04-04-2006, 06:35 AM
The book which is totally indispensible for any detailed study of the Huns is Otto Maenchen-Helfen's The World of the Huns: Studies in Their History and Culture (University of California Press: 1973). Unfortunately it's out of print, but I bought a second-hand copy online a few years ago for a decent price and there were plenty available via used book dealers.
It is an amazing piece of scholarship. It's a pity that Maenchen-Helfen died before it was completed and it had to be edited together from his notes and manuscripts by a student. Even in its incomplete state, it makes everything else written on the Huns seem amateurish by comparison. Even though he did most of his research in the 1920-30s (and suffered persecution by the Nazis in the process) Maenchen-Helfen didn't simply stick to Western sources like Ammianus, Priscus and Jordanes, but used his extensive knowledge of Turkish, Russian and Chinese to utilise information from across Eurasia. He also made intelligent use of archaeological data.
This inter-disciplinary approach allowed him to gain insights that other more narrow scholars lacked. Priscus tells a story of how, in his 452 invasion of Italy, Attila was frustrated by the resistence put up in the Siege of Aquileia. According to Priscus, Attila was walking around the walls of the city, pondering whether to maintain the siege or break camp. As he walked, he noticed storks flying out of their roosting places in the city roofs as though abandoning the city. Encouraged by this, he launched an assault and took the city by storm.
That's a nice story, but Maenchen-Helfen noticed a parallel between it and similar stories from central Asia. In the Chin shu, the biography of the Chin Era conqueror of Turkistan, Lu Kuang, a similar tale is told. In this version the general sees a golden figure flying from the besieged town of Ch'iu-tz'u and declared: "This means the Buddha and the gods are deserting them. The Hu will surely perish."
Maenchen-Helfen concludes, " ... stories like the ones told about Attila and Lu Kuang are unknown in Europe. It must be the Huns who bought them from the east." (The World of the Huns, p. 134)
The Huns' origins remains a vexed question and the old assurance that they were related to the earlier Xiong-Nu is now widely questioned. Analysis of their names from a range of sources shows most of them are Turkic, many are Indo-Iranian, some are Germanic and a few are hybrids of these languages. This probably reflects the make up of the peoples that attached themselves to the Huns and those that came to consider themselves 'Hunnic', as well as intermarriage between Huns and 'subject peoples'. It's interesting that Attila's own name is Gothic, for example.
As for warfare, it's now accepted that the famous description of them as classic horse archer nomads by Ammianus owes as much to Classical literary conventions as it does to historical fact. It's also important to remember that what may have been true of the warfare and practices of the Huns of the Fourth Century may not be true of them a century later.
There is some evidence that, on settling in the Hungarian Basin, the Huns (like the Magyars after them) abandoned many aspects of their steppe lifestyle. It's possible that they would no longer have been able to sustain the numbers of horses to maintain true nomad-style warfare and would have adopted a form of fighting more similar to their Germanic subjects. The king and the nobles and their retinues probably formed an elite heavy cavalry in the Sarmatian style, with richer warriors maintaining horse archer tactics and the rest fighting in foot - much like the subject tribes that fought with them. There are several references to Hun archers running on foot across the battlefield, shooting as they went and at least one to a Hun warrior leaning on a tall shield, similar to the 3-4 foot high infantry shields used in western China.
I've been collecting every decent book on the Huns I can get my hands on for some years now (and there are some crappy ones out there as well), so if anyone has any further questions I'd be happy to answer them.
PS I have no idea where this weird concept of the Huns being related to the Sumerians came from, but there are some unreliable sites on the net which repeat this nonsense. There is zero evidence for any such connection.
It is an amazing piece of scholarship. It's a pity that Maenchen-Helfen died before it was completed and it had to be edited together from his notes and manuscripts by a student. Even in its incomplete state, it makes everything else written on the Huns seem amateurish by comparison. Even though he did most of his research in the 1920-30s (and suffered persecution by the Nazis in the process) Maenchen-Helfen didn't simply stick to Western sources like Ammianus, Priscus and Jordanes, but used his extensive knowledge of Turkish, Russian and Chinese to utilise information from across Eurasia. He also made intelligent use of archaeological data.
This inter-disciplinary approach allowed him to gain insights that other more narrow scholars lacked. Priscus tells a story of how, in his 452 invasion of Italy, Attila was frustrated by the resistence put up in the Siege of Aquileia. According to Priscus, Attila was walking around the walls of the city, pondering whether to maintain the siege or break camp. As he walked, he noticed storks flying out of their roosting places in the city roofs as though abandoning the city. Encouraged by this, he launched an assault and took the city by storm.
That's a nice story, but Maenchen-Helfen noticed a parallel between it and similar stories from central Asia. In the Chin shu, the biography of the Chin Era conqueror of Turkistan, Lu Kuang, a similar tale is told. In this version the general sees a golden figure flying from the besieged town of Ch'iu-tz'u and declared: "This means the Buddha and the gods are deserting them. The Hu will surely perish."
Maenchen-Helfen concludes, " ... stories like the ones told about Attila and Lu Kuang are unknown in Europe. It must be the Huns who bought them from the east." (The World of the Huns, p. 134)
The Huns' origins remains a vexed question and the old assurance that they were related to the earlier Xiong-Nu is now widely questioned. Analysis of their names from a range of sources shows most of them are Turkic, many are Indo-Iranian, some are Germanic and a few are hybrids of these languages. This probably reflects the make up of the peoples that attached themselves to the Huns and those that came to consider themselves 'Hunnic', as well as intermarriage between Huns and 'subject peoples'. It's interesting that Attila's own name is Gothic, for example.
As for warfare, it's now accepted that the famous description of them as classic horse archer nomads by Ammianus owes as much to Classical literary conventions as it does to historical fact. It's also important to remember that what may have been true of the warfare and practices of the Huns of the Fourth Century may not be true of them a century later.
There is some evidence that, on settling in the Hungarian Basin, the Huns (like the Magyars after them) abandoned many aspects of their steppe lifestyle. It's possible that they would no longer have been able to sustain the numbers of horses to maintain true nomad-style warfare and would have adopted a form of fighting more similar to their Germanic subjects. The king and the nobles and their retinues probably formed an elite heavy cavalry in the Sarmatian style, with richer warriors maintaining horse archer tactics and the rest fighting in foot - much like the subject tribes that fought with them. There are several references to Hun archers running on foot across the battlefield, shooting as they went and at least one to a Hun warrior leaning on a tall shield, similar to the 3-4 foot high infantry shields used in western China.
I've been collecting every decent book on the Huns I can get my hands on for some years now (and there are some crappy ones out there as well), so if anyone has any further questions I'd be happy to answer them.
PS I have no idea where this weird concept of the Huns being related to the Sumerians came from, but there are some unreliable sites on the net which repeat this nonsense. There is zero evidence for any such connection.
Tim ONeill / Thiudareiks Flavius /Thiudareiks Gunthigg
HISTORY FOR ATHEISTS - New Atheists Getting History Wrong
HISTORY FOR ATHEISTS - New Atheists Getting History Wrong
