Lud, son of Shem

Lud (Hebrew: לוּדֿ) was a son of Shem and grandson of Noah, according to Genesis 10 (the "Table of Nations"). Lud should not be confused with the Ludim, said there to be descended from Mizraim, a son of Ham.

The descendants of Lud are usually, following Josephus, connected with various Anatolian peoples, particularly Lydia (Assyrian Luddu) and their predecessors, the Luwians; cf. Herodotus' assertion (Histories i. 7) that the Lydians were first so named after their king, Lydus (Λυδός). However, the chronicle of Hippolytus of Rome (c. 234 AD) identifies Lud's descendants with the Lazones or Alazonii (names usually taken as variants of the "Halizones" said by Strabo to have once lived along the Halys) while it derives the Lydians from the aforementioned Ludim, son of Mizraim.

The Book of Jubilees, in describing how the world was divided between Noah's sons and grandsons, says that Lud received "the mountains of Asshur and all appertaining to them till it reaches the Great Sea, and till it reaches the east of Asshur his brother." (Charles translation.) The Ethiopian version reads, more clearly "... until it reaches, toward the east, toward his brother Asshur's portion." Jubilees also says that Japheth's son Javan received islands in front of Lud's portion, and that Tubal received three large peninsulae, beginning with the first peninsula nearest Lud's portion. In all these cases, 'Lud's portion' seems to refer to the entire Anatolian peninsula, west of Mesopotamia.

Some scholars have associated the Biblical Lud with the Lubdu of Assyrian sources, who inhabited certain parts of western Media and Atropatene.^[1] It has been conjectured by others^[2] that Lud's descendants spread to areas of the far-east beyond Elam, or that they were identified with the Lullubi.

The Muslim historian Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari (c. 915) recounts a tradition that the wife of Lud was named Shakbah, daughter of Japheth, and that she bore him "Faris, Jurjan, and the races of Faris". He further asserts that Lud was the progenitor of not only the Persians, but also the Amalekites and Canaanites, and all the peoples of the East, Oman, Hejaz, Syria, Egypt, and Bahrein.

References

1. Bezalel Bar-Kochva, The Seleucid Army: Organisation and Tactics in the Great Campaigns, 318 pp., Cambridge University Press, 1976, ISBN 0-521-20667-7, p.50
2. "The Genetic Origin of the Nations"