Did the Mongols have any knowledge of Attila or the Huns and their origins?

by Al_Mamluk

I've read the theory that the Huns may have been descended from the Xiongnu peoples of Ancient China and Central and Inner Asia. Historically, the Xiongnu are often considered to be a major ancestor or cousins of the Mongols.

To that end, did the Mongols have any knowledge of the Huns and Attila? Who they were and their campaigns in Europe? And did the Mongols have any theories on the origins of the Huns? Did they see the Huns ancestral kin and did they have any opinions on the Huns and Attila and how they fit into the Mongols' own narrative of destiny and conquest?

y_sengaku

Tl;dr: I'd say it is simply extremely unlikely.

  • This imagined apparent parallel between the Huns and the Mongols (as both rushed from the steppes into Europe) is almost entirely post-medieval (especially after the 18th century) and geographically very European.
  • AFAIK There is no written sources that connect either the Mongols with the Huns or Genghis (Chinggis) Khan with Attila in the Middle Ages (in terms of European ones).
  • Recent studies tend to comment negatively on OP's premise of the relationship between the two steppes groups, i.e. the Xiongnu in Ancient China/ Mongolia and the Huns in Central Europe. While we don't know the exact origin of the former, a recent isotopic analysis also demonstrates a considerable diverse origin of the peoples in the 5th century Pannonia under the 'Hun Empire' (Hakenback et al. 2017).

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As for the afterlife/ reputation of Attila:

  • Escher & Lebedynsky remarks: 'We should keep the following facts in mind that Attila had been born in Central Europe and stayed there in his entire life, the core area of his political hegemony was located neither in now Kazakhstan nor in Siberia, but in now Hungary, and further that the Huns was then being in the course of adapting more sedentary lifestyle. The majority of the population of the 'Hun Empire' were of Germanic origin, and its elite culture was characterized by the mixture of the distinct Huns, steppes Iranian ones, possibly Persian-Iranian ones, and also Germanic and even Roman Elements'.
  • Medieval 'afterlife' of Attila was entirely confined to European, especially Northern ones, such as in Hungary (Eastern Europe), German and Icelandic traditions. Some people might also find possible, indirect trace also in the royal genealogy of the Bulgars, only extant in later manuscripts: Names of two mythical founders of their royal house resemble Attila and his youngest son respectively, though the founder was said to reign 300 years over his people (in contrast to Attila's ca. 20 years).
  • In contrast to Alexander the Great, Attila is not mentioned in neither Arab nor Persian historical writings and played no role in them accordingly.

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On the other hand, as for the Mongols:

  • Secret History of the Mongols, whose composition in written form is customarily dated to the 13th century (the middle of the 13th century, Cf. Jackson 2017: 15) is generally regarded as the origin myth of different peoples that later merged into the Mongols as well as the ancestor of their leader, Genghis (Chinggis) Khan himself, but their scope is geographically confined within Mongolia.
  • Even in Inner Mongolia, Turkic Khaganate established the political hegemony in more than 150 years under the Ashina dynasty (from late 6th to the early 8th centuries), and then Uyghur Khaganate followed. If Genghis (Chinggis) sought some role-model for his dominion, why didn't he check this much more successful precedent in his land rather than one-generation ruler who ruled only shortly in the far distant land in Europe? Neither played their memory any role in Secret History.
  • [Added]: Actually, another, more comprehensive historical writing on the Mongols by a Persian Rashid al-Din Hamadani (d. 1318) under the Ilkhanate, Jami'al-tawari ('Compendium of Chronicles'), associates the Mongols not with the Huns, but the Turkic people like Turkic Khaganate (here 'the Turks' might be a concept of denoting the nomadic people in general, though) in which a mythical hero called Oghuz had played an important role of uniting the whole Turkic people, and the Mongols were a branch of these different groups of the people. If we accept the hypothesis that this origin myth had also originally belong to the Mongols, this Oghuz, not Attlila, might be a kind of role-model of Genghis (Chinggis) Khan. Scholars don't seem to reach an agreement on how to interpret the historical implication of this origin myth, though: To give an example, a recent study ([Uno 2002]) argues that this legend reflects rather the contemporary Islamization of the Ilkhanate and the need to integrate various groups of nomadic people under the leadership of khan than the possible original legend. He also clearly says that this tradition had not originally related to the Mongols (Uno 2002: 65).

References:

  • Rachewiltz, Igor de, "The Secret History of the Mongols: A Mongolian Epic Chronicle of the Thirteenth Century" (2015). Shorter version edited by John C. Street, University of Wisconsin―Madison. Books and Monographs. Book 4. http://cedar.wwu.edu/cedarbooks/4

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(Edited): fixes typos.