Battle of Jaxartes
| date | 329 BC Chr. |
|---|---|
| place | near Khujand / Tajikistan |
| output | Victory of the Alexander army |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
| Commander | |
|
Satrakes † |
|
| Troop strength | |
| unknown | about 22,000 men |
| losses | |
|
According to Arrian (Anabasis 4, 4, 8) |
|
Granicus - Miletus - Halicarnassus - Issus - Tire - Gaugamela - Persian Gates - Jaxartes - Sogdian Rock - Chorienes Rock - Gabai - Hydaspes
Alexander the Great was victorious in the Battle of Jaxartes in 329 BC. Chr. , During his campaign in Asia on a rider army of Scythians . It took place near Khujand in Tajikistan .
prehistory
At the turn of the year from 330 to 329 BC In BC Alexander and his army had crossed the Hindu Kush to the north with his army from Alexandria in Arachosia (Kandahar) in order to enter the Bactria region . At that time, the situation had become very critical for him. On the one hand, the army was emaciated after the difficult transition over the Central Asian mountain range during the winter months and longer phases of starvation and lean periods and continued to shrink to almost half its original manpower, i.e. to around 25,000 men, due to larger troop deployments to secure the provinces. The situation was all the more complicated because it was completely surrounded by enemy territory. In Bactria ruled Bessus , who had declared himself Great King, after he had previously Darius III. had murdered. To seize the regicide was Alexander's declared aim, but Bessos avoided a confrontation by retreating north. In his pursuit, Alexander finally reached the Oxus (Amu Darya) crossing into the province of Sogdia , bordering on the north of Bactria , whose governor Spitamenes also refused to submit and began a protracted guerrilla war against Alexander. In the meantime he succeeded in seizing Bessos and taking the heavily fortified city of Marakanda (Samarqand) , the capital of Sogdia, from which he now intended to fight Spitamenes. It was here that he first made contact with the Scythian horsemen, from whom the sub-tribes settling in Europe and on the Aral Sea had sent diplomatic missions to him.
A little further north, across the river Jaxartes (Syrdarja) , lived a sub-tribe of the Scythians, the Saks , who represented a constant threat to Sogdia because of their raids. His princes were well informed about the current events in Sogdia - some of their cavalry hordes were already fighting on the side of the Spitamen - whereupon they now recognized the opportunity to gain rich booty by means of a victory over the Macedonians and a subsequent plundering of the province. On the north bank of the Jaxartes they gathered a large cavalry army. Alexander learned of the emerging threat in Marakanda and therefore refrained from making a direct move against Spitamenes for the time being. Instead, he took his army on the march towards Jaxartes, on which he was able to conquer and destroy seven cities within two days, including the city of Kyropolis near the south bank . It was the northernmost city of the Persian Empire in Asia and was once founded by Cyrus II as a border bulwark against the Scythians living in the vast steppes of the north. After the withdrawal from Marakanda, Spitamenes returned from the steppe with his cavalry troops and took up the siege. However, Alexander refrained from turning back and only sent a 2,300-strong force under Pharnuches to terrify Marakanda.
The battle
Before Alexander started crossing the Jaxartes to fight the Scythians waiting on the north bank, he first decided to found a new city on the south bank, Alexandria Eschatē (“the outermost, the farthest”), today's Khujand . It was supposed to be populated with war-disabled Greeks and the local population of the seven previously destroyed cities and provided with a protective force. Just like Kyropolis before it, it was supposed to guarantee the protection of the northern border of the Alexander Empire against the Scythians. They observed the work on the city wall from the north bank and tried to disrupt it by firing with arrows, which was ineffective, however, since the range of their arrows did not extend beyond the width of the river.
Only after the walls were high enough to effectively protect the city after seventeen days of construction did Alexander decide to fight the Scythians. To do this, he had all the boats that could be found along the Jaxartes requisitioned, on which his warriors were to cross the river at the same time. These were numerous enough to offer the Scythians more targets than their firepower could handle. Furthermore, Alexander had his field artillery , ballistae for direct target fire, positioned on the bank, which could provide fire protection for the boats. Because the range of the ballista towered far beyond that of simple arches and could reach the Scythians on the opposite bank. Alexander used a similar approach during his Balkan campaign (335 BC) against the Illyrians . After one of their leaders was killed under fire, the Scythians withdrew from the bank, realizing that they were inferior to the enemy artillery, unknown to them and more advanced. This allowed Alexander to land on the north bank, who first let his archers and slingers disembark, which were supposed to keep the Scythians at a distance, as cover for the following cavalry and infantry.
After Alexander's army was finally set up in battle formation, Alexander had a detachment of mounted Greek mercenaries and four squadrons of lancers ride ahead as the vanguard to provoke the Scythians, who had initially waited, to attack. These actually attacked the vanguard, following their usual tactics of encircling while shooting with arrows. Thereupon Alexander led his archers, Agrianas and javelin throwers in close formation to the beleaguered vanguard, flanked by three departments of the Hetairen Reitererei and all mounted javelin throwers. With the rest of the cavalry he even attacked the Scythians, who had concentrated entirely on the vanguard, and forced them to break off their circular movement. Instead, they rode straight to meet the waiting archers and spear throwers who came under fire. In addition, besieged by the Macedonian cavalry, they suffered heavy losses. After their leader Satrakes had also fallen, the Scythians turned to flee into their steppes.
End of fight
For some time Alexander pursued the fleeing Scythians in their hinterland. However, he soon had to break off the chase and turn back because he developed severe diarrhea after drinking water from the Jaxartes. At the place of his return he erected altars for the mythical wandering heroes Herakles and Dionysus as the outermost border points of his empire in the north of the Oikumene . Allegedly he even left the stone marks of Dionysus behind on his journey to the Scythian land, which he thus exceeded. In any case, he overshadowed Cyrus II, conqueror of the world, who had only got as far as Jaxartes. Alexander had previously erected altars on the north bank of the Istros (Danube) and the west bank of the Nile , as he was later to repeat on the banks of the Hyphasis (Beas) and at the mouth of the Indus.
Returning to Alexandria Eschatē, Alexander received a delegation of the Scythians in the following days, who requested peace on behalf of their king. As a gesture of respect, Alexander released the prisoners unconditionally when he promised never to plunder into Sogdia again. A little later he received another delegation in Bactria, who offered him a formal alliance and marriage to a daughter of their king. Alexander accepted the former, but refused to marry the Scythian princess; she was to be married to one of his officers instead. It is possible that this incident contributed to the legend of Alexander's meeting with the Amazon queen Thalestris . The equestrian peoples of Central Asia remained calm for the rest of his life, only at the time of the Hellenistic Diadochian empires ( Greek-Bactrian Kingdom ) did they begin to attack again across the Jaxartes in the south.
After his dispute with the Scythians, Alexander turned back to fighting the Spitamenes, who in the meantime had won a complete victory over Pharnuches on Polytimetus (Serafshan) .
swell
Main sources for the battle of Jaxartes are the works of Arrian ( Anabasis 4, 3–5, after Ptolemaios ) and Curtius Rufus ( Historiarum Alexandri Magni Macedonis 7, 7–9).
geography
Aristobulus , a companion of Alexander and a participant in his procession, wrongly identified the river that marked the border between Sogdia and the land of the Scythian Saks with the Tanais, which is actually the Don , as only Strabo realized. This confusion results from the ancient Greeks' extensive ignorance of the geographic nature of the Eurasian land mass, in which the Hindu Kush was mistakenly seen as the eastern foothills of the Caucasus Mountains . The Tanais was considered to be the geographical border between Europe and Asia in the northern Oikumene, which Alexander believed to have reached inappropriately. From his point of view, the founding of the city there was nicknamed “the extreme” in a double sense.
Arrian, who wrote several centuries later and who also referred to Aristobulus as the source, cleared up this error by correctly knowing how to distinguish the two rivers from one another. But he also named the Jaxartes as "Eastern Tanais" to distinguish it from the "Western Tanais" (Don), although the name "Jaxartes" was known to him through Aristobulus. Both dismissed this name but only as a language variation of the local “barbarian tribes” for the “eastern Tanais”. The error about the equality of the two rivers nevertheless persisted into Roman historiography, as with Curtius Rufus and also with the naturalist Pliny . Plutarch , who was somehow familiar with the name “Jaxartes”, took a different approach , but he mixed it up with the Oxus to the river “Orexartes”, which he in turn made the upper reaches of the Jaxartes (with him also “Tanais”) completely wrong. Both rivers actually flow into the Aral Sea and flow almost parallel to each other through Central Asia.
literature
- Alexander Demandt : Alexander the Great. Life and legend . Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-59085-6 .
- Robin Lane Fox : Alexander the Great. Conqueror of the world ("Alexander the Great", 1978). Rowohlt, Reinbek 2010, ISBN 978-3-499-62641-8 .
- Elizabeth Baynham: Alexander and the Amazons . In: The Classical Quarterly , Vol. 51 (2001), pp. 115-126, ISSN 0009-8388 .
Remarks
- ↑ According to Curtius Rufus (7, 7, 1) the leader of the Scythians was called Carthasis, who was the brother of the Scythian king and was sent by him with the order to destroy Alexandria Eschatē.
- ↑ Arrian, Anabasis 4, 1, 1. This diplomatic exchange does not seem to have resulted in a lasting peaceful settlement. As of 325 BC When the Macedonian governor of Thrace, Zopyrion , moved towards Olbia on the north coast of the Black Sea, the European Danube Cythians opposed him there.
- ↑ Pliny , Naturalis historia 6:49; Metz epitome 12.
- ↑ Arrian, Anabasis 4, 15, 1-3.
- ↑ Remarkably, the Thalestris legend was brought into the world by a companion of Alexander, Kleitarchos ( Strabo 11, 5, 4 = Kleitarchos, FGrHist 137). However, it was only considered credible by very few historians, as Plutarch ( Alexander 46: 1-5) noted. Perhaps it was invented out of flattery, so that Alexander could experience a peaceful encounter with the Amazon queen, while his mythical ancestor Achilles had killed the queen Penthesilea before Troy . See Demandt, pp. 232-233.
- ^ Strabo 11, 1.
- ↑ See Demandt, pp. 227–228.
- ↑ Arrian, Anabasis 3, 30, 6-8 = Aristobulos, FGrHist. 139 F 25.
- ^ Curtius Rufus 7, 7, 1; Pliny, Naturalis historia 6, 49.
- ↑ Plutarch, Alexander 45, 6.