- Alans
Alans — numerous Iranian-speaking tribes of Sarmatian origin. They were located in the steppes between the foothills of the Urals and the North Caucasus, between the Tanais and the Aral Sea. In the 1st century AD, they came from Inner Asia and settled on the South Russian Plain east of the Don and north of the Caucasus. In the 3rd century, the Alans repeatedly invaded the territory of the Roman Empire. Before penetrating the Ciscaucasia, by the beginning of the 4th century, the Alans lived east of the Don. In the 4th century, they became part of the Hunnic tribal union and took part in the Great Migration of Peoples. In 370, they were driven west by the Huns. In the 5th century, some of them joined the Suebi and Vandals in Gaul and Spain. Separate Alan detachments crossed with the Vandals to North Africa in 424. In the Caucasus, the formation of the material culture of the Alans dates back to the 5th century, when their settlement zone included the central part of the North Caucasus from the upper reaches of the Kuban to the borders of Dagestan. From the end of the 6th to the end of the 7th century, written sources are silent about the Alans, which may have been due to their dependence on the Khazars. The ethnonym 'Alans' first appeared in sources of the 1st century AD. In the ancient written tradition, there was a contamination of the names 'Alans', 'Albanians', 'Alemanni'.
It is believed that the Mongols, who defeated Alania and by the end of the 1230s captured the fertile lowland regions of the Ciscaucasia, forced the surviving Alans to take refuge in the mountains of the Central Caucasus and in Transcaucasia. There, one of the Alan groups, with the participation of local tribes, gave rise to the modern Ossetians. In Georgian sources, the Alans are mentioned as ovsi, osi. This exonym is still used by Georgians in relation to modern Ossetians. The regular development of the ancient Iranian *ārуаnа in Ossetian, according to V. I. Abaev, is allon (from *āryana) and ællon (from *ăryana). The ethnonym in the form ællon has been preserved in Ossetian folklore, but is not used as a self-name. Ammianus Marcellinus (330 — after 395 AD), describing the Huns, reports that they reached the land of "the Alans, the ancient Massagetae" (Latin: Halanos veteres Massagetas), causing terrible destruction among them, while placing the Alans near the Tanais (modern Don). However, referring to Yu. Kulakovsky and agreeing with him, N. Pigulevskaya notes his completely fair remark that the position of the Alans near the Tanais reported by Ammianus was borrowed by him from the maps of geographers preceding him and does not deserve full trust. During the lifetime of Ammianus himself, the Latin writer Jerome, who in 397 AD made a pilgrimage to the east when the Huns flooded the Roman provinces of Syria and Cappadocia, reports that the Hunnic horde (Latin: Hunnorum examina) moved from the Tanais, where there were "incredible", "terrible" Massagetae. The entire east "shuddered" from the messages of the heralds that "from the distant Maeotis, the land of the icy Tanais and the terrible people of the Massagetae, where in the Caucasus gorges Alexander locked the wild peoples with a door, a horde of Huns burst forth." Theophanes the Byzantine (c. 760-818 AD) claimed that the peoples living east of the Tanais (modern Don) in ancient times bore the name of the Massagetae.
John Tzetzes (12th century), orig. Kissling 1826. Georgica. Information of Byzantine writers about Georgia. 1967, Vol. VII, 22—26:
"The grandmother (mother's mother) of John Tzetzes was born a Massagetean woman, in other words a woman from the Abasgians [1]. [...] (585) Iberians, Abasgians, and Alans are of one race [Iberes, Abasgi et Alani, unum genus.] [...] The Massagetae are Abasgians and their women, in former times, together with their men, fought courageously. [...] And let it be known to you that the Abasgians and Alans, Sakas and Dacians, Rosses and Sauromatians, the Scythians proper, and all those tribes that live in the north, are generally called Scythians."
In ancient Chinese sources, one can find information that at the beginning of our era, a movement of the Da-Yuezhi tribes began from the territory of present-day northern China to the west, who, having mixed with the Aorsi in the Yangtsai region, began to be called Alan-na or Alan-liao in Chinese sources. In the Chinese character denoting the sound 'na' differs from the character denoting 'liao' by only one small stroke, which is why the variant with the spelling liao arose. The variant Alan-na inevitably goes back to Aran-na, i.e. Arianna, which became the basis for Allon in the end. In addition, in the same region, the architecture of towers strongly resembles Ossetian, and they are called 'galon', which literally translated from the Proto-Qiang language means 'stone house'. The population of those places has an epic about Geser, the son of Hormusd (a clear trace of Iranian influence, and not Persian, but Eastern Iranian, since Ahura-Mazda in the Bactrian version was called Hormusd, part of which are religious hymns called Shan Huar, performed during the spring field work). Shan was also the name of the first dynasty of China, whose representatives were Caucasoid and brought cultural achievements to China from the Asia Minor region. It is their burials, most likely, that are found in the sands of northern China. It is noteworthy that they buried in dugout boats (baelaegh) like the Ossetians as late as the 18th century, and several headdresses are found at the head of men. Conclusions about the origin of the Khuarasmi (Khwarezmian tribes, including the Massagetae, also known as the Da-Yuezhi, who later together with the Aorsi came to be called Alans) from the Asia Minor region were also made by Academician Tolstov, after 8 years spent in the Khwarezmian archaeological expedition in his work 'Ancient Khwarezm'. An interesting point is that the same Da-Yuezhi sounded in ancient Chinese as Da-get-shi, i.e. literally 'tribe of the great Getae', which in the Eastern Iranian version sounded exactly like Mazageta/Massageta with the same meaning. In addition, they are also noted as Tokharians. Chinese authors also call the Tokharians Dakha/Dukho/Dukholu. Taking into account the peculiarities of Chinese perception of the sounds 'g' and 'r', we can say that Dukholu has the original form Dugoru/Dugaru. The Greeks also describe this tribe by the same name, but already in the Bactrian Kingdom, where they migrated and which they conquered – Tugar/Tagur. The Turks later began to call them Düger (just as the Ossetian Digors are called by their western neighbors, the Balkars – Dügerla), and the Iron part of the Ossetians - Dyhur. To this day, the Düger tribe has been preserved among the Turkmens, part of this tribe went with the Turkic-Seljuks to Asia Minor and also preserved its name. Part of the Alan union was the Yangtsai region, about which Chinese authors note that clothing, customs and language are similar to those of the Da-Yuezhi and Kangju, i.e. Kang, this is the state of the Central Asian Scythians-Sakas. The Sinologist Paleiblank restored the ancient Chinese pronunciation of the name Yangtsai – Apsa (Yangtsai became it through the form Yamtsai/Amtsai, which also appears in Chinese texts, and the transition P->M is generally characteristic of many languages of the world). In the Georgian language and historiography, the Ovsi figured for a very long time, in the Mingrelian version they are also Opsi, in Abkhazian Au-Aps, A-ps-ua — Abkhazians in Abkhazian; Aua-ps — Ossetians in Abkhazian; O-ps-i — Ossetians in Mingrelian; E-bz-e — Svans in Karachay; A-bz-ange — Bezengians (Balkars) in Ossetian. They are also mentioned in alliance with the Siraces as Aphsi.
Chinese sources on the Sarmatians and Alans:
1. "Yangtsai lies 2000 li from Kangju to the northwest. And this is a nomadic possession. In customs it is completely similar to Kangju. The army is more than 100 thousand. It lies on a large lake, which has no high banks. This is the northern sea (by the western sea the Chinese meant the Aral Sea, by the northern sea the Caspian Sea)."
2. The report from the turn of the era (chronicles of the Later Han dynasty) is interesting: "The possession of Yan lies from Yangtsai to the north. It is dependent on Kangju, to which it pays tribute with skins of mouse-like animals. The possession of Yangtsai was renamed Alanya. It is dependent on Kangju. The climate is temperate. There is much pine, broom, and feather grass. The customs and clothing of the people are similar to those of Kangju."
J. Sabitov: "Judging by the reports of Chinese authors, the Sarmatians and Alans lived near the Caspian Sea, at the turn of the era the name 'yangtsai' (designation of the Sarmatians) gave way to the name 'Alans', due to their strengthening. According to the legend transmitted by Herodotus, part of the later Sauromatians arrived from the region of the modern Turkish harbor of Samsun (northern Turkey) by sea to the northern Kuban region and here mixed with the Scythian tribes. In Sauromatian and Sarmatian archaeological sites, which are localized in the region of the Lower Volga, Western Kazakhstan and the Southern Urals, a large amount of weapons is recorded in female burials, which may indirectly indicate that the myths about the Amazons, who migrated from Asia Minor to the Scythians, are a reflection of reality.
According to the testimonies of Herodotus and archaeologists, we can assume that the ancestors of the Sauromatians (Sarmatians and Alans) came from Asia Minor. Here, under the influence of the Scythians, they changed their language to Indo-European, but with their own flavor ('The Sauromatians speak the Scythian language, but from ancient times distorted, since the Amazons did not sufficiently master the Scythian language'). This language later became the ancestral language for the Alans and their descendants - the Ossetians. The Alans and Sarmatians are considered representatives of haplogroup R1a, more precisely, one of its clusters. This, for example, was expressed in the fact that one of the R1a clusters was conditionally called 'Sarmatian'. Most agreed that R1a could have been one of the majority groups among the Sarmatians and Alans. It is worth noting the version expressed by I.L. Rozhansky: "at that time, part of the carriers of G2a1a found themselves separated from their relatives, and their history developed in other ways. The first thing that comes to mind is that they joined the Proto-Iranian ethnic groups that were forming at that time in the Caspian steppes, with a corresponding language transition and a change in national self-identification. If so, then the elusive Iranian-speaking Alans are descendants of that very branch of G2a1a that once went into the steppe. The lifetime of the ancestor of the branch with DYS391=9 falls almost exactly at the end of the era of the Great Migration of Peoples, which agrees with historical data on the formation of Alan statehood. Why the ancestor turned out to be G2a1a, and not, for example, R1a1 or I2a, is a matter of chance."
According to J. Sabitov, haplogroup G2a1a (P18) appeared in the Caucasus from the territory of Asia Minor in the period 2500-3000 years ago. The Sauromatians managed to preserve their majority haplogroup (naturally, adopting scattered haplotypes of neighboring peoples) and spread all the way to Western Kazakhstan, but lost their language ('adopted the distorted language of the Scythians' according to Herodotus) and later their descendants the Alans, during the invasion of various peoples (Huns, Turks, Khazars, Kipchaks, and later Mongols), went to the mountains, preserving their language from assimilation. Undoubtedly, one can agree that each of the clusters of this haplogroup has its own history, and the lifetime of the ancestor of each cluster can be much lower than the general age of the entire population. The calculated ages of the four clusters of Ossetians based on genealogical speed gave the following results:
1. G2a1a-α: age 1400±500
2. G2a1a-β: age 1300±500
3. G2a1a-γ: age 1000±500
4. R1b1b2-β: age 800±300
The Alans, in fact, retreated to the mountains during the time of the Mongols. This is evidenced by the capture of Magas by Mongol troops during the Western Campaign and the campaigns that followed it. For example, Sartak was actually forced to allocate two men out of ten to guard the herds from Alan raids from the mountains. Later, a huge number of Alans fled to Hulagu from Berke, led by Queen Limachav from the Akhsarfakian clan and her two children Farejan and Bakatar. Later, during the time of Ilkhan Gaykhatu, Farejan ravaged Kartli and captured the city of Gori (possibly, this is where the haplotype of I.V. Stalin came from). Here we can also mention the campaign of the Golden Horde troops to capture "the Yassian city of Dedeyakov in 1278."
Conclusion of J. Sabitov: the ancestors of the Sarmatians and Alans lived in the north of Asia Minor, from where about 3000 years ago they migrated to the Kuban and the North Caucasus. Later they spread their expansion to Western Kazakhstan, where they were recorded by Chinese sources. At the turn of the era, the Alans (one of the Sarmatian clans) began to play the main role in the Sarmatian tribal union. There was an expansion to the West. Later, the Huns, Kipchaks, and Mongols practically pushed the Alans into the mountains, where they found their modern place of residence. There was no linguistic assimilation of a large number of the population of the Caucasus by the Alans (difference from the first point of view). The difference from the second point of view is that we believe that the source of this haplogroup among the Ossetians were the Sauromatians who migrated from Asia Minor and that this haplogroup was the majority, which prevailed among them, and the remaining haplogroups were traces of contact with other populations. According to this point of view, the Alans were one of the Sarmatian clans, which at the turn of the era began to play the first role in the Sarmatian ethnos. Thus, the migration route of this haplogroup is as follows: the migration of the Sauromatians from Asia Minor to the steppes of the Caucasus (transition to the Indo-European language), spread all the way to Western Kazakhstan, the beginning of Alan domination, their partial departure to the mountains of the Caucasus during the Huns (another part went to Europe), departure to the mountains in the era of the Mongols. The legend of the migration of the Sauromatians and Amazons from the territory of Asia Minor, recorded by Herodotus and repeated by later authors. In connection with the mentions of this legend by other authors and the absence of mentions by other authors about the origin of the Sauromatians (Sarmatians), it is more likely that there is a rational grain in this legend about the migration of ancestors from Asia Minor.
VARIANT NAMES: Latin. Alani, Halani, Greek. Αλανοι, Αλανικοι.
[1] Here Kissling summarizes the detailed description of this kinship by Tzetzes in scholia 585, 590.
Sources:
Ethnogenesis of the Abkhazians. D.A. Arshba, 2015
Alans / Massagetae