Maghas

Maghas or Maas, more properly, Mags or Maks, was the capital city of Alania, a medieval kingdom in the Greater Caucasus. It is known from Islamic and Chinese sources, but its location is uncertain, with some authors favouring North Ossetia and others pointing to Arkhyz in modern-day Karachay–Cherkessia, where three 10th-century churches still stand. Historian John Latham Sprinkle from the University of Ghent (Belgium) identified Maghas with an archeological site known as Il’ichevskoye Gorodische in Otradnensky District, Krasnodar Krai. The destruction of Maghas is ascribed to Batu Khan, a Mongol leader and a grandson of Genghis Khan, in the beginning of 1239. Some Russian geographers, like D. V. Zayats, point to a location in Ingushetia. The capital of the Russian Republic of Ingushetia, Magas, is named after Maghas. The name is given in Arabic sources as Maghas or Ma'as, in Persian as Magas or Makas, and in Chinese as Muzashan (木栅山). The name Magas is a homonym of the Persian word magas, meaning "fly", and the medieval writers al-Mas'udi and Juvayni made plays on words about the city's name. The Chinese transcription Muzashan uses the characters for mountain (mu, 木) and forest (shan, 山), which John Latham-Sprinkle interprets as a possible reference to the city's location in rough terrain. The main historical references for the city of Maghas are al-Mas'udi's Murūj al-Dhahab, written sometime in the 940s; Juvayni's Tarīkh-i Jahāngushāy, from the 1250s; Rashid al-Din Tabib's Jāmi' al-Tawārīkh, written 1310; and the Yuanshi, compiled in Ming China around 1369. Al-Mas'udi, who had travelled through the Caucasus in the 930s, wrote that Maghas was the capital of the Alans, or al-Lān, although their unnamed king periodically travelled from one residence to another. Juvayni's account, written three centuries later, is the earliest to mention the Mongol capture of Maghas, although he does not provide a specific date for this event.