Vadas Ferenc (szerk.): A Wosinszky Mór Múzeum Évkönyve 15. (Szekszárd, 1990)

Handelsbeziehungen - Thomas S. Noonan: Scandinavian-Russian-Islamic trade in the ninth century

Here again, numismatics helps to provide an answer. A dirham hoard deposited at Peterhof near Leningrad around 805 contained coins with Arabic, Khazar-Turkic, Greek, and Scandinavian graffiti. These graffiti from coins deposited in northwestern Russia reflect almost perfectly the conditions described in our literary source. Scandinavian (Rus) merchants journeyed to Greek and Khazar centers in the Black Sea and lower Volga as well as to the c

Abbasid capital of Baghdad. We can thus conclude that the Islamic commerce recorded in our written source ca. 850 or later in fact described a trading pattern that already existed in the early ninth century (NOONAN, in the press a)^In sum, it appears that Scandinavian-Russian-Islamic trade was controlled by Rus or Viking merchants for most, if not all, of the ninth century. The above conclusion is further strengthened by an examination of the find spots of the earliest dirham hoards in European Russia. During the first decade of the ninth century, for example, hoards were deposited in the Khazar lands near the area of the Don-Volga portage (Right-bank Tsimliansk, 802) and near the mouth of the Don (Krivianskaia, 805/06) (NOONAN 1981, pp. 82-83, No. 4, pp. 83-84, No. 6). Another hoard was uncovered near the place where the Dnepr and Northern Donets watersheds meet (Zavalishino, 809/10) (NOONAN 1981, pp. 86-87, No. 10). One or more hoards from this time were also found at Kniashchino near Old Ladoga (NOONAN 1981, pp. 84-86, No. 9). Finally, the hoard from Peterhof, near the entry of the Neva river into the Gulf of Finland, has already been notea\ When taken together, these find spots are precisely what one would expect if Rus merchants from Scandinavia were already travelling to the Black Sea, Caspian Sea, and Baghdad in the early ninth century by the routes suggested in our commonwritten source. On their return trip, after obtaining dirhams in the south, the Rus merchants utilized both the Don and the Northern Donets rivers to reach the interior while in northwestern Russia their route went via Old Ladoga and the southern coast of the Gulf of Finland. The conditions described in our sole literary source arose in the early ninth century if not earlier. Islamic sources from the early tenth century depict Islamic and Rüs - Islamic trade discribes now Rüs merchants meeting along the Volga in the Volga Bulgár and Khazar lands. Ibn Rustah, writing around 902, specifically states that both te Rüs and Khazars had commercial relations with the Volga Bulgars while Muslims paida tithe on the goods they brought there (IBN RUSTEH 1955, 159). Ibn Fadlan's famous eyewitness report on Rus-Islamic trade describes how Rusmerchants came to Volga Bulgaria to exchange their goods with Muslim traders in the year 922 (IBN FADLAN 1979, 127-135). In other words, after Islamic trade with European Russia shifted from the Near East to Central Asia in the early tenth century, Rüs merchants no longer journeyed to Baghdad. Instead, they now brought their goods to the Bulgár and Khazar markets along the Volga where their furs, slaves, and sword blades were exchanged with Muslim merchants and other traders from the south. Our ninth-century literary source suggests that Rus merchants did not use the middle Volga in their travels to the Byzantine, Khazar, and Islamic markets. However, the ninth-century dirham hoards from the middle Volga and Perm'Viatka regions suggest very strongly that such a route was utilized by the Rus if only intermittently. This conclusion is strengthened by the fact that an c

Abbasid dirham from a coin hoard deposited at Elmed in the former Kazan' province had 56