Rus' Khaganate
Encyclopedia
Rus' khaganate is a historiographical term (translating ) for the formative phase of the Rus state in the 9th century AD.
The Rus state would come to flourish as the "Kievan Rus'
" during the 10th to 11th centuries, and then fragmented into a number of successor polities during the 12th to 15th centuries.
Very little is known about the early Rus state of the 9th century. It originated in what is now Northwestern Russia, at the time a place of operations of the Varangians
, the term for Norsemen
venturing into Eastern Europe and south to Byzantium.
Contemporary sources mention the people of the area under the name Rus' (Greek
, Arabic ).
The term "khaganate" is motivated by evidence that the population centers of the region, which may have included the proto-towns of Holmgard (Novgorod), Aldeigja (Ladoga), Lyubsha
, Alaborg
, Sarskoye Gorodishche
, and Timerevo
, were under the rule of a monarch
or monarchs using the Old Turkic title khagan
.
Historiographic debate on this early phase of the Rus state often surrounds the probable ethnic composition of its population, which likely consisted of a heterogeneous amalgamation of Baltic
, Slavic
, Finnic
, Turkic and North Germanic peoples.
The early leaders of Rus' were most likely a Scandinavian elite
that ruled a majority of Slavic subjects.
Coinciding with the general decline of the Viking Age
, the influx of Norsemen
to Rus' stopped, and Varangians
were eventually assimilated by East Slavs by the late 11th century. However, their name became that of the land of medieval Rus, the modern state of Russia
and the ethnonym
of its population
. The descendants of the Rus' were the ruling Rurik dynasty
of the Rus state
(after 862), the successor principalities of Galicia-Volhynia (after 1199), Chernigov, Vladimir-Suzdal
, Grand Duchy of Moscow
, and the founders of the Tsardom of Russia
, which eventually developed into the modern nations of Russia
, Belarus
and Ukraine
.
sources from the 11th and 12th centuries.
The earliest European reference related to the khaganate comes from the Frankish
Annals of St. Bertin. The Annals refer to a group of Norsemen
, who called themselves Rhos (qi se, id est gentem suam, Rhos vocari dicebant) and visited Constantinople
around the year 838. Fearful of returning home via the steppe
s, which would leave them vulnerable to attacks by the Magyars, these Rhos travelled through Germany
accompanied by Greek ambassador
s from the Byzantine
emperor Theophilus
. When questioned by the Frankish Emperor Louis the Pious
at Ingelheim, they informed him that their leader was known as chacanus (the Latin
for "Khagan"). and that they lived far to the north, and that they were Swedes (comperit eos gentis esse sueonum).
Thirty years later, in spring 871, the eastern and western
emperors, Basil I
and Louis II
, quarreled over control of Bari
, which had been conquered by their joint forces from the Arab
s. The Byzantine emperor sent an angry letter to his western counterpart, reprimanding him for usurping the title of emperor. He argued that the Frankish rulers are simple reges, while the imperial title properly applied only to the overlord of the Romans, that is, to Basil himself. He also pointed out that each nation has its own title for the supreme ruler: for instance, the title of chaganus is used by the overlords of the Avars
, Khazars
(Gazari), and "Northmen" (Nortmanno). To that, Louis replied that he was aware only about the Avar khagans, and had never heard about the khagans of the Khazars and Normanns. The content of Basil's letter, now lost, is reconstructed from Louis's reply, quoted in full in the Salerno Chronicle
. The correspondence between Louis and Basil indicates that at least one group of Scandinavians had a ruler who called himself "khagan".
Ahmad ibn Rustah
, a 10th century Muslim
geographer from Persia, wrote that the Rus' khagan ("khaqan rus") lived on an island in a lake. Constantine Zuckerman
comments that Ibn Rustah, using the text of an anonymous account from the 870s, attempted to accurately convey the titles of all rulers described by its author, which makes his evidence all the more precious. The Muslim geographer mentions only two khagans in his treatise — those of Khazaria and Rus. A further near-contemporary reference to the Rus' comes from al-Yaqubi, who wrote in 889 or 890 that the Caucasus
mountaineers, when besieged by the Arabs in 854, asked for help from the overlords (sahib) of al-Rum (Byzantium), Khazaria, and al-Saqaliba
(Slavs). Hudud al-Alam, an anonymous Arabic geography text written in the late 10th century, refers to the Rus' king as "rus-khaqan". As the unknown author of Hudud al-Alam relied on numerous 9th-century sources, including ibn Khordadbeh, it is possible that his reference to the Rus' Khagan was copied from earlier, pre-Rurikid texts, rather than reflecting contemporary political reality. Finally, the 11th century Persian geographer Abu Said Gardizi
mentioned "khaqan-i rus" in his work Zayn al-Akbar. Like other Muslim geographers, Gardizi relied on traditions stemming from the 9th century.
There are good grounds for believing that the title "khagan" was still remembered in Kievan Rus'
during the Christian period. Metropolitan
Hilarion of Kiev
applied the title "khagan" to the Grand Princes of Kievan Rus – Vladimir I of Kiev
and Yaroslav I the Wise
in the earliest surviving example of Kievan Rus literature, Slovo o Zakone i Blagodati ("Sermon on Law and Grace"), written around 1050. Hilarion referred to Vladimir as "the great khagan of our land" (velikago kagana nashea zemlja, Vladimera) and Yaroslav as "our devout khagan." A graffito in the north gallery of Saint Sophia Cathedral reads "O Lord, save our khagan", apparently in reference to Sviatoslav II (1073–1076). As late as the end of the 12th century, The Tale of Igor's Campaign
refers in passing to a "kogan Oleg", traditionally identified with Oleg of Tmutarakan.
s (Greek for "ruler"). Later Kievan authors, mentioned above, appear to have revived the term khagan
as Slavicized knyaz
, a laudatory epithet of a ruler rather than as a valid political term, knyaz being the Slavic term for the ruler of the Rus, which was by then current. A connection between original kaghan and the Germanic
kuning (Swedish konung, English king, German König), proto-Germanic kuningaz, is imputed.
The dating of the Khaganate's existence has been the subject of debates among scholars and remains unclear. Omeljan Pritsak
dates the foundation of the Khaganate to around 830–840. In the 1920s, Russian historian Pavel Smirnov suggested that the Rus' Khaganate emerged only briefly at around 830 and was soon destroyed by the migration of the Magyar-Kabar
tribal confederation towards the Carpathian Mountains
. Whatever the accuracy of such estimates may be, there are no primary sources which mention the Rus' or its khagans prior to the 830s.
Equally contentious has been discussion about the date of the khaganate's disintegration. The title of Khagan is not mentioned in the Rus'-Byzantine treaties
(907, 911, 944), or in De Ceremoniis
, a record of court ceremonials meticulously documenting the titles of foreign rulers, when it deals with Olga
's reception at the court of Constantine VII
in 945. Moreover, ibn Fadlan, in his detailed account of the Rus (922), designated their supreme ruler as malik ("king"). From this fact, Peter Golden
concluded via an argumentum ex silentio that the khaganate collapsed at some point between 871 and 922. Zuckerman, meanwhile, argues that the absence of the title "khagan" from the first Russo-Byzantine Treaty
proves that the khaganate had vanished by 911.
The location of the khaganate has been actively disputed since the early 20th century. According to one fringe theory, the Rus' khagan resided somewhere in Scandinavia or even as far west as Walcheren
. In stark contrast, George Vernadsky
believed that the khagan had his headquarters in the eastern part of the Crimea
or in the Taman Peninsula
and that the island described by Ibn Rustah was most likely situated in the estuary of the Kuban River
. Neither of these theories has won many adherents, as archaeologists have uncovered no traces of a Slavic-Norse settlement in the Crimea region in the 9th century and there are no Norse sources documenting "khagans" in Scandinavia.
Soviet historiography
, as represented by Boris Rybakov
and Lev Gumilev
, advanced Kiev as the residence of the khagan, assuming that Askold and Dir
were the only khagans recorded by name. Mikhail Artamonov
became an adherent of the theory that Kiev was the seat of the Rus' Khaganate, and continued to hold this view into the 1990s.
Western
historians, however, have generally argued against this theory. There is no evidence of an urban
settlement on the site of Kiev prior to the 6th century. Troublesome is the absence of hoards of coins which would prove that the Dnieper trade route — the backbone of later Kievan Rus'
— was operating in the 9th century. Based on his examination of the archaeological evidence, Zuckerman concludes that Kiev originated as a fortress on the Khazar border with Levedia, and that only after the Magyars departed for the west in 889 did the middle Dnieper region start to progress economically.
A number of historians, the first of whom was Vasily Bartold
, have advocated a more northerly position for the khaganate. They have tended to emphasize ibn Rustah's report as the only historical clue to the location of the khagan's residence. Recent archaeological research, conducted by Dmitry Machinsky
among others, has raised the possibility that this polity was based on a group of settlements along the Volkhov River
, including Ladoga, Lyubsha
, Duboviki, Alaborg
, and Holmgard. "Most of these were initially small sites, probably not much more than stations for re-fitting and resupply, providing an opportunity for exchange and the redistribution of items passing along the river and caravan routes". If the anonymous traveller quoted by ibn Rustah is to be believed, the Rus of the Khaganate period made extensive use of the Volga route
to trade with the Middle East
, possibly through Bulgar
and Khazar
intermediaries. His description of the Rus' island suggests that their center was at Holmgard, an early medieval precursor of Novgorod whose name translates from Old Norse
as "the river-island castle". The First Novgorod Chronicle describes unrest in Novgorod before Rurik
was invited to come rule the region in the 860s. This account prompted Johannes Brøndsted
to assert that Holmgard-Novgorod was the khaganate's capital for several decades prior to the appearance of Rurik, including the time of the Byzantine embassy in 839. Machinsky accepts this theory but notes that, before the rise of Holmgard-Novgorod, the chief political and economic centre of the area was located at Aldeigja-Ladoga.
The origins of the Rus' Khaganate are unclear. The first Norse
settlers of the region arrived in the lower basin of the Volkhov River
in the mid-8th century. The country comprising the present-day Saint-Petersburg
, Novgorod
, Tver
, Yaroslavl
, and Smolensk regions
became known in Old Norse
sources as "Gardarike", the land of forts. Around the 860 Rus', a group of Vikings perhaps from Roden
, Sweden
, began to rule the area under their leader Rurik
. Gradually, Norse
warlords, known to the Turkic
-speaking steppe peoples as "köl-beki" or "sea-kings", came to dominate some of the region's Finno-Ugric and Slavic peoples, particularly along the Volga trade route
linking the Baltic Sea
with the Caspian Sea
and Serkland
.
Omeljan Pritsak
speculated that a Khazar khagan named Khan-Tuvan
Dyggvi, exiled after losing a civil war, settled with his followers in the Norse-Slavic settlement of Rostov, married into the local Scandinavian nobility, and fathered the dynasty of the Rus' khagans. Zuckerman dismisses Pritsak's theory as untenable speculation, and no record of any Khazar khagan fleeing to find refuge among the Rus' exists in contemporaneous sources. Nevertheless, the possible Khazar connection to early Rus' monarchs is supported by the use of a stylized trident
tamga, or seal, by later Rus' rulers such as Sviatoslav I of Kiev
; similar tamgas are found in ruins that are definitively Khazar in origin. The genealogical connection between the 9th-century Khagans of Rus' and the later Rurikid rulers, if any, is unknown at this time.
Most historians agree that the title "khagan" was borrowed by the Rus from the Khazars, but there is considerable dispute over the circumstances of this borrowing. Peter Benjamin Golden
presumes that the Rus' khaganate was a puppet state set up by the Khazars in the basin of the Oka River
to fend off recurring attacks of the Magyars. However, no source records that the Rus' of the 9th century were subjects to the Khazars. For foreign observers (such as Ibn Rustah), there was no material difference between the titles of the Khazar and Rus' rulers. Anatoly Novoseltsev
hypothesizes that the adoption of the title "khagan" was designed to advertise the Rus' claims to the equality with the Khazars. This theory is echoed by Thomas Noonan
, who asserts that the Rus' leaders were loosely unified under the rule of one of the "sea-kings" in the early 9th century, and that this "High King
" adopted the title "khagan" to give him legitimacy in the eyes of his subjects and neighboring states. According to this theory, the title was a sign that the bearers ruled under a divine mandate.
was the Volga trade route. Early 9th-century coin hordes unearthed in Scandinavia frequently contain large quantities of dirhem coins minted in the Abbasid Caliphate and other Muslim
polities, sometimes split into smaller pieces and inscribed with Runic signs. All in all, more than 228,000 Arabic coins have been recovered from over 1,000 hoards in European Russia and the Baltic region. Almost 90% of these arrived in Scandinavia by way of the Volga trade route. Unsurprisingly, the dirhem was the basis for the monetary system of Kievan Rus'.
Trade
was the major source of income for the Rus, who according to ibn Rustah did not engage in agriculture
: "They have no cultivated fields but depend for their supplies on what they can obtain from as-Saqaliba's [Slavs] land. They have no estates, villages, or fields; their only business is to trade in sable
, squirrel
, and other fur
s, and the money they take in these transactions they stow in their belts." Rus merchants travelled down the Volga, paying duties
to the Bulghars and Khazars, to the ports of Gorgan
and Abaskun
on the southern shore of the Caspian Sea
; on occasion they travelled as far as Baghdad
.
Writing in 922, Ibn Fadlan described the Rus' ruler (like the Khazar khagan), as having little real authority
. Instead, political and military power
was wielded by a deputy, who "commands the troops, attacks [the Rus' ruler's] enemies, and acts as his representative before his subjects." The supreme king of the Rus', on the other hand, "has no duties other than to make love to his slave girls, drink, and give himself up to pleasure." He was guarded by 400 men, "willing to die for him... These 400 sit below the royal throne: a large and bejewelled platform which also accommodates the forty slave-girls of his harem." Ibn Fadlan wrote that the Rus' ruler would almost never leave his throne and even "when he wants to go riding his horse is led up to him, and on his return the horse is brought right up to the throne." Ibn Rustah, on the other hand, reported that the khagan was the ultimate authority in settling disputes between his subjects. His decisions, however, were not binding, so that if one of the disputants disagreed with the khagan's ruling, the dispute was then resolved in a battle
, which took place "in the presence of the contestants' kin who stand with swords drawn; and the man who gets the better of the duel also gets the decision about the matter in dispute."
The dichotomy
between the relative powerlessness of the nominal ruler and the great authority of his subordinate reflects the structure of Khazar government
, with secular authority in the hands of a Khagan Bek
only theoretically subordinate to the khagan, and it agrees with the traditional Germanic
system, where there could be a division between the king and the military commander. Moreover, some scholars have noted similarities between this dual kingship and the postulated relationship between Igor
and Oleg of Kiev in the early 10th century (compare Askold and Dir
in the 9th century). The institution of separate sacral ruler and military commander may be observed in the reconstructed relationship between Oleg and Igor, but whether this is part of the Rus' Khaganate's legacy to its successor-state is unknown. The early Kievan Rus' principalities exhibited certain distinctive characteristics in their government, military organization, and jurisprudence
that were comparable to those in force among the Khazars and other steppe peoples; some historians believe that these elements came to Kievan Rus' from the Khazars by way of the earlier Rus' Khagans.
Judging from excavations conducted since the 1820s at Ladoga and related sites in Northern Russia, the Rus' customs reflected primarily Scandinavian influences. This is consistent with the writings of ibn Rustah and ibn Fadlan. The former gives a brief description of the burial
of a Rus' nobleman, who was put into a "grave like a large house", together with food, amulets, coins, other staples, as well as his favorite wife. "Then the grave door is sealed and she dies there." Ibn Fadlan provides further evidence of the Rus' building a memorial mound, or cenotaph
, and giving it a runic inscription on a piece of wood. The Arab traveler also left a detailed description of the Rus' custom of cremating noblemen in a ship
, which involved both animal and human sacrifice
. When a poor man died, he was put into a little ship and burned in it; the funeral of a nobleman was much more elaborate. His estate was divided into three parts: one for his family, one to pay for his funerary costume, and one to make beer
, which was consumed on the day of his cremation. One of the deceased man's slave girls volunteered to be put to death so as to join her master in paradise
. On the day of cremation, the dead man was disinterred from his grave, dressed in fine clothings, and put onto a specially constructed ship. The volunteer slave girl was killed (after the deceased man's kinsmen and friends had sex with her) and placed on board together with her master before the dead man's nearest kinsman set the vessel on fire. The funeral ended with the construction of a round mound.
Early medieval historians were impressed with the spirit of independence and enterprise inculcated among the Rus from birth. Ibn Rustah writes: "When a son is born the father will go up to the newborn baby, sword in hand; throwing it down, he says; 'I shall not leave you any property: you have only what you can provide with this weapon!'" Al-Marwazi
repeated this description of the instructions given to a son and added that it was the daughter who received her father's inheritance. The same sense of rugged individualism was reflected in their treatment of the ill. According to ibn Fadlan, "if one of the Rus falls sick they put him in a tent by himself and leave bread and water for him. They do not visit him, however, or speak to him, especially if he is a serf. Should he recover he rejoins the others; if he dies they burn him. If he happens to be a serf, however, they leave him for the dogs and vultures to devor." Sources describe the Rus as liberal in sexual matters. Ibn Fadlan wrote that the king of the Rus did not shy away from having public intercourse with the slave girls in his harem. When Rus traders arrived to the Volga shores, they would make love with the slave girls they brought for sale in the presence of their comrades; sometimes this would develop into a communal orgy
.
Both ibn Fadlan and ibn Rustah portray the Rus as devout pagans. Ibn Rustah and, following him, Garizi reported that the Rus shamans or "medicine men" (attiba) wielded great power over the common folk. According to ibn Rustah, these shamans acted "as if they own everything". They determined what women, men, or animals had to be sacrificed, and there was no appealing their decisions. A shaman would take the selected offering, whether human or animal, and hang it from a pole until it died. Ibn Fadlan left a description of the Rus merchants praying for success in trading before "a large wooden stake with a face like that of a human being, surrounded by smaller figures, and behind them tall poles in the ground." If trade did not pick up, more offerings were made; if the business remained slow, the trader would make offerings to the minor idols, too. When the trading was especially good, Rus merchants would likewise make additional offerings of cattle and sheep, some of which were distributed as alms.
On the other hand, Byzantine sources report that the Rus adopted Christianity
by the end of the 860s. In his encyclical
dated to 867, Patriarch Photius wrote about the enthusiastic conversion of the Rus, mentioning that he had sent to their lands a bishop
. Constantine VII
attributes the conversion to his grandfather Basil the Macedonian and to Patriarch Ignatius
rather than to their predecessors Michael III
and Photius. Constantine narrates how the Byzantines galvanized the Rus' into conversion by their persuasive words and rich presents, including gold, silver, and precious fabrics. He also repeats a traditional story that the pagans were particularly impressed by a miracle: a gospel
book thrown by the archbishop
into an oven was not damaged by fire. Ibn Khordadbeh
wrote in the late 9th century that the Rus who arrived to Muslim lands "claimed to be Christians". Modern historians are divided in their views on the historicity and extent of the Christianization of the Rus' Khaganate
.
argued that the embassy was meant to establish amity with Byzantium and to open up the way into Sweden through Western Europe. Constantine Zuckerman
postulates that the Rus' ambassadors were to negotiate a peace treaty after their Paphlagonian expedition of the 830s. George Vernadsky
connects their mission with the construction of the fortress of Sarkel
in 833. That embassy was not recorded in Byzantine sources, and in 860 Patriarch Photius referred to the Rus as "unknown people".
According to Vernadsky, the Khazars and Greeks erected Sarkel near the portage between the Don River
and Volga specifically to defend this strategic point from the Rus. Other scholars, however, believe that the fortress of Sarkel was constructed to defend against or monitor the activities of the Magyars and other steppe tribes, and not the Rus'. The Ukrainian historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky
declared that the extant sources were unclear on this point. John Skylitzes
claimed that Sarkel was a "staunch bulwark against the Pechenegs" but did not identify that as its original purpose.
In 860, the Rus besieged Constantinople
, with a fleet
of 200 ships. The Byzantine army and navy were far from the capital, leaving it vulnerable to the attack. The timing of the expedition suggests that the Rus were well-aware of the internal situation in the empire thanks to the commercial and other relations that continued after the embassy of 838. The Rus warriors devastated the suburbs of Constantinople before suddenly departing on August 4.
The early Rus' traded extensively with Khazaria. Ibn Khordadbeh
wrote in the Book of Roads and Kingdoms
that "they go via the Slavic River (the Don) to Khamlidj, a city of the Khazars, where the latter's ruler collects the tithe from them." Some modern commentators infer from Arab accounts that the Rus' Khaganate's political culture was profoundly influenced by its contacts with Khazaria. By the beginning of the Rurikid period in the first decades of the 10th century, however, relations between the Rus' and the Khazars soured.
, Izborsk
and other local centres were burnt to the ground in the 860s or 870s. Some of these settlements were permanently abandoned after the conflagration. The Primary Chronicle
describes the uprising of the pagan Slavs and Chudes (Finnic peoples) against the Varangians, who had to withdraw overseas in 862. The First Novgorod Chronicle, whose account of the events Shakhmatov considered more trustworthy, does not pinpoint the pre-Rurikid uprising to any specific date. The 16th-century Nikon Chronicle
attributes the banishment of the Varangians from the country to Vadim the Bold
. The Ukrainian historian Mykhailo Braichevsky labelled Vadim's rebellion "a pagan reaction" against the Christianization of the Rus'. A period of unrest and anarchy followed, dated by Zuckerman to ca. 875–900. The absence of coin hoards from the 880s and 890s suggests that the Volga trade route ceased functioning, precipitating "the first silver crisis in Europe".
After this economic depression
and period of political upheaval, the region experienced a resurgence beginning in around 900. Zuckerman associates this recovery with the arrival of Rurik
and his men, who turned their attention from the Volga to the Dnieper, for reasons as yet uncertain. The Scandinavian settlements in Ladoga and Novgorod revived and started to grow rapidly. During the first decade of the 10th century, a large trade outpost was formed on the Dnieper in Gnezdovo
, near modern Smolensk
. Another Dnieper settlement, Kiev, developed into an important urban centre roughly in the same period.
The fate of the Rus' Khaganate, and the process by which it either evolved into or was consumed by the Rurikid Kievan Rus', is unclear. The Kievans seem to have had a very vague notion about the existence of the khaganate. Slavonic sources do not mention either the Christianization of the Rus in the 860s nor the Paphlagonian expedition of the 830s. The account of the Rus' expedition against Constantinople in the 860s was borrowed by the authors of the Primary Chronicle from Greek sources, suggesting the absence of a vernacular
written tradition.
The Rus state would come to flourish as the "Kievan Rus'
Kievan Rus'
Kievan Rus was a medieval polity in Eastern Europe, from the late 9th to the mid 13th century, when it disintegrated under the pressure of the Mongol invasion of 1237–1240....
" during the 10th to 11th centuries, and then fragmented into a number of successor polities during the 12th to 15th centuries.
Very little is known about the early Rus state of the 9th century. It originated in what is now Northwestern Russia, at the time a place of operations of the Varangians
Varangians
The Varangians or Varyags , sometimes referred to as Variagians, were people from the Baltic region, most often associated with Vikings, who from the 9th to 11th centuries ventured eastwards and southwards along the rivers of Eastern Europe, through what is now Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.According...
, the term for Norsemen
Norsemen
Norsemen is used to refer to the group of people as a whole who spoke what is now called the Old Norse language belonging to the North Germanic branch of Indo-European languages, especially Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese, Swedish and Danish in their earlier forms.The meaning of Norseman was "people...
venturing into Eastern Europe and south to Byzantium.
Contemporary sources mention the people of the area under the name Rus' (Greek
Medieval Greek
Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek, is the stage of the Greek language between the beginning of the Middle Ages around 600 and the Ottoman conquest of the city of Constantinople in 1453. The latter date marked the end of the Middle Ages in Southeast Europe...
, Arabic ).
The term "khaganate" is motivated by evidence that the population centers of the region, which may have included the proto-towns of Holmgard (Novgorod), Aldeigja (Ladoga), Lyubsha
Lyubsha
Lyubsha is an archaeological site situated on the right bank of the Volkhov, about 1,500 metres downstream from Staraya Ladoga. As was established by the 1993 excavations, Lyubsha is the site of the earliest Varangian fort in Russia, established in the first half of the 8th century, thus predating...
, Alaborg
Alaborg
Álaborg or Áluborg is the name of a Varangian fort mentioned in the Norse sagas about Halfdan Eysteinsson and Hrolf Ganger. The first saga indicates that it was possible to sail from Aldeigjuborg to Alaborg northward by sea, but a more rapid and practicable way was by land eastward...
, Sarskoye Gorodishche
Sarskoye Gorodishche
Sarskoye Gorodishche or Sarsky fort was a medieval fortified settlement in the Yaroslavl Oblast of Russia. It was situated on the bank of the Sara River, a short distance from Lake Nero, to the south of modern Rostov, of which it seems to have been the early medieval predecessor.- Exploration :The...
, and Timerevo
Timerevo
Timerevo is an archaeological site near the village of Bolshoe Timeryovo, seven kilometers southwest of Yaroslavl, Russia, which yielded the largest deposits of early medieval Arabic coins in Northern Europe.- Description and history :...
, were under the rule of a monarch
Monarch
A monarch is the person who heads a monarchy. This is a form of government in which a state or polity is ruled or controlled by an individual who typically inherits the throne by birth and occasionally rules for life or until abdication...
or monarchs using the Old Turkic title khagan
Khagan
Khagan or qagan , alternatively spelled kagan, khaghan, qaghan, or chagan, is a title of imperial rank in the Mongolian and Turkic languages equal to the status of emperor and someone who rules a khaganate...
.
Historiographic debate on this early phase of the Rus state often surrounds the probable ethnic composition of its population, which likely consisted of a heterogeneous amalgamation of Baltic
Balts
The Balts or Baltic peoples , defined as speakers of one of the Baltic languages, a branch of the Indo-European language family, are descended from a group of Indo-European tribes who settled the area between the Jutland peninsula in the west and Moscow, Oka and Volga rivers basins in the east...
, Slavic
Slavic peoples
The Slavic people are an Indo-European panethnicity living in Eastern Europe, Southeast Europe, North Asia and Central Asia. The term Slavic represents a broad ethno-linguistic group of people, who speak languages belonging to the Slavic language family and share, to varying degrees, certain...
, Finnic
Finnic peoples
The Finnic or Fennic peoples were historic ethnic groups who spoke various languages traditionally classified as Finno-Permic...
, Turkic and North Germanic peoples.
The early leaders of Rus' were most likely a Scandinavian elite
Varangians
The Varangians or Varyags , sometimes referred to as Variagians, were people from the Baltic region, most often associated with Vikings, who from the 9th to 11th centuries ventured eastwards and southwards along the rivers of Eastern Europe, through what is now Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.According...
that ruled a majority of Slavic subjects.
Coinciding with the general decline of the Viking Age
Viking Age
Viking Age is the term for the period in European history, especially Northern European and Scandinavian history, spanning the late 8th to 11th centuries. Scandinavian Vikings explored Europe by its oceans and rivers through trade and warfare. The Vikings also reached Iceland, Greenland,...
, the influx of Norsemen
Norsemen
Norsemen is used to refer to the group of people as a whole who spoke what is now called the Old Norse language belonging to the North Germanic branch of Indo-European languages, especially Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese, Swedish and Danish in their earlier forms.The meaning of Norseman was "people...
to Rus' stopped, and Varangians
Varangians
The Varangians or Varyags , sometimes referred to as Variagians, were people from the Baltic region, most often associated with Vikings, who from the 9th to 11th centuries ventured eastwards and southwards along the rivers of Eastern Europe, through what is now Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.According...
were eventually assimilated by East Slavs by the late 11th century. However, their name became that of the land of medieval Rus, the modern state of Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
and the ethnonym
Ethnonym
An ethnonym is the name applied to a given ethnic group. Ethnonyms can be divided into two categories: exonyms and autonyms or endonyms .As an example, the ethnonym for...
of its population
Russians
The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....
. The descendants of the Rus' were the ruling Rurik dynasty
Rurik Dynasty
The Rurik dynasty or Rurikids was a dynasty founded by the Varangian prince Rurik, who established himself in Novgorod around the year 862 AD...
of the Rus state
Kievan Rus'
Kievan Rus was a medieval polity in Eastern Europe, from the late 9th to the mid 13th century, when it disintegrated under the pressure of the Mongol invasion of 1237–1240....
(after 862), the successor principalities of Galicia-Volhynia (after 1199), Chernigov, Vladimir-Suzdal
Vladimir-Suzdal
The Vladimir-Suzdal Principality or Vladimir-Suzdal Rus’ was one of the major principalities which succeeded Kievan Rus' in the late 12th century and lasted until the late 14th century. For a long time the Principality was a vassal of the Mongolian Golden Horde...
, Grand Duchy of Moscow
Grand Duchy of Moscow
The Grand Duchy of Moscow or Grand Principality of Moscow, also known in English simply as Muscovy , was a late medieval Rus' principality centered on Moscow, and the predecessor state of the early modern Tsardom of Russia....
, and the founders of the Tsardom of Russia
Tsardom of Russia
The Tsardom of Russia was the name of the centralized Russian state from Ivan IV's assumption of the title of Tsar in 1547 till Peter the Great's foundation of the Russian Empire in 1721.From 1550 to 1700, Russia grew 35,000 km2 a year...
, which eventually developed into the modern nations of Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, Belarus
Belarus
Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...
and Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
.
Documentary evidence
The ruler of the Rus' is mentioned by the title of "khagan" in several historical sources (hence the suggested name of the polity). Most of them are foreign texts dating from the 9th century. Three others are East SlavicEast Slavs
The East Slavs are Slavic peoples speaking East Slavic languages. Formerly the main population of the medieval state of Kievan Rus, by the seventeenth century they evolved into the Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian peoples.-Sources:...
sources from the 11th and 12th centuries.
The earliest European reference related to the khaganate comes from the Frankish
Franks
The Franks were a confederation of Germanic tribes first attested in the third century AD as living north and east of the Lower Rhine River. From the third to fifth centuries some Franks raided Roman territory while other Franks joined the Roman troops in Gaul. Only the Salian Franks formed a...
Annals of St. Bertin. The Annals refer to a group of Norsemen
Norsemen
Norsemen is used to refer to the group of people as a whole who spoke what is now called the Old Norse language belonging to the North Germanic branch of Indo-European languages, especially Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese, Swedish and Danish in their earlier forms.The meaning of Norseman was "people...
, who called themselves Rhos (qi se, id est gentem suam, Rhos vocari dicebant) and visited Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
around the year 838. Fearful of returning home via the steppe
Steppe
In physical geography, steppe is an ecoregion, in the montane grasslands and shrublands and temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biomes, characterized by grassland plains without trees apart from those near rivers and lakes...
s, which would leave them vulnerable to attacks by the Magyars, these Rhos travelled through Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
accompanied by Greek ambassador
Ambassador
An ambassador is the highest ranking diplomat who represents a nation and is usually accredited to a foreign sovereign or government, or to an international organization....
s from the Byzantine
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...
emperor Theophilus
Theophilos (emperor)
Theophilos was the Byzantine emperor from 829 until his death in 842. He was the second emperor of the Phrygian dynasty, and the last emperor supporting iconoclasm...
. When questioned by the Frankish Emperor Louis the Pious
Louis the Pious
Louis the Pious , also called the Fair, and the Debonaire, was the King of Aquitaine from 781. He was also King of the Franks and co-Emperor with his father, Charlemagne, from 813...
at Ingelheim, they informed him that their leader was known as chacanus (the Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
for "Khagan"). and that they lived far to the north, and that they were Swedes (comperit eos gentis esse sueonum).
Thirty years later, in spring 871, the eastern and western
Holy Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire was a realm that existed from 962 to 1806 in Central Europe.It was ruled by the Holy Roman Emperor. Its character changed during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, when the power of the emperor gradually weakened in favour of the princes...
emperors, Basil I
Basil I
Basil I, called the Macedonian was a Byzantine emperor of probable Armenian descent who reigned from 867 to 886. Born a simple peasant in the Byzantine theme of Macedonia, he rose in the imperial court, and usurped the imperial throne from Emperor Michael III...
and Louis II
Louis II, Holy Roman Emperor
Louis II the Younger was the King of Italy and Roman Emperor from 844, co-ruling with his father Lothair I until 855, after which he ruled alone. Louis's usual title was imperator augustus , but he used imperator Romanorum after his conquest of Bari in 871, which led to poor relations with Byzantium...
, quarreled over control of Bari
Bari
Bari is the capital city of the province of Bari and of the Apulia region, on the Adriatic Sea, in Italy. It is the second most important economic centre of mainland Southern Italy after Naples, and is well known as a port and university city, as well as the city of Saint Nicholas...
, which had been conquered by their joint forces from the Arab
Arab
Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...
s. The Byzantine emperor sent an angry letter to his western counterpart, reprimanding him for usurping the title of emperor. He argued that the Frankish rulers are simple reges, while the imperial title properly applied only to the overlord of the Romans, that is, to Basil himself. He also pointed out that each nation has its own title for the supreme ruler: for instance, the title of chaganus is used by the overlords of the Avars
Eurasian Avars
The Eurasian Avars or Ancient Avars were a highly organized nomadic confederacy of mixed origins. They were ruled by a khagan, who was surrounded by a tight-knit entourage of nomad warriors, an organization characteristic of Turko-Mongol groups...
, Khazars
Khazars
The Khazars were semi-nomadic Turkic people who established one of the largest polities of medieval Eurasia, with the capital of Atil and territory comprising much of modern-day European Russia, western Kazakhstan, eastern Ukraine, Azerbaijan, large portions of the northern Caucasus , parts of...
(Gazari), and "Northmen" (Nortmanno). To that, Louis replied that he was aware only about the Avar khagans, and had never heard about the khagans of the Khazars and Normanns. The content of Basil's letter, now lost, is reconstructed from Louis's reply, quoted in full in the Salerno Chronicle
Chronicon Salernitanum
The Chronicon Salernitanum, or "Salerno Chronicle", is an anonymous 10th century chronicle of the history of the Principality of Salerno. It was probably written around 990 and has been attributed to Radoald of Salerno, Abbot of San Benedetto, by Huguette Taviani-Carozzi...
. The correspondence between Louis and Basil indicates that at least one group of Scandinavians had a ruler who called himself "khagan".
Ahmad ibn Rustah
Ahmad ibn Rustah
Ibn Rustah was a 10th century Persian explorer and geographer born in Rosta district, Isfahan, Persia....
, a 10th century Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
geographer from Persia, wrote that the Rus' khagan ("khaqan rus") lived on an island in a lake. Constantine Zuckerman
Constantine Zuckerman
Constantine Zuckerman is a French-Jewish historian and Professor of Byzantine studies at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris.-Biography:...
comments that Ibn Rustah, using the text of an anonymous account from the 870s, attempted to accurately convey the titles of all rulers described by its author, which makes his evidence all the more precious. The Muslim geographer mentions only two khagans in his treatise — those of Khazaria and Rus. A further near-contemporary reference to the Rus' comes from al-Yaqubi, who wrote in 889 or 890 that the Caucasus
Caucasus
The Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...
mountaineers, when besieged by the Arabs in 854, asked for help from the overlords (sahib) of al-Rum (Byzantium), Khazaria, and al-Saqaliba
Saqaliba
Saqaliba refers to the Slavs, particularly Slavic slaves and mercenaries in the medieval Arab world, in the Middle East, North Africa, Sicily and Al-Andalus. It is generally thought that the Arabic term is a Byzantine loanword: saqlab, siklab, saqlabi etc. is a corruption of Greek Sklavinoi for...
(Slavs). Hudud al-Alam, an anonymous Arabic geography text written in the late 10th century, refers to the Rus' king as "rus-khaqan". As the unknown author of Hudud al-Alam relied on numerous 9th-century sources, including ibn Khordadbeh, it is possible that his reference to the Rus' Khagan was copied from earlier, pre-Rurikid texts, rather than reflecting contemporary political reality. Finally, the 11th century Persian geographer Abu Said Gardizi
Abu Said Gardizi
Abu Saʿīd Abdul-Hay ibn Dhaḥḥāk ibn Maḥmūd Gardēzī, Gardīzī or Gurdēzī was a Persian Muslim geographer and historian of the early 11th century from Gardēz who wrote the book Zayn al-Akhbār...
mentioned "khaqan-i rus" in his work Zayn al-Akbar. Like other Muslim geographers, Gardizi relied on traditions stemming from the 9th century.
There are good grounds for believing that the title "khagan" was still remembered in Kievan Rus'
Kievan Rus'
Kievan Rus was a medieval polity in Eastern Europe, from the late 9th to the mid 13th century, when it disintegrated under the pressure of the Mongol invasion of 1237–1240....
during the Christian period. Metropolitan
Metropolitan bishop
In Christian churches with episcopal polity, the rank of metropolitan bishop, or simply metropolitan, pertains to the diocesan bishop or archbishop of a metropolis; that is, the chief city of a historical Roman province, ecclesiastical province, or regional capital.Before the establishment of...
Hilarion of Kiev
Hilarion of Kiev
Hilarion or Ilarion was the first non-Greek Metropolitan of Kiev. While there is not much verifiable information regarding Ilarion's biography, there are several aspects of his life which have come to be generally accepted....
applied the title "khagan" to the Grand Princes of Kievan Rus – Vladimir I of Kiev
Vladimir I of Kiev
Vladimir Sviatoslavich the Great Old East Slavic: Володимѣръ Свѧтославичь Old Norse as Valdamarr Sveinaldsson, , Vladimir, , Volodymyr, was a grand prince of Kiev, ruler of Kievan Rus' in .Vladimir's father was the prince Sviatoslav of the Rurik dynasty...
and Yaroslav I the Wise
Yaroslav I the Wise
Yaroslav I, Grand Prince of Rus, known as Yaroslav the Wise Yaroslav I, Grand Prince of Rus, known as Yaroslav the Wise Yaroslav I, Grand Prince of Rus, known as Yaroslav the Wise (Old Norse: Jarizleifr; ; Old East Slavic and Russian: Ярослав Мудрый; Ukrainian: Ярослав Мудрий; c...
in the earliest surviving example of Kievan Rus literature, Slovo o Zakone i Blagodati ("Sermon on Law and Grace"), written around 1050. Hilarion referred to Vladimir as "the great khagan of our land" (velikago kagana nashea zemlja, Vladimera) and Yaroslav as "our devout khagan." A graffito in the north gallery of Saint Sophia Cathedral reads "O Lord, save our khagan", apparently in reference to Sviatoslav II (1073–1076). As late as the end of the 12th century, The Tale of Igor's Campaign
The Tale of Igor's Campaign
The Tale of Igor's Campaign is an anonymous epic poem written in the Old East Slavic language.The title is occasionally translated as The Song of Igor's Campaign, The Lay of Igor's Campaign, and The Lay of...
refers in passing to a "kogan Oleg", traditionally identified with Oleg of Tmutarakan.
Dating
Extant primary sources make it plausible that the title of khagan was applied to the rulers of the Rus' during a rather short period, roughly between their embassy to Constantinople (838) and Basil I's letter (871). All Byzantine sources after Basil I refer to the Rus' rulers as archonArchon
Archon is a Greek word that means "ruler" or "lord", frequently used as the title of a specific public office. It is the masculine present participle of the verb stem ἀρχ-, meaning "to rule", derived from the same root as monarch, hierarchy, and anarchy.- Ancient Greece :In ancient Greece the...
s (Greek for "ruler"). Later Kievan authors, mentioned above, appear to have revived the term khagan
Khagan
Khagan or qagan , alternatively spelled kagan, khaghan, qaghan, or chagan, is a title of imperial rank in the Mongolian and Turkic languages equal to the status of emperor and someone who rules a khaganate...
as Slavicized knyaz
Knyaz
Kniaz, knyaz or knez is a Slavic title found in most Slavic languages, denoting a royal nobility rank. It is usually translated into English as either Prince or less commonly as Duke....
, a laudatory epithet of a ruler rather than as a valid political term, knyaz being the Slavic term for the ruler of the Rus, which was by then current. A connection between original kaghan and the Germanic
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
kuning (Swedish konung, English king, German König), proto-Germanic kuningaz, is imputed.
The dating of the Khaganate's existence has been the subject of debates among scholars and remains unclear. Omeljan Pritsak
Omeljan Pritsak
Omeljan Pritsak was the first Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard University and the founder and first director of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute.-Career:Pritsak began his academic career at the University of Lvov in interwar Poland where he...
dates the foundation of the Khaganate to around 830–840. In the 1920s, Russian historian Pavel Smirnov suggested that the Rus' Khaganate emerged only briefly at around 830 and was soon destroyed by the migration of the Magyar-Kabar
Kabar
The Khavars or erroneously Kabars were Khazarians, therefore Turkic people who joined to the Magyars in the 8th century.- History :...
tribal confederation towards the Carpathian Mountains
Carpathian Mountains
The Carpathian Mountains or Carpathians are a range of mountains forming an arc roughly long across Central and Eastern Europe, making them the second-longest mountain range in Europe...
. Whatever the accuracy of such estimates may be, there are no primary sources which mention the Rus' or its khagans prior to the 830s.
Equally contentious has been discussion about the date of the khaganate's disintegration. The title of Khagan is not mentioned in the Rus'-Byzantine treaties
Rus'-Byzantine Treaty
Treaties between the Kievan Rus and the Byzantine Empire:*Rus'–Byzantine Treaty *Rus'–Byzantine Treaty , supplementary agreement to the one of 907*Rus'–Byzantine Treaty *Rus'–Byzantine Treaty *Rus'–Byzantine Treaty...
(907, 911, 944), or in De Ceremoniis
De Ceremoniis
De Ceremoniis is the Latin title of a description of ceremonial protocol at the court of the Eastern Roman emperor in Constantinople. It is sometimes called De ceremoniis aulae byzantinae...
, a record of court ceremonials meticulously documenting the titles of foreign rulers, when it deals with Olga
Olga of Kiev
Saint Olga , or Olga the Beauty, hypothetically Old Norse: Helga In some Scandinavian sources she was called other name. born c. 890 died 11 July 969, Kiev) was a ruler of Kievan Rus' as regent Saint Olga , or Olga the Beauty, hypothetically Old Norse: Helga In some Scandinavian sources she was...
's reception at the court of Constantine VII
Constantine VII
Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos or Porphyrogenitus, "the Purple-born" was the fourth Emperor of the Macedonian dynasty of the Byzantine Empire, reigning from 913 to 959...
in 945. Moreover, ibn Fadlan, in his detailed account of the Rus (922), designated their supreme ruler as malik ("king"). From this fact, Peter Golden
Peter Benjamin Golden
Peter Benjamin Golden is Professor of History at Rutgers University. He earned his bachelors degree from CUNY Queens College in 1963 and his M.A. and PhD in History from Columbia University in 1968 and 1970, respectively...
concluded via an argumentum ex silentio that the khaganate collapsed at some point between 871 and 922. Zuckerman, meanwhile, argues that the absence of the title "khagan" from the first Russo-Byzantine Treaty
Rus'-Byzantine Treaty (911)
The Rus'–Byzantine Treaty of 911 is the most comprehensive and detailed treaty concluded between the Byzantine Empire and Kievan Rus in the 10th century...
proves that the khaganate had vanished by 911.
Location
Walcheren
thumb|right|250px|Campveer Tower in Veere, built in 1500Walcheren is a former island in the province of Zeeland in the Netherlands at the mouth of the Scheldt estuary. It lies between the Oosterschelde in the north and the Westerschelde in the south and is roughly the shape of a rhombus...
. In stark contrast, George Vernadsky
George Vernadsky
George Vernadsky , Russian: Гео́ргий Влади́мирович Верна́дский) was a Russian-American historian and an author of numerous books on Russian history.- European years :...
believed that the khagan had his headquarters in the eastern part of the Crimea
Crimea
Crimea , or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea , is a sub-national unit, an autonomous republic, of Ukraine. It is located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name...
or in the Taman Peninsula
Taman peninsula
The Taman Peninsula is a peninsula in the present-day Krasnodar Krai of Russia. It is bounded on the north by the Sea of Azov, on the west by the Strait of Kerch and on the south by the Black Sea. The peninsula has evolved over the past two millennia from a chain of islands into the peninsula it is...
and that the island described by Ibn Rustah was most likely situated in the estuary of the Kuban River
Kuban River
The Kuban River is a river in Russia, in the North Caucasus region. It flows mostly through Krasnodar Krai but also in the Karachay-Cherkess Republic, Stavropol Krai and the Republic of Adygea....
. Neither of these theories has won many adherents, as archaeologists have uncovered no traces of a Slavic-Norse settlement in the Crimea region in the 9th century and there are no Norse sources documenting "khagans" in Scandinavia.
Soviet historiography
Soviet historiography
Soviet historiography is the methodology of history studies by historians in the Soviet Union . In the USSR, the study of history was marked by alternating periods of freedom allowed and restrictions imposed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , and also by the struggle of historians to...
, as represented by Boris Rybakov
Boris Rybakov
Boris Alexandrovich Rybakov was a Soviet and Russian historian who personified the anti-Normanist vision of Russian history....
and Lev Gumilev
Lev Gumilev
Lev Nikolayevich Gumilev , was a Soviet historian, ethnologist and anthropologist. His unorthodox ideas on the birth and death of ethnic groups have given rise to the political and cultural movement known as "Neo-Eurasianism".-Life:His parents were two prominent poets Nikolay Gumilev and Anna...
, advanced Kiev as the residence of the khagan, assuming that Askold and Dir
Askold and Dir
Askold and Dir are semi-legendary rulers of Kiev who, according to the Primary Chronicle, were two of Rurik's voivodes in 870s...
were the only khagans recorded by name. Mikhail Artamonov
Mikhail Artamonov
Mikhail Illarionovich Artamonov Artamonov's scientific career was centered on the Leningrad University, where he was a professor since 1935 and the head of the chair of archeology since 1949. He researched Bronze Age and Iron Age settlements by the Don River, in the North Caucasus and in the Ukraine...
became an adherent of the theory that Kiev was the seat of the Rus' Khaganate, and continued to hold this view into the 1990s.
Western
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...
historians, however, have generally argued against this theory. There is no evidence of an urban
Urban area
An urban area is characterized by higher population density and vast human features in comparison to areas surrounding it. Urban areas may be cities, towns or conurbations, but the term is not commonly extended to rural settlements such as villages and hamlets.Urban areas are created and further...
settlement on the site of Kiev prior to the 6th century. Troublesome is the absence of hoards of coins which would prove that the Dnieper trade route — the backbone of later Kievan Rus'
Kievan Rus'
Kievan Rus was a medieval polity in Eastern Europe, from the late 9th to the mid 13th century, when it disintegrated under the pressure of the Mongol invasion of 1237–1240....
— was operating in the 9th century. Based on his examination of the archaeological evidence, Zuckerman concludes that Kiev originated as a fortress on the Khazar border with Levedia, and that only after the Magyars departed for the west in 889 did the middle Dnieper region start to progress economically.
A number of historians, the first of whom was Vasily Bartold
Vasily Bartold
Vasily Vladimirovich Bartold was a Russian and Soviet historian and turcologist.-Biography:Bartold was born in Saint Petersburg.Bartold's lectures at the University of Saint Petersburg were annually interrupted by extended field trips to Muslim countries...
, have advocated a more northerly position for the khaganate. They have tended to emphasize ibn Rustah's report as the only historical clue to the location of the khagan's residence. Recent archaeological research, conducted by Dmitry Machinsky
Dmitry Machinsky
Dmitry Alexeyevich Machinsky is a leading Russian archaeologist. He lives in Saint Petersburg and works in the Hermitage Museum. Machinsky is particularly well known for having excavated Lyubsha and other Viking settlements along the Volkhov River...
among others, has raised the possibility that this polity was based on a group of settlements along the Volkhov River
Volkhov River
Volkhov is a river in Novgorod Oblast and Leningrad Oblast in northwestern Russia.-Geography:The Volkhov flows out of Lake Ilmen north into Lake Ladoga, the largest lake of Europe. It is the second largest tributary of Lake Ladoga. It is navigable over its whole length. Discharge is highly...
, including Ladoga, Lyubsha
Lyubsha
Lyubsha is an archaeological site situated on the right bank of the Volkhov, about 1,500 metres downstream from Staraya Ladoga. As was established by the 1993 excavations, Lyubsha is the site of the earliest Varangian fort in Russia, established in the first half of the 8th century, thus predating...
, Duboviki, Alaborg
Alaborg
Álaborg or Áluborg is the name of a Varangian fort mentioned in the Norse sagas about Halfdan Eysteinsson and Hrolf Ganger. The first saga indicates that it was possible to sail from Aldeigjuborg to Alaborg northward by sea, but a more rapid and practicable way was by land eastward...
, and Holmgard. "Most of these were initially small sites, probably not much more than stations for re-fitting and resupply, providing an opportunity for exchange and the redistribution of items passing along the river and caravan routes". If the anonymous traveller quoted by ibn Rustah is to be believed, the Rus of the Khaganate period made extensive use of the Volga route
Volga trade route
In the Middle Ages, the Volga trade route connected Northern Europe and Northwestern Russia with the Caspian Sea, via the Volga River. The Rus used this route to trade with Muslim countries on the southern shores of the Caspian Sea, sometimes penetrating as far as Baghdad...
to trade with the Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
, possibly through Bulgar
Bulgars
The Bulgars were a semi-nomadic who flourished in the Pontic Steppe and the Volga basin in the 7th century.The Bulgars emerge after the collapse of the Hunnic Empire in the 5th century....
and Khazar
Khazars
The Khazars were semi-nomadic Turkic people who established one of the largest polities of medieval Eurasia, with the capital of Atil and territory comprising much of modern-day European Russia, western Kazakhstan, eastern Ukraine, Azerbaijan, large portions of the northern Caucasus , parts of...
intermediaries. His description of the Rus' island suggests that their center was at Holmgard, an early medieval precursor of Novgorod whose name translates from Old Norse
Old Norse
Old Norse is a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300....
as "the river-island castle". The First Novgorod Chronicle describes unrest in Novgorod before Rurik
Rurik
Rurik, or Riurik , was a semilegendary 9th-century Varangian who founded the Rurik dynasty which ruled Kievan Rus and later some of its successor states, most notably the Tsardom of Russia, until 1598....
was invited to come rule the region in the 860s. This account prompted Johannes Brøndsted
Johannes Brøndsted
Johannes Brøndsted, was a Danish archaeologist and prehistorian.-Biography:Brøndsted was born in Grundfør, Jutland....
to assert that Holmgard-Novgorod was the khaganate's capital for several decades prior to the appearance of Rurik, including the time of the Byzantine embassy in 839. Machinsky accepts this theory but notes that, before the rise of Holmgard-Novgorod, the chief political and economic centre of the area was located at Aldeigja-Ladoga.
Origin
Norsemen
Norsemen is used to refer to the group of people as a whole who spoke what is now called the Old Norse language belonging to the North Germanic branch of Indo-European languages, especially Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese, Swedish and Danish in their earlier forms.The meaning of Norseman was "people...
settlers of the region arrived in the lower basin of the Volkhov River
Volkhov River
Volkhov is a river in Novgorod Oblast and Leningrad Oblast in northwestern Russia.-Geography:The Volkhov flows out of Lake Ilmen north into Lake Ladoga, the largest lake of Europe. It is the second largest tributary of Lake Ladoga. It is navigable over its whole length. Discharge is highly...
in the mid-8th century. The country comprising the present-day Saint-Petersburg
Leningrad Oblast
Leningrad Oblast is a federal subject of Russia . It was established on August 1, 1927, although it was not until 1946 that the oblast's borders had been mostly settled in their present position...
, Novgorod
Novgorod Oblast
Novgorod Oblast is a federal subject of Russia , located between Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Its administrative center is the city of Veliky Novgorod. Some of the oldest Russian cities, including Veliky Novgorod and Staraya Russa, are located there...
, Tver
Tver Oblast
Tver Oblast is a federal subject of Russia . Its administrative center is the city of Tver. From 1935 to 1990, it was named Kalinin Oblast after Mikhail Kalinin. Population: Tver Oblast is an area of lakes, such as Seliger and Brosno...
, Yaroslavl
Yaroslavl Oblast
Yaroslavl Oblast is a federal subject of Russia , which is located in the Central Federal District, surrounded by Tver, Moscow, Ivanovo, Vladimir, Kostroma, and Vologda Oblasts. This geographic location affords the oblast the advantages of proximity to Moscow and St. Petersburg...
, and Smolensk regions
Smolensk Oblast
Smolensk Oblast is a federal subject of Russia . Its area is . Population: -Geography:The administrative center of Smolensk Oblast is the city of Smolensk. Other ancient towns include Vyazma and Dorogobuzh....
became known in Old Norse
Old Norse
Old Norse is a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300....
sources as "Gardarike", the land of forts. Around the 860 Rus', a group of Vikings perhaps from Roden
Roden, Sweden
Roden old designation of the coastal areas of Svealand , that in wartime would mann and equip the ships that sailed out in ledung....
, Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, began to rule the area under their leader Rurik
Rurik
Rurik, or Riurik , was a semilegendary 9th-century Varangian who founded the Rurik dynasty which ruled Kievan Rus and later some of its successor states, most notably the Tsardom of Russia, until 1598....
. Gradually, Norse
Norsemen
Norsemen is used to refer to the group of people as a whole who spoke what is now called the Old Norse language belonging to the North Germanic branch of Indo-European languages, especially Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese, Swedish and Danish in their earlier forms.The meaning of Norseman was "people...
warlords, known to the Turkic
Turkic languages
The Turkic languages constitute a language family of at least thirty five languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.Turkic languages are spoken...
-speaking steppe peoples as "köl-beki" or "sea-kings", came to dominate some of the region's Finno-Ugric and Slavic peoples, particularly along the Volga trade route
Volga trade route
In the Middle Ages, the Volga trade route connected Northern Europe and Northwestern Russia with the Caspian Sea, via the Volga River. The Rus used this route to trade with Muslim countries on the southern shores of the Caspian Sea, sometimes penetrating as far as Baghdad...
linking the Baltic Sea
Baltic Sea
The Baltic Sea is a brackish mediterranean sea located in Northern Europe, from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 20°E to 26°E longitude. It is bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of Europe, and the Danish islands. It drains into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund, the Great Belt and...
with the Caspian Sea
Caspian Sea
The Caspian Sea is the largest enclosed body of water on Earth by area, variously classed as the world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea. The sea has a surface area of and a volume of...
and Serkland
Serkland
In Old Norse sources, such as sagas and runestones, Særkland or Serkland was the name of the Abbasid Caliphate and probably some neighbouring Muslim regions....
.
Omeljan Pritsak
Omeljan Pritsak
Omeljan Pritsak was the first Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard University and the founder and first director of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute.-Career:Pritsak began his academic career at the University of Lvov in interwar Poland where he...
speculated that a Khazar khagan named Khan-Tuvan
Khan-Tuvan
Khan-Tuvan Dyggvi, according to Omeljan Pritsak, was the name of a Khazar khagan of the mid 830s. He led a rebellion of the Kabars against the Khagan Bek...
Dyggvi, exiled after losing a civil war, settled with his followers in the Norse-Slavic settlement of Rostov, married into the local Scandinavian nobility, and fathered the dynasty of the Rus' khagans. Zuckerman dismisses Pritsak's theory as untenable speculation, and no record of any Khazar khagan fleeing to find refuge among the Rus' exists in contemporaneous sources. Nevertheless, the possible Khazar connection to early Rus' monarchs is supported by the use of a stylized trident
Coat of arms of Ukraine
The state coat of arms of Ukraine or commonly the Tryzub is the national coat of arms of Ukraine, featuring the same colors found on the Ukrainian flag; a blue shield with yellow trident, called the tryzub...
tamga, or seal, by later Rus' rulers such as Sviatoslav I of Kiev
Sviatoslav I of Kiev
Sviatoslav I Igorevich ; , also spelled Svyatoslav, was a prince of Rus...
; similar tamgas are found in ruins that are definitively Khazar in origin. The genealogical connection between the 9th-century Khagans of Rus' and the later Rurikid rulers, if any, is unknown at this time.
Most historians agree that the title "khagan" was borrowed by the Rus from the Khazars, but there is considerable dispute over the circumstances of this borrowing. Peter Benjamin Golden
Peter Benjamin Golden
Peter Benjamin Golden is Professor of History at Rutgers University. He earned his bachelors degree from CUNY Queens College in 1963 and his M.A. and PhD in History from Columbia University in 1968 and 1970, respectively...
presumes that the Rus' khaganate was a puppet state set up by the Khazars in the basin of the Oka River
Oka River
Oka is a river in central Russia, the largest right tributary of the Volga. It flows through the regions of Oryol, Tula, Kaluga, Moscow, Ryazan, Vladimir, and Nizhny Novgorod and is navigable over a large part of its total length, as far upstream as to the town of Kaluga. Its length exceeds...
to fend off recurring attacks of the Magyars. However, no source records that the Rus' of the 9th century were subjects to the Khazars. For foreign observers (such as Ibn Rustah), there was no material difference between the titles of the Khazar and Rus' rulers. Anatoly Novoseltsev
Anatoly Novoseltsev
Anatoly Petrovich Novoseltsev was a Russian orientalist who brought to light and translated into Russian a slew of obscure Persian and Arab documents relating to the early history of Kievan Rus'....
hypothesizes that the adoption of the title "khagan" was designed to advertise the Rus' claims to the equality with the Khazars. This theory is echoed by Thomas Noonan
Thomas Noonan
Thomas Noonan, Tom Noonan or Tommy Noonan may refer to:*Tommy Noonan , American television and film actor*Thomas S. Noonan , American historian, anthropologist and Slavicist*Thomas P. Noonan, Jr...
, who asserts that the Rus' leaders were loosely unified under the rule of one of the "sea-kings" in the early 9th century, and that this "High King
High king
A high king is a king who holds a position of seniority over a group of other kings, without the title of Emperor; compare King of Kings.Rulers who have been termed "high king" include:...
" adopted the title "khagan" to give him legitimacy in the eyes of his subjects and neighboring states. According to this theory, the title was a sign that the bearers ruled under a divine mandate.
Economy
The likely mainstay of the khaganate's economyEconomy
An economy consists of the economic system of a country or other area; the labor, capital and land resources; and the manufacturing, trade, distribution, and consumption of goods and services of that area...
was the Volga trade route. Early 9th-century coin hordes unearthed in Scandinavia frequently contain large quantities of dirhem coins minted in the Abbasid Caliphate and other Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
polities, sometimes split into smaller pieces and inscribed with Runic signs. All in all, more than 228,000 Arabic coins have been recovered from over 1,000 hoards in European Russia and the Baltic region. Almost 90% of these arrived in Scandinavia by way of the Volga trade route. Unsurprisingly, the dirhem was the basis for the monetary system of Kievan Rus'.
Trade
Trade
Trade is the transfer of ownership of goods and services from one person or entity to another. Trade is sometimes loosely called commerce or financial transaction or barter. A network that allows trade is called a market. The original form of trade was barter, the direct exchange of goods and...
was the major source of income for the Rus, who according to ibn Rustah did not engage in agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
: "They have no cultivated fields but depend for their supplies on what they can obtain from as-Saqaliba's [Slavs] land. They have no estates, villages, or fields; their only business is to trade in sable
Sable
The sable is a species of marten which inhabits forest environments, primarily in Russia from the Ural Mountains throughout Siberia, in northern Mongolia and China and on Hokkaidō in Japan. Its range in the wild originally extended through European Russia to Poland and Scandinavia...
, squirrel
Squirrel
Squirrels belong to a large family of small or medium-sized rodents called the Sciuridae. The family includes tree squirrels, ground squirrels, chipmunks, marmots , flying squirrels, and prairie dogs. Squirrels are indigenous to the Americas, Eurasia, and Africa and have been introduced to Australia...
, and other fur
Fur
Fur is a synonym for hair, used more in reference to non-human animals, usually mammals; particularly those with extensives body hair coverage. The term is sometimes used to refer to the body hair of an animal as a complete coat, also known as the "pelage". Fur is also used to refer to animal...
s, and the money they take in these transactions they stow in their belts." Rus merchants travelled down the Volga, paying duties
Duty
Duty is a term that conveys a sense of moral commitment to someone or something. The moral commitment is the sort that results in action and it is not a matter of passive feeling or mere recognition...
to the Bulghars and Khazars, to the ports of Gorgan
Gorgan
Gorgan Some east of Gorgan is the Golestan National Park. The city has a regional airport and several universities. Gorgan Airport was opened in September 2005.-Etymology:...
and Abaskun
Abaskun
Abaskun was a port that existed in the Middle Ages on the southwestern shore of the Caspian Sea in the area of Gorgan.In his Geographia, Ptolemy mentions a river Sokanda in Hyrcania, which may have given the name to the city. The exact location of Abaskun remains unclear; most likely, it was...
on the southern shore of the Caspian Sea
Caspian Sea
The Caspian Sea is the largest enclosed body of water on Earth by area, variously classed as the world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea. The sea has a surface area of and a volume of...
; on occasion they travelled as far as Baghdad
Baghdad
Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...
.
Government
Writing in 922, Ibn Fadlan described the Rus' ruler (like the Khazar khagan), as having little real authority
Authority
The word Authority is derived mainly from the Latin word auctoritas, meaning invention, advice, opinion, influence, or command. In English, the word 'authority' can be used to mean power given by the state or by academic knowledge of an area .-Authority in Philosophy:In...
. Instead, political and military power
Power (sociology)
Power is a measurement of an entity's ability to control its environment, including the behavior of other entities. The term authority is often used for power perceived as legitimate by the social structure. Power can be seen as evil or unjust, but the exercise of power is accepted as endemic to...
was wielded by a deputy, who "commands the troops, attacks [the Rus' ruler's] enemies, and acts as his representative before his subjects." The supreme king of the Rus', on the other hand, "has no duties other than to make love to his slave girls, drink, and give himself up to pleasure." He was guarded by 400 men, "willing to die for him... These 400 sit below the royal throne: a large and bejewelled platform which also accommodates the forty slave-girls of his harem." Ibn Fadlan wrote that the Rus' ruler would almost never leave his throne and even "when he wants to go riding his horse is led up to him, and on his return the horse is brought right up to the throne." Ibn Rustah, on the other hand, reported that the khagan was the ultimate authority in settling disputes between his subjects. His decisions, however, were not binding, so that if one of the disputants disagreed with the khagan's ruling, the dispute was then resolved in a battle
Holmgang
Holmgang was a duel practiced by early medieval Scandinavians. It was a recognized way to settle disputes....
, which took place "in the presence of the contestants' kin who stand with swords drawn; and the man who gets the better of the duel also gets the decision about the matter in dispute."
The dichotomy
Dichotomy
A dichotomy is any splitting of a whole into exactly two non-overlapping parts, meaning it is a procedure in which a whole is divided into two parts...
between the relative powerlessness of the nominal ruler and the great authority of his subordinate reflects the structure of Khazar government
Government
Government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized...
, with secular authority in the hands of a Khagan Bek
Khagan Bek
-History:Khazar kingship was divided between the khagan and the Bek or Khagan Bek. Contemporary Arab historians related that the Khagan was purely a spiritual ruler or figurehead with limited powers, while the Bek was responsible for administration and military affairs.In the Khazar Correspondence,...
only theoretically subordinate to the khagan, and it agrees with the traditional Germanic
Germanic peoples
The Germanic peoples are an Indo-European ethno-linguistic group of Northern European origin, identified by their use of the Indo-European Germanic languages which diversified out of Proto-Germanic during the Pre-Roman Iron Age.Originating about 1800 BCE from the Corded Ware Culture on the North...
system, where there could be a division between the king and the military commander. Moreover, some scholars have noted similarities between this dual kingship and the postulated relationship between Igor
Igor, Grand Prince of Kiev
Igor was a Varangian ruler of Kievan Rus' from 912 to 945.-Biography:...
and Oleg of Kiev in the early 10th century (compare Askold and Dir
Askold and Dir
Askold and Dir are semi-legendary rulers of Kiev who, according to the Primary Chronicle, were two of Rurik's voivodes in 870s...
in the 9th century). The institution of separate sacral ruler and military commander may be observed in the reconstructed relationship between Oleg and Igor, but whether this is part of the Rus' Khaganate's legacy to its successor-state is unknown. The early Kievan Rus' principalities exhibited certain distinctive characteristics in their government, military organization, and jurisprudence
Jurisprudence
Jurisprudence is the theory and philosophy of law. Scholars of jurisprudence, or legal theorists , hope to obtain a deeper understanding of the nature of law, of legal reasoning, legal systems and of legal institutions...
that were comparable to those in force among the Khazars and other steppe peoples; some historians believe that these elements came to Kievan Rus' from the Khazars by way of the earlier Rus' Khagans.
Customs and religion
Burial
Burial is the act of placing a person or object into the ground. This is accomplished by excavating a pit or trench, placing an object in it, and covering it over.-History:...
of a Rus' nobleman, who was put into a "grave like a large house", together with food, amulets, coins, other staples, as well as his favorite wife. "Then the grave door is sealed and she dies there." Ibn Fadlan provides further evidence of the Rus' building a memorial mound, or cenotaph
Cenotaph
A cenotaph is an "empty tomb" or a monument erected in honour of a person or group of people whose remains are elsewhere. It can also be the initial tomb for a person who has since been interred elsewhere. The word derives from the Greek κενοτάφιον = kenotaphion...
, and giving it a runic inscription on a piece of wood. The Arab traveler also left a detailed description of the Rus' custom of cremating noblemen in a ship
Ship burial
A ship burial or boat grave is a burial in which a ship or boat is used either as a container for the dead and the grave goods, or as a part of the grave goods itself. If the ship is very small, it is called a boat grave...
, which involved both animal and human sacrifice
Human sacrifice
Human sacrifice is the act of killing one or more human beings as part of a religious ritual . Its typology closely parallels the various practices of ritual slaughter of animals and of religious sacrifice in general. Human sacrifice has been practised in various cultures throughout history...
. When a poor man died, he was put into a little ship and burned in it; the funeral of a nobleman was much more elaborate. His estate was divided into three parts: one for his family, one to pay for his funerary costume, and one to make beer
Beer
Beer is the world's most widely consumed andprobably oldest alcoholic beverage; it is the third most popular drink overall, after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of sugars, mainly derived from malted cereal grains, most commonly malted barley and malted wheat...
, which was consumed on the day of his cremation. One of the deceased man's slave girls volunteered to be put to death so as to join her master in paradise
Paradise
Paradise is a place in which existence is positive, harmonious and timeless. It is conceptually a counter-image of the miseries of human civilization, and in paradise there is only peace, prosperity, and happiness. Paradise is a place of contentment, but it is not necessarily a land of luxury and...
. On the day of cremation, the dead man was disinterred from his grave, dressed in fine clothings, and put onto a specially constructed ship. The volunteer slave girl was killed (after the deceased man's kinsmen and friends had sex with her) and placed on board together with her master before the dead man's nearest kinsman set the vessel on fire. The funeral ended with the construction of a round mound.
Early medieval historians were impressed with the spirit of independence and enterprise inculcated among the Rus from birth. Ibn Rustah writes: "When a son is born the father will go up to the newborn baby, sword in hand; throwing it down, he says; 'I shall not leave you any property: you have only what you can provide with this weapon!'" Al-Marwazi
Al-Marwazi
Ahmad ibn 'Abdallah Habash Hasib Marwazi was an astronomer, geographer, and mathematician from Merv in Khorasan.He flourished in Baghdad, and died a centenarian after 869...
repeated this description of the instructions given to a son and added that it was the daughter who received her father's inheritance. The same sense of rugged individualism was reflected in their treatment of the ill. According to ibn Fadlan, "if one of the Rus falls sick they put him in a tent by himself and leave bread and water for him. They do not visit him, however, or speak to him, especially if he is a serf. Should he recover he rejoins the others; if he dies they burn him. If he happens to be a serf, however, they leave him for the dogs and vultures to devor." Sources describe the Rus as liberal in sexual matters. Ibn Fadlan wrote that the king of the Rus did not shy away from having public intercourse with the slave girls in his harem. When Rus traders arrived to the Volga shores, they would make love with the slave girls they brought for sale in the presence of their comrades; sometimes this would develop into a communal orgy
Orgy
In modern usage, an orgy is a sex party where guests engage in promiscuous or multifarious sexual activity or group sex. An orgy is similar to debauchery, which refers to excessive indulgence in sensual pleasures....
.
On the other hand, Byzantine sources report that the Rus adopted Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
by the end of the 860s. In his encyclical
Encyclical
An encyclical was originally a circular letter sent to all the churches of a particular area in the ancient Catholic Church. At that time, the word could be used for a letter sent out by any bishop...
dated to 867, Patriarch Photius wrote about the enthusiastic conversion of the Rus, mentioning that he had sent to their lands a bishop
Bishop
A bishop is an ordained or consecrated member of the Christian clergy who is generally entrusted with a position of authority and oversight. Within the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox Churches, in the Assyrian Church of the East, in the Independent Catholic Churches, and in the...
. Constantine VII
Constantine VII
Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos or Porphyrogenitus, "the Purple-born" was the fourth Emperor of the Macedonian dynasty of the Byzantine Empire, reigning from 913 to 959...
attributes the conversion to his grandfather Basil the Macedonian and to Patriarch Ignatius
Patriarch Ignatius
Ignatius was a Russian Orthodox bishop of Greek descent who was the second Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia in 1605-1606, even though his status is now disputed and he is frequently omitted from the list of Patriarchs of Moscow by the Russian Orthodox Church.Ignatius was reported to be of...
rather than to their predecessors Michael III
Michael III
Michael III , , Byzantine Emperor from 842 to 867. Michael III was the third and traditionally last member of the Amorian-Phrygian Dynasty...
and Photius. Constantine narrates how the Byzantines galvanized the Rus' into conversion by their persuasive words and rich presents, including gold, silver, and precious fabrics. He also repeats a traditional story that the pagans were particularly impressed by a miracle: a gospel
Gospel
A gospel is an account, often written, that describes the life of Jesus of Nazareth. In a more general sense the term "gospel" may refer to the good news message of the New Testament. It is primarily used in reference to the four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John...
book thrown by the archbishop
Archbishop
An archbishop is a bishop of higher rank, but not of higher sacramental order above that of the three orders of deacon, priest , and bishop...
into an oven was not damaged by fire. Ibn Khordadbeh
Ibn Khordadbeh
Abu'l Qasim Ubaid'Allah ibn Khordadbeh , author of the earliest surviving Arabic book of administrative geography, was a Persian geographer and bureaucrat of the 9th century...
wrote in the late 9th century that the Rus who arrived to Muslim lands "claimed to be Christians". Modern historians are divided in their views on the historicity and extent of the Christianization of the Rus' Khaganate
Christianization of the Rus' Khaganate
The Christianization of the Rus' Khaganate is supposed to have happened in the 860s and was the first stage in the process of Christianization of the East Slavs which continued well into the 11th century...
.
Relations with neighbors
In 838, the Rus' Khaganate sent an embassy to the Byzantine Empire, which was recorded in the Annals of St. Bertin. The purpose of this embassy remains controversial among historians. Aleksey ShakhmatovAleksey Shakhmatov
Aleksey Aleksandrovich Shakhmatov was an outstanding Russian philologist credited with laying foundations for the science of textology.-Biography:...
argued that the embassy was meant to establish amity with Byzantium and to open up the way into Sweden through Western Europe. Constantine Zuckerman
Constantine Zuckerman
Constantine Zuckerman is a French-Jewish historian and Professor of Byzantine studies at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris.-Biography:...
postulates that the Rus' ambassadors were to negotiate a peace treaty after their Paphlagonian expedition of the 830s. George Vernadsky
George Vernadsky
George Vernadsky , Russian: Гео́ргий Влади́мирович Верна́дский) was a Russian-American historian and an author of numerous books on Russian history.- European years :...
connects their mission with the construction of the fortress of Sarkel
Sarkel
Sarkel was a large limestone-and-brick fortress built by the Khazars with Byzantine assistance in the 830s. It was named white-house because of the white limestone bricks they have used to build Sarkel...
in 833. That embassy was not recorded in Byzantine sources, and in 860 Patriarch Photius referred to the Rus as "unknown people".
According to Vernadsky, the Khazars and Greeks erected Sarkel near the portage between the Don River
Don River (Russia)
The Don River is one of the major rivers of Russia. It rises in the town of Novomoskovsk 60 kilometres southeast from Tula, southeast of Moscow, and flows for a distance of about 1,950 kilometres to the Sea of Azov....
and Volga specifically to defend this strategic point from the Rus. Other scholars, however, believe that the fortress of Sarkel was constructed to defend against or monitor the activities of the Magyars and other steppe tribes, and not the Rus'. The Ukrainian historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky
Mykhailo Hrushevsky
Mykhailo Serhiyovych Hrushevsky was a Ukrainian academician, politician, historian, and statesman, one of the most important figures of the Ukrainian national revival of the early 20th century...
declared that the extant sources were unclear on this point. John Skylitzes
John Skylitzes
John Skylitzes, latinized as Ioannes Scylitzes was a Greek historian of the late 11th century. He was born in the beginning of 1040's and died after 1101.- Life :Very little is known about his life...
claimed that Sarkel was a "staunch bulwark against the Pechenegs" but did not identify that as its original purpose.
In 860, the Rus besieged Constantinople
Rus'-Byzantine War (860)
The Rus'–Byzantine War of 860 was the only major military expedition of the Rus' Khaganate recorded in Byzantine and Western European sources. Accounts vary regarding the events that took place, with discrepancies between contemporary and later sources, and the exact outcome is unknown...
, with a fleet
Naval fleet
A fleet, or naval fleet, is a large formation of warships, and the largest formation in any navy. A fleet at sea is the direct equivalent of an army on land....
of 200 ships. The Byzantine army and navy were far from the capital, leaving it vulnerable to the attack. The timing of the expedition suggests that the Rus were well-aware of the internal situation in the empire thanks to the commercial and other relations that continued after the embassy of 838. The Rus warriors devastated the suburbs of Constantinople before suddenly departing on August 4.
The early Rus' traded extensively with Khazaria. Ibn Khordadbeh
Ibn Khordadbeh
Abu'l Qasim Ubaid'Allah ibn Khordadbeh , author of the earliest surviving Arabic book of administrative geography, was a Persian geographer and bureaucrat of the 9th century...
wrote in the Book of Roads and Kingdoms
Book of Roads and Kingdoms (ibn Khordadbeh)
The Book of Roads and Kingdoms is a 9th-century geography text by the Persian geographer Ibn Khordadbeh. It maps and describes the major trade routes of the time within the Muslim world, and discusses distant trading regions such as Japan, Korea, and China...
that "they go via the Slavic River (the Don) to Khamlidj, a city of the Khazars, where the latter's ruler collects the tithe from them." Some modern commentators infer from Arab accounts that the Rus' Khaganate's political culture was profoundly influenced by its contacts with Khazaria. By the beginning of the Rurikid period in the first decades of the 10th century, however, relations between the Rus' and the Khazars soured.
Decline and legacy
Soon after Patriarch Photius informed other Orthodox bishops about the Christianization of the Rus, all the centres of the khaganate in North-Western Russia were destroyed by fire. Archaeologists found convincing evidence that Holmgard, Aldeigja, AlaborgAlaborg
Álaborg or Áluborg is the name of a Varangian fort mentioned in the Norse sagas about Halfdan Eysteinsson and Hrolf Ganger. The first saga indicates that it was possible to sail from Aldeigjuborg to Alaborg northward by sea, but a more rapid and practicable way was by land eastward...
, Izborsk
Izborsk
Izborsk is a rural locality in Pechorsky District of Pskov Oblast, Russia. It contains one of the most ancient and impressive fortresses of Western Russia....
and other local centres were burnt to the ground in the 860s or 870s. Some of these settlements were permanently abandoned after the conflagration. The Primary Chronicle
Primary Chronicle
The Primary Chronicle , Ruthenian Primary Chronicle or Russian Primary Chronicle, is a history of Kievan Rus' from about 850 to 1110, originally compiled in Kiev about 1113.- Three editions :...
describes the uprising of the pagan Slavs and Chudes (Finnic peoples) against the Varangians, who had to withdraw overseas in 862. The First Novgorod Chronicle, whose account of the events Shakhmatov considered more trustworthy, does not pinpoint the pre-Rurikid uprising to any specific date. The 16th-century Nikon Chronicle
Nikon Chronicle
The Nikon Chronicle or Chronicle of Nikon , also known as the Patriarch's Chronicle , is a major 16th century Russian chronicle. It was named after patriarch Nikon, who owned a copy...
attributes the banishment of the Varangians from the country to Vadim the Bold
Vadim the Bold
Vadim the Bold was a legendary chieftain of the Ilmen Slavs who led their struggle against Rurik and the Varangians in the 9th century.According to the Nikon Chronicle, an historic 16th century Russian chronicle that covered events of 859–1520 CE, the Novgorodians broke into rebellion against...
. The Ukrainian historian Mykhailo Braichevsky labelled Vadim's rebellion "a pagan reaction" against the Christianization of the Rus'. A period of unrest and anarchy followed, dated by Zuckerman to ca. 875–900. The absence of coin hoards from the 880s and 890s suggests that the Volga trade route ceased functioning, precipitating "the first silver crisis in Europe".
After this economic depression
Recession
In economics, a recession is a business cycle contraction, a general slowdown in economic activity. During recessions, many macroeconomic indicators vary in a similar way...
and period of political upheaval, the region experienced a resurgence beginning in around 900. Zuckerman associates this recovery with the arrival of Rurik
Rurik
Rurik, or Riurik , was a semilegendary 9th-century Varangian who founded the Rurik dynasty which ruled Kievan Rus and later some of its successor states, most notably the Tsardom of Russia, until 1598....
and his men, who turned their attention from the Volga to the Dnieper, for reasons as yet uncertain. The Scandinavian settlements in Ladoga and Novgorod revived and started to grow rapidly. During the first decade of the 10th century, a large trade outpost was formed on the Dnieper in Gnezdovo
Gnezdovo
Gnezdovo or Gnyozdovo is an archeological site located near the village of Gnyozdovo in Smolensk Oblast, Russia. The site contains extensive remains of a Slavic-Varangian settlement that flourished in the 10th century as a major trade station on the trade route from the Varangians to the...
, near modern Smolensk
Smolensk
Smolensk is a city and the administrative center of Smolensk Oblast, Russia, located on the Dnieper River. Situated west-southwest of Moscow, this walled city was destroyed several times throughout its long history since it was on the invasion routes of both Napoleon and Hitler. Today, Smolensk...
. Another Dnieper settlement, Kiev, developed into an important urban centre roughly in the same period.
The fate of the Rus' Khaganate, and the process by which it either evolved into or was consumed by the Rurikid Kievan Rus', is unclear. The Kievans seem to have had a very vague notion about the existence of the khaganate. Slavonic sources do not mention either the Christianization of the Rus in the 860s nor the Paphlagonian expedition of the 830s. The account of the Rus' expedition against Constantinople in the 860s was borrowed by the authors of the Primary Chronicle from Greek sources, suggesting the absence of a vernacular
Vernacular
A vernacular is the native language or native dialect of a specific population, as opposed to a language of wider communication that is not native to the population, such as a national language or lingua franca.- Etymology :The term is not a recent one...
written tradition.
See also
- ArsaniaArsaniaArtania or Arsania was one of the three centers of the Saqaliba described in a lost book by Abu Zayd al-Balkhi and mentioned in works by some of his followers...
- Rus'–Byzantine War
- Caspian expeditions of the RusCaspian expeditions of the RusThe Caspian expeditions of the Rus were military raids undertaken by the Rus' between 864 and 1041 on the Caspian Sea shores. Initially, the Rus' appeared in Serkland in the 9th century traveling as merchants along the Volga trade route, selling furs, honey, and slaves. The first small-scale raids...
- Christianization of the Rus' KhaganateChristianization of the Rus' KhaganateThe Christianization of the Rus' Khaganate is supposed to have happened in the 860s and was the first stage in the process of Christianization of the East Slavs which continued well into the 11th century...
- Paphlagonian expedition of the Rus'Paphlagonian expedition of the Rus'The Paphlagonian expedition of the Rus is documented in the Life of St. George of Amastris. This hagiographic work describes the Rus' as "the people known to everyone for their barbarity, ferocity, and cruelty". According to the text, they attacked Propontis before turning east and raiding...