Satrapies > Hyrcania

Hyrcania

Background

Hyrcania (Ὑρκανία) is the Greek name for the region, a borrowing from the Old Persian Verkâna as recorded in Darius the Great's Behistun Inscription (522 BCE), as well as in other Old Persian cuneiform inscriptions. Verkā means "wolf" in Old Iranian, cf. Avestan vəhrkō, Gilaki and Mazandarani Verk, Modern Persian gorg, and Sanskrit Vŗka (वृक). See also Warg. Consequently, Hyrcania means "Wolf-land". The name was extended to the Caspian Sea and underlie the name of the city Sari (Zadracarta), the first and then-largest city in northern Iran (Mazandaran, Golestan and Gilan) and the capital of ancient Hyrcania.

Another archaic name, Dahistān (not to be confused with dehestan – a modern Iranian word for "district" or "county") is sometimes used interchangeably with Hyrcania. Dahistān refers, strictly speaking to the "place of the Dahae": an extinct people who lived immediately north of Hyrcania, as early as the 5th Century BCE. Apart from the geographical proximity of the Dahae, their ethnonym may have etymological similarities to "Hyrcanians"; for example, religious historian David Gordon White, reiterating a point made by previous scholars, suggests that Dahae resembles the Proto-Indo-European *dhau "strangle", which was apparently also a euphemism for "wolf".

Geography

The province of Hyrcania, strictly speaking, was the small tract also known as Gorgan (or Zadracarta) in ancient Persia. Gorgan, according to the British historian Sir William Ouseley (who quotes the medieval Persian geographer Hamdallah Mustawfi), and James Morier, was a Farsi name that (like Hyrcania) signified "land of wolves." Sometimes the name Hyrcania was broadened to include the surrounding region of Golestan.

Hyrcania had a sub-tropical climate and was situated on a plain between the Caspian Sea (which was sometimes known as the Hyrcanian Ocean), in the north and the Alborz mountains in the south and west. To the northeast, Hyrcania was open to the Central Asian steppes, where nomadic tribes had been living for centuries.

It was regarded as one of the most fertile and beautiful provinces of the Persian Empire and was sometimes known as Belad-al-Irem, or "Land of the Terrestrial Paradise". The Ancient Persians also considered it to be one of "the good lands and countries", which their supreme god Ahura Mazda had created personally. Ouseley cites an ode to Hyrcania supposedly commissioned from a minstrel by the mythological Persian king, Kay Kāvus (or "Kaikus).

Let the king consider the delights of Golestan province, and may that country flourish during all eternity, for in its gardens roses ever blow, and even its mountains are covered with hyacinths and tulips. Its land abounds in all the beauties of nature; its climate is salubrious and temperate, neither too warm nor too cold, a region of perpetual spring; there, in shady bowers, the nightingale ever sings. There the fawn and antelope incessantly wander among the valleys; every spot, throughout the whole year, is embellished and perfumed with flowers. The very brooks of that country seem to be rivulets of rose water, so much does this exquisite fragrance delight the soul. During the winter months, as at all other seasons, the ground is enamelled, and the banks of murmuring streams smile with variegated flowers; everywhere the pleasures of the chase may be enjoyed. All places abound with money, fine stuffs for garments, and every other article necessary for comfort or luxury; there all the attendants are lovely damsels, wearing golden coronets; and all the men illustrious warriors, whose girdles are studded with gold; and nothing but a wilful perversity of mind, or corporeal infirmity, can hinder a person from being cheerful and happy in Gorgan.

Numerous rivers watered Hyrcania, unlike the rest of Persia. The German traveller Johann Friedrich Gmelin, who visited in 1771, claimed that in the space of 13 kilometres (eight miles), on the road from Sari to Rasht, 250 streams were to be seen, many of them being so exceedingly broad and deep, that the passage across was sometimes impracticable for weeks.

Ancient and medieval sources, such as Strabo (who claimed that Hyrcania extended as far north as the Oxus), citing Aristobulus, reported that the forests of Golestan included: oaks, pines, sweetbriar, honeysuckle, acacias, lindens, and chestnut trees. The summits of the mountains were covered with cedars, cypresses, and various species of pines. Such was the climate of Hyrcania that it permitted the growing of sugar cane.

Of the wildlife, Ouseley states that Hyrcania included species or sub-species of: tiger (babr), wild boar (guraz), fox (rubah), jackal (shegkal) and wolf. Accordingly, the very first thing that he saw, on entering a village of Hyrcania, was the carcasse of a large wolf, which had been shot just half an hour before his arrival, and which "grinned horribly a ghastly grin"; thus confirming the mistrel's claim that "everywhere the pleasures of the chase may be enjoyed." In antiquity, Hyrcania was infested with panthers and tigers so fierce and cruel as to give rise to a proverb concerning fierce and unrelenting men: that they had suckled from Hyrcanian tigers. The poet Virgil refers to this in his Aeneid. Representing Dido chiding Aeneas, he states: "False as thou art, and more than false, forsworn, Not sprung from noble blood, nor goddess born, But hewn from harden'd entrails of a rock! And rough Hyrcanian tigers gave thee suck!"

Hyrcania was also famed for an axe called the tabr. A people called the Tapyri or Tabari, inhabited a district in Hyrcania, and may have taken their name from the axe. According to Ouseley, the name of the part in which the Tabari lived, namely, Tabristan, or Tabaristan, signifies the country of wood.

Achaemenid era

Hyrcania became part of the Persian Empire during the reign of Cyrus the Great (559-530 BC) or Cambyses (530-522 BC). Under the Achaemenids, it seems to have been administered as a sub-province of Parthia and is not named separately in the provincial lists of Darius and Xerxes. The capital and also the largest city and site of the “royal palace” of Hyrcania was Zadracarta. From the Behistun inscription we know that it was Persian by 522. The story is as follows: After the death of Cambyses, the Magian usurper Gaumâta, who did not belong to the Achaemenian dynasty, usurped the throne. The adherents of the Persian royal house, however, helped Darius to become king; he killed the usurper on September 29, 522 BC. Almost immediately, the subjects of the empire revolted. When Darius was suppressing these rebellions and stayed in Babylon, the Median leader Phraortes made his bid for power (December 522). His revolt soon spread to Armenia, Assyria, Parthia and Hyrcania. However the Persian garrison in Parthia still held out. It was commanded by Darius' father Hystaspes. On March 8, 521 BC, the Parthians and their allies, the Hyrcanians, attacked the Persian garrison, but they were defeated. Not much later, Darius was able to relieve his father. This was the first appearance in history of the Hyrcanians.

In the 5th century BC, the Greek researcher Herodotus of Halicarnassus mentions them several times in his Histories. He has a confused report on irrigation (3.117), which may be compared to the statement of the second-century historian Polybius that the Persians had built large irrigation works (World history 10.28.3). Herodotus also tells us that Hyrcanian soldiers were part of the large army which king Xerxes I (486-465) commanded against the Greeks in 480. The historian notes that they carried the same arms as the Persians.

In the confused years after the death of king Artaxerxes I Makrocheir (465-434), three of his sons succeeded to the throne: Xerxes II, Sogdianus and Darius II. The latter was a satrap in Hyrcania and may have used troops from Hyrcania and the 'upper satrapies' - that is Aria, Parthia, Arachosia, Bactria, and Sogdiana.

Hyrcania makes its reappearance in history when the Macedonian king Alexander the Great (336-323) invaded Asia. Hyrcanians are mentioned during the battle of Gaugamela (October 1, 331), and in August 329, when the last Persian king, Darius III Codomannus, was dead, many Persian noblemen fled to Hyrcania, where they surrendered to Alexander (a.o. Artabazus).

Seleucid era

After Alexander's reign, his empire fell apart and Hyrcania became part of the new Seleucid Empire. At the end of the 3rd century BC, northeastern nomads belonging to the tribe of the Parni, invaded Parthia and Hyrcania. Although Parthia was forever lost to the Seleucids, Hyrcania was in the last decade of the third century reconquered by Antiochus III the Great (223-187). After a generation, however, Hyrcania was lost again.

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