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The Rus Khaganate refers to a poorly-documented period in Russian history (roughly the late eighth and early to mid ninth centuries CE) when a mixed Norse, Slavic and Finnic population inhabited northern Russia dominated by the Rus' tribe or tribes. According to contemporary sources their population centers, which may have included the proto-towns near Novgorod, Staraya Ladoga, Smolensk, and Yaroslavl, were under the rule of a king or kings using the Old Turkic title Khagan.
Documentary evidence
The earliest European reference to the "Khaganate" of the Rus' comes from the Annals of St. Bertin. The Annals refer to a group of Vikings, 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 steppes, which would leave them vulnerable to attacks by the Magyars, these Rhos travelled through Germany accompanied by Greek ambassadors from the Byzantine emperor Theophilus. They were questioned by the Frankish Emperor Louis the Pious somewhere near Mainz. They informed the emperor that their leader was known as chacanus (the Latin for "Khagan") and that they lived in the north of Russia, but that their ancestral homeland was in Sweden (comperit eos gentis esse sueonum). Many historians believe that this polity was based on a group of settlements along the Volkhov River.
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Ahmad ibn Rustah, a ninth-century Muslim geographer from Persia, wrote that the Rus' khagan lived on an island in the Volga River, suggesting that their center was at Novgorod (also known as Holmgard or Gorodische). Of their organization ibn Rustah wrote:
- They have a king who is called Khaqan Rus, and they make raids against the Saqlabah, sailing in ships in order to go out to them, and they take them prisoner and carry them off to Khazar and Bulgar and trade with them there. They have no cultivated lands; they eat only what they carry off from the land of the Saqlabah. When a child is born to any man among them, he takes a drawn sword to the new-born child and places it between his hands and says to him: "I shall bequeath to the no wealth and thou wild have naught savve what thou dos gain for thyself by this sword of thine." They have no landed property nor villages nor cultivated land; their only occupation is trading in sables and grey squirrel and other furs, and in these they trade and they can take as the price gold and silver and secure it to their belts.
Influence by Khazars and other Eurasian nomads
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.". They likely were influenced by the culture and government of that empire. Ahmed ibn Fadlan described the Rus' khagan (like the Khazar khagan), of having little real authority. Instead, political and military power was wielded by a deputy, who "commands the troops, attacks enemies, and acts as his representative before his subjects." The Khagan, on the other hand, "has no duties other than to make love to his slave girls, drink, and give himself up to pleasure. This dichotomy reflects the structure of Khazar government, with secular authority in the hands of a Khagan Bek only theoretically subordinate to the khagan. Indeed, some scholars have noted similarities between this dual kingship and the relationship between Igor and Oleg of Kiev in the early tenth century. Burial sites from locations connected to the Rus Khaganate period contain many features common with those of neighboring Eurasian nomad populations.
See also
References
- Christian 338; Franklin and Shepard 33-36; Dolukhanov 187.
- Håkan was a name used among Scandinavians of the period, and it is possible that the Rhos described by Bertin referred to a king by this name, rather than a Khagan.
- Bertin 19-20; Jones 249-250.
- Christian 338.
- Christian 338.
- Vernadsky 1:9.
- Cited in Vernadsky 1:9
- E.g., Jones 164 (summarizing evidence from al-Masudi and al-Muqaddasi; Franklin and Shepard 67-8; Christian 340.
- Ibn Fadlan, as translated in Jones 425-430.
- Ibn Fadlan, as translated in Jones 425-430.
- This sharply contrasts with the traditional Germanic system, where kingship was held by military prowess and not necessarily by blood.
- Christian 341.
- Christian 340, citing, inter alia, Jones 256.
Resources
- Ahmed ibn Fadlan. "The Risala."
- Bertin. The Annals of St. Bertin. Ed. Waitz, Hanover, 1883.
- Christian, David. A History of Russia, Mongolia and Central Asia. Blackwell, 1999.
- Dolukhanov, P.M. The Early Slavs: Eastern Europe and the Initial Settlement to Kievan Rus'. London: Longman, 1996.
- Franklin, Simon and Jonathan Shepard. The Emergence of Rus 750-1200. London: Longman, 1996.
- Halperin, Charles J. Russia and the Golden Horde: The Mongol Impact on Medieval Russian History. Bloomington: Univ. of Indiana Press, 1987.
- Jones, Gwyn. A History of the Vikings. 2nd ed. London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1984.
- Pritsak, Omeljan. The Origin of Rus'. Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991.
- Vernadsky, G.V., ed. A Source Book for Russian History from Early Times to 1917, Vol. 1. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1972.