Amardi

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Amardians, widely referred to as the Amardi (and sometimes Mardi), were an ancient Iranian[1] tribe living along the mountainous region bordering the Caspian Sea to the north,[2] to whom the Iron Age culture at Marlik is attributed.[3] They are said to be related to, or the same tribe as, the Dahae and Sacae. That is to say, they were Scythian.[4] Herodotus mentions a tribe with a similar name as one of the ten to fifteen Persian tribes in Persis.[1][5] They lived in the valleys in between the Susis and Persis,[6] in what is now southwestern Iran. The southern Mardi are described by Nearchus as one of the four predatory mountain peoples of the southwest, along with the Susians, Uxii, and Elymaeans.[7] Of these four nomadic groups, they were the only tribe linguistically Iranian.[8]

Etymology[]

The term Mardi comes from the Old Iranian word for "man"[6] (Old Persian: WIKI