The Volga River

The ancient scholar Ptolemy of Alexandria mentions the lower Volga in his Geography calls it the Rha, which was the Scythian name for the river. Ptolemy believed the Don and the Volga shared the same upper branch, which flowed from the Hyperborean Mountains- a mythical people who lived far to the north of Thrace. Alone among the Twelve Olympians, Apollo was venerated among the Hyperboreans: he spent his winter amongst them. The Greeks thought that Boreas, the North Wind, lived in Thrace, and that therefore Hyperborea was an unspecified nation in the northern lands beyond Scythia. Hyperborea, shown variously as a peninsula or island, is located beyond France or in the general area of the Ural Mountains. Subsequently the river basin played an important role in the movements of peoples from Asia to Europe. In the 4th and 5th centuries AD, the Proto-Magyars moved to the west of the Ural Mountains to the area between the southern Ural Mountains and the Volga River (Bashkiria, or Bashkortostan). A powerful polity of Volga Bulgaria once flourished where the Kama river joins the Volga, while Khazaria controlled the lower stretches of the river. It is thought that the territory of Volga Bulgaria was originally settled by the Finno-Ugric peoples.

 

The Turkic Bulgars moved into the area in about AD 660, commanded by Kotrag Khan, Kubrat's son. Some Bulgar tribes, however, continued westward and after many adventures settled along the Danube River, in what is now known as Bulgaria proper, where they merged with or were assimilated by the Slavs, adopting a South Slavic tongue and an Eastern Orthodox faith and were subject to the great Khazarian Empire. In the early 8th century, a part of the proto-Magyars moved to the Don River (to a territory between the Volga, the Don and the Donets), a territory later called Levedia. The Red Croats, remained on the Don.

In September 1223 near Samara an advance guard of Genghis Khan's army under command of Uran, son of Subedei Bahadur, entered Volga Bulgaria but was defeated by Gabdula Chelbir Khan, the first defeat of the Mongols ever. In 1236, the Mongols returned but it took them five years to subjugate the whole country which in that time was in internal war. Henceforth Volga Bulgaria became a part of the Ulus Jochi, later known as the Golden Horde. By the 1430s, the Khanate of Kazan was established as the most important of these principalities.

The Volga river served as an important trade route connecting Scandinavia, Rus', and Volga Bulgaria with Khazaria and Persia. Later the Empire broke into the Khanate of Kazan and Khanate of Astrakhan; subsequently they were conquered by Russians in the 16th century.

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