Volga Bulgars chose Islam sixty-six years before Rus’
Between the ninth and thirteenth centuries Volga–Kama Bulgaria taxed the middle Volga’s Europe–Asia trade. In 922 it adopted Islam as state religion—sixty-six years before Kievan Rus’ baptized—after Khan Almış asked Baghdad for teachers in 921.
Where the Bulgars began is debated; most researchers look to the steppe between modern Kazakhstan and the North Caucasus, and some link them to the Huns. As an Oghuric people north of the Black Sea they fell under Khazar overlordship and around 630 founded Old Great Bulgaria. Asparukh’s branch moved west to the Danube, adopting Slavic speech and Orthodoxy, while those on the Volga gradually shook off Khazar control by the late ninth century.
Commanding the middle Volga, the state handled much of Europe–Asia trade before the Crusades opened other routes. Its city of Bolghar rivalled the great Islamic centres, dealing with Vikings and Arctic peoples to the north and Baghdad and Constantinople to the south; Bilär, Suwar, and Juketau were other major towns, and Kazan and Yelabuga began as border forts. Slaves from Eastern Europe bound for Byzantine and Islamic households also passed along these rivers.
The 921 request to Baghdad brought an embassy whose secretary, Ibn Fadlan, left a vivid eyewitness account. Rus’ raids ravaged the country in the eleventh century; later the princes of Vladimir, among them Andrew the Pious and Vsevolod III, fought for the Unzha trade route, and in 1220 Yuri II took Ustiug and besieged a major Bulgar town.
In September 1223 a Mongol force under Uran, son of Subutai, lost at Samara Bend, but the Mongols returned in 1236 and subdued the state within five years, killing perhaps two-thirds of the people, above all townsfolk. In the fifteenth century Prince Yuri Dmitrievich burned Old Kazan, New Bolgar, and other towns, leaving Old Kazan half-empty for about 40 years.
Source: Volga Bulgaria
