Anariacae

Author:Laxman Burdak, IFS (R)

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Anariacae (Ancient Greek: Ἀναριάκαι) is an ancient Caucasian people mentioned by Polybius, Strabo, and Pliny. Ptolemy erroneously called them Amariacae (Ἀμαριάκαι).

Variants

• Anariacae (Ancient Greek: Ἀναριάκαι)
• Anariaci (Pliny.vi.15)
• Amariacae (Ἀμαριάκαι)

Jat Gotras Namesake

• Anari = Anariaci (Pliny.vi.15)

History

The Armenian geographer Anania Shirakatsi mentions Anariacae (‘Anariaki’ in Armenian) among the people inhabiting the northern parts of Media.

Mention by Pliny

Pliny mentions 'The Caspian Sea and Hyrcanian Sea.'....Bursting through, this sea makes a passage from the Scythian Ocean into the back of Asia,¹ receiving various names from the nations which dwell upon its banks, the two most famous of which are the Caspian and the Hyrcanian races. Clitarchus is of opinion that the Caspian Sea is not less in area than the Euxine. Eratosthenes gives the measure of it on the south-east, along the coast of Cadusia² and Albania, as five thousand four hundred stadia; thence, through the territories of the Anariaci, the Amardi, and the Hyrcani, to the mouth of the river Zonus he makes four thousand eight hundred stadia, and thence to the mouth of the Jaxartes³ two thousand four hundred; which makes in all a distance of one thousand five hundred and seventy-five miles. Artemidorus, however, makes this sum smaller by twenty-five miles.

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1 His meaning is, that the Scythian Ocean communicates on the northern shores of Asia with the Caspian Sea. Hardouin remarks, that Patrocles, the commander of the Macedonian fleet, was the first to promulgate this notion, he having taken the mouth of the river Volga for a narrow passage, by means of which the Scythian or Northern Ocean made its way into the Caspian Sea

2 The country of the Cadusii, in the mountainous district of Media Atropatene, on the south-west shores of the Caspian Sea, between the parallels of 390 and 370 north latitude. This district probably corresponds with the modern district of Gilan.

3 Now the Syr-Daria or Yellow River, and watering the barren steppes of the Kirghiz-Cossacks. It really discharges itself into the Sea of Aral, and not the Caspian.

Mention by Pliny

Pliny mentions 'Nations situated around the Hyrcanian Sea'.....We then come to the nations of the Tapyri,³ the Anariaci, the Staures, and the Hyrcani, past whose shores and beyond the river Sideris⁴ the Caspian begins to take the name of the Hyrcanian Sea: on this side of that stream are also the rivers Maxeras and Strato: all of them take their rise in the Caucasian chain.

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3 According to Ansart, the district now known as Tabaristan, or Mazanderan, derives the first of those names from the Tapyri.

4 D'Anville remarks that this river still retains its "starry" name, being the modern Aster or Ester, on which Asterabad is situate.