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Alan

Page history last edited by PBworks 17 years, 3 months ago

List: Alan (II/56)

 

1. Vandal and Suevi allies

2. Cuman allies

 

Proposal 1: Vandal allies

 

Synopsis: Allow Vandal and Suevi allies after 406

 

Proposer: Stuart Whigham

 

Proposal:

Replace:

Sub-generals 1-3

With:

Sub-generals 0-2

 

Add the following lines:

 

Only in 406-418 AD:

Asding Vandal allies – List: Early Vandal (Bk 2)

Siling Vandal allies – List: Early Vandal (Bk 2)

Suevi allies – List: Early Frankish, Alamanni, Suevi, Rugian or Turcilingi (Bk 2)

 

Delete from the list notes the phrase "while they are listed as having no allies,".

 

Justification:

 

Currently the published Early Vandal list allows Alan and Suevian allies from the crossing of the Rhine by these allied peoples in late 406, until the 420s. The Alans are not themselves allowed any allies during this period. However, the contemporary Hispano-Roman chronicler Hydatius suggests, in his description of the Visigothic war in Spain in 416-418, that the Alans dominated their Vandal and Suevian allies until the Goths broke Alan power and their remnants were absorbed by the Asding Vandals:

 

"Alani qui Wandalis et Suevis potentabantur..."

(Chronicon XXIV)

 

Peter Heather (p.241) translates this as "The Alans, who were ruling over the Vandals and Suevi...". This is similar to (and perhaps draws on) Muhlberger’s translation. Other translations are less specific – “The Alans, who were powerful along with the Vandals and the Sueves..." – but it seems that the Alans were at the least the most prominent of the barbarian groups in Spain at the time of the Gothic war.

 

The leading role of the Alans can certainly be traced back to their settlement in Spain, judging from the fact that they alone occupied about half of Spain: "the (Asding) Vandals took possession of Gallaecia, and the Suevi part of Gallaecia ... The Alans were allotted the provinces of Lusitania and Carthaginiensis, and the Siling Vandals Baetica" (Chronicon XVII; Heather p.208, and see the map on p.209. Heather (p242) suggest that Alan leadership goes back before the crossing of the Rhine in 406, when they decisively intervened to rescue the Vandals from defeat by the Franks (p.206): though in DBM terms that might alternatively be represented by a Vandal army saved by an allied Alan command intervening late in the battle. (For this reason if no other, the Vandal list should keep its Alan allies option.) See Gregory of Tours citing Renatus Profuturus Frigeridus, History of the Franks II.9, Penguin p.123.

 

The Asding and Siling Vandals were separate peoples at this point, as their separate settlement in Spain shows. If the Alans are to be allowed both Vandal peoples, plus the Suevi, as allies, they cannot use an Alan sub-general (since the rules allow only four commands in an army: an Alan c-in-c and three foreign allies). The compulsory sub-general should therefore be removed. There seems to be no reason to allow the Alans three sub-generals rather than the standard two, so a change from 1-3 to 0-2 is proposed.

 

Reference:

Peter Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History (Macmillan 2005)

 

Hydatius, Chronicon at http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/hydatiuschronicon.html

 

Steven Muhlberger, The Fifth-Century Chroniclers: Prosper, Hydatius and the Gallic Chronicle of 452 (Francis Cairns Publications 1990).

 

Thanks to Myrtilis and Tom Adamson for information on translations.

 

Proposal 2: Cuman allies

 

Synopsis: Allow Cuman allies in the 1220s

 

Proposer: Stuart Whigham

 

Proposal:

Add the following lines:

 

Only in 1222:

Cuman allies - List Cuman (Kipchak) (Book 3)

 

Add to notes:

"When the Mongols crossed the Caucasus in 1222, they were met by an Alan-Cuman allied force. The Cumans were persuaded to desert by the argument that they were related to the Mongols, who then defeated both tribes separately."

 

Justification

 

From Denis Sinor, "The Mongols in the West", Journal of Asian History v.33 n.1 (1999); online at http://www.deremilitari.org/resources/articles/sinor1.htm -

 

"the Mongol expeditionary force crossed the Caucasus and, in 1222, emerged on the South Russian steppe which had been home, since the middle of the 11th century, to the Turkic tribes of the Kipchaks or Cumans. According to the Arab historian Ibn al‑Athir, the Mongols' first victory was achieved through dividing the joint Kipchak-Alan forces by an appeal to the former, reminding them that the Cumans and Mongols "are of the same race, the Alans, however, do not relate to you," a specious argument which, nevertheless, the Cumans found appealing. In January 1223 the Mongol armies entered Sudak (Soldaia) the principal market place in the Crimea, a colony of the Empire of Trebizond, where they met a mixed population consisting mainly of Greeks and Armenians. The Cumans' treachery did not pay off since, separated now from the Alans, they had to bear alone the brunt of a Mongol attack."

 

Sinor doesn't mention the allies actually fighting together, but Vladimir Kouznetsov and Iaroslav Lebedynsky 's Les Alains: Cavaliers des steppes, seigneurs du Caucase, Ier - XVe siècles apr. J.-C. (Errance 2005), which confirms that the source was ibn al-Athir, says that there was an indecisive battle first, between the Mongols and the allies.

 

No information on comparative numbers of the two tribes, but since the battles seem to have been in Alania, and the Cumans are the ones who defected, an Alan army with Cuman allies seems better than the other way round.

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