Modu Chanyu forged a steppe empire that besieged a Han founder
The Xiongnu confederacy ruled the eastern Eurasian Steppe from the third century BC into the late first century AD. After 209 BC, Modu Chanyu built an empire on the Mongolian Plateau that could field hundreds of thousands of riders against early Han China.
Qin general Meng Tian drove Touman (r. 220–209 BC) from the Ordos in 215 BC. Modu then unified the tribes, crushed Donghu and Yuezhi, and in 200 BC trapped Emperor Gaozu at Baideng near modern Datong until the Han accepted tribute and border concessions. By Modu’s death in 174 BC, Chinese records ranked the Xiongnu as the paramount northern nomads.
Later organisation split left and right wings under a chanyu analogous to an emperor. Descendants appear among Sixteen Kingdoms dynasts such as Han-Zhao and possibly Northern Liang, and among Northern Zhou founders—the so-called Five Barbarians chapter of Chinese history. Archaeogenetics now ties them to complex steppe interactions once dismissed when scholars forced Iranian-only pedigrees.
Chinese writers rendered the name as fierce slave, and the ethnic core remains uncertain because only titles and personal names survive in Chinese texts; a link to the Huns has been proposed but is debated. Genetic work points to the Slab Grave people of Mongolia as main ancestors, heavily mixed with West Eurasians, and confirms contact with the Iranian Saka and Sarmatians. Sima Qian, writing around 100 BC, gave them a legendary descent from Yu the Great while casting them as the pastoral opposite of the settled Han.
Modu's conquests reached the Dingling of southern Siberia, and by 176 BC his forces had driven the Yuezhi from the Hexi Corridor and killed their king, whose skull his son Jizhu reportedly turned into a cup. At Baideng in the winter of 200 BC, Emperor Gaozu was cut off for seven days and barely escaped capture. The state ran like an army: beneath the chanyu stood the Tuqi Kings of the Left and Right, the left usually the heir, then paired officials down to commanders of thousands, hundreds and tens. Longcheng, Dragon City, near the Khangai Mountains, hosted the yearly assembly. Han envoys led by Wang Wu had to set aside their tallies and accept face tattoos before entering the chanyu's yurt.
Source: Xiongnu
