Introduction of Huna

White Huns, Akhuns, Ephthalites, Hephthalites, Hephtal, Heftal, Haitila, Haital, Aptal, Eptla, Evdal, Abdal, Abdel, Eftal, (Ch.) Hsi-mo-ta-lo, (Ch.) Ye-ta, (Ch.)Ye-da, Tetal, Hion, Hyon, Hiyona, Khyon, Hun, White Hions, Sveta Huna, Red Huns, Hara (Hala) Huna, Kermihions, Karmir Hion, Kirmirxyun, (Ch.) Hua, War, Uar, Varhun, Warhun, Apar, Awar, Avar, Huns-Kidarites, Kidarites,  Kidaro,  Kidara, Kerder (Kurder), Kerderi, Khoalits, Khoalitoi, Khoali, Khoari, Jabula, Jauvla, Jauwla,  Kangar, Kangju, Qangui, Gaoguy-Uigur,  Alkhon, and other variations

Subdivisions

Chao-wu, Jamuk, Jauvla,  Johal, Jouhal, Joval, Jauvla, Jauhal, Jauhla, Jatt, Jat, Jabuli, Kabuli, Zabul, Zabuli, Zabulites, => all literaly meaning “falcon” in Turkic/Hunnic, but politically “Kabul”

Chionites, Chions,  Hiono,

Abdaly, Hephtal, all other versions

Although the Hephthalites dominated much of Central Asia and Northern India at the height of their power (approximately 460 to 570), little information about their civilization is available to us. Their name derives from the Byzantine "Ephthalites," and they were alternatively known as Ye-Ta to the Wei dynasty and Hunas to the Gupta Empire. They are also referred to as "White Huns" in some histories, a term derived from a quotation from Procopius' History of the Wars, in which he writes, "The Ephthalites are of the stock of the Huns in fact as well as in name; however they do not mingle with any of the Huns known to us.... They are the only ones among the Huns who have white bodies and countenances which are not ugly." We do not know what name these people used to refer to themselves.
Historians tend to fall into two camps when discussing Hephthalite origins. One theory is that the Hephthalites were once part of the Juan-juan confederacy of Turkic nomadic peoples; similarities in portraiture found on Hephthalite and Yuezhi coins is sometimes offered as evidence of a common Western China homeland for both these cultures. An alternate explanation put forth by Kazuo Enoki in the 1950s is that the Hephthalites were an Iranian group who settled in the Altai region, from whence they began their military expansion south into the Bactrian region. But whatever their origins might have been, by the year 500 branch empires of the Hephthalites controlled an area stretching south from Transoxiana to the Arabian Sea, and as far west as Khurasan (the eastern-most part of the Sassanian empire), and all of northern India to the east.

The Bhishma Parva of the Mahabharata, supposed to have been edited around the 4th or 5th century, in one of its verses, mentions the Hunas with the Parasikas and other Mlechha tribes of the northwest including the Yavanas, Chinas, Kambojas, Darunas, Sukritvahas, Kulatthas etc. According to Dr V. A. Smith, the verse is reminiscent of the period when the Hunas first came into contact with the Sassanian dynasty of Persia. Brihat Katha Manjari of Kashmiri Pandit Kshmendra (11th century AD) also claims that king Vikramaditya had slaughtered theShakas, Barbaras, Hunas, Kambojas, Yavanas, Parasikas and the Tusharas etc. and hence unburdened the earth of these sinful Mlechhas. There is still another ancient Brahmanical text Katha-Saritsagara by Somadeva which also attests that king Vikramaditya had invaded the north-west tribes including the Kashmiras and had destroyed the Sanghas of the Mlechhas (reference to Sanghas here obviously alludes to the Sanghas of the Madrakas, Yaudheyas, Kambojas, Mallas or Malavas, Sibis, Arjunayans, Kulutas and Kunindas etc). Those who survived accepted his suzerainty and many of them joined his armed forces.There is mention of Chinese sources identifying them variously with either the Ch'e-shih of Turfan (now in the Uighur regionof China), K'ang Chu or Kangju from southern Kazakhstan or the widespread Yueh Zhi  tribes from Central China. These Yuehzhi were driven out of the Chinese territories that they occupied by  anotherband of tribes known as the Hsiung Nu. One of these tribes of the Yueh Zhi was the White Huns or Hepthelites. According to Richard Heli Chinese chroniclers state that they were known as the Ye-ti-li-do, or Yeda butthey are also known as the people of Hua by the same chroniclers. From these sources there is anambiguity that arises which might show that something was lost in translation between the term Huawhich converted to Hun instead and came to be associated with the Hunnic tribes .The Japanese researcher Kazuo Enoki  disregarded theories based solely on similarity of names due tothe fact that there is so much linguistic variation that we cannot say for certain that a particular namehas not lost something in translation. His approach towards understanding Hephthalite origins is to seewhere they were not in evidence instead of where they were by which he has stated that their originsmight have been from the Hsi-mo-ta-lo southwest of Badakshan near the Hindukush, a name whichstands for snowplain or Himtala in modern times and this might be the Sanskritised form of Hephthal(Heli, 2007)Of note here is the work of Professor Paul Harrison of Stanford University, who deciphered a copperscroll form Afghanistan in 2007. The scroll is dated from 492-93 CE and is from the period of the Hephthalites. It apparently mentions that they were Buddhists and had Iranian names and includesabout a dozen names including that of their overlord or King. (Heli, 2007)Where their name is concerned, they have been variously known as Sveta Hunas or Khidaritas inSanskrit, Ephtalites or Hephthalites in Greek, Haitals in Armenian, Heaitels in Arabic and Persian,  Abdeles by the Byzantine historian Theophylactos Simocattes while the Chinese name them the Ye-ta-li-to , after their first major ruler Ye-tha or Hephtal .The variety of names shows that there is ambiguity towards the specific identity of this particular race and that historically they don’t have a set origin that defines them separately from the various othertribes that existed within that region at the same time, mostly of Yuezhi origins.

As a matter of fact the abovementioned scholars are right. The main part of the Hepthelite consisted of the Little Yuezhi separated from the Yuezhi Tribe during Great Migration of Yuezhi during theirs defat by Xionghnu. But the Chionites and the Kushans of Bactria joined the newcomers: Main part of Great Yuezhi. They hoped that with the help of the Hephtalites they could reconquer their East-Iranian and North-North-western Indian territories. The Khidarites – who also joined the White Huns – belonged to the later Kushans, too. From the Sassanian rule a Ta Yüeh-chi /Great Yüeh-chi/ prince: Khidara and his tribe became independent in the beginning of the 4-th century A.D. and occupied the eastern part of Gandhara. This fact is proved by the Khidarita coins excavated there. But the pillar found in Allahabad, India proves this, too, as the following text is written on it: „near to the border of North India lives a prince called Devaputra Sahanushahi /”son of God – the king of the kings”/.[1] As this title always belonged to the Kushan rulers originated from the Great Yüeh-chis, it means that Khidara was their successor and the Khidarites were his nation. By the archeologists the pillar was made around 340 A.D.,  the Hephtalites and their „kindred tribes”: the Kushans, the Chionites and the Khidarites arrived to the Indian border at that time.

The Central Asian Huna consisted of four hordes in four cardinal directions. Northern Huna were the Black Huns, Southern Huna were the Red Huns, Eastern Huna were the Celestial Huns, and Western Huna were the White Huns or Hephthalites. In next chapters , we will read about all four stock of Huna and their ruling-elite. All four Huna  have been part of the Hephthalite group, who established themselves in central Asia by the 4^th and 5^th century. They sometimes call themselves "Hono" on their coins, but it seems that they are similar to the Huns who invaded the Western world.

They appeared in Northwestern India and parts of eastern Iran. During their invasion, the Hunas managed to capture the Sassanian king Peroz I, and exchanged him for a ransom. They used the coins of the ransom to counter mark and copy them, thereby initiating a coinage inspired from Sassanian designs.

The famous Chinese Buddhist monks: - one of them: Sung Yun who visited India at the time of the Hephtalite kingdom – and the other one: Hsuan Tsang who went there a few decades later, gave details about the White Huns in their accounts. But the Hephtalites had mixed with other nations before they arrived in India.

The Hephtalites while still living in the Oxus valley in the 4-th century, the Indian Puranas – written in Sanskrit – first of all the Vishnu Purana and the Aitareya Brahmana refer to them and call them „Hunas”.[2] In the beginning of the 5-th century the famous poet-writer: Kalidasa writes about them in his Sanskrit epic: the Raghuvamsha  /Raghu’s nation/:

               „Tatra Hunavarodhanam bhartrishu vyaktavikman

                Kapolapataladeshi babhuva Raghuceshtitam” //68//

The Language
There are numerous debates about Hephthalite language. Most scholars believe it is Iranian for the Pei Shih states that the language of the Hephthalites differs from those of the Juan-juan (Mongoloid) and of the "various Hu" (Turkic); however there are some think the Hephthalites spoke Mongol tongues like the Hsien-pi (3rd century) and the Juan-juan (5th century) and the Avars (6th-9th century). According to the Buddhist pilgrims Sung Yun and Hui Sheng, who visited them in 520, they had no script, and the Liang shu specifically states that they have no letters but use tally sticks. At the same time there is numismatic and epigraphic evidence to show that a debased form of the Greek alphabet was used by the Hephthalites. Since the Kushan was conquested by Hephthalites, it is possible they retained many aspects of Kushan culture, including the adoption of the Greek alphabet.

Yabgu

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yabgu (Old Turkic: , yabγu,^[1] Traditional Chinese: 葉護, Simplified Chinese: 叶护, Jabgu, Djabgu, literally, "pioneer"^{[citation needed]}, "guide"^{[citation needed]}) was a state office in the early Turkic states, roughly equivalent to viceroy. The title carried autonomy in different degrees, and its links with the central authority of Khagan varied from economical and political subordination to superficial political deference.

The position of Yabgu was traditionally given to the second highest member of a ruling clan (Ashina), with the first member being the Kagan himself. Frequently, Yabgu was a younger brother of the ruling Kagan, or a representative of the next generation, called Shad (blood prince). Mahmud Kashgari defined the title Yabgu as "position two steps below Kagan", listing heir apparent Shad a step above Yabgu.^[2]

As the Khaganate decentralized, the Yabgu gained more autonomous power within the suzerainty, and historical records name a number of independent states with "Yabgu" being the title of the supreme ruler. One prominent example was the Oguz Yabgu state in Middle Asia, which was formed after the fragmentation of the Second Türkic Kaganate in the 840es. Another prominent example was the Karluk Yabgu, the head of the Karluk confederation which in the 766 occupied Suyab in the Jeti-su area, and eventually grew into a powerful Karakhanid state.^[3]

Etymology[edit]

Although believed by some to be a derivation from early Turkic davgu,^[4] most scholars believe that that the word Yabgu is of Indo-European origin, and was perhaps borrowed by the Türks from the Kushan political tradition, preserved by the Hephtalites.^[5]

Friedrich Hirth suggested that the earliest title "Yabgu" was recorded in literary Chinese with regard to Kushan contexts with transliteration Xihou "e-khu (yephou)" (Chinese: 翖侯; literally: "United/Allied/Confederated Prince").^[2] However, the Chinese does not make clear whether the title was the one bestowed on foreign leaders or rather a descriptive title indicating that they were allied, or united.

The Chinese word sihou (<*xiap-g’u) is a title. The second part of this compound, hou (<g’u), meant a title of second hereditary noble of the five upper classes. Sihou (<*xiap-g’u) corresponds to the title yavugo on the Kushan (Ch. Uechji) coins from Kabulistan, and yabgu of the ancient Türkic monuments [Hirth F. "Nachworte zur Inschrift des Tonjukuk" // ATIM, 2. Folge. StPb. 1899, p. 48-50]. This title is first of all a Kushan title, also deemed to be "true Tocharian" title.^[6] In the 11 BC the Chinese Han captured a Kushan from the Hunnu state, who was a "chancellor" (Ch. sijan) with the title yabgu (sihou). After 4 years he returned to the Hunnu shanyu, who gave him his former post of a «second [after Shanyu] person in the state", and retained the title yabgu (sihou). The bearer of this high title did not belong to the Hunnu dynastic line, well-known and described in detail in the sources. Probably, he was a member of the numerous Kushan (Uechji) autonomous diasporas in the Hunnu confederation. This history suggests, that in the Usun state Butszü-sihou, who saved the life of a baby Gunmo in the 160es BC, also was an yabgu.^[7]

It remains unclear whether the title indicates an alliance with the Chinese or simply with each other. A few scholars, such as Sims-Williams considered the Turkic "Yabgu" to be originally derived from the Chinese "Xihou".^[8] Another theory postulalates a Sogdian origin for both titles, "Yabgu" and "Shad". The rulers of some Sogdian principalities are known to have title "Ikhshid".^[9]

The Religion
The early Huns followed a religion akin to Zorastrianism and worshipped fire and Sun.

The Hephthalites have been portrayed as virulently anti-Buddhist, a claim based primarily on a description of a Hephthalite ruler of Gandhara recorded by Song Yun and Huisheng: "The nature of the king is violent and cruel, very often conducting massacres. He does not believe in the Buddhist faith, but well worships [his] own heathen gods. As all the inhabitants in the country are Brahmans who respect Buddhism by reading the sutras, so it is deeply against their wishes that they suddenly have such a king."⁽¹⁾ Yet other evidence depicts a different situation. One of the coins included in this exhibit was found along with thirteen other Hephthalite examples among the relics found in the Tope Kulan stupa. If the Hephthalite rulers were hostile to Buddhism, it seems doubtful that believers would have interred coins bearing portraits of their rulers. It is more probably that, once their power base had been secured, they at least tolerated Buddhist practice within their realm. They may even have offered the religion a degree of royal patronage; one inscription records donations to a Buddhist monastery in the name of the Hephthalite ruler Toramana

The crown of Hayatelle’s king became decoration of famous fire-temple of Azar Gashnasb in the city of Shiz in Azarbaijan.

Wei-era documentation records that the Hephthalites worshiped Heaven and also fire, also mentioned by Procopius.
"J. Harmatta and BA LiTvinsky present a different view (History of civilizations of Central Asia, Vol. III, p. 371). They argue that the famous Barmakid family were apparently the descants of the Hephthalite pramukhas of the Naubahar at Balkh. According to them the Hepthalite ruler of Balkh bore the Bactrian title sava (King), while the name of his son, Pariowk (in Armenian, clerical error for Parmowk) or Barmuda, Parmuda (in Arabic and Persian, clerical error for Barmuka, Parmuka) goes back to the Buddhist title pramukha. It shows that he was the lord and head of the great Buddhist Centre Naubahar at Balkh. His dignity and power were thus more of an ecclesiastic than of secular nature."

In the middle of the sixth century, a priest of the Hephthalite Huns was consecrated as bishop for his people by the Nestorian Catholicos. (R. Aubrey Vine, The Nestorian Churches: A Concise History of Nestorian Christianity in Asia from the Persian Schism to the Modern Assyrians. London. Independent Press, 1937, p.62.)
Hephthalite capital :
Pendzhikent (= Five Cities) has been partly excavated by the Russian archaeologists. This city was on a bluff overlooking the Zarafshan River, some 65 kilometers southwest of Samarkand, on what had been the Silk Road. It had been founded in the 5th century, was used as the capital of the Hephthalites who conquered Sogdiana in 509, and was a thriving metropolis when it was destroyed by the Arabs in the early 8th century. Remnants lingered on until the 9th, when it was eclipsed by Samarkand and Bukhârâ, and abandoned to the desert. It was divided into two parts, the shahristan or citadel and the city proper. On the hill, there were the citadel, the palace of the ruler, several temples and the richer houses. The rest of the city contained houses of the landed aristocracy, the merchants and shops. A full third of the houses had superbly executed murals and wood carvings, indicating an extraordinary level of wealth. The houses were 2 to 3 stories and had many rooms, including principal halls, resembling the palace on a smaller scale. The large number of shops and craftmen's workshops along the major streets and in special bazaars were of course of smaller size, and were located in front of the larger houses, but without a doorway connecting the two parts. It would seem the shops were leased to the tradesmen. These tradesmen had smaller houses, still with two stories and several rooms, and perhaps a painting in a niche, to parallel the large murals in the richer homes.
Murals found in the temples and other houses aroused great interest when they were first reported. The murals include religious themes, such as one believed to depict the Sogdian burial rite, illustrating the death of the god Syavush, representing the dying year, and his rebirth in a background scene. Some mourners are shown cutting their faces, a Central Asian practice, also reported among the Turks. The genre scenes are important, illustrating national epics, including that of Sohrab and Rustam, a metaphor for the struggle between the Iranians and the Turkish nomads. One sees battles between knights, hunts on horseback, various holiday entertainments, processions and nobles sitting at banquets, holding their goblets in a delicate manner, a harpist which has been said to be the most beautiful painting in the world, and so forth. These refer to specific episodes or may simply represent the ideal of the good life of the wealthy Sogdian. The clothing is Persian, or Sasanian, but one also may note Indian and Hellenistic traces in the renderings. From these we can gain a glimpse of the elegant, prosperous and vibrant society which had developed here.
An important find was the castle of Mt. Mugh, some 200 kilometers east of modern Samarkand, in the upper Zarafshan valley, in the Mugh foothills. A vast number of documents were found, some on paper, others on wood and leather, which had been in the archives of the ruler of Pendzhikent, dating from 717 to 719. The languages include mostly Sogdian, but also Turkish, Chinese and Arabic, the latter being the correspondence with the Arab governor of the area. The prince lived in a castle which had been built as a fortress with thick outer walls and massive towers, all made of sun-baked mud bricks. The rooms were in the form of barrel-vaulted halls connected with each other by narrow corridors. Included in the finds were all sorts of coins, seals, silver and bronze vessels, fragments of cotton and silk, and a partial panel from a shield showing a warrior of a type that one finds later in Islamic Iran. In 722 the prince rebelled and was captured and killed. The castle was then abandoned, and became filled with sand.

The Customs
Very little was known about these Hephthalite nomads. Little art has left from them. According to Sung Yun and Hui Sheng who visited their Hephthalite chief at his summer residence in Badakshan and later in Gandhara,

The Hephthalites have no cities, but roam freely and live in tents. They do not live in towns; their seat of government is a moving camp. They move in search of water and pasture, journeying in summer to cool places and in winter to warmer ones....They have no belief in the Buddhist law and they serve a great number of divinities."

Other than the deformation of skulls, the other interesting feature of the Hephthalites is their polyandrous society. The records of brothers marrying to one wife had been reported from Chinese source.

The Red Snake: The Great Wall of Gorgan

IRAS: It is longer than Hadrian's Wall and the Antonine Wall taken together. It is over a thousand years older than the Great Wall of China as we know it today. It is of more solid construction than its ancient Chinese counterparts. It is the greatest monument of its kind between central Europe and China and it may be the longest brick, or stone, wall ever built in the ancient world. This wall is known as ‘The Great Wall of Gorgan’ or ‘the Red Snake’. An international team of archaeologists has been at work on the snakelike monument and here they report on their findings.

According to Current Archaeology, The ‘Red Snake’ in northern Iran, which owes its name to the red color of its bricks, is at least 195km long. A canal, 5m deep or more, conducted water along most of the Wall. Its continuous gradient, designed to ensure regular water flow, bears witness to the skills of the land-surveyors responsible for marking out the Wall's route. Over 30 forts are lined up along this massive structure. It is also known as the Great Wall of Gorgan, the Gorgan Defence Wall, Anushirvân Barrier, Firuz Barrier and Qazal Al'an, and sometimes Sadd-i-Iskandar, (Persian for dam or barrier of Alexander).
The wall is second only to the Great Wall of China as the longest defensive wall in existence, but it is perhaps even more solidly built than the early forms of the Great Wall. Larger than Hadrian's Wall and the Antonine Wall taken together, it has been called the greatest monument of its kind between Europe and China.
The 'Red Snake' is unmatched in so many respects and an enigma in yet more. Even its length is unclear: its western terminal was flooded by the rising waters of the Caspian Sea, while to the east it runs into the unexplored mountainous landscape of the Elburz Mountains. An Iranian team, under the direction of Jebrael Nokandeh, has been exploring this Great Wall since 1999. In 2005 it became a joint Iranian and British project.

The inhabitants of this region are generally believed to have been the ancient Hyrcanians. Gorgan itself is one of Iran’s most ancient regions and is situated just to the Caspian Sea’s southeast. Gorgan has been a part of the Median, Achaemenid (559-333 BC), Seleucid, Parthian (247 BC-224 AD) and Sassanian empires in the pre-Islamic era. The term Gorgan is derived from Old Iranian VARKANA (lit. the land of wolf). Interesitngly the term Gorgan linguistically corresponds to modern Persian’s “Gorg-an” or “The Wolves”.
The capital of ancient Gorgan was known as Zadrakarta, which later became Astarabad. This city can be traced back to at least the Achaemenid era. Another historical city of importance was ancient Jorjan.
Until recently, nobody knew who had built the Wall. Theories ranged from Alexander the Great, in the 4th century BC, to the Persian king Khusrau I in the 6th century AD. Most scholars favoured a 2nd or 1st century BC construction. Scientific dating has now shown that the Wall was built in the 5th, or possibly, 6th century AD, by the Sasanian Persians. This Persian dynasty has created one of the most powerful empires in the ancient world, centred on Iran, and stretching from modern Iraq to southern Russia, Central Asia and Pakistan.

With the benefit of hindsight it is easy to see why the walls would have been constructed at this later date. It was near the northern boundary of one of the most powerful empires in the ancient world, that of the Sasanian Persians. Centred in modern Iran, it also encompassed the territory of modern Iraq, stretched into the Caucasus Mountains in the north-west and into central Asia and the Indian Subcontinent in the east. The Persian kings repeatedly invaded the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire. Yet, they also faced fierce enemies at their northern frontier. Mountain passes in the Caucasus and the coastal route along the Caspian Sea were closed off by walls, probably to prevent the Huns from penetrating south. Ancient writers, notably Procopius, provide graphic descriptions of the wars Persia fought in the 5th and 6th century against its northern opponents. When the Persian king Peroz (AD 459-484) campaigning against the White Huns, spent time repeatedly at ancient Gorgan. Eventually he had to pay with his life for venturing into the lands of the White Huns. It would have made perfect sense for Peroz, or perhaps another Persian king shortly before or after, to protect the fertile and rich Gorgan Plain from this northerly threat through a defensive barrier.
Modern survey techniques and satellite images have revealed that the forts were densely occupied with military style barrack blocks. Numerous finds discovered during the latest excavations indicate that the frontier bustled with life. Researchers estimate that some 30,000 soldiers could have been stationed at this Wall alone. It is thought that the 'Red Snake' was a defense system against the White Huns, who lived in Central Asia.

The system of castles was developed by the Sassanians into a system of fluid defense. This meant that the Gorgan Wall was not part of a purely static system of defense. The main emphasis was in a system of fluid defense-attack system. This entailed holding off potential invaders along the line and in the event of a breakthrough, the Sassanian high command would first observe the strength and direction of the invading forces. Then the elite Sassanian cavalry (the Savaran) would be deployed out of the castles closest to the invading force. The invaders would then be trapped behind Iranian lines with the Gorgan Wall to their north and the Savaran attacking at their van and flanks. It was essentially this system of defense that allowed Sassanian Persia to defeat the menacing Hun-Hephthalite invasions of the 6-7th centuries AD.
Radiocarbon dates indicate that the fort remained occupied until at least the first half of the 7th century. It is too early to tell whether or not the Wall was abandoned then, perhaps because troops were needed for a major assault against the Byzantine Empire, fighting off the Byzantine counter-offensive or against the Arab invasion from AD 636 onwards. The evidence is mounting, however, that the Wall functioned as a military barrier for at least a century and probably closer to two.
If one assumed that the forts were occupied as densely as those on Hadrian's Wall, then the garrison on the Gorgan Wall would have been in the order of 30,000 men. Models, taking into account the size and room number of the barrack blocks in the Gorgan Wall forts and likely occupation density, produce figures between 15,000 and 36,000 soldiers.
The land corridor between the Caucasus Mountains and the west coast of the Caspian Sea is closed off by a series of walls. The most famous is the Wall of Derbent in modern Dagestan (Russia). Then, much closer to the 'Red Snake' is the contemporary Wall of Tammishe, which runs from the south-east corner of the Caspian Sea into the Elburz Mountains. The Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland sea and depends on inflowing rivers for its water. Its water level has thus fluctuated much more over the centuries than that of the oceans.
This wall starts from the Caspian coast, circles north of Gonbade Kavous, continues towards the northwest, and vanishes behind the Pishkamar Mountains. A logistical archaeological survey was conducted regarding the wall in 1999 due to problems in development projects, especially during construction of the Golestan Dam, which irrigates all the areas covered by the wall. At the point of the connection of the wall and the drainage canal from the dam, architects discovered the remains of the above wall. The 40 identified castles vary in dimension and shape but the majority are square fortresses, made of the same brickwork as the wall itself and at the same period. Due to many difficulties in development and agricultural projects, archaeologists have been assigned to mark the boundary of the historical find by laying cement blocks.

Attention must be likewise given to a similar Sassanian defence wall and fortification on the opposite side of the Caspian Sea at the port of Derbent and beyond. Where the Great Wall of Gorgan continues into the Sea at the Gulf of Gorgan, on the far side of the Caspian emerges from the Sea the great wall of Caucasus at Derbent, complete with its extraordinarily well preserved Sassanian fort.
While the fortification and walls on the east side of the Caspian Sea remained unknown to the Graeco-Roman historians, the western half of this impressive "northern fortifications" in the Caucasus was well known to Classical authors.
This project is seriously challenging the traditional Euro-centric world view. At the time when the Western Roman Empire is collapsing and even the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire under great external pressure, the Sasanian Persian Empire musters the manpower to build and garrison a monument of greater scale than anything comparable in the west. The Persians seem to match, or more than match, their Late Roman rivals in army strength, organizational skills, engineering and water management. Archaeology is beginning to paint a clearer picture of an ancient super power at its apogee

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