---
liberty@... wrote:
> O.K., You've convinced me about the Alans' name. I
> forgot about
> the Chinese attestation. But I've never heard of
> the Dirmar.
> Could you tell me where I could find out more about
> them?
> -David
>
*****GK: As far as I know they are only mentioned in
two contexts, one certain, the other speculative. The
certain context is a mid-6th c. list of Don-Volga
steppe peoples found in a Syrian source
(pseudo-Zacharias). The speculative context I
developed a few years ago through microanalysis of the
Nestor Chronicle. I concluded that a case could be
made that the constant pairing of the two rulers of
Kyiv(Kiev)mentioned there as "boyars of Rurik", to
wit, Askold and Dyr (Askold i Dir --> Askolt-i-Dir(t),
killed by Oleg on the Ugrian Hill, might represent not
so much an earlier Norse presence, as a Khazar
imperial one. That's actually the background of my
queries about Turkic and/or Iranic "i". I'm reasonably
certain about the historical and archaeological
evidence, less so about the linguistic one. "Askol"
was a Turkic title meaning "ruler of the (western)
borderland", which seemed rather appropriate in the
case of mid-9th century Kyiv. The Nestor Chronicle
locates "Dir's tomb" in an area of the old city where
archaeological excavations have discovered burials
according to the Zoroastrian rite of West Khazaria I
mentioned in a separate post. My assumption was that
some of the Dir (or Dirmar)had been sent to the Kyivan
outpost by the Kagan-Bek of Itil. I published an
article containing this suggestion in The Ukrainian
Quarterly (NY) 2000, entitled "The mystery of Kyiv's
original Rus'". I didn't develop any theories about
the later fate of the Dirmar. Their Donetz settlements
were destroyed by the Pechenegs, and their remnants
incorporated into the P. and successor Hordes. I
suppose they were eventually Turkicized.*****
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