The Alans and the mountain peoples

Who rules

Name

Not pinned. The Alan royal house of David Soslan's kin (the line Prince Vakhushti calls Aton and Jadaron) is the leading family; who heads it in 1199-1200 is not recorded

Title

Princes of the Alans; no single king can be named for 1 January 1200

Since

Not pinned

Confidence

low

The Georgian sources speak of an Alan kingdom whose princesses married George III (Burdukhan, Tamar's mother) and whose prince David Soslan married Tamar; by 1236 the Hungarian friar Julian found 'as many princes as villages, none of whom owes allegiance to another'. Between those points the sources are almost silent.

Overlord

None. Georgia has the strongest influence (kinship, missions, the Darial gate); the Kipchaks of the steppe are neighbours and sometimes allies.

Threats

• Kipchak raids from the steppe
• Feuds between princely houses as the kingdom loosens

How they meet and decide

Alan lordship rests on princely families (aldars in later Ossetian usage) with their armed followers in fortified villages and tower settlements; the valley communities meet in assemblies of elders. The Nakh and Dagestani highlanders are organised in free communities of clans with their own assemblies. Nothing is recorded of a general assembly of the Alans in 1199-1200.

Tribute

Georgia claims tribute and service from the mountain peoples on its side of the ridge (the Pkhovi, Didos, Tushetians and the Dvals) and influence among the Durdzuks and Kists; the Alans are friends and kin, not tributaries. The Kipchaks of the steppe to the north take what they can by raid and alliance.

Church

Alania has had a metropolitan of the Patriarchate of Constantinople since the 10th century; its seat in 1200 is not pinned (the churches of Arkhyz on the Zelenchuk were its centre in the 10th-11th centuries). Georgian missionaries and Georgian churches spread among the Dvals, the Nakh peoples and the eastern Alans in the 12th and 13th centuries. Many Alans keep older beliefs alongside Christianity.

Relations with neighbours

Georgia

Close kin and allies: Burdukhan, daughter of an Alan king, was George III's queen; David Soslan is Tamar's husband. Alan auxiliaries serve in Georgian armies, and the Darial road is held jointly by custom since the agreements of David IV's time.

Cumans

Neighbours on the steppe; in the 1120s David IV reconciled the Alans and the Kipchaks so that Kipchak families could pass through Alania into Georgia. Alans and Kipchaks will stand together against the Mongols in 1222 (later).

Derbent

The Dagestani highlanders border the emirate of Derbent (aze sheet).

Byzantium

Old religious ties through the metropolitan of Alania; Alan soldiers have served Byzantium.

What the year holds

What happened next, if nothing in play changes it. Each event carries what it depends on and what would stop it.

In 1200

1. No dated event for 1200Nothing is recorded for the Alans in 1200.

Later, on the likely course

1. 1222 (later course)The Mongols under Jebe and Subutai cross the Caucasus and break the Alan and Kipchak alliance.
2. 1239-40 (later course)The Mongols take the Alan capital Maghas.

Where the sources disagree

• David Soslan's father is named Jadaron only by Prince Vakhushti (18th century); the Ossetian identification of his tomb at Nuzal (Pchelina, 1946) is not accepted by most scholars.

Evidence: The Alans of 1200 are known from a few lines in the Georgian histories, Byzantine and Rus' marriage records, church lists and archaeology; no Alan source survives. The extent of Alan settlement on the Terek plain and on the upper Kuban is from general accounts (Alania before the Mongols reached from the Laba to the Argun).

On the map: Drawn as one block for the Alans; the province records draw the other peoples. The plains along the Terek and Kuma are a shifting edge between Alans and Kipchaks.

Primary sources for this realm

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

• The History of Derbent and Shirvan, as preserved in Munejjim-bashi's Jami al-duwal, Anonymous (an 11th-century author of Derbent, excerpted by Munejjim-bashi, died 1702) (about 1075; preserved in an Ottoman compilation of the 1670s). The only local history of the Shirvanshahs and the emirs of Derbent, surviving as extracts in a 17th-century Ottoman compilation.
• The Georgian Chronicles: the Histories and Eulogies of the Sovereigns, and the Life of Queen Tamar, Anonymous, attributed to the chancellor Theodore of Chqondidi and to Basili, master of the court (about 1210 to 1225). Two court histories of Queen Tamar written within a generation. Read online