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Al-Masaq, 2013

Vol. 25, No. 3, 305330, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2013.844503

Markets in Tenth-Century al-Andalus and Volga


Bulgharia: Contrasting Views of Trade in Muslim
Europe1

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FLORIN CURTA

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.
ABSTRACT

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 revolution, 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, Jos Carvajal Lpez, and Jos Mara Martn 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

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Florin Curta

merchant, may have been well been aware of a large variety of Andalusi products
being exported to Egypt, Khurasan and other places, while seeing in the markets
in al-Andalus such expensive foreign goods as woollen fabrics (suf), the most beau
tiful Armenian velvet and tapestries of excellent quality.3 Miquel Barcel, 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 alAndalus 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 facilitate 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 Barcel. 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 Fatimid interruption of the ties between al-Andalus, on the one hand, and Sijil and Tahert, on the other hand, which were crucial for supplying the Caliphate
massa
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 centuries as trade centres.8 As early as the ninth century, the regulation of activity in
3
Muhammad Abu l-Qasim 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 Lvi
Provenal, Espaa musulmana hasta la cada del Califato de Crdoba (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-Snchez, 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 Barcel, Un estudio sobre la estructura fiscal y procedimientos contables del emirato omeya de
Crdoba (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 sali por Occidente (Estudios sobre el estado omeya en
al-Andalus) (Jan: Universidad de Jan, 1997), pp. 103-36, esp. 124]. See also Miquel Barcel, Qu
arqueologa para al-Andalus?, in Los orgenes del feudalismo en el mundo mediterrneo, ed. Toms
Quesada and Antonio Malpica Cuello (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 1998), pp. 69-99, esp. 80.
5
Miquel Barcel, 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 lOccident Musulman et de la Mditerrane 36
(1983): 5-18. See also Alberto Canto Garca, Cuestiones econmicas y numismtica andalus,
Aragn en la Edad Media 9 (1991): 429-44, pp. 436-37.
6
Barcel, Un estudio, 63.
7
Felipe Mallo Salgado, De la formacin social tributaria mercantile? andalus, Anales de Historia
Antigua, Medieval y Moderna 35-6 (2003): 175-84, p. 182.
8
Hugh Kennedy, From Polis to Madna: 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 econmico-sociales, 2nd edition (Barcelona: Ediciones Pennsula, 1985), pp. 42, 46; Manuel
Acin Almansa, Poblamiento y sociedad en al-Andalus: Un mundo de ciudades, alqueras y husun,

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urban markets became a matter of legislative concern.9 How can Barcels 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 possible 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 Bulgharia.
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 Barcels
rejection of the mercantile model of the Andalusi society, the (primarily Russian)
archaeology of Volga Bulgharia 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 Bulgharia, is now the basis for an effervescent archaeology of markets in tenth-century Islam. Far from denying developments in agriculture or industry, scholars studying the trade organisation in tenth- and early
eleventh-century Volga Bulgharia 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 variste Lvi-Provenal,
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-mercantile 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. Amins
conclusion was that the Arab world was basically, a commercial grouping.11
Amins 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. Jos Ignacio de la Iglesia Duarte (Logroo: Institutos
de Estudios Riojanos, 2008), pp. 141-67, esp. 165; Pedro Chalmeta, El zoco medieval: Contribucin al
estudio de la historia del mercado (Almera: Fundacin Ibn Tufayl de Estudios Arabes, 2010), p. 454.
9
E. Garca Gmez, Unas ordenanzas del zoco del s. IX: Traduccin del ms antiguo antecedente de los
tratados andaluces de hisba, por un autor andaluz, Al-Andalus 22 (1957): 253-316; Pedro Chalmeta

Gendrn, El Seor del zoco en Espaa: Edades media y moderna. Contribucin al estudio de la historia del
mercado (Madrid: Instituto Hispano-Arabe de Cultura, 1973), p. 364. For markets (aswaq) in Islam,
with a specific emphasis on al-Andalus, see Emilio Molina Lpez, En el corazn de la calle: El
mercado islmico, Cuadernos del CEMyR 9 (2001): 189-204.
10
Lvi-Provenal, Espaa 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.

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Barcel wrote an extensive introduction to the Spanish translation of Amins 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 Barquel carefully distanced himself from Amins insistence upon the role of trade in medieval Islam. To
him, Amins generalisations could not possibly have applied to al-Andalus, a society
of rural communities that were largely autonomous, with no hierarchical levels mediating their relations to the state, to which they paid tribute in the form of taxes.13
Drawing inspiration from Amins idea of a tributary mode of production, Barcel
nonetheless pushed aside his description of the Arab world as essentially commercial. 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 contrast 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 dominate 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 surrounding the ideas of the Russian historian Vasilii O. Kliuchevskii (18411911).
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 military-commercial aristocracy of Rus.17 Under the influence of Kliuchevskiis commercial theory, others advanced the idea that Volga Bulgharia 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. Joqun Jord (Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama, 1974), pp. 5-53. The Spanish translation actually includes only a portion of Amins original book, specifically that dealing with Islam.
13
Barcel, Un estudio, 63.
14
Alejandro Garca Sanjun, El concepto tributario y la caracterizacin de la sociedad andalus: treinta
aos de debate historiogrfico, in Saber y sociedad en al-Andalus. IV-V Jornadas de cultura islmica, Almonaster la Real (Huelva), ed. Alejandro Garca Sanjun (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 Premodern 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 izdatelstvo politicheskoi literatury, 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: Sinodalnaia tipografiia, 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 Bulgharia
had no impact whatsoever on its industrial development; see Iz istorii torgovoi-promyshlennoi zhizni Povolzhia (s drevneishikh vremen do osmotra etogo kraia Ekaterinoi II) (Kazan: Tipo-litografiia imperatorskoi universitet, 1898), p. 9. Even after 1917, the idea of Volga Bulgharia as a commercial state influenced the

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were regarded as a symptom of a bourgeois approach to history, and the commercial theory of Kliuchevskii was condemned.19 To counter that theory, Soviet historians developed the Marxist concept of infrastructure and argued that towns had been
an essential component of feudalism in Russia, and that the development of agricultural 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 Bulgharia 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 Bulgharia 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
(footnote continued)
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. Vorobev, volume II (Kazan: Biuro kraevediniia pri Akademicheskom centre T.N.K.P., 1925), pp. 38-51, esp. 45. For the historiography of trade and trade relations in
Volga Bulgharia, see Rafael M. Valeev, Volzhskaia Bulgariia: Torgovlia i denezhno-vesovye sistemy IXnachala 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 Petersburg, Mandrogi, Iaroslavl, Kostroma, Nizhnii Novgorod, Kazan, 3-10 avgusta 2004 g., ed. K.Sh. Iskhakov
(Kazan: Izdatelstvo 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: Izdatelstvo
Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1939), pp. 23, 46, 47, 131-7, 172.
21
Mikhail N. Tikhomirov, Drevnerusskie goroda (Moscow: Izdanie Moskovskogo Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta, 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 Tikhomirovs ideas on the Soviet research
on towns, see Eduard Mhle, Die stdtischen Handelszentren der nordwestlichen Rus. Aufzge und frhe
Entwicklung altrussischer Stdte (bis gegen Ende des 12. Jahrhunderts) [Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte
der stlichen Europa, volume XXXII] (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1991), p. 11.
22
Aleksandr P. Smirnov, Ocherki po istorii drevnikh bulgar raiona srednego Povolzhia, Trudy Gosudarstvennogo Istoricheskogo Muzeia 11 (1940): 55-136. Smirnov specifically refers to Tikhomirovs
theory in his Osnovnye etapy istorii goroda Bolgara i ego istoricheskaia topografiia, in Trudy Kuibyshevskoi arkheologicheskoi ekspedicii, ed. Aleksandr P. Smirnov (Moscow: Izdatelstvo 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 Bulgharia, 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 Bulgharia 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 kultury, 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
socialno-politicheskoi istorii (Leningrad Nauka, 1980), p. 232; Igor Ia. Froianov and Andrei Iu. Dvornichenko, Goroda-gosudarstva Drevnei Rusi (Leningrad: Izdatelstvo Leningradskoi gosudarstvennoi universiteta, 1988), pp. 29-30. For the attack, see Mykola F. Kotliar, Goroda i genezis feodalizma na Rusi,
Voprosy istorii 12 (1986): 74-90.

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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 historians commercial theory.25 Alfred Khalikov similarly
argued that the first Bulgar towns were the result of trade, followed by the development 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 concomitant 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 Samanid 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 neighbours with whom they traded, as emporia (ports-of-trade) were established at that
Kirpichnikov, Istoriia stanovleniia, 146.
Valentin A. Bulkin and Gleb S. Lebedev. Gnezdovo i Birka: K probleme stanovleniia goroda, in
Kultura 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: Izdatelstvo Leningradskogo universiteta, 1978); Igor V. Dubov, Severo-Vostochnaia Rus v epokhu rannego
srednevekovia. Istoriko-arkheologicheskie ocherki (Leningrad: Nauka, 1982); Evgenii N. Nosov, International 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. Melnikova and Vladimir Ia. Petrukhin, Formirovanie seti rannegorodskikh centrov i stanovlenie gosudarstva (Drevniaia Rus i Skandinavia), Istoriia SSSR 5 (1986): 64-78. For the circumstances
surrounding the supposed rehabilitation of Kliuchevskiis theory, see also Evgenii N. Nosov, Pervye
goroda severnoi Rusi (postanovka problemy: istoriia i arkheologiia), in Kulturnoe nasledie rossiiskogo gosudarstva, 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 Lebedevs supposed rehabilitation
of Kliuchevskiis theory, see Daniil A. Avdusin, Proiskhozhdenie drevnerusskikh gorodov (po arkheologicheskim dannym), Voprosy Istorii 12 (1980): 24-42.
26
Alfred Kh. Khalikov, Islam i urbanizm v Volzhskoi Bolgarii, in Biliar stolica domongolskoi Bulgarii,
ed. Petr N. Starostin, Alfred Kh. Khalikov, and Faiaz Sh. Khuzin (Kazan: Akademiia Nauk SSSR,
Kazanskii nauchnyi centr, 1991), pp. 47-60, esp. 57, 58. For the influence of Kliuchevskiis commercial
theory upon the research on Volga Bulgharia, see Khuzin, Bulgarskii gorod, 77-8.
27
Evgenii P. Kazakov, Kultura rannei Volzhskoi Bolgarii: Etapy etnokulturnoi 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 konferencii 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 Povolzhe i
Predurale 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.
24
25

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same time within the lands to the north and north-east of the borders of Volga
Bulgharia, 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 orthodoxy 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 insisting on a supposed contrast between a truly feudal and a tributary mode of production, 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 illustrated by an examination of the archaeological evidence of trade in tenth- to early
eleventh-century Volga Bulgharia.
A model of research? Trade in Bulgharia
Most written sources pertaining to Volga Bulgharia also refer to trade.31 Al-Masud
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-Muqaddas even listed all the commodities from Bulgharia traded to
Khwarazm:
29

Valeev, Volzhskaia Bulgariia, 41.


To be sure, Aleksandr Iakubovskii, the leading Soviet Orientalist, treated Volga Bulgharia as a tributary
formation, for he regarded it as an example of Asian feudalism. See Aleksandr Iu. Iakubovskii, Feodalizm na vostoke (Leningrad: Izdatelstvo GAIMK, 1932), pp. 27-8; idem, Feodalnoe obshchestva Srednei
Azii i ego torgovlia s Vostochnoi Evropi v X-XV vv., in Materialy po istorii Uzbekskoi, Tadzhikskoi i Turkmenskoi SSR, ed. A.N. Samoilovich, volume I, part iii (Leningrad: Izdatelstvo 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
Bulgharia and the information about cities. The oldest sources (reproduced by Ibn-Rusta) make no
mention of cities. See Maryta Espronnier, Villes et commerce: La Khazarie et la Bulgarie de la
Volga, daprs les textes arabes et persans des IXe et Xe sicles, in Les centres proto-urbains russes entre
Scandinavie, Byzance et Orient: Actes du colloque international tenu au Collge de France en octobre 1997,
ed. Michel Kazanski, Anne Nercessian and Constantin Zuckerman (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 2000),
pp. 409-24, esp. 418; Istvn Zimonyi, The Towns of the Volga Bulghars in the Sources (10-13th
Century), 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. 134-40, esp. 134-5.
32
Masud, Muruj al-dhabab, English version from Vladimir Minorsky, A History of Sharvan and Darband
(Cambridge: Heffer, 1958), p. 149. See also Tatiana M. Kalinina, Al-Masudi o bulgarakh, in Mezhdunarodnye sviazi, torgovye puti i goroda srednego Povolzhia IX-XII vekov. Materialy Mezhdunarodnogo simpoziuma Kazan, 8-10 sentiabria 1998 g., ed. Faiaz Sh. Khuzin (Kazan: Izdatelstvo Master Lain, 1999),
pp. 13-20, esp. 17. For Khwarazm as the main trading partner of Volga Bulgharia 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 srednevekove:
Kontakty, zony kontaktov i kontaktnye zony. XI Chteniia pamiati chlena-korrespondenta AH SSSR Vladimira
Terentevicha Pashuto. Moskva, 14-16 aprelia 1999 g. Materialy k konferencii, ed. Elena A. Melnikova
(Moscow: Institut vseobshchei istorii Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk, 1999), pp. 75-81, esp. 78. For the
30

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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], castoreum, prepared horse hides, honey, hazelnuts, falcons, swords, armor,
khalanj wood, Slavonic slaves, sheep and cattle.33
According to Gardz, 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 Fadlan, who visited Volga Bulgharia in 922, knew that the
camp of the Bulgar rulerAlmish (Almush) b. Shilk 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 approximately 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

(footnote continued)
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 Masud is that on which Ibn
Fadlans 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
Bulgharias Tenth-century Trade with Samanid Central Asia, Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 11 (2000):
140-218, pp. 163-4.
33
Muhammad bin Ahmad al-Mukaddas, Kitab Ahsan al-takasm f marifat al-akalm, ed. Michael Jan de

Goeje [Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum, volume III] (Leiden: Brill, 1877), pp. 324-5; English
translation from Vasilii V. Bartold, 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
Abbasid 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 Bulgharia 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 Bulgharia, but that, according to Ibn Hawqal, the beavers were

hunted along the Slavic rivers. According to Kovalev, Ibn Fadlan noted the abundance of honey from

wild bees in the forests of Bulgharia, but the amber and the swords were evidently not local products.
34
A.P. Martinez, Gardzs Two Chapters on the Turks, Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 2 (1982): 109217, pp. 158-9. Those dirhams were then used to obtain goods from the Rus and the Saqlabs.
35
Ibn Fadlans 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 Wsu or Isu, said to be a three-month journey from the Bulgar lands, is also
mentioned by al-Marvaz, who wrote in the early twelfth century. According to him, beyond the
Wsu were the Yura, 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-Zaman Tahir Marvaz on China,
the Turks, and India, trans. Vladimir Minorsky (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1942), p. 34; Janet

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Ibn Fadlans general assessment was unequivocal: Bulgharia has abundant


the kings tax revenues are many.37 Modern researchers agree: Volga
wealth, and
Bulgharia 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
Bulgharia 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 Bulgharia was a
silver bridge between Scandinavia and Samanid Central Asia. Indeed, because
of the fur trade, some 125 million dirhams entered Eastern Europe through Volga
Bulgharia 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 Bulgharia.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, imitations of Samanid dirhams were also struck in Volga Bulgharia, 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
(footnote continued)
Martin, Treasure of the Land of Darkness: The Fur Trade and Its Significance for Medieval Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 7-8; Kovalev, Infrastructure of the Northern Part, 28.
37
Ibn Fadlans 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 Povolzhia IX-XII vekov. Materialy Mezhdunarodnogo simpoziuma
Kazan, 8-10 sentiabria 1998 g., ed. Faiaz Sh. Khuzin (Kazan: Izdatelstvo Master Lain, 1999),
pp. 116-22, esp. 117. Iskander L. Izmailov, in K voprosu o bulgaro-skandinavskikh kontaktakh, in
Biliar - stolitsa domongolskoi Bulgarii, ed. Petr N. Starostin and Alfred 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 Bulgharias Tenth-century Trade, 210; Kovalev,
Infrastructure of the Northern Part, 30.
40
Rafael M. Valeev, Torgovo-ekonomicheskie i kulturnye sviazi bulgarskogo gosudarstva so stranami
Vostoka v IX-XIII stoletiiakh, in Velikii Volzhskii put: Materialy III-go etapa mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoprakticheskoi 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 Almetevo, 25 km from Biliar,
was believed to be the earliest hoard of dirhams from the territory of Volga Bulgharia. 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 Bulgharia is Semenovoe I, the most
recent coin of which was struck in 979/80. See Roman K. Kovalev, Khazaria and Volga Bulg aria as Intermediaries 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): 43156, pp. 143, 144-5, 148.
42
The first Bulgar coins were published in Christian M. Frhn, Drei Mnzen der Wolga-Bulgaren aus
dem X. Jahrhundert, Mmoires de lAcadmie impriale des sciences 1 (1832): 171-204. The earliest imitative dirhams were struck between 901 and 907 on behalf of Jafar b. Abdallah, the name taken after

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name of Talib 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 Fadlan, and his son

Mkhal b. Jafar, 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 Mumin b. Hasan and Mumin b. Ahmad. The circulation of those coins was
as the 600 Bulgar dirhams

remarkably wide,
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 artefacts of Bulgar production in the lands to the north, north-west, and north-east of
Volga Bulgharia cannot be explained without reference to trade. The Bulgars established 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
(footnote continued)
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:
Izdatelstvo 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 Bulgharias 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 materialnoi kultury
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. Alfred Kh. Khalikov (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 numizmaticheskim dannym, in Drevnie slaviane i ikh sosedi, ed. Iurii V. Kukharenko and Petr N. Tretiakov
(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 Povolzhia
IX-XII vekov: Materialy Mezhdunarodnogo simpoziuma Kazan, 8-10 sentiabria 1998 g., ed. Faiaz Sh.
Khuzin (Kazan: Izdatelstvo 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 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.
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 konferencii 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.

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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 Bulgharia 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 eleventhcentury Muslim cemetery.50
Conversely, there is abundant evidence of foreign goods on sites in Volga
Bulgharia. Those of Scandinavian origin are perhaps the most conspicuous category of artifacts often cited in that respect: a tenth-century equal-armed brooch
from Bulgar; a sword chape with animal ornament from Biliar; an eleventhcentury spearhead with ornament in the Ringerike style from Kochkii near
Elabuga; and five swords of Petersens types E and S from Balymery, Biliar,
Salman, and the environs of Spasskii.51 Although swords are mentioned in al(footnote continued)
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 verkhovev Kamy (Sverdlovsk: Izdatelstvo Uralskogo 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 Northern Part, 39.
48
Kazakov, Kultura, 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 Ulianovsk) 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 mezhdunarodnoi nauchno-prakticheskoi konferencii 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. 179-86, esp. 183.
49
Leonilla A. Golubeva, Beloozero i volzhskie bolgary, in Drevnosti Vostochnoi Evropy, ed. L.A. Evtiukhova (Moscow: Nauka, 1969), pp. 40-3, esp. 40-1. Beloozero has also produced evidence of sphericalconical 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 issledovanii 1994-1998 gg.), in Mezhdunarodnye sviazi, torgovye puti i goroda srednego Povolzhia IX-XII vekov:
Materialy Mezhdunarodnogo simpoziuma Kazan, 8-10 sentiabria 1998 g., ed. Faiaz Sh. Khuzin (Kazan:
Izdatelstvo Master Lain, 1999), pp. 196-226, esp. 199.
51
G.F. Poliakova, Izdeliia iz cvetnykh i dragocennykh metallov, in Gorod Bolgar: Remeslo metallurgov, kuznetsov, 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 Sude et lOrient:
Etudes archologiques sur les relations de la Sude et de lOrient pendant lge 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 oba edinennogo muzeia Respubliki
Tatarstan), 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. 207-18, esp. 207-8. A Scandinavian presence in Volga Bulgharia
not connected with trade has been attributed to the cemetery with burial mounds excavated in the late-nineteenth century in Balymery. See Iskander L. Izmailov, Balymerskii kurgannyi mogilnik i rusy na Volge:
Problemy i diskussii, in Velikii volzhskii put. Materialy II-go etapa mezhdunarodnoi nauchno-prakticheskoi konferencii 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.

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Muqaddass list of commodities exported from Volga Bulgharia, some of the artefacts 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 Bulgharia.
The systematic excavations carried out since 1938 in Bolgar, at the confluence 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 population, the existence of which seems to have been supported by several satellite
settlements in the surrounding area. One of them produced six sunken-featured 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 agricultural 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 produced 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 lemonshaped, 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 spherical-conical form, which is believed to have been used as a container of a substance 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 srednevekove (VI-XVI vv. n.e.)
(Izhevsk: Izdatelskii 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-Kamia. 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 neighbouring countryside, as indicated by tenth- and eleventh-century palaeobotanical assemblages from the fort, in
which the most frequent weeds are lambs 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 deiatelnosti, 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 materialnoi kultury AN SSSR 14 (1947): 70-3; Tamara
A. Khlebnikova, Nepolivnaia keramika Bolgara, in Gorod Bolgar. Ocherki remeslennoi deiatelnosti, ed.
German A. Fedorov-Davydov, Faris S. Khakimzianov and Tamara A. Khlebnikova (Moscow: Nauka,
1988), pp. 7-102, esp. 93, 96.

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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 Fragments 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 fortification 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 excavations of the mosque.60 Finds of lids with handles point to trade relations
with Khwarazm and southern Kazakhstan, the area from which such shapes originated.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

G.V. Grigoreva, L.S. Terekhina, N.A. Terekhina, and Alfred 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 mezhdunarodnym 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
Alfred 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 domongolskoi Bulgari, ed. Petr N. Starostin,
Alfred 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 Bulgharia
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 srednego Povolzhia IX-XII vekov. Materialy Mezhdunarodnogo simpoziuma Kazan, 8-10 sentiabria 1998 g., ed.
Faiaz Sh. Khuzin (Kazan: Izdatelstvo 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).
57

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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 agricultural tools, but the commercial function is revealed by finds of glass beads, a fragment 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-Shash for the Samanid amr
Ismal ibn Ahmad (892907), but the excavations also produced a rare penny struck
in Prague for the Czech Duke Wenceslas (r. ca. 921ca. 935) and another struck in
Regensburg for the East Frankish King Conrad I (r. 911918).68
How was the late tenth- or early eleventh-century trade carried out in Volga
Bulgharia? Where did the commercial exchanges take place, of which so many
remains have been found in Bolgar, Biliar, and Kazan? Did those centres function
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 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. 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 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. 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, Kultura, 319; R.L. Rozenfeldt, 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 izdatelstvo, 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 Povolzhia IX-XII vekov: Materialy mezhdunarodnogo simpoziuma, Kazan, 8-10 sentiabria
1998 g., ed. Faiaz Sh. Khuzin (Kazan: Izdatelstvo Master Lain, 1999), pp. 238-9; Abdel abd elMonem 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 Hskov, Drevnecheshskaia moneta iz Kazani, in Mezhdunarodnye sviazi, torgovye puti i
goroda srednego Povolzhia IX-XII vekov: Materialy Mezhdunarodnogo simpoziuma Kazan, 8-10 sentiabria
1998 g., ed. Faiaz Sh. Khuzin (Kazan: Izdatelstvo Master Lain, 1999), pp. 227-34; Jir Slma, Centralnaia Evropa i Volzhska Bolgariia, 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. 239-43.
64

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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, archaeologists 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 19701972 excavations revealed a building made of adobe and stone
located immediately next to the eastern corner of the inner town. The combination 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 Kazakovs excavations to the northeast of Bolgar, at Semenovo and Izmeri. There are more finds of commercial balances from these two sites than from all other sites in Volga Bulgharia. 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 northwestern 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
Bulgharia) 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 connections 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,
Khalikov, Istoriia izucheniia Biliarskogo gorodishcha, 16 fig. 4.
Alfred 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. 2930; 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 building 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 nizoviakh Oksa i Iaksarta.
Obrazy drevnego Priaralia (Moscow: Indrik, 2000), pp. 110-13. For a list of sites, see also Kovalev, Commerce 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 bolgarskikh poselenii X-XI vv. v nizoviakh 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 Mkhal b. Jafar
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 Estridsn (10471075; Kazakov, Bulgarskoe 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
Bulgharia.
69
70

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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 Allah.79
It has been suggested that Izmeri was the market mentioned by Ibn Fadlan as

of
being one farsakh from Almishs camp.80 Be that as it may, the existence
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 Bulgharia 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 Bulgharia on Bulgar trading sites such as Rozhdestvennoe, or the beads
most likely produced in Izmeri out of imported glass rods, substantiate that conclusion.82 On the other hand, Volga Bulgharia appears to have been a key link in
the fur trade network extending from the Muslim markets in the south to the furproducing regions to the north. Judging from the existing evidence, no merchant
from Khwarazm 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 Bulgharia or based in one of the trade posts established 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 Bulgharia. These markets were also a meeting point for Viking merchants
from the north and Muslim merchants from the south and south-east. The caravanserai in Biliar was most likely meant to cater for the needs of the Muslim merchants.
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 Kultury stepei
Evrazii vtoroi poloviny I tysiacheletiia n.e. (iz istorii kostiuma): Tezisy dokladov III Mezhdunarodnoi arkheologicheskoi konferencii 14-18 marta 2000 g., ed. Dmitrii A. Stashenkov (Samara: Samarskii oblastnoi istoriko-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 pismo 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: Riazanskii oblastnyi institut razvitiia obrazovaniia, 2004), pp. 99-100. See also Igor A. Gagin, Volzhskaia Bulgariia: ot posolstva 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. Khvolsons old distinction between three categories of goods involved in the
Bulgar trade: those produced in Bulgharia (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 Bulgharia; and imported goods (such as amber,
Frankish swords, and slaves). See D.A. Khvolson, Izvestiia o khazarakh, burtasakh, bolgarakh, madiarakh, 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.
78

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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 agricultural production in order to meet the food demands of both traders and the administrative personnel in the nearby forts. The territory of Volga Bulgharia (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 Fadlan to Gardz.

They appear to have practised two-field, possibly also three-field, rotation


and cultivated 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 Fadlan,

when a ship from the country of the Khazars arrives in the country of the
Saqaliba, the [Bulgar] king rides out, takes stock of what is on board, and

takes
a tenth of the entire merchandise. When the Rus, 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 Fadlan knew that his tax revenues are many.85 The monitoring 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

A.V. Kirianov, K voprosu o rannebolgarskom zemledelii, in Trudy Kuibyshevskoi arkheologicheskoi


ekspedicii, ed. Aleksandr P. Smirnov (Moscow: Izdatelstvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1958), pp. 282-91,
esp. 288; Tuganaev and Tuganaev, Sostav, 69-70, 73, 79-80, 82-3.
84
Ibn Fadlans 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 Fadlans Journey, 62.
86
Khuzin, Velikii Volzhskii put, 183.
87
For forts in Volga Bulgharia, see Ravil G. Fakhrutdinov, Klassifikaciia i topografiia bulgarskikh gorodishch, Sovetskaia Arkheologiia .4 (1990): 68-84; Airat M. Gubaidullin, Fortifikaciia gorodishcha Volzhskoi Bulgarii (Kazan: Institut istorii Akademii nauk Tatarstana, 2002). For an attempt at applying a
settlement pattern analysis to the territory of Volga Bulgharia, see Anna F. Kochkina, Goroda Volzhskoi
Bolgarii X-nachala XIII vv. v sisteme rasseleniia (na materialakh Sviiazhsko-Kilnenskogo mezhdurechia), in Slavianskii srednevekovyi gorod, ed. Valentin V. Sedov (Moscow: NPBO Fond Arkheologii,
1997), pp. 180-7.
83

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also entered the common circulation, no doubt by means of the exchanges taking
place on the market.

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No comparison? Trade in al-Andalus


Although no list of commodities exists for al-Andalus that could be compared with
that of al-Muqaddas for Volga Bulgharia, 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 Ab Zayd (d. 996) recalled an injunction of the
ninth-century Malki scholar Sahnun prohibiting the capture of Christian ships car
to 935 and 959 mention Andalusi coverlets
rying merchants.88 Charters dated
89
imported into Len. 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 merchants in al-Andalus. In his letter to the king of the Khazars, Hasdai ibn Shaprut
noted the presence of Egyptians in his country, who brought perfumes, spices and
precious gems, as well as of merchant-envoys from Khurasan.93 According to
88
Olivia Remie Constable, Trade and Traders in Muslim Spain: The Commercial Realignment of the Iberian
Peninsula, 9001500 (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-Snchez, Andalusian Economy,

98-9. An African merchant is known to have come to al-Andalus and visited Crdoba together with his
father and brother in 937/8, and then again in 1003. Six years later, another African merchant was in
Crdoba, and he died in Almera in 1036 or 1037 (Imamuddin, Economic History, 346-7). A third businessman is said to have plied the routes between al-Andalus and Ifriqya in the 970s (Constable, Trade,
80). For a discussion of the literary references to trade (primarily in agricultural products) between alAndalus 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 prsence des gens dal-Andalus dans lOccident maghrbin aux Xe et XIe
sicles: Les raisons conomiques, in Le partage du monde:. Echanges et colonisation dans la Mditerrane
mdivale, ed. Michel Balard and Alain Ducellier (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1998), pp. 47583, 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, 9501492 (Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007), p. 6.

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ibn Hayyan, 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 Crdoba at a place called Tajaff. They asked permission of the hajib, Abd 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, shieldbearing horses with gold and silver armour, and many other goods.95 The Risala f
adab al-hisba wa-l-muhtasib, a treatise about the administration and policing of

market places,
which was written by Ibn Abd al-Rauf in the reign of Abd alRahman III or that of his son, al-Hakam II, contains detailed stipulations regarding
of foreign goods. One of them
requires that spice merchants be prevented from
sales
mixing merchandise from India with the local merchandise.96
A letter written in Qayrawan at some point between 1005 and 1035, and preserved in the Geniza archives, reports a consignment of silver money worth 1,230
dinars. The author of the letter mentions that in Qayrawan the dirhams of alAndalus 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 commercial 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 Crdoba en la Muqtabis de Ibn Hayyan: Anales Palatinos de un ms. rabe de la Real Academia
de la Historia, ed. Emilio Garca Gmez (Madrid: Sociedad de Estudios y Publicaciones, 1967), p. 145;
Constable, Trade, 97.
95
Imamuddin, Economic History, 323, believes that the Tajaff 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 Crdoba, the only one in existence in tenth-century al-Andalus (Chalmeta, El zoco medieval,
252).
96
Rachel Ari, Traduction annote et commente des traits de hisba dIbn Abd al-Rauf et de Umar al
Garsf, Hespris Tamuda 1 (1960): 5-38, p. 36. For the date of the treatise, see Chalmeta Gendrn, El
Seor del zoco, 84.
97
S.D. Goitein, The Exchange Rate of Gold and Silver Money in Fatimid and Ayyubid Times: A Preliminary Study of the Relevant Geniza Material, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 8
(1965): 1-46.
98
Alberto Canto Garca, La moneda islmica en al-Andalus, in Arqueologa medieval espaola, II Congreso, Madrid, 19-24 enero 1987 (Madrid: Asociacin Espaola de Arqueologa Medieval, 1987), pp. 2131, esp. 26.
99
Thomas S. Noonan and Roman K. Kovalev, The Dirham Output of the Spanish Umayyad Amirate,
ca. 756-929, in Homenagem a Mrio Gomes Marques, ed. M. Castro-Hiplito, David M. Metcalf, J.M.
Peixoto Cabral, and M. Crusafont i Sabater (Sintra: Instituto de Sintra, 2000), pp. 253-60, esp. 259.
100
Carmen Martnez Salvador, La moneda del califato andalus: Algunos aspectos de su organizacin,
in V Semana de estudios medievales: Njera, 1 ald 5 de agosto de 1994, ed. Jos Angel Garca de Cortzar y
Ruiz de Aguirre and Jos Ignacio de la Iglesia Duarte (Logroo: Instituto de Estudios Riojanos, 1995),
pp. 227-31, esp. 227.

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therefore, Andalusi dirhams were the backbone of the long-distance trade between
al-Andalus and northern Africa. Although almost nothing is known about the presence 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 northern Africa is the presence of Fatimid coins in hoards found in Spain.101 The Badajoz
hoard, which contains 89 dinars dated between 943/4 and 1023/4, includes 12 specimens struck in the name of the Fatimid Caliph al-Mahd (r. 909934), and another
four in the name of al-Muizz (r. 953975).102 There are eight Fatimid dirhams
hoard conamong the 237 found in the Sierra de Cazorla hoard, while the Crdoba
103
Since Fatimid coins appear in
tains 31, and the Lora del Rio hoard only two.

Spain only after 976 (during the reign of Hisham II), the acceleration
of the commercial 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 conclusion. To be sure, pavement ceramic tiles, some gilded or glazed, which were produced in specialist workshops in Catalayud and Mlaga, 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 movement of manufactured goods in the opposite direction. A bronze brazier of
Canto Garca, La moneda islmica, 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 Hisham
II (r. 976-1009, 1010-1013). See Juan Ignacio Senz-Dez, Acuaciones de los aliados magrebes del califato de Crdoba, Gaceta Numismtica 73 (1984): 50-60; idem, Las acuaciones del Califato de Crdoba en el
norte de frica (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 rabs A SC-J, Acta Numismtica 12 (1982): 139-65; Jos
Mara de Navascus, Tesorillo de monedas de plata del califato cordobs y fatims, Numrio hispanico
7 (1958): 208-10; Josep Pellicer i Bru, El tresoret de moneda rab LR-P dels anys 331-418 A.H., Acta
Numismtica 15 (1985): 157-81. For a complete list of hoards with Fatimid coins, see Josep Pellicer i Bru,

Cambio y especulacin: Los dirhams de Hiam II en los documentos de la Geniza de Cairo, Anaquel de
Estudios rabes 4 (1993): 121-8, p. 126.
104
Mallo Salgado, De la formacin social tributaria, 183.
105
Rachel Ari, La vie conomique de lEspagne musulmane, in Wirtschaftsgeschichte des vorderen
Orients in islamischer Zeit, volume I [Geschichte der islamischen Lnder, volume VI] (Leiden: Brill,
1977), pp. 239-54, esp. 250.
106
Graziella Berti, Guillermo Rossell 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 mediterrneo del siglo XI, segn la dispersin y distribucin de
las producciones cermicas, Codex Aquilarenses. Cuadernos de Investigacin del Monasterio de Santa
Mara la Real 13 (1998): 53-78, p. 58.
101

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325

Fatimid manufacture is known from Madnat Ilbira, but similar specimens have also
found in Badajoz. The pottery with epigraphic decoration containing mentionbeen
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
Besal (Girona). Even more impressive is the tenth-century Chinese porcelain ware
from Almera, while Velzquez Boscos excavations in Madnat al-Zahra 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 Fatimid 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 Sijilmassa 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 suq in the sources pertaining to the establishment
of the new cities of Murcia (831), Badajoz (875) and Almera (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 seasonal, 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. Hatim al-Kilab and the governor of al-Andalus, Yusuf b. Abd
, to the Yemeni rebels Ibn Hurayth and Abu l-Khattar (former
man al-Fihr
al-Rah

fighting in 747 in Crdoba

and
governor of al-Andalus).112 In the course of the
the surrounding area, Ibn Hurayth is said to have taken refuge inside a mill
located outside the city, nextto the place where wool is sold.113 As early as the
mid-eighth century, there was a governor of the market (sahib suqihi) in al-Andalus,
Abu Sulayman Futays
and the first prefect of the market (wal l-suq) was

Juan Zozaya Stabel-Hansen, Importaciones casuales en al-Andalus: Las vas de comercio, in IV Congreso de Arqueologa Medieval Espaola: Sociedades en transicin. Actas. Alicante, 49 de octubre 1993, ed.
Antonio Mira-Perceval Pastor and Antonio Amors Snchez (Alicante: Asociacin Espaola de Arqueologa Medieval, 1993), pp. 119-38, esp. 120-3, 125. See also Azuar Ruiz, Al-Andalus y el comercio, 63;
Anja Heidenreich, Cermica islmica de importacin en la Pennsula Ibrica, Anales de Arqueologa Cordobesa 12 (2001): 323-52, pp. 325-6; Encarnacin Cano Montoro, Un fragmento de cermica hecho a
molde aperecido en el contexto de un arrabal cordobs de poca Omeya, Antiquitas 18-19 (2007): 16976.
108
Gozalbes Cravioto, Algunos datos, 30.
109
Dinars were struck in Hisham IIs name in Sijilmassa and in Sfax. See Senz-Dez, Las acuaciones, 656, 69-70.
110
Chalmeta, El zoco medieval, 250, 454.
111
Under Abd al-Rahman III, fairs were transferred from Toledo to al-Fath near Jarankash. In Crdoba,

there was a street named Calle de los Panaderos, where during the reign of Abd Allah (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
Ajbr Machmua: Crnica annima del siglo XI, trans. Emilio Lafuente y Alcntara (Madrid: Rivadeneyra, 1867), pp. 60, 65. Given that the reference is to the sale of wool during the unknown authors lifetime, the fair in question must be dated to the eleventh, and not to the mid-eighth century.
107

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b. Sulayman, 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 treatises 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 Abd al-Raufs
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 merchandise.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
Crdoba 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 aswaq. He built a large market, the al-suq al-uzma, along the
main road passing between the Alcazr and the mosque, next to a neighbourhood
known as Bab al-Attarn. This was a covered market, which was repeatedly
936 and 971. It was then rebuilt under Abd al-Rahman
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 Alcazr and the mosque has not yet been excavated.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 monitoring the sales, no doubt for the purpose of taxation. A substantial number of
Chalmeta Gendrn, El Seor del zoco, 364.
Ari, Traduction annote, 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 Bashquwal reports the story of a merchant from Pechina who, in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, traded in cloth from Pechina on the market in Crdoba, 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 Abd al-Malik ibn Bashquwal, Kitab al-sila f tarkh aimmat al-Andalus, ed. Francisco

Codera y Zaidn, volume I (Madrid: Matbaat Rukhas, 1882), pp. 311-13.

116
Manuel Acin Almansa and Antonio Vallejo Triano, Urbanismo y Estado islmico: de Corduba a
Qurtuba-Madnat al-Zahra, in Gense de la ville islamique en al-Andalus et au Maghreb occidental, ed.

Patrice Cressier and Mercedes Garca-Arenal (Madrid: Casa de Velzquez, 1998), pp. 107-36,
esp. 119; Chalmeta, El zoco medieval, 252.
117
For the excavations in Secunda, see Mara Teresa Casal Garca, Caractersticas generales del urbanismo cordobs en la primera etapa emiral: el arrabal de aqunda, Anejos de Anales Arqueologa Cordobesa
1 (2008): 109-34. For some of the finds (none related to trade), see also Mara Teresa Casal, Rafael Martnez, and Mara Mar Araque, Estudio de los vertederos domsticos del arrabal de aqunda: ganadera,
alimentacin y usos derivados, Anejos de Anales de Arqueologa Cordobesa 2 (20092010): 143-82. For the
pottery, all of it of local production, see Mara Teresa Casal, Elena Castro, Rosa Lpez, and Elena Salinas,
Aproximacin al estudio de la cermica emiral del arrabal de aqunda (Qurtuba, Crdoba), Arqueologa

y Territorio Medieval 12.5 (2005): 189-235.


114
115

Markets in al-Andalus and Volga Bulgharia

327

commodities sold in the al-suq al-uzma in Crdoba must have been of local pro
duction, and the treatises of hisba, such
as that of Ibn Abd al-Rauf 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 qaysarya located in Crdoba.118

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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 Abd al-Rahman

III, the relations with the Fatimids 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 Fatimids conquered Egypt and moved out of
north-western Africa, which was now dominated by two Berber groups locked in
permanent conflict the Sanhaja and the Zanata. A great number of Berber chiefs
came with their men to al-Andalus, despite their Kharijite 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-Mansur became the de facto ruler
of al-Andalus in the aftermath of al-Hakam IIs death in 976. This was in fact the
one of the wealthiest states in the Mediterperiod during which al-Andalus became
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 promoted by Miquel Barcel 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-Mansurs troops

occupied in 998 (Imamuddin, Economic History, 301).


119
Miquel Barcel, El diseo des los espacios irrigados en al-Andalus: Un enunciado de principios generales, in El agua en las zonas ridas: Arqueologa y historia. Actas de I Coloquio de Historia y Medio Fsico,
Almera, 14-15-16 de diciembre de 1989, volume I (Almera: Instituto de Estudios Almerienses de la Diputacin de Almera, 1989), pp. xv-xli. See also the studies in El agua en la agricultura de al-Andalus (Barcelona: Lunwerg, 1995). For a good introduction to the social aspects of the results of research in hydraulic
archaeology, see Jos Mara Martn Civantos, Working in Landscape Archaeology: The Social and Territorial Significance of the Agricultural Revolution in al-Andalus, Early Medieval Europe 19.4 (2011):
385-410.
120
Civantos, Working in Landscape Archaeology, 407.

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and the collection of dues from the agricultural hinterland.121 In this respect, therefore, cities in al-Andalus were not different from those in Volga Bulgharia. However,
we know considerably more about cities as centres of trade in Bulgharia than in alAndalus. Next to nothing is known about the physical remains of markets, ports-oftrade or facilities (such as caravanserais122) associated with long-distance trade in alAndalus. 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 Bulgharia, 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. Crdoba in the latetenth 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 hinterland, but also from more distant areas, such as the huertas in southern and eastern alAndalus. The written sources suggest that Crdoba 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-suq al-uzma near the Bab alAttarn 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
Crdoba 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-suq al-uzma? Did peasants small and medium landowners sell their
on the market in Crdoba, with prices formed freely? Or were
produce directly
those commodities bought by merchants directly from the producers, in the countryside, and then sold perhaps at a higher price on the market in Crdoba? If supplying Crdoba 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 Abd al-Raufs hisba treatise suggests that the

merchandise was sold in shops and stalls, but it is not clear from the text whether
121

Ibid., 408.
Caravanserais are, however, mentioned in Crdoba 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 Fernndez, 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 Madnat al-Zahra, the city that
grew up around the new palatial compound built by Abd al-Rahman III 5 km northwest of Crdoba, or

Madnat al-Zahra, the other city and palatial compound on the eastern outskirts of Crdoba, to which alMansur moved in 979.

122

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329

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 eleventhcentury 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 Crdoba alone. Some Andalusi merchants are
known to have become rich by trading between Crdoba and Pechina, but the
latter was a famous outlet for the inter-regional and international trade. The conquest of Egypt by the Fatimids redirected many of the trade routes in the Mediterranean and opened lines of communication between east and west along the African
coast. Tripoli, Qayrawan, 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 Mlaga, Almera, Cartagena, and
Valencia, but there is very little archaeological evidence available to support that
conclusion.
According to Ibn Abd al-Raufs 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 international 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 Qayrawan 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 Hisham IIs name.

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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
Bulgharia, 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 eleventhcentury 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 medievalism127
then it certainly needs to engage the question of medieval trade more forcefully.

Miquel Barcel, Prlogo, in Arqueologa medieval: En las fueras del medievalismo, ed. Miquel
Barcel (Barcelona: Crtica, 1988), pp. 9-17, esp. 13.

127

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