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Basich or Basikh (Greek: Βασίχ, fl. 395) was a Hun military commander who co-led an invasion of Persia in 395 AD together with Kursich.

Etymology

Otto Maenchen-Helfen took the ending -ich for the Turkic diminutive -iq; he proposed that Basich came from basiq, meaning "little captain". Omeljan Pritsak instead understood there to be a suffix -siġ, meaning "like something"; he derived Basich from Turkic *bars-siġ with loss of the -r- and degemination, giving a meaning "feline-like". Gerhard Doerfer takes the name as having a Hunnish origin, but has criticized both Turkic explanations as relying on unproductive suffixes that are not easily proven to have existed.

Biography

The sources identify Basich and Kursich as "royal Huns". They are the first Huns definitively named in ancient sources. He was probably the chieftain of a Hunnish tribe, though it is not excluded that he and Kursich were two kings ruling in a dual-monarchy, similar to that of the Huns' predecessors, the Xiongnu.

Invasion of Persia

In 395 the Huns had started their first large-scale attacks on the Romans and, in the summer of that year, they crossed over the Caucasus Mountains. In the winter of 395, another Hunnic invasion force crossed the frozen Danube, pillaging Thrace and approaching Dalmatia. Meanwhile, the forces in Asia invaded Armenia, Persia, and the Roman provinces in Asia.

One group crossed the Euphrates, but was defeated by a Roman army. The Hun commanders Basich and Kursich led two other armies down the Euphrates and threatened the Persian capital of Ctesiphon. One of these armies was defeated by the Persians, while the other successfully retreated by Derbent Pass.

Priscus records that Basich, together with Kursich (the commander of the other army that invaded Persia) came to Rome to make an alliance. According to Otto Maenchen-Helfen, they may have come to Rome in 404 or 407 as mercenaries.

References

1. Maenchen-Helfen, Otto J. (2022). Knight, Max (ed.). The World of the Huns Studies in Their History and Culture. University of California Press. ISBN 9780520302617. Retrieved 25 October 2022.
2. * Pritsak, Omeljan (1982). "The Hunnic Language of the Attila Clan". Harvard Ukrainian Studies. 4 (4): 435. ISSN 0363-5570. JSTOR 41036005.
3. Doerfer, Gerhard (1973). "Zur Sprache der Hunnen". Central Asiatic Journal. 17 (1): 39. JSTOR 41927011.
4. Doerfer, Gerhard (1973). "Zur Sprache der Hunnen". Central Asiatic Journal. 17 (1): 42. JSTOR 41927011.
5. Martindale, John R., ed. (1980). The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire: Volume II, AD 395–527. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 211. ISBN 0-521-20159-4.
6. Hughes, Ian (2019). Attila the Hun Arch-Enemy of Rome. Pen & Sword Books. ISBN 9781473890329. Retrieved 25 October 2022.
7. Thompson, E. A. (1996). Heather, Peter (ed.). The Huns. Blackwell Publishers. pp. 30–31. ISBN 978-0-631-15899-8.
8. ^ Sinor, Denis (1990). "The Hun Period". The Cambridge history of early Inner Asia (1. publ. ed.). Cambridge : Cambridge Univ. Press. pp. 177, 183–184, 203. ISBN 9780521243049.
9. Maenchen-Helfen, Otto J. (1973). The World of the Huns: Studies in Their History and Culture (Edited by Max Knight). University of California Press. p. 55. ISBN 978-0-520-01596-8.

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