Rouran epochGöktürk epochUyghur epochKirghiz epoch
RouranFirst GöktürkTang ruleSecond GöktürkUyghurKirghizHunsWestern GöktürkTürgeshKarlukKhazar
  • 400
  • 500
  • 600
  • 700
  • 800
  • 900

The Hunnic Empire was the realm of the Huns in Europe. It grew from their conquest of the Alans and the Goths north of the Black Sea in the 370s. It reached its height under Attila in the 440s, and it broke apart within a year of his death in 453.[1] Dengizich, the last of his sons to lead the Huns against Rome, fell in 469. With him the Hunnic dominance ended.[2] At its height Attila’s empire stretched from the Caucasus to the confines of France and Denmark.[3]

After the subjection of the Alans and the expulsion of the Goths, the Huns set up a realm in the Hungarian plain, the Carpathian basin. It marked the emergence of a tangible Hunnic state, in fact and in law. The Huns grew from a nomadic war machine into an established, if not wholly settled, political power in the middle of Europe.[4]

Formation

The conquest of the Goths in the 370s made the Huns the rulers of a large area of the Pontic steppe. From about 376 they stood on the lower Danube.[5] They were not yet one realm. Ammianus says they were subject to no royal restraint and were content with the disorderly leadership of their chief men.[6] In the 390s there was evidently no Hun ruler strong enough to impose his will on all the tribes.[7] Others hold that Balamber was at most the leader of a tribe or of a band of warriors put together for the occasion, and that from the victory over the Alans to 395 no Hun is named at all. Basich and Kursich, the first leaders known by name, are called archontes, high commanders, and neither claimed to rule the Huns.[8] In 395 Hun bands crossed the Caucasus and raided Armenia, Cappadocia and Syria. Another group under Basich and Kursich rode as far as Ctesiphon.[9][10]

The first Hun king whose existence is certain, Uldin, ruled on the lower Danube about 400 to 408. He ruled west as well as east of the Carpathians, though not over all the Huns.[11] About 412 the historian Olympiodorus found Charaton “the first of the kings” among them.[12] Jordanes writes that the Huns held Pannonia for almost fifty years until 427, when the Romans and the Goths drove them out.[13]

In the 420s and 430s the brothers Rua, Octar and Mundzuc led the Huns.[14] Rua governed the eastern part of the realm and dealt with the eastern Romans. Octar ruled the western lands, including what is now Hungary, and dealt with the western Romans.[15] Octar died about 430 on a campaign against the Burgundians. Rua appears as sole leader in 432.[16][14] Some scholars take the Burgundian victory for a revolt against Hunnic overlordship, the Burgundians having stood for some years between 413 and 430 in a dependence like that of the Thuringians. They take the destruction of their kingdom on the Rhine a few years later for a Hunnic punitive expedition.[17] Rua received a tribute of 350 pounds of gold a year from the eastern empire and, in 433, the province of Pannonia Prima from the western government of Aetius.[18] It has been argued that Rua laid the foundations of his nephew’s greatness.[19] Others put the change into steps. In the time of Ammianus, the Huns were a society of tribes and clans under chiefs. At the beginning of the fifth century they were a federation of tribes. Under Attila they became a state with unrestricted central power, ruled with a small circle of leading men and not unlike the later steppe empires of Asia.[20]

Bleda and Attila

After Rua’s death his nephews Bleda and Attila ruled together. Some scholars hold that this was a territorial division and not an institution. Bleda ruled the tribes in the east, Attila those in the west.[21] Others hold that the brothers regarded the empire as a single property but ruled separately, in parts that are not known.[22] A third group sees in Rua and Octar a double kingship. Rua, the senior partner, held the land south of the Carpathians and north of the Danube, and Octar the Great Hungarian Plain north and west of the Carpathians. Bleda inherited Rua’s part, and Attila took Octar’s place at a date that is not known. From an Inner Asian point of view, they argue, two persons succeeding to one throne would make no sense. Two brothers ruling at once over two parts of one realm, by contrast, would be usual.[23] By the treaty of Margus the eastern empire doubled the tribute to 700 pounds of gold.[24] In the Balkan wars of the 440s the Huns took Viminacium, Singidunum, Sirmium, Naissus and Marcianople and beat the eastern armies. The peace of Anatolius raised the tribute to 2,100 pounds a year.[25]

About 445 Attila killed Bleda and united the whole people under his own rule.[26] In the same years he brought the Akatziri of the Black Sea steppe under his rule and set his eldest son Ellac over them.[27] The war of 447 ended with the greatest victory the Huns ever won. Attila was now the ruler of a great power. From then on he was king, commander in chief and supreme judge, and was obeyed without condition.[28]

In 451 he turned west.[29] The invasion of Gaul ended on the Catalaunian Plains. The invasion of Italy in 452 destroyed Aquileia but did not reach Rome.[30] Attila died early in 453, and the empire broke apart within a year.[1]

Extent

In 449 the western envoy Romulus told Priscus that no one who had ever ruled in Scythia or elsewhere had achieved so much in so short a time. According to Romulus, Attila ruled all Scythia and the islands of the Ocean, and exacted tribute from the Romans.[31] Jordanes calls him “lord over all the Huns and almost the sole earthly ruler of all the tribes of Scythia”.[32]

Some scholars hold that the Germanic and other peoples between the Alps and the Baltic, and between the Caspian and a line an unknown distance east of the Rhine, recognised Attila and Bleda as their masters. In their view, the islands of the Ocean were those of the Baltic.[33] Others hold that Attila, whatever his ambition, was not king of kings or of the world, but lord over a fairly well-defined territory. For a few years he was more than a nuisance to the Romans, though at no time a real danger. The Langobards remained independent.[34] Attila’s residence, which Priscus visited, lay in the Hungarian plain, perhaps beyond the Tisza. Its exact place cannot be fixed.[35] A third group doubts that the Carpathian basin was the centre of Hunnic power at all. The bulk of the Huns, they hold, stayed on the Pontic steppe where they first appeared. In a country as thoroughly excavated as Hungary, the scarcity of Hunnic remains points to an occupation that was short and of low density. No text contradicts this.[36] How far Attila’s control reached over the peoples that acknowledged him cannot be established. The deeds of the Huns are too readily credited to him.[37]

Structure

Below the king stood a circle of leading men whom Priscus calls logades. They were Onegesius, his brother Scottas, Edeco, Berichus, the lord of many villages, and the Roman secretary Orestes.[38] They served on embassies, guarded the king in turn, and governed parts of the realm with their own followings. Some scholars call them the hinge on which the whole administration turned.[39] Others hold that the word means only prominent men, and that nothing shows they had anything in common but their prominence.[40] The secretaries who wrote Attila’s letters were Romans, since the Huns had no script of their own.[41]

The subject peoples kept their own kings. The Gepid Ardaric and the Ostrogoth Valamir stood almost on a par with the leading Huns. The Goths had a king of their own, “though subject to the Huns”.[42][43] Instead of destroying or driving out the conquered peoples, the Huns demanded tribute and the recognition of their rule. The subjects fought beside the Hun warriors and received a share of the booty. The Huns did not interfere in their internal affairs.[10] According to Jordanes, Attila’s sons demanded after his death that the peoples be divided among them by lot “like a family estate”. The kings with their peoples rose against them.[44]

At court Priscus heard Hunnic and Gothic, and Latin among those who dealt with the Romans. The subjects spoke their own languages besides.[45] The Hunnic language survives only in names. Some scholars take the realm to have been made of various peoples that a Turkic upper stratum, holding the reins of government, joined together.[46]

Archaeology

The realm has left a recognisable group of rich single graves. They lie in a belt from the steppes of Kazakhstan to the Hungarian plain, Silesia and southern Poland and the middle Rhine. They hold weapons, gold-plated saddles and harness.[47] None dates before about 400 or after the middle of the fifth century, so that all fall in the years of the widest reach. They have neither known forerunners nor a continuation.[48] They cannot be assigned to one people. The men and women in them belonged to the leading class of the realm.[49] Some scholars take the realm of the early fifth century for a federation of tribes, and that of Attila for a state under a central power, ruled by a small circle of leading men.[20] For the finds in the Roman province of Pannonia the cession of Valeria to the Huns in 409 is taken as the earliest possible date.[50] One survey doubts that the easternmost of them, at Borovoje in northern Kazakhstan, was the grave of a Hun, because of the heavy stone cover it had.[51] Plainer warrior graves of the same age, with deformed skulls, eastern mirrors and bone-stiffened bow ends, lie beside them in the Danube lands.[52]

The graves bear on the question how far Attila ruled. Two princely graves north of the Sudeten, at Höckricht in Silesia and Jakuszowice near Kraków, and a cauldron fragment from Bennisch in Moravia are taken as evidence of Hunnic rule in the basins of the Oder and the Vistula. This supports the view that his rule reached the Baltic. A single grave could mean the passing of a military band. Two graves and a cauldron fragment say more.[53] Graves at Altlußheim and Wolfsheim on the middle Rhine show at least military enterprises there.[54] On the Danube the finds crowd in the land between the Tisza, the Sava and the Vienna basin. Some scholars take this for the weight of Hunnic power in Hungary.[55] Against this stands the view that the occupation of the plain was thin and short.[36]

Graves with deformed skulls lie in and beside the abandoned Roman forts on the Danube between Sucidava in Romania and Carnuntum near Vienna. So do eastern mirrors and cauldron fragments. The forts no longer served the frontier when the graves were laid.[56] The riders, or the Germans allied with them, seem to have used the ruins for a time, perhaps for the iron and non-ferrous metal in them.[57]

The customs of the riders spread among the subject peoples. The Germanic peoples of the middle Danube, Moravia, Bohemia and central Germany took over the binding of infants’ heads. In the Danube lands they also took over the eastern mirrors, which they broke at the burial. Some scholars explain this by their belonging to the realm.[58] The Franks and the Alamanni did not take the custom up. This suggests a different relation to Hunnic overlordship.[17]

Wealth and tribute

The realm lived on tribute, booty and ransom. In the 440s the eastern Romans paid the Huns about 13,000 pounds of gold, more than 900,000 solidi. Attila was paid the full tribute perhaps only in 448, 449 and 450.[59] Attila used embassies to Constantinople to enrich his followers, who came home with gifts.[60] Some scholars call the Hun society that Priscus saw in 449 a parasitic community of marauders that had learned to herd men instead of cattle.[3] Others hold that the great majority of the people still lived almost the same nomadic life as their ancestors.[61] Payments from settled states were vital to mounted nomads such as the Huns. Even at the height of their power, the Huns seem to have had no lasting material basis of their own.[62] A third group calls the Hunnic economy almost monocultural, with booty, ransom and tribute as its main products and the tillers of the soil, perhaps conquered peoples, sharing none of the gain. The Huns bought on the frontier markets they insisted on, even some of their arms. Rua is said to have forbidden the Byzantines to recruit foreigners on Hunnic ground and to trade freely, and to have allowed trade only in the border towns.[63] A cavalry whose strength rested on the size of its pastures could not be fed in Italy or Gaul.[64]

The gold in the graves came in the main from the Roman tribute and from raids. The inflow must have far outweighed the subsidies that the Romans paid to Germanic tribes.[65] The coined gold was melted down and laid in the graves as jewellery and as fittings of belts, weapons and harness. Of all these graves only that of Wolfsheim holds a gold coin.[66] Roman gold coin does not seem to have circulated as money in the realm. It was precious metal for the luxuries of the leading class, who held it as a monopoly.[67]

Dissolution

After Attila’s death his many sons quarrelled over the succession. The Gepid king Ardaric led the subject peoples against them. At the Nedao in 454 the Huns were defeated and Attila’s eldest son Ellac fell.[68][2] The Gepids took the land of the Huns and ruled the whole of Dacia.[69] Attila’s younger son Ernak settled with his people in the Dobruja. His kinsmen took fortresses on the Danube.[70] Dengizich fought the Ostrogoths in Pannonia and asked the emperor Leo in vain for a market on the Danube. He fell in 469 against a Roman army, and his head was shown in Constantinople.[71] The eastern government had by then closed the market towns to the Huns and forbidden the export of weapons to the barbarians. Some scholars date the end of the period of nomadic domination from these measures.[72] The remaining Huns returned to the steppe and were absorbed into new confederations.[73]

Assessment

Some scholars hold that the Huns played an important part in European history for less than a hundred years. In their view, they gave Europe nothing.[74] Others doubt that Attila made history at all. In their view, the Huns perished like the Avars.[75] A third group calls the realm a hastily built confederation. It can hardly be called a state, much less an empire, and it collapsed at Attila’s death.[76] The legacy of Attila and the Huns has been argued over for centuries. Several ruling houses, among them the Bulgarian khans and the Hungarian Árpád dynasty, claimed descent from Attila. A verifiable genealogical line is hard to establish.[2]

Rulers

  1. Uldina400–408 · King
  2. Charaton412–? · King
  3. Octar?–430 · King
  4. Ruabc?–434 · King
  5. Bledade434–445 · King
  6. Attila434–453 · King
  7. Ellacf?–454 · King
  8. Dengizichg454–469 · King

On the succession

  1. aUldin: No succession is recorded. Uldin disappears after his defeat in 408, and the next Hun king named, Charaton, appears in 412 or 413.
  2. bRua: Rua and Octar ruled together; after Octar's death about 430 no one took his place.
  3. cRua: Rua was succeeded by his nephews Attila and Bleda together. His death is placed in 434 in one reckoning and after the end of 435 in a second.
  4. dBleda: Bleda and his brother Attila succeeded their uncle Rua together and ruled side by side.
  5. eBleda: Bleda and Attila succeeded Rua together and ruled side by side, each over his own peoples. After Bleda's murder Attila took his peoples under his own rule.
  6. fEllac: Attila preferred Ellac for the kingship, in Jordanes; but the sons demanded that the subject peoples be divided among them, and Ellac fell in the war that followed.
  7. gDengizich: After the Nedao the remaining Huns were led by Attila's sons; Dengizich and Ernak acted together in the 460s but disagreed over war with Rome.
  1. Balamber—King
  2. Uldin400–408King
  3. Charaton412–?King
  4. Octar?–430King
  5. Rua?–434King
  6. Bleda434–445King
  7. Attila434–453King
  8. Ellac?–454King
  9. Dengizich454–469King
  10. Ernak—

Relations with other states

Red is war, blue alliance, gold trade. Where several held at once, the line shows what prevailed; alliance and trade can run side by side. Each line rests on an article. Point at a state to see its weightiest relation, select it to see its events. The slider shows what stood in a given year, and Play runs through the years.

  1. Byzantium441 to 452

  2. Western Roman Empire451 to 452

References

  1. ^ a b Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 143–147
  2. ^ a b c d Yavuz 2025, p. 104
  3. ^ a b Thompson 1948, p. 177
  4. ^ Yavuz 2025, p. 90
  5. ^ a b Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 26
  6. ^ Ammianus Marcellinus; Rolfe 1939, xxxi.2.7, p. 383–385
  7. ^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 51
  8. ^ Sinor 1990, p. 181–182
  9. ^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 52
  10. ^ a b Yavuz 2025, p. 91
  11. ^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 59–62
  12. ^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 73
  13. ^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 166, p. 97
  14. ^ a b Thompson 1948, p. 63
  15. ^ Yavuz 2025, p. 93
  16. ^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 81
  17. ^ a b Werner 1956, p. 17, 94
  18. ^ Thompson 1948, p. 64, 161
  19. ^ Thompson 1948, p. 209
  20. ^ a b Werner 1956, p. 2
  21. ^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 86
  22. ^ Thompson 1948, p. 76–77
  23. ^ Sinor 1990, p. 187–188
  24. ^ Priscus; Müller 1851, fr. 1, p. 72
  25. ^ Priscus; Müller 1851, fr. 1–5, p. 71–75
  26. ^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 181, p. 102
  27. ^ Priscus; Müller 1851, fr. 8, p. 82–83
  28. ^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 124–125
  29. ^ Thompson 1948, p. 135–143
  30. ^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 132–141
  31. ^ Priscus; Müller 1851, fr. 8, p. 90
  32. ^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 178, p. 101
  33. ^ Thompson 1948, p. 75–76
  34. ^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 125–127
  35. ^ Thompson 1948, p. 221–222
  36. ^ a b Sinor 1990, p. 182, 203
  37. ^ Sinor 1990, p. 189
  38. ^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 192
  39. ^ Thompson 1948, p. 163–165
  40. ^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 194
  41. ^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 376
  42. ^ Thompson 1948, p. 166
  43. ^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 249, p. 121
  44. ^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 259–260, p. 125
  45. ^ Priscus; Müller 1851, fr. 8, p. 86
  46. ^ Rásonyi 1993, p. 73
  47. ^ Werner 1956, p. 86–88
  48. ^ Werner 1956, p. 87, 91
  49. ^ Werner 1956, p. 2, 84–85
  50. ^ Werner 1956, p. 87
  51. ^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 325
  52. ^ Werner 1956, p. 82, 91–92
  53. ^ Werner 1956, p. 88
  54. ^ Werner 1956, p. 88–89, 91
  55. ^ Werner 1956, p. 91–92
  56. ^ Werner 1956, p. 92
  57. ^ Werner 1956, p. 92–93
  58. ^ Werner 1956, p. 17, 93
  59. ^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 180–182
  60. ^ Priscus; Müller 1851, fr. 6, p. 76
  61. ^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 169
  62. ^ Yavuz 2025, p. 94
  63. ^ Kafesoğlu 1997, p. 75
  64. ^ Sinor 1990, p. 204–205
  65. ^ Werner 1956, p. 85–86
  66. ^ Werner 1956, p. 85
  67. ^ Werner 1956, p. 86
  68. ^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 259–262, p. 125–126
  69. ^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 264, p. 126–127
  70. ^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 266, p. 127
  71. ^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 164–168
  72. ^ Thompson 1948, p. 179–180
  73. ^ Golden 1992, p. 92
  74. ^ Thompson 1948, p. 214–215
  75. ^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, xxiv
  76. ^ Golden 1992, p. 91–92
  77. ^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 125

Sources

Literature

  • John C. Rolfe, Ammianus Marcellinus, with an English Translation, vol. III: Books XXVII–XXXI (1939)
  • Karl Müller (ed.), Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, Bd. IV (darin: Menandri Protectoris fragmenta, griechisch mit lateinischer Übersetzung) (1851)
  • J. B. Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire from the Death of Theodosius I to the Death of Justinian, vol. I (1923)
  • Charles Christopher Mierow, The Gothic History of Jordanes in English Version, with an Introduction and a Commentary (1915)
  • Otto J. Maenchen-Helfen, The World of the Huns: Studies in Their History and Culture (1973)
  • E. A. Thompson, A History of Attila and the Huns (1948)
  • Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
  • Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
  • Denis Sinor (ed.), The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (1990)
  • Joachim Werner, Beiträge zur Archäologie des Attila-Reiches (1956)
  • İbrahim Kafesoğlu, Türk Millî Kültürü (1997)
  • László Rásonyi, Tarihte Türklük (1993)

Related

What links here9

Persons
Attila · Gaiseric · Theodoric I · Thorismund · Valamir · Valentinian III
Peoples
History of the Turkic peoples · Huns · The Great Empires of the Steppe

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Hunnic Empire.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/polities/hunnic-empire/

Last revised: 8 November 2026