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|Location||Eastern Lands of Middle-earth, north of Mordor|
|Description||Centered by Sea of Rhûn|
|Etymology||S. rhûn "east"|
|References||The Lord of the Rings|
We know almost nothing of the lands of beyond the great Sea of Rhûn that stood on its borders with the western lands. Even Gandalf had never explored there, and though Aragorn had travelled there, we have no report of his doings.
Rhûn was far from an empty land; it was the domain of the Easterlings, Men of Darkness who were ready to follow both the Dark Lords and fought as their allies in war. These lands, too, were peopled by lost Elves, Avari and Úmanyar, and by four of the seven clans of the Dwarves who dwelt in the Orocarni.
During the Third Age, Rhûn was visited by three Wizards; Saruman, Alatar and Pallando, and though Saruman returned into the west, the two Blue Wizards remained. Sauron himself journeyed into the eastward lands, in hiding from the White Council during the centuries known in the west as the Watchful Peace.
The wstern part of Rhun is shown on the Lord of the Rings map. It contains the great Sea of Rhun, connected with three rivers, one northeast, one northwest and one running south to Mordor. It also shows a small mountain range southeast of the sea and a forest northwest of it.
Of its ancient geography we can glean a little from The Silmarillion; far beyond the Sea of Rhûn was another inland sea, the Sea of Helcar, and beyond that a range of Red Mountains known as the Orocarni. Somewhere in the lost east, too, lay Cuiviénen and Hildórien, where Elves and Men first awoke: all the Children of Ilúvatar could trace their ancestries back to the eastward regions of Middle-earth. We know also that it was a wide and vast land with many kingdoms, and strange and unexplored places.
Rhûn means "east" in Sindarin.