Volga Bulgaria

Volga Bulgaria was a state at the meeting point of the Volga and Kama rivers, in what is now the Russian republic of Tatarstan. Founded by Bulgar tribes who moved north from the steppes, it became a wealthy trading kingdom and, in 922, the first Muslim state in what is now Russia.

The Bulgars were a Turkic people of the Pontic steppe. In the seventh century, they formed Old Great Bulgaria under Khan Kubrat, north of the Black Sea. After his death, the Khazars attacked, and the Bulgars split. One group, under Asparukh, moved west across the Danube and founded the First Bulgarian Empire in 681, the origin of modern Bulgaria, where they merged with the Slavs. Another group moved north, up the Volga, and settled among Finno-Ugric peoples on the middle Volga and Kama, founding Volga Bulgaria, which was at first tributary to the Khazars.

In 921 the Bulgar king, Almish, asked the Abbasid caliph al-Muqtadir in Baghdad for help in building a fortress against the Khazars and for teachers of Islam. The caliph sent an embassy, which reached the Bulgars in May 922. One of its members, Ahmad ibn Fadlan, wrote an account of the journey, describing the Oghuz, Pechenegs and Bulgars, the northern lights and the short summer nights, and, famously, the Rus' traders he met on the Volga, including a ship burial of a Rus' chief with a sacrificed slave girl. Almish adopted Islam, took the name Jafar and declared allegiance to the caliph, breaking from the Khazars.

Volga Bulgaria controlled the river trade between the forests of the north and the Islamic world. Northern peoples supplied furs, especially sable and squirrel, honey, wax, walrus ivory and slaves, which Bulgar merchants traded with the Rus', Scandinavians, Khwarazm and the Samanids, receiving silver coins, cloth, spices and other goods. The Bulgars minted their own silver coins, imitating Samanid dirhams. Hoards of these coins have been found in Russia, Scandinavia and the Baltic.

The main cities were Bolghar, near the confluence of the Volga and Kama, and Bilär, a large fortified city that was probably the capital in the twelfth century. Archaeologists have found mosques, bathhouses with underfloor heating, workshops for metal, leather, pottery and glass, and evidence of farming. The Bulgars grew wheat and other crops and exported grain to Rus' in times of famine.

Volga Bulgaria clashed with the Rus' principalities, especially Vladimir-Suzdal, which attacked it several times in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and the Bulgars raided Rus' towns. Prince Sviatoslav of Kyiv attacked the Bulgars in the 960s.

In 1223, after the Mongol victory at the Kalka river, the Volga Bulgars ambushed and defeated a returning Mongol force, one of the first defeats of the Mongols. In 1236 the Mongols returned with Batu's great army and destroyed Volga Bulgaria, sacking Bilär and Bolghar and killing much of the population. The region became part of the Golden Horde. Bolghar was rebuilt and became an important city of the Horde, with a cathedral mosque, mausoleums and minarets, whose ruins are now a World Heritage Site.

After the Golden Horde, the region became the Khanate of Kazan, conquered by Russia in 1552. The Volga Tatars and the Chuvash both claim descent from the Volga Bulgars; the Chuvash language is the only living language of the Oghur, or Bulgar, branch of the Turkic family. Tatarstan's Muslims commemorate the conversion of 922.

Our maps show Volga Bulgaria from 800 to 1200, almost entirely in today's Russia. Its largest outline, about 640,000 square kilometres on the 1000 map, covers the middle Volga and Kama region. Kazan's site lies inside it throughout. On the 1279 map the region belongs to the Golden Horde.