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Hephthalite Empire
440s–670
Tamga of the Hephthalites
The Hephthalites (green), c. 500.
Status	Nomadic empire
Capital	Kunduz (Walwalij, Drapsaka, or Badian) Balkh (Pakhlo)
Common languages	Middle Bactrian[1] Gandhari (Gandhara) Sogdian (Sogdiana) Chorasmian Sanskrit Turkic[1]
Religion	Hinduism[2][3] Buddhism[2] Manichaeism[4] Zoroastrianism[5]
Historical era	Late Antiquity
• Established	440s
• Disestablished	670
Preceded by Succeeded by Kushan Empire Sassanid Empire Gupta Empire Kangju Kidarites Alchon Huns Nezak Huns Kabul Shahi Göktürk Empire Zunbils Principality of Chaghaniyan

The Hephthalites (or Ephthalites) were a people of Central Asia who were militarily important circa 450–560. They were based in Bactria and expanded east to the Tarim Basin, west to Sogdia and south through Afghanistan to northern India. They were a tribal confederation and included both nomadic and settled urban communities. They were part of the four major states known collectively as Xyon (Xionites) or Huna, being preceded by the Kidarites, and succeeded by the Alkhon and lastly the Nezak. All of these peoples have often been linked to the Huns who invaded Eastern Europe during the same period, and/or have been referred to as "Huns", but there is no consensus among scholars about such a connection, if they actually existed.

The Sveta Huna who invaded northern India are probably the Hephthalites, but the exact relation is not clear.

The stronghold of the Hephthalites was Tokharistan on the northern slopes of the Hindu Kush, in what is present-day northeastern Afghanistan. By 479, the Hephthalites had conquered Sogdia and driven the Kidarites westwards, and by 493 they had captured parts of present-day Dzungaria and the Tarim Basin in what is now Northwest China. They expanded into northwestern India as well.^[6]

The sources for Hepthalite history are poor and historians' opinions differ. There is no king-list and historians are not sure how they arose or what language they spoke.

They seem to have called themselves Ebodalo (ηβοδαλο, hence Hephthal), often abbreviated Eb (ηβ), a name they wrote in the Bactrian script on some of their coins.^[7][8][9] The origin of the name "Hephthalites" is unknown, possibly from either a Khotanese word *Hitala meaning "Strong" or from postulated Middle Persian *haft āl "the Seven".^[4]

Territory

Hephthalites chieftain circa 484–560.^[10]

The Hephthalites formed in Bactria around 450, or sometime before.^[6] In 442 their tribes were fighting the Persians. Around 451 they pushed southeast to Gandhara. In 456 a Hephthalite embassy arrived in China. By 458 they were strong enough to intervene in Persia.

Around 466 they probably took Transoxianan lands from the Kidarites with Persian help but soon took from Persia the area of Balkh and eastern Kushanshahr.

In the second half of the fifth century they controlled the deserts of Turkmenistan as far as the Caspian Sea and possibly Merv.^[11]

By 500 they held the whole of Bactria and the Pamirs and parts of Afghanistan.

Probably in the late fifth century they took the western Tarim Basin (Kashgar and Khotan) and in 479 they took the east end (Turfan). In 497–509, they pushed north of Turfan to the Urumchi region. In 509 they took 'Sughd' (the capital of Sogdiana).

Around 565 their empire was destroyed by an alliance of the Göktürks and the Sasanians, but some of them remained as local rulers in the Afghan region for the next 150 years.

History

5th century: conflicts and alliances with the Sasanians

Hephthalite king wearing the crown of Sasanian Emperor Peroz I.^[12] Late 5th century CE.^[13]

Hephthalite coin with Sasanian-style bust imitating Khavadh I, whom the Hephthalites had helped to the Sasanian throne. Late 5th century CE.

The most reliable information comes from Persian sources: from 442, Yazdegerd II (435–457) fought 'tribes of the Hephthalites’, according to the Armenian Elisee Vardaped. In 453, Yazdegerd moved his court east to deal with the Hephthalites or related groups.

Support of Peroz I, then war

In 458, a Hephthalite king called Khushnavaz helped Sasanian Emperor Peroz I (458–484) gain the Persian throne from his brother.^[14] The Hephthalites may have also helped the Sasanians eliminate another Hunnic tribe, the Kidarites: by 467, Peroz I, with Hephthalite aid, reportedly managed to capture Balaam and put an end to Kidarite rule in Transoxiana once and for all.^[15] The Kidarites, weakened, had to take refuge in the area of Gandhara.

Later however, Peroz I fought three wars with his former allies the Hephthalites. In the first two he was captured and ransomed himself.^[12] In the third, at the Battle of Herat (484), he was killed, and for the next two years the Hephthalites plundered parts of Persia.^[14]

With the Sasanian Empire paying tribute to the Hephthalites, from 474, the Hephthalites themselves adopted the winged, triple-crescent crown of Peroz I to crown their effigy in their own coinage.^[12] They thus expressed symbolically that they had become the legitimate rulers of Iran.^[12]

Support of Kavadh I

From 484 until the middle of the sixth century, Persia paid tribute to the Hephthalites. In 488, Kavadh I (488–496, 498–531) made himself king of Persia with Hephthalite help. (He overthrew his uncle, the brother of Peroz). In 496–498, he was overthrown by the nobles and clergy, escaped and restored himself with a Hephthalite army. Hephthalite troops helped Kavadh at a siege of Edessa.^[14]

6th century and later

The "Hephthalite bowl", NFP Pakistan, 460–479 CE. British Museum.^[16][17]

The period c. 498–555 is almost blank in the standard English sources. In 552, the Göktürks took over Mongolia, and by 558 reached the Volga. By 581 or before, the western part separated and became the Western Turkic Khaganate.

Circa 555–567,^[18] the Turks and the Persians allied against the Hephthalites and defeated them after an eight-day battle near Qarshi, the Battle of Bukhara, perhaps in 557.^[19] The allies then fought each other and c. 571 drew a border along the Oxus. After the battle, the Hephthalites withdrew to Bactria and replaced king Gatfar with Faganish, the ruler of Chaghaniyan. What happened in the Tarim Basin is not clear.

Invasion of the Sasanid Empire (7th century)

A Hephthalite coin imitating the coinage of Khosrow II. Obverse: Hephthalite signature in Sogdian to the left and Tamgha symbol to the right. Susa mint. 7th century.^[20]

Circa 600, the Hephthalites were raiding the Sasanian Empire as far as Spahan in central Iran. The Hephthalites issued numerous coins imitating the coinage of Khosrow II, adding on the obverse a Hephthalite signature in Sogdian and Tamgha symbol. In ca. 606/607, Khosrow recalled Smbat IV Bagratuni from Persian Armenia and sent him to Iran to repel the Hephthalites. Smbat, with the aid of a Persian prince named Datoyean, repelled the Hephthalites from Persia, and plundered their domains in eastern Khorasan, where Smbat is said to have killed their king in single combat.^[21] Khosrow then gave Smbat the honorific title Khosrow Shun ("the Joy or Satisfaction of Khosrow"),^[21] while his son Varaztirots II Bagratuni received the honorific name Javitean Khosrow ("Eternal Khosrow").^[21]

Small Hephthalite states remained, paying tribute either to the Turks or the Persians. They are reported in the Zarafshan valley, Chaghaniyan, Khuttal, Termez, Balkh, Badghis, Herat and Kabul.^[22] Circa 651, during the Arab conquest, the ruler of Badghis was involved in the fall of the last Sassanian Shah Yazdegerd III. Circa 705, the Hephthalite rulers of Badghis and Chaghaniyan surrendered to the Arabs under Qutaiba ibn Muslim.

Ethnonyms

Coin of the Hephthalites circa 350 CE, possibly from Bactria, imitating a coin of Shapur I.

The name Hephthalites originated with Ancient Greek sources, which also referred to them as Ephthalite, Abdel or Avdel.

To the Armenians, the Hephthalites were Haital, to the Persians and Arabs, they were Haytal or Hayatila (هياطلة), while their Bactrian name was Ebodalo (ηβοδαλο).^[4]

In Chinese chronicles, the Hephthalites are usually called Ye-ta-i-li-to (or Yediyiliduo), or the more usual modern and abbreviated form Yada (嚈噠 Yàdā). The latter name has been given various Latinised renderings, including Yeda, Ye-ta, Ye-Tha; Ye-dā and Yanda. The corresponding Cantonese and Korean names Yipdaat and Yeoptal (Korean: 엽달), which preserve aspects of the Middle Chinese pronunciation (roughly yep-daht, [ʔjɛpdɑt]) better than the modern Mandarin pronunciation, are more consistent with the Greek Hephthalite. Some Chinese chroniclers suggest that the root Hephtha- (as in Ye-ta-i-li-to or Yada) was technically a title equivalent to "emperor", while Hua was the name of the dominant tribe.^[23]

In Ancient India, names such as Hephthalite were unknown. The Hephthalites were apparently part of, or offshoots of, people known in India as Hunas or Turushkas,^[24] although these names may have referred to broader groups or neighbouring peoples.

Ethnicity

Hephthalites chieftain late 5th century.^[25]

There are several theories regarding the origins of the White Huns, with the Iranian^{[26][27][28][29]} and Turkic^[30][31] theories being the most prominent.

According to most specialist scholars, the spoken language of the Hephthalites was an Eastern Iranian language, but different from the Bactrian language written in the Greek alphabet that was used as their "official language" and minted on coins, as was done under the preceding Kushan Empire.^[32][33][34]

According to Xavier Tremblay, one of the Hephthalite rulers was named "Khingila", which has the same root as the Sogdian word xnγr and the Wakhi word xiŋgār, meaning "sword". The name Mihirakula is thought to be derived from mithra-kula which is Iranian for "the Sun family", with kula having the same root as Pashto kul, "family". Toramāna, Mihirakula's father, is also considered to have an Iranian origin. In Sanskrit, mihira-kula would mean the kul "family" of mihira "Sun", although mihira is not purely Sanskrit but is a borrowing from Middle Iranian mihr.^[35] Janos Harmatta gives the translation "Mithra's Begotten" and also supports the Iranian theory.^[36]

Hephthalite king wearing the crown of Sasanian Emperor Peroz I.^[12] Late 5th century CE.^[13]

For many years, however, scholars suggested that they were of Turkic stock.^[31] Some have claimed that some groups amongst the Hephthalites were Turkic-speakers.^[30] Today the Hephthalites are generally held to have been an Eastern Iranian people speaking an East Iranian language.^[37] The Hephthalites inscribed their coins in the Bactrian (Iranian) script,^[38] held Iranian titles,^[38] the names of Hephthalite rulers given in Ferdowsi's Shahnameh are Iranian,^[38] and gem inscriptions and other evidence shows that the official language of the Hephthalite elite was East Iranian.^[38] In 1959, Kazuo Enoki proposed that the Hephthalites were probably Indo-European (East) Iranians as some sources indicated that they were originally from Bactria, which is known to have been inhabited by Indo-Iranian people in antiquity.^[32] Richard Frye is cautiously accepting of Enoki's hypothesis, while at the same time stressing that the Hephthalites "were probably a mixed horde".^[39] More recently Xavier Tremblay's detailed examination of surviving Hephthalite personal names has indicated that Enoki's hypothesis that they were East Iranian may well be correct, but the matter remains unresolved in academic circles.^[33]

Asia in 500, showing the Hephthalite Khanate at its greatest extent.

According to the Encyclopaedia Iranica and Encyclopaedia of Islam, the Hephthalites possibly originated in what is today Afghanistan.^[40][41] They apparently had no direct connection with the European Huns, but may have been causally related with their movement. The tribes in question deliberately called themselves "Huns" in order to frighten their enemies.^[42]

Some White Huns may have been a prominent tribe or clan of the Chionites. According to Richard Nelson Frye:

Just as later nomadic empires were confederations of many peoples, we may tentatively propose that the ruling groups of these invaders were, or at least included, Turkic-speaking tribesmen from the east and north. Although most probably the bulk of the people in the confederation of Chionites and then Hephhtalites spoke an Iranian language... this was the last time in the history of Central Asia that Iranian-speaking nomads played any role; hereafter all nomads would speak Turkic languages.^[43]

Hephthalite horseman on British Museum bowl, 460–479 CE.^[17]

The 6th-century Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea (Book I. ch. 3), related them to the Huns in Europe:

The Ephthalitae Huns, who are called White Huns [...] The Ephthalitae are of the stock of the Huns in fact as well as in name, however they do not mingle with any of the Huns known to us, for they occupy a land neither adjoining nor even very near to them; but their territory lies immediately to the north of Persia [...] They are not nomads like the other Hunnic peoples, but for a long period have been established in a goodly land... They are the only ones among the Huns who have white bodies and countenances which are not ugly. It is also true that their manner of living is unlike that of their kinsmen, nor do they live a savage life as they do; but they are ruled by one king, and since they possess a lawful constitution, they observe right and justice in their dealings both with one another and with their neighbours, in no degree less than the Romans and the Persians^[44]

As an illustration of how little we know of the Hephthalites, Kurbanov^[45] surveyed the literature and found these opinions: They were named after a king Eftalan or Hephtal. They lived in the Eftali valley (location not given). They called themselves War or Jabula or Alkhon. They were a political rather than ethnic unit. They, the Xionites and Kidarites were the same people or three different peoples. They were the ruling class of the Xionites. They were not Xionites. They were not the White Huns. They were natives of Bactria, or the Pamirs, or the Kundu Kush. They began as the Hua who were subjects of the Rouran in the Turfan area. They were a branch of the Yuezhi in the Altai area who merged with the Dinglings, defeated the Yueban and moved south. They arose near the Aral Sea from a fusion of Massagetae and Alans and moved southeast under the name of Xionites. They were partly Tibetan or Mongol or Tokharian or Huns who returned east after the fall of Attila. Kurbanov gives a few other theories and makes no attempt to reconcile them.

Origins

Ancient Chinese chroniclers, as well as Procopius, wrote various theories about the origins of the people:

• They were descendants of the Yuezhi or Tocharian tribes who remained behind after the rest of the people fled the Xiongnu;


• They were descendants of the Kangju;


• They were a branch of the Tiele; or


• They were a branch of the Uar.

Older Chinese sources (c. 125) refer to them as Hua (滑 Huá) or Hudun, and describe the Hephthalites as a tribe living beyond the Great Wall, in Dzungaria.^[46] Chinese chronicles state that they were originally a tribe of the Yuezhi, living to the north of the Great Wall, and subject to the Rouran (Jwen-Jwen), as were some Turkic peoples at the time. Their original name was Hoa or Hoa-tun; subsequently they named themselves Ye-tha-i-li-to (厌带夷栗陁, or more briefly Ye-tha 嚈噠),^[47] after their royal family, which descended from one of the five Yuezhi families which also included the Kushan.

The Hephthalite was a vassal state to the Rouran Khaganate until the beginning of the 5th century.^[48] Between Hephthalites and Rourans were also close contacts, although they had different languages and cultures, and Hephthalites borrowed much of their political organization from Rourans.^[4] In particular, the title "Khan", which according to McGovern was original to the Rourans, was borrowed by the Hephthalite rulers.^[4] The reason for the migration of the Hephthalites southeast was to avoid a pressure of the Rourans. Further, the Hephthalites defeated the Yuezhi in Bactria and their leader Kidara led the Yuezhi to the south.^[4]

Religion and culture

They were said to practice Polyandry and Artificial cranial deformation. Chinese sources said they worshiped 'foreign gods', 'demons', the 'heaven god' or the 'fire god'. The Gokturks told the Byzantines that they had walled cities. Some Chinese sources said that they had no cities and lived in tents. Litvinsky tries to resolve this by saying that they were nomads who moved into the cities they had conquered. There were some government officials but central control was weak and local dynasties paid tribute.^[49]

According to Song Yun, the Chinese Buddhist monk who visited the Hephthalite territory in 540 and "provides accurate accounts of the people, their clothing, the empresses and court procedures and traditions of the people and he states the Hephthalites did not recognize the Buddhist religion and they preached pseudo gods, and killed animals for their meat."^[2] It is reported that some Hephthalites often destroyed Buddhist monasteries but these were rebuilt by others. According to Xuanzang, the third Chinese pilgrim who visited the same areas as Song Yun about 100 years later, the capital of Chaghaniyan had five monasteries.^[38]

According to historian André Wink, "...in the Hephthalite dominion Buddhism was predominant but there was also a religious sediment of Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism."^[5]Balkh had some 100 Buddhist monasteries and 30,000 monks. Outside the town was a large Buddhist monastery, later known as Naubahar.^[38]

White Huns in Southern Central Asia

Hephthalite successor kingdoms in 600.

It is not clear whether the people called Sveta Huna (White Huns) in Sanskrit were the Hephthalites or a related people, the Xionites. In the northwest of the Indian subcontinent, the Hephthalites were not distinguished from their immediate Chionite predecessors; both are known as Huna (Sanskrit: Sveta-Hūna, White Huns). In Ancient India, names such as Hephthalite were unknown. The Hephthalites were apparently part of, or offshoots of, people known in India as Hunas or Turushkas.^[24]

Historians such as Beckwith, referring to Étienne de la Vaissière, say that the Hephthalites were not necessarily one and the same as the White Huns (Sveta Huna).^[50] According to de la Vaissiere, the Hephthalites are not directly identified in classical sources alongside that of the White Huns.^[51]

The Huna had already established themselves in Afghanistan and the modern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa of Pakistan by the first half of the 5th century, and the Gupta emperor Skandagupta had repelled a Hūna invasion in 455 before the Hephthalite clan came along. These attacks on the Guptas were therefore probably made by the predecessors of the Hephthalites, the Kidarites.

India was invaded during the 5th century by a people known in the Indian Subcontinent as the Hunas – including the Alchon Huns and possibly an alliance broader than the Hephthalites and/or Xionites. The Hunas were initially defeated by Emperor Skandagupta of the Gupta Empire.^[52] By the end of the 5th century, however, the Hunas had overrun the part of the Gupta Empire that was to their southeast and had conquered Central and North India.^[4] Gupta Emperor Bhanugupta defeated the Hunas under Toramana in 510.^[53][54] The Hunas were driven out of India by the kings Yasodharman and Narasimhagupta, during the early 6th century.^[55][56]

The Hephthalites had their capital at Badian, modern Kunduz, but the emperor lived in the capital city for just three winter months, and for the rest of the year, the government seat would move from one locality to another like a camp.^[4] The Hephthalites continued the pressure on ancient India's northwest frontier and broke east by the end of the 5th century, hastening the disintegration of the Gupta Empire. They made their capital at the city of Sakala, modern Sialkot in Pakistan, under their Emperor Mihirakula.
But later the Huns were defeated and driven out of India by the Indian kings Yasodharman and Narasimhagupta in the 6th century.

Possible descendants

A number of groups in Afghanistan and India may be partly descended from the Hephthalites.^[57]

• Karluks: The 'Karluks' or Qarlughids reported from near Ghazni in the thirteenth century may have arisen from the Hephthalites. Others say they were Khalachs, the names being similar in Arabic.


• Khalachs: The Khalachs or Khalaj people are first mentioned in the 7th–9th centuries in the area of Kabul and Ghazni. They spoke Turkic, possibly arose from the Hephthalites and later probably merged into the Ghilzai Pashtuns. Their descendents may have founded the Khalji dynasty (1290) and the Lodi dynasty (1451) of the Delhi Sultanate.


• Abdal is a name associated with the Hephthalites. It is an alternate name for the Äynu people of the Tarim Basin and appears as a sub-tribe of the Chowdur Turkmen, Kazakhs and Volga Bulgars.


• Duranni: The Durrani of Afghanistan were called Abdali before 1747.


• Rajputs: The Rajputs may have begun as assimilation of Hephthalites in Indian society.

The Pashtuns began as a union of largely East-Iranian tribes which became the initial ethnic stratum of the Pashtun ethnogenesis, dates from the middle of the first millennium CE and is connected with the dissolution of the Epthalite (White Huns) confederacy. ... Of the contribution of the Epthalites (White Huns) to the ethnogenesis of the Pashtuns we find evidence in the ethnonym of the largest of the Pashtun tribe unions, the Abdali (Durrani after 1747) associated with the ethnic name of the Epthalites — Abdal. The Siah-posh, the Kafirs (Nuristanis) of the Hindu Kush, called all Pashtuns by a general name of Abdal still at the beginning of the 19th century.^[58]

See also

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• Huna people


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  Kidarites (Red Huns)


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References

Sources

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Hephthalites.

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Ephthalites.

• "The Ethnonym Apar in the Turkish Inscriptions of the VIII. Century and Armenian Manuscripts" Dr. Mehmet Tezcan.


• 
  The Anthropology of Yanda (Chinese) pdf


• The Silkroad Foundation


• Columbia Encyclopedia: Hephthalites


• Hephthalite coins


• 
  Hephthalite History and Coins of the Kashmir Smast Kingdom- Waleed Ziad at the Wayback Machine (archived 27 October 2009)


• 
  The Hephthalites of Central Asia – by Richard Heli (long article with a timeline)


• 
  The Hephthalites at the Wayback Machine (archived 9 February 2005) Article archived from the University of Washington's Silk Road exhibition – has a slightly adapted form of the Richard Heli timeline.


• 
  (pdf) The Ethnonym Apar in the Turkish Inscriptions of the VIII. Century and Armenian Manuscripts – Mehmet Tezcan


• iranicaonline hephthalites