Igor / Игорь / Ingvar
In the last episode:
Rurik dies, leaving his new kingdom and his young son, Igor, in the hands of his relative Oleg. Oleg almost immediately acts to bring the southern East Slavic tribes into the new state and moves the capital to Kiev. Now he is closer to Constantinople and all the attendant trading opportunities as well as nearer to his new subjects, to keep them in line if needs be. Towards the end of his life, he collects a huge army and fleet from his vassals and neighbouring tribes and heads off to Constantinople, leaving Igor behind to run the show in Kiev. Oleg returns in triumph with huge amounts of silver, a profitable trade deal with the Romans and, a few years later, signs a more general treaty of friendship and mutual legal recognition to aid the growing trade between the two states. However, Oleg does not get to enjoy this success for long, dying, as predicted by his fortune teller, because of his favourite horse. The horse was long dead, but its skull was home to a poisonous snake.
Igor has acquired the nickname Igor the Old, as he would have been about thirty-five when he finally became Grand Prince of Kiev, and he ruled for another thirty-three years before meeting his rather unpleasant end at the hands of his rebellious subjects. The Povest’ Vremennykh Let (PVL) shows Igor doing a lot of activity at the start of his reign and again at the end, with a twenty-one year gap of silence. Oleg’s record is similar, except that the chronicle has the Hungarians come to visit in 898, breaking what would have been an eighteen year gap in noteworthy activity. This is generally assumed to be due to a portion of the original records going missing or getting damaged. There are some theories that Oleg died much later (922 AD according to a chronicle from Novgorod) or there was a non-dynastic ruler whom the Rurikovichi managed to “memory hole”. As ever, I’m going with the traditional dating, but I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if it turned out to be wrong.
Although Igor had been a leading figure in Kiev for some time, collecting tribute and ruling in Oleg’s absence during his campaign to Constantinople, the PVL mentions his taking power in 913 AD, the year after Oleg’s death in 912. The PVL goes on a massive tangent in 912, discussing other predictions of deaths, so maybe our author Nestor decided to draw a line under 912 and start afresh in 913. In any case, Igor’s reign starts as it ends – with trouble from the Drevlyane. They “shut themselves off” from Igor, so the next year, 914, he goes on campaign to restore their obedience to Kiev, and to force them to pay a greater tribute than they did under Oleg (one beech marten fur per household previously – the new tribute isn’t specified). Having sorted out this little problem at the start of his reign, he comes up against a potentially far larger one – the Pechenegs turn up.
Drevlyane pay tribute to Igor – in furs.
The steppe lands to the south of Kiev and Pereyaslav were inhabited by a procession of nomadic peoples until finally brought under Russian control by Catherine II (the Great) towards the end of the 18th century. Under Oleg, the Magyars were moving to what is now Hungary, as they were being pushed out of their pastures by the Pechenegs, a Turkic speaking group who had previously lived further east.
The problem with a nomadic way of life is that pastoralism or hunter / gatherer economics can only support a very low density of population compared to agriculture and it is much more difficult to acquire the heavy equipment and do the long term preparatory work for technologies like pottery and metallurgy. It’s not impossible, but it is more difficult. The advantages were that if the conditions turned bad in one place, it was easy to up-sticks and move somewhere else, and every fit adult male was expected to be a highly mobile cavalryman, often also a skilled archer. That meant that although it might be difficult to arrange supplies of, for example, charcoal and iron ore to wherever the tribe might be camping, one could attack a settlement, take what you needed and be off before anyone could respond.
The Pechenegs had been living in the steppes to the north of the Caspian sea before being forced south-west to the valley of the Kuban by the Khazars, to whom they now paid tribute. Oleg had been able to switch the loyalty of a number of Slavic tribes from the Khazars to himself. This move of the Pechenegs out of Khazar domination and into an area previously inhabited by ex-Khazar vassals (the Magyars) seems to be part of the same process of Khazar decline.
In 915, the first Pechenegs arrived in the Russian lands, they made peace with Igor and moved on towards the Danube. The PVL goes on to mention that the Pechenegs had been called in by the Roman Empire to help them against the Bulgarians1 by attacking them from behind. Unfortunately, the Roman generals started arguing, the Pechenegs decided they didn’t want to take part and the Bulgars won the war, taking Adrianople. However, the peace between Igor and the Pechenegs didn’t last long. In 920, the two sides fought. The PVL doesn’t say who won, so it might have been a raid and reprisal with the Pechenegs deciding to move off somewhere calmer for a bit.
Igor fights the Pechenegs.
This, and almost all of the events in Igor’s reign, are connected in some way to the main engine of the Russian state’s economy at this point – the collection of goods as tribute and their subsequent export to the Roman Empire. Starting in November, when the autumn mud and rivers started to freeze, the Grand Prince in Kiev along with his warband would start travelling around his realm to collect the tribute owed (this was called the “polyudie / полюдье” roughly meaning “going about the people”) from all the tribes under his control. This included silver coin as well as fur, but also their value equivalent in other goods: honey and wax (wax was in great demand for candles) and even slaves. By moving around, they were able to feed off local supplies of food as well. The winter also served as a time for building ships.
When spring came and the rivers thawed, the Grand Prince would return to Kiev with the tribute and new ships. According to Roman sources, the fleet could comprise as many as five hundred ships, each carrying up to ten tons of cargo. To the south-east of Kiev, between modern Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporozhye (which means “area beyond the rapids”), the Dnieper passes over about 45 miles of harder rock, through which sailing is very dangerous. Here, the ships were unloaded, the slaves would drag the cargo on sleds across land while the ships were carefully manoeuvred through the rocks by rope. As much of the crew as could be spared would be armed, guarding the whole caravan against nomadic raids.
At the end of the rapids, chickens were sacrificed on an island in thanks for the fleet’s survival and they set off down the river for the Black Sea and Constantinople. Even once they were on board their ships again, they still weren’t entirely safe from whichever nomads were living in the steppes. On occasion, the nomads would track the fleet along the coast, hoping a storm would force the traders to seek a “safe” harbour where they could rob them of all their goodies. Upon arrival in Constantinople, the goods were sold (or bartered – relatively few Roman coins of this period have been found in Russia) and the ships would stock up with cloth (especially silk), wine, jewellery and dried fruits and grains for the return journey.
The importance of this system explains many features of what is recorded in the chronicles at this time. The trading relationship with the Romans was of primary significance to the Russian economy, as was the ability of the Grand Prince of the time to collect tribute and to maintain the security of the river network against the nomads of the day – now the Pechenegs. A failure in any of these three areas would be disastrous for the finances of the Grand Prince, and the economy of the country as a whole. Thus all the raids and diplomatic missions to Constantinople, the importance of peace with the nomads and why Grand Princes needed to make sure they extracted plenty of tribute (but not too much) from their subjects.
With the Pechenegs at least temporarily pacified, here starts the twenty year gap in the chronicle. The fact that Igor is still in charge in 941 suggests things couldn’t have gone too badly for him. However, something very interesting was happening at the same time as Igor’s recorded activity in the 910’s and 940’s – the “Russian” raids on the Caspian Sea. The Russian state had been established by Vikings around the trade route between the Baltic Sea and the Roman Empire but the Vikings were also very interested in trade with the Abbasid Caliphate with its capital in Baghdad. To get to Baghdad, it was better to head east and go down the Volga, through Khazar lands and arrive at the Persian ports at the south coast of the Caspian Sea.
The first raid took place at some point between 864 and 884, when a small fleet of Rus’ attacked Abaskun, a port on the south-east corner of the Caspian. This raid went rather badly for the raiders: Alid, the Emir of Tabaristan, killed them all. This raid might have been in response to attacks by local highlanders against Russian / Viking trading posts in the area in 872 rather than plain robbery, although Vikings were known for robbery as well as trade, if they thought they could get away with it. The next set of raiders also failed to cover themselves in glory. The dating is unclear, so it might be a series of attacks over several years, or one inaccurately reported one in 913. If we take them separately, in 909, a fleet of sixteen Viking ships attacked Abaskun again, the town was sacked and the raiders sailed off with their loot. They headed north-west, landing near the mouth of the river Kura, where the army of the governor of Tabaristan, Ahmad, caught up with them and killed them.
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In 910, a larger fleet sailed to Sari, governor Ahmad’s seat of power, and destroyed the town. Half the fleet stayed at sea, while the other half landed and set up camp on the coast of Deylam (south-west coast of Caspian sea). The chaps on the coast were caught by the locals and they were all killed. Those on the ships sailed away – right into a fleet sent by Ali I, the Shah of Shirwan, at which point … they were all killed.
In 913, a fleet of 500 ships, each holding 100 warriors (maybe an exaggeration, most Russian / Viking ships only held up to forty crew), made its way into the Sea of Azov. They asked permission from the Khazar government to cross their territory, the Khagan’s Bek 2 Khazar dual rulersagreed as the Khazars had been in conflict with the states at the south coast of the Caspian recently. It is possible that the earlier raids had been carried out at the behest of the Khazars as well. The fleet sailed up the Don, dragged their ships over to the Volga near modern Volgograd, then sailed down the Volga to the Caspian. At first the fleet raided Deylam and Tabaristan on the south coast, revisiting Sari and Abaskun for some more pillaging (it says a lot for the liveliness of the trade routes that they thought there would be anything worth taking afer the recent depredations) before turning to Shirwan and Arran to raid and rob the locals. They moved on to the islands of the Baku archipelago and the Shah of Shirwan tried to repeat his success, but this time the Russians sank the Shirwanian fleet, killing thousands. There was a stand-off for a few months, before the Russian fleet set off for the Volga, taking with them all the loot they could get on their ships.
They arrived at the Khazar capital Itil, where they shared the plunder with the Khagan, but the mainly Muslim Royal guard wanted to attack them in revenge for their raids on Muslim lands. It is believed that the Guard followed Russians to the Volga – Don portage and attacked there. About 5000 Russians were able to get to the Don and escape, while the others were either killed in the ambush, or travelled up the Volga and were attacked by the peoples living further upstream – the Volga Bulgars and Burtas.
At the time, these two nations were probably still mostly pagan, the Volga Bulgars officially converted to Islam in 922 AD after a diplomatic visit described by Ahmad Ibn Fadlan. His description of the Vikings who were living and trading along the Volga is one of the most well-known first hand descriptions of the people he knew as Rus, of a Viking ship burial and the accompanying human sacrifice. Ibn Fadlan is probably most famous now, at least in the West, as the character played by Antonio Banderas in “The Thirteenth Warrior”. The first part of the film is based on Ahmad Ibn Fadlan’s description of the Rus and the ship burial, including showing the habit of everyone taking it in turn to wash themselves and blow their noses into the same bowl of water and of the killing of the slave girl who chose to accompany the leader of the Rus into the afterlife.
There was one more Caspian raid, but this time, the records suggest it was in some way linked to “our” Russians. In 941, Igor attacked Constantinople, but there had been a prologue to this, not mentioned in the PVL. Rather the information came from a letter, written in Hebrew, from a Khazar merchant living in Constantinople to a functionary in Cordoba collecting information about the Khazars. The letter states that in 939, the Roman Emperor Romanus Lecapenus paid a Russian war leader called H-L-G-W (Helgi / Oleg? – Hebrew doesn’t have vowels) to attack the Khazar fort at the entrance to the Sea of Azov, Tmutarakan’. This leader failed to beat the Khazars and was instead persuaded to attack the Romans instead. The similarity of the name of the Russian leader in the letter to that of Oleg makes some people think that this might be the Grand Prince of Kiev who survived the snake-bite. This is unlikely because at this point he would have been very old for fighting – in his very late seventies if not older.
Igor sets sail for Constantinople with 10000 ships.
Whether H-L-G-W was with him or not, in 941 AD, Igor sets sail for Constantinople with ten thousand ships. The city was almost defenceless, with both the fleet and army elsewhere. The Emperor’s Chamberlain Theophanes was given command of 16 old mothballed warships which were fitted with siphons, with which he struck Igor’s fleet with a shocking application of Greek Fire3.
Greek fire according to the Radziwill Chronicle.
After this stunning blow, Igor’s fleet lands on the Asian shore and repeats some of Oleg’s mistreatment of the locals. Some they crucified, some they used as targets for archery practice, they even drove nails into the heads of some. They robbed and burnt many churches and monasteries and collected plunder from both shores of the Bosphorus. Finally the Roman army arrived and, although the Russians held the field after a day’s fighting, they decided it was more sensible to take to the sea. However, the Roman admiral Theophanes saved the day a second time and largely destroyed the Russian fleet.
Our anonymous Khazar source claims H-L-G-W was so ashamed of his defeat at the hands of the Romans that he could not show his face in Kiev again, so he left to take part in a raid on Persia and died there. This might indicate that at least some of the men on the 943-945 raid on Berda (read on for details!) might have been survivors of this raid on Constantinople who wanted to avoid associating themselves with Igor’s apparent bad luck.
If at first you don’t succeed – Igor’s second campaign against Constantinople.
Igor returns to Kiev with the remains of his fleet and called upon Vikings from overseas to come and help him try again. By 943, Igor was ready for a re-match and had raised an army from the overseas Vikings (varyagi / варяги in Russian), the Rus’ i.e. Norsemen settled in Russia, as well as Polyane, Slovenes. Krivichi and Tivertsy (but not the Drevlyane or Severyane). He also hired some Pechenegs. The Romans in the Crimea and the Bulgarians sent reports of a huge fleet heading for Constantinople, so the Emperor Romanus sent some of his most noble retainers to Igor, saying “Don’t attack us, but take the tribute which we used to pay to Oleg, to which I shall add some more.” The Romans sent gold and silk to buy off the Pechenegs as well. Igor stopped at the Danube and consulted his warband.
The PVL relates that the warband thought it better to accept the tribute that the Romans were offering without fighting as who knew how the battle would go, or whether a storm at sea would sink them anyway. That would suggest that the warriors who knew Igor best weren’t exactly confident in his ability to lead them to victory. So Igor left the Pechenegs to raid Bulgaria and returned to Kiev with his tribute.
Igor gets tribute from the Romans and returns to Kiev.
The next year (944 AD), the Roman Emperors Romanus, Constantine and Stephanus Lecapenus sent envoys to Igor to negotiate a new treaty and trade arrangement. The PVL lists a series of names of representatives of the Russian side. Interestingly, not only Igor was represented, but his wife Olga, his son Svyatoslav (still only a boy), his nephew (also named Igor) and a number of other notables sent their own ambassadors. Twenty-six of the Russian delegation were merchants out of a total of fifty-one envoys named.
The final treaty was similar to the one signed with Oleg, but with a few more obligations for the Russians. For example, the merchants were specifically not allowed to over-winter in Constantinople or even remain in the mouth of the Dnieper, and the Grand Prince of Kiev had to prevent the Black Bulgars from attacking the Roman territory in the Crimea. Igor went to the hill in Kiev with the idol to Perun and summoned the ambassadors. He and the pagan Russians swore to uphold the new treaty. The Christian Russians and Khazars, on the other hand, went to the cathedral of St. Elijah (the PVL points out that it was a cathedral because there were already so many Christians) to swear their oaths. The prophet Elijah (who ascended to heaven in a fiery chariot) seemed to be used as a Christian replacement for Perun (the thunder god, who travelled in a fiery chariot) – many early churches in Russia were dedicated to St. Elijah because of this.
While Igor was busy twisting the arms of the Romans to renew the trade arrangements, there was another Russian / Viking raid on the Caspian. This time a fleet of Russians sailed through the Caspian sea (probably with the agreement of the Khazars), sailed up the river Kura, and took over the city Berda. The Arab sources disagree as to whether this happened in the Islamic year corresponding to 943/944 or 944/945. There were about three thousand Russians, but they were allied to local Lezgins and Alans. The defenders of Berda under-estimated the fighting ability of the Russians and although the locals had a 2 to 1 advantage in numbers, the Russians overcame the defenders and took the city. The Russians offered the inhabitants freedom of religion in return for loyalty, but the Muslim majority lower classes in the city constantly fought against the Russians. The Russians told the unruly population that they had three days to pack up their belongings and leave, after which those who remained were rounded up (with many fighting and dying as a result) and were allowed to buy themselves out of captivity for 20 dirhams each. Those who did not or could not pay their way out were killed.
The Caspian steppes by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky.
The local ruler, Marzuban, collected an army of thirty thousand men and set out to besiege Berda. He had some successes against the Russians, killing seven hundred of them in one battle, but he was called away to deal with rebellions, leaving four thousand men to maintain the siege. The Russians were hit with disease, probably dysentery, which thinned their ranks, so after a few months, they decided to abandon the town under the cover of darkness, return to their ships with whatever plunder they could carry and sail home. Given that the timing is unclear, it is possible that these men, described as Rus in the Arabic sources, might have been men recruited by Igor who found themselves at a loose end after Igor’s armada returned from the Danube, or, if the earlier date was true, these two expeditions were going on at the same time and the Caspian campaign would have been completely unrelated to, and from Igor’s point of view, rivalling his attempt to recruit Vikings to the second attack on Constantinople.
Now we come to the final act in Igor’s life. Despite his success in renewing the trade agreement with the Roman Empire, Igor was clearly feeling the pinch financially. At the end of 944’s listing, it says that Russia was at peace with all countries, but in the autumn Igor started planning a campaign against the Drevlyane in order to take more tribute from them. Remember that they had not been listed among the tribes that had sent men to the 943 campaign against Constantinople, so there might have been more to this than just money, although if they were in a state of partial rebellion, they probably wouldn’t be paying tribute either. In 945, Igor’s warband started complaining that Sveneld’s men (Sveneld was a military commander who was to play a major role in Olga’s regency) were well armed and well dressed, while Igor’s men were “naked”. They suggested going to the Drevlyane to collect tribute for Igor and for them. Igor took more than the customary tribute and acted with violence. On the way back to Kiev, he decided that there was probably more to take, so he left the bulk of his forces to accompany the wagons with the tribute back home, while he and a limited group of men returned to the Drevlyane to demand more.
When they heard Igor was coming back again, Mal, the prince of the Drevlyane judged that “if a wolf attacks the flock of sheep, he will kill them all unless someone kills the wolf. If we don’t kill Igor, he will destroy us all.” They sent a message to Igor pointing out that he had taken all the tribute owed and more, but Igor refused to back down. So near the town of Iskorosten’, the Drevlyane attacked Igor and his men. The warband were all killed, but a Roman source, Leo the Deacon, gives us some more details about Igor. Apparently, rather than give Igor a dignified death, the Drevlyane bent two trees over, holding them down with ropes, tied Igor’s arms and legs to different trees, then let go of the ropes, tearing his body apart as the trees sprang back into position. Ouch. 4 Significance of method
The illustrator hasn’t read Leo the Deacon – Mal has Igor killed, this time with swords.
You might think that no-one could be more upset by this turn of events than Igor, but in our next episode, we find out that someone else might just prove that expectation false. “Vengeance is mine, I will repay” saith the Lord. In this case, He delegates the very comprehensive repayment to the new regent of Russia – Olga.
RATINGS
Length of Reign: Igor, like Oleg, managed to stay on the throne for thirty-three years, so getting 6 points out of 10 which isn’t at all bad. A little less greed might have got another point or two here.
World Fame: Igor has the tale of his life told in 53 languages on Wikipedia. Run that through the spreadsheet and he gets 5 points out of 20.
Achievements: To be honest, looking back at the reign from the unfortunate end (and knowing what is coming next), Igor’s greatest achievement seems to be his choice of wife, but that only really becomes apparent after his death and because of his death. Starting with the negatives – despite having ruled as Oleg’s deputy, his accession to the throne was marked by … a revolt by the Drevlyane marked by a refusal to pay tribute. Although that could be put down to a previously independent people trying their luck at a point of instability, Igor clearly failed to permanently solve the hostility between the Drevlyane and Kiev. Oleg’s expedition to Constantinople formalised the tribute – trade system which Igor took advantage of during most of his reign. Whether his less fortunate raids were launched to restore conditions the Romans had rejected, or to wring more concessions from them than before, it has to be said that the treaty that Igor got was less generous than Oleg managed.
On the plus side, having become Grand Prince at a mature age, he stayed on the throne for thirty-three years. The 944 treaty show us that there were relatives and nobles with enough status to nominate their own ambassadors to negotiations with the Romans within Russia, while Ibn Fadlan and the mysterious Khazar letter-writer show that there were Russian “Princes” outside that state, but nearby, who could have caused Igor trouble, but seem, at the very least, not to have succeeded. A new nomadic threat appeared in the Pechenegs and Igor had dealt with them both with force and with diplomacy relatively successfully. At the very least, they were happy to come with him as allies on a raid against the Roman Empire.
Igor suffers from appearing among a list of rulers who are, due to the lack of detailed sources, literally legendary to a great extent. He fails to live up to the greatness of Oleg or Rurik; both his wife and son cut very impressive figures. The chronicles remark that he asked his warband for advice on the campaign to Constantinople and gave in to their pressure to take more from the Drevlyane. This could be the failings of an old man feeling the years take their toll, or he may have been a more collegiate ruler from the start – something that maybe didn’t impress his contemporaries as much as it might. The missing twenty years might have told us a lot more about his life. Why, as an old man, was his heir only a boy? Are the dates in the chronicles all wrong? Were the 920s and 30s marked with warfare that took the sons of his youth from him in battle? We shall probably never know, but what we do know looks a bit mediocre. He survived, he left an heir to whom he passed on a state in much the same form as he acquired it. If he had died in his bed, I’d have given him 15, but as his last act was to drive his subjects, who had already paid him more than enough tribute, to murderous revolt, I’m going to have to drop it to 12 out of 30.
Defence of the Realm: A bit like the Achievement section, Igor doesn’t fail badly, nor does he shine. Importantly, Russia seems no smaller at the end of his reign than it was at the beginning. According to the Novgorod Chronicle, it might even be a bit bigger. According to this source, Sveneld led a three year campaign against the Ulichi (to the south of Kiev), eventually forcing them to pay tribute. While Igor gets a mention, it seems that Sveneld took the lion’s share, which is why Igor’s men were jealous.
We don’t see the Khazars taking back the tribes wrested from them by Oleg, we don’t see the south over-run by Pechenegs. The Vikings on the Volga trade route don’t raid Kiev or Rostov, they attack the far coast of the Caspian Sea. Later on, we see a Prince in Polotsk called Rogvolod (Ragnvaldr) who has been used to suggest Igor had lost control of this area, but the existence of other people with the title of Prince, subject to the Grand Prince in Kiev, was something referred to in Oleg’s dealings with the Romans, as well as Igor’s. The 941 AD raid on Constantinople ended in debacle, but Igor survived, along with enough of a force to rebuild and scare the Romans into coming to terms in 943 AD. Sending most of his warband back to Kiev while he returned to rob the Drevlyane was foolish, but one must presume, from his long life spent collecting tribute every winter, that it was a single act of folly or desperation, not a habit. I’ll give him 9 out of 20.
Bonus Points. Of the proof of modern popular regard we have considered before, we have the monument to Oleg and Igor in Lyubech, the stamp with Rurik through to Svyatoslav and Rurik’s (and Oleg and Igor’s) ship in Sweden. He gets a bit part in Vikings, as a child, and of course appears in the Rurikovichi (as the only literal Rurikovich – son of Rurik – you’d hope he would) as well as Kreshchenie Rusi. As the main character’s husband, he appears in the film Legend of Princess Olga / Legenda o Knyagine Ol’ge. He also features in a part-historical, part-fantasy novel “Ingvar i Ol’kha” by Yuri Nikitin.
Igor has a street in Kiev named after him, but I couldn’t find any ships. I got the impression he tags along with his more illustrious predecessors and successors here, but he is far from unknown, certainly his fame among his descendants deserves a little boost in points. I’ll give him 10 out of 20.
Reflected Glory. We are starting to get to a point where the sources name a far larger number of people associated with a ruler’s reign. With Igor, he eventually gets outshone by a couple of them: his wife Olga and his son Svyatoslav. The PVL mentions a group of high-ranking people, including Igor’s nephew and namesake and the Khazar letter to Cordoba mentions the mysterious H-L-G-W, who might have taken part in the 941 raid on Constantinople. Finally, we have a war leader Sveneld, who looks after the military side of things for Olga. He rose to prominence under Igor, but his real period of glory comes later, so I’ll deal with him next time.
Igor’s rating: 43 out of 100.
Next time, we find out how Olga fares with rebellious subjects and a young son’s interests to defend.
- We will mention three sets of Bulgars this time, who are related, but by this time separate. Around the middle of the 7th century AD, a nomadic empire known as Old Great Bulgaria formed on the steppes around the lower stretches of the Dnieper, Don and Kuban rivers, with a capital near the tip of the Taman’ peninsula (Phanagoria, just down the road from Tmutarakan). The Bulgars were a Turkic speaking people who got into a fight with the up-and-coming Khazars to the east and the Avars to the west and were defeated. Part of them moved south-west into the Balkans, where they took over a mainly Slavic inhabited area and caused no end of trouble for the Romans. They eventually assimilated to the culture of their Slavic subjects, forming the nation we know as the Bulgarians today. They officially converted to Christianity in 864 AD. Another group headed north and settled around the confluence of the Volga and Kama rivers, becoming known as the Volga Bulgars. In the wake of the Mongol invasion, these people acquired a new ruling class, associated with the Mongols, but mainly Turkic speaking as well, from which the Tatar nation developed. The Volga Bulgars converted to Sunni Islam in 922AD. The Black Bulgars seem to have remained in their old homeland, living to the north of the Azov sea, and judging from the treaty signed between Igor and the Romans, raiding the Roman cities in the Crimea from time to time. They stop being mentioned soon after this, it is assumed they integrated into the Pechenegs. ↩︎
- The Bek was a sort of Prime Minister or Vizier – Khazaria seemed to run a bit like Japan under the Shoguns or France under the later Merovingians, with a Khagan who reigned, but a Bek who controlled the military and generally ruled. ↩︎
- Greek Fire was a flammable substance used as a weapon by the Roman Empire. It’s recipe was a closely guarded secret, but is presumed to include petroleum oil, as it floated on water as well as burning easily. It had been used against Arab fleets for centuries, being pumped from siphons at the prow of Roman warships, but seems to have been a shock for Igor and his men: the PVL describes it as a “terrifying wonder”. It’s last use was during the final defence of Constantinople and the Empire in 1453. ↩︎
- Interestingly, this was the punishment for adultery among the Oguz Turks who lived along the east coast of the Caspian Sea at this time, as recorded by Ahmad Ibn Fadlan. It seems deliberately chosen to avoid anything like a death in combat which would have allowed its victim to enter Valhalla. ↩︎
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