Iranian Huns

The term Iranian Huns is sometimes used for a group of different tribes that lived in Central Asia, in the historical regions of Transoxiana, Bactria, Tokharistan, Kabul Valley, and Gandhara, overlapping with the modern-day Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Eastern Iran, Pakistan, and Northwest India, between the fourth and seventh centuries.

[1] They also threatened the Northeast borders of Sasanian Iran and forced the Shahs to lead many ill-documented campaigns against them.

[5] Göbl describes four groups: Kidarites, Alchons, Nezaks, and Hephthalites as the Iranian Huns based on numismatic evidence available at his time.

[citation needed] In the fourth century various central Asian tribes began to attack the Persian Sasanian Empire.

It is probable that they were not related to the Huns who appeared on the south Russian steppe about 375 and attacked the Roman Empire.

[citation needed] The Xionites were not included in Robert Göbl's classification because they left no coinage.

Later they allied with the Persians, participated in the Roman-Persian War and joined in the Siege of Amida (359) under their king Grumbates.

Göbl's first group were the Kidarites who near the end of the fourth century were involved in the aftermath of the fall of the Kushan Empire (after 225, see Kushano-Sasanian Kingdom).

Recent research has the Kidarites as a clan of the Xionites, or somehow derived from them so that the two groups cannot be strictly distinguished.

By this time the Hephthalites had established themselves in Bactria and the Alkhons had driven the Kidarites out of the land south of the Hindu Kush.

In the early sixth century they expanded from Gandhara to northwest India and practically destroyed the rule of the Guptas, whose coins they imitated.

This claim of an Alkhon invasion is based entirely on coin-finds since Indian sources call all of the northern invaders 'Hunas', including perhaps the Hephthalites.

It seems that returning Alkhon groups met the Nizaks and produced an Alkhon-Nizak mixed language.

Their remnants south of the Hindu Kush seem to have been destroyed by the Arab conquest in the late seventh century.

The few reports of Greco-Roman authors, who often had little knowledge of events so far east, made little distinction between the different groups and it seems more probable that they referred to other Iranian Huns who arrived before the Hephthalites proper.

To the end of the fifth century they had spread from eastern Tocharistan (Bactria) and brought several neighboring areas under control.

Syrian and Armenian sources report repeated Sassanid attempts to secure their northeast border which led to disaster for Peroz I who had previously defeated the Kidarites.

According to Procopius they had an effective ruling system with a king at the top and, at least after the conquest of Bactria and Sogdia, were no longer nomads.

Hephthalite remnants lasted until the Arab conquest in the late seventh and early eighth centuries.