Хунн-Хань согуштары

209–200 BC Modu unites the steppe

In 209 BC Modu killed his father Duman and became chanyu. Between the Xiongnu and the Donghu lay an empty strip more than a thousand li wide. When the Donghu demanded it, Modu struck east and destroyed their king. The Wuhuan held out at the Wuhuan mountain and paid the Xiongnu a yearly tribute of oxen, horses and sheepskins; the Xianbei withdrew far beyond the Liaodong frontier. Modu drove back the Yuezhi, took back the land Meng Tian had seized as far as Chaona and Fushi, and subjected the Hunyu, Qushe, Dingling, Gekun and Xinli in the north. In 200 BC he surrounded the Han emperor Gaozu for seven days on the hill of Baideng near Pingcheng.

176–c. 160 BC The height of the realm

In 176 BC Modu wrote to the Han court that the Wise King of the Right had destroyed the Yuezhi, and that Loulan, the Wusun, the Hujie and twenty-six states around them had all become Xiongnu: all the peoples who draw the bow were now one family. His son Laoshang killed the Yuezhi king and made a drinking cup of his skull. The Yuezhi left the Hexi and moved west into the land of the Saka. The Han Shu names a Xiongnu Commandant of Slaves who resided between Karashahr, Weixu and Weili and taxed the oasis states. In 162 BC the emperor Wendi confirmed the Long Wall as the line between the two realms. No source describes the northern edge of the realm in Tuva and beyond the Baikal.

127–121 BC The Han take the Ordos and the Hexi

In 127 BC the Han general Wei Qing drove the kings of the Loufan and the Baiyang out of the Ordos. Han founded Shuofang there and restored Meng Tian's wall along the river; in exchange it gave up the district of Zaoyang beyond Shanggu. In 123 BC the chanyu withdrew north across the Gobi on the advice of the defector Zhao Xin. In the spring and summer of 121 BC Huo Qubing struck into the Hexi corridor, and in the autumn the Hunye king killed the Xiutu king and went over to Han with more than forty thousand people. From then on, says the Shiji, the land from Jincheng and the Hexi west along the Southern Mountains to the Salt Marsh was empty of Xiongnu. By this time the Wusun held the land of the Saka, and the Yuezhi had moved on to the north bank of the Oxus.

119–c. 100 BC North of the Gobi

In 119 BC Wei Qing and Huo Qubing crossed the Gobi with separate armies. Huo Qubing marched more than two thousand li beyond Dai, sacrificed on Mount Langjuxu and turned back at the Hanhai. Afterwards, says the Shiji, there was no royal court south of the Gobi. Han settled soldiers and farmers from Shuofang west to Lingju and set up the commanderies of the Hexi, from Wuwei to Dunhuang; the Wuhuan were moved beyond the frontier of five eastern commanderies to watch the Xiongnu for Han. By 105 BC the chanyu had moved further north-west, his left wing facing Yunzhong and his right Jiuquan and Dunhuang. The southern edge of the realm ran somewhere in the Gobi.

60–51 BC The Western Regions lost, the realm divided

In 71 BC the Dingling struck the Xiongnu from the north, the Wuhuan from the east and the Wusun from the west, and the peoples bound to them fell away. In 60 BC the Rizhu king went over to Han. The Xiongnu Commandant of Slaves was abolished, and Zheng Ji became the first Protector-General of the Western Regions, with his seat at Wulei. In 57 BC five chanyus contended for the throne. In 54 BC Zhizhi took the royal court, and his younger brother Huhanye moved south to the Han frontier. In 51 BC Huhanye came before the emperor at Ganquan and was allowed to live below the Guanglu wall.

49–33 BC Zhizhi in the west, Huhanye in the north

Believing that Huhanye, weak and bound to Han, could not come back north, Zhizhi led his people west. He defeated the Wusun, received the surrender of the Wujie in the north, broke the Jiankun in the west and brought the Dingling under him, and made his seat in the land of the Jiankun. Around 44 BC he killed a Han envoy and went on to Kangju; of his people only three thousand arrived. In 36 BC the Protector-General Gan Yanshou and his deputy Chen Tang marched on Kangju and killed him. Huhanye meanwhile returned to the royal court in the north, and in 33 BC he received the palace lady Wang Zhaojun as his wife. From then on the land north of the Long Wall belonged to the Xiongnu again.

AD 48–50 Northern and Southern Xiongnu

Under Wang Mang the states of the Western Regions went over to the Xiongnu. In AD 48 the chiefs of eight southern tribes raised Bi, the Rizhu king, as chanyu under the name Huhanye; he came to the Wuyuan frontier and offered to shield Han against the northern Xiongnu for ever. The next year the northern chanyu fell back a thousand li. In AD 50 the southern court moved inside the frontier, first to Yunzhong and in the winter to Meiji in Xihe, and its chiefs were stationed along the frontier commanderies from Beidi to Dai. Beyond the Liaodong frontier the Xianbei sent their first envoys to Han in AD 49.

AD 87–93 The end of the Northern Xiongnu

In AD 87 the Xianbei entered the eastern lands of the Northern Xiongnu and killed the chanyu Youliu; fifty-eight tribes, two hundred thousand people, came to the frontier to surrender. In 89 Dou Xian marched out with the southern chanyu, defeated the northern chanyu at Mount Jiluo and had an inscription cut on Mount Yanran, more than three thousand li beyond the frontier. A rock inscription in the Gobi of central Mongolia is identified with this text; it lies much closer to the frontier than the figure of the source. In 91 Geng Kui defeated the northern chanyu at the Jinwei mountains, and the chanyu fled to the land of the Wusun. The Xianbei moved into the empty land, and more than a hundred thousand Xiongnu tents that stayed behind called themselves Xianbei.

c. AD 155–180 The Xianbei in the old Xiongnu land

The Xianbei leader Tanshihuai set his court on the Chuochou river below Mount Tanhan, more than three hundred li north of Gaoliu. According to the Hou Han Shu he raided the Han frontier in the south, held off the Dingling in the north, drove back the Fuyu in the east and struck the Wusun in the west, and held all the old Xiongnu land, fourteen thousand li from east to west. He divided it into an eastern, a central and a western part; the western reached Dunhuang and the Wusun. The Southern Xiongnu remained inside the Han frontier. One reckoning puts the last defeat of the Northern Xiongnu by the Xianbei in 155, a second puts their move west around 158; the hatched area north of Kangju shows where the second places them.