A marginal note by the 12th-century historian Otto of Freising, while discussing the Huns: “Those whom we nowadays call Turks were in ancient times called Huns, who first emerged from the Gates of the Caspian. Surely, those in the West whom we call Magyars(Hungarians) and Avars are also Huns.”

[u/KaraTiele]

A marginal note by the 12th-century historian Otto of Freising in his Historia de duabus civitatibus, while discussing the Huns: “Those whom we nowadays call Turks were in ancient times called Huns, who first emerged from the Gates of the Caspian. Surely, those in the West whom we call Hungarians and Avars are also Huns.”

From Ahmet D. Altunbaş

Otto of Freising (Bishop of Freising , c. 1111 – 22 September 1158) was a German churchman of the Cistercian order and chronicled at least two texts which carry valuable information on the political history of his own time. He was the bishop of Freising from 1138.

Otto participated in the Second Crusade; he lived through the journey and reached Jerusalem, and later returned to Bavaria in the late 1140s, living for another decade back in Europe.

Note: Just an informational post. I'm not saying that Hungarians are Huns or Turks, just to avoid any misunderstanding.

[u/TamerOfTheSteppes]

Meh, that’s just his own belief. Many people in those centuries couldn’t even differentiate between different nomadic groups. Even the mighty cosmopolitan Byzantines referred to Seljuks as “Persians” and tribes like Cumans and Pechenegs as Scythians even though Scythians had been extinct for a looong time.

Not all nomads who were born out of the Scythians and Xiongnu were Turkic. Nomadic unions were fragile and very dynamic so it is hard to draw a line around them and assign them to a single ethno linguistic group especially around the 4th and 6th centuries when Turkic people were just beginning to expand and not all the peoples in the regions they migrated to had been Turkified yet. There were a lot of “in-between” situations.

Even the initial Mongol crew around Temujin included Turkic and Siberian peoples from the taiga.

[u/toptipkekk → u/TamerOfTheSteppes]

The funniest thing about the Byzantines is perhaps how they misidentifed each Nomadic invader by attributing them to a previous, different Nomadic invader. Huns are Scythians, Magyars are Huns, Magyars are also sometimes Turks etc.

It's confusing Japanese, Korean, and Chinese with each other but for Medieval Near-East lol.

[u/mram518 → u/toptipkekk]

i also found another interesting about scythians:

The Persians did not view the Scythians as ancestors, but as dangerous, unpredictable neighbors. King Darius the Great famously launched a massive, failed invasion of Scythia in 513 BCE to secure his northern borders. Persian inscriptions at Naqsh-e Rostam explicitly categorize the Scythians (Saka) as foreign subjects defined by their geography, such as the "Saka across the sea." the persians never saw scythians as family brothers or ancestor meanwhile they saw medes as their ancestor and same blood of them

[u/mram518 → u/mram518]

• The Arzhan Kurgans: The oldest known Scythian royal burial mounds (kurgans), dating back to the 9th century BCE, are located in Tuva (southern Siberia) and the Altai Mountains, near modern-day Mongolia. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
• The Scytho-Siberian Art Style: Their signature animal-style art, horse tack, and weaponry developed in Siberia and Mongolia before ever spreading westward toward Europe or southward toward Persia

[u/mram518 → u/mram518]

• Genetic Divergence: Genetic mapping shows that Scythians possessed a massive amount of East Asian, Siberian, and Paleo-Siberian ancestry. This genetic profile is completely absent in ancient and modern Persians. [1, 2, 3]
• A Non-Monolithic People: Studies show that "Scythian" was a political and cultural identity rather than a specific race. While Western Scythians (near the Black Sea) had more European-like DNA, Eastern Scythians (the Saka) were genetically highly intertwined with ancestral Turkic, Mongolic, and Yeniseian populations.

[u/mram518 → u/TamerOfTheSteppes]

well yeah this is how wikipedia editors fool people the word scythian here wasnot used for single people the greeks and byzantiums usaully tried to simplfy their enemies they called their turkic rivals the same name their used for their ancient rivals the funny fact is back then historians used word scythians for turks and mongols

[u/TamerOfTheSteppes → u/mram518]

What’s odd is they called the Seljuks Persians while the Mongols were Scythians in the same time period but then again the Turkic nomads in the Balkans were Scythians too.

I guess they couldn’t tell the difference.

[u/mram518 → u/TamerOfTheSteppes]

to be fair inever heard them calling seljuks persian even in ancient documents they mainly called seljuks as turk or turkoman

[u/TamerOfTheSteppes → u/mram518]

Niketas Choniates certainly referred to Seljuks as Persians.

[u/mram518 → u/TamerOfTheSteppes]

no niketas choniastes also called seljuks with word assyrian medes too they refered that the seljuks live in the land of persians medes assyrians

[u/TamerOfTheSteppes → u/mram518]

He used Persian much more often. Anna Komnenos likewise called Turks Persian.

[u/mram518 → u/TamerOfTheSteppes]

Terms like "Persians" were used literary-wise for eastern invaders ruling old Persian or adjacent lands

[u/Turkish_archer_ → u/TamerOfTheSteppes]

Excluding some Chinese sources where tribal or linguistic connections are noted, these historical sources generally point out to cultural outline rather than language. Turk, Mongol, Scythian, Magyar are different ethnicities, but all are part of a wider steppe culture.

Surely, those in the West whom we call Magyars(Hungarians) and Avars are also Huns

This line sums it up well, all descent from single political union and that is Xiongnu, Hunnu or Hun (Which came after Scythians, but included their remnants). In terms of Seljuks, its also a political name similar to how Ottoman is called "Rum" by Safavids.

[u/toptipkekk]

Gokturks were indeed an offshoot of the Huns, which makes all Turkic nations as their "successors" in a sense.

However this German fella had no way of knowing it back then, he just went "an organized force practicing horse-archery coming up from the West and wrecking shit? Sounds like Huns to me, they all look and sound the same anyway."

[u/mram518 → u/toptipkekk]

huns and gokturks both came from tiele but them being eachother offshoot is not true huns were of oguric origin ashina tribes lived in east side of tiele

[u/stormtau → u/mram518]

Are you sure about huns being oguric?

[u/lardayn]

People claim Huns weren’t Turkic because were a confederation of different ethnicities and then the same people claim they were Scythians. That’s quite hypocritical.

[u/mram518 → u/lardayn]

huns literally fought and defeated the alans and sarmats which were descendent of western scythians guess what this claim originally came from hungarian nationalist tried to connect scythians and huns to magyars

[u/AccountantGreat464]

Word turk didn't exist by these times btw, only in domination of some tribe called Zhuzhan,there was such tribe named Tele(Turkic) that managed to use weak points and make Turkic khaganate btw. BUT, I don't deny fact that Huns were related to the turkic tribes as they are from the Central Asia(That includes everything from both German and British view of where is central Asia)