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14 A HISTORY OF SHARVAN AND DARBAND
Vhe fortification of the most important of them, Darband (in Armenian
Ch'or, in Arabic al-Sul, but usually al-Bab] and of a series of "gates"
(i.e. fortified passes), is traditionally connected with the names of the
Sasanian kings Kavat (in Arabic: Qubadh b. Firuz, A.D. 488-531) and
his famous son Khusrau (Chosroes, Kisra) Anushirvan (A.D. 531-79).
A brief account of these works will be found on p. 86. Apart from such
feats of military engineering, the Sasanians strove to reinforce their northern
frontier by organising vassal principalities of local tribes and by settling
in its neighbourhood large numbers of their subjects, chiefly from the
Caspian provinces. The titles Tabarsaran-shah, Khursan-shah, Vardanshah,
"the Lord of the Throne" (sanr), etc., found in Muslim historians
(cf. Baladhuri, 207), refer to the first class of indigenous vassals, though
even in this case some tribal names may have in view not the aboriginal
inhabitants but the aristocracy of outsiders superimposed upon them.
It is curious that the grandfather of Mardavfj (the founder of the Ziyarid
dynasty and a native of Gilan) bore the name (title?) of Vardan-shah,
which points to the existence of a Vard-an tribe or family.1
The presence of Iranian settlers2 in Transcaucasia, and especially
in the proximity of the passes,3 must have played an important r61e
in absorbing and pushing back the aboriginal inhabitants. Such names
as Sharvan, Layzan, Baylaqan, etc., suggest that the Iranian immigration
proceeded chiefly from Gilan and other regions on the southern coast
of the Caspian. In fact even in Roman times the presence of Daylamite
mercenaries is attested as far as Pegamum in Asia Minor, and in the
tenth century A.D. Daylam (i.e. the hilly part of Gilan, lacking fertility)
became the prodigious reservoir of man-power from which the greater
part of Persia and a considerable part of Mesopotamia, including Baghdad,
were conquered.
The most obvious of the Gilanian names in the region interesting us
is Layzan, now Lahij, which is definitely connected with the homonymous
1 On the possible connection of the mutilated V'ahvavz-an-shah see below p. 98,
2 Arabic sources have transmitted the Iranian terms for those settlers. Marquart
restored Baladhuri's (p. 194) Siyasijun and Svjun and Mas'udi's Siyabija as *Sibasiga,
from *spas:ig "Dienstleute" (guards, watchers). In the new edition of Ibn-Hauqal
(by Kramers) and in Yaqut I, 438, the Arabic complex suggests some derivation
from nishast—"to seat, to settle someone". See Hudud, p. 409. One of Yaqut's
sources, I, 438, says that the guards of the passes who received special endowments,
consisted of people "brought from (various) lands (naqilat al-buldan}" and of "men
of confidence (ahl al-thiqa}".
3 See the enumeration of the passes (bob) in Baladhurl, 194-5, I. Khurdadhbih,
123, I. Faqih, 286. According to I. Khurdadhbih the "gates" (abwab) "are the
mouths of the gorges ((shi*ab) in Mt. Qabq". I. Faqih says that the "gates" were
so called because they had been built on the roads in the mountains, and that up
to the Alan gate there were 360 castles.