Taifals

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The dragon-and-pearl device of the shields of the Equites Honoriani Taifali iuniores unit based in Gaul. The dragon was blue, as was the "pearl". The boss was blue and the band around the boss was red. The field was white.

The Taifals or Tayfals (

Merovingian
armies. By the sixth century their region of western Gaul had acquired a distinct identity as Thifalia.

Settlement in Oltenia

Taifals in Oltenia and the political landscape in the 4th-century Balkans

One of the earliest mentions of the Taifals puts them in the following of the Gothic king Cniva when he campaigned in Dacia and Moesia in 250 and the years following.[2] They are sometimes classified as a Germanic tribe closely related to the Goths, although some believe they were related to the (non-Germanic) Sarmatians with whom they might have emigrated from the Pontic–Caspian steppe.[3]

In the late third century they settled on the

Someş River, with the Thervingi and Taifals.[7] The Taifals were subsequently made foederati of the Romans, from whom they obtained the right to settle in Oltenia.[8] They were at that time independent of the Goths.[9]

Coşoveni
, Oltenia, Romania

In 328

Nicholas of Myra.[11][12] In 332 he sent his son Constantine II to attack the Thervingi, who were routed. According to Zosimus (ii.31.3), a 500-man Taifal cavalry regiment engaged the Romans in a "running fight", and there is no evidence that this campaign was a failure.[11][12]
Nonetheless, the Taifals largely fell into the hands of the Romans at this time.

Around 336 they revolted against Constantine and were put down by the generals Herpylion,

Olt River.[5]

Crossing the Danube

With the

Huns—from Central Asia changed the political layout of Dacia: "the Huns threw themselves upon the Alans, the Alans upon the Goths, and the Goths upon the Taifali and Sarmatae."[18] Athanaric had refused to extend his defensive preparations to the Taifalian territory and the Huns forced the Taifals to abandon Oltenia and western Muntenia by 370.[19][20] The Taifals allied with the Greuthungi of Farnobius against Rome; they crossed the Danube in 377, but were defeated in late autumn that year.[21] The Taifals were prominent among the survivors of Farnobius' coalition. After the Gothic victory at Adrianople (378) under Fritigern, the Thervingian king Athanaric began to assail the Taifals.[18] Athanaric had not included the Taifals in his defensive construction efforts against the Huns earlier (376).[22] The breaking of the alliance between Thervingia and Taifal may have had something to do with disagreements over tactics in light of the Huns and the crossing of the Danube, the Taifals being horsemen and the Thervingi infantry.[23]

Sometime before their conversion to Christianity, Ammianus Marcellinus wrote:

It is said that this nation of the Taifali was so profligate, and so immersed in the foulest obscenities of life, that they indulged in all kinds of unnatural lusts, exhausting the vigour both of youth and manhood in the most polluted defilements of debauchery. But if any adult caught a boar or slew a bear single-handed, he was then exempted from all compulsion of submitting to such ignominious pollution.[24]

The Taifals were probably never

Orthodox Catholic faith probably occurred through Roman evangelism in the mid fifth century.[25]

A page of the Insignia viri illustris magistri Equitum from manuscript Canon. Misc. 378 of Notitia Dignitatum, since 1817 in the Bodleian Library[26]

Coloni and laeti of the Empire

Subsequent to their defeat and falling out with Athanaric, the Taifals were officially resettled as

Battle of Châlons (451). However, the victory of Adrianople in 378 meant that those Taifals who remained with the Visigoths fought against their cousins at Châlons. In 412, the Taifals entered Aquitaine
in the train of the Visigoths.

The Taifals were often teamed with the Sarmatians and the Citrati iuniores by the Romans and subsequently by

Eastern Empire, which was probably formed in the reign of Theodosius I.[30]

Some Taifals were settled in

Gothograeci, leading Gustav Anrich to suggest that these Phrygian Taifals were the ancestors of the Gothograeci of the 7th–10th centuries.[31]

The village of Tealby (originally Tavelesbi, Tauelesbi or Teflesbi) in the former kingdom of Lindsey may preserve the name of some Taifali who remained in Britain after the Roman withdrawal in 410. If so, it suggests the unattested Old English tribal name *Tāflas or *Tǣflas.[32]

Presence in Merovingian Gaul

Also according to the Notitia, there was a praefectus Sarmatarum et Taifalorum gentilium, Pictavis in Galia, that is, a Sarmatian and Taifal prefect in Poitiers in Gaul.[33] The region of Poitou was even called Thifalia, Theiphalia or Theofalgicus pagus (all meaning "Taifal country") in the sixth century. The Taifals were instrumental in defeating the Visigothic cavalry hand to hand at the Battle of Vouillé in 507.[34]

Under the Merovingians, Theiphalia had its own dux (duke).[35] It is possible that the Taifal laeti who had served the Romans also served as garrisons for the Franks, but this is not referred to in primary records.[36] The laeti were formally integrated into the Merovingian military establishment under Childebert I.[37] Gregory of Tours, the principal source for the Taifals in the sixth century, says that a certain Frankish dux named Austrapius "oppressed" the Taifals (probably in the vicinity of Tiffauges); they revolted and killed him.[38] The last mention of the Taifals as a distinct gens dates from year 565,[39] but their Oltenic remnants almost certainly took part in the Lombard migration and invasion of Italy in 568.[40]

The most famous Taifal was

Burgundy owe their names to Taifal settlement. Perhaps the town of Tafalla in the Navarre owes its name to these people, but if so, it is unknown if the Taifals were established in Hispania (probably to subdue the Basques) by the Romans before 412 or by the Visigoths after that. The town of Taivola in northern Italy was also a Taifal settlement.[45]

Notes

  1. ISBN 9780191744457
    . Retrieved January 26, 2020. Taifali. Germanic or Sarmatian group, renowned as light cavalry...
  2. ^ Wolfram, 45.
  3. ^ Maenchen-Helfen, 26 n50, says there is "no evidence they were Germans". Dalton, I, 172 n7, calls them "probably of Asiatic descent." Wolfram, 92, mentions hypothesised Vandalic origin which equates the Taifals with the Lacringi and considers "Taifali" to be a Celtic "cult name".
  4. ^ Wolfram, 56.
  5. ^ a b Wolfram, 91.
  6. ^ Panegyrici Latini, iii[xi].17, cited in Thompson, 9 n2.
  7. ^ a b c Wolfram, 57ff, mentions a panegyric delivered on 1 April 291 which refers to Thervings and Taiflas defeating a Vandal-Gepid coalition.
  8. ^ Thompson, 4.
  9. ^ Musset, 36.
  10. ^ "Prezentare Locala - Comuna Cosoveni DJ". Archived from the original on 2014-10-21. Retrieved 2013-07-06.
  11. ^ a b Thompson, 11 and n3.
  12. ^ a b Wolfram, 61 and n141.
  13. ^ Barnes, "Forty", 226, and "Constans", 331–332.
  14. ^ a b Thompson, 13.
  15. ^ Wolfram, 63.
  16. ^ Wolfram, 67.
  17. ^ Thompson, 14 n1.
  18. ^
    Ambrose of Milan
    , Expositio evangelii secundum Lucam, X.10, quoted in Maenchen-Helfen, 20.
  19. ^ Maenchen-Helfen, 26 and n50.
  20. ^ Wolfram, 408 n225.
  21. ^ Id. Ammianus wrote of their annihilation, but Zosimus placed them second to the Goths in importance. They were evidently numerous.
  22. ^ Wolfram, 71.
  23. ^ Wolfram, 99.
  24. ^ Ammianus, 31.IX.v. Greenberg, 243, believes this refers to practices of ritualistic homosexual pederasty among the Taifal warrior class.
  25. ^ Wolfram, 238.
  26. Bishop of Padua
    .
  27. ^ Wolfram, 123.
  28. ^ Wolfram, 478 n562.
  29. ^ Nickel, 139.
  30. ^ Nischer, 51.
  31. ^ Haldon, 369–370.
  32. ^ Green, passim.
  33. ^ Bachrach, Merovingian, 12 n30.
  34. ^ Bachrach, Merovingian, 17.
  35. ^ Bachrach, Merovingian, 29 and 38.
  36. ^ Dalton, I, 226, who calls them foederati.
  37. ^ Dalton, I, 44.
  38. ^ Gregory, IV.18.
  39. ^ In Gregory, Wolfram, 238. Gregory's generally friendly attitude towards the Taifals attests to their orthodoxy and to their relative lack of Gothicisation considering their many years spent in Gothic alliances.
  40. ^ Musset, 88.
  41. ^ Gregory, V.7.
  42. ^ Bachrach, Aquitaine, 24.
  43. ^ Dalton, I, 172 n7.
  44. ^ "Google Maps". Google Maps.
  45. ^ Wolfram, 92.

Sources

External links

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