Kursich

Kursich was a Hun general and royal family member. He led a Hunnish army in the Hunnic invasion of Persia in 395 AD.

Etymology Omeljan Pritsak derived Kursich's name from a proposed Altaic root *kür or *kür+ä, meaning "brave, noble, powerful, universal," together with a suffix *-siġ, meaning "like, similar to". Otto Maenchen-Helfen considered the name to be a hybrid of Turkic and another language. He took the ending -ich to be a Turkic diminutive suffix -iq, while he compared kurs to the name Churs, attested as the name of an Armenian prince, Ossetian xors and the Ias name Horz. Gerhard Doerfer takes the name for Hunnish but rejects attempts to etymologize it. Historian Hyun Jin Kim argued that the name was Turkic.

Biography

The Huns started to seriously threaten the Eastern Roman Empire in 395, crossing over the Caucasus mountains in the summer of that year. The following winter, another Hunnic force pillaged Thrace and threatened Dalmatia. The Huns then invaded Armenia, Persia and the Asian Roman provinces. Kursich and another commander, Basich, led two armies down the Euphrates, up to threatening the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon. One army was defeated by the Persians, while the other successfully retreated by Derbent Pass.

Priscus recorded that Kursich later came to the city of Rome to make an alliance. Maenchen-Helfen suggested that he and Basich came to Rome in 404 or 407, as mercenaries.