Origin of the Alans

[Michael Kerr]

Hi Alanus, my knowledge of Han and steppe history is not that great but did the Wusun push the Sai (Saka) out of the Ili Valley or did they defeat the Yueh-shih who had earlier pushed the Saka out.
 I agree with your statement in an earlier post that the Wusun probably lived west of the Yueh-shih as they would have been in the way of the fleeing Yueh-shih who had just been defeated by Mao-tun's son the Old Shan-yu in about 166 BC. Considering Mao-tun came to rule the Hsiung-nu around 209 BC the Yueh-shih must have been a tough nut to crack and it took the Hsiung-nu about 40 years to finally send them packing from the Gansu corridor. I seriously doubt if the Wusun and Yueh-shih shared grazing grounds as the Yueh-shih were a powerful and numerous tribe around the end of the third century BC before the Hsiung-nu became the dominant confederation and probably didn't have to share their grazing ground with anyone and this misconception probably stems from when Chang tried to bribe  them with the territory of the defeated tribe (K'un-yeh) in the Gansu as a means to break them away from the  sphere of the Hsiung-nu. 

Regards

Michael Kerr