Chopalav-Tepe

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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Chopalav-Tepe **
     This city is known only from archaeological data. The settlement is located seven kilometers from the village Chopalav-Tepe in Dagestan.
     Analysis of materials collected from this settlement suggests that there was a fortified point with a settlement here in the 8th century, which by the standards of medieval architecture in the Tersko-Sulak interfluve can be attributed to the city.
     Dagestan has always served as a link between South-Eastern Europe, Transcaucasia and Central Asia due to its geographical location. Here many trade routes converged and diverged, for the possession of which Kingdoms and empires fought.
     This circumstance required the creation of fortresses and recreation centers on trade routes, including the Caspian sea Route, the Kumyk Trade route, and the Great Silk Road. The safety of trade caravans and military convoys moving through Derbent and further along the Kumyk platform and along the Caspian spurs was often decisive in the fate of local peoples and world empires.
     The city was located on a small hill about 7 meters high, which created a natural barrier on the approaches to it.
     The area of the developed territory was about one hectare, that is, the entire plane of the hill.
     The most dense cultural layer belongs to the saltov-mayatsky culture, characteristic of the khazars. There are many layers of loamy soil mixed with ash, which are saturated with gray-clay ceramics, there are remnants of metallurgical furnaces, weapons workshops and other materials that indicate the presence of a military garrison and merchant people on the hill.
     At the end of the 7th century, on the Terek-Sulak shopping avenue, in a roadside fortresses and posad when they were already a large number of people savir-bulgaran ethnicity, on the basis of which a socio-cultural focus-center arises here, which begins to form saltov-mayatsk culture, which became the basis and the hallmark of the Khazarus State.
     As a rule, the khazars at the fortresses organized artisan villages, which attracted people of different ethnicities. The task of the artisans was to provide the military garrison in the fortress with weapons, food, horses and fodder.
     Under the cities, the merchant class was also formed, the most cohesive and literate basis of which was the jews. The jews had a written language, they sent letters with caravans to their addressees in the Crimea, Byzantium, China, Persia, Kiev, Europe, in which they reported on the prospects of trade in the territory of their presence. They received letters back with information about what and where they could sell and buy.
     Under the cultural layer of the khazar period, other cultural layers were found that indicate that sarmatians, huns and persians were present here from the beginning of the New Faith.
     After the collapse of the Khazarus state, the polovtsians appear here, whose culture is considered by researchers to be derived from the saltov culture.
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