Lud was a son of Shem

Shem

Shem was one of the sons of Noah in the Hebrew Bible as well as in Islamic literature. He is most popularly regarded as the eldest son, though some traditions regard him as the second son. Genesis 10:21 refers to relative ages of Shem and his brother Japheth, but with sufficient ambiguity in each...

 and grandson of Noah

Noah

Noah was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the tenth and last of the antediluvian Patriarchs. The biblical story of Noah is contained in chapters 6–9 of the book of Genesis, where he saves his family and representatives of all animals from the flood by constructing an ark...

, according to Genesis 10 (the "Table of Nations"). Lud should not be confused with the Ludim

Ludim

Ludim is the Hebrew term for Lydia used in Jeremiah and Ezekiel. In the Biblical Table of Nations Genesis 10:13 they were descended from Mizraim...

, said there to be descended from Mizraim

Mizraim

Mizraim is the Hebrew name for the land of Egypt, with the dual suffix -āyim, perhaps referring to the "two Egypts": Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt....

.

The descendants of Lud are usually, following Josephus

Josephus

Titus Flavius Josephus , also called Joseph ben Matityahu , was a 1st-century Romano-Jewish historian and hagiographer of priestly and royal ancestry who recorded Jewish history, with special emphasis on the 1st century AD and the First Jewish–Roman War, which resulted in the Destruction of...

, connected with various Anatolia

Anatolia

Anatolia is a geographic and historical term denoting the westernmost protrusion of Asia, comprising the majority of the Republic of Turkey...

n peoples, particularly Lydia

Lydia

Lydia was an Iron Age kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the modern Turkish provinces of Manisa and inland İzmir. Its population spoke an Anatolian language known as Lydian....

 (Assyrian Luddu) and their predecessors, the Luwians; cf. geographic references to the 'Mountains of Lud' (Anatolia) in Jubilees

Jubilees

The Book of Jubilees , sometimes called Lesser Genesis , is an ancient Jewish religious work, considered one of the pseudepigrapha by Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox Churches...

, and Herodotus

Herodotus

Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...

' assertion (Histories i. 7) that the Lydians were first so named after their king, Lydus

Lydus

Lydus was the third king of Maeonia in succession to his father Atys. He was the third and last king of the Atyad dynasty. According to Herodotus, Maeonia became known as Lydia after Lydus's reign.-See also:*List of Kings of Lydia...

 (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

Halizones

The Halizones are an obscure people that appear in Homer's Iliad as allies of Troy during the Trojan War. Their leaders were Odius and Epistrophus, said by Apollodorus to be sons of a man named Mecisteus...

" said by Strabo

Strabo

Strabo, also written Strabon was a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher.-Life:Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus , a city which he said was situated the approximate equivalent of 75 km from the Black Sea...

 to have once lived along the Halys

Halys River

The Kızılırmak , also known as the Halys River , is the longest river in Turkey. It is a source of hydroelectric power and is not used for navigation.- Geography :...

) while it derives the Lydians from the aforementioned Ludim, son of Mizraim.

It has been conjectured by others that Lud's descendants spread to areas of the far-east beyond Elam

Elam

Elam was an ancient civilization located in what is now southwest Iran. Elam was centered in the far west and the southwest of modern-day Iran, stretching from the lowlands of Khuzestan and Ilam Province, as well as a small part of southern Iraq...

, or that they were identified with the Lullubi

Lullubi

The Lullubi or Lulubi were a group of tribes during the 3rd millennium BC, from a region known as Lulubum, now the Sharazor plain of in the Zagros Mountains of modern Iran...

. Some scholars have also associated the Biblical Lud with the Lubdu of Assyrian sources, who inhabited certain parts of western Media

Medes

The MedesThe Medes...

 and Atropatene

Atropatene

Atropatene was an ancient kingdom established and ruled under local ethnic Iranian dynasts first with "Darius" of Persia and later "Alexander" of Macedonia, starting in the 4th century BC and includes the territory of modern-day Iranian Azarbaijan and Iranian Kurdistan. Its capital was Gazaca...

.

The Muslim historian Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari

Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari

Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari was a prominent and influential Sunni scholar and exegete of the Qur'an from Persia...

 (c. 915) recounts a tradition that the wife of Lud was named Shakbah, daughter of Japheth

Japheth

Japheth is one of the sons of Noah in the Abrahamic tradition...

, 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 Amalek

Amalek

The Amalekites are a people mentioned a number of times in the Hebrew Bible. They are considered to be descended from an ancestor Amalek....

ites and Canaanites, and all the peoples of the East, Oman, Hejaz, Syria, Egypt, and Bahrein.