East Asia · Confederacies, Han and the steppe
Southern Xiongnu
drawn on the map AD 51–105
The Southern Xiongnu emerged c. 48 CE when the chanyu Bi submitted to the Eastern Han, settling along the northern frontier (Ordos, Shanxi) as Han allies and border guards. Over centuries they sinicized while retaining tribal structures.
- Shown on the map
- AD 51–105
- Peak area
- 188k km²
- Region
- East Asia
Overview
The Southern Xiongnu emerged c. 48 CE when the chanyu Bi submitted to the Eastern Han, settling along the northern frontier (Ordos, Shanxi) as Han allies and border guards. Over centuries they sinicized while retaining tribal structures. In 304 CE their descendant Liu Yuan proclaimed the Han-Zhao state, opening the "Uprising of the Five Barbarians" and the Sixteen Kingdoms period.
Common questions
- What was Southern Xiongnu?
- The Southern Xiongnu emerged c. 48 CE when the chanyu Bi submitted to the Eastern Han, settling along the northern frontier (Ordos, Shanxi) as Han allies and border guards. Over centuries they sinicized while retaining tribal structures.
- When is Southern Xiongnu shown on the map?
- The border data draws Southern Xiongnu AD 51–105. The source samples borders at fixed dates, so a span can begin late or run on past the end.
- How large was Southern Xiongnu?
- At its greatest extent drawn on this map, Southern Xiongnu covered about 188,000 km². That is the largest area the border data gives it across the years it is drawn, not necessarily its greatest extent in history.
Sources
This compendium cites its sources once for the whole document rather than per territory. Its bibliography names the English Wikipedia article for each polity as the basis of these profiles, supplemented by Encyclopaedia Britannica, chinaknowledge.de, the World History Encyclopedia, museum and university sources, and the academic works it lists. The article this entry is anchored on:
- Wikipedia — Xiongnu en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiongnu
This entry was last updated .
This entry was researched and drafted with AI from the sources above, and has not been reviewed by a historian. How entries are made
Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0: reuse it with a credit to The World Through Time and a link to this page. Passages drawing on the Wikipedia articles listed above are also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by their contributors.
Border geometry for the map itself comes from Cliopatria v0.12 (Seshat Global History Databank, CC-BY-4.0).
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