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The Alans or Alani were a nomadic group among the Sarmatian people, warlike nomadic pastoralists of mixed backgrounds, who spoke an Indo-Iranian language and shared, in a broad sense, a common culture.
The first mentions of names that historians link with "Alani" appear almost at the same time in Greco-Roman geography and somewhat later Chinese dynastic chronicles of the 1st century BCE. The Geography (book 23, ch.XI.v) of Strabo, who was born in Pontus on the Black Sea, but was also working with Persian sources, to judge from the forms he gives to tribal names, mentions Aorsi that he links with Siraces and claims that a Spadines, king of the Aorsi, could assemble two hundred thousand mounted archers in the mid-1st century BCE. But the "upper Aorsi" from whom they had split as fugitives, could send many more, for they dominated the coastal region of the Caspian Sea
Secure identifications of names and places in the ancient Chinese chronicles are even more speculative, but some centuries later, the Later Han Dynasty Chinese chronicle, the Hou Han Shu (covering the period from 25 - 220 CE), mentioned a report that the steppe land Yen-ts’ai was now known as Alan-liao. (阿蘭聊):
In another section the Hou Han Shu reported
The "Great Marsh" may be the wetlands at the delta of the Danube, which were a formidable obstacle that slowed the westward drift of many nomads or even more impressive marshes of present day Belarus and north Ukraine. Thus at the beginning of the 1st century A.D., the Alans had occupied lands in the northeast Azov Sea area, along the Don. The written sources suggest that from the second half of the 1st to 4th century A.D. the Alans had supremacy over the tribal union and created a powerful confederation of Sarmatian tribes. The Alans made trouble for the Roman Empire, with incursions into both the Danubian and the Caucasian provinces in the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE
Archaeological finds support the written sources. Late Sarmatian sites were first identified with the historical Alans by P.D. Rau. Based on the archaeological material, they were one of the Iranian-speaking nomadic tribes that began to enter the Sarmatian area between the middle of the 1st and the 2nd century A.D.
The Alani were first mentioned in Roman literature in the 1st century CE and were described later as a warlike people that specialized in horse breeding. They frequently raided the Parthian empire and the Caucasian provinces of the Roman Empire. In the Vologeses inscription one can read that Vologeses, the Parthian king, in the 11th year of his reign, battled Kuluk, king of the Alani.
This inscription is supplemented by the contemporary Jewish historian, Josephus (37 - 100 CE), who reports in the Jewish Wars (book 7, ch. 8.4) how Alans, (whom he calls a "Scythian" tribe) living near the Sea of Azov, crossed the Iron Gates for plunder and defeated the armies of Pacorus, king of Media, and Tiridates, King of Armenia, two brothers of the Vologeses I for whom the inscription was made:
Flavius Arrianus ('Arrian') marched against the Alani in the 1st century CE and left a detailed report (Ektaxis kata Alanoon) that is a major source for studying Roman military tactics, but doesn't reveal much about the Alans.
About 370 CE the Alans were overwhelmed by the Huns. They were divided into two groups. One group fled westward. These 'western' Alani joined the Germanic nations in their invasion of Gaul. Gregory of Tours mentions that their king Respendial saved the day for the Vandals in an armed encounter with the Franks at the crossing of the Rhine (c. 407). Although some of the Alani perhaps invaded England or settled in Spain and Portugal, and others settled near Orléans and Valence, most went to Spain and eventually North Africa with the Vandals.
Following the fortunes of the Vandals into Spain, the separate ethnic identity of the western Alans dissolved. In 426, the western Alan king, Attaces, was killed in battle against the Visigoths, and this branch of the Alans subsequently appealed to the Vandal king Gunderic to accept the Alan crown. Later Vandal kings in North Africa styled themselves Rex Wandalorum et Alanorum (King of the Vandals and Alans).
Along with the Vandals and Suevi, these Alans eventually reached the shores of Gilbraltar.
In Iberia, the Alans were famous for their massive hunting and fighting dogs, which they introduced to Europe. A giant breed of dog still called Alanos survives in the Basque region of northeastern Spain. The dogs, which are traditionally used in boar hunting and cattle herding, are associated with the massive dogs that Alans and Vandals brought into Spain.
Alan tribes living north of the Black Sea may have moved northeast into what is now Poland, merging with Slavic peoples there to become the precursors of historic Slav nations. Third-century inscriptions from Tanais, a town on the Don River in modern Ukraine, mention a nearby Alan tribe called the Choroatus or Chorouatos. The historian Ptolemy identifies the 'Serboi' as a Sarmatian tribe who lived north of the Caucasus, and other sources indentify the Serboi as an Alan tribe in the Volga-Don steppe in the Third century. Accounts of these names reappear in the fifth century, with the Serboi, or Serbs, established east of the river Elbe in what is now western Poland, and the Croats in what is now Polish Galicia. The Alan tribes likely moved northeast and settled among the Slavs, dominating and mobilizing the Slavic tribes they encountered and later assimilating into the Slav population. In 620 the Croats and Serbs were invited into the Balkans by Eastern Roman Emperor Heraclius to drive away the Turkic Avars, and settled there among earlier Slavic migrants to become ancestors of the modern Serbs and Croats. Some Serbs remained on the Elbe, and their descendants are the modern Sorbs. Tenth-century Byzantine and Arab accounts describe a people called the Belochrobati (White Croats) living on the upper Vistula, an area later called Chrobatia.
Some of the other Alani, who remained under the rule of the Huns, were among the federates at the Battle of the Halys River, in Anatolia, 430 CE. These 'eastern' Alans are said to be ancestors of the modern Ossetians of the Caucasus.
Those of the eastern division, though dispersed about the steppes until late medieval times, were forced by fresh invading hordes into the Caucasus, where they remain as the Ossetians. Their most famous leader was Aspar, the magister militum of the Byzantine Empire during the 460s. They formed a network of tribal alliancess between the ninth and twelfth centuries. In the thirteenth century, fresh invading Mongol hordes pushed the eastern Alans further south into the Caucasus, where they mixed with native Caucasian groups and successively formed three territorial entities each with different developments. Digor in the west came under Kabard and Islamic influence. Tuallag in the southernmost region became part of what is now Georgia, and Iron, the northernmost group, came under Russian rule after 1767, which strengthened Orthodox Christianity considerably. Most of these Ossetes today are Eastern Orthodox Christians.
The remaining Alans speak a unique language where they remain as the Ossetians, divided between Russia and Georgia. There is an Ossetian minority in Chechnya too. Jacob Reinegg, in Description of the Caucasus, may have been the first to make this connection. He noted that the Tatars called them Edeki-Alan. Their language, Ossetic, belongs to the North Iranian language group; it is the survivor of the northeastern branch of Iranian languages known as Scythian, which once included languages of the Russian steppes and Central Asia: Scythians, Sarmatians, Arian church. Islam was introduced in the 17th century through the Kabardians (an East Circassian tribe). Energetic re-Christianization was begun with increasing Russian influence after the Ossetians acknowledged Russian overlordship in 1802.
(Greek Αλανοι, Αλαννοι; Chinese O-lan-na; since the 9th century A.D. they have been called As, Russ. Jasy, Georgian Ossi),
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