Alans

The Alans or Alani were an Iranian nomadic group among the Sarmatian people, warlike nomadic pastoralists of mixed backgrounds, who spoke an Iranian language and shared, in a broad sense, a common culture.

Early Alans

The first mentions of names that historians link with "Alani" appear almost at the same time in Greco-Roman geography and somewhat later Chinese dynastic chronicles of the 1st century BCE. The Geography (book 23, ch.XI.v) of Strabo, who was born in Pontus on the Black Sea, but was also working with Persian sources, to judge from the forms he gives to tribal names, mentions Aorsi that he links with Siraces and claims that a Spadines, king of the Aorsi, could assemble two hundred thousand mounted archers in the mid-1st century BCE. But the "upper Aorsi" from whom they had split as fugitives, could send many more, for they dominated the coastal region of the Caspian Sea

Related Topics:
1st century BCE - Strabo - Black Sea - Persia - Caspian Sea

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:"and consequently they could import on camels the Indian and Babylonian merchandise, receiving it in their turn from the Armenians and the Medes, and also, owing to their wealth, could wear golden ornaments. Now the Aorsi live along the Tanaïs, but the Siraces live along the Achardeüs, which flows from the Caucasus and empties into Lake Maeotis."

Related Topics:
India - Babylonia - Armenia - Medes - The Tanaïs - The Achardeüs - Caucasus - Lake Maeotis

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Secure identifications of names and places in the ancient Chinese chronicles are even more speculative, but some centuries later, the Later Han Dynasty Chinese chronicle, the Hou Han Shu (covering the period from 25 - 220), mentioned a report that the steppe land Yen-ts?ai was now known as Alan-liao. (???):

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:"The Kingdom of Yancai (Yen-ts'ai, "Vast Steppe") has changed its name to the kingdom of Alanliao. Its capital is the town of Di. It is a dependency of Kangju (centered on Tashkent). The climate is mild. Wax trees, pines, and ?white grass? (aconite) are plentiful. Their way of life and dress are the same as those of Kangju."

Related Topics:
Tashkent - Aconite

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In another section the Hou Han Shu reported :

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:?It is said : ?Some 2000 li (832 km) to the north-west from K?ang-chü is the state of Yen-ts?ai. The trained bowmen number 100,000. It has the same way of life as K?ang-chü. It is situated on the Great Marsh, which has no shore .?

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The "Great Marsh" may be the wetlands at the delta of the Danube, which were a formidable obstacle that slowed the westward drift of many nomads or even more impressive marshes of present day Belarus and north Ukraine. Thus at the beginning of the 1st century, the Alans had occupied lands in the northeast Azov Sea area, along the Don. The written sources suggest that from the second half of the 1st to 4th century the Alans had supremacy over the tribal union and created a powerful confederation of Sarmatian tribes. The Alans made trouble for the Roman Empire, with incursions into both the Danubian and the Caucasian provinces in the 2nd and 3rd centuries.

Related Topics:
Danube - Belarus - Ukraine - 1st century - Azov Sea - Don - 4th century - Roman Empire - 3rd

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Herodotus describes Alans as tall, blond with men cutting their hair short unlike the Scythians. {{fact}}.

Related Topics:
Herodotus - Scythians

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Ammianus Marcellinus considered the Alans to be the former Massagetae : "iuxtaque Massagetae Halani et Sargetae", "per Albanos et Massagetas, quos Alanos nunc appellamus", "Halanos pervenit, veteres Massagetas".

Related Topics:
Ammianus Marcellinus - Alans

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Archaeological finds support the written sources. Late Sarmatian sites were first identified with the historical Alans by P.D. Rau. Based on the archaeological material, they were one of the Iranian-speaking nomadic tribes that began to enter the Sarmatian area between the middle of the 1st and the 2nd century.

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The Alani were first mentioned in Roman literature in the 1st century and were described later{{fact}} as a warlike people that specialized in horse breeding. They frequently raided the Parthian empire and the Caucasian provinces of the Roman Empire. In the Vologeses inscription http://www.lostlanguages.com/parthian.htm one can read that Vologeses, the Parthian king, in the 11th year of his reign, battled Kuluk, king of the Alani.

Related Topics:
Parthia - Vologeses - Kuluk

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This inscription is supplemented by the contemporary Jewish historian, Josephus (37–100), who reports in the Jewish Wars (book 7, ch. 8.4) how Alans, (whom he calls a "Scythian" tribe) living near the Sea of Azov, crossed the Iron Gates for plunder and defeated the armies of Pacorus, king of Media, and Tiridates, King of Armenia, two brothers of Vologeses I for whom the inscription was made:

Related Topics:
Josephus - Scythia - Sea of Azov - Pacorus - Media - Tiridates - Armenia

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:"4.Now there was a nation of the Alans, which we have formerly mentioned somewhere as being Scythians, and inhabiting at the Lake Meotis. This nation about this time laid a design of falling upon Media, and the parts beyond it, in order to plunder them; with which intention they treated with the king of Hyrcania; for he was master of that passage which king Alexander shut up with iron gates. This king gave them leave to come through them; so they came in great multitudes, and fell upon the Medes unexpectedly, and plundered their country, which they found full of people, and replenished with abundance of cattle, while nobody durst make any resistance against them; for Pacorus, the king of the country, had fled away for fear into places where they could not easily come at him, and had yielded up everything he had to them, and had only saved his wife and his concubines from them, and that with difficulty also, after they had been made captives, by giving them a hundred talents for their ransom. These Alans therefore plundered the country without opposition, and with great ease, and proceeded as far as Armenia, laying all waste before them. Now Tiridates was king of that country, who met them, and fought them, but had like to have been taken alive in the battle; for a certain man threw a net over him from a great distance, and had soon drawn him to him, unless he had immediately cut the cord with his sword, and ran away, and prevented it. So the Alans, being still more provoked by this sight, laid waste the country, and drove a great multitude of the men, and a great quantity of the other prey they had gotten out of both kingdoms, along with them, and then retreated back to their own country."

Related Topics:
Lake Meotis - Media - Hyrcania - Passage - Alexander - Medes

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Flavius Arrianus ('Arrian') marched against the Alani in the 1st century and left a detailed report (Ektaxis kata Alanoon or 'War Against the Alans') that is a major source for studying Roman military tactics, but doesn't reveal much about the Alans.

Related Topics:
Arrian - Military tactics

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