Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages

by Dan Jones

The Huns were related in some way to a nomadic group who populated and dominated the Asian steppe as rulers of a tribal empire from the third century b.c.5 These nomads fought against the Chinese Qin and Han dynasties, and Chinese scribes dubbed them “Xiongnu,” or “howling slaves.”6 The name stuck, and was transliterated as Xwn or Hun. Although the Xiongnu empire collapsed in the second century a.d., many tribes survived, and the scattered descendants of the imperial Xiongnu still retained the name two hundred years later. Xiongnu, Xwn, or Hun: who called them what, when, and where is only vaguely knowable given the patchy sources of the time. But whichever way the word was rendered, it carried a sense of implied horror, the fear and loathing traditionally borne by sedentary civilizations toward alien nomads.