Abstract
The purpose of this article is to bring to the attention of academic circles and the wider public the little-known pages of national history. It attempts to reconstruct the history of the “glorious dynasty of Paradata,” which, for various reasons, has not previously been connected to the history of the mighty Parthian Empire, and to trace its continuation. The difficulties of this reconstruction stem from the scattered and fragmentary nature of information preserved in the accounts of ancient Greek travelers, geographers and historians, Parthian legends, and Persian narratives. Subsequently, especially during the dominance of the Sasanian dynasty, the preceding Parthian history was rewritten and interpreted to serve the interests of the ruling elite. These distortions continued to dominate during the rise of Eurocentric theories and the prevalence of Indo-Iranian concepts. Based on the method of the unity of the historical and the logical, and through the study of the migration routes of the Scythians from the northern Caspian steppes to the interfluve of the Edil and Zhaiyk rivers, and further south between the Caspian and Aral seas, it becomes evident that this was not merely a simple migration of nomadic tribes. Beneath the veil of Parthian legends and myths emerges the authentic history of the Paradata dynasty, which lasted for more than two millennia and was once described as “glorious.” The task of reconstructing this history and achieving its maximum demythologization requires introducing into scholarly discourse previously unknown, dramatic, and little-studied pages of a centuries-long history that unfolded in the western regions of present-day Kazakhstan.