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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Samkerz **
The city of Khazar. Also Smcrii or Smcriu, Samkush, Sancush. Tmutarakan.
Among the karaites, the word «san» means to count, and the word «kush» means customs (M.Aga).
Samkerz can be considered a suburb of Kerch, according to Moshin. King Joseph of the khazars united Kerch with its suburbs. Artamonov leads Kerch to Taman as an area, Samkertÿs he leads to the ñossack village of Taman, which arose in the 6th century.
In the 10th century, the khazar king Joseph, in a lengthy version of the letter, names 13 cities in the west of Khazaria, including the city of S-m-k-r-c, which is well identified with the chronicled city of Samkerz. At the same time, the city of Kerch is separate from it. All of these cities, with the exception of Sarkel and Samkerz, were in the Crimea. Thus in the Cambridge document contains the form of Smcrii or Smkriu.
In Ibn al-Faqih Samkerz corresponds to Samkush al-yahud, that is Samkush jewish. However, he believes that Samkerz-Samkush and Matarha-Tmutarakan are one city on the Taman Peninsula.
Konstantin Porphyrogenitus does not have an answer to the question who owned Tamatarcha, which he presented as an area that moves up to the Ukrukh river, most likely the Kuban. From this report it becomes clear that in the middle of the 10th century, the city or district of Tmutarakan, along with the city of Samkerz, was owned by both Byzantium and Khazaria. He believed Samkerz large trade town.
At this time, only merchants from Novgorod and Kiev were present here from Rus, and there was no working or military population of Rus yet.
The chronicled city of Samkerz is most often identified with the settlement of Samkerz, which is a huge hill 15 meters high, with several cultural layers. The area of the city, which was located here, was 16 hectares.
On the site of Samkerts, there was an ancient city Hermonassa destroyed by the huns. Here, in Hermonassa, many sea and land roads of the Bosporus Kingdom crossed.
Cultural activity on the site of the future city begins in the 6th century after the birth of Christ, and by the beginning of the 7th century it was densely populated, as can be seen from its dense construction. Its density increases towards the fortified center, where the fortress was located in the middle of the 7th century.
People in the city's posad were engaged in ceramics, pottery, bone products, construction, and trade. Calculations were made either in exchange or in Byzantine coin.
The urban structure was formed by the middle of the 8th century, and the newcomers only rebuilt the old buildings to suit their interests. All the pavements in the city were updated every 20-30 years with a composition of broken ceramics and bones.
The dwellings of the townspeople were made of stone or glinobit bricks. The stonework in the city was of the khazar type, in a herringbone pattern.
In the 8th century, Samkerz was occupied by the khazars and fortified with stone walls with buttresses, behind which sat the khazar tudun with his detachment.
Perhaps the Prince of the Norman Tmutorokan Rus was Helga or in russian Oleg, who was killed in Persia. In this Tmutorokan Rus there was also Samkerts, a suburb of Kerch, which was separated into an independent city, because there was a customs office and a fee was charged for transshipment of goods.
Prince of Kiev, Oleg, going to Constantinople, conquered first Samcerts, who did not resist, because the jewish custom gave the nod. Owned the custom house and Prince Igor. Igor's wife Olga was also there on her way to Constantinople for the baptism of her retinue.
According to Constantine Porphyrogenitus, Samkerz, which he also called Tamatarha, was a rich trading city, and it was located on the shore of the Kerch Strait on the cape of the Taman Peninsula, where the Cossack village of Tamanskaya now stands.
By custom Samkerz could not slip in unnoticed, not a single ship moving through the Azov to the Black sea.
Constantine Porphyrogenitus believed that Rus descended into the Black sea along the Dnieper and, moving along the Crimean coast, passed into Black Bulgaria and Khazaria. Rus not once got close to Samkerts, captured it by cunning, and, having taken the pay-offs from the jews who held the customs of Samkerts, they left for Kiev.
In 944, Kievan Rus made a campaign in Transcaucasia, where it first took Samkerz in Tmutorokani, and, wintering there, moved to the Caucasus by land, along the steppes of the North Caucasus to the Caspian sea.
Some modern researchers associate Samkerts with the khazar fortress on the Don, which is imprisoned in Semikarakorsk the site. But more interesting to associate the settlement with the city of Smcarsh according to Ibn al-Faqih.
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