The area of the Nart in the toponymy of Mongolian

Abstract

Despite the fact that the study of Alanian history in Mongolia and China has been going on for a century and a half, it has not been systematic until recently. Moreover, researchers traditionally focus on the Yuan period of the Alans’ presence in this territory. The longer period after the fall of the Yuan Empire in 1368 and up to the twentieth century remains poorly understood. So far, no direct traces of the Alans’ presence in Mongolia, who assimilated after the 17th century, have been found. This article is devoted to a small story related to the first identified traces of the cultural presence of the medieval Alans on the territory of Mongolia, which was the Northern part of the Yuan Empire. We are talking about the toponym Nart, identified on the ground thanks to the consultations of Mongolian researchers, in the area of recorded historical settlement of the Alans-Asas or Asuts, as they were called by the Mongols. The Nart area is located on the territory of the Gov-Sumbar aimag, in a semi-desert area dotted with natural rock outcrops that resemble cyclopean buildings made of huge and carefully fitted stone slabs, as if they were built by heroes. The name Nart does not have any semantic meaning in the Mongolian language, but it is lexically well connected with the heroes of the Scythian-Alanian epic, the bearers of which lived in this area in the late middle ages. This conclusion confirms the Iranian theory of the origin of the term nart, which raises it to the Iranian basis nara -, ‘male, man’, meaning’ warrior, hero, strongman, hero’ and contradicts the long-disputed Mongolian theory of the origin of the word nart from the Mongolian nara, ‘sun’, nar-tæ – ‘children of the sun’. The considered plot shows the prospects for further research that will reveal other traces of the Alans ‘ stay in Mongolia and China.