Huns: Map & History
The Huns were a nomadic people who lived in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe between the 4th and 6th centuries CE.
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The Huns were a nomadic people who lived in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe between the 4th and 6th centuries CE. According to European tradition, they were first reported living east of the Volga River, in an area that was part of Scythia at the time. By 370 CE, the Huns had arrived on the Volga, causing the westward movement of Goths and Alans. By 430, they had established a vast, but short-lived, empire on the Danubian frontier of the Roman empire in Europe. Either under Hunnic hegemony, or fleeing from it, several central and eastern European peoples established kingdoms in the region, including not only Goths and Alans, but also Vandals, Gepids, Heruli, Suebians, Scirians, and Rugians.
Modern Countries Once Part of Huns
At its mapped extent, Huns covered territory in 11 present-day countries. The period shown is when the mapped borders include that country, and the note says how much of it.
- Armenia396–406 CE · nearly all
- Moldova373–425 CE · nearly all
- Romania378–425 CE · most
- Ukraine373–425 CE · most
- Hungary407–425 CE · a large part
- Lebanon396 CE · a large part
- Serbia407–425 CE · a large part
- Turkey396–406 CE · a large part
- Azerbaijan396–406 CE · a small part
- Russia371–425 CE · a small part
- Kazakhstan106–425 CE · a small part
States and Provinces
Largest Present-Day Cities in Its Territory
Each opens on the live map inside Huns's borders of that time.
Derived by testing mapped cities against this polity's dated territorial polygons, so the list is indicative and follows the borders in the source dataset.
Huns in Depth
History
The history of the Huns in the fourth century is not very clear, and the Huns left no sources themselves. The Romans became aware of the Huns when the latter's invasion of the Pontic steppes forced thousands of Goths to move to the Lower Danube to seek refuge in the Roman Empire in 376. The Huns conquered the Alans, most of the Greuthungi or Eastern Goths, and then most of the Thervingi or Western Goths, with many fleeing into the Roman Empire. In 395 the Huns began their first large-scale attack on the Eastern Roman Empire. Huns attacked in Thrace, overran Armenia, and pillaged Cappadocia. They entered parts of Syria, threatened Antioch, and passed through the province of Euphratesia. At the same time, the Huns invaded the Sasanian Empire.
Lifestyle and economy
he term 'nomad', if it denotes a wandering group of people with no clear sense of territory, cannot be applied wholesale to the Huns. All the so-called 'nomads' of Eurasian steppe history were peoples whose territory/territories were usually clearly defined, who as pastoralists moved about in search of pasture, but within a fixed territorial space.
Maenchen-Helfen notes that pastoral nomads (or "seminomads") typically alternate between summer pastures and winter quarters: while the pastures may vary, the winter quarters always remained the same. This is, in fact, what Jordanes writes of the Hunnic Altziagiri tribe: they pastured near Cherson on the Crimea and then wintered further north, with Maenchen-Helfen holding the Syvash as a likely location.
Society and culture
Artificial cranial deformation, the process of artificially lengthening the skulls of babies by binding them, first appears in Europe on the Pontic Steppe in the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE, before spreading to the Carpathian basin, becoming common there in the 5th century. During the Hun period, between 50% and 80% of all burials in the Carpathian basin contain individuals with artificial cranial deformation. This chronology and its spread in Europe has been linked to nomadic invasions from Asia and in particularly the spread of the Huns, with the argument that it was practiced by their nobility and then taken up by Germanic groups influenced by them, in particular the Gepids.
Legacy
After the fall of the Hunnic Empire, various legends arose concerning the Huns. Among these are a number of Christian hagiographic legends in which the Huns play a role. In an anonymous medieval biography of Pope Leo I, Attila's march into Italy in 452 is stopped because, when he meets Leo outside Rome, the apostles Peter and Paul appear to him holding swords over his head and threatening to kill him unless he follows the pope's command to turn back. In other versions, Attila takes the pope hostage and is forced by the saints to release him.
Sections adapted from Wikipedia: Huns (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Huns: Key Facts
| Religion | Tengrism |
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Facts from Wikidata Q45813 (CC0).
Huns Map Over Time
Dated world maps on which Huns appears, with the other states of the time.
Huns Timeline
Key historical inflections from foundation to peak territorial expansion
Expansion to peak recorded area of 1,462,848 km² in 396 CE.
Huns: Frequently Asked Questions
When did Huns exist?
Huns is dated to 106 CE – 425 CE, in the Classical Antiquity era.
What was the capital of Huns?
The capital of Huns was Attila's Court, (434–453).
How large was Huns at its peak?
At its peak in 396 AD Huns covered about 1,462,848 km².
How did the map of Huns change over time?
Huns appears on 4 dated world maps in the atlas, from 117 CE to 400 CE. Each shows its borders in that year next to the other states of the time.