About the First Mention of the Rus Merchants in Byzantium

Abstract

The information of the Arabic official and writer Ibn Khordadbeh in The Book of Roads and Kingdoms about ar-Rūs merchants was studied many times but his mention of their travels to “the sea ar-Rum” where they pay the tithe to the ruler of ar-Rum did not attract much attention. On the one hand, it was taken for granted that in the 9th century there existed trade connections between Scandinavians who settled in Eastern Europe and Byzantium in spite of the almost absolute lack of archaeological confirmations of trade with Byzantium both in Scandinavia and in Eastern Europe in the 9th century and the silence of written sources. On the other hand, the identification of the place where the Rūs merchants traded with Kherson is dominating in modern literature. The mention of the Rūs merchants by Ibn Khaodadhbeh is, however, the earliest and unique peace of information of the trading activity of the Rus in Byzantium in the 9th century and as such it deserves greater attention, all the more so as the dating of Ibn Khordadhbeh’s work is debatable. First, most of the scholars tend to believe that there existed two versions of The Book dated to the 840s and 880s. Since the information about the Rūs merchants exist in both versions it is considered to belong to the 840s. Serious arguments, however, were recently suggested in favour of the existence of only one, and late, version. Second, the interpretation of the “ar-Rum sea” as the Black sea contradicts both its regular usage in Oriental literature as the designation of the Mediterranean Sea and its usage by Ibn Khordadhbeh himself: there are four other cases where the hydronym as unambiguously applied to the Mediterranean. Thus it is possible to speak about the trade activity of Rus in Byzantium and, maybe, in Constantinople with a great degree of confidence. The juxtaposition of Ibn Khordadhbeh’s information with a few other sources on Rus and Byzantium connections that came to us from the 9th century convincingly demonstrate the domination of peaceful relations based most probably on mutually beneficial trade and accompanied by diplomatic procedures and the recognition of the title “khagan” of the Rus ruler at any case in the second half of the 9th century. If we agree with the early date of The Book of Roads and Kingdoms, the beginnings of trade connections between the Rus and Byzantium can be dated to the first half the 9th century and it seems possible to suggest, highly hypothetically, that the embassy of the khagan of the Rhos to the emperor Theophilos at the end of the 830-s could have for their object the regulation of trade.