Cities of Khazaria. Kromos Estatium
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The khazar cities here include not only those cities that were built by the khazar architects, but also those that were built before the arrival of the khazars, were used by the khazars for their needs and tasks for a long time.
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Germen-chick **
This ancient city is reproduced only according to the data of archeology, which responsibly States that such a city was definitely located on the settlement of the same name at the present village of Germenchik in Dagestan.
Linguists believe that the fortress and the city under it received their last name Germen-chick from the turks. Whether this was during the time of the huns, the khazars, or the Golden Horde is unknown. According to this version, the word «hermen-kermen» means fortress, the word «chick» means small. That is, Gemen-Chik means Small Fortress.
Archaeological and historical analysis shows that in sarmatian-persian times in the 1st century BC, the first settlement appeared here, which was located on the route of the Great Silk Road, which was controlled by the persians.
In the 6th century, the persian King of Kings and Shahinshah Kavad-Anushirvan, often separated from each other, carried out a complete reconstruction of the fortifications along this route and built a fortress, which was caused by the appearance of hunnic detachments that sought to take control of this life-giving Kumyk tract.
In the 7th century, the steppe wanderers of the Western Turkic Khaganate came here, who were replaced by their socio-cultural heirs, the Khazar Khagans, for 300 years. The khazars significantly rebuild the fortresses using their architectural technologies. In addition, they attract local mountain Kings to the service, which was not the case with the newcomers sarmatians and persians.
Now the autochthonous peoples of the Kumyk platform take part in solving military and political tasks at the international level as part of the armies of the Khazar Khaganate in its trade and military expeditions to the steppes of the Black Sea region, Crimea, Transcaucasia and the Volga region.
In these campaigns, mountaineers communicate with different cultures and religions, which enriches their own culture. They bring a variety of skills, technologies, and interesting cultural traditions that they apply in their social culture on the spot.
By the middle of the 8th century, a new well-developed ethnic group, which calls itself the kumyks, appeared in the bowels of the Khazarus state. They still live here, and chechens have been added to them in recent centuries.
By the 8th century, an arab-khazar confrontation broke out on the Kumyk platform, which lasted until the middle of the 8th century. The city of Hermen-chin several times fell into the hands of the arabs, who destroyed all the iconic objects created by that time on the basis of the saltov-mayatsk culture that had developed here, which then spread throughout the khazars. From the stones of these sites, including fortress walls and towers, the arabs hastily built several mosques, forcing the mountaineers to convert to islam on pain of the death of their children and wives.
After the surrender of the Khazarus state to Rus in the 10th century, the fortress is deserted, the military garrison moves to larger cities, the population, mainly artisans, settled in the neighborhood, goes away from the fortress, where the visiting king came, robbers and treasure hunters came to plunder it for a long time.
The fortress was about 100 meters in diameter. Its area was 1 hectare. The height of the fortress walls reached 4 meters, and the walls were pyramidal in shape, they had a thickness of 20 meters at the bottom, and 4 meters at the top.
On the hillfort can be traced a few cultural layers, cultural levels of which it is possible to judge the historical eras in which there was formed its population. The upper cultural layer is the deepest, about 2 meters, and it belongs to the khazar culture.
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