In the early 600s, the heartland of the Avar kaghanate in Pannonia was not the main area of Bulgar settlement. A seventh-century Armenian source—the Geography of Ananias of Sirak—lists several Bulgar groups in the region north of the Caucasus Mountains, on both sides of the river Kuban. The same region has been identified as the "Great Bulgaria," which, according to the ninth-century Byzantine chronicler Theophanes, had come into existence by 630 under the leadership of a chieftain named Kubrat. He is said to have ruled over lands situated between the Maeotid Lake (the Sea of Azov) and the river Kouphis, which many historians believe to be the Kuban. However, the name applied also to the (Southern) Bug River, which means that Kubrat's Great Bulgaria was most likely located in the steppe lands of present-day Ukraine, just north of Crimea, on both sides of the Lower Dnieper River. Such an interpretation is supported by the seventh-century burial assemblage found in (Malo) Pereshchepyne, near Poltava. Besides weapons, exquisite dress accessories, as well as Byzantine and Sassanian silverware, this archaeological assemblage produced three golden finger-rings, each bearing a Greek monogram mentioning a certain patrikios Kubrat. The ruler of Great Bulgaria appears to have taken advantage of the civil war in the neighboring Avar kaghanate to strike out on his own. His rivals in the east were the Khazars. In the ensuing conflict, the Khazars eventually had the upper hand, and by 660 subjugated one of Kubrat's five sons, Batbaian. The so-called "black Bulgars," who remained under Khazar, rule are mentioned in later sources as enjoying a certain degree of autonomy within the Khazar kaghanate. A second group appears to have moved to the Middle Volga region, where recent archaeological excavations have revealed a number of seventh- and eighth-century cemeteries with burial mounds apparently erected by a population of immigrants. During the ninth and tenth century, Volga Bulgaria became a major link in the trade network across the continent between the Baltic and the Caspian Sea. In the early tenth century, Ibn Fadlan describes the Volga Bulgars as recent converts to Islam.
Florin CurtaSource:
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