ALANS, a fierce and warlike people, of Asiatic, and probably of Tartar origin. Their early residence ap pears to have been near the districts of Oula and Solem skoi, and the mountainous country where the Jairk takes its rise ; but they aft, r•.% aids migrated towards the south, and occupied the pl.,ins which lie to the north of Derbend and Circassia. Man adventurous and martial disposition, they at length reached the Danube ; and proceeding from their settlements on that river, they traversed Gaul, A. 1). 406, and established themsele es at the foot of the Pyrenees. They next entered Spain, and took possession of many of its finest pro-vinces ; but they were afterwards dispersed by the Goths and Franks, and their name was ultimately lost in those of their conquerors. The Alans resembled the Tartars in many of their 'habits and customs. Like them, the'; travelled in wagons from place to place ; like them too, they re garded their flocks as their principal riches ; and, like many tribes of the same people, they adorned the trap pings of their horses with the scalps of their enemies whom they had slain in the field. Their chief occupa
tion was the exercise of arms; they considered those who died in battle as fortunate and happy, while they reckoned it disgraceful to wait the approaches of solution among their women and children. Such their inclination to war, that it is said they worshipped a naked scymita• fixed in the earth ; but whether as a divinity, or only as an emblem of the God of battles, his tory does not enable us to determine. See .lunian. Marcell. xxxi. 2.; Gibbon, flirt. vul. ii. p. 56. chap. 12, vol. iv. p. 312, 535, chap. 26. De Guigne's dcs Huns, torn. ii. p. 279. (5)