|
|
Article: Sources on the Alans. (Brief Reviews of Books).(Book Review)
- Article from:
- The Journal of the American Oriental Society
- Article date:
- January 1, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 American Oriental Society. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
Sources on the Alans. By agusti ALEMANY. Handbook of Oriental Studies, sect. 8: Central Asia, vol. 5. Leiden: BRILL, 2000. Pp. xxi + 461, maps.
This book, which grew out of a doctoral thesis submitted to the University of Barcelona in 1997, is a meticulous study of Oriental and Western sources on Alan history from antiquity till late medieval times.
The Alans made their first appearance in Classical sources in the first century A.D. (Pliny the Elder, Josephus [Jewish Antiquities and History of the Jews]; brief allusions in Lucan's Bellum Civile and Seneca's Thyestes). The identification of the Alans and As with the Yancai and Wusun of Chinese sources ...