Dahae

The Dahae or Dahaener (Persian داها; Greek Δάοι, DAOI and Greek Δάαι, Daai ) were a confederation of three ancient Iranian tribes who lived east of the Caspian Sea. They spoke a language ostiranische.

History

The first datable mention of Dahae found in the Daiva inscription of the Persian king Xerxes I at Persepolis. There the Dahae be one of the tributary peoples under the name of Daha directly in front of the Sakas, who were the neighbors of the Dahae called. Their settlement area was called Dahestan or Dihistan. Whether they had an urban center is not known.

The Dahae fought together with the Sakian strains on the part of the Achaemenid Empire at the Battle of Gaugamela. After the fall of the Achaemenid empire, they took part in the India campaign of Alexander the Great. Sakische coins from the era of the Seleucids sometimes refer specifically to the Dahae.

In the third century BC, a part of the Parni tribe of Dahae rose under their leader Arsaces on to power. They invaded Parthia, which had detached itself recently by the Seleucids, and Arsaces crowned king of Parthia. His successors - the Arsacid - took power in the Iranian highlands and so founded the Parthian empire.

Identity

It is not clear whether the Dahae with the * daha are equated from the religious Yasht texts. Perhaps both words are attributed to the word Daha what was in the ancient Iranian for man. But these etymological relationship is not a proof that both peoples belong to the same ethnic group. Strabo referred in his Geographika the Dahae explicitly as Scythian Dahae. He placed the Dahae near the present-day Turkmenistan.