The Five Barbarians, or Wu Hu (Chinese: 五胡; pinyin: Wǔ Hú), is a Chinese historical exonym for five ancient non-Han "Hu" peoples who immigrated to northern China in the Eastern Han dynasty, and then overthrew the Western Jin dynasty and established their own kingdoms in the 4th–5th centuries.[1][2][3][4] The peoples categorized as the Five Barbarians were:[1][3][5]
Xiongnu
Jie
Xianbei
Qiang
Di
Of these five tribal ethnic groups, the Xiongnu and Xianbei were nomadic peoples from the northern steppes. The ethnic identity of the Xiongnu is uncertain, but the Xianbei appear to have been Mongolic. The Jie, another pastoral people, may have been a branch of the Xiongnu, who may have been Yeniseian or Iranian.[6][7][8] The Di and Qiang were from the highlands of western China.[1] The Qiang were predominantly herdsmen and spoke Sino-Tibetan (Tibeto-Burman) languages, while the Di were farmers who may have spoken a Sino-Tibetan[9] or Turkic language.[10]
The term "Five Barbarians" is generally used to refer to the non-Han ethnic groups during the Sixteen Kingdoms of the 4th and early 5th centuries, despite the fact that other groups like the Dingling and Wuhuan also existed alongside the five during the period. Even among the ruling families of the Sixteen Kingdoms, the Li clan of Cheng-Han were Ba-Di, with Ba referring to their Bandun Man or Cong (賨) background, while the Juqu clan of Northern Liang, though often classed as Xiongnu, were of Lushuihu ethnicity. Gao Yun, who was either the last ruler of Later Yan or first ruler of Northern Yan, was also an ethnic Goguryeo.
^ abcA History of Chinese Civilization, Jacques Gernet, Cambridge University Press 1996 P.186-87
^Michio Tanigawa & Joshua Fogel, Medieval Chinese Society and the Local "community" University of California Press 1985 p. 120-21
^ abPeter Van Der Veer, "III. Contexts of Cosmopolitanism" in Steven Vertovec, Robin Cohen eds., Conceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context and Practice Oxford University Press 2002 p. 200-01
^John W. Dardess, Governing China: 150-1850 Hackett Publishing 2010 p. 9
^"The Sixteen States of the Five Barbarian Peoples 五胡十六國 (www.chinaknowledge.de)".
^Vovin, Alexander. "Did the Xiongnu speak a Yeniseian language?". Central Asiatic Journal 44/1 (2000), pp. 87-104.
^Lewis, Mark Edward (2009). China between Empires: The Northern and Southern Dynasties. Harvard University Press. p. 82-83.
^Lee, Joo-Yup; Kuang, Shuntu (2017-10-18). "A Comparative Analysis of Chinese Historical Sources and y-dna Studies with Regard to the Early and Medieval Turkic Peoples". Inner Asia. 19 (2): 197–239. doi:10.1163/22105018-12340089. ISSN 2210-5018.
^(Chinese) 段渝, 先秦巴蜀地区百濮和氐羌的来源 Archived 2018-09-08 at the Wayback Machine 2006-11-30
^Guo Ji Zhongguo Yu Yan Xue Ping Lun, Volume 1, Issue 1, J. Benjamins 1996. page 7.
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