Dahae

Origins

The Dahae appear in a daiva inscription of Xerxes I and in Greek accounts of the Achaemenid army, living on the steppes south-east of the Caspian Sea, in what is now Turkmenistan. They comprised three main tribes, the Parni, Xanthii and Pissuri, and are often counted among the Saka peoples.

Rule and society

They were horse-riding pastoralists famed as mounted archers, serving as cavalry for Darius III at Gaugamela and later for Alexander the Great and his successors. Their territory, later called Dahistan, bordered the farming lands of Hyrcania and Margiana, and they traded and raided along this edge.

Decline and legacy

Around 238 BCE Arsaces, leader of the Parni, seized the Seleucid province of Parthia, founding the Arsacid dynasty of the Parthian Empire, whose era was later reckoned from 247 BCE. The remaining Dahae were absorbed into Parthian and later steppe populations, though the name Dahistan survived for the region into Islamic times.

Few sources survive for this state; details are uncertain.