Saltov of the Khazaria

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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Saltov of the Khazaria **
     Also Savgar or Sarada.
     The city is associated with a settlement near the modern village of Stary Saltov in the Kharkiv region on the right bank of the Seversky Donets river, now there is the Pechenezh reservoir.
     From the beginning of the 8th century to the 10th century, this city was the center of saltov culture. Its end is associated with the collapse of the Khazaria, when trade contacts between all the cities of the Khaganate were cut off.
     In the 8th century, according to Menander, the Avar Khaganate, having entered into a military alliance with Byzantium, attacked savirs, but being rebuffed, besieged the saltovites in their main city of Saltov. Where this city was located, Menander did not say.
     At the beginning of the 8th century, under The Tzar Obadiah, the Volga-Don interfluve was gradually filled with alans, bulgars, and khazars. At the same time, the bulgar part of the khazar union was divided into the Volga bulgars, who advanced towards the Kama river, and the Black sea Bulgarians, who went under the arm of Byzantium. In the Don steppes, the nomadic way of life is changing to agriculture and related craft production.
     By the middle of the 8th century, a full-fledged independent saltov-mayatsk culture was being formed here, which is characterized by diversity, since a large number of tribes participated in its formation, the main of which were the alans, bulgars, slavs, ugric, khazars, savirs, remnants of the goths and crimean greeks.
     Academician Rybakov also brings the city of Saltov closer to the city of Savgar, which appears in written history in the 9th century and disappears in the 10th century.
     With a similar name Saltanovsky, historians know the city in the 16th century.
     Al-Idrisi's map of 1154, attached to the story about the Russian lands, indicates that this is the city of Sarada in the place of Saltov.
     In the 12th century, Saltov disappears from the pages of history, despite the fact that the place near Old Saltov was strategically very advantageous, since all local and river routes-roads-were clearly visible from the high cape on which the city was located.
     Only in the 17th century, on a high promontory, not far from the old settlement, the cossacks founded their settlement, calling it Old Saltov, a good old name in honor of the ancient saltovites.
     The saltov culture, which can be traced to the saltovsky settlement, almost completely fits into the historical boundaries of the Khazar Khaganate.
     Gradually, several cultural and trade centers of this interethnic union are formed on the Don, one of which is the city of Salt, which is different from other centers because there is no noticeable spread of any other religion, except for the so-called among the jews, the fourth, or among the people as tengrian, which was supported Kagan.
     About 400 settlements, burial grounds similar in culture to Saltov were found on the territory of Khazaria.
     The city covered an area of 100 hectares. The city had a Fortress with a Citadel, built of stone. Behind the fortress there was a posad. The city was surrounded by ramparts and ditches. In addition, artificial breaks were made.
     The walls of the Citadel were built of stone with a space inside the wall that was filled with rammed earth. In the wall were towers and gates to the city. Beyond the village there were large numbers of undefended villages.
     There were several types of housing in the city. Most of all there were semi-earthen houses with an area of 20 meters square with a clay stove, either made of stone, or with a stove in the form of an open hearth, surrounded by stone. On top of the earthen part there were wooden blockhouse, or walls of a post structure. The floor was covered with river sand. Next were placed the barns, the granaries in the ground, cellar.
     In addition to semi-rural settlements, there were also yurt-type dwellings, which indicates that the population was not only sedentary, but also steppe.
     The craft was quite diverse. People were engaged in the manufacture of ceramics, pottery, repair and manufacture of fishing utensils, jewelry, bronze, gold and silver casting, metallurgy, as evidenced by the found on the hillfort raw blast furnaces for obtaining iron from ore.
     At the burial of the famous warrior, saltovtsy laid at the crypt and his horse. If ordinary soldiers died, they were placed several people in one crypt.
     The earthen graves belonged to the poor part of the population. Several people could have been buried in one such grave.
     According to the researcher Galkina, the main tribe of the Russian tribal union, the Russian Kaganate, was called the saltov Rus.
     Saltovs were ethnically close to the population of the main part of the Khaganate. On approval of Novoceltcev, these saltovts subsequently began to support Hakan in the North-West of the Khazaria.
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