Alpan is the Lezgin god of fire, lightning and justice, the thunder-wielder of the pantheon. His name is linked to the Lezgin word for lightning, tsIaIlapan, understood as 'the blaze or flash of fire.' From the sixth celestial sphere, and equally from the hearth of every house, he restores balance and right order in the world; the eagle and the fiery bolt are his emblems. Because the god was believed to lodge in the domestic fire, families kept an ember perpetually alight and treated the hearth as sacred, forbidding refuse, spitting or the pouring of water upon it. His name endures in the still-current imprecation 'May Alpan strike you!' In the pantheon he is paired with the goddess Yar in a sacred marriage whose visible sign is the spring rainbow, their daughter. Some scholars connect his name and cult to the ancient toponym Alpan/Albania of Caucasian Albania.