Modun becomes chanyu
-209
Modun overthrew his father Touman, unified the steppe tribes, recovered the Ordos and subjugated the settled peoples of the Tarim Basin, founding the Xiongnu Empire.
209 BC – 93 AD
Xiongnu Empire · Хүннү гүрэн
In 209 BC Modun chanyu united the steppe tribes into the first recorded nomadic empire. The Xiongnu controlled the whole Mongolian plateau, the Ordos in the south and the Tarim Basin in the west, and established the classic institutions of steppe statehood, including decimal military organization.
Whether the Xiongnu were Mongolic is unresolved: linguistic hypotheses range from Yeniseian to Iranian to Turkic (Di Cosmo 2011). This site presents the Xiongnu as the first steppe empire on the territory of Mongolia while showing the continuity debate openly.
This period has a page and its sources; the scroll-through chapter is not written yet.
Events
Siege of Baideng
-200
Modun encircled the Han founding emperor Gaozu at Baideng. The Han bought peace afterwards through the heqin tribute-and-marriage treaties.
The long Han–Xiongnu war begins
-133
Emperor Wu of Han abandoned the heqin policy, beginning the generations-long Han–Xiongnu war.
North–south split
-53
After a succession civil war, Huhanye chanyu submitted to the Han in 53 BC; the Xiongnu split into northern and southern halves.
Fall of the Northern Xiongnu
89–93 AD · the sources disagree about this
In 89 the Han general Dou Xian, with Southern Xiongnu and Qiang auxiliaries, crushed the Northern Xiongnu at Mount Jiluo; the victory inscription he left on Mount Yanran, at Inil Khad in Dundgovi, was identified in 2017. After Geng Kui's victory in the Altai in 91 the northern chanyu fled west, and the Han-installed successor was killed in 93. The Xianbei took over the steppe.
Atwood dates the end to 91 CE; other scholarship uses 93 or 98 CE.
People
- Modun chanyu r. 209–174 BC — Founding ruler
- Touman chanyu — First known chanyu, Modun's father
- Huhanye chanyu d. 31 BC — Southern chanyu who submitted to the Han
Sources
- Atwood, C. P., Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire (2004), s.v. XIONGNU, MODUN.
- Yü, Ying-shih, “The Hsiung-nu”, in Sinor (ed.), The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (1990), pp. 118–150.
- Honeychurch, W., “Inner Asian States and Empires” (J. Archaeological Research, 2012): territory ~4M km², decimal organization.
- Di Cosmo, N., “Ethnogenesis, Coevolution and Political Morphology of the Earliest Steppe Empire” (2011): continuity debate.
- Taagepera, R., “Expansion and Contraction Patterns of Large Polities” (ISQ 41, 1997): peak ~9M km² c. 180 BC.
- Cliopatria: a geospatial database of world-wide political entities from 3400 BCE to 2024 CE (Scientific Data, 2025): the polygons were traced from hand-coloured raster maps, which is why the water is cut out of them.
- Давыдова А. В., «Иволгинский комплекс (городище и могильник) — памятник хунну в Забайкалье» (Л.: ЛГУ, 1985): the northernmost Xiongnu site of any kind, at 51.75°N on the Selenga.
- Харинский А. В., «Елгинские захоронения Прибайкалья», Известия Лаборатории древних технологий (2014): the western and northern shores of Baikal are Elga culture in this period, with Xiongnu goods in local graves and no Xiongnu burials.