Curta-Markets in Tenth Century Al Andalus and Volga Bulgh Ria Contrasting Views of Trade in Muslim Europe

Al-Masaq
Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean
ISSN: 0950-3110 (Print) 1473-348X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/calm20
Markets in Tenth-Century al-Andalus and Volga

Bulghāria: Contrasting Views of Trade in Muslim
Europe
Florin Curta
To cite this article: Florin Curta (2013) Markets in Tenth-Century al-Andalus and Volga
Bulghāria: Contrasting Views of Trade in Muslim Europe, Al-Masaq, 25:3, 305-330, DOI:
10.1080/09503110.2013.844503
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2013.844503
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Al-Masaq, 2013
Vol. 25, No. 3, 305–330, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2013.844503
Markets in Tenth-Century al-Andalus and Volga

Bulghāria: Contrasting Views of Trade in Muslim
Europe1
FLORIN CURTA
ABSTRACT There is a conspicuous absence of interest in markets and commercial activities

in recent studies of al-Andalus. A similar problem existed in the Marxist historiography of
commercial relations in Eastern Europe during the early Middle Ages. Although Soviet
scholars initially downplayed trade in favour of agriculture and crafts, the explosion of
archaeological research in key Bulghar centres, as well as the discovery of a number of
sites that may be defined as emporia have dramatically changed both the terms of the
discussion and the role of trade in studies of urbanisation and state formation. This may
in turn provide inspiration for the study of trade in contemporary al-Andalus. Moreover,
the recent emphasis on hydraulic archaeology and its role in explaining the extraordinary
wealth of al-Andalus in the tenth and early eleventh centuries provides a useful
background for a re-assessment of the question of trade in the westernmost region of
medieval Islam.
Keywords: Economics – trade / archaeology – sites; Iberia / Russia; Markets – in
Russia; Bulgars, people – Volga Bulgars; Al-Andalus – trade
Over the last three decades or so, the study of al-Andalus has experienced a revolu-
tion, at the forefront of which is what a leading American historian has called the
“amazing development” of medieval archaeology. Archaeologists have by now
been able to make fundamental contributions to the understanding of a number
of key issues such as “medieval technology, the nature of peninsular feudalism,
basic patterns of human settlement in al-Andalus, urban morphology, and the
organisation of agricultural production”.2 Conspicuously absent from this tribute
is trade. As a matter of fact, any historian interested in learning something about
the archaeological contributions to the history of trade in al-Andalus will be
quickly disappointed. Ibn Hawqal, who visited Spain twice (948 and 974/5) as a
˙
Correspondence: Florin Curta, 202 Flint Hall, P.O. Box 117320, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL
32611-7320, USA. E-mail: fcurta@ufl.edu
1
I would like to thank Roman Kovalev, José Carvajal López, and José María Martín Civantos for reading
and offering valuable advice and bibliographical references on earlier drafts. Mats Roslund provided an
important discussion of various issues with me.
2
Thomas F. Glick, Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages [The Medieval and Early Modern
Iberian World, volume XXVII] (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2005), p. xv. For a brief review of the development
of the archaeology of al-Andalus, see Florin Curta, “Introduction. The Centrality of the Periphery: The
Archaeology of al-Andalus”, Early Medieval Europe 19.4 (2011): 377-84.
© 2013 Society for the Medieval Mediterranean

306 Florin Curta
merchant, may have been well been aware of a large variety of Andalusi products
being exported to Egypt, Khurasān and other places, while seeing in the markets
in al-Andalus such expensive foreign goods as woollen fabrics (sūf), the most beau-
˙
tiful Armenian velvet and tapestries of excellent quality.3 Miquel Barceló, one of the
most influential archaeologists of al-Andalus, dared to differ. He has consistently
rejected the idea that al-Andalus was a mercantile civilisation and insisted that the
portion of the annual caliphal income derived from commercial taxes was no
larger than 12 percent.4 Moreover, a great part of the trade taking place in al-
Andalus was in fact stimulated and conducted by the state in response to its own
needs or to those of its officials. Coins were therefore struck in al-Andalus to facili-
tate not market exchanges, but the payment of taxes. This would also explain why
Spanish Umayyad dirhams rarely appear outside al-Andalus.5 In short, the
“society of al-Andalus cannot be described as a ‘mercantile civilisation’ of an
‘urban middle class’ and other such simplifications; it was instead a society of
rural communities”.6 To be sure, not everybody agrees with Barceló. Some have
been sceptical about the possibility that the many slaves from various countries
and the large quantities of African gold most certainly present in al-Andalus could
have possibly been purchased only with the money collected as taxes. In fact, the
intervention of the Umayyad caliphate in Africa is viewed as an attempt to prevent
a Fātimid interruption of the ties between al-Andalus, on the one hand, and Sijil-
massa ˙ and Tahert, on the other hand, which were crucial for supplying the Caliphate
with grain and gold.7 Others have noted that, unlike the classical city, the most
important function of the Islamic city was commerce. The initial impulse leading
to the rise of cities in al-Andalus came from a group of merchants closely associated
with the state. In fact, several new cities were built in the late-ninth and tenth cen-
turies as trade centres.8 As early as the ninth century, the regulation of activity in
3
Muhammad Abū l-Qāsim Ibn Hawqal, Configuration de la terre, ed. Gaston Wiet, volume I (Paris/Beirut:
˙ ˙
Maisonneuve, 1964), p. 113. For the itinerary of Ibn Hawqal during his visits to Spain, see Evariste Lévi-
˙
Provençal, España musulmana hasta la caída del Califato de Córdoba (711-1031 de J.C.): Instituciones y vida
social e intellectual (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1957), p. 192 fig. 55. See also S.M. Imamuddin, The Economic
History of Spain (under the Umayyads, 711-1031 A.C.) (Dacca: Asiatic Society of Pakistan, 1963), p. 334;
Francisco Franco-Sánchez, “The Andalusian Economy in the Times of Almanzor: Administrative Theory
and Economic Reality through Juridical and Geographic Sources”, Imago temporis. Medium aevum 2
(2008): 83-112, pp. 98-9. Ibn Hawqal specifically mentioned markets in Caracuel, Calatrava, Gharra
˙
and Guadalajara.
4
Miquel Barceló, “Un estudio sobre la estructura fiscal y procedimientos contables del emirato omeya de
Córdoba (138-300/755-912) y el califato (300-366/912-976)”, Acta Historica et Archaeologica Mediaevalia
5-6 (1984-1985): 45-72, p. 63 [reprinted in his El sol que salió por Occidente (Estudios sobre el estado omeya en
al-Andalus) (Jaén: Universidad de Jaén, 1997), pp. 103-36, esp. 124]. See also Miquel Barceló, “¿Qué
arqueología para al-Andalus?”, in Los orígenes del feudalismo en el mundo mediterráneo, ed. Tomás
Quesada and Antonio Malpica Cuello (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 1998), pp. 69-99, esp. 80.
5
Miquel Barceló, “Why and How Did Andalusian Coins Travel to Europe during the Emirate and the
Caliphate from 98/716-717 to 403/1012-1013”, Revue de l’Occident Musulman et de la Méditerranée 36
(1983): 5-18. See also Alberto Canto García, “Cuestiones económicas y numismática andalusí”,
Aragón en la Edad Media 9 (1991): 429-44, pp. 436-37.
6
Barceló, “Un estudio”, 63.
7
Felipe Maíllo Salgado, “De la formación social tributaria ¿mercantile? andalusí”, Anales de Historia
Antigua, Medieval y Moderna 35-6 (2003): 175-84, p. 182.
8
Hugh Kennedy, “From Polis to Madı̄na: Urban Change in Late Antique and Early Islamic Syria”, Past
& Present 106 (1985): 2-27, p. 25; Reyna Pastor de Togneri, Del Islam al Cristianismo: En las fronteras de dos
formaciones económico-sociales, 2nd edition (Barcelona: Ediciones Península, 1985), pp. 42, 46; Manuel
Acién Almansa, “Poblamiento y sociedad en al-Andalus: Un mundo de ciudades, alquerías y husūn”,
˙ ˙
Markets in al-Andalus and Volga Bulghāria 307
urban markets became a matter of legislative concern.9 How can Barceló’s reticence
be explained and why is there no apparent interest in markets in the archaeology of
al-Andalus? While the answer may be found in a historiographic cul-de-sac, a poss-
ible solution is suggested in this article by means of a comparison with the parallel
line of research on markets in tenth- and early eleventh-century Volga Bulghāria.
Although growing out of a very different historiographic tradition, that line of
research was also marred by similar problems. At about the same time as Barceló’s
rejection of the “mercantile model” of the Andalusi society, the (primarily Russian)
archaeology of Volga Bulghāria moved in the opposite direction with remarkable
results that may prove inspiring for the situation resulting from the theoretical
impasse of research in Spain. The idea that the Volga commercial route is ultimately
responsible for the rise of the first urban centres in Eastern Europe as a whole,
including the territory of Volga Bulghāria, is now the basis for an effervescent archae-
ology of markets in tenth-century Islam. Far from denying developments in agricul-
ture or industry, scholars studying the trade organisation in tenth- and early
eleventh-century Volga Bulghāria have by now been able to recognise that the
latter was the catalyst of a dramatic transformation of the local society and the key
impulse towards urbanisation.
Historiography as an obstacle
The idea that Muslim Spain was economically self-sufficient and had no real need to
engage in commercial activity is an old one. According to Évariste Lévi-Provençal,
the entire commerce of al-Andalus consisted only of luxuries.10 During the late
1970s, however, the debate about the role of feudal versus “tribal” (segmentary)
structures in the medieval history of Spain has increasingly shifted the discussion
towards issues of economic and social organisation. Muslim Spain was now
regarded as part of a specifically Arab economic and social formation, which
Samir Amin, an Egyptian-born Marxist economist, had called the “tributary-mer-
cantile formation”. According to Amin, the Arab world “at its apogee” depended
upon trade routes, and its prosperity was bound with that of long-distance trade.
Large cities existed in the medieval Muslim world only because of trade. Amin’s
conclusion was that the “Arab world” was “basically, a commercial grouping”.11
Amin’s work had a considerable influence upon the development of medieval
archaeology in Spain, exactly at the crucial moment when the emphasis in the
research on al-Andalus shifted to rural settlements and irrigation systems. Miquel
(footnote continued)
in Cristiandad e Islam en la Edad Media hispana, ed. José Ignacio de la Iglesia Duarte (Logroño: Institutos
de Estudios Riojanos, 2008), pp. 141-67, esp. 165; Pedro Chalmeta, El zoco medieval: Contribución al
estudio de la historia del mercado (Almería: Fundación Ibn Tufayl de Estudios Arabes, 2010), p. 454.
9
E. García Gómez, “Unas ‘ordenanzas del zoco’ del s. IX: Traducción del más antiguo antecedente de los
tratados andaluces de hisba, por un autor andaluz”, Al-Andalus 22 (1957): 253-316; Pedro Chalmeta
˙
Gendrón, El “Señor del zoco” en España: Edades media y moderna. Contribución al estudio de la historia del
mercado (Madrid: Instituto Hispano-Arabe de Cultura, 1973), p. 364. For markets (aswāq) in Islam,
with a specific emphasis on al-Andalus, see Emilio Molina López, “En el corazón de la calle: El
mercado islámico”, Cuadernos del CEMyR 9 (2001): 189-204.
10
Lévi-Provençal, España musulmana, 183.
11
Samir Amin, Unequal Development: An Essay on the Social Formations of Peripheral Capitalism, trans.
Brian Pearce (New York/London: Monthly Review Press, 1976), pp. 20, 42, 47.
308 Florin Curta
Barceló wrote an extensive introduction to the Spanish translation of Amin’s book,

in which he insisted upon the fundamental distinction between the feudal and the
tributary modes of production.12 Muslim Spain was different from Christian
Spain not just in religious terms, but, more importantly, in terms of the economic
and social organisation. However, it is important to note that Barqueló carefully dis-
tanced himself from Amin’s insistence upon the role of trade in medieval Islam. To
him, Amin’s generalisations could not possibly have applied to al-Andalus, a society
of rural communities that were largely autonomous, with no hierarchical levels med-
iating their relations to the state, to which they paid tribute in the form of taxes.13
Drawing inspiration from Amin’s idea of a tributary mode of production, Barceló
nonetheless pushed aside his description of the Arab world as essentially commer-
cial. At the origin of prosperity in al-Andalus were not trade routes, but agriculture,
with trade playing a secondary, if not altogether minor role. While following Amin,
he fully embraced an anti-market point of view, placing Muslim Spain in sharp con-
trast to feudal Europe.14 The tributary mode of production was characterised by
social evolution only to the extent that it reflected the actions of an elite able to dom-
inate a passive subaltern class living in village communities. Those communities
lacked private property (primarily because their economy was tied to communitarian
systems of agricultural production based on irrigation) and trade, which could in
turn explain the lack of any interest in market exchanges, beyond a very limited
elite group concerned with luxuries or exotic goods.15
This approach is remarkably similar to the debate in Soviet historiography sur-
rounding the ideas of the Russian historian Vasilii O. Kliuchevskii (1841–1911).
According to Kliuchevskii, “the most important result of the flourishing trade
with the East was the rise of ancient trading towns in Rus’”.16 Vikings played a
key role in the organisation of that trade with the East, and thus became the “mili-
tary-commercial aristocracy” of Rus’.17 Under the influence of Kliuchevskii’s “com-
mercial theory”, others advanced the idea that Volga Bulghāria had been a primarily
commercial and industrial state.18 After the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, such ideas
12
Samir Amin, Sobre el desarrollo desigual de las formaciones sociales, trans. Joáquín Jordá (Barcelona: Edi-
torial Anagrama, 1974), pp. 5-53. The Spanish translation actually includes only a portion of Amin’s orig-
inal book, specifically that dealing with Islam.
13
Barceló, “Un estudio”, 63.
14
Alejandro García Sanjuán, “El concepto tributario y la caracterización de la sociedad andalusí: treinta
años de debate historiográfico”, in Saber y sociedad en al-Andalus. IV-V Jornadas de cultura islámica, Almo-
naster la Real (Huelva), ed. Alejandro García Sanjuán (Almonaster la Real/Huelva: Excmo. Ayto. de
Almonaster la Real/Universidad de Huelva, 2006), pp. 81-152, esp. 93-4.
15
Richard E. Blanton and Lane F. Fargher, “Evaluating Causal Factors in Market Development in Pre-
modern Sates: A Comparative Study, with Critical Comments on the History of Ideas about Markets”, in
Archaeological Approaches to Market Exchange in Ancient Societies, ed. Christopher P. Garraty and Barbara
L. Stark (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2010), pp. 207-26, esp. 208.
16
Vasilii O. Kliuchevskii, Sochineniia, volume I (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo politicheskoi lit-
eratury, 1956), p. 127; English version from A History of Russia, trans C.J. Hogarth (New York: Russell &
Russell, 1960), p. 52.
17
Kliuchevskii, Sochineniia, I: 148-150; idem, Boiarskaia duma v drevnei Rusi (Moscow: Sinodal’naia tipo-
grafiia, 1902; repr. Moscow: Ludomir, 1994), pp. 20-38.
18
P.V. Golubovskii, “Bolgary i khazary”, Kazanskaia starina 22 (1888): 32-57. Not everybody agreed with
Golubovskii. Nikolai N. Firsov believed that, on the contrary, the trade routes crossing Volga Bulghāria
had no impact whatsoever on its industrial development; see Iz istorii torgovoi-promyshlennoi zhizni Povolz-
h’ia (s drevneishikh vremen do osmotra etogo kraia Ekaterinoi II) (Kazan’: Tipo-litografiia imperatorskoi uni-
versitet, 1898), p. 9. Even after 1917, the idea of Volga Bulghāria as a commercial state influenced the
were regarded as a “symptom of a bourgeois approach to history, and the commer-

cial theory of Kliuchevskii was condemned”.19 To counter that theory, Soviet histor-
ians developed the Marxist concept of infrastructure and argued that towns had been
an essential component of feudalism in Russia, and that the development of agricul-
tural production had led to the rise of local aristocracies, which in turn had used
towns as centres of power.20 The significance of trade was therefore downplayed
along with the contribution of the Vikings to the medieval history of Russia.
Mikhail Tikhomirov argued that towns actually grew out of settlements of craftsmen
and traders outside tribal strongholds.21 Similarly, Aleksandr Smirnov believed that
towns in Volga Bulghāria emerged from tribal centres, which tribal leaders had
turned into fortified centres of feudal power.22 Such ideas remained the basis of
Soviet research on towns in Rus’ and Volga Bulghāria until the early 1990s.23 As
Anatolii Kirpichnikov has succinctly put it, “one of the symptoms of the current
Marxist approach is the emphasis on agriculture, the labor of peasants, while
Marxist interpretation of its history. The Bulgar elites were now regarded as a “commercial bourgeoisie”.
See V.F. Smolin, “Arkheologicheskii ocherk Tatrespubliki”, in Materialy po izucheniiu Tatarstana, ed.
Galimzhan Ibrakhimov and Nikolai I. Vorob’ev, volume II (Kazan’: Biuro kraevediniia pri Akademiches-
kom centre T.N.K.P., 1925), pp. 38-51, esp. 45. For the historiography of trade and trade relations in
Volga Bulghāria, see Rafael’ M. Valeev, Volzhskaia Bulgariia: Torgovlia i denezhno-vesovye sistemy IX-
nachala XIII vekov (Kazan’: Fest, 1995), pp. 8-20.
19
Anatolii N. Kirpichnikov, “Istoriia stanovleniia i razvitiia velikogo volzhskogo puti”, in Velikii volzhskii
put’: Materialy IV etapa mezhdunarodnoi konferencii “Velikii Volzhskii put’”. Staraia Ladoga, Sankt Peters-
burg, Mandrogi, Iaroslavl’, Kostroma, Nizhnii Novgorod, Kazan’, 3-10 avgusta 2004 g., ed. K.Sh. Iskhakov
(Kazan’: Izdatel’stvo Kazanskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, 2005), pp. 143-51, esp. 146.
20
The connection between the development of agriculture and the rise of towns was first established by
Serafim V. Iushkov in his Ocherki po istorii feodalizma v Kievskoi Rusi (Moscow/Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo
Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1939), pp. 23, 46, 47, 131-7, 172.
21
Mikhail N. Tikhomirov, Drevnerusskie goroda (Moscow: Izdanie Moskovskogo Gosudarstvennogo Uni-
versiteta, 1946). According to Tikhomirov, trade played some role only in densely inhabited areas, the
prosperity of which was based on agriculture. For the impact of Tikhomirov’s ideas on the Soviet research
on towns, see Eduard Mühle, Die städtischen Handelszentren der nordwestlichen Rus’. Aufzüge und frühe
Entwicklung altrussischer Städte (bis gegen Ende des 12. Jahrhunderts) [Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte
der östlichen Europa, volume XXXII] (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1991), p. 11.
22
Aleksandr P. Smirnov, “Ocherki po istorii drevnikh bulgar raiona srednego Povolzh’ia”, Trudy Gosu-
darstvennogo Istoricheskogo Muzeia 11 (1940): 55-136. Smirnov specifically refers to Tikhomirov’s
theory in his “Osnovnye etapy istorii goroda Bolgara i ego istoricheskaia topografiia”, in Trudy Kuibyshevs-
koi arkheologicheskoi ekspedicii, ed. Aleksandr P. Smirnov (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR,
1954), pp. 302-24, esp. 314. For a critique of the use of the notion of “tribe” in studies pertaining to
Volga Bulghāria, see Faiaz Sh. Khuzin, Bulgarskii gorod v X-nachale XIII vv. (Kazan’: Master Lain,
2001), p. 76.
23
In the late 1980s, Tamara Khlebnikova still advocated the idea that towns in Volga Bulghāria had
emerged when Bulgars abandoned nomadism in favour of a sedentary life based on agriculture, and
the Bulgar society turned feudal. See Tamara A. Khlebnikova, “Istoriia arkheologicheskogo izucheniia
Bolgarskogo gorodishcha: Stratigrafiia, topografiia”, in Gorod Bolgar: Ocherki istorii i kul’tury, ed.
German A. Fedorov-Davydov (Moscow: Nauka, 1987), pp. 32-88, esp. 57. Only Igor Froianov noted
the chronological gap between the earliest evidence of economic development in agriculture and crafts
(ninth century), and the earliest evidence of towns (tenth and eleventh centuries), from which he drew
the conclusion that agriculture and industry were not sufficient for the rise of cities. He was immediately
attacked for having questioned the scholarly orthodoxy. See Igor Ia. Froianov, Kievskaia Rus’: Ocherki
social’no-politicheskoi istorii (Leningrad Nauka, 1980), p. 232; Igor Ia. Froianov and Andrei Iu. Dvorni-
chenko, Goroda-gosudarstva Drevnei Rusi (Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Leningradskoi gosudarstvennoi univer-
siteta, 1988), pp. 29-30. For the attack, see Mykola F. Kotliar, “Goroda i genezis feodalizma na Rusi”,
Voprosy istorii 12 (1986): 74-90.
310 Florin Curta
trade takes only a secondary role, for throughout history it could never lead to the
accumulation of capital”.24 In the Soviet Union, it was archaeologists who began
to bring back trade as an interpretative framework and advocated the idea that it
may have had a greater role in the rise both of early medieval towns and of the
early medieval state than previously thought. Although they did not mention
Kliuchevskii anywhere in their comparative study of Gnezdovo and Birka, Valentin
Bulkin and Gleb Lebedev were therefore promptly criticised for their attempt to
revive the Russian historian’s “commercial theory”.25 Al’fred Khalikov similarly
argued that the first Bulgar towns were the result of trade, followed by the develop-
ment of agriculture and crafts, as well as the adoption of Islam, which had turned
those towns into religious centres.26 According to Evgenii Kazakov, during the
second half of the tenth and the early decades of the eleventh century, Volga
Bulgar society experienced a dramatic transformation triggered by three almost con-
comitant processes: the economic acceleration due to the opening of the Volga route
to the Rus’ trade with Central Asia; the rise of the state; and the conversion to Islam.
The opening of the trade route with Samānid Central Asia coincided in time with the
establishment of the first urban centres – Bolgar and Suwar.27 Cities in the Middle
Volga region emerged as a direct consequence of the development of markets and
centres of production, which later turned into administrative and industrial
centres as well.28 Moreover, the Bulgars took the urban phenomenon to the neigh-
bours with whom they traded, as emporia (“ports-of-trade”) were established at that
24
Kirpichnikov, “Istoriia stanovleniia”, 146.
25
Valentin A. Bulkin and Gleb S. Lebedev. “Gnezdovo i Birka: K probleme stanovleniia goroda”, in
Kul’tura srednevekovoi Rusi: Posviashchaetsia 70-letiia M. K. Kargera, ed. Anatolii N. Kirpichnikov and
Pavel A. Rappoport (Leningrad: Nauka, 1974), pp. 11-17. See also Valentin A. Bulkin, Igor
V. Dubov, and Gleb S. Lebedev, Arkheologicheskie pamiatniki drevnei Rusi IX-XI vekov (Leningrad: Izda-
tel’stvo Leningradskogo universiteta, 1978); Igor V. Dubov, Severo-Vostochnaia Rus’ v epokhu rannego
srednevekov’ia. Istoriko-arkheologicheskie ocherki (Leningrad: Nauka, 1982); Evgenii N. Nosov, “Inter-
national Trade Routes and Early Urban Centres in the North of Ancient Russia”, in Fenno-Ugri et
Slavi1978. Papers Presented by the Participants in the Soviet-Finnish Symposium “The Cultural Relations
between the Peoples and Countries of the Baltic Area during the Iron Age and the Early Middle Ages”, in Helsinki
May 20 - 23, 1978, ed. Paula Purhonen (Helsinki: Suomen Muinaismuistoyhdistys, 1980), pp. 49-62;
Elena A. Mel’nikova and Vladimir Ia. Petrukhin, “Formirovanie seti rannegorodskikh centrov i stanovle-
nie gosudarstva (Drevniaia Rus’ i Skandinavia)”, Istoriia SSSR 5 (1986): 64-78. For the circumstances
surrounding the supposed rehabilitation of Kliuchevskii’s theory, see also Evgenii N. Nosov, “Pervye
goroda severnoi Rusi (postanovka problemy: istoriia i arkheologiia)”, in Kul’turnoe nasledie rossiiskogo gosu-
darstva, ed. Anatolii N. Kirpichnikov, Evgenii N. Nosov and V.S. Ponomarev (St Petersburg: IPK
“Vesti”, 2003), pp. 401-27, esp 410-12. For the critique of Bulkin and Lebedev’s supposed rehabilitation
of Kliuchevskii’s theory, see Daniil A. Avdusin, “Proiskhozhdenie drevnerusskikh gorodov (po arkheolo-
gicheskim dannym)”, Voprosy Istorii 12 (1980): 24-42.
26
Al’fred Kh. Khalikov, “Islam i urbanizm v Volzhskoi Bolgarii”, in Biliar – stolica domongol’skoi Bulgarii,
ed. Petr N. Starostin, Al’fred Kh. Khalikov, and Faiaz Sh. Khuzin (Kazan’: Akademiia Nauk SSSR,
Kazanskii nauchnyi centr, 1991), pp. 47-60, esp. 57, 58. For the influence of Kliuchevskii’s “commercial
theory” upon the research on Volga Bulghāria, see Khuzin, Bulgarskii gorod, 77-8.
27
Evgenii P. Kazakov, Kul’tura rannei Volzhskoi Bolgarii: Etapy etnokul’turnoi istorii (Moscow: Nauka,
1992), p. 311; idem, “K probleme sootnosheniia istoricheskikh etapov Volzhskoi Bolgarii i Velikogo
Volzhskogo puti”, in Velikii volzhskii put’: Materialy II-go etapa mezhdunarodnoi nauchno-prakticheskoi kon-
ferencii “Velikii Volzhskii put’”, Sankt-Petersburg, Stockholm, Sankt Petersburg, 5-14 avgusta 2002 g., ed. R.
N. Musina (Kazan’: Institut istorii Akademii Nauk Respubliki Tatarstane, 2003), pp. 70-9, esp. 71.
28
Andrei M. Belavin, “Torgovye faktorii volzhskikh bolgar i puti vozniknoveniia gorodov v Povolzh’e i
Predural’e v srednie veka”, in Srednevekovaia Kazan’: Vozniknovenie i razvitie. Materialy Mezhdunarodnoi
nauchnoi konferencii, Kazan’, 1-3 iunia 1999 goda, ed. Faiaz Sh. Khuzin, K.H. Iskhakov, Rafael’
S. Khakimov and M.A. Usmanov (Kazan’: Master Lain, 2000), pp. 122-6, esp. 122-3.
same time within the lands to the north and north-east of the borders of Volga
Bulghāria, the lands from which the goods (primarily furs) came that were then
sold on the markets in Bolgar and Suwar.29
Why were archaeologists, but not historians, capable of overcoming the impasse
of the historiography of medieval trade and urbanism in Russia and the neighbouring
countries? Was it that in Soviet Russia they were less exposed to the scholarly ortho-
doxy to which historians had to subscribe more often and more evidently? On closer
examination, it appears that in fact the theoretical premises of the approach to this
issue that Soviet archaeologists embraced were thoroughly Marxist. Instead of insist-
ing on a supposed contrast between a “truly” feudal and a tributary mode of pro-
duction, they focused their attention on a number of issues pertaining to
economic and social development and in doing so turned to (long-distance) trade
as the most convenient, if not the only framework to explain change.30 The line of
thinking and the conclusions leading to such an interpretation may be best illus-
trated by an examination of the archaeological evidence of trade in tenth- to early
eleventh-century Volga Bulghāria.
A model of research? Trade in Bulghāria
Most written sources pertaining to Volga Bulghāria also refer to trade.31 Al-Masʿūdı̄
knew that the Volga Bulgars were “a kind of Turk, and caravans constantly go
from them to Khwarazm in the land of Khorasan, [and] from Khwarazm to
them”.32 Al-Muqaddası̄ even listed all the commodities from Bulghāria traded to
Khwarazm:
29
Valeev, Volzhskaia Bulgariia, 41.
30
To be sure, Aleksandr Iakubovskii, the leading Soviet Orientalist, treated Volga Bulghāria as a tributary
formation, for he regarded it as an example of “Asian feudalism”. See Aleksandr Iu. Iakubovskii, Feoda-
lizm na vostoke (Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo GAIMK, 1932), pp. 27-8; idem, “Feodal’noe obshchestva Srednei
Azii i ego torgovlia s Vostochnoi Evropi v X-XV vv.”, in Materialy po istorii Uzbekskoi, Tadzhikskoi i Turk-
menskoi SSR, ed. A.N. Samoilovich, volume I, part iii (Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk, 1932),
pp. 1-60; idem, “K voprosu ob istoricheskoi topografii Itilia i Bolgar v IX-X vv.”, Sovetskaia Arkheologiia
10 (1948): 255-70.
31
There seems to be a clear connection between the sudden interest in commodities traded from Volga
Bulghāria and the information about cities. The oldest sources (reproduced by Ibn-Rusta) make no
mention of cities. See Maryta Espéronnier, “Villes et commerce: La Khazarie et la Bulgarie de la
Volga, d’après les textes arabes et persans des IXe et Xe siècles”, in Les centres proto-urbains russes entre
Scandinavie, Byzance et Orient: Actes du colloque international tenu au Collège de France en octobre 1997,
ed. Michel Kazanski, Anne Nercessian and Constantin Zuckerman (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 2000),
pp. 409-24, esp. 418; István Zimonyi, “The Towns of the Volga Bulghars in the Sources (10-13th
Century)”, in Srednevekovaia Kazan’: Vozniknovenie i razvitie. Materialy Mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konfer-
encii, Kazan’, 1-3 iunia 1999 goda, ed. Faiaz Sh. Khuzin, K.H. Iskhakov, Rafael’ S. Khakimov, and M.A.
Usmanov (Kazan’: Master Lain, 2000), pp. 134-40, esp. 134-5.
32
Masʿūdı̄, Murūj al-dhabab, English version from Vladimir Minorsky, A History of Sharvān and Darband
(Cambridge: Heffer, 1958), p. 149. See also Tat’iana M. Kalinina, “Al-Masudi o bulgarakh”, in Mezhdu-
narodnye sviazi, torgovye puti i goroda srednego Povolzh’ia IX-XII vekov. Materialy Mezhdunarodnogo simpo-
ziuma Kazan’, 8-10 sentiabria 1998 g., ed. Faiaz Sh. Khuzin (Kazan’: Izdatel’stvo “Master Lain”, 1999),
pp. 13-20, esp. 17. For Khwarazm as the main trading partner of Volga Bulghāria during the late-tenth
and early-eleventh centuries, see Irina G. Konovalova, “Drevniaia Rus’ i Volzhskaia Bulgariia: Torgovlia
i politika v vospriiatii drevnerusskikh letopiscev”, in Vostochnaia Evropa v drevnosti i srednevekov’e:
Kontakty, zony kontaktov i kontaktnye zony. XI Chteniia pamiati chlena-korrespondenta AH SSSR Vladimira
Terent’evicha Pashuto. Moskva, 14-16 aprelia 1999 g. Materialy k konferencii, ed. Elena A. Mel’nikova
(Moscow: Institut vseobshchei istorii Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk, 1999), pp. 75-81, esp. 78. For the
312 Florin Curta
sables, miniver, ermines, and the fur of the steppe foxes, martens, foxes,
beavers, spotted hares, and goats [i.e., goat hides]; also wax, arrows, birch
bark, high fur caps, fish glue, fish teeth [most likely walrus tusks], castor-
eum, prepared horse hides, honey, hazelnuts, falcons, swords, armor,
khalanj wood, Slavonic slaves, sheep and cattle.33
According to Gardı̄zı̄, who wrote in the mid-eleventh century, the wealth of the
Bulgars “consists of ermine (or weasel) pelts. They have no solid money of their
own and thus give payments of ermine skins at the rate of one pelt for two and a
half dirhams”.34 Ibn Fadlān, who visited Volga Bulghāria in 922, knew that the
camp of the Bulgar ruler˙Almish (Almush) b. Shilkı̄ was
by a water called Khallaja, which consists of three lakes, two large and one
small… Between this place and a large river of theirs which flows into the
land of the Khazars, and which is called the river Itil [Volga], is approxi-
mately one farsakh [about 6 km]. On this river is the site of a market,
which takes place periodically, in which much precious merchandise is
sold.35
He also noted that Bulgar merchants regularly “go out to the land of the Turks
[Oghuz] and bring back sheep, and to the country called Wisu and return with
sable and black fox”.36
Middle Volga-Khwarazm caravan route, see also Roman K. Kovalev, “Commerce and Caravan Routes
along the Northern Silk Road (Sixth-Ninth Centuries). Part I: The Western Sector”, Archivum Eurasiae
Medii Aevi 14 (2005): 55-106, pp. 66-73. The caravan route mentioned by Ma‘sūdı̄ is that on which Ibn
Fadlān’s embassy also travelled. The embassy left Urgench, on the Amu Daria River, on 4 March 922, and
˙
reached the camp of the Bulgar ruler on 12 May 922 – a trip of 70 days. See Thomas S. Noonan, “Volga
Bulghāria’s Tenth-century Trade with Samanid Central Asia”, Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 11 (2000):
140-218, pp. 163-4.
33
Muhammad bin Ahmad al-Mukaddası̄, Kitāb Ahsan al-takāsı̄m fı̄ maʿrifat al-akalı̄m, ed. Michael Jan de
˙ ˙ ˙ ˙
Goeje [Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum, volume III] (Leiden: Brill, 1877), pp. 324-5; English
translation from Vasilii V. Bartol’d, Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion, 2nd edition [E.J.W. Gibb
Memorial Series, volume V] (London: Luzac, 1928), p. 235. The furs were sought after in the
ʿAbbāsid Caliphate because of their use for the production of robes of honour (khila), while the elites
wore caftans, pelisses, and bonnets – all lined with precious furs, especially black fox. Roman
K. Kovalev, in “The Infrastructure of the Northern Part of the ‘Fur Road’ between the Middle Volga
and the East during the Middle Ages”, Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 11 (2000): 25-64, pp. 25-6, 27,
notes that the fur trade between Islamic Central Asia and Volga Bulghāria must have started as some
point in the third quarter of the ninth century.He says that the sable and grey squirrel pelts were most
likely a local commodity in Volga Bulghāria, but that, according to Ibn Hawqal, the beavers were
˙
hunted along the Slavic rivers. According to Kovalev, Ibn Fadlān noted the abundance of honey from
˙
wild bees in the forests of Bulghāria, but the amber and the swords were evidently not local products.
34
A.P. Martinez, “Gardı̄zı̄’s Two Chapters on the Turks”, Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 2 (1982): 109-
217, pp. 158-9. Those dirhams were then used to obtain goods from the Rus’ and the Saqlabs.
35
Ibn Fadlan’s Journey to Russia. A Tenth-Century Traveler from Baghdad to the Volga River, trans. Richard
N. Frye (Princeton: Markus Wiener, 2006), pp. 57-8.
36
Ibid., 57. The land of Wı̄sū or Isū, said to be a three-month journey from the Bulgar lands, is also
mentioned by al-Marvazı̄, who wrote in the early twelfth century. According to him, beyond the
Wı̄sū were the Yūra, with whom the Bulgar merchants engaged in a dumb trade – clothes, salt, and
other goods in exchange for sable and other fine furs. See Sharaf al-Zamān Tāhir Marvazı̄ on China,
the Turks, and India, trans. Vladimir Minorsky (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1942), p. 34; Janet
Ibn Fadlān’s general assessment was unequivocal: “Bulgharia has abundant

wealth, and˙ the king’s tax revenues are many”.37 Modern researchers agree: Volga
Bulghāria grew immensely rich in the late-tenth and early-eleventh centuries, and
Bolgar was by far a richer and more prosperous city than Kiev during that period.
The source of this extraordinary prosperity was the trade with Central Asia, which
was gigantic by any standard, the largest in all of tenth-century Eurasia. Volga
Bulghāria had by far the largest fur market in all Eastern Europe during the tenth
and early-eleventh centuries.38 It has been suggested that Volga Bulghāria was a
“silver bridge” between Scandinavia and Samānid Central Asia. Indeed, because
of the fur trade, some 125 million dirhams entered Eastern Europe through Volga
Bulghāria in the direction of Scandinavia.39 Only a small portion of that surplus
value was retained locally in the form of hoards, 17 of which are so far known
from the territory of Volga Bulghāria.40 All of them have a terminus post quem
between 900 and 1010, and include dirhams struck in various mints in
Central Asia, an indication that such collections consisted of coins that had
previously exchanged many hands, most likely as a result of trade.41 In addition, imi-
tations of Samānid dirhams were also struck in Volga Bulghāria, followed, after the
mid-tenth century, by official Bulgar dirhams struck in Bulgar mints with the names
of Bulgar rulers.42 The earliest of such coins was minted in Suwar in 949/50 in the
Martin, Treasure of the Land of Darkness: The Fur Trade and Its Significance for Medieval Russia (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 7-8; Kovalev, “Infrastructure of the Northern Part”, 28.
37
Ibn Fadlan’s Journey, 62.
38
Martin, Treasure, 6.
39
Many of those coins remained in Eastern Europe and never reached Scandinavia. However, the vast
majority of dirham imitations found in Scandinavia are Bulgar imitations. See Ingmar Jansson, “‘Oriental
Import’ into Scandinavia in the 8th-12th Centuries and the Role of Volga Bulgaria”, in Mezhdunarodnye
sviazi, torgovye puti i goroda srednego Povolzh’ia IX-XII vekov. Materialy Mezhdunarodnogo simpoziuma
Kazan’, 8-10 sentiabria 1998 g., ed. Faiaz Sh. Khuzin (Kazan’: Izdatel’stvo “Master Lain”, 1999),
pp. 116-22, esp. 117. Iskander L. Izmailov, in “K voprosu o bulgaro-skandinavskikh kontaktakh”, in
Biliar - stolitsa domongol’skoi Bulgarii, ed. Petr N. Starostin and Al’fred Kh. Khalikov (Kazan’: Akademiia
nauk SSSR, Kazanskii nauchnyi centr, 1991), pp. 130-8, esp. 131, notes that after 944, new dirhams
stopped reaching Birka. See also Noonan, “Volga Bulghāria’s Tenth-century Trade”, 210; Kovalev,
“Infrastructure of the Northern Part”, 30.
40
Rafael’ M. Valeev, “Torgovo-ekonomicheskie i kul’turnye sviazi bulgarskogo gosudarstva so stranami
Vostoka v IX-XIII stoletiiakh”, in Velikii Volzhskii put’: Materialy III-go etapa mezhdunarodnoi nauchno-
prakticheskoi konferencii “Velikii volzhskii put’”, Astrakhan’, Makachkala, Derbent, Baku, Enzeli, Tegeran,
Aktau, Astrakhan’, 3-14 avgusta 2003 g., ed. K. Sh. Iskhanov, Rafael’ S. Khakimov, F.G. Khamidullin,
M.A. Usmanov, L.M. Drobizheva, Valerii A. Tishkov, L.N. Andreeva, R.R. Khairutdinov and S.T.
Rakhimov (Kazan’: Institut istorii Akademii Nauk Respubliki Tatarstane, 2004), pp. 20-5, esp. 23-4,
lists 19 hoards.
41
The largest hoard is Biliarsk II, with 1,785 dirhams and their fragments, struck for a great variety of
rulers in the Muslim world. For a long while, the hoard found in Staroe Al’met’evo, 25 km from Biliar,
was believed to be the earliest hoard of dirhams from the territory of Volga Bulghāria. Over 40 percent
of its 167 coins were struck in Near Eastern mints, and the most recent coin in the collection is dated
to 984/5. However, the earliest hoard from the lands of Volga Bulghāria is Semenovoe I, the most
recent coin of which was struck in 979/80. See Roman K. Kovalev, “Khazaria and Volga Bulğāria as Inter-
mediaries in Trade Relations between the Islamic Near East and the Rus’ Lands during the Tenth to
Early-Eleventh Centuries: The Numismatic Evidence”, Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 18 (2011): 43-
156, pp. 143, 144-5, 148.
42
The first Bulgar coins were published in Christian M. Frähn, “Drei Münzen der Wolga-Bulgaren aus
dem X. Jahrhundert”, Mémoires de l’Académie impériale des sciences 1 (1832): 171-204. The earliest imita-
tive dirhams were struck between 901 and 907 on behalf of Ja‘far b. ʿAbdallāh, the name taken after
314 Florin Curta
name of Tālib ibn Ahmad, the latest is from 986/7.43 The most prolific issuers of imi-
˙
tative dirhams were˙ Almish, the Bulgar ruler visited by Ibn Fadlān, and his son
˙
Mı̄khāʾı̄l b. Jaʿfar, who struck coins in Bolgar in the 920s and 930s, respectively.
The largest number of official Bulgar coins was minted in the 970s in the names
of Muʾmin b. Hasan and Muʾmin b. Ahmad. The circulation of those coins was
remarkably wide, ˙ as the 600 Bulgar dirhams
˙ known so far appear in hoards found
in Russia, Ukraine, Estonia, Poland, Finland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway.44
Such a distribution bespeaks commercial exchanges. Similarly, the presence of arte-
facts of Bulgar production in the lands to the north, north-west, and north-east of
Volga Bulghāria cannot be explained without reference to trade. The Bulgars estab-
lished trade centres on the territory of the present-day Republic of Mari El and in the
Kama region (Avkul’, Ybyr, and Chulman), which controlled the fur trade with the
north.45 It is through the Bulgar intermediary that dirhams first reached native sites
in the region.46 In the whole of Eastern Europe, the Kama region is the only one in
which bone assemblages in excavated native settlements contain remains of animals
of the genus Martes (which includes both marten and sable). Shortly before and after
the year 1000, sable furs were entering the Bulgar trade either from western Siberia
or from the Kama region.47 Moreover, the Bulgar trade is responsible for the
conversion by the Bulgar ruler Almish. See S.A. Ianina, “Novye dannye o monetnom chekane Volzhskoi
Bolgarii X v.”, in Trudy Kuibyshevskoi arkheologicheskoi ekspedicii, ed. Aleksandr P. Smirnov (Moscow:
Izdatel’stvo akademii nauk SSSR, 1962), pp. 179-204.
43
Gert Rispling, “The Volga Bulgarian Imitative Coinage of al-Amir Yaltawar (‘Barman’) and Mikail
b. Jafar”, in Sigtuna Papers. Proceedings of the Sigtuna Symposium on Viking-Age Coinage, 1-4 June 1989,
ed. Kenneth Jonsson and Brita Malmer (Stockholm/London: Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets
Akademien/Spink and Son, 1990), pp. 275-82, esp. 278-9; Noonan, “Volga Bulghāria’s Tenth-century
Trade”, 162-3. No coins were struck after 986/7.
44
Rafael’ M. Valeev, “O bulgarskoi tovarno-denezhnoi sisteme X v.”, in Iz istorii material’noi kul’tury
tatarskogo naroda, ed. Evgenii P. Kazakov and Iu. I. Smykov (Kazan’: Kazanskii filial Akademii Nauk
SSSR, 1981), pp. 64-73; Vladislav V. Kropotkin, “Bulgarskie monety X veka na territorii drevnei Rusi
i Pribaltiki”, in Volzhskaia Bulgariia i Rus’ (k 1000-letiiu russko-bulgarskogo dogovora), ed. Al’fred Kh. Kha-
likov (Kazan’: Institut iazyka, literatury i istorii im. G. Ibragimova Kazanskogo Nauchnogo Centra AN
SSSR, 1986), pp. 38-62, esp. 38. The largest cluster of hoards with Bulgar coins is on the southern
shore of Lake Peipus. See Vladislav V. Kropotkin, “Torgovye sviazi Volzhskoi Bolgarii v X v. po numiz-
maticheskim dannym”, in Drevnie slaviane i ikh sosedi, ed. Iurii V. Kukharenko and Petr N. Tret’iakov
(Moscow: Nauka, 1970), pp. 146-50, esp. 148-9.
45
Valeev, Volzhskaia Bulgariia, 41; Evgenii P. Kazakov, “Torgovo-remeslennye poseleniia bulgar X-XI
vv. i Severo-Vostochnaia Evropa”, in Mezhdunarodnye sviazi, torgovye puti i goroda srednego Povolzh’ia
IX-XII vekov: Materialy Mezhdunarodnogo simpoziuma Kazan’, 8-10 sentiabria 1998 g., ed. Faiaz Sh.
Khuzin (Kazan’: Izdatel’stvo “Master Lain”, 1999), pp. 101-6, esp. 106; Faiaz Sh. Khuzin, “K
voprosu o vozniknovenii Kazani kak odnogo iz centrov mezhdunarodnoi torgovli (konec X- nachalo
XIII vv.)”, in Slaviane, finno-ugry, skandinavy, volzhskie bulgary: Doklady Mezhdunarodnogo nauchnogo sim-
poziuma po voprosam arkheologii i istorii, 11-14 maia 1999 g., Pushkinskie Gory, ed. Anatolii
N. Kirpichnikov, Evgenii N. Nosov and A.I. Saksa (St Petersburg: IPK “Vesti”, 2000), pp. 254-63,
esp. 257.
46
Evgenii P. Kazakov, “K probleme sootnosheniia istoricheskikh etapov Volzhskoi Bolgarii i Velikogo
Volzhskogo puti”, in Velikii volzhskii put’. Materialy II-go etapa mezhdunarodnoi nauchno-prakticheskoi kon-
ferencii “Velikii Volzhskii put’”, Sankt-Petersburg, Stockholm, Sankt Petersburg, 5-14 avgusta 2002 g., ed. R.
N. Musina (Kazan’: Institut istorii Akademii Nauk Respubliki Tatarstane, 2003), pp. 70-9, esp. 73
believes that the Volga trade may also be responsible for the presence of West European coins in the
region.
47
Nikolai A. Makarov, “The Fur Trade in the Economy of the Northern Borderlands of Medieval
Russia”, in The Archaeology of Medieval Novgorod in Context: Studies in Centre/Periphery Relations, ed.
presence of large quantities of silver (sometimes gilded silver) in the form of jewellery
on several sites in the Vychegda region or even further to the north, on sanctuary
sites in the Pechora region of the subarctic tundra.48 Wheel-made pottery produced
in Bulghāria has been found as far north as Beloozero, the northernmost terminal of
the trade routes linking the Middle Volga region to the Rus’ in the north-west.49
Beginning with the early-eleventh century, the percentage of Bulgar wheel-made
pottery found in assemblages in the Kama region increases from 5 to 50 (sometimes
even 75). However, wheel-made pottery of Bulgar design was also produced locally,
as demonstrated by the discovery of a kiln in the Bulgar trade centre excavated in
Rozhdestvennoe, on the River Obva, next to a late tenth- and early eleventh-
century Muslim cemetery.50
Conversely, there is abundant evidence of foreign goods on sites in Volga
Bulghāria. Those of Scandinavian origin are perhaps the most conspicuous cat-
egory of artifacts often cited in that respect: a tenth-century equal-armed brooch
from Bulgar; a sword chape with animal ornament from Biliar; an eleventh-
century spearhead with ornament in the Ringerike style from Kochkii near
Elabuga; and five swords of Petersen’s types E and S from Balymery, Biliar,
Salman, and the environs of Spasskii.51 Although swords are mentioned in al-
Mark Brisbane, Nikolai A. Makarov and Evgenii N. Nosov (Oxford: Oxbow, 2012), pp. 381-90, esp. 386.
For amulets made of sable bone from the Kama region, see Rimma D. Goldina and Vladimir A. Kananin,
Srednevekovye pamiatniki verkhov’ev Kamy (Sverdlovsk: Izdatel’stvo Ural’skogo Universiteta, 1989), fig.
77.5. Over 75 percent of all wild animal bones found in Krutik, a ninth- to tenth-century settlement in
the Beloozero region of north-western Russia, were of beaver. See Kovalev, “Infrastructure of the North-
ern Part”, 39.
48
Kazakov, Kul’tura, 315-16. The penannular fibula decorated in the Borre style that was found in
Idnakar (Udmurtia) and the fibula with runic inscription from Krasnaia reka II (near Ul’ianovsk) are
directly related to the Bulgar trade. See Faiaz Sh. Khuzin, “Velikii Volzhskii put’ i severo-zapadnye
sviazi bulgarskogo gosudarstva v X-XIII vekakh”, in Velikii volzhskii put’. Materialy II-go etapa mezhdunar-
odnoi nauchno-prakticheskoi konferencii “Velikii Volzhskii put’”, Sankt-Petersburg, Stockholm, Sankt Peters-
burg, 5-14 avgusta 2002 g., ed. R.N. Musina (Kazan’: Institut istorii Akademii Nauk Respubliki
Tatarstane, 2003), pp. 179-86, esp. 183.
49
Leonilla A. Golubeva, “Beloozero i volzhskie bolgary”, in Drevnosti Vostochnoi Evropy, ed. L.A. Evtiu-
khova (Moscow: Nauka, 1969), pp. 40-3, esp. 40-1. Beloozero has also produced evidence of spherical-
conical vessels originating in Central Asia and dated to the first half of the eleventh century.
50
Faiaz Sh. Khuzin, “Drevniaia Kazan’ i problemy ee vozniknoveniia (v svete arkheologicheskikh issledo-
vanii 1994-1998 gg.)”, in Mezhdunarodnye sviazi, torgovye puti i goroda srednego Povolzh’ia IX-XII vekov:
Materialy Mezhdunarodnogo simpoziuma Kazan’, 8-10 sentiabria 1998 g., ed. Faiaz Sh. Khuzin (Kazan’:
Izdatel’stvo “Master Lain”, 1999), pp. 196-226, esp. 199.
51
G.F. Poliakova, “Izdeliia iz cvetnykh i dragocennykh metallov”, in Gorod Bolgar: Remeslo metallurgov, kuz-
netsov, liteishchikov, ed. German A. Fedorov-Davydov (Kazan’: Institut iazyka, literatury i istorii
im. G. Ibragimova, 1996), pp. 154-268, esp. 200 fig. 65.24; Ture Algot J. Arne, La Suède et l’Orient:
Etudes archéologiques sur les relations de la Suède et de l’Orient pendant l’âge des Vikings (Uppsala: K.W. Appelberg,
1914), pp. 48-9 with fig. 36; Jansson, “‘Oriental Import’”, 120; Anatolii N. Kirpichnikov and Iskander
L. Izmailov, “Karolingskie mechi iz Bulgarii (iz fondov Gosudarstvennogo obăedinennogo muzeia Respubliki
Tatarstan)”, in Srednevekovaia Kazan’: Vozniknovenie i razvitie. Materialy Mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferen-
cii, Kazan’, 1-3 iunia 1999 goda, ed. Faiaz Sh. Khuzin, K.H. Iskhakov, Rafael’ S. Khakimov and M.A.
Usmanov (Kazan’: Master Lain, 2000), pp. 207-18, esp. 207-8. A Scandinavian presence in Volga Bulghāria
not connected with trade has been attributed to the cemetery with burial mounds excavated in the late-nine-
teenth century in Balymery. See Iskander L. Izmailov, “Balymerskii kurgannyi mogil’nik i ‘rusy’ na Volge:
Problemy i diskussii”, in Velikii volzhskii put’. Materialy II-go etapa mezhdunarodnoi nauchno-prakticheskoi kon-
ferencii “Velikii Volzhskii put’”, Sankt-Petersburg, Stockholm, Sankt Petersburg, 5-14 avgusta 2002 g., ed. R.N.
Musina (Kazan’: Institut istorii Akademii Nauk Respubliki Tatarstane, 2003), pp. 50-70.
316 Florin Curta
Muqaddası̄’s list of commodities exported from Volga Bulghāria, some of the arte-
facts of Scandinavian origin may have been obtained through forms of exchange
other than commercial. Of much greater significance for the question of markets
is the presence of foreign goods in archaeological assemblages from the earliest
(proto-)urban settlements in Bulghāria.
The systematic excavations carried out since 1938 in Bolgar, at the conflu-
ence of the Volga and the Kama rivers, have revealed that the tenth-century
fortification was erected on the site of an earlier settlement dated between
the late-ninth and early-tenth centuries. The area enclosed by ramparts was
small (about 90,000 square metres), which suggests an equally small popu-
lation, the existence of which seems to have been supported by several satellite
settlements in the surrounding area. One of them produced six sunken-fea-
tured buildings, with a number of silos between them.52 The agricultural
implements (a scythe, an axe, and scissors), as well as fragments of quern
stones, bespeak the function of this settlement, no doubt designed to supply
food to the inhabitants of the fort.53 In contrast, there are no signs of agricul-
tural activities inside the fort.54 Instead, there is an abundance of goods of
foreign origin. The excavations carried out inside the fort up to 1987 have pro-
duced 2,450 glass beads, some 15 percent of which may be dated between the
tenth and the eleventh centuries. Most typical of the latter are the lemon-
shaped, segmented, grooved and facetted beads, the off-cuts of glass staves,
the eye beads and the mosaic-ornamented beads – all of them produced in
Syria and Egypt.55 The central area of the fortress produced a vessel of spheri-
cal-conical form, which is believed to have been used as a container of a sub-
stance employed in metalworking, possibly imported mercury.56 A much larger
52
Charred seeds found in one of the houses turned out to be of wheat (Triticum aestivum), much as in the
palaeobotanical sample from a silo in Biliar. See A.V. Tuganaev and V.V. Tuganaev, Sostav, struktura i
evoliuciia agroekosistem evropeiskoi Rossii (lesnaia i lesostepnaia zony) v srednevekov’e (VI-XVI vv. n.e.)
(Izhevsk: Izdatel’skii dom “Udmurtskii universitet”, 2007), pp. 79-80.
53
Petr N. Starostin, “O rannem Bolgare”, in Nauchnoe nasledie A. P. Smirnova i sovremennye problemy
arkheologii Volgo-Kam’ia. Sbornik tezisov dokladov konferencii, posviashchennoi 100-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia
Alekseia Petrovicha Smirnova, ed. I.V. Belocerkovskaia (Moscow: Gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii muzei,
1999), pp. 99-101, esp. 100-1. The dating of the service settlement is secured by five dirhams, the earliest
struck in 894/5, the latest between 913 and 932. The fact that the ceramic assemblages include vessels with
round bottoms and cord-like impressions reminiscent of Lomovatovo and Polom assemblages in the
Kama region has been interpreted as an indication that the inhabitants of the satellite settlement were
not locals, but immigrants from the north (Kazakov, “K probleme sootnosheniia”, 71).
54
However, grain was apparently brought inside the walls in some quantities, directly from the neighbour-
ing countryside, as indicated by tenth- and eleventh-century palaeobotanical assemblages from the fort, in
which the most frequent weeds are lamb’s quarters (Chenopodium album) and red hempnettle (Galeopsis
ladanum). See Tuganaev and Tuganaev, Sostav, 82-83.
55
Marina D. Poluboiarinova, “Stekliannye izdeliia Bolgarskogo gorodishcha”, in Gorod Bolgar: Ocherki
remeslennoi deiatel’nosti, ed. German A. Fedorov-Davydov, Faris S. Khakimzianov and Tamara
A. Khlebnikova (Moscow: Nauka, 1988), pp. 151-219, esp. 153-5, 180, 182, 212; 154 fig. 81.3-5, 10,
14, 15, 17; 181 fig. 84.3, 7-9. There are no such beads on any neighbouring sites in the Middle or
Lower Volga region.
56
N.P. Sychev, “K voprosu o bolgarskikh sferokonicheskikh sosudakh”, Kratkie soobshcheniia o dokladakh
i polevykh issledovaniiakh Instituta istorii material’noi kul’tury AN SSSR 14 (1947): 70-3; Tamara
A. Khlebnikova, “Nepolivnaia keramika Bolgara”, in Gorod Bolgar. Ocherki remeslennoi deiatel’nosti, ed.
German A. Fedorov-Davydov, Faris S. Khakimzianov and Tamara A. Khlebnikova (Moscow: Nauka,
1988), pp. 7-102, esp. 93, 96.
quantity of such vessels is known from Biliar, and several of them have signs
stamped on them, which have been interpreted as referring to Bolgar.57 Frag-
ments of such vessels have been found together with slag and other traces of
metalworking in a rural settlement excavated in 2003 to the north of the fortifi-
cation in Biliar. However, unlike the situation in the hinterland of Bolgar, the
satellite settlement near Biliar produced evidence of contacts with the trade
network in the form of a rock crystal bead, an amber pendant, another made
of carnelian, fragments of raw amber, and iron weights.58 While the chemical
analysis of the glass beads found on that site showed that they had all been
made in the Near East, the vast majority of the glass beads (over 300) found
inside the fort in Biliar have been dated to the eleventh and twelfth centuries
and appear to be of Byzantine origin.59 However, the most spectacular marker
of long-distance trade in Biliar is the pottery. A large amount of glazed pottery
of Iranian, Central Asian, Rus’ and Byzantine origin, in addition to amber and
glass beads, and a tenth-century dirham, were all found during the 1974 exca-
vations of the mosque.60 Finds of lids with handles point to trade relations
with Khwārazm and southern Kazakhstan, the area from which such shapes ori-
ginated.61 Equally significant are finds of Glazed White Ware from Iran, some
with Kufic inscriptions.62 In addition, there are about 100 fragments of fine,
wheel-made ware of pink or yellowish-pink colour, for which a Mediterranean
origin has been recently advanced.63
57
G.V. Grigor’eva, L.S. Terekhina, N.A. Terekhina, and Al’fred Kh. Khalikov, “Goncharnaia keramika
Biliarskogo gorodishcha (po materialam raskopok 1967-1972 gg.)”, in Issledovaniia velikogo goroda:
Sbornik statei, ed. Valentin V. Sedov (Moscow: Nauka, 1976), pp. 186-211, esp. 191, 192 fig. 91.1-16.
58
Evgenii A. Begovatov, “Issledovaniia Biliarskogo II selishcha”, in Arkheologicheskie otkrytiia 2003 g., ed.
Valentin V. Sedov (Moscow: Nauka, 2004), pp. 302-3. The excavations also produced a dirham struck for
Ali b. Mamun between 997 and 1015. The conclusion that, like Bolgar, Biliar relied on food from the
hinterland results from the charred seeds of emmer and rye found in houses and silos inside the fort
(Tuganaev and Tuganaev, Sostav, 80).
59
Begovatov, “Issledovaniia”, 204; Svetlana I. Valiullina, “Stekliannye busy kak istochnik po mezhdunar-
odnym sviazam volzhskikh bulgar v VIII-nachale XIII vv.”, in Slaviane, finno-ugry, skandinavy, volzhskie
bulgary: Doklady Mezhdunarodnogo nauchnogo simpoziuma po voprosam arkheologii i istorii, 11-14 maia 1999
g., Pushkinskie Gory, ed. Anatolii N. Kirpichnikov, Evgenii N. Nosov and A.I. Saksa (St Petersburg: IPK
“Vesti”, 2000), pp. 51-66, esp. 60. The 20 glass bracelets found in excavations in Biliar, none of which
could be dated to earlier than the eleventh century, must also be of Byzantine origin.
60
Al’fred Kh. Khalikov, “Istoriia izucheniia Biliarskogo gorodishcha i ego istoricheskogo topografiia”, in
Issledovaniia velikogo goroda. Sbornik statei, ed. Valentin V. Sedov (Moscow: Nauka, 1976), pp. 33-46,
esp. 33; 34 fig. 8. For the tenth- to eleventh-century glazed pottery produced in Mawarranahr (the
region between Amudarya, the Syrdarya, and the land of Khorasan), see Rafael’ M. Valeev, “Torgovlia
Biliara po arkheologicheskim dannym”, in Biliar - stolica domongol’skoi Bulgari, ed. Petr N. Starostin,
Al’fred Kh. Khalikov and Faiaz Sh. Khuzin (Kazan’: Akademiia nauk SSSR, Kazanskii nauchnyi centr,
1991), pp. 69-79, esp. 73. The glazed pottery of foreign origin in Biliar and other sites in Volga Bulghāria
has not yet been properly studied.
61
Khalikov, “Istoriia izucheniia”, 45, 44 fig. 12.
62
ibid., 53 fig. 17.
63
Anna F. Kochkina, “Prichernomorsko-sredizemnomorskie sviazi Volzhskoi Bolgarii v X-nachale XIII
vv. (arkheologicheskie dannye o torgovykh putiakh)”, in Mezhdunarodnye sviazi, torgovye puti i goroda sred-
nego Povolzh’ia IX-XII vekov. Materialy Mezhdunarodnogo simpoziuma Kazan’, 8-10 sentiabria 1998 g., ed.
Faiaz Sh. Khuzin (Kazan’: Izdatel’stvo “Master Lain”, 1999), pp. 132-9, esp. 133-4. This ware appears
also at Muromskoe (district of Staropol’, region of Samara) in very small quantities (0.1 to 0.2 per cent of
all the wheel-made pottery from the fortified settlement).
318 Florin Curta
Long-distance trade connections are also revealed by the recent excavations in

Kazan’, 6 km from the River Volga.64 Unlike Bolgar, but like Biliar, the earliest
settlement on that site, established in the late-tenth century, was fortified from the
very beginning. Its non-agrarian character is betrayed by the absence of any agricul-
tural tools, but the commercial function is revealed by finds of glass beads, a frag-
ment of raw amber and an amber pendant, glass bracelets, and stone spindle
whorls.65 Of all fifty beads or so that could be securely dated to before ca. 1100,
most are of the segmented type and originated in the Near East or in Byzantium.
There is also a bead made of carnelian from either India or eastern Iran.66 According
to the petrological analysis of the whorls, their origin may be traced back to the slate
stone quarries near Ovruch in Ukraine, several hundreds of kilometres to the west.67
The earliest coin found in Kazan’ is a dirham struck in al-Shāsh for the Samānid amı̄r
Ismāʿı̄l ibn Ahmad (892–907), but the excavations also produced a rare penny struck
in Prague for˙ the Czech Duke Wenceslas (r. ca. 921–ca. 935) and another struck in
Regensburg for the East Frankish King Conrad I (r. 911–918).68
How was the late tenth- or early eleventh-century trade carried out in Volga
Bulghāria? Where did the commercial exchanges take place, of which so many
remains have been found in Bolgar, Biliar, and Kazan’? Did those centres function
64
Faiaz Sh. Khuzin, “K voprosu ob arkheologicheskoi date drevnei Kazani (k 1000-letiiu goroda)”, in
Problemy pervobytnoi i srednevekovoi arkheologii: Tezisy dokladov pervykh Khalikovskikh chtenii, ed. Petr
N. Starostin (Kazan’: Institut istorii Akademii Nauk Respubliki Tatarstan, 1999), pp. 76-8, esp. 77-8.
65
Faiaz Sh. Khuzin, “K voprosu o vozniknovenii Kazani kak odnogo iz centrov mezhdunarodnoi torgovli
(konec X- nachalo XIII vv.)”, in Slaviane, finno-ugry, skandinavy, volzhskie bulgary: Doklady Mezhdunar-
odnogo nauchnogo simpoziuma po voprosam arkheologii i istorii, 11-14 maia 1999 g., Pushkinskie Gory, ed.
Anatolii N. Kirpichnikov, Evgenii N. Nosov and A.I. Saksa (St Petersburg: IPK “Vesti”, 2000),
pp. 254-63, esp. 257, 259; Belavin, “Torgovye faktorii”, 122. See also Faiaz Sh. Khuzin, “Novoe v
arkheologii drevnei Kazan’”, in Srednevekovaia Kazan’: Vvozniknovenie i razvitie. Materialy Mezhdunarod-
noi nauchnoi konferencii, Kazan’, 1-3 iunia 1999 goda, ed. Faiaz Sh. Khuzin, K.H. Iskhakov, Rafael’
S. Khakimov and M.A. Usmanov (Kazan’: Master Lain, 2000), pp. 12-21.
66
Johan Callmer, “Rannie busy iz raskopok drevnei Kazani”, in Srednevekovaia Kazan’: Vozniknovenie i
razvitie. Materialy Mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferencii, Kazan’, 1-3 iunia 1999 goda, ed. Faiaz Sh.
Khuzin, K.H. Iskhakov, Rafael’ S. Khakimov and M.A. Usmanov (Kazan’: Master Lain, 2000),
pp. 54-8, esp. 55-6.
67
Kazakov, Kul’tura, 319; R.L. Rozenfel’dt, “O proizvodstve i datirovke Ovruchskikh priaslic”, Sovetskaia
Arkheologiia (1964) 4: 220-24. The earliest spindle whorl made of Ovruch slate was found in grave 1105 of
the Tankeevo cemetery, which is dated to the third quarter of the tenth century. See Evgenii P. Kazakov,
Bulgarskoe selo X-XIII vekov nizovii Kamy (Kazan’: Tatarskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1991), pp. 151, 152
fig. 49.
68
Khuzin, “K voprosu o vozniknovenii Kazani”, 261. For the dirham, see Mokhammed Gamaleddin and
Abdel’ Sovelam, “O samanidskom dirkheme iz drevnei Kazani”, in Mezhdunarodnye sviazi, torgovye puti i
goroda Srednego Povolzh’ia IX-XII vekov: Materialy mezhdunarodnogo simpoziuma, Kazan’, 8-10 sentiabria
1998 g., ed. Faiaz Sh. Khuzin (Kazan’: Izdatel’stvo “Master Lain”, 1999), pp. 238-9; Abdel abd el-
Monem Sowelam, “Dating and Attribution of a Samanid Dirham from Kazan Kremlin Excavations in
the Light of Samanid Dirham Collection in Cairo”, in Srednevekovaia Kazan’: vozniknovenie i razvitie.
Materialy Mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferencii, Kazan’, 1-3 iunia 1999 goda, ed. Faiaz Sh. Khuzin, K.
H. Iskhakov, Rafael’ S. Khakimov and M.A. Usmanov (Kazan’: Master Lain, 2000), pp. 79-102. For
the penny struck for Wenceslas, which may have reached Kazan’ by means of non-commercial exchanges,
see Jarmila Hásková, “Drevnecheshskaia moneta iz Kazani”, in Mezhdunarodnye sviazi, torgovye puti i
goroda srednego Povolzh’ia IX-XII vekov: Materialy Mezhdunarodnogo simpoziuma Kazan’, 8-10 sentiabria
1998 g., ed. Faiaz Sh. Khuzin (Kazan’: Izdatel’stvo “Master Lain”, 1999), pp. 227-34; Jiří Sláma, “Cen-
tral’naia Evropa i Volzhska Bolgariia”, in Srednevekovaia Kazan’: vozniknovenie i razvitie: Materialy Mezh-
dunarodnoi nauchnoi konferencii, Kazan’, 1-3 iunia 1999 goda, ed. Faiaz Sh. Khuzin, K.H. Iskhakov, Rafael’
S. Khakimov and M.A. Usmanov (Kazan’: Master Lain, 2000), pp. 239-43.
as centres for commercial transactions in the entire Middle Volga region? If so, were
markets located inside or outside the ramparts of those centres? In Biliar, archaeol-
ogists have been able to identify a merchant quarter only 300 m. south-west of the
“inner town” (the fortified palatial compound inside the fort).69 Moreover, the
1967 and 1970–1972 excavations revealed a building made of adobe and stone
located immediately next to the eastern corner of the “inner town”. The combi-
nation of warehouse, kitchen, dining-hall, central underground heating, numerous
wells and a small mosque leaves no doubt as to the function of the building – an
inn for merchants entering the city.70 The presence of merchants is in fact betrayed
by finds of keys and scales.71 However, there is more evidence of markets outside
fortified centres. Trading centres that cannot be classified either as simple villages
or as forts have been unearthed by Evgenii Kazakov’s excavations to the north-
east of Bolgar, at Semenovo and Izmeri. There are more finds of commercial bal-
ances from these two sites than from all other sites in Volga Bulghāria. The foldable,
bronze examples have clear similarities with finds in Viking-age sites in the Iaroslavl’
region of Russia, while the unfoldable, iron balances remind one of specimens from
Central Asia.72 Numerous locks and keys strongly suggest the existence of a notion
of private property that is often associated with trading sites in northern and north-
western Europe.73 The commercial function of Semenovo results from the discovery
of a great number of weights (over 200, more than on any other site in Volga
Bulghāria) and of several hundred dirhams dated between 930 and 970.74 Out of
1,018 beads found on the site, 728 were lemon-shaped, most of them of Near
Eastern origin.75 A large, penannular fibula made of bronze somewhere in the
Baltic region during the late-ninth or early-tenth centuries points to trade connec-
tions to the north-west.76 Weights have also been found in Izmeri, and it has been
suggested that they are subdivisions of the Iraqi pound of 409.512 gm, which
served for the striking of Kufic coins.77 The pre-manufactured rods of yellow or
brown glass with yellow or blue “eyes” found in Izmeri strongly suggest a local,
69
Khalikov, “Istoriia izucheniia Biliarskogo gorodishcha”, 16 fig. 4.
70
Al’fred Kh. Khalikov and R.F. Sharifullin, “Karavan-sarai drevnego Biliara”, in Issledovaniia velikogo
goroda. Sbornik statei, ed. Valentin V. Sedov (Moscow: Nauka, 1976), pp. 75-100, esp. 75, 76 figs. 29-
30; fig. 31 folded (after p. 54); 85 fig. 41. Kovalev, “Infrastructure of the Northern Part”, 61-2, believes
that the caravanserai in Biliar served for the storage of pelts brought from the north. At any rate, the build-
ing excavated in Biliar is very similar to tenth- and eleventh-century caravanserais on the routes leading to
Khorasan and Marw. See Iurii A. Rapoport, E.E. Nerazik, and L.M. Levina, V nizov’iakh Oksa i Iaksarta.
Obrazy drevnego Priaral’ia (Moscow: Indrik, 2000), pp. 110-13. For a list of sites, see also Kovalev, “Com-
merce and Caravan Routes”, 83.
71
Khalikov and Sharifullin, “Karavan-sarai”, 90 fig. 48.6-8, 15.
72
Rafael’ M. Valeev and Evgenii P. Kazakov, “Vesovye giri i nekotorye drugie predmety torgovli s bolgars-
kikh poselenii X-XI vv. v nizov’iakh r. Akhtai”, Sovetskaia Arkheologiia 1 (1993): 185-95, p. 185.
73
Kazakov, Bulgarskoe selo, 71 fig. 28.1-5, 72 fig. 29.5-10. One single cylindrical lock is known from
Izmeri (Kazakov, Bulgarskoe selo, 71 fig. 28.9), but there are several keys for that type of lock from both
Izmeri (Kazakov, Bulgarskoe selo, 72 fig. 29.21-23, 26) and Semenovo (Kazakov, Bulgarskoe selo, 72 fig.
29.27-29).
74
Khuzin, Bulgarskii gorod, 69. Among the coins, there is also a Bulgar dirham struck for Mı̄khāʾı̄l b. Jaʿfar
in the 920s. No such dirhams have been found in any of the fortified settlements. The most recent coin
from Semenovo is a penny struck for the Danish King Svend II Estridsøn (1047–1075; Kazakov, Bulgars-
koe selo, 29).
75
Valiullina, “Stekliannye busy”, 55, 57.
76
Kazakov, Bulgarskoe selo, 127, 128 fig. 43. 22.
77
Valeev and Kazakov, “Vesovye giri”, 188, conclude that these weights were probably produced in Volga
Bulghāria.
320 Florin Curta
albeit secondary production of beads using imported material.78 A very large

number of spindle whorls made of Ovruch slate, amber beads, a painted clay egg
(pisanka), glass bracelets and four amber pendants were also discovered in Izmeri,
but the most spectacular find from that site is a bone mount with an inscription in
Arabic on two rows, which reads “Blessings” and “In the name of the merciful
and gracious Allāh”.79
It has been suggested that Izmeri was the market mentioned by Ibn Fadlān as
being one farsakh from Almish’s camp.80 Be that as it may, the existence ˙ of
trading centres such as Semenovo and Izmeri strongly suggests a specific role
assigned to local markets in the organisation of trade. It has in fact been observed
that unlike the Khazars, who simply took advantage of their geo-strategical position
on the Lower Volga, the Bulgars participated in the international trade on their own,
for Bulghāria appears to have produced some of the goods that were exchanged for
furs in the north or for dirhams in the south.81 The wheel-made pottery produced
outside Bulghāria on Bulgar trading sites such as Rozhdestvennoe, or the beads
most likely produced in Izmeri out of imported glass rods, substantiate that con-
clusion.82 On the other hand, Volga Bulghāria appears to have been a key link in
the fur trade network extending from the Muslim markets in the south to the fur-
producing regions to the north. Judging from the existing evidence, no merchant
from Khwārazm or from other parts of the Muslim world would venture into the
fur-producing regions on the Kama region or in western Siberia. Instead, Bulgar
merchants coming from Volga Bulghāria or based in one of the trade posts estab-
lished in the lands along the Upper Volga or the Kama obtained the furs directly
from the local communities through exchanges that appear to have taken place at
the trading posts or, perhaps, on native sites. They then brought the pelts to the
markets in Bulghāria. These markets were also a meeting point for Viking merchants
from the north and Muslim merchants from the south and south-east. The caravan-
serai in Biliar was most likely meant to cater for the needs of the Muslim merchants.
78
Evgenii P. Kazakov, “Izmeri: Glavnyi torgovyi punkt Volzhskoi Bolgarii (konec X-XI vv.)”, in Slaviane,
finno-ugry, skandinavy, volzhskie bulgary: Doklady Mezhdunarodnogo nauchnogo simpoziuma po voprosam
arkheologii i istorii, 11-14 maia 1999 g., Pushkinskie Gory, ed. Anatolii N. Kirpichnikov, Evgenii
N. Nosov and A.I. Saksa (St Petersburg: IPK “Vesti”, 2000), pp. 87-99, esp. 91; Evgenii
A. Begovatov, “Torgovlia i ukrasheniia Volzhskoi Bulgarii v konce X-nachale XI vv.”, in Kul’tury stepei
Evrazii vtoroi poloviny I tysiacheletiia n.e. (iz istorii kostiuma): Tezisy dokladov III Mezhdunarodnoi arkheo-
logicheskoi konferencii 14-18 marta 2000 g., ed. Dmitrii A. Stashenkov (Samara: Samarskii oblastnoi istor-
iko-kraevedcheskii muzei im. P.B. Alabina, 2000), pp. 7-9, esp. 9.
79
Kazakov, Bulgarskoe selo, 153-4; 141 fig. 45.6-10; 152 fig. 49; 155 fig. 50.7. For the inscription, see
Evgenii P. Kazakov, “Znaki i pis’mo rannei Volzhskoi Bolgarii po arkheologicheskim dannym”, Sovetskaia
Arkheologiia .4 (1985): 178-85, pp. 183 with fig. 5.2; 182 fig. 4.3; 184 fig. 6.2, 3.
80
Khuzin, “Velikii Volzhskii put’“, 184.
81
Igor A. Gagin, Volzhskaia Bulgariia: Ocherki istorii diplomatii (X-pervaia tret’ XIII v.) (Riazan’: Riazans-
kii oblastnyi institut razvitiia obrazovaniia, 2004), pp. 99-100. See also Igor A. Gagin, “Volzhskaia Bulgar-
iia: ot posol’stva bagdadskogo khalifa do pokhodov kniazia Sviatoslava (X v.)”, Voprosy istorii .3 (2008):
131-42, pp. 133-4.
82
Ravil’ G. Fakhrutdinov, Ocherki po istorii Volzhskoi Bulgarii (Moscow: Nauka, 1984), pp. 37-8.This
further confirms D.A. Khvolson’s old distinction between three categories of goods involved in the
Bulgar trade: those produced in Bulghāria (beaver pelts, castoreum, hare and goat hides, sheep and
cattle, walnuts, dried and salted fish, hawks, arrows, pelted hats, fish glue, and boots); those bought in
raw form from somewhere else and manufactured in Bulghāria; and imported goods (such as amber,
Frankish swords, and slaves). See D.A. Khvol’son, Izvestiia o khazarakh, burtasakh, bolgarakh, mad’iar-
akh, slavianakh i russakh Abu-Ali Akhmeda ben Omar ibn-Dasta, neizvestnago doselie arabskago pisatelia
nachala X veka (St Petersburg: Tipografiia Imperatorskoi Akademii Nauk, 1869), pp. 181-5.
The concentration of goods and people in such key points as Semenovo and Izmeri,
or, further inland, at Biliar and Kazan’ required a drastic reorganisation of agricul-
tural production in order to meet the food demands of both traders and the admin-
istrative personnel in the nearby forts. The territory of Volga Bulghāria (present-day
Tatarstan) is actually one of the most productive areas in the chernozem belt of
Eurasia, and to this day one of the largest granaries of Russia. The Volga Bulgars
are mentioned as agriculturists in the earliest sources, from Ibn Fadlān to Gardı̄zı̄.
˙
They appear to have practised two-field, possibly also three-field, rotation and cul-
tivated a wide variety of crops, from wheat and emmer to rye and oats.83 Satellite
settlements in the hinterland of the fortified sites at Biliar, Bolgar and possibly
Kazan’ were meant to harness that agricultural productivity for the benefit of
those living inside the walls. The success of the re-organising efforts of the Bulgar
elites results from the great interest they seem to have taken in taxing the
booming trade along the River Volga. According to Ibn Fadlān,
˙
when a ship from the country of the Khazars arrives in the country of the
Saqāliba, the [Bulgar] king rides out, takes stock of what is on board, and
˙
takes a tenth of the entire merchandise. When the Rūs, or the members
of some other races, come with slaves, the [Bulgar] king has the right to
choose for himself one out of every ten head.84
Whether or not the taxes on the Volga trade were the only source of revenue for
the Bulgar ruler, Ibn Fadlān knew that his “tax revenues are many”.85 The monitor-
ing and taxation of the˙ commercial exchanges taking place on such prominent
trading sites as Izmeri may also explain the later building of a fort with four
towers at the nearby site in Devichii gorodok.86 In the absence of a comprehensive
study of the tenth- to eleventh-century settlement pattern in the Middle Volga
region, it remains unclear how many of the numerous forts identified in the
region may have served not defensive, but administrative and fiscal needs associated
with the taxation of the Volga trade.87 Moreover, at least initially, the official coins
struck for Bulgar rulers may have been intended to facilitate the payment of taxes.
The fact that they have been found in collections of coins deposited in various
places over a large area of northern and north-eastern Europe suggests that they
83
A.V. Kir’ianov, “K voprosu o rannebolgarskom zemledelii”, in Trudy Kuibyshevskoi arkheologicheskoi
ekspedicii, ed. Aleksandr P. Smirnov (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1958), pp. 282-91,
esp. 288; Tuganaev and Tuganaev, Sostav, 69-70, 73, 79-80, 82-3.
84
Ibn Fadlan’s Journey, 62. Gagin, Volzhskaia Bulgariia, 100, rightly observes that the only reason for the
Khazars to insist on maintaining the Bulgars as subjects and to oppose any move towards independence
was to extract tribute from them and to use Bolgar as a market for international trade from which taxes
could be extracted to the benefit of the Khazar (but not Bulgar) elites.
85
Ibn Fadlan’s Journey, 62.
86
Khuzin, “Velikii Volzhskii put’“, 183.
87
For forts in Volga Bulghāria, see Ravil’ G. Fakhrutdinov, “Klassifikaciia i topografiia bulgarskikh gor-
odishch”, Sovetskaia Arkheologiia .4 (1990): 68-84; Airat M. Gubaidullin, Fortifikaciia gorodishcha Volzhs-
koi Bulgarii (Kazan’: Institut istorii Akademii nauk Tatarstana, 2002). For an attempt at applying a
settlement pattern analysis to the territory of Volga Bulghāria, see Anna F. Kochkina, “Goroda Volzhskoi
Bolgarii X-nachala XIII vv. v sisteme rasseleniia (na materialakh Sviiazhsko-Kil’nenskogo mezhdure-
ch’ia)”, in Slavianskii srednevekovyi gorod, ed. Valentin V. Sedov (Moscow: NPBO “Fond Arkheologii”,
1997), pp. 180-7.
322 Florin Curta
also entered the common circulation, no doubt by means of the exchanges taking
place on the market.
No comparison? Trade in al-Andalus
Although no list of commodities exists for al-Andalus that could be compared with
that of al-Muqaddası̄ for Volga Bulghāria, there is no dearth of information in the
written sources about the tenth- and early-eleventh-century Andalusi trade. As
early as the tenth century, Christian merchants from northern Spain were coming
to al-Andalus, for the jurist Ibn Abı̄ Zayd (d. 996) recalled an injunction of the
ninth-century Mālı̄ki scholar Sahnūn prohibiting the capture of Christian ships car-
rying merchants.88 Charters dated ˙ to 935 and 959 mention Andalusi coverlets
89
imported into León. According to Ibn Hawqal, ordinary linen from al-Andalus
was exported in large quantity to Egypt,˙ while blankets made in Pechina went
even farther, to Mecca and Yemen. There was plenty of silk in al-Andalus, even a
variety that was waxed to make it waterproof. Al-Andalus produced brocades of
high quality, while felts imported from northern Africa were dyed locally and then
sold at high prices. However, in the East, al-Andalus was most famous for slaves
from France (but originating in lands farther to the north or to the east) and
Galicia, many of whom, according to ibn Hawqal, were castrated by Jewish mer-
chants. He wrote about Andalusi merchants ˙ trading in Tabarqa, buying grain
from Oran, and bringing goods from al-Andalus to Tenes.90 Andalusi ships
moved along the western coast of Africa, to Massat, where they usually remained
until the return of the sailing season.91 An Andalusi merchant-scholar went as far
as Iraq and India, where he amassed a colossal fortune through commerce, but
lost it all in a shipwreck on his way home.92 There were also numerous foreign mer-
chants in al-Andalus. In his letter to the king of the Khazars, Hasdai ibn Shaprūt
noted the presence of Egyptians in his country, who brought perfumes, spices and
precious gems, as well as of “merchant-envoys” from Khurasān.93 According to
88
Olivia Remie Constable, Trade and Traders in Muslim Spain: The Commercial Realignment of the Iberian
Peninsula, 900–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 65.
89
Imamuddin, Economic History, 334.
90
Ibn Hawqal, Configuration de la terre, 70, 73, 74, 109, 113; Franco-Sánchez, “Andalusian Economy”,
˙
98-9. An African merchant is known to have come to al-Andalus and visited Córdoba together with his
father and brother in 937/8, and then again in 1003. Six years later, another African merchant was in
Córdoba, and he died in Almería in 1036 or 1037 (Imamuddin, Economic History, 346-7). A third busi-
nessman is said to have plied the routes between al-Andalus and Ifriqı̄ya in the 970s (Constable, Trade,
80). For a discussion of the literary references to trade (primarily in agricultural products) between al-
Andalus and northern Africa, see Enrique Gozalbes Cravioto, “Algunos datos sobre el comercio entre
al-Andalus y el Norte de Africa en la epoca omeya (I): los puertos de contacto”, Sharq al-Andalus 8
(1991): 25-42.
91
Christophe Picard, “La présence des gens d’al-Andalus dans l’Occident maghrébin aux Xe et XIe
siècles: Les raisons économiques”, in Le partage du monde:. Echanges et colonisation dans la Méditerranée
médiévale, ed. Michel Balard and Alain Ducellier (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1998), pp. 475-
83, esp. 477. The establishment in Arzila (Morocco) of a ribat to meet the threat of a Viking attack led
to the formation of a market-town during the second half of the ninth and the first half of the tenth
centuries.
92
Constable, Trade, 80.
93
Franz Kobler, Letters of Jews through the Ages, from Biblical Times to the Middle of the Eighteenth Century
(New York: East and West Library, 1978), p. 100; Peter Cole, The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from
Muslim and Christian Spain, 950–1492 (Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007), p. 6.
ibn Hayyān, the Amalfitan merchants first came to al-Andalus in 942, but they made
˙ profits in the years after that.94 Merchants from Egypt and Iraq attended a
greater
fair organised in tenth-century Córdoba at a place called Tajāfı̄f. They asked per-
mission of the hājib, ʿAbd al-Malik al-Muzaffar (r. 1002-1008) to exhibit their com-
˙ ˙
modities before the native traders. Apparently, what they were bringing had not been
shown before to any king or noble: Persian carpets, Indian spears or lances, shield-
bearing horses with gold and silver armour, and many other goods.95 The Risāla fı̄
ādāb al-hisba wa-l-muhtasib, a treatise about the administration and policing of
˙
market places, which ˙was written by Ibn ‘Abd al-Ra’ūf in the reign of ʿAbd al-
Rahmān III or that of his son, al-Hakam II, contains detailed stipulations regarding
˙ of foreign goods. One of them
sales ˙ requires that spice merchants be prevented from
mixing merchandise from India with the local merchandise.96
A letter written in Qayrawān at some point between 1005 and 1035, and pre-
served in the Geniza archives, reports a consignment of silver money worth 1,230
dinars. The author of the letter mentions that in Qayrawān the dirhams of al-
Andalus were plentiful and that all prices were based on them.97 The movement
of the Andalusi coins to northern Africa cannot be explained in the absence of
trade relations, but the value of those dirhams on the local market was primarily
the result of the monetary reforms introduced during the Caliphate, when the
mono-metallic system was replaced with issues of gold (dinars), silver, and copper
(in small amounts).98 The study of 48 hoards from the Iberian Peninsula with the
latest coins struck between 797/8 and 1015/16, the vast majority of which were
deposited after 930, shows that large numbers of dirhams were struck especially
after the middle of the tenth century, at the same time as the acceleration of the com-
mercial exchanges with northern Africa and the East.99 The fact that no hoard found
in Spain mixes gold with silver is a strong indication that, despite issuing dinars
(some of which were also deposited in hoards), the Caliphate employed exclusively
silver for monetary exchanges.100 In the late-tenth and early-eleventh centuries,
94
El Califato de Córdoba en la Muqtabis de Ibn Hayyān: Anales Palatinos de un ms. árabe de la Real Academia
de la Historia, ed. Emilio García Gómez (Madrid: Sociedad de Estudios y Publicaciones, 1967), p. 145;
Constable, Trade, 97.
95
Imamuddin, Economic History, 323, believes that the Tajāfı̄f was a market for trade in silk, other textiles,
and precious metals (qaysariyya).To be sure, al-Hakam II is known to have ordered the building of a qay-
˙
sariyya in Córdoba, the only one in existence in tenth-century al-Andalus (Chalmeta, El zoco medieval,
252).
96
Rachel Arié, “Traduction annotée et commentée des traits de hisba d’Ibn ʿAbd al-Raʾūf et de ʿUmar al-
˙
Garsı̄fı̄”, Hespéris Tamuda 1 (1960): 5-38, p. 36. For the date of the treatise, see Chalmeta Gendrón, El
“Señor del zoco”, 84.
97
S.D. Goitein, “The Exchange Rate of Gold and Silver Money in Fatimid and Ayyubid Times: A Pre-
liminary Study of the Relevant Geniza Material”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 8
(1965): 1-46.
98
Alberto Canto García, “La moneda islámica en al-Andalus”, in Arqueología medieval española, II Con-
greso, Madrid, 19-24 enero 1987 (Madrid: Asociación Española de Arqueología Medieval, 1987), pp. 21-
31, esp. 26.
99
Thomas S. Noonan and Roman K. Kovalev, “The Dirham Output of the Spanish Umayyad Amirate,
ca. 756-929”, in Homenagem a Mário Gomes Marques, ed. M. Castro-Hipólito, David M. Metcalf, J.M.
Peixoto Cabral, and M. Crusafont i Sabater (Sintra: Instituto de Sintra, 2000), pp. 253-60, esp. 259.
100
Carmen Martínez Salvador, “La moneda del califato andalusí: Algunos aspectos de su organización”,
in V Semana de estudios medievales: Nájera, 1 ald 5 de agosto de 1994, ed. José Angel García de Cortázar y
Ruiz de Aguirre and José Ignacio de la Iglesia Duarte (Logroño: Instituto de Estudios Riojanos, 1995),
pp. 227-31, esp. 227.
324 Florin Curta
therefore, Andalusi dirhams were the backbone of the long-distance trade between
al-Andalus and northern Africa. Although almost nothing is known about the pres-
ence and frequency of Andalusi coins in hoards from Egypt or the Middle East, it is
likely that they would have followed the goods exported in that same direction,
which are mentioned in the sources. Similarly, nothing is known about the presence
and frequency of Andalusi coins in hoards in North Africa, despite the documentary
evidence of their dominant position on the local markets. However, an important
indication of the intensity of commercial exchanges between al-Andalus and north-
ern Africa is the presence of Fātimid coins in hoards found in Spain.101 The Badajoz
hoard, which contains 89 dinars˙ dated between 943/4 and 1023/4, includes 12 speci-
mens struck in the name of the Fātimid Caliph al-Mahdı̄ (r. 909–934), and another
four in the name of al-Muʿizz (r.˙ 953–975).102 There are eight Fātimid dirhams
among the 237 found in the Sierra de Cazorla hoard, while the Córdoba ˙ hoard con-
103
tains 31, and the Lora del Rio hoard only two. Since Fātimid coins appear in
˙
Spain only after 976 (during the reign of Hishām II), the acceleration of the commer-
cial exchanges between al-Andalus and northern Africa may be dated to the last
quarter of the tenth and the first decades of the eleventh century.
The written and numismatic evidence strongly suggests that in the late tenth and
early eleventh century, al-Andalus belonged to a vast commercial network in the
southern Mediterranean region, which reached all the way to Cairo. It has been
suggested that within that network, the Andalusi trade was of a colonial type, in
that it imported raw materials and exported manufactured goods.104 Although
remarkably scarce, the archaeological evidence does not seem to confirm that con-
clusion. To be sure, pavement ceramic tiles, some gilded or glazed, which were pro-
duced in specialist workshops in Catalayud and Málaga, began to reach the markets
in the east precisely in the tenth century.105 Glazed pottery (the so-called “verde y
manganese” wares) produced in Mallorca during the first quarter of the eleventh
century appears in Italy, at Pisa.106 However, there is also evidence for the move-
ment of manufactured goods in the opposite direction. A bronze brazier of
101
Canto García, “La moneda islámica”, 28. It is important to note in this context that both gold and
silver coins were also struck in northern Africa (Sijilmassa) in the name of the Umayyad caliph Hishām
II (r. 976-1009, 1010-1013). See Juan Ignacio Sáenz-Díez, “Acuñaciones de los aliados magreb’es del cali-
fato de Córdoba”, Gaceta Numismática 73 (1984): 50-60; idem, Las acuñaciones del Califato de Córdoba en el
norte de África (Madrid: Vico & Segarra, 1984), pp. 65-6, 69-70.
102
A. Prieto y Vives, “Tesoro de monedas musulmanas encontrado en Badajoz”, Al-Andalus 2 (1934):
299-327.
103
Josep Pellicer i Bru, “Un tresor de dirhems àrabs A SC-J”, Acta Numismàtica 12 (1982): 139-65; José
María de Navascués, “Tesorillo de monedas de plata del califato cordobés y fatimís”, Numário hispanico
7 (1958): 208-10; Josep Pellicer i Bru, “El tresoret de moneda àrab LR-P dels anys 331-418 A.H.”, Acta
Numismàtica 15 (1985): 157-81. For a complete list of hoards with Fātimid coins, see Josep Pellicer i Bru,
˙
“Cambio y especulación: Los dirhams de Hišam II en los documentos de la Geniza de Cairo”, Anaquel de
Estudios Árabes 4 (1993): 121-8, p. 126.
104
Maíllo Salgado, “De la formación social tributaria”, 183.
105
Rachel Arié, “La vie économique de l’Espagne musulmane”, in Wirtschaftsgeschichte des vorderen
Orients in islamischer Zeit, volume I [Geschichte der islamischen Länder, volume VI] (Leiden: Brill,
1977), pp. 239-54, esp. 250.
106
Graziella Berti, Guillermo Rosselló Bordoy, and Ezio Tongiorgi, “Alcuni bacini ceramici di Pisa e la
corrispondente produzioni di maiorca nel secolo XI”, Archeologia medievale 13 (1986): 97-115; Rafael
Azuar Ruiz, “Al-Andalus y el comercio mediterráneo del siglo XI, según la dispersión y distribución de
las producciones cerámicas”, Codex Aquilarenses. Cuadernos de Investigación del Monasterio de Santa
María la Real 13 (1998): 53-78, p. 58.
Fātimid manufacture is known from Madı̄nat Ilbira, but similar specimens have also
˙ found in Badajoz. The pottery with epigraphic decoration containing mention-
been
ing the Arabic word baraka (blessing) that has been found in Medinaceli was most
likely produced in late tenth-century Egypt. Glazed pottery from Iraq is known from
Besalú (Girona). Even more impressive is the tenth-century Chinese porcelain ware
from Almería, while Velázquez Bosco’s excavations in Madı̄nat al-Zahrā in the
1920s brought to light a few fragments of ataifors imitating Chinese porcelain.
Such pottery, which has also been documented in the excavations of Pajaroncillo
(Cuenca), is most likely of Fātimid manufacture, much like the rock crystal
˙
vessels for kohol known from various sites in southern Spain.107 Although northern
Africa was most likely the area from which al-Andalus obtained important goods,
such as grain, gold and black slaves from Sudan, there is so far no archaeological
confirmation for any of them.108 The dinars struck by tenth-century Umayyad
caliphs were most likely made of African gold that reached al-Andalus through Sijil-
massa and Tahert, but it is important to note in this respect that some of them were
struck in the names of the caliphs in northern Africa.109
The organisation of the Andalusi trade is known only from written sources.
Although there is no mention of a sūq in the sources pertaining to the establishment
of the new cities of Murcia (831), Badajoz (875) and Almería (955), several cities
established in the tenth century were intended as commercial centres from the
very beginning.110 There certainly were local fairs by that time, more or less seaso-
nal, which often took place outside the city walls.111 One of them is mentioned in
connection with the conflict that opposed the Mudar (Syrian troops) led by
al-Sumayl b. Hātim al-Kilābı̄ and the governor of ˙al-Andalus, Yūsuf b. ʿAbd
al-Rah ˙
˙ mān al-Fihrı̄, to the Yemeni rebels Ibn Hurayth and Abū l-Khattār (former
˙
governor of al-Andalus).112 In the course of the ˙ fighting in 747 in Córdoba
˙˙ and
the surrounding area, Ibn Hurayth is said to have taken refuge inside a mill
located outside the city, next˙to the “place where wool is sold”.113 As early as the
mid-eighth century, there was a governor of the market (sāhib sūqihi) in al-Andalus,
and the first prefect of the market (wālı̄ l-sūq) was ˙ ˙Abū Sulaymān Futays
˙
107
Juan Zozaya Stabel-Hansen, “Importaciones casuales en al-Andalus: Las vías de comercio”, in IV Con-
greso de Arqueología Medieval Española: Sociedades en transición. Actas. Alicante, 4–9 de octubre 1993, ed.
Antonio Mira-Perceval Pastor and Antonio Amorós Sánchez (Alicante: Asociación Española de Arqueo-
logía Medieval, 1993), pp. 119-38, esp. 120-3, 125. See also Azuar Ruiz, “Al-Andalus y el comercio”, 63;
Anja Heidenreich, “Cerámica islámica de importación en la Península Ibérica”, Anales de Arqueología Cor-
dobesa 12 (2001): 323-52, pp. 325-6; Encarnación Cano Montoro, “Un fragmento de cerámica hecho a
molde aperecido en el contexto de un arrabal cordobés de época Omeya”, Antiquitas 18-19 (2007): 169-
76.
108
Gozalbes Cravioto, “Algunos datos”, 30.
109
Dinars were struck in Hishām II’s name in Sijilmassa and in Sfax. See Sáenz-Díez, Las acuñaciones, 65-
6, 69-70.
110
Chalmeta, El zoco medieval, 250, 454.
111
Under ʿAbd al-Rahmān III, fairs were transferred from Toledo to al-Fath near Jarankash. In Córdoba,
˙ ˙
there was a street named Calle de los Panaderos, where during the reign of ‘Abd Allāh (r. 888-912), a
cloak (barrukan) could be purchased for 24.5 dinars. This implies the existence of markets inside the
city walls as well. See Imamuddin, Economic History, 310, 319.
112
Hugh Kennedy, Muslim Spain and Portugal: A Political History of al-Andalus (London/New York:
Longman, 1996), pp. 27-8.
113
Ajbár Machmua: Crónica anónima del siglo XI, trans. Emilio Lafuente y Alcántara (Madrid: Rivade-
neyra, 1867), pp. 60, 65. Given that the reference is to the sale of wool during the unknown author’s life-
time, the fair in question must be dated to the eleventh, and not to the mid-eighth century.
326 Florin Curta
b. Sulaymān, a Syrian, who is mentioned in the sources under the year 822.114 In the
tenth century, there was already a body of legislation pertaining to markets, and trea-
tises were written to deal with sales, the cleanliness of the places where bread, milk
and meat were sold and the location of the markets for specific crafts. There is very
little description of the actual markets in the written sources, but Ibn ʿAbd al-Raʿūf’s
hisba treatise contains a stipulation requiring that fruit merchants lower the stone
˙
benches or tables in front of their shops, so that buyers could properly see the mer-
chandise.115 Given that they are specifically said to have owned shops located next to
the market, the implication is that they were merchants residing in the city where the
market was located, who procured their merchandise from the surrounding
countryside.
Recent excavations on the left bank of the Guadalquivir in a residential area of
Córdoba known as Secunda have revealed a small neighbourhood market, which
was in use until 818, when al-Hakam demolished the entire neighbourhood,
together with its aswāq. He built˙ a large market, the al-sūq al-uzmā, along the
main road passing between the Alcazár and the mosque, next to a ˙neighbourhood
known as Bāb al-ʿAttarı̄n. This was a covered market, which was repeatedly
˙˙ 936 and 971. It was then rebuilt under ʿAbd al-Rahmān
destroyed by fire in 918,
III as part of a major restructuring of the western side of the city, providing˙ long
avenues and secondary streets lined with specialised buildings.116 Unfortunately,
the excavations in the Secunda have not yet been comprehensively published, and
the covered market between the Alcazár and the mosque has not yet been exca-
vated.117 It remains unknown where foreign merchants set out their merchandise
for sale, and especially whether any facilities existed in Andalusi cities similar to
the caravanserai in Biliar to meet the demands of travelling merchants. Nor is it
known exactly where the slaves, for which al-Andalus was famous in the east,
were sold.
Nonetheless, the fact that as early as the ninth century local, neighbourhood
markets were replaced with a larger ones bespeaks the interest the ruler took in moni-
toring the sales, no doubt for the purpose of taxation. A substantial number of
114
Chalmeta Gendrón, El “Señor del zoco”, 364.
115
Arié, “Traduction annotée”, 213. The treatise mentions merchants trading in spices (pp. 36-7), figs
(p. 203), cheese (p. 349), harisa (p. 350), olive oil, butter, and honey (pp. 354-5). With the exception
of spices, all these goods were most likely of local production. Similarly the twelfth-century biographer
Ibn Bashquwāl reports the story of a merchant from Pechina who, in the late tenth and early eleventh cen-
turies, traded in cloth from Pechina on the market in Córdoba, and in Cordovan goods in Pechina, his
business being ruined by the political and military turmoil following the death of al-Muzaffar in 1008.
˙
See Khalaf ibn ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Bashquwāl, Kitāb al-sila fı̄ taʾrı̄kh aʾimmat al-Andalus, ed. Francisco
˙
Codera y Zaidín, volume I (Madrid: Matbaʿat Rukhas, 1882), pp. 311-13.
˙
116
Manuel Acién Almansa and Antonio Vallejo Triano, “Urbanismo y Estado islámico: de Corduba a
Qurtuba-Madı̄nat al-Zahrā”, in Genèse de la ville islamique en al-Andalus et au Maghreb occidental, ed.
˙
Patrice Cressier and Mercedes García-Arenal (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 1998), pp. 107-36,
esp. 119; Chalmeta, El zoco medieval, 252.
117
For the excavations in Secunda, see María Teresa Casal García, “Características generales del urba-
nismo cordobés en la primera etapa emiral: el arrabal de Šaqunda”, Anejos de Anales Arqueología Cordobesa
1 (2008): 109-34. For some of the finds (none related to trade), see also María Teresa Casal, Rafael Mar-
tínez, and María Mar Araque, “Estudio de los vertederos domésticos del arrabal de Šaqunda: ganadería,
alimentación y usos derivados”, Anejos de Anales de Arqueología Cordobesa 2 (2009–2010): 143-82. For the
pottery, all of it of local production, see María Teresa Casal, Elena Castro, Rosa López, and Elena Salinas,
“Aproximación al estudio de la cerámica emiral del arrabal de Šaqunda (Qurtuba, Córdoba)”, Arqueología
˙
y Territorio Medieval 12.5 (2005): 189-235.
commodities sold in the al-sūq al-ʿuzmā in Córdoba must have been of local pro-
˙
duction, and the treatises of hisba, such as that of Ibn ʿAbd al-Raʿūf written in the
˙
tenth century, betray an ever increasing preoccupation with state control over
sales of even such ordinary foodstuffs as cheese, harisa and butter. Such centralising
concerns are also apparent in the desire to concentrate all sales of silk, other textiles,
and precious metals in a single qaysarı̄ya located in Córdoba.118
Conclusion: the archaeology of markets in al-Andalus
Whether or not al-Andalus was a mercantile society, trade played an important role
in the politics of the late-tenth and early-eleventh centuries. Under ʿAbd al-Rahmān
˙
III, the relations with the Fātimids in northern Africa had been tense, as illustrated
˙
by the sacking of Pechina in 955, followed by a raid by the Andalusi fleet on the
Tunisian coast. But in 969, the Fātimids conquered Egypt and moved out of
north-western Africa, which was now˙ dominated by two Berber groups locked in
permanent conflict – the Sanhāja and the Zanāta. A great number of Berber chiefs
came with their men to al-Andalus, despite their Khārijite views, while at the
same time the Andalusi men moved to northern Africa, as indicated by Ibn
Hawqal, who knew of an Andalusi colony in Tripoli. The Andalusi presence in
˙
northern Africa seems to have increased after al-Mansūr became the de facto ruler
of al-Andalus in the aftermath of al-Hakam II’s death˙ in 976. This was in fact the
period during which al-Andalus became ˙ one of the wealthiest states in the Mediter-
ranean region. At the origin of that wealth was the “green revolution” brought about
by the introduction of new crops (rice, sugar cane, hard wheat, citrus) sustained by
irrigation. The study of the irrigation systems as peasant work areas has been pro-
moted by Miquel Barceló and his followers as part of a programme of research
now known as “hydraulic archaeology”. The introduction of systems of capture
and distribution of water for intensive cultivation led to the radical transformation
of the landscape of al-Andalus and the appearance of irrigated productive spaces
known as vega or huerta.119 In addition to providing the basic supplies of cereals
for neighbouring cities, the irrigated spaces produced a variety of goods for which
al-Andalus became a famous exporter in the tenth century: silk, sugar cane, nuts,
dried fruits and linen.120 It was precisely the high level of productivity attained by
irrigated agriculture that created the surplus available for sale on the market.
Without selling their produce on the market, peasants could not have actually had
access to coins with which to pay their taxes, all of which were due in cash, not in
kind. “In this scenario, the city acted as a centre of trade, monetary transaction,
118
Another qaysariyya had been in existence since the ninth century in Fes, a city al-Mansūr’s troops
˙
occupied in 998 (Imamuddin, Economic History, 301).
119
Miquel Barceló, “El diseño des los espacios irrigados en al-Andalus: Un enunciado de principios gen-
erales”, in El agua en las zonas áridas: Arqueología y historia. Actas de I Coloquio de Historia y Medio Físico,
Almería, 14-15-16 de diciembre de 1989, volume I (Almería: Instituto de Estudios Almerienses de la Dipu-
tación de Almería, 1989), pp. xv-xli. See also the studies in El agua en la agricultura de al-Andalus (Barce-
lona: Lunwerg, 1995). For a good introduction to the social aspects of the results of research in hydraulic
archaeology, see José María Martín Civantos, “Working in Landscape Archaeology: The Social and Ter-
ritorial Significance of the Agricultural Revolution in al-Andalus”, Early Medieval Europe 19.4 (2011):
385-410.
120
Civantos, “Working in Landscape Archaeology”, 407.
328 Florin Curta
and the collection of dues from the agricultural hinterland”.121 In this respect, there-
fore, cities in al-Andalus were not different from those in Volga Bulghāria. However,
we know considerably more about cities as “centres of trade” in Bulghāria than in al-
Andalus. Next to nothing is known about the physical remains of markets, ports-of-
trade or facilities (such as caravanserais122) associated with long-distance trade in al-
Andalus. No weights and scales have been published from any excavation in urban
centres of Muslim Spain. The glass and metal production often mentioned in the
written sources is poorly known archaeologically, and no chemical analysis of
glass artifacts has been so far applied to distinguish between local production and
imports. Similarly, there is nothing in the otherwise very rich ceramic repertoire of
tenth- and eleventh-century al-Andalus similar to the spherical-conical vessels
found on several sites within the territory of Volga Bulghāria, which were most
likely used for the transportation of mercury.123 Nor is anything known about the
workshops and facilities associated with the production of silk or leatherwork.124
Much more important, however, is the absence of any archaeological or historical
study of the structure and organisation of the Andalusi trade. Córdoba in the late-
tenth and early-eleventh centuries must have been a large city with perhaps as
many as 100,000 inhabitants.125 The demands of such a large concentration of
population must have drawn to it agricultural commodities not only from the hinter-
land, but also from more distant areas, such as the huertas in southern and eastern al-
Andalus. The written sources suggest that Córdoba played a central, pivotal role in
the organisation of trade, and the state appears to have intervened relatively early, no
doubt out of fiscal concerns. The organisation of the al-sūq al-ʿuzmā near the Bāb al-
ʿAttarı̄n neighbourhood betrays such concerns, but it remains ˙unclear whether the
˙˙
transactions that took place there were also mediated by the state. In other words,
the mechanisms by which the abundant agricultural commodities of al-Andalus
made available by the irrigated agriculture arrived on the central market in
Córdoba remain largely unknown. Did elites residing in the city, but owning land
outside its walls, provide for themselves without any need of a market? ? Did they
also sell the surplus to local or foreign merchants? Were they bound to do so at
the al-sūq al-ʿuzmā? Did peasants – small and medium landowners – sell their
produce directly ˙ on the market in Córdoba, with prices formed freely? Or were
those commodities bought by merchants directly from the producers, in the country-
side, and then sold – perhaps at a higher price – on the market in Córdoba? If sup-
plying Córdoba with food was in the hands of a few merchants buying directly from
the producers, the physical layout of the market should indicate the character of the
transactions taking place there. Ibn ʿAbd al-Raʾūf’s hisba treatise suggests that the
˙
merchandise was sold in shops and stalls, but it is not clear from the text whether
121
Ibid., 408.
122
Caravanserais are, however, mentioned in Córdoba and in other Andalusi cities by Ibn Hawqal, Con-
˙
figuration de la terre, 112, 115.
123
For the exportation of Andalusi mercury, see Gustavo Turienzo Veiga, “Observaciones sobre el
comercio en al-Andalus”, PhD Thesis, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2002, pp. 23-5.
124
Luis Serrano-Piedecasas Fernández, “Elementos para una historia de la manufactura andalusi (siglos
IX-XII)”, Studia Historica. Historia Medieval 4 (1986): 205-29, pp. 211, 214-16.
125
This estimate does not take into consideration the population of either Madı̄nat al-Zahrā, the city that
grew up around the new palatial compound built by ʿAbd al-Rahmān III 5 km northwest of Córdoba, or
˙
Madı̄nat al-Zāhı̄ra, the other city and palatial compound on the eastern outskirts of Córdoba, to which al-
Mansūr moved in 979.
˙
these were owned or rented by merchants. The distinction may not be recognisable
archaeologically, but finds of scales, weights and other implements associated with
commercial transactions, as well as the contexts of their finding should be able to
help characterise the nature of the trade.
Trade may not have contributed substantially to GNP in tenth- and eleventh-
century al-Andalus, but it certainly was a dynamic sector, which lent the economy
complexity. It must have infiltrated the domestic market at exactly the same time
that the international markets acquired greater importance. Commerce was not
only centre-oriented or based on Córdoba alone. Some Andalusi merchants are
known to have become rich by trading between Córdoba and Pechina, but the
latter was a famous outlet for the inter-regional and international trade. The con-
quest of Egypt by the Fātimids redirected many of the trade routes in the Mediter-
ranean and opened lines ˙of communication between east and west along the African
coast. Tripoli, Qayrawān, Tahert and Ceuta were the most important nodes of this
trade network in the late-tenth and early-eleventh century. This may have increased
the importance of such Andalusi ports-of-trade as Málaga, Almería, Cartagena, and
Valencia, but there is very little archaeological evidence available to support that
conclusion.
According to Ibn ʿAbd al-Raʾūf’s hisba treatise, one and the same merchant could
˙
sell in his shop merchandise of local production and spices from India, which were
most obviously obtained from foreign merchants either abroad or, more probably, in
al-Andalus. This suggests that foreign goods were resold on the domestic market,
but it is possible that foreign merchants sold their merchandise directly, without
any native intermediary. This is, after all, why Amalfitan and Egyptian merchants
came to al-Andalus, as indicated by the written sources. Were any of them housed
in special buildings, with a limited period of residence and limited access to local
markets? Or were they granted free access to all the markets in al-Andalus? Were
their exports controlled by the state or did Andalusi cities acquire the characteristics
of international markets where freedom of trade was the rule? A comparison between
the archaeological remains of markets in various cities in al-Andalus known from the
written sources as having been visited by foreign merchants should at least suggest
the direction of future research in this respect.
Andalusi merchants may not have gone, like their Bulgar counterparts, into the
neighbouring lands to acquire the slaves or other goods sold to foreign merchants
on markets in al-Andalus. Nonetheless, they extended their activities to the inter-
national markets. While one could dismiss as anecdotes the stories of individuals
amassing enormous fortunes in Iraq or India, the presence of a large number of
Andalusi coins in northern Africa raises a number of key questions for future
research. The fact that Andalusi dirhams dominated the market in Qayrawān in
the early-eleventh century also points to the possibility that at least some of them
were brought there by merchants from al-Andalus (as opposed to local merchants
returning from al-Andalus). What did the Andalusi merchants buy from northern
Africa, besides grain and black slaves? Did they have special residential quarters
with their own facilities and mosque, or were they simply attending local markets
for exchange? Did Andalusi merchants reach the regions in the interior, away
from the coast?126 The marketing of both bulk and luxury products is certainly a
126
They most likely did so in Fes, at least after 998, and some must have been present in Sijilmassa when
coins were struck there in Hishām II’s name.
330 Florin Curta
good indicator of the productivity of the Andalusi economy, but the nature of the
Andalusi imports into northern Africa remains unknown. Tracking Andalusi
goods, such as glass, metalwork or pottery on sites in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia
and Libya could help identify some of the mechanisms of exchange in which the
Andalusi merchants were involved. Perhaps more importantly, a comprehensive
study of Andalusi dirhams in hoards and single finds outside al-Andalus is long
overdue.
The economy of Al-Andalus may have been very different from that of Volga
Bulghāria, as were the political and military circumstances in which trade developed
in the two countries in the late-tenth and early-eleventh centuries. Nonetheless, the
strategies employed by archaeologists studying the concomitant rise of the Volga
trade and of Bulgar cities may provide inspiration for future research on the Andalusi
trade. For if medieval archaeology, particularly that concerning tenth- and eleventh-
century al-Andalus is not to be relegated to a merely auxiliary function for medieval
history, or for illustrating historical narratives– in short, left out of “medievalism”127
– then it certainly needs to engage the question of medieval trade more forcefully.
127
Miquel Barceló, “Prólogo”, in Arqueología medieval: En las fueras del “medievalismo”, ed. Miquel
Barceló (Barcelona: Crítica, 1988), pp. 9-17, esp. 13.

Curta-Markets in Tenth Century Al Andalus and Volga Bulgh Ria Contrasting Views of Trade in Muslim Europe

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Curta-Markets in Tenth Century Al Andalus and Volga Bulgh Ria Contrasting Views of Trade in Muslim Europe

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Al-Masaq

Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean

ISSN: 0950-3110 (Print) 1473-348X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/calm20

Markets in Tenth-Century al-Andalus and Volga

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2013.844503

Published online: 20 Nov 2013.

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Markets in Tenth-Century al-Andalus and Volga

ABSTRACT There is a conspicuous absence of interest in markets and commercial activities

© 2013 Society for the Medieval Mediterranean

Barceló wrote an extensive introduction to the Spanish translation of Amin’s book,

were regarded as a “symptom of a bourgeois approach to history, and the commer-

A model of research? Trade in Bulghāria

Ibn Fadlān’s general assessment was unequivocal: “Bulgharia has abundant

Long-distance trade connections are also revealed by the recent excavations in

albeit secondary production of beads using imported material.78 A very large

No comparison? Trade in al-Andalus

Conclusion: the archaeology of markets in al-Andalus

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