Lud, son of Shem

Lud (לוּד) 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.

The descendants of Lud are usually, following Josephus, connected with various Anatolian peoples, particularly Lydia (Assyrian "Luddu") and their predecessors, the Luwians; cf. geographic references to the 'Mountains of Lud' (Anatolia) in "Jubilees", and 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.

It has been conjectured by others [ [http://www.ccg.org/English/s/p265.html "The Genetic Origin of the Nations"] ] that Lud's descendants spread to areas of the far-east beyond Elam, or that they were identified with the Lullubi. Some scholars have also associated the Biblical Lud with the "Lubdu" of Assyrian sources, who inhabited certain parts of western Media and Atropatene [Bezalel Bar-Kochva, "The Seleucid Army: Organisation and Tactics in the Great Campaigns", 318 pp., Cambridge University Press, 1976, ISBN 0521206677, p.50] .

The Persian 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.

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