Hyrcani

Hyrcani, or Hyrcanians, are the inhabitants of Hyrcania, an ancient region along the southern coast of the Caspian Sea. In classical geography Hyrcania lay on the south side of the Caspian, roughly corresponding to parts of present-day Golestan, Gilan, and Mazandaran in northern Iran, with the Alborz mountains to the south. The name comes from the indigenous people, the Hyrcani, who spoke Iranian languages and are mentioned by Greek, Persian, and other Near Eastern writers. The region is famed for its dense forests, commonly called the Hyrcanian forests, which form a distinctive temperate woodland belt along the coast.

Historically Hyrcania was a satrapy in the Achaemenid Empire and later remained a recognized province under Hellenistic and Parthian domains and into the Sasanian era. It supplied troops and resources for imperial campaigns and linked Caspian littoral trade with the Iranian plateau. Classical authors sometimes describe the Hyrcani as hardy horsemen and forest people. Over time the region became integrated into successive Iranian sovereignties and, in late antiquity and the medieval period, into Islamic administrative divisions.

In modern terminology, Hyrcania is primarily a historical designation. The area corresponds to northern Iran’s Caspian littoral, today part of Golestan, Gilan, and Mazandaran provinces, and overlaps with the Hyrcanian forest ecosystem, a biodiverse temperate forest that is one of Iran’s notable ecological regions.