De Administrando Imperio Research Articles

Garum or Grain? Crimea and the Provisioning of Constantinople (7th to 9th centuries)

Historians have relied for too long on written sources (the letters that Pope Martin I wrote from Cherson, as well as De Administrando Imperio) to assess the economic situation in the Crimea, especially in Cherson, during the so-called Dark Ages (7th to 9th centuries). Many still believe that that city could not have survived without shipments of grain from the outside, particularly from the lands along the southern coast of the Black Sea. Seals of Byzantine officials found in Cherson tell a different story, as they indicate commercial exchanges between the Crimea and Constantinople. If the peninsula participated in trade, something must have been offered in exchange for the goods coming from the Capital. The archaeological evidence strongly suggests that during the 8th and 9th centuries, the hinterland of Cherson, as well as the Kerch Peninsula (eastern Crimea) witnessed rapid economic development, largely based on the cultivation of crops. Silos found on several settlement sites, both open and fortified, suggest a surplus, which was most likely commercialized. If so, the closest markets were across the Black Sea, to the south, primarily in Constantinople. Other commodities, such as wine transported in amphorae, traveled in the opposite direction, across the Sea of Azov and into the interior of Khazaria. In exchange, the peninsula received shipments of grain, which were then re-exported to Constantinople. Far from relying on shipments of grain from the Capital, Cherson and the rest of the Crimean Peninsula in fact supplied Constantinople with food. Numerous vats for the production of fish sauce have been found in Cherson, and many were in operation before 900. A good deal of the garum served at tables in Constantinople between the 7th and the 9th century must have come from Cherson. The archaeological evidence therefore calls for a re-assessment of the economic situation in the Crimean Peninsula during the “Dark Ages”.

Rhosia and the Circum-Russian Politosphere of the 10th Century

This review considers the concept of the Rurikid polity of the tenth century proposed by Aleksei S. Shchavelev, Senior Researcher at the Center for Eastern Europe in the Ancient and Medieval World, Department of the History of Byzantium and Eastern Europe, Institute of General History, Russian Academy of Sciences. Also, the reviewer examines its chronology and spatial structure, the genealogy of the early Rurikids, and the dynamics of their territorial power. The concept of “polity” replaces the previous notions of “Ancient Russia”, “Kievan Rus’”, and “Ancient Russian State” irrelevant for pre-Christian Times. The basis for the reconstruction of the Rurikid polity in the tenth century was not so much The Primary Chronicle whose chronology is being criticized more and more harshly, as The Tactica by Byzantine Emperor Leo VI the Wise (866–912), the treatise De Administrando Imperio by Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (905–959), letters from Hasdai ibn Shaprut (905–975), advisor to the Caliph of Cordoba, etc. This polity emerged following stochastic fluctuations in ethno-social, event, and personal history.

Early Medieval Serbs in the Balkans

This paper discusses the problem of the appearance of the Serb ethnonym in the Balkans, as evidenced in the ninth-century Frankish Royal Annals and the mid-tenth-century Byzantine treaty De Administrando Imperio. Written evidence is analysed together with available archaeological information in order to criticize currently dominating ideas concerning the Serb migration in the seventh century, as well as to offer different perspectives on the origins of the early medieval Serb ethnonym in the Balkans.

A myth as a replacement for a history: Ethnogenetic elements in De Administrando Imperio and the Chronicle of the Priest of Duklja

We will examine how the diversity of historical sources affects the portrayal of the Balkan Slavs by following two writings that notably differ. First is De Administrando Imperio, written in the X century. Our second source is the Chronicle of the Priest of Duklja about which very little is known. The two sources have a strong influence on our understanding of the earliest history of the Slavs that dwell in the Western Balkans. Hence, on our understanding of the modern nations, i.e. Croats and Serbs. These sources are so different when regarding their historicity, time of composition etc. But in terms of myths, we see the same patterns: coming of pagan peoples in Roman Dalmatia, story of their origin, how they were baptised, who were their rulers, what kind of dynasties they had, when did it happen and many more. Following this general ethnogenetic and mythological framework, we will try to conclude the relationship between myth and the identity of a European populace. To achieve this goal, we used qualitative and quantitative content analysis and provided their narrative networks of the mentioned texts. These networks illustrate patterns of connections between different ethnogenetic elements in the writings that serve to form groups identities of interest.

SOME REMARKS REGARDING PRONUNCIATION OF THE SOUND /Ʀ/ BY THE INITIAL RUS’

Pronunciation of the Scandinavian Younger Futhark’s rune Ýr, conventionally transcribed as /ʀ/, varied in Old Norse dialects. In the western dialect, this consonant merged with /r/ due to the active rhoticism; while eastern dialects, including a dialect presumably spoken by the initial Rus’ after its origination (in the Viking Era), probably preserved it as a separate phoneme. Some pronunciation features of the sound /ʀ/ by the initial Rus’ were indirectly emerged in foreign-language rendering cases of certain Rus’ words. The article considers examples of such renderings: a few Rus’ proper names in Constantine Porphyrogenitus’ De Administrando Imperio as well as the presumptive Rus’ self-naming in Geografus Bavarus and Finnish-language reproductions. With regard to restrictions of the alphabets involved in the discussed examples, an assumption was proposed that the initial Rus’ pronounced the sound /ʀ/ as a palate-alveolar (or even alveo-palatal) sibilant with the uncompleted rhoticism.

New Interpretations of Data about South Slavic Gentes from the De Administrando Imperio of Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (944-959)

This paper presents an overview of historical research of one of the most important documents for the earliest history of South Slavs – the De administrando imperio by the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (944–959). It is evident that previous researchers investigated this work according to a black/white, correct/incorrect template and that the most important things remained unanalysed – where does all this information come from, who collected it and when, for which occasion was it written and with which aim? The researchers posed of the source legitimate questions but in an incorrect order. The firstthing which should have been asked is: on what sources is the work based on, when and where was it written, and who wrote it. Beside the historiographic part of the work, the author, using his own methodological template, also provides information about the newest results in the study of this historical text. He argues that the Emperor’s main source on the settlement of theSouth Slavic peoples on the Balkan peninsula was the now lost work titled De conversione Croatorum et Serborum. Including this element into research allows us to understand some of the Emperor’s claims which but which were never properly understood by historians.

Uniquely preserved Slavic nautical technology behind religious exchange and transition in Old Rus and Scandinavia

In order to understand how world religions such as Christianity spread, we need to investigate routes of religious exchange. This paper examines Scandinavian exposure to Christianity in the Viking Age from a maritime and theological perspective. It does so by combining literary, graphic, and material evidence with a field study of ancient boatbuilding, which is uniquely preserved in Russia. It investigates how Scandinavians in large numbers reached the Christian metropolis Constantinople by adapting their boatbuilding skills to Slavic nautical technology. An analysis of De Administrando Imperio proves that Scandinavians used and outfitted the Slavic expanded logboat in the text named σκαφίδιον (“skafidion”) along Put’ iz varjag v Greki from the Novgorod Region. It argues that this particular Slavic technology was the precondition for naval expeditions to Constantinople, and it offers a new explanation as to why Slavs over time used the term Rus as a signifier to identify themselves. The paper shows that this is cooperated and elaborated by the field study of the Russian expanded logboat ‘ботник’ (botnik). The paper argues that this study substantiates the claim in The Russian Primary Chronicle also known as Povest’ vremennykh let, that several thousand Scandinavians and Slavs reached Constantinople during their naval expeditions in year 860, 907, and 941, and the information that some of them were baptized in Constantinople, during these years. It is argued that the first major conversion of the Scandinavian elite took place abroad. Because of ботник, Scandinavians together with Slavs were exposed to the idea and reality of a Christian empire long before their kings and grand prince took on and adopted Christianity.

Легенда о Гикии, Станислав Сестренцевич-Богуш и Екатерина II

This article analyses the reasons which made Stanislas Sestrencewicz-Bohusz (Siestrzeńcewicz-Bohusz, also Sestrentsevich or Sestrenzewitsch, 1731—1826) to study the history of the Crimea and to write one of the first monographs on the subject, which still determines some trends in the Crimean studies. It has been shown that Sestrencewicz, the head of Catholic church in Russia, who tried to establish normal relations between the Polish elite and the Russian government after the first partition of Rzeczpospolita, composed a verse drama of the story of the relations between Chersonesus and Bosporus as described in the 53rd chapter of De administrando imperio by Constantine Porphyrogenitus. Sestrencewicz supplied the main character of his drama, Gycia by name, with well-recognizable traits of Catherine II and put up the idea of the necessity of peaceful cooperation between the Chersonesites (Russians) and Sarmatians (Poles). It has been supposed that the ideas embodied in the drama made Catherine II and her favorite Grigorii Potemkin to order Sestrencewicz to write the history of the Crimea. After the unification of the Crimea with Russia in 1783, the writing of its history became a matter of public importance. Sestrencewicz knew ancient languages and therefore could read sources in original. His sincere pro-Russian position appeared in his interpretation of the liquidation of the khanate as the end of the Crimean history. The events in Sestrencewicz’s creative biography are uncovered against the background of the Russian state ideology and the ideas of Enlightenment about the history of the Crimea.

New “Russian Translation” of the Treatise “De Adminstrando Imperio” Amid Its Contemporary Studies

Introduction. The article is a critical essay about an attempt to translate the Constantine’s treatise “De Administrando Imperio” into an artificially archaic “Pseudo-Slavic” language, made by R.A. Gimadeev. It is shown that his commentaries accompanying this translation are extremely primitive, the author does not follow scientific methods and he is not familiar with modern scientific literature. This is especially clearly seen, since this publication takes place against the backdrop of a fundamental rethinking in modern Byzantine studies of political history and the system of power organization in the “Eastern Roman Empire” of the 10th century. This rethinking of basic Byzantine issues is vastly based on the re-interpretations and new commenting of the classic text of “De Administrando Imperio”. Discussion. In recent years several special articles and monographs have been published, in which the questions about authorship, text structure, stylistics and ideology of the text of “De Administrando Imperio” and related subjects were re-posed. Analysis. For a number of parameters, the text of the introduction and commentaries on the text of the treatise in this new edition made by R.A. Gimadeev is far from the standards of academic writing. His attempts to reason about the paleography of the manuscript and the text’s structure are devoid of formal arguments and arbitrary rhetorical in their nature. The translation of the text into some artificial archaic “Slavic Russian Language” does not convey the pragmatics and stylistics of the original, but leads to a distortion of its perception. The uniformity of the principles of translating special vocabulary is not maintained: in some cases, the translator refuses the usual transliterations, in others – he introduces new ones. The publication practically does not take into account modern historiography, partly, apparently, intentionally, but often, out of unfamiliarity with the necessary studies. Perhaps, some ideas of R.A. Gimadeev will be confirmed and find application in the future, but all his observations require the most careful verification. Conclusions. The considered attempt of a new reconstruction of the Greek text of the treatise and its translation by R.A. Gimadeev are not fully scientific and qualified. As a result, the new edition turned out to be a kind of historiographical deviation, especially evident against the background of modern studies of this masterpiece of Byzantine literature.

Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos on Croats in Early Medieval Southern Pannonia (DAI, c. 30, 75–78): A Note on Concept and Method of Byzantine History Writing

The paper endeavours to discuss anew a scholarly puzzle related to the Croatian early Middle Ages and centred on a few lines from Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos’s De administrando imperio, which in English translation are as follows: And of the Croats who arrived to Dalmatia one part separated and ruled Illyricum and Pannonia. And they also had an independent ruler who was sending envoys, though only to the ruler of Croatia from friendship. Taking a different approach from the complete dismissal of the two sentences as a pure fiction or a mere literary device, the paper instead attempts to trace the concept behind this account as well as its underlying meaning. On the one hand, it seeks to detect the methods or strategies used by the royal compiler in trying to elucidate the past. On the other hand, it aims to provide a thorough historical analysis and offer a possible interpretation in opposition to the view, still largely extant in the Croatian scholarship, that this account is an evidence for an early presence of the group called Croats in southern Pannonia.

Rus’ “From Frank’s Origin”: the Isolated Ethnogenetic Motif of Byzantine Historiography

The paper presents an attempt of analysis of an isolated ethnogenetic motif of the Byzantine historiography: that the Rus were descendants of the Franks. This motif is present in three texts: in the the Chronography of Theophanes Continuatus, The Chronicle of Pseudo-Symeon, and in one copy of the second edition of the Chronicle of Symeon the Magister and Logothete. According to the treatise De administrando imperio by emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, representatives of the imperial family of the Roman Empire could marry only representatives of the noble kins of the Franks. Therefore, the only possible explanation of the appearance of the idea that the Rus had a prestige decadence from the Franks in Byzantine historical and political thought is an attempt to justify the marriage of the sister of the ruling Byzantine emperors Anna Porphyrogenita with the “archon” of the “northern barbarians” Vladimir Svaytoslavich. The logic of the inventors of this ethnogenetic construction is transparent: if the people of Rus descended from the Franks, Vladimir was also a descendant of the Franks and so could marry a Roman princess, Anna Porphyrogenita, in accordance with the “political testament” of Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus. This idea could have the greatest relevance only after the marriage of Vladimir and Anna between c. 987 and 990, and until the death of Anna in 1011/1012. The possible dates for the compilation of the three codices at our disposal, which contain the texts with this motif, don’t contradict with this time period, but, on the contrary, correspond to it optimally.

On One Byzantine Rhetorical Gambit to Disavow Diplomatic Precedent (Const. Porph. Dai. 13.145–194 & Liud. Relatio. 55)

Introduction. The article aims to compare two texts concerning byzantine diplomatic practices of the mid 10th century. The first one is described in the 13th chapter of the treatise “De Administrando Imperio”, in which its author Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus gave some pieces of advice to his son Romanus II Porphyrogenitus how to line up rhetorical manipulation during the negotiations with ambassadors of different ‘barbarian’ nations. The second one is the description of conversation, which took place on September 17, 968 between emperor Otto I the Great’s ambassador bishop Liudprand of Cremona and patrician Christopher. It is described in Liudprand’s “Relatio de Legatione Constantinopolitana”. Methods. The classical comparative method is used to examine the veracity of two independent texts of different character describing the similar diplomatic trick. The author compares a program-ideological and simultaneously a propaedeutic treatises with a semiofficial report of a foreign senior ambassador. Analysis. In the 13th chapter of the treatise “De Administrando Imperio” its author Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus advised his son Roman II in negotiations with the ambassadors of the “barbarian” nations not to except the precedent of giving in marriage the granddaughter of the Byzantine emperor Romanus I Lecapenus Maria-Irina to Bulgarian ruler Peter, since Romanus I Lecapenus was a man of poor education and incompetent in the ancient sacred customs of the Roman Empire. In “Relatio de Legatione Constantinopolitana” by bishop Liudprand of Cremona during the confiscation of “purple clothes”, which he had bought, he referred to the fact that during his last visit to Constantinople, emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus had allowed him to take out even more expensive clothes without any obstacles. Contrary to this example, he received a reply from patrician Christopher, that emperor Constantine was a weak man and cherished the friendship of barbarians and foreigners with gifts, and ruling emperor Nikephoros II Phokas was a strong and warlike man, he didn’t allow such liberties for foreigners. In both cases, the same counter-argument was used to disavow precedent – a criticism of the bygone emperor in comparison with the current sovereign. This suggests that it was a common rhetorical device for Byzantine diplomats. These two cases allow to clarify the sophisticated ideology of “Tradition” and its “Split” as a corner-stone political idea of Eastern Roman Empire. Results. As a result of comparing the texts “De Administrando Imperio” (952–959) and “Relatio de Legatione Constantinopolitano” (969) it becomes clear that Byzantine politicians in the mid 10th century used for disavowing diplomatic precedents the criticism of their own emperor, who agreed to some concessions in the past. His personality was declared inappropriate to the high standards of a Roman ruler in comparison with the current emperor. Such rhetoric was surprising for the peoples who considered a series of their rulers as a genealogical aggregate of relatives responsible for their predecessors as for themselves. Byzantine politicians calmly recognized imperfections of their bygone emperors, what allowed them to ignore the strongest diplomatic argument of the early Middle Ages – a historical precedent.

About the Bosporos Oil of Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus and the Byzantine “Greek Fire”: Archaeological Evidence

Introduction. The article discusses information sources of the 10th – 11th centuries about the oil fields in the area of the Bosporus needed to produce the secret offensive weapon of the Byzantine Empire, i.e. the famous “Greek fire”. Methods. The study is comprehensive. Along with a review of written sources allowing to establish the chronology of the most active period of using the Byzantine “Greek fire”, their material evidence of the oil fields development on the banks of the Kerch strait and the subsequent transportation of Bosporus oil in the central regions of Byzantium were analyzed. Analysis. The treatise of Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus De Administrando Imperio contains a message about the oil fields in various areas of the Northeastern Black Sea including the Asian Bosporus which are traditionally considered as sources of raw materials for the famous secret weapons of the Empire – the so-called “Greek fire”. The unique nature of this information, in fact, has reliable archaeological evidence. During excavations of many settlements and fortresses of the Bosporus a sufficient number of examples of the local oil production and transportation to the central areas of Byzantium were found. In the late 9th – 11th centuries containers for the oil transportation were the so-called jugs with a high neck, the general chronology of which generally coincides with the period of the most active use of the “Greek fire” by the Byzantine fleet in fighting against numerous opponents of the Empire. Results. As the study shows, in addition to the military-strategic and political component, the interest of Byzantium in ensuring control over the territories of the Bosporus was probably due to the abundance of numerous sources of oil needed to manufacture the secret offensive weapon of the Empire – the famous “Greek fire”.

Treatise "De Administrando Imperio" by Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus: Date of the Paris. gr. 2009 Copy, Years of Compiling of the Original Codex, and a Hypothesis about the Number of Authors

The article proposes a new version of the history of the famous Byzantine political treatise De Administrando Imperio. The text of this treatise was written after 952 and before November 959 personally by Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus for his eldest son Romanus II. The emperor worked in tandem with an “Anonymous Collaborator”. The text of the treatise was based on the private notes and excerpts of emperor Constantine VII and various other historical and geographical data. Such a scheme of cooperation of Constantine VII himself and a second “Anonymous Collaborator” was described in the title of Vita Basilii Imperatoris. The same mode of compiling was mentioned in Constantine VII’s private letter to Theodoros the archbishop of Cyzicus. The original codex of the treatise was kept in the emperor’s palatial library, where one of the readers made a few marginalia on its pages; one of them is dated to after 979. Between 1059 and 1073 a scribe Michael Roizaite made a copy of this text for Caesar John Ducas. Apparently, John Ducas needed it as a handbook for future emperors Michael VII and Constantine X, whom he taught together with Michael Psellos.

Basilikoi on the Routes of Gardariki

The paper presents an experience of the analytical mapping of the route of the Kiev mission of “Roman I Lakapin’s basilikos” — the hypothetical author-compiler of Constantin Porphyrogenitus’ De administrando imperio’s chapter 9th. DAI’s geodata is critically compared with evidence from medieval (Old Scandinavian, Old Russian, Byzantine) texts and modern descriptions of the Dnieper in order to identify the toponyms contained in the sources, as well as clarifying an additional issues, such as the direction and ways of travel, the ethnic cultural identity of local informants and guides. On the basis of narrative data, the map scheme of DAI’s Dnieper itinerary, including methodological comments, graphic materials and modern maps of the Dnieper region is being built.

The Identification and Localization of the Place-Name Ustaulm in Eastern Europe (to the Interpretation of the 11th Century Runic Inscription on the Stone from Ålstad, Norway)

The article proposes an identification of the toponym “*ustaulmr / *Ustahólmr” from the runic inscription of the middle of the 11th century on the stone from the Norwegian village Ålstad as a Scandinavian variant of the Slavic oeсonym “*Оусть-островъ”, which was called the settlement of the people of Rus’ on the island of St. Aitherios (presumably, contemporary Berezan’ Island) at the mouth of the Dnieper. The article proves that the three main camp-settlements of the Rus’ people on the way down the Dnieper River in the 10th and 11th centuries are named in this runic inscription: Russia = Kiev (= *Garðar), Vitichev (= *Vitahólmr) and a village on an island in the mouth of the Dnieper *Oust-island (*Ustahólmr). The sequence “*Garðar —*Vitahólmr — *Ustahólmr” fully coincides with the sequence of stays Rus’ fleet from the Byzantine treatise ‘De Administrando Imperio’ (the mid of the 10th century): “Kiev — Vitichev — the island of St. Aitherios”.

Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De administrando imperio and the Byzantine historiography of the mid-10th century

The paper is dedicated to certain aspects of the treatise De administrando imperio, composed at the court of Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus in 948-952. It first examines the diplomatic basis of the information collected in the treatise, then the management of the information available from other sources and some common information found in it and in other contemporary works such as Theophanes Continuatus, Vita Basilii and De thematibus. It closes with a conclusion about the authorship of the treatise and its place in the context of the historiographical activity at the court of Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus in the mid-10th century.

The Ethnopolitical Situation in Khazaria in the 830s–850s

The article reviews interpretations of Constantine Porphyrogenitus’s document De Administrando Imperio, the dominant source for reporting a Khavar revolt against Khazaria in the 830s. It is associated with the 830s timing of Pecheneg warfare, Turkic clan consolidation, and Magyar tribes’ push northward to the Black Sea Region. Timing of prior and later events is analyzed, with the suggestion that two Khavar rebellions may have occurred.

The geographical position of the town of Rasa based on Porphyrogenitus and medieval maps

The town of Rasa was mentioned in the tenth-century work De administrando imperio by Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus. The significance of this town in the Middle Ages is indicated by the fact that this toponym appears on old maps created by the greatest European cartographers from the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries. Based on cartographic and historical geographical sources, this paper considers various perceptions and texts connecting the town of Rasa with today’s town of Ražanj or with the medieval Serbian capital Ras. The subject treated is historical social geography. Five types of sources were used for the historical geography of the Balkans: old maps, chronicles, geographical nomenclature, archeological findings, and ethnographic findings. Based on written sources, geographical names, and geographical logic, the authors provide their own conclusions about the geographical position of the town of Rasa.

Urne, Slaveni i Hrvati

Questions of the origin of Croats and the time and circumstances of their migration and settlement in the former Roman province of Dalmatia have been in the very centre of interest of Croatian medieval studies for long, and still today can provoke heated discussions. Written sources that serve as bases for such discussions are, however, scarce, often indirect, and even mutually controversial. Notwithstanding, the still most widely accepted thesis is the one which dates the arrival of the Croats to Roman Dalmatia to the first half of the seventh century, relying on the only one source – the three centuries later treatise De administrando imperio. Given the lack of written data, archaeological sources are often used to corroborate this dating, specifically cremation burials in urns labelled as Slavic, as well as certain other finds. The present paper first presents the extant written sources, and then discusses precisely these archaeological ones. The cremation graves are analyzed in their closer contexts, especially regarding their dating and relations to the inhumation graves present at the same sites. Afterwards they are put in a wider context, together with other finds usually dated to the seventh and early eighth centuries, and compared with Late Antique cemeteries of the sixth and early seventh centuries. The analysis shows that cremation graves present a novelty in the region, as do also the grave-goods and burial customs in the eighth-century cemeteries. It also shows that there is no continuity between those cemeteries and the earlier ones. Still, the dating of the cremation graves and the earliest so-called Slavic pottery remains uncertain, and for now there is no firm evidence for its positioning to the period earlier than the late seventh century. In the end, it can be concluded that immigration of new populations did occur through the seventh century, but the simultaneous arrival of the Croats remains impossible to prove.