An important tool for preserving and transmitting historical memory is to be found in the texts of folk tales and legends that preserve history by means of an artistic interpretation.


The legend of the coat of arms of the Portuguese city of Coimbra refers to the historical context of the period when "the Alans and their companions moved around the whole of Spain in large groups, stopping or camping wherever the opportunity arose."
As the most powerful tribe among the different peoples who captured Roman-occupied Spain in 409 AD, the Alans took for themselves the largest part of the peninsula — the provinces of Cartagena and Lusitania — exerting an active influence over all the different processes that were to take place in that part of Europe. This is how researchers have come to explain the legendary origin of the coat of arms of the Portuguese city of Coimbra under the influence of the Alans. This coat of arms was officially granted in 1930, but, according to Bernardo de Brito (1569−1617), the history of its creation is rooted in the early fifth century.


The historical annals have not preserved any mention of any personal relationship between Hermeric, the king of the Suevi, and Addac, the Alan king, but Bernardo de Brito tells the romantic story of the love that the king of the Alans nurtured for Hermeric’s daughter.
According to one version, the coat of arms was commissioned by the king of the Alans in celebration of a grandiose event that involved an important moment: the wedding between the king of the Alans and the Suevi princess, his enemy’s daughter. This marriage was both the consequence and the guarantee of the end of the persistent hostilities between the Alans and the Suevi. Strategic alliances of this nature were fairly common practice at that time, and between those two tribes in particular. There was nothing unusual in the decision to resolve military and territorial disputes in this way. The legend stresses that the young Alan king was fascinated by the beauty of the Suevic maiden.


In English literature, the reference to this story is mainly associated with commentaries on the verses of R. Southey, contained in the poem "Roderick, Last of the Goths: A tragic poem", from 1814:
Thus travelling on / He past the vale where wild Arunca pours / Its wintry torrents; and the happier site / Of old Conimbrica, whose ruin’d towers / Bore record of the fierce Alani’s wrath. — Adosinda. III. 24.
As can be seen in this passage, the two words that characterise the Alans both have negative connotations. Hence the legend.
The Roman Conimbrica that is mentioned by the poet was located close to present-day Coimbra and was the predecessor of this same city. The city of Coimbra experienced times of prosperity and war, with bloody battles and political conflicts, as well as a period of grandeur, when Afonso Henriques, the first king of Portugal, chose it as his capital.


Addac, the king of the Alans, recaptured this city from the Suevi and, in order to take revenge for its stubborn resistance, completely destroyed it, thereafter forcing all of the city’s residents, without exception, to work on the construction of the new Coimbra. Hermeric, the king of the Suevi, attacked the Alans while they were building the city, attempting to catch them by surprise, but he was defeated and pursued by the Alans as far as the River Douro. The scale of these events is clearly demonstrated by the famous poetic formula: "The battle was so bloody that the water of the River Mondego turned red."


After this, peace was made, and Sindasunda, "the daughter of the defeated tribe, married the winner." In order to commemorate the reconciliation achieved in this way, Addac painted the picture of a royal maiden on his standards — as proof of her rare beauty — and a gold cup — symbolising a great wedding party — with a dragon, personifying the ferocious Suevi, on one side of the cup, and a lion, personifying the courageous Alans, on the other side.
In this way, while, on the one hand, Addac was responsible for the destruction of the old city, he was also, on the other hand, the person who initiated its restoration. And it is here that the legend comes to an end.


Gutieva Elmira Tamerlanovna, Head of the Faculty of Philology of the State University of North Ossetia, Researcher at the Institute of Humanities of North Ossetia.

The end of the fourth century was marked by terrible events of great cruelty, which triggered the beginning of the "great resettlement of peoples" that was to redraw the map of old Europe. The irrepressible tribe of the Huns advanced with their horses into the territory of the Alans, with the latter becoming the first European people to experience the savage aggression of those hordes that came from the banks of the River Volga.


Exhausted by many years of conflict with the Alans, who halted them in their westward movement, the Huns ended up forming a military alliance in order to fight against Ermanaric, the king of the Goths, who was hostile towards the Alans. The Alans from Ciscaucasia maintained control over their own lands without being pushed to the west by the Huns, serving as the central nucleus for the formation of Alania in the Caucasus. The old Ermanaric, who, by the force of the sword, had successfully brought together various Germanic, Sarmatian, Slavic and Finnish tribes from Eastern Europe, committed suicide on recognising the inevitable collapse of his power. His successor, Vitimir, from the Amalov royal family, was not able to withstand the attack by the allies for very long. He was killed in battle and the control of the Goths passed into the hands of their military leaders, Safrak and Alathey.


The fate of the Gothic state was not to be envied. Some of the Goths submitted to the Huns, while others fled into the Roman territories, hurriedly abandoning their land and their properties. The Huns and Alans then formed an alliance with one another and proceeded together to the same place. In describing these events, Marcellinus compared the Goths to the sand that is blown by the wind across the desert… In 375, significant numbers of Gothic refugees, mainly Visigoths, tried to cross over the frontiers of the Roman Empire, being forced to bear both the taxes of the Roman State and the chaos caused by the opposition of the Roman citizens to the new settlers. The tyranny of the Romans soon aroused the rebellious spirit of the new settlers. Within a short time, all of the Empire’s border provinces were already plunged into chaos and suffering the effects of the pillaging perpetrated by small detachments of united Goths. The military alliance between the Huns and Alans was not a strong one. When they arrived at Pannonia and the Lower Danube region in the mid-370s, reaching the frontiers of the Roman Empire, the interests of the former allies began to diverge: the Alans embarked on a period of new beginnings, forming short-term alliances and engaging in military campaigns for the division and control of the rich provinces of Rome.

A small group of Alans who had penetrated into the territory of the Roman provinces, together with the Visigoths, took an active part in the Battle of Adrianople, fighting on the side of the Goths. In 378, the Roman legions, led by the emperor Valens, were defeated. A crushing blow was inflicted upon the emperor’s troops by the Alan cavalry, which took the Roman flank by surprise, defeating it and forcing it to flee in panic. After the victory at Adrianople, where the emperor Valens died and the Roman army suffered that terrible defeat, coalitions of Visigoths and Huns, which also included Alans, tried to capture Constantinople. The Alans' military power and war strategy were highly valued in the Roman Empire. Some Alans were even warmly welcomed into the Empire and were invited to render military service as "federated" soldiers. Under the emperor Gratian, there already existed a regiment of Alan bodyguards, with the emperor agreeing to pay them a good stipend. At the same time, Gratian himself loved to appear in public dressed in Alan clothes and wielding Alan weapons, and, at this same emperor’s initiative, even the Roman cavalry was reorganised along Alan lines. The envy that was created in Rome’s military elites through the emperor Gratian’s fondness for the Alans led to his being assassinated in Lyon, on 25 August 383.
It is important to note that Huns and Goths, who had already experienced the powerful influence of Alan military methods, only began to be recruited for military service under the emperor Theodosius, or, in other words, in the late fourth century. As one of his contemporaries wrote at that time: "Rome's former enemies — Goths, Huns and Alans — marched under the Roman standard, responding to the call, waiting and only fearing that they would be considered absent."


On two occasions, at the beginning of the fifth century (402 and 405), Alans and Huns provided military assistance to the Roman commander Stilicho in order to stem the invasion of the Germanic tribes. However, on 31 December 406, a large group of Alans, who took with them Vandals and Suevi, crossed the frozen Rhine and spread throughout Roman Gaul. The widespread pillaging of the rich Roman provinces contributed to the imminent decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire.
In Gaul, the Alans were once again divided: one group, led by Gohar, entered into military service under the Empire, and, as "federated" soldiers, settled in the lands that had been attributed to them between the River Loire and the River Seine, forming a short-lived kingdom, with its capital in the city of Orléans (442); another group, led by Respendial, hastened to render assistance to the Vandal allies attacked by the Franks. As a result, within the space of two years, the Vandals, Alans and Suevi had spread all over Gaul from north to south, laying the region to waste and crossing over the Pyrenees into Spain.
Roman historians and chronographers from the fifth century described the fate of the Alans who settled in Gaul for four decades. Gohar proved to be a perspicacious strategist. Having concluded an agreement with Rome, he passed over to the side of the Roman authorities and began to defend the Empire’s interests. His authority as a military leader and ally of Rome was so influential that, in 411, together with the king of Burgundy, Gundahar, he supported Jovinus, who proclaimed himself as emperor.


From the subsequent chronicling of events associated with the Alans in Gaul, it is important to highlight the following events: the transfer of some of the Alans from the Visigoth army to the Roman encampments in the Aquitaine; the formation of the Alanya base in the region of Valence and in the province of Outer Spain, to the north of the River Loire (440−442); the campaign of the Alan king Eochar in 447−448 in Armorica; the participation of the Alan king Sangiban in the "Battle of the Nations" on the Catalonian Fields in 451, where the Alan cavalry occupied the centre of the united Roman army, confronting the full force of the army of the indestructible Atilla, halting the advance of the Huns all across Europe; the war between the Alans from the Loire and the Visigoths from Aquitaine (452−452); and the laying to waste of Gaul by the Alans, which took place in 461, etc.


The Alans, who chose Gaul as a place to settle, mainly concentrated their presence in two of its regions. The first was called the kingdom of Goara, located in the north-east of Gaul. At the same time, another large Alan community was formed in another province, Valence, between the rivers Rhone, Gardon, Verdon and Allondon. The events that dictated the fate of the Alans in the Roman Empire developed with similar intensity in Spain. In October 409, the Alans of Respendial formed alliances with the tribes of Vandals and Suevi crossing over the Pyrenees and invaded the territory of the Spanish Diocese of the Western Roman Empire. During this period, that same Roman administrative-territorial unit consisted of seven provinces: Gallaecia, Lusitania, Tarragona, Cartagena, Baetica, Mauretania Tingitana and the Balearic Islands. In narrating the events of that period, Paulus Orosius wrote that the Roman army failed in its attempt to repel the attack of the barbarians, and the tribes of Germans and Alans occupied most of Spain. In his chronicle, the Spanish bishop Hydatius eloquently described the disasters that befell the population of the peninsula just prior to 410, as a result of the barbarian invasion.


In 411, the barbarians divided the provinces of the Iberian Peninsula among themselves. The Vandals and the Suevi obtained Gallaecia; the Alans, who were the largest and strongest tribe, took over Lusitania and Cartagena for themselves; and the Vandals-Silingi settled in Baetica, in the north of the peninsula; while the province of Tarragona remained under the control of the Roman authorities. After two years of sacking and pillaging, and attacks on those seeking refuge in the Hispano-Roman fortresses and fortifications, the Alans and the Germans still managed to establish some official relations with the municipalities that controlled those areas, through agreements in which they undertook to protect the local population from invasions by the barbarians. Even so, although the Spanish Alans considered that they enjoyed a special relationship with the Roman Empire, regarding themselves as their military allies, Rome preferred to make a political and military alliance with Wallia, the king of the Visigoths. The Visigoths invaded Spain in 416. As a result of the three-year war that followed, the Visigoths broke the resistance of the Alans and Vandals, pushing them to the south of the Iberian Peninsula. Hydatius' chronicle tells how "the Alans, who governed the Vandals and the Suevi, were so badly defeated by the Goths that, after the death of King Addac, and by virtue of the fact that their kingdoms had been destroyed, were placed under the protection of the Vandal king Gunderic, who had settled in Gallaecia." In 429, tired of the incessant attacks of the Visigoths and their former allies, the Suevi, an alliance led by the Vandal king Geiseric crossed over the Mediterranean from Gibraltar to North Africa, where, having conquered the Romans, he founded a Vandal-Alan kingdom. All of those who governed this state after Geiseric displayed the title of "Rex Vandalorum et Alanorum" (the king of the Vandals and Alans). The kingdom lasted for little more than 100 years and played a vital role in the Mediterranean region, dominating it, competing with, and even threatening, the existence of the Eastern Roman Empire, until it fell under the pressure of the Byzantine troops of the Emperor Justinian I, in 534.


Even after the European Alans had ceased to be of interest to the chroniclers, they continued to have a cultural influence over many European peoples in the Middle Ages, making a crucial and unquestionable contribution to the history of modern France, Italy, Spain and Portugal. The important role that they played in the ethnogenesis, culture and art of the European peoples calls for close examination by future generations of researchers.
After the first half of the sixth century, the references to the Alans in the west began to disappear from the pages of historical documents. However, in their native homeland (in the vast open expanses of Ciscaucasia and the mountains of the North Caucasus), the powerful regional state of the Alans — Alania Caucasiana — flourished throughout the Middle Ages. Despite the disasters and historical cataclysms that have occurred since then, the mountains of the Caucasus still bear the name of the Caucasian Alans. Ossetia — the modern-day name for Alania Caucasiana — has preserved until the present the melodic language of the Alans, the heroic epic of the Nart saga, a rich folklore of dance and music, archaic beliefs, and the more than one thousand-year-old fighting spirit and wisdom of the Alans, in the people of the modern-day Alans-Ossetians.


Tsagaraev Marat Aslanbekovich, President of the Board of the National Historical and Ethnographic Society of Alanya "Uasamonga", PhD in Political Sciences (Ossetia-Alania, Vladikavkaz).