Grand Prince of Kiev | |
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Details | |
First monarch | Vladimir the Great |
Last monarch | Michael of Chernigov |
Formation | unknown |
Abolition | 1362 |
Prince of Kiev | |
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Details | |
First monarch | Vladimir VI |
Last monarch | Simonas |
Formation | 1362 |
Abolition | 1471 |
Grand Prince of Kiev (sometimes Grand Duke of Kiev) was the title of the Kievan prince and the ruler of Kievan Rus' from the 10th to 13th centuries. In the 13th century, Kiev became an appanage principality first of the Grand Prince of Volodymyr and the Golden Horde governors, and later was taken over by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
According to some Ukrainian historians (i.e., Kanyhin, Tkachuk), Ptolemy's mention of Metropolis, a Sarmatian town on the Dnieper River, shows the ancient existence of Kiev. The name Dnieper is derived from Sarmatian (Iranian) Dānu apara "the river far away."
According to Slavophiles, Kyi ruled since 430, one of the dates attributed to the legendary founding of Kiev in 482, although that date relates to Kovin on the Danube in Serbia. Some historians speculate that Kyi was a Slavic prince of eastern Polans in the 6th century. Kyi's legacy along with Shchek's is mentioned in the Book of Veles, the authenticity of which, however, is disputed.
Oleg, an apocryphal Kiev voivode, probably of Danish or Swedish origin, under the overlordship of the Khazar Khaganate.
Bravlin was a Varangian prince or chieftain, who led a Rus' military expedition to devastate the Crimea, from Kerch to Sugdaea, in the last years of the 8th century.
According to some Russian historians (i.e., Gleb S. Lebedev), Dir was a chacanus of Rhos (Rus' Khaganate|Rus' khagan).Thomas Noonan asserts that one of the Rus' "sea-kings", the "High king", adopted the title khagan in the early 9th century.Peter Benjamin Golden maintained that the Rus' became a part of the Khazar federation, and that their ruler was officially accepted as a vassal kagan of the Khazar Khaqan of Itil.
Some western historians (i.e., Kevin Alan Brook) suppose that Kiev was founded by Khazars or Magyars. Kiev is a Turkic place name (Küi = riverbank + ev = settlement). At least during the 8th and 9th centuries Kiev functioned as an outpost of the Khazar empire (a hill-fortress, called Sambat, "high place" in Old Turkic). According to Omeljan Pritsak, Constantine Zuckerman and other scholars, Khazars lost Kiev at the beginning of the 10th century.