The Alāns were an Iranian people of the western Eurasian steppes and North Caucasus, noted by Graeco-Roman authors (as Ἀλανοί, Ἀλανορρσοί, Alani, or Halani) since the first century C.E. Middle Persian and Modern Persian Alān (= Īrān < *āryāna < *aryānām (genit. pl.) < *arya (“Aryan”), with the shift ry > l characteristic of some Scythian dialects) = Arabic al-Lān (sometimes ʿAlāniyya), Hebrew Alan, and Armenian Alankʿ. The mediaeval Alāns were sometimes known as Ās/Āṣ in Islamic sources (cf. Georgian Ows-i, Mongol Asud (pl.), Hungarian Jász). Th…

Karachay-Cherkessia (Karaçay-Cerkesiya, Karacay-Cerkesiya) is a republic in the western Caucasus, a part of the Russian Federation. It is bordered by the Kabardino-Balkar Republic to the east, Georgia and Abkhazia to the south, Stavropol Krai to the north, and Krasondar Krai to the west. Karachay-Cherkessia lies on the northern slopes of the Greater Caucasus, and the highest point of Europe, the inactive volcano Elbrus (5,642 metres), is located in the republic. The main rivers are the Kuban and its tributaries, the Teberda, Bolshoy Zelenchuk, Urup, and Bolshaya Laba. The populati…

The Massagetae were a nomadic tribe mentioned chiefly by ancient Greek authors who had no precise idea of their location. They were supposed to be around the Oxus or the Jaxartes delta or between the Caspian Sea and the Aral Sea, or perhaps further to the northeast. The ancient authors’ information is imprecise, and their sources remain mostly unclear. Particularly problematic is the fact that the Massagetae (Gk. Massagétai) are often said to have lived north of the Araxes (Gk. Aráxēs) river, which is assigned various identities by modern scholars. Concerning the Massagetae, the Grae…

The Caucasus range, which constitutes a natural barrier between Europe and Asia, was called in pre-900/ 1500 Muslim sources al-Qabq (Ibn Ḥawqal, 306, 319; Ḥudūd al-ʿālam, 67, 145, 201; al-Kabkh (al-Masʿūdī, 399). Pre-Islamic Persian sources referred to it as Kaf Kof, a Middle Persian name that appears in Sāsānid-era inscriptions (MacKenzie, 535) and resurfaces in variant form in the Islamic-era Persian tradition, when Firdawsī (c. 328–410/940–1020) refers, in his Shāh-nāma (“Book of kings”), to the Caucasus mountains as the Kōh-i Kāf. The earliest etymon of the n…

Crimea (Tatar Qırım, Ukr. and Russ. Krym) is a peninsula surrounded by the Black Sea and Sea of Azov and connected to present-day mainland Ukraine by a narrow isthmus. In classical antiquity, it was inhabited by Scythians, and its southern shores were colonised by Greeks, who called the peninsula Tauris. In the third and fourth centuries C.E., Alans, Goths, and Huns settled in Crimea, and in the early Middle Ages its territory was divided politically between the Khazar Kaganate and Byzantium. In…

Abū ʿAlī Aḥmad b. ʿUmar Ibn Rusta, a native of Isfahan, is known for his work Kitāb al-aʿ lāq al-nafīsa (“The book of precious and valuable things”), an encyclopaedia of sorts. Little is known about his life, however, and only the seventh volume of his book is extant. This volume is, broadly speaking, a geographical treatise, for which reason Ibn Rusta is often, however inaccurately, referred to as a geographer. From internal evidence it is apparent that the volume was written around 300/912. Ibn Rusta’s geographical treatise was written at a time when a handful of geographica…

The Khazars, a Turkic tribe, were founders of the Khazar Empire, a state formation that, for three hundred years (mid-seventh to mid-tenth century C.E.), played a pivotal role in the history of Eastern Europe. 1. Origins of the Khazars Khazaria encompassed a vast area, the nucleus of which lay within the ill-defined borders of the North Caucasian steppe lands, the lower and middle Volga region, the Don–Dniepr region, and the northern coasts of the Black Sea (including Crimea). This unique empire, founded by nomads and semi-nomads, in…

The Balkars, or Malqar(lı), are a Turkic-speaking Sunnī Muslim people living in the upland valleys of the Baksan/Baskhan (Orusbiy), Chegem, Kholam, Bezengi/Bızıngı, and Malka(r) rivers in the North Caucasus, in the Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria (capital: Nal’chik), which forms part of the Russian Federation. Their self-designation is tawlu (“mountaineer”), and their Kabardinian neighbours refer to them as Q’ushkh’ǝ (also “mountaineer”) or Bǝɬqǝr. The latter name is probably linked to the Balkar/Malka(r) gorge, from which the Russian “Balka…

The Avars are the largest ethnic group of Dāghistān (capital, Makhachkala) in the Northeast Caucasus and form smaller communities in adjoining regions. About 500,000 of the 600,000 Avars live in Dāghistān (especially in the Andi and Avar Qoy Su region), where the Avar nationality often includes smaller, linguistically related groupings. Ethnic identification, in a region of more than thirty distinct ethnicities, is often situational and includes strong “sub-ethnic” identities. The Avar self-designation is maʿarulal “mountaineers” (< Avar meʿer “mountain,” although this e…

The name al-Andalus designated the Arab and Islamic regions of the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages. From the late first century/early eighth century, the name al-Andalus was used by Arabs to designate the entire Iberian Peninsula, as well as, in a more restricted sense, the part of that territory under the political control of Muslims. The name has thus always had two meanings in the Arabic tradition, a broader, geographic one, and a more restricted, political one. The two senses coexisted throughout the centuries of the Muslim presence in Ib…

The Oghuz tribal union derived from groups within the Türk Qaghanate; they were led by a Yabghu and inhabited the Syr Darya–Aral Sea region. The Eastern Old Turkic (EOT) ethnonym Oghuz initially denoted a kinship grouping (cf. Chin. 九 姓 Jiu Xing “Nine Surnames/clans” translated into Chinese as Toquz Oghuz [“The Nine Oghuz”]). Its earliest attestation may be Hujie 呼揭 (Old Chin. hâ/hâh gat, Early Middle Chin. xɔ gɨat) or Wujie 烏揭 (Old Chin. ʔâ gat/kat, Early Middle Chin. ʔɔ gɨat), which may transcribe *Hagaŕ (Oghur? the Western Old Turkic [WOT] variant of Oghuz), a people con…

Daghestan (Dāghistān) is a republic of the Russian Federation. Located in the northeastern Caucasus, it has an area of 50,300 square kilometres and borders Kalmykia and the Stavropol region in the north, Chechnya and Georgia in the west, Azerbaijan in the south, and the Caspian Sea in the east. Daghestan’s geography ranges from coastal plain to foothills to alpine areas. The population of 2,910,249 (2010 census) includes speakers of Turkic languages (Kumyks, 14.9 percent; Azeris, 4.5 percent; N…

Georgia resides in the Caucasus isthmus, a crucible of cross-cultural encounter linking the Eurasian steppe and the Middle East. Across the pre-modern epoch, the area named for the Caucasus Mountains was diverse and cosmopolitan: “[i]t would be hard to place such peoples as Georgians and Armenian unequivocally within any one major ‘civilization’” (Hodgson, 33). While Hodgson astutely perceived Caucasia’s cross-cultural condition, subsequent research has exposed the region’s long-term participati…