Map of the Sixteen Kingdoms 317 CE
"When the second Han dynasty, known as that of the late Han, ascended the throne of China (25 CE), the Chinese protectorate of the Tarim had still to be restored. Very fortunately for China, the Hsiung-nu were at this time divided among themselves. In 48, the eight Hsiung-nu hordes of the south under their chief Pi rebelled against the shan-yu P'u-nu and made submission to China. Emperor Kuang Wu-ti bestowed upon them the status of confederates in Inner Mongolia, on the southern borders of the Gobi and the marches of Kansu and Shansi. Thus was founded the kingdom of the southern Hsiung-nu; and these, so long as China remained strong, continued as faithful dependents of the empire until, in the days of its decline, they became its destroyers. The story is paralleled among many federated Germanic peoples along the outskirts of the Roman Empire.
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In 216, the warlord-statesman Cao Cao detained (Shanyu) Hucuquan in the city of Ye, and divided his followers in Shanxi into five divisions: left, right, south, north, and center. This was aimed at preventing the exiled Xiongnu in Shanxi from engaging in rebellion, and also allowed Cao Cao to use the Xiongnu as auxiliaries in his cavalry. Eventually, the Xiongnu aristocracy in Shanxi changed their surname from Luanti to Liu in order to enhance their prestige, claiming that they were related to the Han imperial clan through the old intermarriage policy.
After the Han Dynasty: After Hucuquan, the Xiongnu were partitioned into five local tribes. The complicated ethnic situation of the mixed frontier settlements instituted during the Eastern Han had grave consequences, not fully apprehended by the Chinese government until the end of the third century. By 260, Liu Qubei had organized the Tiefu confederacy in the north east, and by 290, Liu Yuan was leading a splinter group in the south west. At that time, non-Chinese unrest reached alarming proportions along the whole of the Western Jin frontier.
Liu Yuan's Northern Han (304-318): In 304 the sinicised Liu Yuan, a grandson of Yufuluo Chizhisizhu, stirred up descendants of the southern Xiongnu in rebellion in Shanxi, taking advantage of the War of the Eight Princes then raging around the Western Jin capital Luoyang. Under Liu Yuan's leadership, they were joined by a large number of frontier Chinese and became known as Bei Han. Liu Yuan used 'Han' as the name of his state, hoping associate his reign with the lingering nostalgia for the glory of the Han dynasty, and established his capital in Pingyang. The Xiongnu use of large numbers of heavy cavalry with iron armor for both rider and horse gave them a decisive advantage over Jin armies already weakened and demoralized by three years of civil war. In 311, they captured Luoyang, and with it the Jin emperor Sima Chi (Emperor Huai). In 316, the next Jin emperor was captured in Chang'an, and the whole of north China came under Xiongnu rule while remnants of the Jin dynasty survived in the south (known to historians as the Eastern Jin)."
-taken from NewWorldEncyclopedia & The Empire of the Steppes: A History of Central Asia by René Grousset, 1885-1952
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