Xionites

Xionites, Chionites, or Chionitae (Middle Persian: Xiyōn or Hiyōn; Avestan: X́iiaona-; Sogdian xwn; Pahlavi Xyōn) were a nomadic people in the Central Asian regions of Transoxiana and Bactria.

[1] The Xionites appear to be synonymous with the Huna peoples of the South Asian regions of classical/medieval India,[2] and possibly also the Huns of European late antiquity, who were in turn connected onomastically to the Xiongnu in Chinese history.

[4] Ammianus indicates that the Xionites had previously lived in Transoxiana and, after entering Bactria, became vassals of the Kushans, were influenced culturally by them and had adopted the Bactrian language.

They had attacked the Sassanid Empire,[1][5] but later (led by a chief named Grumbates), served as mercenaries in the Persian Sassanian army.

The prefixes karmir ("red") and speta ("white") likely refer to Central Asian traditions in which particular colours symbolised the cardinal points.

The Spet Xyon or "White Huns" appear to have been the known in South Asia by the cognate name Sveta-huna, and are often identified, controversially, with the Hephthalites.

[1] In 2005, As-Shahbazi suggested that they were originally a Hunnish people who had mixed with Iranian tribes in Transoxiana and Bactria, where they adopted the Kushan-Bactrian language.

Xionite tribes reportedly organised themselves into four main hordes: "Black" or northern (beyond the Jaxartes), "Blue" or eastern (in Tianshan), "White" or western (possibly the Hephthalites), around Khiva, and the "Red" or southern (Kidarites and/or Alchon), south of the Oxus.

[10] A special type of coinage has been attributed to them, where they appear in portraits as diademed kings, facing right, with a tamgha in the shape of an X, and a circular Sogdian legend.

[13] Early confrontations between the Sasanian Empire of Shapur II with the Xionites were described by Ammianus Marcellinus: he reports that in 356 CE, Shapur II was taking his winter quarters on his eastern borders, "repelling the hostilities of the bordering tribes" of the Xionites and the Euseni, a name often amended to Cuseni (meaning the Kushans).

Although the power of the Huna in Bactria was shattered in the 560s by a combination of Sassanid and Turkic forces, the last Hephthalite king Narana/Narendra managed to maintain some kind of rule between 570 and 600 AD over the nspk, napki or Nezak tribes that remained.