← Back to the front page

Great Daring Moments From History

Khalid Elhassan September 28, 2020 31 min

Josip Broz Tito - World War II — Yugoslav partisans wading across a river. Wikimedia

26. The Daring Nomad Who Took on an Empire

Modu Chanyu (234 – 174 BC) was a daring Steppe warrior and chieftain who took on the Chinese Empire of his day. A formidable and fearsome figure, he had a habit of turning his defeated enemies’ skulls into cups from which he drank blood.

He unified the nomadic tribes of the eastern Steppe, and founded the Xiongnu Empire, spanning the Eastern Steppe from Central Asia to Manchuria. Under Chanyu’s leadership, the Xiongnu menaced the Chinese to their south, and continued to do so for centuries. They forged a complex relationship with China, that alternated between trade and raid, marriage treaties and tribute and war.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.