The history of the Huns spans the time from before their first secure recorded appearance in Europe around 370 AD to after the disintegration of their empire around 469. The Huns likely entered Western Asia shortly before 370, from Central Asia: they first conquered the Goths and the Alans, pushing a number of tribes to seek refuge within the Roman Empire. In the following years, the Huns conquered most of the Germanic and Scythian tribes outside of the borders of the Roman Empire. They also launched invasions of both the Asian provinces of Rome and the Sasanian Empire in 375. Under Uldin, the first Hunnic ruler named in contemporary sources, the Huns launched a first unsuccessful large-scale raid into the Eastern Roman Empire in Europe in 408. From the 420s, the Huns were led by the brothers Octar and Ruga, who both cooperated with and threatened the Romans. Upon Ruga's death in 435, his nephews Bleda and Attila became the new rulers of the Huns, and launched a successful raid into the Eastern Roman Empire before making peace and securing an annual tribute and trading raids under the Treaty of Margus. Attila appears to have killed his brother, and became sole ruler of the Huns in 445. He would go on to rule for the next eight years, launching a devastating raid on the Eastern Roman Empire in 447, followed by an invasion of Gaul in 451. Attila is traditionally held to have been defeated in Gaul at the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields, however some scholars hold the battle to have been a draw or Hunnic victory. The following year, the Huns invaded Italy and encountered no serious resistance before turning back.
Hunnic dominion over Barbarian Europe is traditionally held to have collapsed suddenly after the death of Attila the year after the invasion of Italy. The Huns themselves are usually thought to have disappeared after the death of his son Dengizich in 469. However, some scholars have argued that the Bulgars in particular show a high degree of continuity with the Huns. Hyun Jin Kim has argued that the three major Germanic tribes to emerge from the Hunnic empire, the Gepids, the Ostrogoths, and the Sciri, were all heavily Hunnicized, and may have had Hunnic rather than native rulers even after the end of Hunnic dominion in Europe.
It is possible that the Huns were directly or indirectly responsible for the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and they have been directly or indirectly linked to the dominance of Turkic tribes on the Eurasian steppe following the fourth century.
Potential history prior to 370
Some scholars believe that the Huns originated in the ancient people known as the Xiongnu and are thus related to other steppe peoples called Huns, however, there is no consensus on the issue. There is a gap of about two hundred years between the conquest of the Xiongnu by the Xianbei and their disappearance from Chinese historical records and the appearance of the Huns in Greco-Roman sources. Archaeology has discovered few links between the material culture of the Huns and Eastern Central Asia. As of 2023, there is little genetic data from the Carpathian basin from the Hunnic period (5th century), and the population living there during the Hunnic period shows a variety of genetic signatures. Maróti et al. 2022 showed that the genomes of 9 Hun-era individuals from the basin varied from European to Northeast Asian connections, with those individuals showing associations with Northeast Asia being most similar to groups found in Mongolia such as the Xiongnu and the Xianbei.
The 2nd century AD geographer Ptolemy mentioned a people called Χοῦνοι Khounoi, when listing the peoples of the west Eurasian steppe. (In the Koine Greek used by Ptolemy, Χ generally denoted a voiceless velar fricative sound; hence contemporary Western Roman authors Latinised the name as Chuni or Chunni.) The Khounoi lived "between the Bastarnae and the Roxolani", according to Ptolemy. However, modern scholars such as E. A. Thompson have claimed that the similarity of the ethnonyms Khounoi and Hun were coincidental. Maenchen-Helfen and Denis Sinor also dispute the association of the Khounoi with Attila's Huns. However, Maenchen-Helfen concedes that Ammianus Marcellinus referred to Ptolemy's report of the Khounoi, when stating that the Huns were "mentioned only cursorily" by previous writers.
A tribe called the Ουρουγούνδοι Ourougoúndoi (or Urugundi) who, according to Zosimus, invaded the Roman Empire from north of the Lower Danube in 250 AD, may have been synonymous with the Βουρουγουνδοι Bourougoundoi, whom Agathias (6th century) listed among the Hunnish tribes. Other scholars have regarded both names as referring to a Germanic tribe, the Burgundi (Burgundians), although this identification was rejected by Maenchen-Helfen (who speculated that one or both names may have approximated an early Turkic ethnonym, such as "Vurugundi").
It is sometimes claimed that the Roman historian Tacitus (c. 56 – c. 120 CE) had first mentioned the Huns in 91 CE. However, this is a misinterpretation that has arisen because the later historian Orosius (c. 375/385 – c. 420 CE) identified the contemporary Alans, Goths, and Huns with the Scythians whom Tacitus and Justin had already mentioned.
Early history
First conquests
The Huns' sudden appearance in the written sources suggests that the Huns crossed the Volga River from the east not much earlier. The reasons for the Huns' sudden attack on the neighboring peoples are unknown. One possible reason may have been climate change, as some Greco-Roman sources speculate on the drying up of pastureland further east. However, Peter Heather notes that in the absence of reliable data the climate change hypothesis is unprovable. As a second possibility, Heather suggests some other nomadic group may have pushed them westward. Peter Golden suggests that the Huns may have been pushed west by the Jou-jan. A third possibility may have been a desire to increase their wealth by coming closer to the wealthy Roman Empire.
The Romans became aware of the Huns when the latter's invasion of the Pontic steppes forced thousands of Goths to move to the Lower Danube to seek refuge in the Roman Empire in 376, according to the contemporaneous Ammianus Marcellinus. There are also some indications that the Huns were already raiding Transcaucasia in the 360s and 370s. These raids eventually forced the Eastern Roman Empire and Sasanian Empire to jointly defend the passes through the Caucasus mountains.
The Huns first invaded the land of the Alans, which was located to the east of the Don River, defeating them and forcing the survivors to submit themselves to them or to flee across the Don. Maenchen-Helfen believes that rather than a direct conquest, the Huns instead allied themselves with groups of Alans. Writing much later, the historian Jordanes mentioned that the Huns also conquered "the Alpidzuri, the Alcildzuri, Itimari, Tuncarsi, and Boisci" in a battle by the Maeotian Swamp. These were potentially Turkic-speaking nomadic tribes who are later mentioned living under the Huns along the Danube.
Jordanes claimed that the Huns at this time were led by a king Balamber. E. A. Thompson doubts that such a figure ever existed, but argues that "they were operating [...] with a much larger force than any one of their tribes could have put to the field". Hyun Jin Kim argues that Jordanes has invented Balamber on the basis of the 5th century figure Valamer. However, Maenchen-Helfen credits that Balamber was a historic king, and Denis Sinor suggests that "Balamber was merely the leader of a tribe or an ad hoc group of warriors".
After they subjugated the Alans, the Huns and their Alan auxiliaries started plundering the wealthy settlements of the Greuthungi, or eastern Goths, to the west of the Don. Maenchen-Helfen suggests that it was as a result of their new alliance with these Alans that the Huns were able to threaten the Goths. The Greuthungic king, Ermanaric, resisted for a while, but finally "he found release from his fears by taking his own life", according to Ammianus Marcellinus. Marcellinus's report refers either to Ermanaric's suicide or to his ritual sacrifice. His great-nephew, Vithimiris, succeeded him. According to Ammianus, Vithimiris hired Huns to fight against the Alans who invaded the Greuthungi's land, but he was killed in a battle. Kim suggests that Ammianus has muddled events: the Alans, fleeing the Huns, likely attacked the Goths, who then called upon the Huns for aid. The Huns, having dealt with the Alans, "probably then in Machiavellian fashion fell upon the weakened Greuthungi Goths and conquered them as well".
After Vithimiris's death, most Greuthungi submitted themselves to the Huns: they retained their own king, named Hunimund, whose name means "protégé of the Huns". Those who decided to resist marched to the Dniester River which was the border between the lands of the Greuthungi and the Thervingi, or western Goths. They were under the command of Alatheus and Saphrax, because Vithimiris's son, Viderichus, was a child. Athanaric, the leader of the Thervingi, met the refugees along the Dniester at the head of his troops. However, a Hun army bypassed the Goths and attacked them from the rear, forcing Athanaric to retreat towards the Carpathian Mountains. Athanaric wanted to fortify the borders, but Hun raids into the land west of the Dniester continued.
Most Thervingi realized that they could not resist the Huns. They went to the Lower Danube, requesting asylum in the Roman Empire. The still resisting Greuthingi under the leadership of Alatheus and Saphrax also marched to the river. Most Roman troops had been transferred from the Balkan Peninsula to fight against the Sassanid Empire in Armenia. Emperor Valens permitted the Thervingi to cross the Lower Danube and to settle in the Roman Empire in the autumn of 376. The Thervingi were followed by the Greuthingi, and also by the Taifali and "other tribes that formerly dwelt with the Goths and Taifali" to the north of the Lower Danube, according to Zosimus. Food shortage and abuse stirred the Goths to revolt in early 377. The ensuing war between the Goths and the Romans lasted for more than five years.
First encounters with Rome
During the Gothic War, the Goths appear to have allied with a group of Huns and Alans, who crossed the Danube and forced the Romans to allow the Goths to advance further into Thrace. The Huns are mentioned intermittently among their allies until 380, after which they apparently returned beyond the Danube. Additionally, in 381, the Sciri and Carpi, together with at least some Huns, launched an unsuccessful attack upon Pannonia. Once Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius I made peace with the Goths in 382, the historian Eunapius claims that he gave them land and cattle in order to form "an unconquerable bulwark against the inroads of the Huns." After this, the Huns are recorded to have launched a raid into Scythia Minor in 384 or 385. Soon afterwards, in 386, a group of Greuthungi under Odotheus fled the Huns into Thrace, followed by several attempts by the Sarmatians. This is the last serious migration into Roman territory until after the end of Hun rule, and Kim suggests that this indicates that the Huns were securely in control of the tribes beyond Rome at this time.
Otto Maenchen-Helfen and E. A. Thompson argue that the Huns appear to have already been in possession of large parts of Pannonia (the Hungarian plain) as early as 384. Denis Sinor suggests that they may have been settled there as foederati of the Romans rather than as invaders, dating their presence to 380. In 384, the Roman-Frankish general Flavius Bauto employed Hunnic mercenaries to defeat the Juthungi tribe attacking from Rhaetia. However, the Huns, rather than return to their own country, began to ride to Gaul: Bauto was forced to bribe them to turn back. They then attacked the Alamanni.
Pacatus Drepanius reports that the Huns then fought with Theodosius against the usurper Magnus Maximus in 388. In 392, however, the Huns were again involved in raids in the Balkans, together with various other tribes. Some of the Huns seem to have settled in Thrace, and these Huns were then used as auxiliaries by Theodosius in 394; Maenchen-Helfen argues that the Romans may have hoped to use the Huns against the Goths. Kim believes that these mercenaries were not really Huns, but rather non-Hunnic groups capitalizing on the Huns' fearsome reputation as warriors. These Huns were eventually wiped up by the Romans in 401 after they began plundering the territory.
First large scale attack on Rome and Persia
In 395 the Huns began their first large-scale attacks on the Romans. In the summer of that year, the Huns crossed over the Caucasus Mountains, while in the winter of 395, another Hunnic invasion force crossed the frozen Danube, pillaged Thrace, and threatened Dalmatia. Sinor argues that these two events were likely not coordinated, but Kim believes they were. The forces in Asia invaded Armenia, Persia, and the Roman provinces in Asia. One group crossed the Euphrates and was defeated by a Roman army, while two armies, recorded in later sources as under the leadership of Basich and Kursich, rode down the Euphrates and threatened the Persian capital of Ctesiphon. One of these armies was defeated by the Persians, while the other successfully retreated by Derbend Pass. A final group of Huns ravaged Asia Minor. The Huns devastated parts of Syria and Cappadocia, threatening Antioch. The devastation was worse because most Roman forces had been moved to the West due to Roman power struggles there. In 398 Eutropius finally succeeded in gathering an army and restoring order in the province. It seems likely, however, that the Huns left of their own accord without Eutropius having defeated them in battle.