Alans

Rouran epoch Göktürk epoch Uyghur epoch Kirghiz epoch

Rouran First Göktürk Tang rule Second Göktürk Uyghur Kirghiz Huns Western Göktürk Türgesh Karluk Khazar

Rouran 400–554
First Göktürk 552–630
Tang rule 630–682
Second Göktürk 682–744
Uyghur 744–840
Kirghiz 840–924
Huns 370–469
Western Göktürk 552–659
Türgesh 699–766
Karluk 766–800
Khazar 650–969

The Alans held the north Caucasus through the whole middle ages. They were an Iranian-speaking people on the passes between the steppe and the Transcaucasian kingdoms.^[1] Every power that wanted the Caspian gate had to come through their country.

The Alans and the Huns

In the fourth century the Alans lived beyond the Don, in the endless wastes of Scythia. Ammianus Marcellinus writes that they took their name from a range of mountains. By repeated victories they wore down the neighbouring peoples and drew them under their own name, as the Persians had done. The Alans were scattered over immense distances. All of them were called Alans because of their customs, their savage way of life and their common armour.^[2] They lived on meat and plenty of milk, in wagons covered with bark. They gave most care to their horses. When they reached pasture, they drew up their wagons in a circle.^[3] Almost all of them were tall and handsome, with fair hair. In everything they were close to the Huns, but milder in their way of life.^[4] They had no temple. They worshipped a naked sword fixed in the ground as their god of war. They foretold the future with willow twigs.^[5]

The Huns fell first on the Alans of the Don, whom usage called the Tanaites. They killed and plundered many of them. They joined the survivors to themselves by a treaty. With the survivors’ help they broke into the realm of Hermanaric.^[6] Ammianus does not record the date.^[7] Jordanes says that the Huns wore the Alans down by repeated attacks and subdued them, “their equals in battle, but unlike them in civilization, manners and appearance”.^[8] The alliance of Huns and Alans lasted three decades.^[9] In 377 the Goths won some of the Huns and Alans with the hope of great booty.^[10] At Adrianople in 378 a band of Alans fought, while the Huns stayed away.^[11] The alliance broke up about 400.^[12] Most of the Alans crossed the Rhine on 31 December 406. No author of the fifth century mentions Alans as allies of the Huns.^[12]

The graves show what the Hunnic advance did to them. Ammianus and Chinese sources lead scholars to count the late Sarmatians of the lower Volga as Alans.^[13] Their graves of the third and fourth centuries show the custom of binding the heads of infants, which they took over from the east about 200 AD. A few of the graves hold bows stiffened with bone plates.^[14] They also used simple reflex bows of wood and horn that have left no trace in the ground.^[15] In the late fourth and the fifth century the steppe cemeteries change. Mounds with cremation burials and single rich shaft graves appear. The usual Alan mounds vanish from the steppe. This break is traced to the Hunnic advance to the Volga and the Don.^[16] After 400 deformed skulls turn up in numbers in the valleys of the north Caucasus and in Dagestan.^[17] Scholars take this to mean that groups of Alans moved from the steppe into the mountains. Their culture lived on there, and the custom probably into the seventh century.^[18]

In Gaul the Alans stood against Attila. In 451 Sangiban, king of the Alans at Orléans, promised to hand the city over to him.^[19]^[20] Aetius and the Visigothic king Theodorid fortified it before Attila arrived. On the Catalaunian Plains they placed Sangiban and his people in the centre of their line, under watch.^[21] After his return from Italy, Jordanes writes, Attila marched against the Alans settled beyond the Loire. The Visigothic king Thorismud drove him back.^[22] No other author mentions this second campaign. Historians generally disbelieve it.^[23] The invasion of Gaul and the battle on the Catalaunian Plains carry the war. At the Nedao in 454 Alans fought in heavy armour.^[24]

The Alans and the Göktürks

Two powers of the sixth century reached for them. Persia built against them. The Arabic tradition says that king Peroz raised a work of stone in the region of Sul and the Alans to keep those peoples out of his land.^[1] The Göktürks claimed them. When Valentinos came to Türk-shad in 576, Istemi’s son catalogued Roman perfidies. He announced that the Alans and the Utigurs were now numbered among the Göktürks’ slaves.^[25] Some scholars name the Onogurs instead of the Utigurs.^[26]

Whether the claim was more than a claim is another matter. Turkic Atlas follows what the Göktürks actually did in that country fifty years later under the Caucasus campaign.

References

^ a b Tabari
^ Ammianus Marcellinus; Rolfe 1939, xxxi.2.13, 17, p. 387–391
^ Ammianus Marcellinus; Rolfe 1939, xxxi.2.18–19, p. 391–393
^ Ammianus Marcellinus; Rolfe 1939, xxxi.2.21, p. 393
^ Ammianus Marcellinus; Rolfe 1939, xxxi.2.23–24, p. 393–395
^ Ammianus Marcellinus; Rolfe 1939, xxxi.3.1, p. 395–397
^ Thompson 1948, p. 22
^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 126, p. 86
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 22
^ Ammianus Marcellinus; Rolfe 1939, xxxi.8.4, p. 437
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 29
^ a b Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 71
^ Werner 1956, p. 7
^ Werner 1956, p. 7, 49
^ Werner 1956, p. 49
^ Werner 1956, p. 12
^ Werner 1956, p. 13
^ Werner 1956, p. 13, 16
^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 194, p. 105
^ Thompson 1948, p. 140–141
^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 194–197, p. 105–106
^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 226–228, p. 114–115
^ Mierow 1915, p. 175
^ Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 261, p. 126
^ Menander Protector; Dindorf 1871, p. 87
^ Golden 1992, p. 130

Sources

Ammianus Marcellinus
Jordanes (after Priscus and Ammianus Marcellinus)
Menander Protector
Tabari

Literature

John C. Rolfe, Ammianus Marcellinus, with an English Translation, vol. III: Books XXVII–XXXI (1939)
Charles Christopher Mierow, The Gothic History of Jordanes in English Version, with an Introduction and a Commentary (1915)
Otto J. Maenchen-Helfen, The World of the Huns: Studies in Their History and Culture (1973)
E. A. Thompson, A History of Attila and the Huns (1948)
Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
Theodor Nöldeke, Geschichte der Perser und Araber zur Zeit der Sasaniden. Aus der arabischen Chronik des Tabari übersetzt und mit ausführlichen Erläuterungen und Ergänzungen versehn (1879)
Josef Marquart, Osteuropäische und ostasiatische Streifzüge (1903)
Ludwig Dindorf (ed.), Historici Graeci minores, Bd. II: Menander Protector et Agathias (1871)
Joachim Werner, Beiträge zur Archäologie des Attila-Reiches (1956)