Sarkel

Sarkel

Sharkil
Aerial photo of the excavations conducted at Sarkel in the 1930s.
Shown within European Russia
Location	Russia
Region	Rostov Oblast
Coordinates	47°42′18″N 42°16′23″E / 47.70500°N 42.27306°E / 47.70500; 42.27306Coordinates: 47°42′18″N 42°16′23″E / 47.70500°N 42.27306°E / 47.70500; 42.27306
Type	Fortification
History
Builder	Khazars, Byzantine Empire
Founded	830s
Cultures	Khazar
Site notes
Excavation dates	1930s
Archaeologists	Mikhail Artamonov
Condition	Submerged by Tsimlyansk Reservoir

Sarkel (or Sharkil, literally white house in Khazar language) was a large limestone-and-brick fortress built by the Khazars with Byzantine assistance in the 830s. It was named Sarkel, or 'white-house', because of the white limestone bricks used in its construction. Sarkel was located on the right bank of the lower Don River, in present-day Rostov Oblast of Russia.

Sarkel was built to protect the north-western border of the Khazar state in 833. The Khazars asked their ally, Byzantine emperor Theophilus, for engineers to build a fortified capital, and Theophilus sent his chief engineer Petronas Kamateros. In recompense for these services, the Khazar khagan ceded Chersonesos and some other Crimean dependencies to Byzantium.

Historians have been unable to determine why such a strong fortress was built on the Don. They generally assert that the costly construction must have been due to the rise of a strong regional power that posed a threat to the Khazars. Alexander Vasiliev and George Vernadsky, among others, argue that Sarkel was built to defend a vital portage between the Don and the Volga from the Rus' Khaganate. Other historians believe this polity was situated many hundred miles to the north. Another nascent power, the Hungarians, was not particularly threatening to the Khazars as long as they paid tribute to the khagan.

Constantine Porphyrogenitus records in his work De Administrando Imperio that the Khazars asked the Emperor Teophilos to have the fortress of Sarkel built for them. His record is connected to the Hungarians on the basis that the new fortress must have become necessary because of the appearance of a new enemy of the Khazars, and other peoples could not be taken into account as the Khazars’ enemies at that time. In the 10th century, a Persian explorer and geographer Ahmad ibn Rustah mentioned that the Khazars entrenched themselves against the attacks of the Hungarians.