The History of the Alans in the West

186 Pages·2016·7.83 MB·English

by  Bachrach Bernard S.

VOLUME 7
Minnesota Monographs in the Humanities
Leonard Unger, editor
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A History of
the Alans in the West
From Their First Appearance
in the Sources of Classical Antiquity
through the Early Middle Ages
BERNARD S. BACHRACH
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS
Minneapolis
© Copyright 1973 by the University of Minnesota.
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
at the University of Minnesota Printing Department, Minneapolis.
Published in the United Kingdom and India by the Oxford University
Press, London and Delhi and in Canada
by the Copp Clark Publishing Co. Limited, Toronto.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 73-77710
ISBN 0-8166-0678-1
For DEBBY
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Preface
n 1922 the Russian scholar M. I. Rostovtzeff wrote, "In most
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of the work on the period of migrations, the part played by the
Sarmatians and especially by the Alans in the conquest of Europe
is almost ignored. But we must never forget that the Alans long
resided in Gaul, . . . that they invaded Italy, and that they came
with the Vandals to Spain and conquered Africa. . . ." In 1963
George Vernadsky echoed Rostovtzeff's remarks and concluded
that during the intervening four decades still no major historical
investigation of the Alans in the West had appeared.1 The pres-
ent study is aimed at filling this lacuna in the history of early
medieval Europe which has already existed too long.2
1. M. I. Rostovtzeff, Iranians and Greeks in South Russia (Oxford, 1922),
p. 237. George Vernadsky, "Eurasian Nomads and Their Impact on Medie-
val Europe," Studi Medievali, 3rd ser., IV (1963), 421. Vernadsky has made
numerous contributions to the study of the Alans, which are synthesized in
the article mentioned above. For Vernadsky's complete bibliography on the
Alans and related subjects through 1963, see Essays in Russian History: A
Collection Dedicated to George Vernadsky, ed. Alan D. Ferguson and Alfred
Levin (Hamden, Conn., 1964), pp. xiii-xxv.
2. The most recent surveys of the Alans are R. Wenskus, "Alanen,"
Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde, 1.2 (Berlin, 1970), 122-124;
J. Ozols, "Alanen," ibid., pp. 124-126. Ozols discusses the archaeological
materials and this discussion is supplemented by T. Sulimirski, The Sarma-
tians (New York, 1970). Wenskus's attempt to cover Alan history in less
than three pages falls short of W. Tomaschek, "Alanen," RE, I, cols. 1282-
1285. Sulimirski's treatment of the Alans in the West is less than four pages
long (pp. 185-188). See my review of this work in AHR, LXXVI (1971),
1525-1526. In none of these works noted above are the latest studies of the
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A HISTORY OF THE ALANS
A history of the Alans in the West during the Volkerwander-
ung and the early Middle Ages, like histories of the other peoples
during those hectic times, helps us to obtain a better under-
standing of the end of the ancient world and the beginning of
the Middle Ages. Unlike the various German tribes which dom-
inated the migrations numerically and have dominated the his-
torical literature of the migrations ever since, the Alans were
Indo-Iranian nomads. In fact, the Alans were the only non-
Germanic people of the migration period to make important set-
tlements in Western Europe. The Huns were driven out of
Europe; the Avars, Magyars, Bulgars, and Slavs confined their
settlements to Eastern Europe. As a unique phenomenon in the
history of Western Europe, the Alans have long deserved to be
studied.
The history of this nomadic people begins in the West not
when they first entered the Roman empire but when Westerners
first became aware of the Alans and left some written record
of their observations. Therefore, to provide for a better under-
standing of the Alans' migration westward and their reception,
the first chapter of this monograph is devoted primarily to what
Westerners thought and said about the Alans before the Volker-
wanderung. Secondly, an attempt has been made to ascertain the
nature of Alan culture in the period before migration. This latter
task is far more difficult than the former because frequently we
cannot accept the information provided in the written sources at
its face value. In addition, the archaeological evidence is often
ambiguous, and we cannot, for example, determine precisely
whether a burial or an artifact is Alan, Sarmatian, or Roxolan.3
Alans in the West consulted. An incomplete collection of texts of the classi-
cal and Byzantine periods in which the Alans are mentioned is to be found
in lu. Kulakovsky, Alany po svedeniiam klassicheskikh i vizantiiskikh
pisatelei (Kiev, 1899).
3. The virtually insurmountable problems of gaining exact knowledge of
the history of nomad culture from archaeological evidence are set out in a
most convincing fashion by E. A. Thompson, A History of Attila and the
Huns (Oxford, 1948), pp. 4-5. Joachim Werner, Eeitrdge zur Archaologie
des Attila-Reiches (Munich, 1956), illustrates even in the choice of his title
the great difficulties attendant upon ascribing particular styles or objects to
particular groups, especially when these groups are nomadic. On the prob-
lem of drawing specific conclusions about a particular people from archaeo-
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PREFACE
As the foregoing remarks imply, the Alans left us no corpus of
written materials for the period under discussion; like most no-
mads of the ancient and medieval world they were nonliterate.
It was only after the Alans were assimilated into the late Roman-
early medieval world that some of them attained literacy, and
then only in Latin. Much of the extant information about the
Alans is provided by certain contemporary and near contempo-
rary individuals whose interests were more often than not focused
on a subject other than the Alans. Therefore, information about
the Alans survives in some unlikely sources, and only by critically
examining this written evidence can we hope to understand a
people whose culture and history largely remains obscure to
modern scholars.
A historical inquiry such as this one necessarily evokes the
question of who exactly is being studied. In dealing with this
problem, I have employed what may be called a modified nom-
inalist approach. If the sources use the Latin term Alani (Gr.
'A\avoi), I have assumed that the information is relevant to my
study. Conversely, if other barbarian groups such as the Roxolani
or Aorsi, who were also Indo-Iranian nomads, appear in the
sources but the Alans are not specifically mentioned, I have
judged that the information is not relevant to my inquiry. This
method has been modified in two cases. In the first, a writer
might mention the Alani but mean some other group with a
similar name such as the Celtic Alauni. The contrapositive of this
case has also arisen. In the second, the source might mention
the Roxolani or some other Indo-Iranian group but have confused
them with the Alani because of similar customs or linguistic pat-
logical evidence without the support of written evidence, see the brief re-
marks in my review of Sulimirski's book, AHR, pp. 1525-1526. On the gen
eral problem of using archaeological evidence for writing history, see
Thomas F. O'Rahilly, Early Irish History and Mythology (Dublin, 1946),
p. 440, and P. H. Sawyer, The Age of the Vikings (London, 1962), pp. 48
50. For a highly critical attack on the intellectual validity of identifying
certain styles or traditions with particular ethnic or "racial" groupings, see
B. H. Slicher van Bath, "Dutch Tribal Problems," Speculum, XXIX (1949),
319-338. Slicher van Bath maintains that during periods when many peoples
are in movement and there is a considerable degree of interaction between
them it is preferable to emphasize the melange nature of artifacts.
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