Cities of Khazaria. Kromos Estatium
======================
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.
=======================
Sarada **
Also Savgar also Saltov.
According to the 12th-century arab geographer Idrisi, since the 8th century the city of Sarada was the center of the saltov culture. Then, after the 10th century, this city became known as Saltov. At another time he was called Savgar.
From the beginning of the 8th century to the 10th century, this city was the center of saltov culture. Its end is associated with the collapse of the Khazaria, when trade contacts between all the cities of the Khaganate were cut off.
In his map from 1154, Idrisi indicated the city of Sarada on the site of Saltov.
According to indirect sources Sarada, or Savgar, was a large city, it stood on the trade route between Europe and the Volga region.
Academician Rybakov brings the city of Sarada closer to the city of Savgar, which appears in written history in the 9th century and disappears in the 10th century.
In the necropolis of Verhnesaltov and Netailov burial in the place of the city Sarada a significant part of the grave goods were not manufactured in Khazaria, and imported from other lands: Asia, North Africa, Pannonia, the Volga region.
Presumably, Sarada is associated with a settlement near the village of Stary Saltov in the Kharkiv region on the right bank of the Seversky Donets river, now there is the Pechenezh reservoir.
At the beginning of the 8th century, under Obadiah, the Volga-Don interfluve was gradually filled with alans, bulgars, and khazars. At the same time, the bulgar part of the khazar Union was divided into the Volga bulgars, who advanced towards the Kama river, and the Black sea Bulgarians, who went under the arm of Byzantium. In the Don steppes, the nomadic way of life is changing to agriculture and related craft production.
By the middle of the 8th century, a full-fledged independent saltov-mayatsk culture was being formed here, which is characterized by diversity, since a large number of tribes participated in its formation, the main of which were the alans, bulgars, slavs, ugric, khazars, savirs, remnants of the goths and crimean greeks.
This culture almost completely fits into the historical borders of the Khazar Khaganate.
Gradually formed several cultural and shopping centers of the inter-ethnic Union, one of which is the city Sarada-Savgar, which is different from other centers because here not much spread of any other religion except for the so-called among the jews, the fourth, or among the people as tengrian, which was supported by the Kagan.
The city had a Fortress with a Citadel, built of stone. Behind the fortress there was a posad. The city was surrounded by ramparts and ditches. In addition, artificial breaks were made.
The walls of the Citadel were built of stone with a space inside the wall that was filled with rammed earth. In the wall were towers and gates to the city. Beyond the village there were large numbers of undefended villages.
There were several types of housing in the city. Most of all there were semi-earthen houses with an area of 20 meters square with a clay stove, either made of stone, or a stove in the form of an open hearth made of stone. On top of the earthen part there were wooden blockhouse, or walls of a post structure. The floor was covered with river sand. Next were placed the barns, the granaries in the ground, cellar.
In addition to semi-rural settlements, there were also yurt-type dwellings, which indicates that the population was not only sedentary, but also steppe in its socio-culture.
The craft was quite diverse. People were engaged in the manufacture of ceramics, pottery, fishing gear, jewelry making, bronze, gold and silver casting, metallurgy, as evidenced by the found on the hillfort raw blast furnace for obtaining iron from ore.
The saltovites of Sarada were ethnically close to the population of the main part of the Khaganate. On approval of Novoseltzev, these same saltov people subsequently began to support Hakan in the north-west of the Khazaria.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++