Alania

Alania was an important buffer state during the Byzantine-Arab Wars and Khazar-Arab Wars of the 8th century. Theophanes the Confessor left a detailed account of Leo the Isaurian's mission to Alania in the early 8th century. Leo was instructed by Emperor Justinian II to bribe the Alan leader Itaxes into severing his "ancient friendship" with the Kingdom of Abkhazia which had allied itself with Caliph Al-Walid I[15] He crossed the mountain passes and concluded an alliance with the Alans, but was prevented from returning to Byzantium through Abasgia. Although the Abkhazians spared no expense to have him imprisoned, the Alans refused to convey the Byzantine envoy to his enemies. After several months of adventures in the Northern Caucasus, Leo extricated himself from the precarious situation and returned to Constantinople.

After Leo assumed the imperial title, the land of his mountaineer allies was invaded by Umar II's forces. A Khazar chieftain, Barjik, hastened to their succor and, in 722, the joint Alan-Khazar army inflicted a defeat on the Arab general Tabit al-Nahrani. The Khazars erected Skhimar and several other strongholds in Alania at this period. In 728 Maslamah ibn Abd al-Malik, having penetrated the Gate of the Alans, devastated the country of the Alans. Eight years later, Marwan ibn Muhammad passed by the Gate in order to ravage the forts in Alania. In 758, as Ibn al-Faqih reports, the Gate was held by another Arab general, Yazid ibn Usayd.

As a result of their united stand against the successive waves of invaders from the south, the Alans of the Caucasus fell under the overlordship of the Khazar Khaganate. They remained staunch allies of the Khazars in the 9th century, supporting them against a Byzantine-led coalition during the reign of the Khazar king Benjamin. According to the anonymous author of the Schechter Letter, many Alans were during this period adherents of Judaism.

Surviving architectural monuments of the Alanian kingdom include three churches in Arkhyz, the Shoana Church, and the Senty Church.

Late 19th century copy of a mural from the central Zelenchuk church

In the late 9th century, Alania became independent from the Khazars.[1] In the early 10th century, the Alans fell under the influence of the Byzantine Empire due to King Constantine III of Abkhazia's activities in north Caucasus, the latter sent an army into Alan territory and, with the Byzantine patriarch Nicholas Mystikos, converted the Alans to Christianity.[16] The conversion is documented in the letters of Patriarch Nicholas Mysticus to the local archbishop, Peter, who was appointed here through King George II of Abkhazia's efforts.[16]

When Ibn Rustah visited Alania at some point between 903 and 913, its king was by then Christian. The Persian traveller came to Alania from Sarir, a Christian kingdom immediately to the east:[17]

You go to the left from the kingdom of Sarir and, after three days of journey through mountains and meadows, arrive in the kingdom of Al-Lan. Their king is Christian at heart, but all his people are idolaters. Then you travel for ten days among rivers and woods before arriving at a fortress called the "Gate of the Alans". It stands on the top of a mountain at the foot of which there is a road; high mountains surround it and a thousand men from among its inhabitants guard its walls day and night.[18]

The Byzantines, who had adopted an anti-Khazar foreign policy, involved the Alans in a war against the Khaganate during the reign of the Khazar ruler Aaron II, probably the early 920s. In this war the Alans were defeated and their king captured. According to Muslim sources such as al-Mas'udi (943/56), the Alans abandoned Christianity and expelled the Byzantine missionaries and clergy roughly contemporaneously with these events. Aaron's son married the daughter of the Alan king and Alania was re-aligned with the Khazars, remaining so until the collapse of the Khaganate in the 960s.

Empress Maria of Alania, right, the wife of Michael VII and of Nicephorus III, was Alan on her mother's side. Her maternal uncle was king Dorgolel of Alania.

After the downfall of Khazaria, the Alan kings frequently allied with the Byzantines and various Georgian rulers for protection against encroachments by northern steppe peoples such as the Pechenegs and Kipchaks. John Skylitzes reports that Alda of Alania, after the death of her husband, "George of Abasgia" (i.e., George I of Georgia), received Anakopia as a maritime fief from Emperor Romanus III.[19] This happened in 1033, the year when the Alans and the Rus sacked the coast of Shirvan in modern-day Azerbaijan. Alania is not mentioned in East Slavic chronicles, but archaeology indicates that the Alans maintained trade contacts with the Rus' principality of Tmutarakan. There is a stone grave cross, with a Cyrillic inscription from 1041, standing on the bank of the Bolshoi Yegorlyk River in present-day Stavropol Krai, immediately north of Alania.[20] Two Russian crosses, datable to ca. 1200, were discovered by archaeologists in Arkhyz, the heartland of medieval Alania.[21]

The Alans and Georgians probably collaborated in the Christianization of the Vainakhs and Dvals in the 12th and 13th centuries, Georgian missionaries were active in Alania[14] and the Alan contingents were frequently employed by the Georgian monarchs against their Muslim neighbors. The Alanian-Georgian alliance was cemented in the 1060s, when the Alans struck across Muslim Arran and sacked Ganja. In the 1120s King David the Builder of Georgia visited the Darial to reconcile the Alans with the Kipchaks, who thereupon were allowed to pass through Alania to the Georgian soil. David's son, Demetre I, also journeyed, c. 1153, to Alania accompanied by the Arab historian Ibn al-Azraq. The alliance culminated in 1187, when the Alanian prince David Soslan married Queen Tamar of Georgia, a half-Alanian herself, with their descendants ruling Georgia until the 19th century. The medieval Alanian princesses also married Byzantine and Russian Rurikid rulers more than once. For instance, Maria the Ossetian, who founded the Convent of Princesses in Vladimir, was the wife of Vsevolod the Big Nest and grandmother of Alexander Nevsky.

Political map of the Caucasus region in 1245

In the late 1230s all three Christian powers - Alania, Georgia, and Vladimir-Suzdal - fell before the Mongol invaders. Bishop Theodore of Alania described the plight of his metropolis in a lengthy epistolary sermon written during the tenure of Patriarch Germanus II (1222–40). The French-Flemish monk and traveler William of Rubruck mentions Alans numerous times in the account of his 1253–1255 journey through Eurasia to the Great Khan, e.g. Alans living as Mongol subjects in Crimea, Old Astrakhan, the Khan's capital Karakoram, and also still as freemen in their Caucasian homeland ("the Alans or Aas, who are Christians and still fight the Tartars").[22]

The wars of Timur in the 14th century inflicted the final blow on Alania and decimated its population. Those who survived being killed or enslaved by the Mongols and Timur's armies, broke up into three groups. One retreated into the foothills and valleys of the central Caucasus and produced the two principal Ossetian groups, Digor and Iron. Another group of Alans migrated with the Kipchaks into Eastern Europe and preserved their language and ethnic identity as the Jassic people until the 15th century. The third group joined the Mongol horde and soon disappeared from history.[14]

• Bazuk - c. late 1st/early 2nd century; allied with the Arsacid kings of Iberia
• Anbazuk/Ambazuk - co-ruled with previous
• Ashkhadar - c. early 4th century; father of Ashkhen, wife of Trdat III of Armenia
• Itaz - waged war against Abkhazia in the early 8th century

• Urdur/Urdura/Urdure - c. early 11th century; invaded Kakheti around 1029 and was killed by Kvirike III. According to Vakhushti of Kartli, Kvirike was assassinated by an Alan slave in revenge.
• Durgulel the Great - c. 11th century; son of previous, brother of Alda of Alania and Borena of Alania. Called Gabriel on Byzantine seals.
• Rosmik - c. early 12th century; fought with the Byzantines against the Normans invading Epirus c. 1107/8
• Khuddan - c. 12th century; father of Burdukhan of Alania, wife of George III of Georgia

• David - c. 12th century; grandson of Alda of Alania; forced to flee Georgia after his father Demetrius unsuccessfully tried to claim the throne. He and his descendants married into the Tsarazon dynasty and became the rulers of Alania
• Aton - son of previous
• Jadaron - son of previous
• David Soslan - d. 1207; son of previous, married Tamar of Georgia

• Kachir-Ukule/Kachiruk Ulu - c. 1237 - captured and killed by the Mongols
• Indiabu - c. 13th century
• Peredjan - c. 1290

• Alemany, Agusti (2000). Sources on the Alans: a critical compilation. Brill. ISBN 9789004114425.
• Benveniste, Émile (1973). Indo-European Language and Society. University of Miami Press. ISBN 978-0870242502.
• Kuznetsov V. A. Ocherki istorii alan. Vladikavkaz, 1992.
• Kouznetsov, Vladimir; Lebedynsky, Iaroslav (2005). Les Alains. Cavaliers des steppes, seigneurs du Caucase. I-XV siecles apr. J.-C. ISBN 2877722953.
• Mallory, J. P.; Adams, Douglas Q. (1997). Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture. Fitzroy Dearborn. ISBN 978-1-884964-98-5.
• Pletneva, Svetlana. Ot kochevii k gorodam. Moscow, 1967.
• Waldman, Carl; Mason, Catherine (2006). Encyclopedia of European Peoples. Infobase Publishing. ISBN 1438129181. Retrieved January 16, 2015.
• West, Barbara A. (January 1, 2009). Encyclopedia of the Peoples of Asia and Oceania. Infobase Publishing. ISBN 1438119135. Retrieved 16 May 2015.