Caucasian Albania and the “Gates” in the Caucasus: Caspian, Albanian and Alanian

Abstract

The article dedicated to the Caspian, Albanian and Alanian "gates" in the Caucasus continues the series of publications by the authors on the topic of the historical onomastics of Caucasian Albania. The focus is on the problem of mixing the names of the Caucasian "gates" - the most important mountain passes on the main routes of movement in antiquity, due to the common origin of the names Aluan and Alan from the old root *’äle- meaning“king, prince, lord”. This problem, typical for sources of various origins - Greco-Roman, Armenian, Arab-Persian and others - is solved on the basis of these sources themselves, including using data from the Albanian palimpsest, in which the word alye is directly recorded in the meaning of ‘senior; ruler'. An equally important task is the closely related interpretation of the contexts of reference and the possible localization of the "gates" in the Caucasus. The analysis of the sources made it possible to clarify some of the prevailing views on the locations of mountain passes, to provide additional source study and linguistic arguments to confirm the change in specific localizations during the time of fixing the names of the "gates" in historical writings. Caucasian etymologies have been developed for the words "Chor" and "Caspian". The use of the entire set of data, including the names of the dominant mountains with the etymologically the same word in phrases, shows the productivity of this model for constructing geographical names and determines the historical boundaries of the distribution of the languages of the North Caucasian language family.