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Parvin DARABADI
D.Sc. (Hist.), professor, Baku State University (Baku, Azerbaijan).
GEOHISTORICAL PROCESSES IN THE CAUCASIAN-CASPIAN REGION DURING ANTIQUITY (THE 4TH CENTURY B.C.-4TH CENTURY A.D.)
Abstract
T
he author concentrates on the contacts between Greece and Rome, two major civilizational centers of antiquity, and the
states of the Central Eurasian mega-region that formed the content of the geohistorical processes in the Caucasian-Caspian region.
I n t r o d u c t i o n
The Caucasus and the Caspian, part of the vaster area where human civilization emerged and developed, are found at the crossroads of Europe and Asia. This easily explains the highly important role they have been playing for the last three millennia in the political, economic, and cultural development of all the peoples and countries that formed the Central Eurasian mega-region. From the geostrategic point of view it can be described as an open door to the Near and Middle East and Central Asia and further on to India. The Caucasus, the Black, Azov, and Caspian coasts of which helped to turn it into a military-strategic springboard leading to the Near and Middle East, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Persian Gulf, can be described as the geopolitical key to this door. Its advantageous
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geographic location made the Caucasus a huge bridge between Eastern Europe and Hither Asia crossed by caravan routes that tied together Central Asia, the Black Sea coast and the Mediterranean, the Eurasian steppes and the Near East.
The Caucasus and the Caspian in Antiquity
In antiquity, the narrow littoral strip on the western Caspian coast where the Caucasian mountains abutted the sea was known as the Caspian Route. This was the best road between Southeastern Europe and Hither Asia, which for many centuries connected the lands of the North Caucasian nomads with the regions of ancient agriculture of the Southern Caucasus. Belligerent steppe nomads found this opening leading to the rich land-tilling areas of the south as early as the Bronze Age. It was interaction between the northern nomads and the settled land-tilling population of the east that played an important role in the history of the Caucasus and Hither Asia. It can be described as one of the major elements of the economic system of antiquity.
The Caspian Route became the main artery of the vigorous ethno-genetic processes that contributed to the ethnic development of the peoples and ethnic groups now living in the Caucasian states. Mirza Kazem bek, a prominent Orientalist of the 19th century, wrote: “No other area of antiquity remained open to the inflows and outflows of different peoples to the same extent as Northern Media (territory of Azerbaijan.—P.D.). Since time immemorial the Caucasian bridge was a theater of political developments; peoples of all races and all varieties invaded it from all directions: from the south and southeast pressing to the north and northwest and from the north in an effort to reach the south and southeast. For this reason the passes between the Caspian and the Black Sea knew no peace. The present linguistic blends of the Caucasian mountains and the historical names ‘the Caucasian, Caspian, or Albanian Gates,’ etc. confirm the above. The peoples’ ebbs and flows first hit Northern Media at the foot of the Caucasus and flooded it.”1
Throughout the centuries this road was used by ancient Iranian tribes who moved from the Eastern European steppes to the Iranian Plateau (no later than the 9th century B.C.); later it was used by the Scythians, Massageteans, Sarmatians, Alanians, Huns, Savirs, Khazareans, and many other Eurasian nomads to reach the Southern Caucasus and Hither Asia. It is no accident that Derbent, an impregnable stronghold with impressive fortifications, appeared at the narrowest and therefore strategically most important point along the Caspian Route when the Scythians moved onto Hither Asia in the late 8th-early 7th centuries B.C. Herodotus (5th century B.C.), Strabo (1st century B.C.-lst century A.D.), Pliny the Elder (1st century), Ptolemy (1st-2nd centuries), Cassius Dio (2nd century), and other Greek and Roman historians and geographers mentioned the Caspian (Albanian) Gates in their works.
The same processes were going on in the west, on the Caucasian Black Sea coast, where the Cimmerians and Scythians of the Northern Caucasus migrated southward in the 8th-7th centuries B.C. along the Meotida-Colchis Route, negotiated the Main Caucasian Range through the Darial Gorge, and invaded Assyria, Urartu and Media.
On the whole, since time immemorial, or since Homer’s time to be more exact, the Caucasus, the Black Sea coast and the Caspian attracted the attention of the intellectual and military-political elite
1 Quoted from: A.S. Sumbatzade, Azerbaijantsy—etnogenez i formirovanie naroda, Elm Publishers, Baku, 1990,
p. 16.
of antiquity. The Assyrian cuneiform inscriptions of the time of Adadnerari III (810-783 B.C.) described the Caspian as the “Great Sea of Sunrise.”2 It seems that the Greek myth of the Argonauts who crossed the sea to mysterious Colchis to get the Golden Fleece came as a result of the rumors about the riches of the Caucasus. Homer believed that in the west the land stretched to the Atlantic while in the east it ended at the “Sun pond,” the Caspian.3 He described the Caspian as a “Sun pond, the bay of a deep and smoothly flowing worldwide river called the Ocean.”4
As early as in the 5th century B.C. Herodotus possessed much more exact information about the Caspian Sea and its size: “This is a closed water body that has no outlets to any other sea.”5 Both the Father of History and later authors of classical antiquity invariably pointed to the extremely patchy ethnic composition of the “Country of Mountains.” “There are many different tribes living in the Caucasus,” wrote Herodotus. Geographer Strabo (1st century B.C.-1st century A.D.), historian Cornelius Tacitus (55-117), and others confirmed this.6
The natural riches of the area which served as a place for all sorts of contacts between Eastern Europe and Hither Asia attracted ancient Mediterranean states: Alexander the Great, Pompey, Caesar, Nero, and other potentates of the ancient West looked at the Caucasus and the Caspian with a great deal of interest.
As early as in the 6th century B.C. ancient Greeks reached the Northern Black Sea coast to set up their colonies there: Phanagoria, Hermonassa, Kepy, and others appeared on both sides of the Cimmerian Bosporus (nowadays called the Strait of Kerch). About 480 B.C. they united to form the Bosporan Kingdom with the capital in Panticapaeum.
In the 4th century B.C. the Northern Caucasus mainly populated by the Sindo-Meotian tribes became a major grain exporter to Athens. The resultant fairly close economic and political contacts between the Bosporus and autochthonous tribes created cultural interaction. The Meotians borrowed some of the material and spiritual achievements of the world of classical antiquity, while the Bosporans learned military tactics from the local tribes and borrowed some types of armaments and military equipment much better suited to the local conditions than the Greek ones. During that period Ichkeria and Daghestan essentially remained outside the Greek influence coming from the Northern Black Sea coast.7
By the mid-1st millennium B.C. the northern and eastern Caspian regions were already populated by nomadic cattle-breeders whom Herodotus and other authors of antiquity called Scythians; the cuneiform texts of the Achaemenid period referred to them as Saks. In the 3rd-2nd centuries B.C. they were replaced with tribal unions of the Usuns who lived in Zhetysu (Semirechye), tribes that belonged to the Kantsju state and lived in Karatau and along the middle reaches of the Syr Darya, as well as the Alanian tribes that roamed between the western shores of the Aral Sea and the Caspian northern coast. They maintained economic, political, and cultural ties with China, Transoxiana/Ma Wara’un-Nahr, and the Volga area. One of the branches of the Great Silk Road ran across the land of the Usuns.8 In the mid-1st millennium B.C. Margiana and Parthia were two most economically developed states on the territory now occupied by Turkmenia. Hyrcania was situated on the southeastern Caspian coast; Massageteans and Dakhs roamed the steppe to the north of it. In the 7th-6th centuries B.C. Margiana was part of Bactria while Parthia and Hyrcania belonged to the Median state. Later, in the 6th-5th centuries B.C. they belonged to the Achaemenid Empire; still
2 I.M. Diakonov, “Assyriysko-vavilonskie istochniki po istorii Urartu,” Vetsnik drevney itorii, No. 2, 1951, p. 32.
3 M.A. Mirzoev, Imena na kartakh Kaspia, Nedra, St. Petersburg, 1992, p. 5.
4 I.S. Zonn, Kaspiiskaia entsiklopedia, Mezhdunarodnye otnoshenia Publishers, Moscow, 2004, p. 225.
5 K.G. Aliev, Antichnye istochniki po istorii Azerbaijana, Elm Publishers, Baku, 1986, p. 14.
6 Istoria narodov Severnogo Kavkaza s drevneyshikh vremen do kontsa XVIII v., Nauka Publishers, Moscow, 1988, p. 21.
7 See: Ibid., pp. 78-79.
8 See: Bol’shaia sovetskaia entsiklopedia (BSE), Vol. 11, Moscow, 1973, p. 149.
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later, after the conquests of Alexander the Great first Parthia and later, in the 3rd century, the Sas-sanian Empire dominated over these territories.
Meanwhile, the thalassic Hellenic West, having withstood, thanks to its naval force, the protracted Greco-Persian wars (495-449 B.C.) and the fierce pressure of the telluric continental East represented by the Achaemenid Empire, launched, after a little more than100 years, its counter-offensive towards the East that went on for several centuries.
Hellenism in the Caucasus
In the latter half of the 1st millennium B.C. the thalassic West (represented by the world of antiquity) expanded to the telluric East mainly along two main routes: the northern (Black Sea-Cauca-sian) and the southern (Asia Minor-Caspian). The Caucasus, in turn, acted as a fairly reliable natural barrier on the road of Hellenistic (mainly cultural and economic in the north and Greco-Roman military-political in the south) expansion.
The famous march into Asia (the 330s-320s B.C.) of Alexander the Great, the first geostrategist in world history, transformed the Caucasian-Caspian region into one of the military-political factors of the confrontation between the macro-civilizations of the West and the East. It began in the mid-1st millennium B.C. when thalassic Greece appeared in the Mediterranean while Persia became the leading telluric power of the Middle East.
Alexander the Great was convinced that the Caspian was a defective sea: it was not a sea at all but a quagmire of stagnant water, and he presumed it was connected with the Azov Sea and the Don.9
After defeating the Achaemenid Empire, conquering the tribes of Cadussi, Tapur, and Amard and occupying, in the summer of 330 B.C. Zadracarta, the capital of Hyrcania, Alexander the Great completed the encirclement of the Caspian. After returning to the West from India Alexander planned to conquer the Mediterranean up to the Atlantic; he contemplated a march along the southern coasts of Asia and subjugation of the Scythians and areas around the Caspian. After the Indian march he intended to explore the rivers, littoral areas, and the World Ocean. In India he was captivated by the idea of peripheral naval routes passing along the very edge of the earth. Even before he concentrated on the Arabian expedition in 323 B.C., he issued an order that spoke volumes about his plans to conquer the world: he ordered Heraclides to build a navy in Hyrcania to be used for studying the Caspian and discovering new naval trade routes. Being convinced of the Earth’s symmetry, he regarded the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea as the southeastern gulfs of the ocean, and so the Caspian Sea was its northeastern equivalent. This meant that the Caspian, very much like the Persian Gulf, might have an ocean outlet and could let continue the march northward. It was necessary to find out whether the Caspian was an enclosed sea, something which most geographers and Alexander the Great suspected all the time. If this were true, all other investigations would be futile: for this reason, Heraclides was not instructed to conquer or to develop but merely to study the Caspian Sea. An ocean outlet would have boosted Alexander the Great’s interest.10 However, he died when the Arabian expedition was ready to begin but never lived to see it through.
The collapse of the huge Achaemenid Empire under the powerful blows of Alexander the Great’s armies and the setting up of a world power opened the era of Hellenization of the East in the
9 See: F. Schachermeyr, Aleksandr Makedonskiy (Alexander der Grosse), Nauka Publishers, Moscow, 1984, p. 186 (Russian translation).
10 See: Ibid., p. 333.
history of East-West relations. It was Alexander the Great who, for the first time in world history, tried to realize the impressive geopolitical idea of unifying the Europeans and Asians (represented by the Greeks and Persians)—the idea of mutual understanding and mutual penetration of peoples. The episode of the celebrated weddings at Susa is ample evidence of this.11
His cause of Hellenization of the East was, to a certain extent, continued by his generals who headed the Seleucid Empire and Egypt of Ptolemy. It was the marches of Alexander the Great that contributed to the emergence of new Hellenistic states in which Greek culture and economic and military-political organization were intertwined, in the quaintest of ways, with the traditional Oriental way of life. This blend created states with a new political order in which Greece’s developed production relations were combined with the military-administrative system of the East. Hellenism delivered the first blows at ethnic and religious insularity; it created new forms of statehood, laid the foundations for a new culture, new art, new beliefs, and revived economic life, trade, etc.12
On the whole, Alexander’s conquest of vast areas in the East and the emergence of Hellenistic states created the most favorable conditions for drawing closer two different cultures—Eastern and Western. This epoch, which lasted until the 1st century B.C., was filled with various economic, political, ideological, and cultural achievements. It was at that time that the Seleucids tried to use the Southern Caucasus to establish trade contacts with the East.
This called for more detailed knowledge of the Caspian coast, which forced Seleucus I to order Partocles to travel, between 285 and 282 B.C., along the Caspian coast and acquire a more or less clear idea about its western and eastern parts.13 The expedition looked for outlets to other seas and addressed more practical tasks as well: subjugation of the coastal South Caspian tribes.14 Just like Alexander the Great before him, Seleucus I was looking for trade possibilities; in the 3rd century B.C. the Seleucids even kept a naval squadron in the Caspian.15 In fact, Seleucus’ plans were even more ambitious: a channel to connect the Caspian and Black seas to facilitate trade.16 However, soon after the discovery of the naval trade route from Europe to India these plans were abandoned; from that time on the Caspian and the Kura were used for internal trade in Albania of antiquity.17
Later, in the 1st century A.D., Pliny the Elder wrote that this route could be used for international trade: “The Indian goods carried across the Caspian to the Kura can be moved in five days by land to the Fazis (the Rioni.—P.D.) that runs into the Black Sea.”18 The need to portage vessels from one water body to another (in the absence of a channel between the Caspian and the Black and Azov seas) did nothing to encourage trade along this route. On the other hand, under Vespasian (A.D. 69-79) navigator Hippalux, who discovered the monsoons, the already used sea route from Egypt to India via the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean was made much safer.19
Meanwhile, by the late 2nd century B.C. the Seleucid Empire, the outpost of Hellenism in the East, had disappeared. It was replaced with Parthia, which served as a link of sorts between the
11 See: R. Frye, Nasledie Irana (The Heritage of Persia), Oriental Literature Publishers, Moscow, 1972, pp. 180181 (Russian translation).
12 See: B.G. Gafurov, D.I. Tsibukidis, Aleksandr Makedonskiy i Vostok, Moscow, 1980, p. 391.
13 See: R. Hennig, Nevedomye zemli (Terrae Incognitae), in 4 vols, Vol. 1, Moscow, 1962, pp. 244-246 (Russian translation).
14 See: L.A. El’nitskiy, Znania drevnikh o Severnykh stranakh, Moscow, 1961, pp. 126-128.
15 See: E. Bikerman, Gosudarstvo Sekevkidov (Institutions des Seleucides), Moscow, 1985, p. 94 (Russian translation).
16 See: Ibid., p. 40.
17 See: K.G. Aliev, Antichnaia Kavkazskaia Albania, Azerneshr Publishers, Baku, 1992, p. 121.
18 K.V. Trever, Ocherki po istorii i kul’ture Kavkazskoy Albanii (IV v. do n.e.—VII v. n. e.), Moscow, Leningrad, 1959, pp. 43-44.
19 K.G. Aliev, op. cit., p. 120.
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eastern and western parts of the ecumene. Western Hellenism was gradually retreating under the pressure of Oriental Iran-ism. Deprived of their privileges, the Greeks were no longer separated from the locals by their social and political status. This ushered in a new, Parthian, stage in the history of Hellenism—a synthesis especially evident in ideology and culture.20 This blend created a new art that can be described as Hellenic-Oriental. Having acquired its very distinctive nature by the 1st century B.C., it destroyed the artistic styles of both Classical Greece and the Ancient Orient. Parthian art, in particular, combined elements of Greek, Achaemenid, and recent Central Asian nomadic traditions.21
The powerful drive toward restoring Iranian culture undermined Hellenism in Parthia: everything Hellenic was rejected outright. It was a time when the Iranian-Oriental world prevailed over the predominantly Hellenic one; the East “digested” Hellenism.22 In the 1st century B.C. Parthia became the center of attraction for all anti-Hellenic elements of the East Mediterranean states.23
By the mid-2nd century B.C., the Roman Republic developed into the strongest Mediterranean power. Having destroyed Carthage, it moved, early in the 1st century B.C., to Asia Minor. Its expansionist policy in the East developed in leaps and bounds until Parthia reached the Euphrates. Rome was threatened—a military clash was inevitable. This launched the great Ro-man-Parthian confrontation that can be described as a total war between Europe and Asia. Theodor Mommsen wrote in his History of Rome that the kings and peoples of Asia had closed ranks in the face of the powerful and arrogant West. This war, wrote the German historian, could be described as a national struggle between the East and the West for the simple reason that this was precisely what it was.24
Rome and the Caucasus
In the 1st century B.C. the Caucasus or, to be more precise, Albania, which bordered on the Caspian in the west, became one of the targets of the Roman eastward expansion. It filled a vast territory that stretched from the Smaller Caucasus and the lower reaches of the Kura and Arax to the northeastern offshoots of the Main Caucasian Range, its advantageous geographic location being its main attraction. In the south its land routes led to the major ancient Oriental trade roads that crossed the vast Parthian Kingdom from the west to the east—from Antioch and Seleucia on the Tigris to Margiana. They led to the west, the Rome-dominated countries, and to the east, to India and China, and met at the ancient Median city of Ektabany. The Romans, who were likewise seeking stronger positions on the western, Albanian, Caspian coast, were driving for control over one of the branches of the Great Silk Road (2nd century B.C.-16th century A.D.); having accomplished this, they expected to come into contact with the Central Asian regions, bypassing the Parthians who ruled there. The Romans also planned to use Albania on the western Caspian coast to deliver a blow at Parthia, its main rival in the East, from the north and move deeper into Asia.
On the whole, the military expeditions of Roman generals Lucullus, Pompey, Mark Anthony, and others pursued both military-strategic and geoeconomic aims. They were resolved to find a way
20 See: Istoria Irana, Moscow, 1977, p. 88.
21 See: R. Frye, op. cit., p. 240.
22 See: Ibid., p. 244.
23 See: A.G. Bokshanin, Parfia i Rim, Part II, Moscow University Press, Moscow, 1966, p. 250.
24 See: Th. Mommsen, Istoria Rima, Vol. III, Moscow, 1941, pp. 61-62.
to establish trade contacts with India and China across Central Asia beyond the lands dominated by Parthia that controlled the trade between the West and the East.
Gneus Pompey (106-48 B.C.) came close to the desired aim: having secured a union with Parthia, he routed Mithridates VI of Pontus and invaded the Southern Caucasus. He planned to march on Iberia and, having fortified its rear, cross Albania to reach the western Caspian coast. His plans were thwarted by the local tribes. Ancient authors (Gaius Valery Flakk, Strabo, Priscian, etc.) described their determined resistance to the Romans. Rufus Festus Avienus (4th century A.D.) had the following to say: “There, close to the Caspian waters, roamed belligerent Scythians; this is also the home of fierce Albans. There, in the stony fields live blood-thirsty Cadusses, swift Mards, Hyrcans, and Apirs.”25 The Albans’ stubborn resistance and internal strife in Rome forced Pompey to abandon his earlier designs. The Romans, however, did not shelve their plans of reaching the Caspian via Albania.
Meanwhile the Roman-Parthian rivalry in the East led to another war. Julius Caesar, who was planning a war with Parthia, intended, after defeating it, to cross Hyrcania along the Caspian Coast and the Caucasus, go along the Black Sea, and invade Scythia and Germany to come back to Italy via Gallia. This would have closed the circle of the Roman domains and expanded the Empire to the Ocean.26 In the 30s B.C. Mark Anthony, a member of the Second Triumvirate, invaded Parthia and was defeated.
It should be said that during the era of Roman conquests, the absolutely correct idea of the Caspian as an inland water body, generally accepted at the time of Herodotus, was rejected. The Caspian was believed to be part of the ocean or its bay. At that time several names were used: the Caspian, Hyrcanian, Scythian, or Albanian sea. These hydronyms were applied to parts of the Caspian Sea according to the names of the tribes that lived along the Caspian coast. In the Middle Ages the Caspian Sea was known under different hydronyms, the most popular being the Khazar, Tabaristan, Abeskun, Jurdjan, Baku, etc. seas. Later the hydronym of Caspian, derived from the tribal name of the Caspians living along the southwestern littoral zone, prevailed.
In the new millennium Rome did not abandon its attempts to reach the Caspian western coast and become entrenched there. In the mid-1st century A.D., Emperor Nero (54-68) planned a large march on the Caspian in an effort to revive the plans of Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to establish trade routes to the East across the western Caspian. It was under the same emperor that India was connected by a direct route with Aden. The trip took 40 days and was fairly hazardous. Indian and Chinese goods reached Europe via the Central Asian regions of the Parthian Kingdom, across the Caspian and the Caucasus; part of the route lay along the River Oxus (Amu Darya), across the Caspian, the rivers Kura and Fazis (Rioni), and reached the Black Sea. At certain periods the Caspian Sea was an important part of the Great Silk Road.27
Meanwhile, in the mid-1st century A.D. the belligerent tribes of Alans and Sarmatians who occupied the vast steppes between the Azov Sea and the northwestern coast of the Caspian became very active. In the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D., they frequently passed the Darial Gorge (the Alanian Gates) and Derbent Pass (the Albanian Gates) to attack the Southern Caucasus, Atropatene, and Parthia. They even reached Cappadocia in Asia Minor. Tacitus specifically pointed out that “there was hardly an army able to stand opposed to their mounted hordes.”28 The Alans established contacts and entered into alliances with some North Caucasian mountain tribes and frequently changed sides when fighting in the Southern Caucasus.
25 Quoted from: A.S. Sumbatzade, op. cit., p. 44.
26 See: K.G. Aliev, Antichnye istochniki po istorii Azerbaijana, p. 65.
27 See: N.A. Aliev, Voenno-morskaia istoria Azerbaijana, Elm Publishers, Baku, 2002, pp. 20-21.
28 Cornelius Tacitus, Sochinenia, Vol. 2, Leningrad, 1969, p. 42.
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On the whole, the fact that the North Caspian nomads and their well-armed and well-organized units became more active in the Caucasus and systematically penetrated the south added a new aspect to the Roman-Parthian rivalry in the vast Central Eurasian geopolitical expanse. It is no accident that in 68 Nero planned a military expedition to reach the Caspian and to complete the encirclement from the north and the south at the “Caspian Gates” (the Derbent Pass) to close the road for the North Caucasian nomads to Hither Asia controlled by Rome.29
This was made easier by the fact that Parthia was considerably weakened by internal strife and the need to defend its eastern borders. Nero, in turn, built up a formidable force by drawing on numerous legions from several Roman provinces (Spain, Germany, Britain, and Illyria). One of them, staffed with the best Roman warriors, was called the phalanx of Alexander the Great; there was also a legion of marines, the first in Roman history.
The revolt in Gallia interfered with Nero’s plans. Later, from time to time the Romans appeared on the western Caspian coast: for instance, the troops of Domician (84-96) reached their cherished destination yet never managed to become entrenched there. Theodor Mommsen was right when he wrote that the Caucasus again had betrayed its historic importance: very much like the Persians and the Greeks before them the Romans found their limits there. At that time the Parthian pressure on Caspia porta or Caspia claustra (Tacitus) prevailed over the Roman; yet it was Rome that opened the Caspian Sea for the West.
Meanwhile, the new powerful Sassanian Empire in Persia that emerged in the first decades of the 3rd century A.D. opened a new stage in the struggle with Rome and Byzantium which ended in the 5th century when Persia established its hegemony over the Caucasian-Caspian region, which survived until the Arabic invasion of the 7th century.
C o n c l u s i o n
Geohistorical experience has shown that the attempts of the very different civilizational Western and Eastern societies to cooperate during antiquity ended with mutual alienation that went on for the next two thousand years.
In the new, third millennium the problem of cooperation between the largest civilizational communities, divided mainly by territorial and religious characteristics (let me remind you of the “clashes of civilizations” theory formulated by Samuel Huntington), is still topical; the same can be said about its far-reaching geopolitical and geo-economic repercussions for the whole of mankind.
29 See: E.A. Pakhomov, “Rimskaia nadpis’ I v. n.e. i legion XII Fulminata,” Izvestia Akademii naukAze^aijanskoy SSR, No. 1, 1949, p. S4.
