The Luandi (simplified Chinese: 挛鞮; traditional Chinese: 攣鞮; pinyin: Luándī; Wade–Giles: Luan-ti; alternatively written as Xulianti simplified Chinese: 虚连题; traditional Chinese: 虛連題; pinyin: Xūliántí) was the ruling clan of the Xiongnu that flourished from the 3rd century BCE to 4th century CE. The form Luandi comes from the Book of Han, while the form Xulianti comes from the Book of Later Han.
Liu Yao (died 329), courtesy name Yongming, was the final emperor of the Xiongnu-led Han-Zhao dynasty of China. He became emperor in 318 after most other members of the imperial Liu clan were massacred by Jin Zhun in a coup. However, the empire was soon divided in half, as the general Shi Le declared independence and established the Later Zhao dynasty. In a decisive battle in early 329, Shi captured and executed him, and while his sons Liu Xi the Crown Prince and Liu Yin the Prince of Nanyang continued to hold out for nearly a year, the Han-Zhao state fell later that year.
The Han-Zhao (simplified Chinese: 汉赵; traditional Chinese: 漢趙; pinyin: Hàn Zhào; 304–329 AD), or Former Zhao (simplified Chinese: 前赵; traditional Chinese: 前趙; pinyin: Qián Zhào), was a dynastic state of China ruled by the Liu (Luandi) clan of Chuge-Xiongnu ethnicity during the Sixteen Kingdoms period of Chinese history. In Chinese historiography, it was given two conditional state titles, the Northern Han (北漢; Běi Hàn) for the state proclaimed in 304 by Liu Yuan, and the Former Zhao (前趙; Qián Zhào) for the state proclaimed in 319 by Liu Yao. The reference to them as separate states can be misleading, given that when Liu Yao changed the name of the state from "Han" to "Zhao" in 319, he treated the state as having been continuous from when Liu Yuan founded it in 304; instead, he de-established his imperial lineage from the Han dynasty and claimed ancestry directly from Modu Chanyu.
The reason it is also referred to as "Former Zhao" in historiography is to distinguish it from the Later Zhao founded by Shi Le in 319, which was also known officially as "Zhao". Since both the Former Zhao and Northern Han were ruled by the same family, Chinese scholars often conditionally combined them into a single Han-Zhao regime. Numerous Western texts refer to the two states separately; others referred to the Han state as the "Northern Han" (not to be confused with Northern Han of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period).
Chanyu (simplified Chinese: 单于; traditional Chinese: 單于; pinyin: Chányú) or Shanyu (Chinese: 善于), short for Chengli Gutu Chanyu (Chinese: 撐犁孤塗單于; pinyin: Chēnglí Gūtu Chányú), was the title used by the supreme rulers of Inner Asian nomads for eight centuries until superseded by the title "Khagan" in 402 AD. The title was most famously used by the ruling Luandi clan of the Xiongnu during the Qin dynasty (221–206 BC) and Han dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD). It was later also used infrequently by the Chinese as a reference to Tujue leaders.
The Xubu (Chinese: 須卜; pinyin: Xūbǔ; Wade–Giles: Hsü-pu; LHC: *sio-pok) was a tribe of the Xiongnu that flourished between 3rd century BCE and the 4th century CE. Chinese annals noted that the Xubu tribe replaced the Huyan tribe, which was an earlier maternal dynastic tribe of the dynastic union with the paternal dynastic tribe Luandi. The traditional system of conjugal unions is a form of the nomadic exogamic society. The male members of the maternal dynastic line were not eligible to be chanyu, only the male members of the Luandi line, whose father was a Luanti Chanyu, and mother was a Xubu Khatun (Queen) were eligible to be chanyu. A Xubu could only become a chanyu after a palace coup.
The Huyan tribe moved from the Right (Western) Wing, where the maternal dynastic tribe is traditionally assigned, to the Left (Eastern) Wing. The Book of the Later Han (chapter 89, l. 7b) stated that of the noble tribes other than Luanti, Huyan, Xubu, Qiulin and Lan, Huyan already belonged to the dominating Left Wing, and Lan and Xubu belonged to the Right Wing. The Book of the Later Han also names the dynastic Luandi tribe with a composite name Xulianti, implying a merger of the two dynastic lines.