The Hunye king was one of the two Xiongnu kings of the west. In the autumn of 121 BC he came over to the Han with his people.[1] The surrender left the country from Jincheng and Hexi along the Southern Mountains to the Salt Marsh empty of Xiongnu. On his land the Han set up the commanderies of Wuwei and Jiuquan.[2] The Shiji and the Han Shu give him no personal name and no later history.[3]

Name

The Shiji and Han Shu 55 write the name as 渾邪, Hunye. Han Shu 6, 54, 68 and 94A write it as 昆邪, Kunye.[4] In every case the name stands before the word for king, 王. The sources record no Xiongnu form of it.[1]

The same two characters 渾邪 are the name of an unrelated man of Yiqu, the father of the Han general Gongsun He. Under the emperor Jing he was made marquis of Pingqu, but he lost the title for breaking the law.[5] Han Shu 54 also writes this man’s name as 昆邪.[6]

The kings of the west

The Hunye king and the king of Xiutu were in the west of the Xiongnu country.[7] They may have lived in the Gansu corridor, which the Xiongnu had taken from the Yuezhi. Each would then have ruled his own people on his own land. Neither belonged to the Left or to the Right wing of the Xiongnu order of worthy kings.[8] A more exact placement also exists. It puts the land of the Xiutu king in the eastern Hexi, around Wuwei, and that of the Hunye king in the western Hexi, around Zhangye and Jiuquan.[9]

The defeats of 121 BC

In the spring of 121 BC, during the wars of the Han and the Xiongnu, the Han general Huo Qubing went out of Longxi with ten thousand horse.[10] In six days of fighting he passed through five kingdoms. He went more than a thousand li beyond Yanzhi mountain. He killed the king of Zhelan and beheaded the king of Luhu. He captured the Hunye king’s son together with the chancellor and the commandant. He took more than eight thousand heads and the golden image with which the king of Xiutu sacrificed to Heaven.[5] Han Shu 55 gives the count as 8,960 heads.[11] The Shiji chapter on the Xiongnu gives eighteen thousand and more.[12] The Han Shu chapter on the Xiongnu gives eight thousand and more.[13] That chapter also writes the name of the mountain as Yanqi (焉耆), where the Shiji writes Yanzhi (焉支).[14][15]

In the summer Huo Qubing went out again from Beidi. He crossed Juyan and attacked the Qilian mountains. The Shiji records more than thirty thousand heads, five kings, the chanyu’s consorts and fifty-nine princes taken. It also records the surrender of the Qiutu king with two thousand five hundred men.[5]

The surrender

In the autumn the chanyu was angry with the Hunye king. In the west the king had been beaten again and again by the Han and had lost tens of thousands of men. The chanyu wished to summon him and put him to death.[16] The chanyu was Yizhixie.[13] The Hunye king and the Xiutu king were afraid. They planned to go over to the Han.[16] They sent men ahead to the frontier. The Grand Herald Li Xi was building a fortress on the river. He received the messengers and sent the news to the emperor at once by post-carriage.[5]

Wudi feared that the surrender was a trick to attack the frontier. He ordered Huo Qubing to go out and meet the kings with an army.[17] Huo Qubing crossed the river. The two hosts stood facing each other. Many of the Hunye king’s subordinate commanders saw the Han army and did not want to surrender. Some of them slipped away.[5] Huo Qubing rode into the camp and met the Hunye king. He cut down the eight thousand men who wanted to flee. He sent the Hunye king alone on ahead to the emperor by post-carriage. He led the people across the river.[17]

According to the Shiji and the Han Shu, the Hunye king killed the Xiutu king. He surrendered with the combined people.[18] Han Shu 68 says that the Xiutu king repented of the plan. The Hunye king then killed him.[19] The chapters on the Xiongnu and on Huo Qubing give no reason for the killing. One explanation draws on the divided camp. Most of the people favoured surrender, and a few opposed it. The Xiutu king may then have been among those who opposed it, which agrees with Han Shu 68.[20] The Xiutu king’s son Jin Midi, then fourteen, was taken into the Han palace.[19]

Shiji 111 and Han Shu 55 say that those who surrendered numbered some tens of thousands and were styled a hundred thousand.[17] Shiji 110, Han Shu 6 and Han Shu 94A give more than forty thousand, styled a hundred thousand.[18][21] The edict that rewarded Huo Qubing counts more than ten thousand bowmen with the king.[5]

Rewards and settlement

At Chang’an the emperor’s gifts are counted at several tens of juwan (巨萬). He gave the Hunye king ten thousand households as marquis of Tayin (漯陰侯). He also enfeoffed three of the king’s lesser kings and a great danghu, among them Huduni (呼毒尼) and Tongli (銅離).[17] The edict that rewarded Huo Qubing calls the Hunye king the Xiongnu king of the western region (西域王). It counts thirty-two kings of foreign states brought in. It also adds seventeen hundred households to Qubing’s fief.[5]

The Han then divided the surrendered people among the old outer fortifications of five frontier commanderies, all south of the river. They kept their own customs and lived as dependent states (屬國).[5] Han Shu 6 speaks of five dependent states. It says that the Hunye king’s land became the commanderies of Wuwei and Jiuquan.[22] The garrisons of Longxi, Beidi and Shang were cut by half.[10] Poor families from east of the pass were moved onto the land taken from the Xiongnu. Raiders became scarce in Longxi, Beidi and Hexi.[23]

For years the country stayed empty. When Zhang Qian returned from the west, he told the emperor that the old land of the Hunye king was empty and uninhabited. He added that the Wusun, if bribed, could be called east to live in it, which would cut off the Xiongnu’s right arm.[24] Two years after the surrender the Han drove the chanyu north of the desert.[25] Turkic Atlas tells the campaign under the Mobei campaign. Han Shu 28B is said to call Wuwei the former land of the Xiutu king, set up in 101 BC. It is said to call the country west of Wuwei the former land of the Hunye and Xiutu kings, which Wudi divided into four commanderies: Wuwei, Zhangye, Jiuquan and Dunhuang.[26] Han Shu 96 says that after the surrender the Han first set up Jiuquan. As settlers were moved in, they then divided out Wuwei, Zhangye and Dunhuang. In this way four commanderies stood on the land.[27]

The nephew

Han Shu 54 names one more relative. The Gou King was the son of the Hunye king’s sister. He went over to the Han with his uncle. Later he fell among the Xiongnu with the marquis of Zhuoye.[6] When Su Wu’s embassy reached the Xiongnu, he plotted with Yu Chang to seize the chanyu’s mother and carry her to the Han. He died when the plot failed. Turkic Atlas tells the plot under Wei Lü.[6]

The extent of the evidence

The sources name the Hunye king in the history of a single year, as the king who was beaten, who killed his fellow king and who surrendered. They give no age and no personal name. They do not say whether he lived long in the Han country.[3]

References

  1. ^ a b Shiji, juan 110; Shiji, juan 111; Han Shu, juan 6
  2. ^ Shiji, juan 123; Han Shu, juan 6
  3. ^ a b Shiji, juan 110; Shiji, juan 111; Han Shu, juan 55
  4. ^ Shiji, juan 110; Shiji, juan 111; Han Shu, juan 55; Han Shu, juan 6; Han Shu, juan 54; Han Shu, juan 68; Han Shu, juan 94
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h Shiji, juan 111
  6. ^ a b c Han Shu, juan 54
  7. ^ Shiji, juan 110; Shiji, juan 111; Han Shu, juan 94
  8. ^ Sinor 1990, p. 127, 136
  9. ^ Kurakichi 1930, p. 10–15
  10. ^ a b Shiji, juan 111; Han Shu, juan 6
  11. ^ Han Shu, juan 55
  12. ^ Shiji, juan 110
  13. ^ a b Han Shu, juan 94
  14. ^ Han Shu, juan 94; Shiji, juan 111
  15. ^ Kurakichi 1930, p. 8–9, 11–12
  16. ^ a b Shiji, juan 110; Shiji, juan 111
  17. ^ a b c d Shiji, juan 111; Han Shu, juan 55
  18. ^ a b Shiji, juan 110; Han Shu, juan 6; Han Shu, juan 94
  19. ^ a b Han Shu, juan 68
  20. ^ Kurakichi 1930, p. 24
  21. ^ Kurakichi 1930, p. 9, 23–24
  22. ^ Han Shu, juan 6
  23. ^ Shiji, juan 110; Han Shu, juan 94
  24. ^ Shiji, juan 123
  25. ^ Shiji, juan 123; Han Shu, juan 61
  26. ^ Kurakichi 1930, p. 10–11
  27. ^ Han Shu, juan 96

Sources

  • Shiji, juan 110, 111, 123
  • Han Shu, juan 6, 54, 55, 61, 68, 94, 96 (after Shiji)

Literature

  • Denis Sinor (ed.), The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (1990)
  • Shiratori Kurakichi, On the Territory of the Hsiung-nu Prince Hsiu-t'u Wang and His Metal Statues for Heaven-worship (1930)

Related

What links here6

Persons
Emperor Wu of Han · Huo Qubing · Jin Midi · Qiedihou Chanyu · Su Wu · Yizhixie Chanyu

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Hunye King.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/persons/hunye-king/

Last revised: 8 November 2026