As they rowed south, Rurik’s men first had to deal with the Khazars, who since the break-up of the western Turks around 650 had ruled from central Asia to Ukraine, fighting the Arabs for fifty years while enjoying good relations with Constantinople’s emperors, two of whom married Khazar princesses. Ruled by two kings, a khagan and an
These Jewish khagans controlled the riverine trade. Rurik and his federation of Slav, Viking and Turkic peoples traded furs, amber, wax, honey, walrus tusks and slaves, for which they received payment from Khazars, Romans and Arabs in silver dirhams, the dollars of the day, which allow us to imagine trade routes that extended from India to Britain. Hoards of the caliph’s coins – 100,000 so far – have been discovered in Sweden, as has a small bronze Buddha cast in Kashmir, while in Britain Mercian kings adapted dirhams, still marked in Arabic, for local use. But the chief Viking merchandise was human: Slavs were sold so widely through the Black Sea and the Mediterranean that the very word for slave was named after them.
Both Baghdad and Constantinople bid for the support of the Khazars and other tribes in these turbulent borderlands, dispatching brave envoys to treat with these terrifying barbarians. Meeting the Rus, Ibn Fadlan, a caliphal envoy, was as excited as he was disgusted: ‘I’ve never seen more perfect physical specimens, tall as date palms, blond and ruddy,’ he wrote. Their chieftain sat on his throne surrounded by 400 warriors and forty slaves ‘destined for his bed’.*
Ibn Fadlan witnessed the group sex and human sacrifice of a young intoxicated enslaved girl at a chieftain’s funeral supervised by a female shaman, the Angel of Death, ‘a strapping old woman, fat and louring’. Ibn Fadlan was surely relieved to make it back to Baghdad.
Rurik, a semi-mythic hero of whom we know little, ruled a fiefdom from Gorodische, or the Town, a trading settlement, later refounded as New Town, Novgorod. His successors expanded southwards. His descendant Igor was brought to the Slav town Kyiv on the Dnieper, founded around the sixth century, later making this the headquarters for trading furs and slaves to Constantinople where Rus – known to the Romaioi as Varangians – often served as elite guards.
The Great City was a tempting prize: Igor launched two raids during which his longboats were torched by Greek Fire. Later, he was captured by a Slav tribe who tied him to two branches which were then released, tearing him in half. Yet his widow Olga defeated his Slavic enemies, then travelled to Constantinople, where she was baptized after meeting the emperor. The empire was resurgent thanks to a remarkable Armenian peasant whose career was made by his buff physique, grim charms and skill with horses.
CONSTANTINOPLE AND ROME: BASIL THE UNIBROW HORSE WHISPERER AND MAROZIA THE SENATRIX
