Touman

Touman
Chanyu
Domain and influence of the Xiongnu.
Reign	c. 220–209 BCE
Successor	Modu

Touman or Teoman (Mongolian: Tümen), or T'u-man, – was the earliest known Xiongnu chanyu (匈奴單于), reigning from c. 220 to 209 BCE. The name Touman is likely related to a word meaning '10,000, a myriad', which was widely borrowed between language families in, most plausibly, the order indicated by the following representative list of its forms: Modern Persian (which includes the Tajik and Dari dialects of it) tōmān ~ tūmān,Mongolian tümen, Old Turkic tümän, East tmāṃ, West t(_u)māne, which possibly even includes Old Chinese and later 萬, whose pronunciation can be reconstructed as for instance an early Middle Chinese *muanʰ. Note however that our only certain evidence this number-word already existed around and before Touman's lifetime would be the Chinese; not until many centuries after he lived are the other languages with this word in them first attested.

By the time the Qin Dynasty conquered the other six states and began its reign over a unified China in 221 BCE, the nomadic Xiongnu had grown into a powerful invading force in the north and started expanding both east and west.

At the time the Donghu (東胡) or 'Eastern Barbarians' were very powerful and the Yuezhi were flourishing. Emperor Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty, sent a 100,000-strong army headed by General Meng Tian to drive the Xiongnu northward for 1,000 li (about 416 km).