Inderi on the Great Silk Road

Cities of Khazaria. Kromos Estatium
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     The khazar cities here include not only those cities that were built by the khazar architects, but also those that were built before the arrival of the khazars, were used by the khazars for their needs and tasks for a long time.
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Inderi on the Great Silk Road **
     Also Indar and Endirei.
     The Andrey-aul settlement, where local historians are trying to place the city of Inderi, is located near the current city of Endirei in Dagestan on the right bank of the Aktash river.
     Many archaeologists, based on the features of the cultural material raised from the excavations, conclude that the chronicled city of Vabander, as well as the city of Balkh, could have been located here. There are suggestions that Semender, Varachan and Belendger were located here. The researchers who put forward these versions gave a lot of evidence in their favor, rejecting the facts that indicate the opposite, of which there were and are immeasurably more.
     The area of the city was very large, almost 70 hectares. The Citadel, with an area of 1 hectare, with a fortress and main posads was 25 hectares, which certainly corresponded to a large commercial city with a fortress, a Citadel and more than one posad at the fortress.
     The fortress walls of the Citadel were separated from the city by a rampart and moats. The city's main village was also protected by a rampart. The height of the shafts was at least 8 meters. The foundations of the dwellings were made of glinobit blocks, or ragged stone.
     The Tersk-Sulak interfluve, which includes the city of Inderi, has always had a mild climate, which allowed the local population to graze cattle on pastures all year round. The entire area around the city was occupied by agriculture, which was based on arable farming, gardening, and rice planting. Wheat, barley, millet, oats, rice, cotton, and silk were grown here, mostly for their own use. Also, people here were engaged in fishing and viticulture.
     Artisans of the city have always been famous for the production of weapons, since the city had a military garrison for several centuries.
     The main peoples here before the arrival of the huns and khazars were the highlanders, from which it is difficult to distinguish a special tribe. Since the 7th century after the birth of Christ, the core of a local autochthonous tribe was formed on the Kumyk platform in the depths of Khazaria, the ethnic basis of which was the kumyks, who later added the kipchak-oguz-bulgar conglomerate of clans and tribes.
     Kumyks have always been in authority among the mountaineers, they formed the basis of the military garrisons of a unified system of cities along the caravan route through the Kumyk plain. Their khagans, khans and shamkhals, as a rule, were the basis of military and trade campaigns of the eastern highlanders to the Transcaucasian region. From these campaigns, the kumyks brought new cultural trends to their cities, which they borrowed from the slavic, turanian, and aryan tribes, being cultural guides from Asia through the Eastern Caucasus to Europe.
     On the ethnic territory of the kumyk people there were many ancient cities and fortresses that arose many centuries before the formation of the kumyk ethnic core, which the kumyks settled in the huns, khazars, arab and persian times.
     The first settlements here begin to be built from the 2nd century after the birth of Christ, and in the middle of the 3rd century, with the appearance of units of the Kingdom of the huns on the Kumyk plain, the first defensive fortifications appear at the settlement.
     With the arrival of the persians here, their shahinshahs create a whole network of interconnected fortifications with fortress functions in the interfluve of Sunzha and Terek. The purpose of these fortresses was to contain the huns, as well as to ensure the safety of movement along the riverbeds of trade caravans of the Great Silk Road.
     In the 7th century, the persians leave here, as their main forces were engaged in a war with the Caliphate. The city was deserted for a while.
     At the beginning of the 8th century, the khazars appeared here, who restored the fortifications of the Fortress, creating a major trade and military-strategic point here, which lasted until the end of the 10th century, when the Khazaria collapsed and the trade routes changed their geography.
     Residents of the city partly left with caravans in search of new places to settle, and partly dispersed to local villages and villages. A small part of the people created a new village nearby, which was named Endyrei, which still exists today.
     It is interesting that the jewish community living in Endirei, officially settled here at the end of the 18th century, keeps legends about their families that they have lived here since the beginning of the New faith. These centuries-old legends contain information that became known to archaeologists only in the 20th century.
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