Xiongnu

Nomadic confederacy, possibly of Turkish origin, that fought against the Chinese states in the 3rd century BC. Their power began in Mongolia in about 200 BC, but they were forced back to the Gobi Desert in 119 BC by China's Han-dynasty emperor Wudi (Wu-ti (reigned 141–87 BC) and Qin Shi Huangdi built the Great Wall of China against them. They were eventually conquered and the survivors were employed as frontier troops.

The Xiongnu defeated Han Gaozu at Pingcheng. Han Wudi launched a series of campaigns against them under Huo Qubing, Li Guang, Li Ling, and Li Guangli, but armies had difficulty coping with their horse-archers' hit-and-run tactics. China eventually broke their power by fomenting civil wars, one of which saw Chichi flee to the west while another split the Xiongnu into northern and southern factions.

An alliance of Chinese, southern Xiongnu, and Xianbei destroyed the northerners, who fled to the Ili valley (southern Kazakhstan) in AD 92. They resisted the Chinese reconquest of the Tarim cities, and thereafter disappeared, perhaps moving west to play a part in forming the Huns.

The southerners settled on the Chinese border, intervening in civil wars like the Eight Princes' rebellion and in 304 rebelled under Liu Yuan and Liu Cong to establish one of the Sixteen Kingdoms. The Jie, a Xiongnu subject-tribe, rebelled in their turn under Shi Le. The Xiongnu states were successively conquered by Fu Jian and Toba Gui and his successors, and the survivors were absorbed.