Alans migrations in the 4th-5th centuries. Red: migrations; Orange: military expeditions; Yellow: settlement areas.

Was thinking to golchin a few usefull essays on Iran;s history for new generation of Iranians born outside Iran thus to relate to a sense of identity & the concept behind this everchanging term "Iran" . We shall start from the old migration of Airyas folks in kiaani Iran & extend it to the newer additions of turkomen, Tatars ..etc . Diversity Rules ! as it was the tradition of old kiaani Iran . lets celebrate Iran excluded from all the noise & black politics of nowadays .

from a series of lectures by Russian historian Dr Oric Basirov;,

INTRODUCTION
As late as the closing decades of the 4th century B.C., the Iranian peoples were still the largest and the most widespread group within the great Indo-European family; this position must have been held for thousands of years by their nomadic ancestors, and was not relinquished until well into the Roman period; during those distant millennia, they roamed the vast, limitless Eurasian steppes as pastoralist riders and charioteers; towards the end of the second millennium B.C., some of them, lured by the great civilisations of the Indus vally, Elam, Mesopotamia, and Asia Minor, moved southwards and made permanent settlements; it didn''t take very long for one group of these settled people, the Medes, to form the first of the four Iranian empires, and less than 500 years for the Persians, to become the absolute masters of the known world; their nomadic ancestors,the Saka Skuda Scythian Sarmatian Cimmerian however, continued to roam the steppes, unopposed, for a very long time; it was not until the 5th century A.D. that the invading Turkic tribes pushed them out of their homelands into central Europe and further west; by then, of course, vast numbers of them had merged with eastern Europeans to form the core of the modern Slavs [1]; the rest were eventually assimilated in western Europe, especially in France; the intention of this paper is to give a broad outline of the history and the culture of these fascinating warriors, who for many thousands of years remained the indisputed masters of the steppes; throughout their long nomadic history, they are known to us by a variety of names, both native and foreign.

# 1 - The Alans

In Shahnameh the great Ferdowsi talks about Alanians as gate keepers of kiaani Iran in most furthest north lands west of Caspian see . Here he talks about the Rum Ghaisar as he enters north Sassanian land in search of Victorious Kasra II .

As the Roman Cesar blazed thru the Alanian gates

The heart of victorious Kasra became full of sorrow

(Massagetae-Sarmatians-Alans-Ossetians)

The Alans or Alani (occasionally termed Alauni or Halani) were a group of Sarmatian tribes, nomadic pastoralists of the 1st millennium AD who spoke an Eastern Iranian language which derived from Scytho-Sarmatian and which in turn evolved into modern Ossetian.By the beginning of the 1st century, the Alans had occupied lands in the northeast Azov Sea area, along the Don and by the 2nd century had amalgamated or joined with the Yancai of the early Chinese records to extend their control all the way along the trade routes from the Black Sea to the north of the Caspian and Aral seas. The written sources suggest that from the end of the 1st century to the second half of the 4th century the Alans had supremacy over the tribal union and created a powerful confederation of Sarmatian tribes.



The earliest known reference to the Alans (Greek ALANOI, Latin ALANI), however, is not until the mid 1st century A.D; it appears that by then the Alans, in turn, had taken the place of the Sarmatians in Eastern Europe; both these Iranian peoples are frequently mentioned in Greek, Roman, and Byzantine sources as late as the middle of the fifth century A.D. Alans, with an identical etymological origin with the word Iran, are extensively covered, especially by Ammianus Marcellinus  the Roman historian who states inter alia, that "Almost all of the Alans are tall and good looking, their hair is generally blond" (AM, XXX,2,21); they once ruled a vast territory stretching from the Caucasus to the Danube, but were gradually driven westwards by the invading Huns; however, unlike their predecessors the Cimmerians, Scythians and the Sarmatians, the Alans did not vanish from the history; indeed they settled in the Byzantine Empire and Western Europe, playing a vital role in the subsequent European affairs; nonetheless, one finds it very odd that they are not given the full credit they truly deserve for being an important force in medieval Europe. Rostovtzeff, the great Russian expert in Iranians of the steppes, once complained that "In most of the work on the period of migrations, the part played by the Sarmatians and especially by the Alans in 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 North Africa"; one can easily sympathise with the frustration of the great Russian scholar; unlike various German tribes and Slavs and hoards of Huns, Avars, Magyars and Bulgars, who dominate the historical literature dealing with the early Middle Ages, the Alans hardly receive a mention; yet, they were in fact the only non-Germanic people of the migration period to make important settlements in Western Europe, and for many years dominated the affairs of the late Roman Empire. In 421, soon after their arrival in Constantinople, the Alan general, Ardaburius (Ardapur), fighting for the Byzantine emperor Theodosius, defeated the army of the Sasanian Emperor, Bahram V, and took the fortified frontier city of Nisibus; after several more victorious campaigns in Italy he was made consul for the year 427; his son, Asp~r (aspwar, Saw~r), in 431 commanded a large army against Vandals and Alans in Africa, and was made consul for the year 434. Asp~r''s son, Ardaburius (named after his grandfather) was also made consul in 447; in 450 when the emperor Theodosius II died, Asp~r was offered the imperial throne by the senate of Constantinople; he declined the throne, but gave it to his subordinate, Marcian. In 451 Attila the Hun laid siege to Orleans the capital city of the Alans in central Gaul; their new king, with the remarkably Modern Persian name of Sangiban, successfully defended the city, and with the help of his Roman and Visigoth allies pushed Attila to Chalons in eastern France; in the famous battle of Chalons Western Europe was saved from the ravage of the Huns. From the mid fifth century A.D. onwards, Alans, now fully Christianised, gradually lost their Iranian language, and were eventually absorbed into the population of medieval Europe; as late as 575 one still comes across Iranian names, such as Gersasp in southern France, and Aspidius (Aspapati, Asppat) in northern Spain, and of course the word Alan itself, which is still a very popular name in western Europe. Alans are credited for importing into western Europe their steppe tactics of warfare; these include never fighting on foot out of choice, having armour both for men and their mounts, and most significantly, the practice of tactical fake retreat; these Iranian steppe tactics were passed on to the Bretons, Visigoths and later, to the Normans, who used the fake retreat at many battles including the Battle of Hastings. Alans are also credited with teaching western Europeans the still popular sport of hunting on horseback with hunting dogs; a famous breed of medieval hunting dogs was called Alan (med. Latin Alanus) which, according to a 19th century authority on the history and origin of canine breeds, "derived originally from the Caucasus, whence it accompanied the fierce, fairhaired, and warlike Alani"; the town of Alano in Spain to this day bears two Alan dogs on its coat of arms.

Notes
1. Encyclopedia Iranica, "Alans" V. I. Abaev External link
2. Agusti Alemany, Sources on the Alans: A Critical Compilation. Brill Academic Publishers, 2000 ISBN 90-04-11442-4
3. For ethnogenesis, see Walter Pohl, "Conceptions of Ethnicity in Early Medieval Studies" Debating the Middle Ages: Issues and Readings, ed. Lester K. Little and Barbara H. Rosenwein, (Blackwell), 1998, pp 13-24)

References
Agusti Alemany, Sources on the Alans: A Critical Compilation. Brill Academic Publishers, 2000 ISBN 90-04-11442-4
Bernard S. Bachrach, A History of the Alans in the West, from their first appearance in the sources of classical antiquity through the early Middle Ages, University of Minnesota Press, 1973 ISBN 0-8166-0678-1
Bachrach, Bernard S. "The Origin of Armorican Chivalry." Technology and Culture, Vol. 10, No. 2. (Apr., 1969), pp. 166-171.
Castritius, H. 2007. Die Vandalen. Kohlhammer Urban.
Golb, Norman and Omeljan Pritsak, Khazarian Hebrew Documents of the Tenth Century. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1982.
Hill, John E. 2003. "Annotated Translation of the Chapter on the Western Regions according to the Hou Hanshu." 2nd Draft Edition. [1]
Yu, Taishan. 2004. A History of the Relationships between the Western and Eastern Han, Wei, Jin, Northern and Southern Dynasties and the Western Regions. Sino-Platonic Papers No. 131 March 2004. Dept. of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Pennsylvania.