place names that have come down to us: Tyumen, Taman, Temnikov, Tumen-Tarkhan (Tmutarakan). The word tumen also entered the Russian language in the sense of “a lot, apparently-invisibly”, perhaps from here such words as darkness, dark and fog.
In 1223, the three Tumens of Subedei defeated a Russo-Polovtsian army on the Kalka, but were defeated by the Volga Bulgarians in the region of Samarskaya Luka later that year.
The Hunnic military division of the Turkic peoples into hundreds (yuzbashi - centurion), thousands (menbashi - thousand), 10 thousand - tumens (temnik), was preserved in the cavalry of various armies, for example, among the Cossacks.
But let's go back to the 2nd century. BC. - despite the difficult geopolitical situation: the Yuezhi tribes threatened from the west, the Xianbi from the east, China from the south, Shanyu Mode in 205 BC. expanded the borders of the state to Tibet, and began to regularly receive iron from the Tibetans.
After 205 BC iron products are often found in Xiongnu burials. It can be assumed that it was precisely the acquisition of metallurgical knowledge that became one of the reasons for the military superiority of the Huns.
The following important fact testifies to the preservation of the metallurgical tradition of the Huns by the Bulgarians: the first cast iron in Europe was smelted by Volga Bulgaria in the 10th century. Europe learned how to smelt iron four centuries later, and Muscovy two more - in the 16th century, only after the conquest of the Bulgar Yurt (Kazan Khanate, in Russian chronicles). Moreover, the steel that Muscovy exported to England was called "Tatar".
The Huns also had a great influence on their southern neighbors - Tibetans and Hindus. For example, in the biography of the Buddha (623-544 BC) it is pointed out that he learned the writing of the Huns at a young age.
The territory of the Huns' empire stretched from Manchuria to the Caspian and from Baikal to Tibet. The historical role of Mode consisted not only in the fact that it was from his reign that the Xiongnu expansion began in all directions, but also in the fact that under him the tribal society received the features of not just a state, but an empire. A policy was developed with regard to the conquered peoples, which allowed the latter to actively participate in the life of the state by leaving their autonomous rights and lands. China's policy towards the conquered was more stringent.
Here is how Shi-Ji 110 and Qianhanshu, ch. 94a describe the victorious wars of Mode: “Under Mode, the House of the Huns became extremely strong and exalted; having conquered all the nomadic tribes in the north, in the south he became equal to the Middle Court, that is, to the Chinese emperors ... Moreover, as a result of several major victories, Mode even forced the Chinese emperor to pay tribute! “Subsequently, in the north (the Huns) conquered the possessions of Hunyu, Kyueshe, Dingling (occupied at that time the territory from the Yenisei to Baikal), Gegun and Caili”.
In 177 BC. The Huns organized a campaign against the Iranian-speaking Yuezhi to the West and reached the Caspian Sea. This was the last victory of Chanyu Mode, who died in 174 BC. The Yuezhi Empire ceased to exist, part of the population was conquered and assimilated by the Huns, part migrated to the West, beyond the Volga.
Thus, the Huns reached the Caspian Sea, and theoretically it is impossible to deny the possibility of their access to the Volga as early as 177 BC. The fact of the flight of part of the Yuezhi to the west across the Volga just confirms this.
During 133 BC. before 90 AD the wars of the Huns with the Chinese were fought with varying success, but the overall result was the gradual advance of China.
Victory in the wars of 133-127 BC. allowed the Chinese to oust the Huns from the territories between the Gobi desert and the Yellow River, which, as we see, was not always Chinese.
In the wars of 124-119, the Chinese managed to reach the northern camp of the Xiongnu chanyu.
In 101 BC The Chinese army has already plundered the cities of the Ferghana Valley.
In companies 99, 97 and 90 years. BC. success was on the side of the Huns, but the war was waged on their lands.
During this period, China was weakened, but Chinese diplomacy managed to incite the Usuns, Dinlins and Donghus, who had previously been vassals of the Huns, against the Huns.
In 49 BC. e. the shanyu of the Huns Zhizhi annexed the principality and the Vakil family (in Chinese, Hu-jie). This genus was preserved in the composition of the European Huns and Bulgarians. Interestingly, after 800 years, a representative of this family - Kormisosh became the Khan of the Danube Bulgaria (ruled 738-754). He replaced Sevar, the last khan of the Dulo dynasty, to which Attila (? -453), the founder of Great Bulgaria Khan Kubrat (c.605-665) and his son, the founder of Danube Bulgaria Khan Asparuh (c.644-700) belonged. gg.).
In 71 BC. civil strife began, which destabilized the central power of the chanyu and led to the first split of the state of the Huns into northern and southern ones in 56 BC.
The Southern Huns, led by the Chanyu Hukhanye, established peaceful relations with China, which eventually led to the loss of independence.
The Northern Huns were forced to retreat to the Altai and to Central Asia on the Syr Darya, but even there they suffered a major defeat from the Chinese army.
After the first split in 56 BC. part of the northern Huns broke through “between the Usuns and the Dinlins, fled west to the Aral tribes of Kangyui and, obviously, mixed here with the ancient Turkic and Iranian-speaking tribes. These mixed groups of the population then formed the backbone of the ruling population of the Kushan Empire, at the turn of the Common Era. stretching its territory from the Urals to indian ocean» .
unite on short term the Huns succeeded at the beginning of the era, but in 48 AD. a new split occurs.
After that, the southerners almost completely became dependent on China, and the northern Huns were not able to resist the enemies surrounding them. In the east, the Syanbi alliance was strengthening, China was advancing from the south, and the Kyrgyz were threatening from the north.
The Mode clan came to an end in the Northern Xiongnu state in 93 AD, the last shanyu of the clan was called Yuchugyan in Chinese spelling. After that, the dynasty changed - the state was headed by representatives of one of the four senior aristocratic families - the Huyan clan. The remaining clans were called Lan, Xuybu and Qiolin.
From now on, it is 4 clans that will make up the aristocracy of the Turkic states. For example, in the Crimean, Kazan, Astrakhan khanates, these were the Argyn, Shirin, Kypchak and Baryn clans.
The Huns waged constant wars with China for at least 350 years. But China was then the strongest state with advanced technologies. The forces were too unequal. A huge number of Huns went to China and to the Xianbei union, which was growing stronger in the east. Only the Xiongnu came under the rule of the Xianbi state in 93 AD. about 100,000 wagons is about 300-400 thousand people. Pinpoint percentage carriers of language groups in the state of Xianbi are now rupp in the state of Xianbi is now difficult, but it is possible that the Turkic-speaking part reached half or more.
In the middle of the 2nd century, both Xiongnu states were steadily weakening, and the Xianbei state, led by the strong and authoritative Tangshihai (137-181), on the contrary, strengthened and reached power, defeating all its neighbors, including China.
Throughout history, the internecine wars of the Turkic peoples have weakened them more than external enemies. It was the Syanbeis, and not the Chinese, who drove the remnants of the independent Huns to the west, occupying their territories. It is known that the Syanbi state reached the Caspian Sea, thus reaching the western border of the former possessions of the Huns, who were forced to retreat even further to the west - to the Idel (Volga). Thus, the rivalry between the states of the Xiongnu and the Xianbei influenced many global events in Europe.
By the middle of the 2nd century, the fate of the peoples of the northern Xiongnu union developed in different ways:
1. The Altai part of the Huns became the ethnic base of the Kimaks and Kypchaks, who seized control of the western part of the Great Steppe in the 11th-12th centuries and were known to Russians as the Cumans and Cumans.
2. Part of the clans captured Semirechye and Dzungaria (the southeast of modern Kazakhstan) and founded the state of Yueban there.
3. Part of the Huns returned to China, having founded a number of states. They were called Turks-Shato. The descendants of the Shato Turks - the Onguts were part of the state of Genghis Khan in the 13th century
4. The part of the Huns most known to Europeans retreated to the Idel River by about 155, and two hundred years later these Huns moved further west and, under the leadership of Attila, reached the Atlantic. This part of the Huns became our ancestors.
The strengthening of the Huns in the Volga region for 200 years could have occurred not only from the union and assimilation of the Sarmatians and Ugrians, but also from the constant influx of related Turkic-speaking population from Central and Central Asia. The opposition clans of the Huns and other Turkic-speaking peoples who remained in Asia as part of the Xianbei state and other associations could migrate westward to their independent brethren and back in a constant stream.
Turkic became the dominant language of the Volga region. It is possible that these territories were part of the state of Attila and subsequent state associations of the Huns and Bulgarians. This can explain the transfer of the center of statehood of the Bulgarians at the end of the 7th century AD after the death of Khan Kubrat from the Don and the Dnieper to the Kama. It is possible that the territories of Volga Bulgaria were still a region of Great Bulgaria under Kubrat. After the defeat from the Khazars, the clans that did not want to submit to the Khazar union could simply retreat to their own northern provinces.
Part of the Huns broke away from the steppe world and came into close contact with the local Finno-Ugric peoples, giving rise to the Chuvash ethnos.
Some European historians point to the presence of the Huns in the Volga region and the Caspian until the middle of the 2nd century.
For example, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who lived in the 1st century. BC..
So far there is no consensus - to explain this by the mistakes of the chroniclers or the Huns could have come to Europe earlier than it was thought. Perhaps the Huns really reached Idel even in those days. We know that they reached the Caspian, conquering the Yuezhi in 177 BC.
Eratosthenes of Cyrene (Eratosthenes) (circa 276-194 BC) also indicates a strong state of the Huns in the North Caucasus. Claudius Ptolemy (Ptolemaios) reports on the Huns of the North Caucasus in the middle of the 2nd century BC, placing them between the Bastarnae and the Roxolani, that is, to the west of the Don.
Dionysius Perieget (160 AD) mentions the Huns. According to him, the Huns lived in the area adjacent to the Aral Sea.
An interesting explanation is offered by S. Lesnoy. He draws attention to the fact that, for example, Procopius of Caesarea clearly and repeatedly indicates that the Huns in ancient times were called Cimmerians, who from ancient times lived in the North Caucasus and the Black Sea region: “In the past, the Huns were Cimmerians, later they began to be called Bulgarians” .
The fact that the Cimmerians could be Turkic-speaking was also pointed out by other historians. But for now it remains the version.
Also noteworthy is the hypothesis of a possible exodus of a part of the Sumerian people from the Tigris River to the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea long before the arrival of the Huns from the east.
These are topics for future research, but for now we can proceed from the fact that by 155 the Turkic-speaking Xiongnu really lived on the Ra River, which they began to call Idel.
A great future awaited them - to crush the Alans, the ancient Greek Bosporan kingdom in the Crimea, the German state of Gotland on the Dnieper, and, as a result, the entire ancient world.
1. The artificial term "Huns" was proposed in 1926 by K.A. Inostrantsev to designate the European Xiongnu: see Inostrantsev K.A. Huns and Huns. - Proceedings of the Turkological Seminary. v.1., 1926
2. "Historical Notes"" by Sima Qiang, ch. 47 "The Hereditary House of Kung Tzu - Confucius" see: KUANGANOV Sh.T. Aryan-Hun through centuries and space: evidence and toponyms. - 2nd ed., Rev. and additional - Astana: "Foliant", 2001, p.170.
KLYASHTORNY S. Ch. 8. in “History of the Tatars from ancient times. T.1. The peoples of the steppe Eurasia in antiquity. Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of Tatarstan, Kazan, Ed. "Rukhiyat", 2002. C. 333-334.
3. BICHURIN Nikita Yakovlevich (1777-1853) - a native of the village of Akuleva (now Bichurino) of the Sviyazhsky district of the Kazan province, Chuvash, sinologist, corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1828). Founder of Sinology in Russia. In 1807-1821 he headed the spiritual mission in Beijing.
4. BICHURIN N.Ya. (Iakinf) Collection of information about the peoples who lived in Central Asia in ancient times. St. Petersburg, 1851. Reprint ed. "Zhalyn Baspasy" Almaty, 1998. T.1.p.39. (Further - BICHURIN N.Ya., 1851.)
5. Gumilev L.N. Xiongnu. Steppe trilogy. Time Out Compass. St. Petersburg, 1993.
6. Karimullin A. Proto-Turks and Indians of America. M., 1995.
SULEYMENOV O. Az and I: The book of a well-intentioned reader. - Alma-Ata, 1975.
ZAKIEV M.Z. The origin of the Turks and Tatars. - M .: INSAN, 2003.
RAKHMATI D. Children of Atlantis (Essays on the history of the ancient Turks). - Kazan: Tatars. book. publishing house.1999.p.24-25.
See the article "Prehistoric Turks" in the newspaper "Tatar News" No. 8-9, 2006.
7. Daniyarov K.K. History of the Huns. Almaty, 2002.p.147.
8. Beishan - a highland in China, between Lop Nor Lake in the west and the river. Zhoshui (Edzin Gol) in the east. Tarbagatai is a mountain range in the south of Altai in western Kazakhstan and eastern China.
9. Gumilev L.N. From the history of Eurasia. M.1993, p.33.
10. Gordeev A.A. History of the Cossacks. - M.: Veche, 2006.p.44.
KAN G.V. History of Kazakhstan-Almaty: Arkaim, 2002, p.30-33.
11. Gumilev L.N. From Russia to Russia: essays on ethnic history. Ed. Group "Progress", M, 1994., pp. 22-23.
12. SMIRNOV A.P. Volga Bulgaria. Chapter 6 Archeology of the USSR. Steppes of Eurasia in the Middle Ages. Institute of Archeology of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Ed. "Science", M., 1981. p.211.
13. ZALKIND G. M. Essay on the history of the mining industry of Tatarstan // Proceedings of the Society for the Study of Tatarstan. Kazan, 1930. T. 1. - P. 51. Link to the book ALISHEV S.Kh. All about the history of Kazan. - Kazan: Rannur, 2005. p.223.
14. Chapter 10 of the book Lalitavistara (Sanskrit - Lalitavistara) "A detailed description of the games of the Buddha", one of the most popular biographies of the Buddha in Buddhist literature.
15. ANDREEV A. History of the Crimea. Ed. White wolf-Monolith-MB, M., 2000 pp. 74-76.
16. BICHURIN N.Ya., 1851. pp. 47-50.
17. BICHURIN N.Ya., 1851. p.55.
Zuev Yu. A. Early Turks: Essays on History and Ideology. - Almaty: Dike-Press, 2002 -338 p. + incl. 12 p.13-17.
18. Klyashtorny S.G., Sultanov T.I. Kazakhstan: a chronicle of three millennia. Ed. "Rauan", Alma-Ata, 1992.p.64.
19. Khalikov A.Kh. Tatar people and their ancestors. Tatar book publishing house, Kazan, 1989.p.56.
20. Gumilev L.N. Xiongnu. Steppe trilogy. Time Out Compass. St. Petersburg, 1993. C. 182.
21. Archeology of the USSR. Steppes of Eurasia in the Middle Ages. Institute of Archeology of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Ed. "Science", M., 1981.
22. News of ancient writers about Scythia and the Caucasus. Collected and published with Russian translation by VV Latyshev. SPb., 1904. T. I. Greek writers. SPb., 1893; T. II. Latin writers. T.I, p. 186. According to the book: ZAKIEV M.Z. The origin of the Turks and Tatars. - M.: INSAN, 2003, 496 p. P.110.
23. ARTAMONOV M.I. History of the Khazars. 2nd edition - St. Petersburg: Faculty of Philology of St. Petersburg State University, 2002, p.68.
24. LESNOY (Paramonov) S. "Don Word" 1995, based on the book by S. Lesnoy "The originas of the Ancient "Russians"" Winnipeg, 1964. P. 152-153.
The HUNS are even more mysterious. What is so mysterious, if we read so much about their ruler Attila? The nightmare of Western civilization, which found its death on the marriage bed. How much has been said, written and even filmed about him!
And yet I argue that we know practically nothing about the Huns, except for their wars, first with the Goths, and then with the Roman Empire. But before fighting the Romans, the Huns had to come from somewhere, and before that they had to live and develop somewhere. They did not appear overnight on horseback and with weapons?
Where did they come from between the Volga and the Don, and where did the very name of this people come from?
Here we have to face how the authority of one, even the most remarkable, scientist crushed the ability to think logically in a whole generation. Of course, I mean Lev Nikolaevich Gumilyov. Infinitely respecting both his work and his ability to think extraordinary, I still cannot agree with some of his conclusions. And I wonder why voices about the absurdity of some Gumilev's maxims sound so timid.
Gumilyov firmly connected the Huns with the Xiongnu people, known from the Chinese chronicles. Of course, he was not the first to do this, but he was one of the main supporters of such a theory. Something goes a long way. At first they were thoroughly beaten in China, then for some reason they dragged themselves through all of Siberia or the rocky deserts of Northern China to the Volga. True, the Chinese themselves deny such a dubious honor (although they are proud of their “acquaintance” with Genghis Khan), arguing that the hieroglyph “Xiongnu” is basically impossible for them, and therefore such a name for the people. But who will listen to them? In Western Europe, they know better what is Chinese and what is not. Saying Chinese means Chinese!
It turns out that the rather miserable remnants of the unfinished tribe, having passed half of Eurasia, were able to defeat the Alans, all the tribes living along the Black Sea coast, and even the strong kingdom of the Goths with its mighty army, and then “deal with” the Roman Empire? Hard to believe.
The Xiongnu (Xiongnu) in China had a very developed and peculiar culture, which for some reason was completely forgotten on the way to the Volga-Don steppes. On the contrary, they managed to fully master and recognize as their own the culture of the tribes that lived along the banks of the Volga and the Don. And they forgot their own language so firmly that they did not add a single Chinese word to the speech of the local population (the Turkic influence in those places was strong even without the Huns). These Xiongnu, who are Xiongnu, are strange.
Of course, the Romans, describing the Huns, did not spare gloomy colors. They can be understood, the conquerors from the east (and for the Romans, the east is everything that is beyond Istrom - the Danube) should have been terrifying, otherwise the Roman legions themselves are worthless. Therefore, the appearance of the “horror of Europe” turned out to be unthinkably ugly in the stories: instead of eyes, holes, a beard in tatters, faces scarred from birth (before giving a newborn a mother’s breast, they were allegedly wounded with a sword on their faces!).
But these are stories, but on the portal of the Reims Cathedral there is a bas-relief depicting the death of Bishop Nikas at the hands of cruel Huns. The Huns on it are in chain mail and with weapons, it is impossible to confuse them with a saint and mourners. Of course, the expression on the faces of the killers is far from benevolent, but there is nothing ugly or terrible in them. And the beards are not in tatters, but either absent or neatly trimmed. Hairstyles are very neat, and the slanting in the eyes is not noticeable even with the most careful examination. But they could portray narrow-eyed freaks ...
In addition, the Romans said that the thunderstorm of the Roman Empire, the great and terrible Attila, was fluent in several languages, was very knowledgeable in many philosophical issues. And the sister of the Roman emperor Valentinian, Honoria, asked the leader of the Huns for help against her own brother, who doomed her to girlhood for the sake of his political ambitions. As a token of her respect, she even sent Attila a ring. The ruler of the Huns took this as a marriage proposal and demanded half of the empire as a dowry for marrying an overripe beauty.
In fact, the sister of Emperor Valentinian II Justa Grata Honoria did not suffer from piety and decent behavior from her youth. And when she was over 30, she started an affair with the procurator Yevgeny and became pregnant from him. It is not permissible for anyone to corrupt the emperor’s sisters, even if they have been of age for a long time, the official was executed, and the loving beauty was sent out of sight to Byzantium and there she was promised a wife to the aged senator Herculaneus. But Honoria decided to fight for her future and sent the eunuch Hyacinth to Attila with a ring and a request for help.
The Hun, apparently not too well versed in the intricacies of Roman politics and female logic, in turn sent a message to Valentinian II with the message that he was already engaged to his sister and therefore demanded that no obstacles be placed on her. Maybe the emperor would have given the obstinate beauty Attila, but the requirement to add half of the empire as a dowry seemed impudent. Attila was told that Honoria had been married a long time ago, and therefore she could not be engaged to anyone.
It is unlikely that the Hun himself really needed the second-hand imperial sister so much, but the refusal turned out to be a wonderful reason for an attack, which the Huns took advantage of. After that, there was no information about Honoria in the sources. Maybe they just strangled her so that she would not announce her engagement to someone else? And her eunuch Hyacinth was subjected to cruel torture and executed.
Such is the tragic story. So was Attila, whom Honoria asked for help, a complete freak? And did he have a Mongoloid appearance?
Let us return to the Huns, who first appeared on the Volga somewhere in the 2nd century. Yet where did they come from? And if you look not in Chinese abroad, but where is it closer? Or not closer, but among their own?
We pick up a map of the Arkhangelsk region (detailed so that not only Arkhangelsk and Severodvinsk can be seen, but also smaller inscriptions).
If you sail from Arkhangelsk to the north-west along the coast of the Dvinskaya Bay, then 170 km away you will meet the Unskaya Bay (it is very clearly visible on the map, such a cozy bay, on its horns the Unsky Lighthouse and Pertominsk). And Unsky Bay. And the river flows into this bay called Una. And the ancient village on it is Una. And Unozero is also there. And there are many places with that name. And the area used to be called Unskoy. Only all this was written with two "n" - Unna, Unno, Unny ... There is information about skirmishes with the warlike people of the Unns in the Scandinavian sagas and local legends.
Doesn't it remind you of anything? If you climb up from the Unskaya Bay either along the Dvina or along the Onega, then the Don and Volga are within easy reach. And then they often traveled this way, it turned out, they sailed from White Russia to Blue and further Red to relatives, and the portages were good. And restless and thirsty for adventure on their own and other people's heads (and their opposite, from which legs grow) have always been enough in Russia too.
Is it not about these Huns who lived in the north beyond the Meotian swamp (Sea of \u200b\u200bAzov) at the very Arctic Ocean, wrote Roman historians?
Ambassador Priscus of Panius, sent to Attila, describes the customs of the Huns as purely Scythian, he slips between words that "the Scythians are supposed to." What are these conquerors who adopt the customs of the vanquished? Moreover, the ambassador was treated with honey and kvass. And where did the Chinese Xiongnu learn to cook Russian mead and kvass?
The story of Procopius of Caesarea about the first skirmish between the Huns and the Goths is well known. The Goths who lived in the Crimea considered themselves inaccessible, because they were protected from all sides by the sea and a narrow isthmus. But one day the young Huns, hunting for a deer, pursued him to the very sea coast. For some reason, the deer was not embarrassed by the water surface, he calmly entered the water, but did not swim, but continued to walk.
So the Huns discovered the opportunity to go to the Crimea, barely getting their feet wet. And get into the deep rear to the Goths, who are fenced off by impregnable ramparts.
There is one "but". Procopius of Caesarea claimed that the deer helped the Huns to cross ... the Bosporus (this is the Kerch Strait!). The Kerch Strait could only be forded many millennia BC. e., when Sea of Azov didn't exist at all. But by the time of the Huns, as now, I do not advise climbing into the water of the Kerch Strait without knowing how to swim. Yes, and I can too. No wonder the Greeks called it the Cimmerian Bosporus, as if emphasizing the waywardness, similar to the waywardness of their Bosphorus.
Rather, the deer and after him the Huns crossed the Meotida (Sea of Azov) ford not through the Bosporus, but in another place. It is generally shallow, but there is a long spit called the Arabat Arrow (that's right, and not the Arbat Arrow, as it is often called). This spit stretches from the coast of the Sea of Azov to the coast of Crimea. It's possible there.
Be that as it may, the Huns found themselves in the rear of the Goths and, having driven such successful warriors into a corner, they finally believed in themselves. Since then, their ascent to the heights of power in the Black Sea region, and then in a large part of Europe, began. Let me remind you that only the Pope managed to persuade Attila not to smash Rome (by the way, he even advised the emperor to give his sister to the leader of the Huns). And the first serious victory on the Catalaunian fields over the Huns was won only in 451, almost 70 years after their active appearance on the historical stage. Yes, in fact, there was no defeat of the Huns, it's just that Attila did not win.
Now let's try to analyze.
If we proceed from Gumilev's version of the identity of the Huns and the Xiongnu, it turns out that, defeated in China, they dashed at a vigorous trot to the Volga steppes and for some reason settled there for a long time. So long that they managed to adopt the customs and even the language of the local population, under the influence of local cuisine, having lost a narrow section of the eyes. And for some reason, the very militant local population accepted the eastern guest performers almost with open arms. At the same time, the Huns-Xiongnu completely forgot their language, because not a single Chinese word was added to the locals. But as soon as the guys crossed the Arabatskaya Spit after the deer, the nomads suddenly woke up their gene memory and decided to take revenge on the Goths for the insults inflicted by others in China. And off we go...
Somehow it doesn't fit very well.
And now the second option.
The Huns are not distant Chinese Xiongnu, but the White Sea Huns, who sailed to their relatives in Red Russia, where they could well find a use for themselves. They could also easily learn how to control a horse and improve their military skills. Naturally, it was not women with children who sailed, but, first of all, warriors. Then the non-resistance on the part of the locals, and the absence of language barriers, and “forgetfulness” in relation to Chinese culture, language and customs are understandable (look at the map of the settlement of the Scythians, the borders of the Proto-Slavic language, White Sea just a circle of the Proto-Slavic language). And also the absence of the Mongoloid appearance of the Huns in the bas-reliefs. And one can not explain the statements of ancient historians about the origin of the Huns from the shores of the White Sea by the fact that they (historians) simply did not have a map in front of their eyes and therefore confused China with the European coast of the Arctic Ocean.
In general, this is an interesting trend - to explain everything that does not fit into a fictitious theory with a lack of knowledge among the ancients. Maybe you should take a closer look at their work? You never know what else there is, although it refutes established theories famous personalities, but well explaining the absurdities in their intellectual conclusions ...
Want more about Attila? Pretty mysterious person. He is credited (perhaps it was in fact) with exceptional cruelty. But at the same time they recognize the mind and education. The case of Honoria can mean both amazing naivete and cunning calculation.
He had many wives, and even more just concubines and slaves. Faith allowed you to make as many women happy as you like. And yet he died because of a woman. Perhaps she is not directly to blame for the death of the Thunderstorm of Rome, but she was present at the same time. Still, it all happened on their wedding night!
This is the case when a person remained in the memory of descendants, literally doing nothing for this. Ildiko was another wife sent by some of the Germanic tribes to strengthen Attila's disposition. Only one thing is known about the girl herself - she was very beautiful. Of course, we don't keep the bad ones.
The stormy wedding feast ended as usual - with the solitude of the newlyweds. In the morning, surprised by the long sleep of their master, the servants ventured into the bedroom and found Attila dead, with the girl weeping over him. Thunderstorm Europe choked with blood coming from his nose. If he had been sober, or even awake, this might not have happened.
It’s hard to believe in death from a banal nosebleed of a person who spent his whole life on a horse and with weapons in his hands, therefore, they immediately came up with many versions that Ildiko was a “mishandled Cossack”, about the poison she carried, about a dagger ... But the fact from this has not changed: Attila died during the wedding night, choking on his own blood, although before that he had easily shed someone else's blood for twenty years.
And he was also buried in a peculiar way (after many centuries, Genghis Khan would do something similar): the waters of the river were diverted for a while, and after being placed on the bottom of the coffin with the body of Attila, the water was returned to its place.
Where did the Huns go? Here again is a mystery for historians. Quite quickly after the death of the last strong leader Attila, the Huns suddenly disappeared by themselves! They were and were not, they didn’t go anywhere, they didn’t die on the battlefields, they didn’t return home to China ... They just flowed away like water into the sand. This does not happen with strong nations. They don't appear out of nowhere and they don't go nowhere.
But it is worth remembering that in the famous battle on the Catalaunian fields, the army of the formidable Hun Attila consisted almost entirely of Germans. Where did these Germans go after the death of their leader? They became Germans again and returned to their tribes. And the rest? Similar. The Huns again became Sarmatians, Germans, Goths, Gepids, and so on, that is, those who they were before Attila joined the army. No wonder the same ambassador Priscus called the Huns synonymous with the word "rabble." By the way, the name Attila is clearly of Gothic origin and means ... "daddy." It turns out that at the head of an ordinary, albeit very disciplined gang was the godfather (daddy) Attila. But as soon as the strong daddy gave up, the gang simply broke up. That's how it usually happens.
Maybe there was no Great Migration? Nobody moved from China to the Volga, and then throughout Europe (that's why Europeans did not add Mongoloid markers)? Just at first, the very restless youth of the White Sea region went to seek their fortune from distant relatives closer to the Black Sea. Having settled in a new place, they became the basis of a military alliance of the same restless called the HUNS (from their former UNNA, as, by the way, they were often called by Roman historians).
In the same way, after a few centuries, the brotherhood of the Vikings is formed. The Vikings did not have a pronounced nationality, they were just restless and strong men Scandinavia (and the same Kola Peninsula, and the White Sea coast too) tried to seek their fortune on the side. The Vikings also turned Europe upside down, but, moving on ships, they simply could not involve anyone else in their movements. And the Huns moved by land, it was much easier to go with them for the company.
Why, then, are great movements of peoples constantly mentioned? First, what peoples and where? The tribes constantly moved along the Black Sea steppes, and no one called this the Great Migration. Secondly, it is quite natural that the adventurers of the Huns carried along a lot of local youth, including women. Heroes, even thugs, are always popular. And when they also managed to win so much ... Who would refuse to follow the winner even to the ends of the world, let alone conquer Great Rome? It was the mothers who stayed at home, and the daughters got into carts or even horses and followed the gentlemen ...
By the way, the Book of Veles admits that, having doubted a little, the Rus sided with the Huns. That is, at first they were convinced that yesterday's gang was generally successful, and decided to join before it was too late.
Why did the Huns manage to win so many victories, in fact, bringing the mighty Roman Empire to its knees? Firstly, the Roman Empire itself was going through hard times, secondly, iron discipline and the desire to take the world at the tip of its sword made the Huns and excellent warriors who joined them, thirdly, the same courage ...
It turns out that the war of the Goths and the Huns was like a civil war between their own? Yes, yes. Yesterday's (if not outcasts, then certainly not the main ones) showed Kuz'kin's mother first to their elders, and then to everyone else they managed to get to. Almost all historians of antiquity and those who were personally acquainted with the Huns themselves write about the army of the Huns as a rabble of anyone. Priscus, for example, spoke about one of the Huns, who, upon closer acquaintance, turned out to be ... a Greek merchant! But how could yesterday's Greek become a Hun? You can change your appearance, even gender, but it is impossible to become Chinese by being born in Greece. Unless the Huns really are the name of the freemen, the basis of which were the Huns of the White Sea.
You can not accept this version, but you have to admit that the arrival of the Huns from the back streets of China does not explain anything at all, but it raises a great many questions. And Lev Nikolayevich Gumilyov?.. Unfortunately, even geniuses are not always right. He loved the Steppe very much, and therefore he was too eager to bring out of it all the greats, except perhaps those who lived in southern Africa.
It is simply impossible to tell about all the peoples and cultures of the Black Sea and the Caspian in one book, I would have to write several volumes, I repeat: my task is to arouse interest. If your conclusions do not coincide with mine, it does not matter, the main thing is that there is something on which they can be done, that is, knowledge or a desire to receive them. My job is to get you interested!
Many events of the ancient world still attract the attention of historians. The reason for this attention is usually controversial issues, the answers to which have not yet been received. These include the question of the origin of the Huns - the union of warlike barbarian tribes, which was formed by mixing various ethnic groups in the II - IV centuries on the territory of the Great Eurasian steppe, the Urals and the Volga region.
Vasily Nikitich Tatishchev, a Russian historian, also tried to determine whether the Huns belonged to any people. He wrote that the Ugrians and Obras, called Avars and Huns by foreign historians, are widely known. The Slavic chronicler Nestor considered the Ugrians to be Slavs, and the Obrovs to be Sarmatians. But in the historical Lexicon they were considered one genus. Personally, Tatishchev believed that among the Ugrians and Obry there were many Slavs who joined as a result of the Hunnic conquests. Ugry means those living near the Caucasus Mountains from the rivers Kume, Terku to Sulak, i.e. the name is given according to the place of residence, which happened quite often in ancient times. The Ugric people called themselves Cumans. Ptolemy also mentioned the Ugrians as maters, hemp, sabochs and other tribes. Tatishchev emphasizes that Ptolemy himself did not visit those places, but only translated Slavic sources and passed them off as his own works. Pliny called the Slavs Essedons (Issedons), and Stralenberg called the tribes living from the Volga to the mountains and along the Don, Oigurs (Ugrians).
Jordan, being the enemy of the Ugrians and Huns, according to Tatishchev, "made up a very funny and stupid fable." Filimer, the king of the Goths, who came to Pannonia, drove out from his army several sorceresses, who, by committing adultery with fauns and wood goblins, gave birth to the Huns.
Many historians, out of ignorance, speculated and invented historical facts, which, according to Tatishchev, is not consistent with the honor of a historian. And the Bible "is used just like Melitrissa's carpet, and they pull it on everything they want." The Greeks and Romans, on the other hand, translated many names to a pleasant sound in their language.
The nomadic society of the barbarians was very dynamic, but their social structure is a mystery. There was no written language in the society of the Huns. The songs that the Huns composed about their leader Atilla would have been lost in history over time, if not for the testimonies of Roman and Greek travelers and historians, but there is no information about their origin in the songs either. Steppe nomadic life and constant raids did not contribute to the perpetuation of victories in written sources. The nomads did not manual labor, crafts and agriculture. Greek craftsmen exchanged their products with the Huns, for which they paid in gold, furs or captured trophies. Therefore, archaeological excavations have yielded nothing, and everything that archaeologists have found can just as well be attributed to the Scythians before or after the reign of Attila, Roman and Greek masters. For example, in the early 1940s In the 20th century, Professor Alfedi described at least four items of clearly Hunnic origin. The Hungarian archaeologist Zoltan identified them as Roman, since only Roman coins were found in the places where the nomads' camps were located. The remains of the Huns' burials were found in Transcarpathia, Rostov, Arkhangelsk, Odessa, Nikolaev and Kherson regions, in the Crimea and Feodosia. A stuffed horse was placed on top of the graves. Many similar burials are found in Russia and Kazakhstan.
All states located on the territory of the Huns: Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Turkey, Germany, Chuvashia, Kazakhstan and many others, claim kinship with Attila and the Huns. And, most likely, everyone has good reason for this.
The Great Migration of Nations is associated with the Huns. The Great Migration is also a Great mixture of clans and nationalities, and in the army of the Huns there were people of various bloodlines, many joined Attila in order to continue the raids together. The appearance of the commander Attila is depicted in different ways by ancient sources, not to mention his further historical interpretation. Either he looks like a Mongol, then an Arab, then a blue-eyed and fair-haired warrior (Cimmerian, Scandinavian, Slavic). Even one of the most important historical sources, the voivode Prisk of Pannia, apparently created a collective image. Where there was no real data, he added already existing stereotypes.
Atilla gathered "mercenaries" from all the conquered territories for further capture and plunder. His name remained in history only thanks to a series of successful raids on Byzantium and Ancient Rome, where writing and historians already existed, which captured the history of the raids. But only one side was captured. On the part of those who were pretty battered by the raids of the Huns. From those who were forced to pay tribute to the terrible barbarians and hardly felt sympathy for them.
According to the concept of G. Wirth (the first head of the Ahnenerbe), Atilla intended to create his own political state, but the randomness of the raids, the lack of military logic and tactics, as well as strange relations with the Roman Empire, do not allow us to accept this concept.
Ammianus Marcellinus described warriors whose life without raids is unthinkable, their mood is changeable, they easily abandon their intentions, promises and allies with whom they concluded a truce. This may also indicate the presence of several unrelated associations.
They rush into battle, lining up in a wedge, uttering a war cry: “Hurra!”. Unreliable in word, have no religion and superstitions that limit their actions, cruel towards the defeated, including children and women. Almost inseparable from their horses, they live on them: they eat, sleep and make trade deals.
But such a unity with a horse has already happened in history. At the beginning of the 7th century BC. unknown warriors appeared at the borders of China. They fought battles, merging together with their horses, not jumping off to the ground, as was customary. So swift were their actions, so warriors and horses seemed to be single creatures, almost fantastic, that they gave rise to the legend of the centaurs. Thousands of light-skinned, blue-eyed and blond warriors, whom the Chinese called the Jun (Xiongnu), fought millions of Chinese for two millennia. Until the Chinese wall appeared. Warriors, like the Huns later, skillfully used the bow. Professor Degin, who lived in the 18th century, put forward a hypothesis about the identity of the Xiongnu with the Xiongnu. But evidence of identity was never found.
Huns also called all the invasions of barbarians from the northeast after the death of the Scourge of God. So later they began to call Attila in early medieval literature, where he was assigned the role of a barbarian-destroyer. On the examples of the struggle with the Scourge of God, the deeds of the saints were glorified and miracles were performed for the benefit of strengthening the faith.
After the death of the Great Scythian, they buried him in three coffins: made of gold, silver and iron. Weapons and gold jewelry and coins were also placed in the grave. According to Jordan, everyone who took part in the burial was then killed in order to avoid disclosure. exact location graves. In the testimony of Jordan about the burial of Attila, some conjectures are also observed: they diverted the riverbed, buried it, and then returned the river again. Heavy waters closed over the body of the Great Hun. Many archaeologists are searching for the legendary grave, which may reveal the secret of the origin of the Huns.
The steppe barbarians annoyed the more developed states, and it was then that they began to be noticed. The attacks stopped, and the legendary warriors "suddenly disappeared." Perhaps the reason for the sudden appearances and disappearances lies precisely in this? And then it is necessary to admit that the Huns are the cause and result of the Great Migration.
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One and a half thousand years ago, the land from China to France trembled under the hooves of the cavalry of the Huns - mysterious, cruel and invincible conquerors.
Huns. Wild tribe of Asian nomads. One and a half thousand years ago, they arose out of nowhere and just as mysteriously disappeared, passing through Eurasia in a swift whirlwind.
In an incredible way, the Huns created one of the most powerful empires in the history of mankind, rallying different peoples. And it is the Huns - a mysterious people whose traces were lost in history fifteen centuries ago - that can clarify many dark spots in Russian history.
Reference:
Xiongnu (Mong. Khnn, Chinese Xiongnu) - according to science, this is an ancient nomadic people, from 220 BC. to the 2nd century AD inhabiting the steppes northeast of China. Khnn means "people, people" in Mongolian. They waged active wars with the Chinese Han Empire, which, to protect against their raids, erected the Great Chinese wall(By the way, for some reason, the loopholes on this wall look south, towards China. So, who built it and who defended themselves from whom is a question).
During the wars with China, the Xiongnu managed to consolidate into a single power that subjugated the tribes of neighboring nomads. As a result of wars with the Chinese, as well as civil strife, the Xiongnu state collapsed and the Xiongnu were divided into several peoples.
According to the widespread opinion, part of the Xiongnu reached Europe and, having mixed with the Ugrians, began to be called the Huns. Part of the Xiongnu mixed with the northern Chinese. In the IV-V centuries AD. people from this tribal union even headed royal dynasties in Northern China.
The Huns are a union of tribes, formed in the II-IV centuries. in the Urals from the Xiongnu, who migrated here in the II century. from Central Asia, and local Ugrians and Sarmatians. The Huns created a huge state from the Volga to the Rhine. Under the commander and ruler Atilla, the Huns tried to conquer all of Western Europe (mid-5th century). They subjugated the Alans in the North Caucasus, devastated Syria and Cappadocia in Asia Minor, defeated the state of the Goths of Germanaric in the Crimea, subjugated the Ostrogoths in the lower reaches of the Dnieper, drove the Visigoths into Thrace. Having settled in Pannonia (the territory of present-day Hungary) and Austria, they began to raid the Eastern Roman Empire.
The Hunnic union of tribes (it included the Bulgars, Ostrogoths, Heruls, Gepids, Scythians, Sarmatians and a number of other tribes) reached its greatest territorial expansion and power under Attila (ruled in 434-453). In 451 the Huns invaded Gaul and in the Catalaunian fields were defeated by the Romans and their allies, the Visigoths and the Franks.
After the death of Attila and the strife that arose within the empire, the empire of the Huns fell apart, and they disappeared as a people, although their name was still met as a common name for the nomads of the Black Sea region for a long time.
The Huns are a Russian trace in ancient history.
At the beginning of the first millennium of our era in the south of Russia, the capital (Itil?) of the empire of a mysterious people, which contemporaries called the Huns, arose. Today they are considered to be wild Asian barbarians who enslaved different tribes. But there are facts in favor of the fact that the Russian lands have never been under the yoke of nomads. So who were the Huns really? And what is mysterious about them, if we read so much about their ruler Attila? The nightmare of Western civilization, which found its death on the marriage bed. How much has been said, written and even filmed about him!
And yet, we know practically nothing about the Huns, except for their wars, first with the Goths, and then with the Roman Empire. But before fighting the Romans, the Huns had to come from somewhere, and before that they had to live and develop somewhere. They did not appear overnight on horseback and with weapons?
Where did they come from between the Volga and the Don, and where did the very name of this people come from?
There are three hypotheses for this. The first, official hypothesis of science identifies the Huns with the Mongoloid people who came to Europe from the depths of Asia. This version was also defended by the Russian historian-ethnologist L.N. Gumilyov. It is outlined above.
What happens? First, the Xiongnu - Xiongnu were thoroughly beaten in China, then for some reason they dragged themselves through all of Siberia and the rocky deserts of Northern China to the Volga.
True, the Chinese themselves deny such a dubious honor, arguing that the hieroglyph "Xiongnu" is basically impossible for them, and, consequently, such a name for the people. But who will listen to them? In Western Europe, they know better what is Chinese and what is not. Saying Chinese means Chinese!
It turns out that the rather miserable remnants of an unfinished tribe, having passed half of Eurasia, were able to defeat the Alans, all the tribes living along the Black Sea coast and even a strong kingdom ready with its mighty army, and then "deal" with the Roman Empire? Hard to believe.
The Xiongnu (Xiongnu) in China had a very developed and peculiar culture, which for some reason was completely forgotten on the way to the Volga-Don steppes. On the contrary, they managed to fully master and recognize as their own the culture of the tribes that lived along the banks of the Volga and the Don.
And their own language was so completely forgotten that they did not add a single Chinese word to the speech of the local population.
These Xiongnu, who are Xiongnu, are strange.
Of course, the Romans, describing the Huns, did not spare gloomy colors.
They can be understood, the conquerors from the east (and for the Romans, the east is everything that is beyond Istrom - the Danube) should have been terrifying, otherwise the Roman legions themselves are worthless. Therefore, the appearance of the "horror of Europe" turned out to be unthinkably ugly in the stories: instead of eyes, holes, a beard in tatters, faces were scarred from birth (before giving the newborn a mother's breast, they were allegedly wounded on the face with a sword).
But these are stories, but on the portal of the Reims Cathedral there is a bas-relief depicting the death of Bishop Nikas at the hands of cruel Huns. The Huns on it are in chain mail and with weapons, it is impossible to confuse them with saints and mourners. Of course, the expression on the faces of the killers is far from benevolent, but there is nothing ugly or terrible in them. And the beards are not in tatters, but either absent or neatly trimmed. Hairstyles are very neat, and the slanting in the eyes is not noticeable even with the most careful examination. But they could portray narrow-eyed freaks ...
And here is what the Byzantine ambassador Priysk Panisky wrote. In 449, he went to the Hunnic king Attila to talk about the size of the Roman tribute. The diplomat was sure that he would see tents made of horseskin and unwashed riders. But the capital of the Huns struck him. The city was located across three rivers to the northeast of the Danube and was built of wood. The royal palace with carved towers towered on the mountain. Guests were greeted with bread and salt, honey and kvass. And the girls in long dresses led round dances, celebrating the arrival of guests ...
The chroniclers testify that Attila's people were mostly with blond hair and blue eyes. Attila himself was from the Volga. His country was called Bulyar (Bulgar?), and it was founded by Attila's great-grandfather King Balamber. Some historians read his name as Vladimir. Attila's brother's name was Bled, which sometimes sounds like Vlad. And in the ancient Bulgarian chronicle "Gazi-Baradj tarihi" (some historians consider this chronicle a fake), the real name of Attila himself is written - Mstislav.
In addition, the Romans said that the thunderstorm of the Roman Empire, the great and terrible Attila, was fluent in several languages, was very knowledgeable in many philosophical issues. And the sister of the Roman emperor Valentinian, Honoria, asked the leader of the Huns for help against her own brother, who doomed her to girlhood for the sake of his political ambitions. As a token of her respect, she even sent Attila a ring. The ruler of the Huns took this as a marriage proposal, and demanded half of the empire as a dowry for marrying an overripe beauty.
In fact, the sister of Emperor Valentinian II Justa Grata Honoria did not suffer from piety and decent behavior from her youth. And when she was over 30, she started an affair with the procurator Yevgeny and became pregnant from him. It is not permissible for anyone to corrupt, even if for a long time, the emperor's sisters of age, the official was executed, and the loving beauty was sent out of sight to Byzantium and there they were promised a wife to the elderly senator Herculaneus. But Honoria decided to fight for her future and sent the eunuch Hyacinth to Attila with a ring and a request for help.
The Hun, apparently not too well versed in the intricacies of Roman politics and female logic, in turn sent a message to Valentinian II with the message that he was already engaged to his sister and therefore demanded that no obstacles be placed on her. Maybe the emperor would have given the obstinate beauty Attila, but the requirement to add half of the empire as a dowry seemed impudent. Attila was told that Honoria had been married a long time ago, and therefore she could not be engaged to anyone.
It is unlikely that the Hun himself really needed the second-hand imperial sister so much, but the refusal turned out to be a wonderful reason for an attack, which the Huns took advantage of. After that, there was no information about Honoria in the sources. Maybe they just strangled her so that she would not announce her engagement to someone else? And her eunuch Hyacinth was brutally tortured and executed.
Such is the tragic story. So was Attila, whom Honoria asked for help, a complete freak? And did he have a Mongoloid appearance?
The second hypothesis connects the Huns with the white race of the Hyperboreans.
It is known that approximately 70 - 110 thousand years ago, in the north of Europe, a glaciation began, called Valdai. It happened either due to the fact that the Gulf Stream changed the direction of its course, or a lithospheric catastrophe occurred, as a result of which the civilization of the Hyperboreans died. The survivors were forced to migrate south.
Approximately 15,000 years ago, the glacier clogged the drains of the high-water Siberian rivers, as a result of which the entire West Siberian lowland, the European part of Russia and the Turan lowland gradually turned into one giant lake. People were forced to flee to elevated places, one of which was the Urals.
Approximately 11,600 years ago, the waters of this lake found their way through the future Bosporus and the Dardanelles into the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas, turning them into what we see now. And before that, there was no Strait of Gibraltar and the Mediterranean Sea itself was a shallow lake with large quantity islands. Naturally, after the formation of the Bosphorus, huge coastal territories were flooded - the biblical Flood occurred.
The Russian plain began to dry up gradually, covered with forests and lush vegetation. The Gulf Stream again flowed to the right place, the glacier receded and people began to migrate.
Some went south, some went west, some went east, some went back home to the north. And here the Indo-Aryan "Mahabharata" and the Russian "Book of Veles" help us.
The inestimable advantage of these books is that they cover the period from the exodus of the Aryan Russians from the Cold Land - Hyperborea (Mahabharata) and in great detail (Veles book) - "one thousand five hundred years before Dir", that is, from 700 years to new era.
It is also said that the Aryans, moving south, reached the "Aryan Land" (India) and the "Land of Yin" (southern Siberia, Altai, Mongolia, China). The book says that our ancestors did not like it in the "Land of Yin" and they went back to the west, and came to Semirechye (Central Asia), where they lived in the "cereal steppes for a long time." And from there - to the Volga and the Black Sea steppes.
And the fact that they were in China is a lot of evidence. This is evidenced by Chinese chronicles and archaeological excavations in the north of China and Altai, where many burial places of white people - Tokhars - were found. And among the first Chinese emperors were blue-eyed white people.
The book of the writer Yuan Ke "Myths of Ancient China" tells about a certain sage and court historian Lao Zi (literal translation - the old sage), who had the real name Li Er and lived about 500 years BC. It turns out that Li Er was not of Chinese origin. He was born in the village of Qu-jen, Li parish, Ku county, Chu inheritance in the area of present-day Beijing, where at that time there were not Chinese, but tribes of some whites, whom the Chinese called "Di". These white Di about 1000 years before the new era created their own state there, called Chaoxian or Xian-yu with its capital in the city of Phin-hsiang-chen (Beijing?). It is also mentioned that in the 5th century BC. the white Di tribes left China forever and went somewhere to the north, and then turned to the west, where the Chinese soon began to be referred to as the Yuezhi tribes, that is, the Kushan and Tochar tribes, who later formed the huge Kushan kingdom.
And the traditional depiction of Li Er allows us to make sure that he really was not a Mongoloid.
Third hypothesis: Let's return to the Huns, who first appeared on the Volga somewhere in the 2nd century. Yet where did they come from? And if you look not in Chinese abroad, but somewhere closer, for example, among your own? Why not a hypothesis?
We take, for example, a map of Arkhangelsk in our hands and if we sail from Arkhangelsk to the north-west, along the coast of the Dvina Bay, then Unskaya Bay is found 170 km away (it is very clearly visible on the map, such a cozy bay, on its horns the Unsky lighthouse and Pertominsk) . And Unsky Bay. And the river flows into this bay called Una. And the ancient village on it is Una. And Unozero is also there. And there are many places with that name. And the area used to be called Unskoy. Only all this was written with two "n" - Unna, Unno, Unna.
And if you climb up the Dvina and Onega from the Unskaya Bay, then the Don and Volga are within easy reach. And then they often traveled this way, it turned out, they sailed from White Russia to Blue (middle) and further Red (southern) to relatives, and the drags were good. And restless and thirsty for adventure on their own and other people's heads (and their opposite, from which legs grow) have always been enough in Russia too.
Did not Roman historians write about these northern Huns, the descendants of the same Hyperboreans, who lived in the north beyond the Meotian swamp (Sea of Azov) near the Arctic Ocean? They also unambiguously indicate that the basis of Attila's invincible army was the Slavs. And the ambassador Priscus of Panius, sent to Attila, describes the customs of the Huns as purely Scythian, he slips between words that "the Scythians are supposed to do this." What are these conquerors who adopt the customs of the vanquished? Moreover, the ambassador was treated with honey and kvass. And where did the Chinese Xiongnu learn to cook Russian mead and kvass?
The story of Procopius of Caesarea about the first skirmish between the Huns and the Goths is also well known. The Goths who lived in the Crimea considered themselves inaccessible, because they were protected from all sides by the sea and a narrow isthmus. But one day the young Huns, hunting for a deer, pursued him to the very sea coast. For some reason, the deer was not embarrassed by the water surface, he calmly entered the water, but did not swim, but continued to walk.
So the Huns discovered the opportunity to go to the Crimea, barely getting their feet wet. And get into the deep rear to the Goths, who are fenced off by impregnable ramparts.
There is one "but". Procopius of Caesarea claimed that the deer helped the Huns to cross ... the Bosporus (this is the Kerch Strait!).
The Kerch Strait could only be forded many millennia BC, when the Sea of Azov did not exist at all. But by the time of the Huns, as now, I do not advise climbing into the water of the Kerch Strait without knowing how to swim. Yes, and I can too. No wonder the Greeks called it the Cimmerian Bosporus, as if emphasizing the waywardness, similar to the waywardness of their Bosphorus.
Rather, the deer and after him the Huns crossed the Meotida (Sea of Azov) ford not through the Bosporus, but in another place. It is generally shallow, but there is a long spit called the Arabat Arrow (that's right, and not the Arbat Arrow, as it is often called). This spit stretches from the coast of the Sea of Azov to the coast of Crimea. It's possible there.
Be that as it may, the Huns found themselves in the rear of the Goths and, having driven such successful warriors into a corner, they finally believed in themselves. Since then, their ascent to the heights of power in the Black Sea region, and then in a large part of Europe, began. Let me remind you that only the Pope managed to persuade Attila not to smash Rome (by the way, he even advised the emperor to give his sister to the leader of the Huns). And the first serious victory on the Catalaunian fields over the Huns was won only in 451, almost 70 years after their active appearance on the historical stage. Yes, in fact, there was no defeat of the Huns, it's just that Attila did not win.
Now let's try to analyze.
If we proceed from Gumilev's version of the identity of the Huns and the Xiongnu, it turns out that, defeated in China, they dashed at a vigorous trot to the Volga steppes and for some reason settled there for a long time. So long that they managed to adopt the customs and even the language of the local population, under the influence of local cuisine, having lost a narrow section of the eyes.
And for some reason, the very militant local population accepted the eastern guest performers almost with open arms. At the same time, the Huns-Xiongnu completely forgot their language, because not a single Chinese word was added to the locals. But as soon as the guys crossed the Arabatskaya Spit after the deer, the nomads suddenly woke up their gene memory and decided to take revenge on the Goths for the insults inflicted by others in China. And off we go...
Somehow it doesn't fit very well.
And if we assume that the Huns are not distant Chinese Xiongnu, but the White Sea Huns, who sailed to their relatives in Red Russia, where they could well find a use for themselves. They could also easily learn how to control a horse and improve their military skills. Naturally, it was not women with children who sailed, but, first of all, warriors. Then the non-resistance on the part of the locals, and the absence of language barriers, and "forgetfulness" in relation to Chinese culture, language and customs are understandable (look at the map of the settlement of the Scythians, the borders of the Proto-Slavic language, near the White Sea just a circle of the Proto-Slavic language). And also the absence of the Mongoloid appearance of the Huns in the bas-reliefs. And one can not explain the statements of ancient historians about the origin of the Huns from the shores of the White Sea by the fact that they (historians) simply did not have a map in front of their eyes and therefore confused China with the European coast of the Arctic Ocean.
In general, this is an interesting trend - to explain everything that does not fit into a fictitious theory with a lack of knowledge among the ancients.
Maybe you should take a closer look at their work? You never know what else there is, although refuting the established theories of famous personalities, but well explaining the absurdities in their intellectual conclusions ...
Want more about Attila? Pretty mysterious person. He is credited (perhaps it was in fact) with exceptional cruelty. But at the same time they recognize the mind and education. The case of Honoria can mean both amazing naivete and cunning calculation.
He had many wives, and even more just concubines and slaves.
Faith allowed you to make as many women happy as you like. And yet he died because of a woman. Perhaps she is not directly to blame for the death of the Thunderstorm of Rome, but she was present at the same time. Still, it all happened on their wedding night!
This is the case when a person remained in the memory of descendants, literally doing nothing for this. Ildiko was another wife sent by some of the Germanic tribes to strengthen Attila's disposition. Only one thing is known about the girl herself - she was very beautiful. Of course, we don't keep the bad ones.
The stormy wedding feast ended as usual - with the solitude of the newlyweds. In the morning, surprised by the long sleep of their master, the servants ventured into the bedroom and found Attila dead, with the girl weeping over him. Thunderstorm Europe choked with blood coming from his nose. If he had been sober, or even awake, this might not have happened.
It’s hard to believe in death from a banal nosebleed of a person who spent his whole life on a horse and with weapons in his hands, so they immediately came up with many versions that Ildiko was a “mishandled Cossack”, about the poison she carried, about a dagger ... But the fact from this has not changed: Attila died during the wedding night, choking on his own blood, although before that he had easily shed someone else's blood for twenty years.
And he was also buried in a peculiar way (after many centuries, Genghis Khan would do something similar, by the way, according to the Mongolian chronicles, he was also white and blue-eyed): the waters of the river were diverted for a while, and after being placed at the bottom of the coffin with the body of Attila, the water was returned to its place.
Where did the Huns go? Here again is a mystery for historians. Quite quickly after the death of the last strong leader Attila, the Huns suddenly disappeared by themselves! They were and were not, they didn’t go anywhere, they didn’t die on the battlefields, they didn’t return home to China ... They just flowed away like water into the sand. This does not happen with strong nations. They don't appear out of nowhere and they don't go nowhere.
But it is worth remembering that in the famous battle on the Catalaunian fields, the army of the formidable Hun Attila consisted almost entirely of Germans. Where did these Germans go after the death of their leader? They became Germans again and returned to their tribes. And the rest?
Similar. The Huns again became Sarmatians, Germans, Goths, Gepids, and so on, that is, those who they were before Attila joined the army. No wonder the same ambassador Priscus called the Huns synonymous with the word "rabble". By the way, the name Attila is clearly of Gothic origin and means ... "daddy." It turns out that at the head of an ordinary, albeit very disciplined gang was the godfather (daddy) Attila. But as soon as the strong daddy gave up, the gang simply broke up. That's how it usually happens.
So maybe there was no Great Migration?
Nobody moved from China to the Volga, and then throughout Europe (that's why Europeans did not add Mongoloid markers)?
Just at first, the very restless youth of the White Sea region went to seek their fortune from distant relatives closer to the Black Sea.
Having settled in a new place, they became the basis of a military alliance of the same restless called the HUNS (from their former UNNA, as, by the way, they were often called by Roman historians).
In the same way, after a few centuries, a brotherhood of the Varangians and Vikings is formed. The Vikings did not have a pronounced nationality, just restless and strong men of Scandinavia (and the same Kola Peninsula, and the White Sea coast too) tried to seek their fortune on the side. The Vikings also turned Europe upside down, but, moving on ships, they simply could not involve anyone else in their movements. And the Huns moved by land, it was much easier to go with them for the company.
Why, then, are great movements of peoples constantly mentioned? First, what peoples and where? The tribes constantly moved along the Black Sea steppes and no one called it the Great Migration. Secondly, it is quite natural that the adventurers of the Huns carried along a lot of local youth, including women. Heroes, even thugs, are always popular. And when they still managed to win so much ...
Who will refuse to follow the winner even to the ends of the world, let alone conquer Great Rome? It was the mothers who stayed at home, and the daughters got into carts or even horses and followed the gentlemen ...
By the way, the Book of Veles admits that, having doubted a little, the Rus sided with the Huns. That is, at first they were convinced that yesterday's gang was generally successful and decided to join before it was too late.
Why did the Huns manage to win so many victories, in fact, bringing the mighty Roman Empire to its knees? Firstly, the Roman Empire itself was going through hard times, secondly, iron discipline and the desire to take the world at the tip of its sword made the Huns and excellent warriors who joined them, thirdly, the same courage ...
It turns out that the war of the Goths and the Huns was like a civil war between their own? Yes, yes. Yesterday's (if not outcasts, then certainly not the main ones) showed Kuz'kin's mother first to their elders, and then to everyone else they managed to get to. Almost all historians of antiquity and those who were personally acquainted with the Huns themselves write about the army of the Huns as a rabble of anyone. Priscus, for example, spoke about one of the Huns, who, upon closer acquaintance, turned out to be ... a Greek merchant! But how could yesterday's Greek become a Hun? You can change your appearance, even gender, but it is impossible to become Chinese by being born in Greece. Unless the Huns really are the name of the freemen, the basis of which were the Huns of the White Sea.
You can not accept the last two versions, but we have to admit that the arrival of the Mongoloid Huns from the back streets of China does not explain anything at all, but it raises a great many questions.
And Gumilev Lev Nikolaevich?.. Unfortunately, even geniuses are not always right. He loved the Steppe very much, and therefore he was too eager to bring out of it all the greats, except perhaps those who lived in southern Africa.
Ancient about the Huns.
Roman historian of the 4th century A.D. Ammian Marcellinus, who knew the Huns only by hearsay, speaks of them as if they were a nomadic people who lived beyond the Miotia (Azov) swamp.
“They,” this historian narrates, “have brutal morals and a disgusting appearance; in childhood they cut their chin, face and cheeks so that hair cannot grow. With the greatest disgrace of the face, their bones are strong, their shoulders are broad and, moreover, they are so clumsy, and are disordered, that seem like two-legged cattle.For the preparation of food they do not need either fire or spices; they feed on wild roots and raw meat, which they put instead of a saddle on a horse and steam it with a quick ride; agriculture is alien to them; they do not have permanent dwellings. they know, from childhood they wander through the mountains and forests, and get used to endure cold and hunger. Their clothes are linen or sewn from the skins of wood mice; they change it only when it falls off the body in rags. They are inseparable from their small but strong horses, on which they eat, drink, sleep and do all their business, even at social meetings everyone sits on horseback They carry their dirty wives and children behind them in carts They don’t know shame and decency and have no religion gee; exorbitant greed for gold incites them to raids. Their weapons are spears and arrows with bones pointed at the end; they know how to skillfully throw lasso at enemies.
In their movements they are extremely fast, they suddenly fly into the enemy formation from all sides, bully, scatter, run away and then suddenly attack again ... They boast most of all about killing enemies, and instead of taking off their weapons, they take off their heads, tear off their skin and with hair they hang on the chest of horses.
Elsewhere Ammianus says that "the Huns royal power unknown; they noisily follow the leader who leads them into battle," etc.
It is reliably known that the named historian did not have direct acquaintance with this people, but borrowed the information reported by him from other persons, namely: in describing the appearance and way of life of the Huns, their manners and customs, he repeated word for word Pompey's Trog (I century BC). R.X.), which tells about the life of not the Huns at all, but the legendary Cimmerians or Kmers, allegedly expelled in ancient times by the Scythians from present-day southern Russia beyond the Caucasus, to Asia Minor (according to Herodotus). This description, transferred to the Huns, thanks to the fear of their disastrous invasion of the Western Roman Empire, gave Roman historians a reason to increase these fears to fantastic proportions, and later classify this people as a Mongol tribe that supposedly emerged from the unknown depths of Asia.
Meanwhile, Claudius Claudian (late 4th and early 5th centuries A.D.) clearly and definitely says that the Huns lived on the eastern side of the Tanais (Don), which was then considered the border between Europe and Asia. This area is for westerners was the extreme east, and for us southeastern Russia, where the Don and Volga flowed.
Iornand, who wrote about a hundred years after the death of Attila, which followed in 453, based on unknown sources, described the appearance of this leader as follows: "Small stature, broad chest, gray hair, snub-nosed, swarthy - he showed the features of his tribe" . In a word, he describes him in the most unattractive colors, although above he speaks of Attila's inquisitive gaze and his proud posture.
Further, Iornand, repeating the words of Trogus Pompey and Marcellinus about the ugliness of the Huns, says that those who could resist them in the war could not stand their terrible appearance and fled in fear.
These last lines say it all. The psychic phenomenon - mass fear of a formidable enemy, the cowardice of the demoralized troops of the Western Roman Empire, which had already decayed by that time, historians of that era tried to explain by nothing more than some unprecedented ugliness of their opponents, who supposedly instilled supernatural fear in the troops.
No dirty wives, no children in carts followed the Huns. This is the fantasy of Ammianus Marcellinus, cited by him in imitation of Trog Pompey. He considered the Huns to be the fabulous Cimmerians, and therefore he used Pompey's ready-made description of their life.
In addition, this historian did not see the invasion of the Huns in Western Europe, since this event took place many years after his death. The same mistake was repeated by subsequent historians Iornand and others. The westward movement of the Huns is not a migration of peoples, which in fact did not exist, since all the peoples of the Sea of \u200b\u200bAzov and the northern shores of the Black Sea, described in the 1st century by Strabo, for the most part remained in the same places, like: Small Aorsy or Small (Zadonskaya) Russia. Alans, Roksolany, Chigi, Goths, etc. This was a campaign of the allied Slavic peoples, arranged by the efforts of the Greek emperors to curb the western provinces that had settled from them, especially Gaul and Italy. Consequently, the question of the "Mongolism" of the Huns disappears by itself. Huns or Unns (the Greeks wrote) - from the Latin unus - one, unity, union of peoples.
Warsaw professor D.Ya. Samokvasov, who was engaged for a long time research on the Scythians, did not find any Mongolian peoples in southeastern Europe, from where Marcellinus, Claudian, Iornand and Procopius (VI century) bring out the Huns, i.e. from the eastern shores of the Sea of Azov, from the Zadonsk steppes and the lower reaches of the Volga. Ptolemy (2nd century A.D.) speaks of the Huns as neighbors of Roksolan and Bastarn. Armenian historian of the 5th c. Moses Khorensky, reporting on the invasion of the Bolgars from the North Caucasus into Armenia, adds that the area where they settled was called Vanand, i.e. the land of the Wends, by which name historians called the Slavs from ancient times.
Dionysius Periegetes in the "History of the Universe" about the Huns (Unns or Funns) says that they forced the Medes to pay them 40,000 gold coins and generally had so much gold that they made beds, tables, chairs, benches and so on.
Of the Western or Latin writers, Venerable Bede calls the Western Slavs Huns. Saxo Grammatik speaks of the war of the Danes with the Hunnic king, who was in alliance with the Russ, and by the Huns he means some tribes of the Baltic Slavs. "Edda the most ancient" or Semundova mentions the Hunnic heroes, including Yarisleif, i.e. Yaroslav, and in general by the Huns he means the Slavs. "Vilkinga-Saga" calls the city of the Slavic tribe Velets the capital of the Huns. Iornand called a significant part of ancient Russia the country of the Huns or Gunivar. Holmold says that in the language of the Saxons, the Slavs were called dogs, by the convergence of the name "Hun" with the German word Hund. Using this consonance, the Saxons turned the name of the Slavs "Huns" into a swear word. The country of the Huns, according to Helmold, was called Gunigard (Hun cities). Safarik in his historical work says that in the Valis canton, in Switzerland, the Germans still call the descendants of the Slavs who once settled there the Huns.
In the most ancient historical acts, beginning with Ptolemy, the Huns are spoken of somehow vaguely, inconsistently and not as a separate people, but as a group, a union of several peoples who lived somewhere beyond the Don, which then served as the border between Asia and Europe.
Procopius (6th century) usually calls the Huns Massagets, i.e. Great Sakas-Gets; Priscus Rhetor, who knew these people well and personally negotiated with their famous leader Attila, almost everywhere calls them Scythians, i.e. collective name; Constantine Porphyrogenitus calls Attila the king of the Avar. And in the full title of Attila, given by Iornand, not a word is said about the Hunnic people. Here is his title: "Attila of all Scythia is the only (only one) ruler (king) in the world - Attila totius Scythiae solus in mundo regnator". A similar title was at all times the property of the Russian Grand Dukes: " Grand Duke of all Russia" or "Autocrat of All Russia". Byzantine historians speak of the duality of the Hunnic people, calling them either Varkhunites (Menander), then Var-Hunn (Simokata), from which it must be assumed that the ruling class among the Slavic-Huns was the people of Var or Caucasian Avars.
Attila really united all the Slavic tribes of Great and Lesser Scythia, i.e. Dnieper and Zadonsk Rus and, having concluded a secret agreement with the Greeks through the ambassador, the historian Priscus, set off to smash the western Roman provinces, which had almost already seceded from Byzantium. All this was done by gold, the precious gifts of the Greek emperors, and the promised booty in the western provinces. Of the Hunnic kings, or rather leaders, from 376 to 465, the following are known: Donat, Kharaton, Roa or Rado, whom Iornand calls Roas, and Prisk - Rua basileus, Western historians as the governor of the Scythians - Rhodas; then Attila and his sons: Vdila, the sons of Mundiukh or Mundyuk; Dangichig, Irnar, Danchich (Danzic) and Yaren. Of the other Hun leaders are known: Valamir, Bled, Gord, Sinnio, Boyariks, Regnar, Bulgudu, Horsoman, Sandil, Zavergan, etc.
The names Donat and Charaton are Christian. And Attila, Vdila, Danchich (Danovich, that is, the son of the Don), Valamir, Gord and others are Slavic.
Greek historians of the 6th and 7th centuries. R. The Volga was called the Tilo or the Black River (Theophylact), Attila (Menander), Atalis (Theophanes) and Atel (Konst. Bagr.). In Tatar, this river was called Edil, among the Arab writers of the 9th century. Itil, Ossetians have Idil. Consequently, the formidable leader of the Huns bore the name of the great Russian river Volga. He subordinated to his power all the Volga, Azov, Caucasian and Dnieper Slavic peoples, i.e. Volgar or Bolgar, Aorsov, Alan, Cherkasov, Chigov, Massagetov, Roksolan and others, and also attracted the Caspian-Caucasian Avars, a warlike and strong people, known to this day, to their union, and with them moved to the Danube in order to continue the war started by his predecessor Rado against the Greeks. Here he was met by the ambassadors of the Greek emperor. From the notes of Priscus it is known what conditions, gifts and tribute the Greeks paid off from such a formidable conqueror.
In 451, Attila with an incalculable force, stretching, according to some historians, up to 500, and according to others - up to 700 thousand people, invaded Gaul (present-day France) across the Rhine River and devastated it.
On the fields of Catalaun, where now Shalons on the Marne, he was met by the Roman legions under the command of Aetius, who was in alliance with the king of the Goths Theodoric, as well as with the Burgundians, Franks, Saxons and others.
A gigantic battle took place, in which the peoples who came down from the Volga to Atlantic Ocean. Theodoric fell in battle. The allies were defeated. At the site of the battle, according to Roman historians, up to 300 thousand corpses remained. Other historians claim that Attila was defeated in this battle.
But the very next year, Attila moved through the Alps to Italy, took Milan by storm and encamped on the river. Mincio.
Then an embassy from the emperor Valentinian came to him and with a cross in his hands Pope Leon himself. The formidable conqueror was touched by the eloquence of the head of the church and gave peace. This circumstance sufficiently confirms the legend recorded in the "Wilking Sang", in the "Nibelungs" and other chronicles that Attila was a Slav, like his predecessors Donat, Kharaton and others.
Attila and Pope Leon I.
In 453, Attila died on the Danube on the day of his wedding with the beautiful Ildika, drunk, as Iornand says, to insensibility with wine.
There is a hypothesis that he was poisoned.
The palace of Attila, which stood in a large village in eastern Hungary, was, according to the story of Priscus, more magnificent than his other palaces. It was built of logs and boards, skillfully hewn, and surrounded by a wooden fence with towers. There were many houses inside the fence: some were built from boards with carved work, others from hewn and leveled logs. Between the buildings there was a large bath, built of stone brought from afar. The royal house was larger than the others and stood on a hill. Inside, there were benches near the walls, around which tables were placed for three, four or more persons. Attila's bed was in the middle of a large room: several steps led up to it. It was covered with thin, colorful curtains, similar to those used by the Romans and Greeks for newlyweds. At the feasts of Attila, guests were served excellent dishes on silver dishes, while the king himself only had meat on a wooden plate, since in everything he showed exemplary moderation. The feasters were offered cups of gold and silver, and his bowl was wooden. Of the drinks used: wine; honey ikamos or kama, prepared from barley, something like mash or beer.
The clothes of the king were also simple, without any decorations, although they were neat.
The envoy of the Greek emperor Priscus, who was present at such feasts, conveys the rituals of honoring guests and entertainment, consisting in the following: they sang epics, listened to the ridiculous and absurd speeches of the holy fool (jester) Scythian and the breaking of the Greek hunchback, who distorted the Latin language with Hunnic and Gothic, etc. P.
When Attila entered his capital, he was met by virgins walking in rows, under thin white veils, which were supported on both sides by standing women; there were up to seven or more virgins in a row, and there were a lot of such rows. These virgins, preceding Attila, sang Scythian songs. When, Priscus says further, Attila found himself near a house, past which the road to the palace went, the hostess went out to him with many servants: some brought food, others wine - this is a sign of special respect among the Scythians.
Attila, sitting on a horse, ate dishes from a silver dish, raised high by servants. Priscus was admitted to the chambers of the wife of King Kreki.
The floor was covered with expensive carpets. The queen lay on the bed.
There were many slaves around her. Slaves, sitting on the floor opposite her, painted different patterns on the canvas. Coverlets were sewn from this cloth, worn over clothes for beauty - guni.
Are Attila and his court like the nomads of Asia? Of course not. And the appearance of Attila described above by Jornand is hardly true, since this historian, who wrote a hundred years after his death, does not say a word from where he got this news.
Iornand also tells us that the Huns also had a custom to make a funeral feast on a grave hill, called strava, and this is the Slavic feast.
Source ruskrugul.ucoz.com/