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The Gelae ( grc, Γῆλαι, , or , ''Gélai'' or ''Géloi'' ), or Gelians, were a

Scythian The Scythians or Scyths, and sometimes also referred to as the Classical Scythians and the Pontic Scythians, were an ancient Eastern * : "In modern scholarship the name 'Sakas' is reserved for the ancient tribes of northern and eastern Centra ...

tribe mentioned by

Strabo Strabo''Strabo'' (meaning "squinty", as in strabismus) was a term employed by the Romans for anyone whose eyes were distorted or deformed. The father of Pompey was called "Pompeius Strabo". A native of Sicily so clear-sighted that he could see ...

and other ancient writers as living on the southern shores of the

Caspian Sea The Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland body of water, often described as the world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea. An endorheic basin, it lies between Europe and Asia; east of the Caucasus, west of the broad steppe of Central Asia ...

, in what is now the

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

ian province of Gilan. The name of the province might possibly be derived from the Gelae.''Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography'', vol. I, p. 986 ("Gelae").

Classical sources

According to Strabo, the tribes of the southern Caspian included the Gelae,

Cadusii The Cadusii (also called Cadusians; grc, Καδούσιοι, ''Kadoúsioi''; Latin: ''Cadusii'') were an ancient Iranian tribe that lived in the mountains between Media and the shore of the Caspian Sea. The area that the Cadusii lived in bordered ...

Amardi The Amardian Achaemenid_Empire.html"_;"title="satrap_shown_within_a_map_of_the_Achaemenid_Empire">satrap_shown_within_a_map_of_the_Achaemenid_Empire_at_its_greatest_extent_(500_BC). The_Amardians,_widely_referred_to_as_the_Amardi_(and_sometimes_ ...

, Witii, and

Anariacae Anariacae ( grc, Ἀναριάκαι) is an ancient Caucasian people mentioned by Polybius, Strabo, and Pliny. Ptolemy erroneously called them Amariacae (Ἀμαριάκαι). The Armenian geographer Anania Shirakatsi mentions Anariacae (‘An ...

. If, as seems probable, this description accurately represents their distribution from west to east, then the Gelae would have lived directly east of the river Araxes, along the border of

Armenia Armenia (), , group=pron officially the Republic of Armenia,, is a landlocked country in the Armenian Highlands of Western Asia.The UNbr>classification of world regions places Armenia in Western Asia; the CIA World Factbook , , and ''Ox ...

. Their territory is supposed to have been relatively unproductive, of little agricultural or mineral value. Pliny considers the Gelae and the Cadusii to be synonymous, with "Cadusii" being the tribe's name in Greek, and "Gelae" being its eastern equivalent. If he is correct, then it is likely that the name of modern Gilan is derived from the Gelae. According to the late-classical author

Bardaisan Bardaisan (11 July 154 – 222 AD; syr, ܒܪ ܕܝܨܢ, ''Bardaiṣān''), known in Arabic as Ibn Daisan (ابن ديصان) and in Latin as Bardesanes, was a Syriac-speaking Assyrian or ParthianProds Oktor Skjaervo. ''Bardesanes''. Encyclopædia ...

, the Gelae had feminine men and masculine women, like the citizens of

Cumae Cumae ( grc, Κύμη, (Kumē) or or ; it, Cuma) was the first ancient Greek colony on the mainland of Italy, founded by settlers from Euboea in the 8th century BC and soon becoming one of the strongest colonies. It later became a rich Ro ...

under the

tyrant A tyrant (), in the modern English usage of the word, is an absolute ruler who is unrestrained by law, or one who has usurped a legitimate ruler's sovereignty. Often portrayed as cruel, tyrants may defend their positions by resorting to rep ...

Aristodemus In Greek mythology, Aristodemus (Ancient Greek: Ἀριστόδημος) was one of the Heracleidae, son of Aristomachus and brother of Cresphontes and Temenus. He was a great-great-grandson of Heracles and helped lead the fifth and final attack ...

Recent scholarship

Modern scholars have developed various hypotheses about the original location, ethnicity, and the language of the Gelae.

Peter von Uslar Baron Peter von Uslar (, ''Pjotr Karlovič Uslar'') ( — () was a Russian general, engineer and linguist of German descent, known for his research of languages and ethnography of peoples of Caucasus. Biography Peter von Uslar was born in Kur ...

writes, "traces of the name of Gelae can be found in northern

Dagestan Dagestan ( ; rus, Дагеста́н, , dəɡʲɪˈstan, links=yes), officially the Republic of Dagestan (russian: Респу́блика Дагеста́н, Respúblika Dagestán, links=no), is a republic of Russia situated in the North C ...

".Peter von Uslar, "The Lak Language". The connection between the name of Gilan and the Gelae was further discussed by

Vasily Bartold Vasily Vladimirovich Bartold (russian: Васи́лий Влади́мирович Барто́льд.; 1869–1930), who published in the West under his German baptism name, Wilhelm Barthold, was a Russian orientalist who specialized in the his ...

and E.A. Grantovsky, who accept Pliny's identification of the Gelae and

as one people who spoke an ancestral form of the

Talysh language The Talysh language (زبان تالشی, Tolışə Zıvon, Tолышә зывон), is a Northwestern Iranian language spoken in the northern regions of the Iranian provinces of Gilan and Ardabil and the southern regions of the Republic of Azer ...

, one of the

Iranian languages The Iranian languages or Iranic languages are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family that are spoken natively by the Iranian peoples, predominantly in the Iranian Plateau. The Iranian languages are grouped ...

References

Bibliography

, ''

Geographica The ''Geographica'' (Ancient Greek: Γεωγραφικά ''Geōgraphiká''), or ''Geography'', is an encyclopedia of geographical knowledge, consisting of 17 'books', written in Ancient Greek, Greek and attributed to Strabo, an educated citizen ...

''. * Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus (

Plutarch Plutarch (; grc-gre, Πλούταρχος, ''Ploútarchos''; ; – after AD 119) was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo in Delphi. He is known primarily for his ''P ...

), ''

Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans Plutarch's ''Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans'', commonly called ''Parallel Lives'' or ''Plutarch's Lives'', is a series of 48 biographies of famous men, arranged in pairs to illuminate their common moral virtues or failings, probably writt ...

''. * Claudius Ptolemaeus (

Ptolemy Claudius Ptolemy (; grc-gre, Πτολεμαῖος, ; la, Claudius Ptolemaeus; AD) was a mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist, who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were of importanc ...

), ''

Geographia The ''Geography'' ( grc-gre, Γεωγραφικὴ Ὑφήγησις, ''Geōgraphikḕ Hyphḗgēsis'', "Geographical Guidance"), also known by its Latin names as the ' and the ', is a gazetteer, an atlas, and a treatise on cartography, com ...

''. * ''

Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography The ''Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography'' is the last in a series of classical dictionaries edited by the English scholar William Smith (1813–1893), following ''A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities'' and the ''Dictionary of Gr ...

'', William Smith, ed., Little, Brown and Company, Boston (1854). *

, Этнография Кавказа. Языкознание. IV. Лакский язык (''Ethnography of the Caucasus'', vol. IV: "The Lak Language"), Tbilisi (1890). * Kamilla Trever, "Albania in the IV–II Centuries BCE", in ''Essays on the History and Culture of Caucasian Albania: IV Century BC–VII Century AD'' (1959). * "Onomastics and Epigraphy of Medieval Eastern Europe and Byzantium" (1993), p. 204. * ''Naturkunde: Lateinisch-Deutsch'', Buch VI, Kai Brodersen, ed., Zürich (1996), p. 184. * A.K. Alikberov, "To the Sources and Historical Foundations of the Koranic story about Yl'juj, Ma'juj and Zu-l-Karnain", in ''Ars Islamica: In Honor of Stanislav Mikhailovich Prozorov'', Nauka, Moscow (2016), p. 350.

External links

Cadusii
at ''

Encyclopædia Iranica ''Encyclopædia Iranica'' is a project whose goal is to create a comprehensive and authoritative English language encyclopedia about the history, culture, and civilization of Iranian peoples from prehistory to modern times. Scope The ''Encycl ...

''. {{Scythia Cadusii History of Gilan Iranian nomads Scythians Historical Iranian peoples