From: e.karloukovski@uea.ac.uk (Vassil Karloukovski)
Subject: Re: Caucasoid Turks/Bulgars
Date: 20 Apr 1999 00:00:00 GMT
Message-ID: <7fhir3$h91@cpca3.uea.ac.uk>
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In article <3717dfd1.43241958@news.yale.edu>, cluster.user@yale.edu says...
>On 10 Apr 1999 11:15:25 GMT, e.karloukovski@uea.ac.uk (Vassil Karloukovski) wrote:

...
>>Yes, it would be probably helpful to compare the arabic accounts of the
>>alans and the bulgars. Dobrev hasn't treated this question. BTW, the 
>>arab accounts in my previous post were from one book of Atanas Stamatov.

>I just founds such a discussion in studia orientalia I (budapest -
>1961 I think) J. Harmata, the language of the iranian tribes in south
>russia
...

>"the Alans or A:s. had formerly lived, together with the Pechenegs,
>around th elower reaches of the Amu-darya (the Uzboy), and later,
>after the river had changed its course, they migrated to the coast of
>the Sea of the Khazars"; Bi:ru:ni: also telss us that "the language of
>these Alans is a compound Chorasmian and Pecheneg-Turkish". ...
>                                    >>

>the historical error abouit the pechenegs aside, 


there is probably another detail: Amu-darya flowed into the Caspian 
sea until quite recently (until the VIII-th c. ?). On the other side, 
Alans are mentioned near Danube as early as the I c. Pompey also had to
march against them, crossing the Caspian gates. So Biruni's account 
could relate to a later, separate migration of some group. There were 
several isolated groups of Alans living in Europe and Asia and their 
habitats didn't form a contiguous area.

and leaving aside the
>question of the relation between alanian ansd ossetian (which is
>basically one of th efine points argued in the article) this would
>tend to show an awarness (biruni was a kwarezmian) of the east-iranain
>nature of alanic. the lack of reference to the bulghars, are lack of
>any analogous statment on bulghar thus stand out. 


I don't know what were the similarities/differences between choresmian,
sogdian, and other eastern-iranisn l-s, but there is one interesting 
observation in Richard Frye's "History of ancient Iran", Muenchen, 1983:

 " Whereas the Pamir l-s cannot be considered as descendants of any known
  ancient Iranian l., the l. of the Yaghnobis ... is descendant from a 
  Sogdian dialect."

Apparently there must have been some reasons not to connect alanian/
ossetian with the modern pamir l-s, so that the linking of old bulgar
with pamirian but not so much with alanian was right.

>you might want to look at the article, there is a refernce to an
>iranian name similar to asparukh (it may even be that).


Yes, there was one alan general Aspar in V-th c. Byzantium, who fought 
against the vandals of Northern Africa. Also, one regional governor of
Alan origin Asparg (?) in Spain.

  
VK