Kidarites

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 Kidarites were a Hun dynasty named after their founder Kidara. Their expansion began at the end of the 420s in Bactria. The Sasanian king Vahram V checked it near Merv.^[1] Kidara then turned south and took Gandhara, where he left one of his sons. Afterwards he seized Sogdiana, probably after 440.^[1] The Wei Shu records that the Xiongnu killed the king of Sute and took the country. It also records that in 457 a Xiongnu king named Huni, the third of his line, sat on the throne.^[1] Sute has been identified with Sogdiana, the throne with that of Samarkand and these Xiongnu with the Kidarites.^[1] A different identification takes Sute for the country of the Alans north of the Black Sea, the Xiongnu for the Huns and Huni for Attila’s son Hernac.^[2] The name of Kidara, written Kydr, stands on several archer coins of Samarkand.^[1]

The Wei Shu’s entry on the Great Yuezhi tells the same movement from the east. The Yuezhi bordered on the Rouran in the north. The Rouran attacked them again and again, and the Yuezhi moved their capital west to Boluo.^[3] Their king Kidara crossed the great mountains and invaded northern India. He made the five states north of Gandhara his subjects.^[3] A second entry says that Kidara was driven west and left his son to hold the city of Peshawar. For that reason his people were called the Little Yuezhi.^[4] The sources give two different answers to who drove him west. The transmitted Wei Shu names the Xiongnu. The Tongdian and the Taiping huanyu ji name the Rouran. Some scholars take the Rouran version as the original text and date the loss of Balkh to about 434.^[5] They also place Boluo, the new capital, at Balkan near the south-eastern shore of the Caspian.^[6] A separate view dates Kidarite rule in Gandhara from about 435 to about 480.^[7]

The war with Persia in Priscus

Priscus names them the Huns “whom they call Kidarites”. About 456, he writes, the Persian king turned away the Lazi who fled to him, because he was at war with these Huns.^[8] About 464 a Persian embassy asked the Romans for money for the war against the Kidarite Huns. The embassy gave as its reason that keeping that people from the frontier served the Romans as well.^[9] The Romans answered that the Persians had taken on the war themselves and had no right to ask them for money.^[9]

About 465 the Roman envoy Constantius found the Persian king Peroz not in his cities but in a camp on the border between his country and that of the Kidarites.^[10] The Persians had made war on them because the Huns no longer paid the tribute that earlier Persian kings had imposed. Worn out by the long war, Peroz tried to end it by deceit. He offered Kunchas, the young and childless king of the Huns, his sister in marriage. He sent him instead another woman dressed as a princess. She revealed the deception to Kunchas, who praised her for her honesty and kept her as his wife. To avenge the fraud, Kunchas pretended to be at war with his neighbours. He asked Peroz for officers to lead the war. Peroz sent 300 of his nobles. Kunchas killed some of them, mutilated the rest and sent them back to announce the penalty.^[10] The war broke out again more fiercely than before. Peroz received Constantius in his camp at Gorga and sent him home without an answer.^[10] About 468 a Persian embassy announced in Constantinople that the Kidarite Huns had been defeated and Balaam, a city of the Huns, taken.^[11]

Sogdiana and the end of the dynasty

Between 440 and 470, under the Kidarites, towns were founded and walls built in Sogdiana, among them Panjikent. The citadel of Samarkand was raised as well.^[12] The Sasanian campaigns of the 440s and the advance of the Hephthalites into Tukharistan from 456 split their realm into a southern part and a Sogdian one.^[13] The dynasty waned from the 470s. It was gone when the Hephthalites took Sogdiana in 509.^[13]

References

^ a b c d e de la Vaissière 2005a, p. 108
^ 内田吟風 1971, p. 254-255
^ a b Wei Shu, juan 102; 内田吟風 1972, p. 370
^ Wei Shu, juan 102; 内田吟風 1972, p. 372
^ 内田吟風 1959, p. 144
^ 内田吟風 1959, p. 146
^ 内田吟風 1972, p. 373
^ Priscus; Müller 1851, fr. 25, p. 102
^ a b Priscus; Müller 1851, fr. 31, p. 105
^ a b c Priscus; Müller 1851, fr. 33, p. 106
^ Priscus; Müller 1851, fr. 41, p. 109
^ de la Vaissière 2005a, p. 109
^ a b de la Vaissière 2005a, p. 110

Sources

Wei Shu, juan 102
Priscus

Literature

Étienne de la Vaissière, Sogdian Traders: A History (2005)
Uchida Ginpū 内田吟風, 魏書西域傳原文考釋（中） (1971)
Uchida Ginpū 内田吟風, 魏書西域傳原文考釋（下） (1972)
Uchida Ginpū 内田吟風, 蠕蠕の寄多羅月氏領バルク地方侵入について (1959)
Karl Müller (ed.), Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, Bd. IV (darin: Menandri Protectoris fragmenta, griechisch mit lateinischer Übersetzung) (1851)