The Barbarians - full documentary: The Huns and the story of Attila the Hun

Huns in battle with the Alans. An 1870s engraving after a drawing by Johann Nepomuk Geiger (1805–1880).

They were the dreaded forces on the fringes of civilization, the bloodthirsty warriors who defied the Roman legions and terrorized the people of Europe. They were the Barbarians, and their names still evoke images of cruelty and chaos. Amongst them, the Huns, the mysterious warriors who were led by man whose name remains synonymous with bloodshed and destruction: Attila. 

The Huns were anomadic group of people known to have inhabited Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia between the 1st century AD and the 7th century. They were first reported living east of the Volga River, in an area that was part of Scythia at the time; the Huns' arrival is associated with the migration westward of a Scythian people, the Alans. They were first mentioned as Hunnoi by Tacitus. In 91 AD, the Huns were said to be living near the Caspian Sea and by about 150 AD had migrated southeast into the Caucasus. By 370 AD, the Huns had established a vast, if short-lived, dominion in Europe.

In the 18th century, the French scholar Joseph de Guignes became the first to propose a link between the Huns and the Xiongnu people, who were northern neighbours of China in the 3rd century BC. Since Guignes' time, considerable scholarly effort has been devoted to investigating such a connection. However, there is no scholarly consensus on a direct connection between the dominant element of the Xiongnu and that of the Huns. Priscus mentions that the Huns had a language of their own; little of it has survived and its relationships have been the subject of debate for centuries. Numerous other languages were spoken within the Hun Empire, including Gothic (East Germanic). Their main military technique was mounted archery.

The Huns may have stimulated the Great Migration, a contributing factor in the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. They formed a unified empire under Attila the Hun, who died in 453 AD; their empire broke up the next year. Their descendants, or successors with similar names, are recorded by neighbouring populations to the south, east and west as having occupied parts of Eastern Europe and Central Asia approximately from the 4th century to the 6th century. Variants of the Hun name are recorded in the Caucasus until the early 8th century.

Credits to Wikipedia.