The Southern Xiongnu were the half of the Xiongnu that chose the Han. They came into being in AD 48, when eight tribes of the southern border proclaimed their own chanyu against the court in the north. They lasted as a titled realm until 216, when Cao Cao kept the chanyu at Ye and sent a Worthy King back to oversee his people.[1] For most of that time they were the instrument by which the Han destroyed the northern Xiongnu. The Hou Han Shu devotes a chapter to them, which is the fullest account of a steppe polity under Chinese protection in any source.

Foundation

The founder was Bi, a grandson of Huhanye. Bi had been passed over twice in the succession after the northern chanyu killed the brother who stood next in line. He took the title Huhanye for himself, deliberately, because his grandfather had found safety by leaning on the Han.[1][2] The split has its own article. What matters for the realm is the settlement that followed.

In AD 50 the Han sent two officers north to install the court, eighty li west of the Wuyuan frontier post.[1] After the envoys had reported, the chanyu was allowed to move into Yunzhong.[1] In the winter his troops fared badly against the Northern Chanyu’s riders. The Han moved him again, to Meiji in Xihe. There they set up an office, clerks and staff beside him, under a Chinese Leader of Court Gentlemen.[1] The officer held a new post, Leader of Court Gentlemen Envoy to the Xiongnu. The Wei, the Jin and the Northern Wei kept it as the office through which the Xiongnu were governed.[3] Every year the frontier prefecture of Xihe provided two thousand horse and five hundred pardoned convicts to guard him. They were in garrison through the winter and stood down in summer. The chapter says this became the standing arrangement.[1] The chanyu in turn placed his own men along the frontier.[1] The Right Worthy King controlled Shuofang. Gudu Marquises of five clans controlled Beidi, Wuyuan, Yunzhong, Dingxiang and Dai. The Left Southern General controlled Yanmen. Each of them had his people with him, as scouts and watchers for the commanderies.[1] The Left Southern General is missing from the lists of Xiongnu offices in both Han histories. Some scholars take him for a standing office of the left wing, not a command made for the occasion.[4]

The terms of the settlement

The gifts are itemised. They were a cap, sash and robes, a gold seal with the green and purple cords, a covered carriage with a feathered canopy and a four-horse team, a precious sword and bow and arrows, three black staves of office, halberds, armour and weapons, ten thousand bolts of gold, brocade, embroidery and cloth, ten thousand catties of floss, musical instruments and a drum carriage, table ware and provisions. From Hedong came twenty-five thousand hu of dried rice and thirty-six thousand head of cattle and sheep.[1] Every year the chanyu sent a son to serve at the Han court, and a memorial with him. The Han sent the previous hostage son home, and the two parties met on the road.[1]

What the Han gained was the appearance of subjection and the use of the army. The chapter records the moment when the first was established. The chanyu was told that he must prostrate himself to receive the edict. He looked about him for a while. Then he prostrated himself and called himself a subject. Afterwards he had an interpreter ask the envoy not to humiliate him in front of his own people. The Gudu Marquises who watched it wept.[1]

Some scholars hold that the Southern Xiongnu were a state under Han protection and not a Han frontier command.[5] The chanyu received a seal and the courtesies of a prince of the imperial house, but he was never enfeoffed as one. He, not the emperor or an official of the emperor, ruled the Southern Xiongnu. Chinese officials governed them only from the Wei onward.[6] The Jin Shu records that from the Later Han onward the Southern Xiongnu paid no tribute and no taxes.[7] The payments ran the other way.[8] A memorial in the Hou Han Shu’s biography of Yuan An puts the customary cost of supplying the Southern Chanyu at more than 100,900,000 cash a year, the copper coins of the Han, against 74,800,000 for the Western Regions.[9] The memorial names no year, but it already speaks of the northern court as swept away.[9] Modern accounts set it in AD 92. One count gives 91.[10]

The court

The southern court kept the Xiongnu order and added one item. The Hou Han Shu says that the Xiongnu sacrificed to the god of heaven three times a year, in the first, fifth and ninth months on the wu day. It adds that since the Southern Chanyu had come in, he sacrificed to the Han emperor as well. At the same gathering he settled the affairs of the realm, with horse racing and camel racing for the entertainment.[1]

The ranks are set out as a table of succession. First come the Left Worthy King, the Left Guli King, the Right Worthy King and the Right Guli King, called the Four Horns. Then come the Left and Right Rizhu Kings, the Left and Right Wenyudi Kings and the Left and Right Jianjiang Kings, called the Six Horns. All ten were sons and brothers of the chanyu, and they were the men who in their order would become chanyu.[1] The ministers of other surname were the Left and Right Gudu Marquises and the Left and Right Shizhu Gudu Marquises. Below them came the riluo, qiequ and danghu offices, ranked by power and by how many followers a man had.[1]

The Hou Han Shu gives the chanyu’s surname as Xuliandi. The Han Shu uses a different form for the same house.[1] Turkic Atlas treats the difference under Luandi. Four clans of other surname are named as the famous houses of the realm and the ones that regularly married the chanyu: Huyan, Xubu, Qiulin and Lan. The Huyan stood on the left, and the Lan and the Xubu on the right. They judged lawsuits and reported their judgements to the chanyu by word of mouth, because there were no written records.[1]

The war against the north

The southern realm was the Han’s weapon against the northern one, and it asked for the work. The Southern Chanyu Tuntuhe proposed the campaign of AD 89 in a memorial. It was fought mainly with his thirty thousand horse. In AD 90 a purely southern operation followed. It surrounded the Northern Chanyu at night and took his jade seal.[1] At that point the chapter counts the realm: thirty-four thousand households, two hundred and thirty-seven thousand three hundred people, and fifty thousand one hundred and seventy men able to bear arms.[1] The campaigns have their own article.

Instability

Absorbing the north nearly broke the south. The newly surrendered northerners were many. They resented the southern commanders who had raided them, and one claimant used them against another. In AD 94 a chanyu was killed by his own uncle, after a quarrel with his heir turned into an armed stand-off in a walled town. Within months, fifteen tribes and more than two hundred thousand of the new arrivals revolted. They forced a chanyu of their own on themselves and tried to cross the desert northward. Four Han armies and eight thousand Xianbei and Wuhuan horse were needed to stop them.[1]

That pattern held for the rest of the realm’s life: a chanyu who owed his place to the Han, a following that did not, and a Chinese resident officer between them. The Xianbei took the northern steppe the Xiongnu had lost. The southern tribes stayed inside the frontier, where their descendants founded Chinese-style states of their own in the fourth century.[11] Some scholars have Dingling groups come into China in Han times as subject tribes within the armies of the Southern Xiongnu, and play a part in the barbarian dynasties of the fourth and fifth centuries.[12]

The detention of 216

In 216 the chanyu Huchuquan came to court. Cao Cao kept him at Ye and sent the Right Worthy King Qubei back to oversee his people.[1] Within the Jian’an era, which ended in 220, Cao Cao divided the Southern Xiongnu into five divisions under Xiongnu commanders watched by Chinese officers.[13] Some scholars take 216 as the end of the realm and of the chanyuate. Others hold that the power ended and the title did not.[14] A Southern Chanyu still stood among the dignitaries at the Jin accession of 265. The title lasted until Liu Yuan’s rising in 304.[14] Liu Yuan rose from the five divisions and founded the Xiongnu Han.[14] In 304 he took the style of Han. He claimed that under the old treaties of brotherhood the Xiongnu house succeeded the Han when the elder brother died.[15]

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. Han dynasty48 to 93

  2. Xiongnu48 to 93

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Hou Han Shu, juan 89
  2. ^ Kafesoğlu 1997, p. 66–67
  3. ^ 内田吟風 1933, p. 127,129
  4. ^ 内田吟風 1932, p. 588
  5. ^ 内田吟風 1933, p. 125,127
  6. ^ 内田吟風 1933, p. 125,126
  7. ^ 内田吟風 1933, p. 136
  8. ^ 内田吟風 1933, p. 137
  9. ^ a b Hou Han Shu, juan 45
  10. ^ Sinor 1990, p. 143
  11. ^ Golden 1992
  12. ^ Pulleyblank 1990, p. 21–22
  13. ^ 内田吟風 1934, p. 276
  14. ^ a b c 内田吟風 1934, p. 279
  15. ^ Lattimore 1951, p. 526–527

Sources

Literature

  • Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
  • Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
  • Uchida Ginpū 内田吟風, 後漢光武帝の對南匈奴策に就て 上篇：匈奴分裂以前の後漢・匈奴の交渉 (1932)
  • Uchida Ginpū 内田吟風, 後漢光武帝の對南匈奴策に就て 下篇：匈奴の分裂と光武帝の南匈奴統御 (1933)
  • Uchida Ginpū 内田吟風, 後漢末期より五胡亂勃發に至る匈奴五部の狀勢に就て (1934)
  • Denis Sinor (ed.), The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (1990)
  • İbrahim Kafesoğlu, Türk Millî Kültürü (1997)
  • Owen Lattimore, Inner Asian Frontiers of China (1951)
  • Edwin G. Pulleyblank, The 'High Carts': A Turkish-Speaking People Before the Türks (1990)

Related

What links here17

Persons
Ban Chao · Bi Chanyu · Dou Xian · Huhanye Chanyu · Poliuhan Baling · Wang Zhaojun
States
Five Divisions of the Xiongnu · Han dynasty · Xiongnu Han
Conflicts
The Xiongnu–Han Wars
Battles & Events
Xiongnu split of 48
Places
Yunzhong
Lineages
Luandi
Institutions and Titles
Chanyu
Customs & Pastimes
Horse and Camel Races at the Xiongnu Sacrifices · The New Year on the Steppe · The Three Xiongnu Assemblies

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Southern Xiongnu.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/polities/southern-xiongnu/

Last revised: 8 November 2026