Amilzuri

Rouran epoch Göktürk epoch Uyghur epoch Kirghiz epoch

Rouran First Göktürk Tang rule Second Göktürk Uyghur Kirghiz Huns Western Göktürk Türgesh Karluk Khazar

Rouran 400–554
First Göktürk 552–630
Tang rule 630–682
Second Göktürk 682–744
Uyghur 744–840
Kirghiz 840–924
Huns 370–469
Western Göktürk 552–659
Türgesh 699–766
Karluk 766–800
Khazar 650–969

The Amilzuri were a people on the lower Danube in the fifth century. Priscus names them first among four peoples: the Amilzuri, the Itimari, the Tounsoures and the Boisci. The Hun king Rua meant to make war on them because they had fled to the Romans and joined their alliance.^[1] Jordanes names the Alpidzuri and Alcildzuri among the peoples who lived on the shore of Scythia. The Huns, he says, swept these peoples away like a whirlwind as soon as they had crossed the Maeotic marshes.^[2] In the 430s the survivors were still clustered near the Danube in resistance to the newcomers. Nothing else is known about them.^[3] Rua could not compel them to obey.^[4]

Some scholars take Jordanes’s two names for one, Alpilčur, and Priscus’s form for a corruption of it. The name would be the Turkic alp il čur, made of the words for hero, people and the title chur. On this view the name alone proves that Turkic-speaking nomads lived on or near the north-eastern shore of the Black Sea before the Huns came.^[5] Other scholars give the same etymology with hesitation.^[3]

References

^ Priscus; Müller 1851, fr. 1, p. 71
^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 126, p. 86
^ a b Golden 1992, p. 87
^ Thompson 1948, p. 208
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 23, 402–403

Sources

Priscus
Jordanes (after Priscus and Ammianus Marcellinus)

Literature

Karl Müller (ed.), Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, Bd. IV (darin: Menandri Protectoris fragmenta, griechisch mit lateinischer Übersetzung) (1851)
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)
Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
E. A. Thompson, A History of Attila and the Huns (1948)