Caspian expeditions of the Rus'

• 1. The Long Road South

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  The Caspian expeditions of the Rus' had an unlikely beginning: camel caravans bound for Baghdad. Long before Rus' warships appeared on the Caspian, small groups of their traders were heading south on camels, bound for Baghdad's markets. Their European slaves interpreted for them when they arrived. These men from the Baltic north traded in the Muslim world on furs, honey, and enslaved people.

  How did a trading network on the Volga become a military force that raided cities on the far shores of the Caspian Sea? What drove these warriors to return again and again over nearly two centuries? And why did the effort finally collapse, with so many men dying so far from home?

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• 2. Merchants of the Volga

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  In the early ninth century, Norsemen established a settlement called Aldeigja, about six miles south of the Volkhov River's entry into Lake Ladoga. From there, they developed two trading corridors. One ran southwest along the Dnieper toward the Byzantine Empire. The other ran east along the Volga into the Muslim world.

  The Arab geographer ibn Khordadbeh described these traders in the late ninth century. He recorded them buying goods from the Khazars on the lower Volga and selling them in Caspian towns. Coins support his account. Thomas S. Noonan argued the Rus' had reached Baghdad as early as 800. His argument rests partly on Sassanid, Arab, and Arabo-Sassanid dirham coins found at Peterhof, near Saint Petersburg, dated no later than 804-805.

  Ibn Khordadbeh labeled the Rus' "a kind of the Saqaliba," a term usually applied to Slavic peoples. This wording has sustained a long debate. Anti-Normanist scholars read it as evidence that the Rus' were Slavic rather than Scandinavian. Normanist scholars counter that the term Saqaliba also covered fair-haired, ruddy-complexioned peoples across Central and Eastern Europe. The passage remains genuinely ambiguous.

  The first recorded Caspian raid came during the reign of Hasan ibn Zaid, ruler of Tabaristan between 864 and 884. A Rus' fleet attacked Abaskun on the eastern Caspian shore, failed, and left without leaving a detailed record. In 909 or 910, a second expedition reached the same target with only sixteen ships. A third minor raid followed in 911 or 912. The era of small Caspian probes was almost over.

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• 3. Five Hundred Ships

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  In 913, the Rus' launched their first large-scale Caspian raid with a fleet of five hundred ships. To reach the Caspian, they navigated a deliberate overland route. They sailed down the Dnieper into the Black Sea, then crossed into the Sea of Azov. From there they traveled up the Don River, past the Khazar city of Sarkel. A portage at the headwaters connected them to the Volga, which carried them south into the Caspian.

  The Rus' could not simply pass through Khazar territory. They negotiated safe passage by promising the Khazars half of everything they seized. The arrangement was accepted, and the fleet crossed into Muslim waters.

  The raiders struck first in the Gorgan region near Abaskun, then swept through Tabaristan. They attacked Baku, pushing inland three days' journey from the coast, and raided Arran, Beylagan, and Shirvan. An attempt to repel them while their ships lay anchored near islands in the southwestern Caspian failed completely. Everywhere they looted as much as they could, taking women and children as slaves.

  The homeward journey turned catastrophic. In the Volga Delta, the Rus' were attacked by Muslims and, apparently, by some Christians. The Khazar ruler appears to have given his assent to this ambush. According to al-Masudi, those who escaped that initial attack were finished off by the Burtas and Volga Bulgars in the middle Volga. Of the five-hundred-ship fleet, it is unclear how many reached home.

  The disaster in the Volga Delta ended the 913 campaign, but the routes were still open. Thirty years later, a new Rus' force appeared on the Caspian.

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• 4. The City of Bardha'a

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  When Igor was prince of Kievan Rus', a second large-scale expedition set out for the Caspian in 943, according to the Primary Chronicle. The Rus' rowed up the Kura River into the Caucasus, defeating the forces of Marzuban bin Muhammad. They then captured Bardha'a, the capital of Arran. At first, the occupiers presented themselves as something close to a governing force. They allowed the local people to keep their religion in exchange for recognition of Rus' authority. There is some possibility they intended to stay.

  The peace collapsed. According to ibn Miskawaih, the local people broke it by throwing stones and directing abuse at their occupiers. The Rus' demanded that the inhabitants evacuate the city. The ultimatum was rejected. What followed was a massacre and ransom demands. A siege then locked the Rus' inside Bardha'a fortress while Muslim forces pressed from outside.

  Fruit ended the standoff. Ibn Miskawaih wrote that the Rus' "indulged excessively in the fruit of which there are numerous sorts there." This produced an epidemic, and their numbers began to dwindle. Encouraged by the sickness spreading through the Rus' ranks, the besieging Muslims pressed harder. The Rus' chief rode out on a donkey, leading a failed sally. That engagement cost seven hundred warriors. The chief escaped encirclement and fell back to the fortress.

  At night, the survivors slipped away. Ibn Miskawaih describes them carrying their treasure, gems, and fine clothing, as well as the boys and girls they had seized. They headed for the Kura River, where their ships waited. Three hundred Rus' had remained with the ships throughout the occupation. When the Muslims dug up the Rus' graves afterward, they found weapons buried beside the warriors.

  Who commanded the Rus' at Bardha'a is still disputed. George Vernadsky proposed that the donkey-riding chief was Oleg of Novgorod, identifying him with a figure called Helgu in the Schechter Letter. That document records Helgu traveling to Persia by boat and dying after a failed attack on Constantinople in 941. Lev Gumilev, drawing on Arabian sources, identified the leader as Sveneld, a Varangian chieftain. The Primary Chronicle notes Sveneld's wealth in the entry for 945.

  Twenty-two years after the Rus' fled Bardha'a by night, a Rus' prince moved to settle the question of Khazar power on the Volga. The resolution would be final.

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• 5. Sviatoslav's March

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  Around 950-960, the Khazar ruler Joseph wrote a letter now known as the Khazar Correspondence. Joseph wrote: "I have to wage war with them." Without his vigilance, he warned, they would lay waste to Muslim lands all the way to Baghdad. Joseph was not exaggerating the threat. Within a few years of writing those words, the Khazar state he was defending would be gone.

  The causes of the war between Sviatoslav I of Kiev and Khazaria are not entirely clear from surviving sources. The Khazars had long collected duties on goods transported along the Volga, placing a direct tax on Rus' trade. The conflict may also have been spurred by a Khazar decision to close the Volga after the 943 raid. Cutting off passage would have directly harmed Rus' revenues.

  In 965, Sviatoslav moved against Khazaria with Oghuz and Pecheneg mercenaries, perhaps to counter the Khazars' superior cavalry. He destroyed the Khazar city of Sarkel around that year and possibly sacked Kerch on the Crimea. Later, probably in 968 or 969, he destroyed the Khazar capital of Atil. A visitor who passed through shortly after wrote: "The Rus' attacked, and no grape or raisin remained, not a leaf on a branch."

  Ibn Hawqal records the sack of Semender as well. According to ibn Hawqal, the Rus' then departed for regions he calls "Rum and al-Andalus." The destruction of Khazaria erased a power that had controlled north-south trade for generations. The steppe routes and Black Sea crossings that had been a primary source of Khazar revenue now fell under Rus' control. The Saltovo-Mayaki culture of the transitional zone between forest and steppe saw increased Slavic settlement as a result of Sviatoslav's campaigns.

  Sviatoslav's campaigns reset the political map, but they did not end Rus' interest in the Caspian. Decades later, individuals and small forces were still probing the same southern routes.

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• 6. The Last Runestones

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  In 987, an emir named Maymun of Derbent asked the Rus' for help against local chiefs. The Rus' arrived with eighteen ships, but uncertain of their reception, they sent a single ship ahead to reconnoiter. The crew of that ship was massacred by the local population. The Rus' responded by looting the city of Maskat.

  Maymun appears in the sources again in 989. A local preacher demanded he hand over his Rus' mercenaries for conversion to Islam or death. Maymun refused, was driven from the city, and was forced to surrender the Rus' soldiers. He returned to power in 992. The episode shows Rus' fighters had become fixtures in Caspian political struggles.

  Raids continued into the eleventh century. In 1030, the Rus' struck Shirvan. The ruler of Ganja then paid them to help suppress a revolt in Beylagan. In November 1031, the Rus' returned and were defeated near Baku. In 1032, the Rus' raided Shirvan again, this time with Alans and Sarir fighting alongside them. Local Muslims defeated the Rus' in 1033. Omeljan Pritsak suggested these later raiders operated from a base near the Terek estuary, with their principal home in Tmutarakan. He also speculated they later lent support to the Oghuz in a power struggle in Khwarezm.

  The final expedition is the one best remembered. Ingvar the Far-Travelled launched an attack against Persia in 1042, sailing from Sweden. He led a fleet of two hundred ships, carrying an estimated fifteen to twenty thousand men. He traveled down the Volga into the land he and his men called the Saracens' country, Serkland in Norse. The expedition failed. The saga of his journey, Yngvars saga víðförla, mixes legend with historical fact. No less than twenty-six runestones in Sweden commemorate the warriors who went east with Ingvar. Twenty-three of them stand in the Lake Mälaren region of Uppland.

  No further Norse attempt was made to reopen the Caspian route after Ingvar's failure. The stone raised for his brother says only that he went east for gold and that he died in the Saracen land.

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