Itil

Itil was the capital of the Khazars on the lower Volga.^[1] The Arabic geographers describe a city on both banks of the river.^[2] Its site is not fixed. It probably lay near the mouth of the river.^[2]

Name

AtilArabic
EtilTurkic

The Arabic sources write the name Atil.^[2] The dictionary of Yaqut, which preserves the report of Ibn Fadlan, heads its article Itil.^[3] Modern accounts write the name Atil, Etil or Itil. They list it beside Khamlikh and Qutlugh and say that these names may refer to one capital, to parts of it or to several cities.^[4] The two halves of the city had names of their own. In one edition of Ibn Hawqal the western half is Atil and the eastern half Khazaran. A second edition reverses this, and the reversal is probably correct.^[2]

The city

Ibn Fadlan did not go to Itil himself. His report gives what he was told about it.^[5] According to the report, the king of the Khazars has a large city on the Atil, on both banks of the river. The Muslims live on one bank. The king and his followers live on the other.^[6]

The head of the Muslims is an officer of the king named Khaz, who is himself a Muslim. He decides the cases of the Muslims who live in the country or come there to trade. No one else judges them.^[7] The meaning of the name Khaz is not explained.^[2] The Muslims have a cathedral mosque with a high minaret and several muezzins, and they pray there on Fridays.^[7]

The report tells of an incident in AH 310 (922 or 923). The king of the Khazars heard that Muslims had destroyed a synagogue in the residence of al-Babunj. He ordered the minaret torn down and the muezzins killed. He is quoted as saying that he would have destroyed the mosque as well, if he did not fear that no synagogue would be left standing in the lands of Islam.^[8] The report adds that the Khazars and their king are all Jews.^[9] Other sources limit Judaism to the khagan, the ruling elite and the inner core of the tribes.^[10]

Later geographers describe the same city. The Muslims, about 10,000 in number, have been placed in the eastern city, which was the trading centre. The ruling class of Judaised Khazars lived on the western bank, where the brick palace of the king stood. Masʿūdī divides the city into three parts, which may mean that the palace stood on an island.^[2] These geographers describe a later situation than Ibn Fadlan. In his time the Muslims in the capital were mainly merchants.^[2] Al-Istakhri says that the Muslims of the city have about thirty mosques.^[11]

Only the royal house had buildings of brick or stone. The rest of the people lived in felt tents. The city was divided into a Khazar part, where the ruler and the Khazars of pure descent lived, and the other districts, where a mixed merchant population lived.^[12] The Muslim sources name seven judges for the realm: two each for Jews, Muslims and Christians, and one for the pagans.^[13]

Trade and the Rus

The state took a tithe on all goods that passed through its land.^[4] Ibn Khurdadhbih, writing about 840, says that Rus ships passing through the country owed a tax of a tenth on their cargoes.^[14] The khagan or his representative collected it from the Rus merchants who came down the Volga to the capital.^[15] The traffic in slaves down the Volga, which Istakhri mentions and Ibn Fadlan confirms, implies a slave market in the capital.^[16]

Masʿūdī tells that some time after AH 300, which began in 912, about 500 Rus ships, each with 100 men, entered the channel from the sea of Nitas, where a Khazar post stood.^[17] The Rus sent to ask the king of the Khazars for leave to pass through his land into the great river and down to the Caspian Sea. They promised him half of the booty that they would take there, and he agreed.^[18] After the raid the Rus sent the king his share. The Arsiyah and the other Muslims of Khazaria then asked the king to leave the Rus to them, and he could not hold them back. About 15,000 Muslims, with many Christians among them, fought the Rus for three days and defeated them.^[19] In one translation these Christians are those living in Atil.^[20] The raid is dated to about 913.^[21]

Moving the capital, and the fall

Masʿūdī says that the capital was once at Semender, eight days from Bab al-Abwab. After Sulayman ibn Rabiʿa al-Bahili conquered the city in the early days of Islam, the seat of the empire moved to Atil, seven days away.^[22] Modern accounts connect the move with Arab pressure.^[1] The earlier capital, Samandar, stood in the North Caucasus.^[23]

In 965 the Rus, allied with elements of the Oghuz, overran Atil and perhaps Sarkel.^[24] The Rus chronicle has Sviatoslav defeat the Khazars under their khagan in 965 and take their town of Belaya Vezha. This town is usually equated with Sarkel, but it may be the Khazar capital.^[25] The chronicle does not record the fall of the capital.^[25] Ibn Hawqal writes that the Rus destroyed Khazaran, Samandar and Atil in AH 358, which is 968 to 969.^[26] The date may mark Ibn Hawqal’s visit to Gurgan and not the attack.^[26]

Ibn Hawqal also says that many Khazars returned to Atil and Khazaran with the support of the Shirvanshah.^[27] An indication in al-Biruni, who died in 1048, is taken to mean that Itil lay in ruins in his time.^[28] A town called Saqsin on the Volga is presumed to have taken its place.^[29]

The search for the site

In September 2008 a team under Dmitry Vasiliev announced that it had found Itil at Samosdelka, about 30 kilometres south-west of Astrakhan. Critics call the identification speculative. In 2020 the Russian Geographical Society concluded that Itil had not been found there. Excavations at Semibugry in the Volga delta have been carried out since 2020 in the hope of finding the city. One hypothesis holds that the rising Caspian Sea washed the city away. The dates proposed for the rise range from the tenth to the thirteenth century.

Everything said above about Itil therefore rests on texts. No find from the site is available to check it.

References

^ a b Golden 1992, p. 238
^ a b c d e f g Canard 1958, p. 141
^ Canard 1958, p. 41
^ a b Golden 1992, p. 240
^ Canard 1958, p. 135
^ Ibn Fadlan; Canard 1958, p. 140–141
^ a b Ibn Fadlan; Canard 1958, p. 141
^ Ibn Fadlan; Canard 1958, p. 141–142
^ Ibn Fadlan; Canard 1958, p. 142
^ Golden 1992, p. 241
^ al-Iṣṭakhrī; Dunlop 1954, p. 92
^ Golden 1992, p. 240–241
^ Golden 1992, p. 242
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 238
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 226
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 227
^ al-Masʿūdī; al-Masʿūdī 1863 (MDCCCLXIII auf dem Titelblatt), p. 18
^ al-Masʿūdī; al-Masʿūdī 1863 (MDCCCLXIII auf dem Titelblatt), p. 19–20
^ al-Masʿūdī; al-Masʿūdī 1863 (MDCCCLXIII auf dem Titelblatt), p. 22–23
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 212
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 239
^ al-Masʿūdī; al-Masʿūdī 1863 (MDCCCLXIII auf dem Titelblatt), p. 7
^ Golden 1992, p. 237
^ Golden 1992, p. 243
^ a b Dunlop 1954, p. 241
^ a b Dunlop 1954, p. 242
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 246
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 248
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 248–249

Sources

Literature

Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
M. Canard, La relation du voyage d'Ibn Fadlān chez les Bulgares de la Volga (1958)
Douglas M. Dunlop, The History of the Jewish Khazars (1954)
al-Masʿūdī; C. Barbier de Meynard and Pavet de Courteille (trans.), Les Prairies d’or, Bd. II (Texte et traduction) (1863 (MDCCCLXIII auf dem Titelblatt))