Towards the Location of the Land of Pharasmanes the King of Chorasmians:

An Attempt to interpret Arrian’s Information related to Alexander of Macedon

Abstract

According to the testimony of Arrian’s “Alexander’s Campaign”, in the spring of 327 BC, Pharasmanes, king of the Chorasmians, accompanied by the 1500 horsemen, appeared in front of Alexander near the riverbank of Oxus (modern Amu Darya) in Central Asia and told him that he lived in the neighborhood of Colchians and Amazonians and was ready to help him, if Alexander will decide to subdue the tribes which inhabited territories stretching towards Pontus Euxinos. Alexander told the King of Chorasmians that by now he had no time and opportunity to go to Pontus, but after the conquest of Asia and returning to Greece through the Hellespontus and Propontidis, he would be able to penetrate deep into Pontus with the help of all his maritime and military forces, and only then he would need Pharasmanes’ support.

In the historical literature have been expressed a very clear remark that it is unbelievable the author of the “Black Sea Periplus”, Arrian could consider Colchian’s residence in Central Asia, in the neighborhood of the Chorasmians, instead of the surroundings of Trapesund on the Black Sea littoral. It is supposed to be a mistake in the Greek manuscripts, as it is inconceivable that in the original text the Colchians would be mentioned side by side with Central Asian Chorasmians.

It is clear that the Arrian’s text should refer to the Black Sea area and not Central Asia, except that the Colchians, Amazonians, and Euxinus Pontus are mentioned in it, Alexander’s own words must testify it, that only after returning to Greece via Hellespont and Propontis (i.e. allegedly after turning back from Central Asia), he would go to Pontus and for this purpose, it would be used as land as naval forces. The latter note: “The use of naval forces”  makes the possibility of his return to Central Asia and, thus, the opportunity of helping King of Chorasmians quite unimaginable. Therefore it is highly probable that the name of some country located in the Anatolia-Caucasian area has been confused with the name of Central Asian Chorasmians, and in this case to deal with the erroneous use or misinterpretation of ethnonyms or choronyms. Cases of similar contamination of ethnonyms are not rare in ancient written sources.

In this regard, special attention deserves Strabo’s information that the Armenians enlarged their country by capturing from the Iberians except for Gogarene, the Paryadres Mountains, and Khorzene. This event dates back to the relatively later period, to the early part of the 2^nd century BC. It seems that at this time by the appropriation of the Iberian province Khorzene, Armenian lands expanded to the Kura River.

Thus, it seems possible to search there the country of the Pharasmanes of the text of Arrian’s “Alexander’s expedition”, where usually are looking for the country of “Arian-Kartli” of the old Georgian chronicles, and, at the same time, suppose that under the name of Pharasmanes, of the king of the Chorasmians, the ruler of the Iberian province of Khorzene could be hiding behind; we must take into account that the name ‘Pharasmanes’ especially often is confirmed in Iberia. Besides, it is significant that the name ‘Pharasmanes’ is typical of the Iberian court at the end of the first millennium BC and the beginning of the first millennium AD and not for the Chorasmians of Central Asia.

We should assume that certain events seem to have taken place in Central Transcaucasia in the late 4^th-early 3^rd centuries BC and they were somehow connected with the processes which caused the emergence of the statehood in Eastern Georgia (Iberia). The data of Georgian and Armenian chronicles are genuine witnesses of these events, the initial stimulus of which has been given by Alexander’s conquest of the Achaemenid Empire and the replacement of Pax Achaemenica with Pax Macedonica. We must take into consideration the conjuncture that has developed in the Middle East and its periphery as a result of this conquest.

One of the main events of the pre-Hellenistic era, naturally arising from the political situation of that time, was the emergence and creation of new states on the territory of the defeated empire. In this regard, the reports of the Georgian chronicles should be discussed that Alexander gave the Georgians a king or a ruler and gave an ideological basis – a necessary attribute for every state: “and Alexander ordered the Azon to honor the sun and the moon and the five star, and serve the invisible God, the creator of all things”.