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

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

merchants travel north to meet the Rus merchants in the markets of Khazaria and Volga Bulgaria as was the case in the tenth century? How did this trade change during the course of the ninth century? These and other pertinent questions cannot be answered by our single common cource. Therefore, to expand our understanding of the ninth century Scandinavian-Russian-Islamic trade, it is necessary to ask what the numismatic evidence can tell us about this commerce. For over fifteen years my research has focused on analyzing the thousands of dirham hoards deposited throughout western Eurasia as a source for the Scandinavian-Russian-Islamic trade. Unfortunately, the topic is so broad and complex that, to date, I have only addressed a small number of the relevant questions. Nevertheless, this essay provides an excellent opportunity to pull together a series of separate studies and determine what can now be said about this great trade based on the dirham hoards. The trade of the Islamic world with European Russia began during the late eighth century. For over a century (ca. 650-ca. 750), the Umayyads had waged an intermittent but persistent war with the Khazars for control of the Caucasus. Despite temporary successes on both sides, neither could establish its hegemony over the entire Caucasus. With the collapse of the Umayyad caliphate in the mid-eighth century, the new c

Abbasid rulers faced a host of serious internal problems and the potential loss of many areas. Consequently, the early c

Abbasid caliphs abandoned the Islamic efforts to conquer the northern Caucasus and sought instead to make peace with the Khazars. Long-standing hostility made Arab-Khazar détente difficult to achieve but, by the last quarter of the eighth century, the old Arab-Khazar conflict for control of the Caucasus was becoming a thing of the past. Islamic commerce with European Russia developed in the late eighth century due to the emergence of more peaceful relations between Arabs and Khazars in the Caucasus (NOONAN 1984, 151-282). The start of Islamic trade with Eastern Europe is reflected very clearly in the numismatic data. Although the Arabs had begun to strike coins by 650 A. D. and a reformed, completely epigraphic dirham was created in the late seventh century, dirham hoards only began to appear in the southern Caucasus during the 770s. The first dirham hoard in European Russia was deposited shortly after 786/87. From this time on, dirham hoards were regularly deposited in both the Caucasus and European Russia, i.e., the trade relations initially established in the 770s-780s reamined active. The literary evidence combined with the dirham hoards from the Caucasus suggest that the early Islamic trade with European Russia went via the Caucasus and/or Caspian. This is confirmed by a comparative analysis of the dirham hoards from the Near East (Iran and Iraq), the Caucasus, Central Asia, and European Russia. The dirhams which appeared in European Russia came from the Near East, not Central Asia. Consequently, the merchants who travelled from Iraq and Iran to European Russia went by way of the Caspian and/or Caucasus (NOONAN 1980, 401-469). Our literary source, as noted above, describes Rus merchants from northern Russia travelling to the Byzantine and Khazar centers of the Black Sea as well as going by a Don-Volga portage to Itil from whence they could cross the Caspian and continue on to Baghdad. While the dating of this literary source is not certain, it appears to have been composed sometime after 850. Therefore, we might well ask whether the commerce it describes only functioned at that time or whether its information on the routes of the Rus merchants dates to an earlier period. 55