The Huns

[L.Valerius Gaudentius]

Could you put a bibliography about the Huns? (books that you considered interesting or useful)

Okay. Unfortunately there aren't as many as I'd like, but that's largely because the source material is pretty scanty. A much more up to date book along the lines of Maenchen-Helfen's work is desperately needed, especially since archaeology has advanced greatly since the 1930s and the fall of the Soviet Union means a lot of material which was not available to him are now able to be utilised.

Apart from Maenchen-Helfen, I'd also recommend C.D. Gordon's The Age of Attila: Fifth Century Byzantium and the Barbarians. It too is now out of print, but second-hand copies are available fairly readily. I bought a paperback edition for about $10, which was a bargain for such a useful book.

Gordon doesn't just cover the Huns, but details the history of the Fifth Century by reproducing translations of relevant sections of primary sources linked by his commentary. It's an excellent way of creating a narrative history while giving a general reader access to material which would normally require a good knowledge of Greek and Latin.

Erik Hildinger's Warriors of the Steppe: A Military History of Central Asia 500 BC to 1700 AD is also well worth reading. It only has one, relatively short chapter on the Huns themselves, but it does focus on military aspects. And the rest of the book puts the Huns in their Asian context and gives insights into how they probably fought and campaigned by examining parallel cultures.

The Osprey Elite volume Attila and the Nomad Hordes has the problems that such short books by Osprey always have, but it's useful because it shows line drawings of things like Hunnic arrow heads and the styles of swords and saddles they probably used.

The Blackwell 'Peoples of Europe' series seems to have missed the opportunity to publish a new overview of recent research when it brought out its volume The Huns. Instead of commissioning a scholar to write a wholly new overview, this book is simply a new edition of E.A. Thompson's A History of Attila and the Huns, which was originally published in 1948. The new edition has additional material by Peter Heather, but Thompson's work is now fairly dated and tended to take the old Classicist approach which stuck solely to Greek and Latin sources and ignored archaeology and Turkic, Mongolian and Chinese material. That said, it's still a good work by a great scholar and Heather's additions are useful.

Speaking of Peter Heather, his recent The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians adds some excellent insights into the importance of the Huns in the collapse of the Western Empire. Heather makes a persuasive case that it was three developments amongst the Huns that were the catalyst for the fall of the West - (i) the movement of the Huns into the area north of the Black Sea in the 370s, which sent Tervingian and Greuthungian Goths into the Empire, (ii) the establishment of Attila's hegemony centred on the Hungarian Basin in the 440s and his campaigns of the 450s and (iii) the collapse of the Hunnic Kingdom in the 460s, which led to a realignment of tribes on the Danube frontier with significant implications for the last decades of the Western Empire.

Heather counters Thompson's view that the Huns were actually fairly ineffective and incidental to the end of the Empire and shows that Attila had a strong grasp of strategy, was an excellent diplomat and made the Huns into a formidable military power, particularly by mastering siege tactics.

One newer book which I haven't yet read is John Man's Attila. It doesn't cover any new ground, but it's use of some data (and photos) by Hungarian re-enactors who have revived horse archery as a sport.

Rew-enactors wanting to buy Hunnic bows and swords can shop at Samarkandia, who also stock scale and lamellar made from horn. I've lost the link to the Hungarian horse archer re-enactment groups, who stage riding and archery competitions, but if I find it again, I'll post it here.

I hope that helps.

It helps me a lot. Thanks for your work and effort, Thiudareiks. I´ll give you a "Laudes" point. 8)