The Alans (Latin: Alani) were an ancient and medieval Iranic nomadic pastoral people who migrated to what is today the North Caucasus; some continued on to Europe and later North Africa. They are generally regarded as part of the Sarmatians, and possibly related to the Massagetae. Modern historians have connected the Alans with the Central Asian Yancai of Chinese sources and with the Aorsi of Roman sources. Having migrated westwards and becoming dominant among the Sarmatians on the Pontic–Caspian steppe, the Alans are mentioned by Roman sources in the 1st century CE. At that time they had settled in the region north of the Black Sea and frequently raided the Parthian Empire and the South Caucasus provinces of the Roman Empire. Between 215 and 250 CE the Goths broke their hold on the Pontic Steppe, thereby assimilating a significant population of associated Alans.
After the Hunnic defeat of the Goths on the Pontic Steppe around 375 CE, many of the Alans along with various Germanic tribes migrated westwards. They crossed the Rhine in 406 CE along with the Vandals and Suebi, settling in Orléans and Valence. Around 409 CE they joined the Vandals and Suebi in crossing the Pyrenees into the Iberian Peninsula, settling in Lusitania and Hispania Carthaginensis. The Iberian Alans, soundly defeated by the Visigoths in 418 CE, subsequently surrendered their autonomy to the Hasdingi Vandals. In 428 CE, the Vandals and Alans crossed the Strait of Gibraltar into North Africa, where they founded a kingdom which lasted until its conquest by Byzantine emperor Justinian I in 534 CE.
Eventually in the 9th century, those Alans who remained under Hunnic rule established the kingdom of Alania, a regional power in the Northern Caucasus. It survived until the Mongol invasions of the 13th century. Various scholars consider these Alans to be the ancestors of the modern Ossetians.
The Alans spoke an Eastern Iranian language which derived from Scytho-Sarmatian; in turn, the language evolved into the modern Ossetian language. The name Alan represents an Eastern Iranian dialectal form of the Old Iranian term Aryan, and so is cognate with the name of the country Īrān (from the gen. plur. *aryānām).
Name
The Alans were documented by foreign observers from the 1st century onward under similar names: Latin: Alānī; Greek: Ἀλανοί Alanoi; Chinese: 阿蘭聊 Alanliao (Pinyin; Alan + Liu) in the 2nd century, 阿蘭 Alan in the 3rd century, later Alanguo (阿蘭國); Parthian and Middle Persian Alānān (plural); Arabic Alān (singular); Syriac Alānayē; Classical Armenian Alank'; Georgian Alaneti ('country of the Alans'); Hebrew Alan (pl. Alanim). Rarer Latin spellings include Alauni or Halani. The name was also preserved in the modern Ossetian language as Allon.
The ethnonym Alān is a dialectal variant of the Old Iranian *Aryāna, itself derived from the root arya-, meaning 'Aryan', the common self-designation of Indo-Iranian peoples. It probably came in use in the early history of the Alans for the purpose of uniting a heterogeneous group of tribes through the invocation of a common, ancestral 'Aryan' origin. Like the name of Iran (*Aryānām), the adjective *aryāna is related to Airyanəm Waēǰō ('stretch of the Aryas'), the mythical homeland of the early Iranians mentioned in the Avesta.
Some other ethnonyms also bear the name of the Alans: the Rhoxolāni ('Bright Alans'), an offshoot of the Alans whose name may be linked to religious practices, and the Alanorsoi ('White Alans'), perhaps a conglomerate of Alans and Aorsi. The personal names Alan and Alain (from Latin Alanus) may have been introduced by Alan settlers to Western Europe during the first millennium.
The Alans were also known over the course of their history by another group of related names including the variations Asi, As, and Os (Romanian Iasi or Olani, Bulgarian Uzi, Hungarian Jász, Russian Jasy, Georgian Osi). It is this name at the root of the modern Ossetian.
The Alans and warfare
The Alans were famed for their elite and highly mobile cavalry, a fighting style they inherited from their Sarmatian relatives. The Alans' influence on mounted warfare was widespread, with their tactics and equipment impacting the Roman and Germanic armies, among others.
Alani boys learned to ride at a young age, and Roman writer Ammianus Marcellinus remarked that walking was considered offensive for an Alanic man. A hallmark Alanic tactic, the feigned retreat was designed to draw enemy infantry into a vulnerable position. Alani horsemen would pretend to flee before suddenly wheeling around to attack the enemy's exposed flank.
As mercenaries for the Romans and other powers, the Alans demonstrated a sophisticated understanding of combined-arms tactics. Their missile-equipped cavalry would harry the enemy, pinning them in place before the shock cavalry delivered a devastating charge.
Alani cavalry was highly mobile and was used for rapid skirmishing and opportunistic attacks against enemy flanks. The mobility of their cavalry and the psychological terror they inspired in less disciplined infantry were major advantages.
The Alans were recruited into the Mongol forces and known as the Asud, with one unit called "Right Alan Guard" that was combined with "recently surrendered" soldiers.
History
Origin
The Alans were formed out of the merger of the Massagetae, a Central Asian Iranian nomadic people, with some old tribal groups. Related to the Asii who previously invaded Bactria in the 2nd century BC, the Alans were pushed west by the Kangju people (known to Graeco-Roman authors as the Ἰαξάρται Iaxártai in Greek, and the Iaxartae in Latin), the latter of whom were living in the Syr Darya basin, from where they expanded their rule from Fergana to the Aral Sea region.
Early Alans
The first mentions of names that historians link with the Alani appear at almost the same time in texts from the Mediterranean, Middle East and China.
In the 1st century, the Alans migrated westwards from Central Asia, achieving a dominant position among the Sarmatians living between the Don River and the Caspian Sea. The Alans are mentioned in the Vologases inscription which reads that Vologases I, the Parthian king between around 45 and 78, in the 11th year of his reign (62), battled Kuluk, king of the Alani. Regarding the Alan invasion of Parthia, the 1st century Jewish historian Josephus supplements this inscription. Josephus reports in the Jewish Wars (book 7, ch. 7.4) how Alans (whom he calls a "Scythian" tribe) living near the Sea of Azov crossed the Iron Gates for plunder (72 CE) and defeated the armies of Pacorus, king of Media, and Tiridates, King of Armenia, two brothers of Vologases I (for whom the above-mentioned inscription was made):
Now there was a nation of the Alans, which we have formerly mentioned somewhere as being Scythians, and living around Tanais and Lake Maeotis. 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 dared 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 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 waste all before them. Now, Tiridates was king of that country, who met them and fought them but was lucky not to have been taken alive in the battle; for a certain man threw a noose over him and would soon have drawn him in, had he not immediately cut the cord with his sword and escaped. 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 booty from both kingdoms, along with them, and then retreated back to their own country.
The fact that the Alans invaded Parthia through Hyrcania shows that at the time many Alans were still based north-east of the Caspian Sea. By the early 2nd century the Alans were in firm control of the Lower Volga and Kuban. These lands had earlier been occupied by the Aorsi and the Siraces, whom the Alans apparently absorbed, dispersed and/or destroyed, since they were no longer mentioned in contemporaneous accounts. It is likely that the Alans' influence stretched further westwards, encompassing most of the Sarmatian world, which by then possessed a relatively homogenous culture.
In 135 CE, the Alans made a huge raid into Asia Minor via the Caucasus, ravaging Media and Armenia. They were eventually driven back by Arrian, the governor of Cappadocia, who wrote a detailed report (Ektaxis kata Alanoon or 'War Against the Alans') that is a major source for studying Roman military tactics.
From 215 to 250, the Germanic Goths expanded south-eastwards and broke the Alan dominance on the Pontic Steppe. The Alans however seem to have had a significant influence on the culture of the Goths, who became excellent horsemen and adopted the Alanic animal style art. (The Roman Empire, during the chaos of the 3rd century civil wars, suffered damaging raids by the Gothic armies with their heavy cavalry before the Illyrian Emperors adapted to the Gothic tactics, reorganized and expanded the Roman heavy cavalry, and defeated the Goths under Gallienus, Claudius II and Aurelian.)
After the Gothic entry to the steppe, many of the Alans seem to have retreated eastwards towards the Don, where they seem to have established contacts with the Huns. Ammianus writes that the Alans were "somewhat like the Huns, but in their manner of life and their habits they are less savage." Jordanes contrasted them with the Huns, noting that the Alans "were their equals in battle, but unlike them in their civilisation, manners and appearance". In the late 4th century, Vegetius conflates Alans and Huns in his military treatise – Hunnorum Alannorumque natio, the "nation of Huns and Alans" – and collocates Goths, Huns and Alans, exemplo Gothorum et Alannorum Hunnorumque.
The 4th century Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus noted that the Alans were "formerly called Massagetae," while Dio Cassius wrote that "they are Massagetae." It is likely that the Alans were an amalgamation of various Iranian peoples, including Sarmatians, Massagetae and Sakas. Scholars have connected the Alans to the nomadic state of Yancai mentioned in Chinese sources. The Yancai are first mentioned in connection with late 2nd century BC diplomat Zhang Qian's travels in Chapter 123 of Shiji (whose author, Sima Qian, died c. 90 BC). The Yancai of Chinese records has again been equated with the Aorsi, a powerful Sarmatian tribe living between the Don River and the Aral Sea, mentioned in Roman records, in particular Strabo.
Link to Chinese chronicles
The Later Han dynasty Chinese chronicle, the Hou Hanshu, 88 (covering the period 25–220 and completed in the 5th century), mentioned a report that the Yancai nation (奄蔡 lit "Vast Steppes" or "Extensive Grasslands" < LHC *ʔɨamB-sɑC; a.k.a. Hesu (闔蘇), compare Latin Abzoae, identified with the Aorsi (Ancient Greek Αορσιοι)) had become a vassal state of the Kangju and was now known as Alan (< LHC: *ʔɑ-lɑn 阿蘭)
Y. A. Zadneprovskiy suggests that the Kangju subjugation of Yancai occurred in the 1st century BC, and that this subjugation caused various Sarmatian tribes, including the Aorsi, to migrate westwards, which played a major role in starting the Migration Period. The 3rd century Weilüe also notes that Yancai was then known to be Alans, although they were no longer vassals of the Kangju.
Dutch Sinologist A. F. P. Hulsewé noted that:
Chavannes (1905), p. 558, note 5, approves of the identification of Yen-ts’ai with the ‘Αορσοι mentioned by Strabo, as proposed by Hirth (1885), p. 139, note 1; he believes this identification to be strengthened by the later name Alan, which explains Ptolemy's "Alanorsi". Marquart (1905), pp. 240–241, did not accept this identification, but Pulleyblank (1963), pp. 99 and 220, does, referring for additional support to HSPC 70.6b where the name Ho-su 闔蘇, reconstructed in ‘Old Chinese’ as ĥa̱p-sa̱ĥ, can be compared with Abzoae found in Pliny VI, 38 (see also Pulleyblank (1968), p. 252). Also Humbach (1969), pp. 39–40, accepts the identification, though with some reserve.
Migration to Gaul
Around 370, according to Ammianus, the peaceful relations between the Alans and Huns were broken, after the Huns attacked the Don Alans, killing many of them and establishing an alliance with the survivors. These Alans successfully invaded the Goths in 375 together with the Huns. They subsequently accompanied the Huns in their westward expansion.
Following the Hunnic invasion in 370, other Alans, along with other Sarmatians, migrated westward. One of these Alan groups fought together with the Goths in the decisive Battle of Adrianople in 378 CE, in which emperor Valens was killed. As the Roman Empire continued to decline, the Alans split into various groups; some fought for the Romans while others joined the Huns, Visigoths or Ostrogoths. A portion of the western Alans joined the Vandals and the Suebi in their invasion of Roman Gaul. Gregory of Tours mentions in his Liber historiae Francorum ("Book of Frankish History") that the Alan king Respendial saved the day for the Vandals in an armed encounter with the Franks at the crossing of the Rhine on 31 December 406. According to Gregory, another group of Alans, led by Goar, crossed the Rhine at the same time, but immediately joined the Romans and settled in Gaul.