Mukhamadiev A. - Imenkov monetary system

§1. Imenkov monetary-weight system

Monetary circulation is a social process of emergence not only of a monetary circulation, but also of a large number of centrally weight-normalized metallic money and their intensive circulation, indicating organization of a state.

Study of the history of the early-medieval monetary circulation in the Itil, Urals, and North Caucasus regions allows to see there not a “Wild field”, as this process was interpreted by some Soviet historians, but the successive confederations of tribes or states of the Huns, Khazars, Bulgars, etc.

To the first, or the earliest, period monetary circulation in the Itil and Urals regions belong the metallic money - the bronze ingots (sums) found in settlements and rich burials “metal castings for further distribution, probably to exchange”, as noted V.F. Gening who discovered during excavations such bars in the Turayev Vb. kurgan cemetery.¹

The incipient Rus inherited the custom of ingot money, called in Slavic grivna (гривна), the use of grivna continued in the Rus through the 15th c., also under its northern name rubl (рубль). Both grivna and rubl are the names of the modern currency, grivna in the Ukraine, and rubl in Russia.

The Russian historiography pretends that it has no clue where the grivnas came from. Since the Rus was a splinter of the Khazar Kaganate, the “Khazar Kingdom” is somewhat mentioned in the Russian historiography, but the previous Bulgar, Avar, and Hunnic periods are beyond the historical Russian horizon. Hence, the Russian grivna does not have a defined origin. Not yet. Since the historical hushing is not an open falsification, in the official Russia it is not rated as falsification.

That peculiar historiographical tradition was started during the reign of the Peter I, when invited luminaries were to create the “History of Russian state” or “History of the House of Romanov” from scratch. neither history was to cover the people of the land, and they did it with excellence. Oceans of paper were spent to spread the history where the word “Russians” was an adjective, and the word “Tatars” was a noun. Nothing much has changed since in that funny historiography.

He noted the cultural affinity of the tribes, and wrote that Turayev-type ceramics is extremely close to that of the Imenkovo-type in the the Kama area, and suggested their synchronicity, i.e. simultaneous arrival of the Imenkov and Romanov-type ceramics with the Turayev-type ceramics and populations that occupied the entire Middle Itil, Lower Kama, and the middle course of the White river (Fig. 17).²

Indeed, later in the settlements of that region archaeologists found a large number of bronze ingots, including workshops for casting such ingots, with numerous finished products (in the Imenkov settlement) (Fig. 19).

Fig. 17. Tribes of Itil and Urals regions that appeared in the era of the “Great Migration of Peoples” in 3rd - 4th cc. (according to V.F.Gening)	Figure 19. Бronze ingots

With respect to the newcomer groups of the 3rd -5th cc., whose kurgans were investigated by V.F. Gening, referring to the relatively late Arab synopses, he suggested that they were Burtas tribes.

It is generally believed that Burtases were Mordva, mentioned by the Classical authors in the area of the Middle Itil. However, the Fennic Mordva were foot hunters, were not Tengrians, and did not build kurgans. V.F. Gening, an experienced archeologist, must have known that very well. His “Burtases” were nomadic, were Tengrians, and did build kurgans. At the time, the only way to continue studies without harassment and persecution of himself and his family was to label the subject as something palatable to the powers to be, which was a menu selection of Slavs, Iranians, and Finns, in that order.

The connection Burtas ~ Mordva is based on the location and m/b alternation, typical in the Itil area: Burtas > Murdas > Mordva. The Türkic name for Mordva is Modjar, which is a phonetic rendition of the ethnonym Magyar.

Historians and archaeologists also have other, sometimes fantastic, ideas about their ethnical affiliation, in particularly of the Imenkov tribes. At that, is hushed that Imenkovs had fairly developed social structure and intense metallic monetary circulation, which later grew into the coinage of the Khazars and Bulgars.

Before plunging into the Imenkov monetary-weight circulation system, we will attempt to sort out who were those tribes that appeared almost simultaneously in the Itil and Urals regions in the course of the “Great Migration of Peoples”?

1 Gening V.F. Turaev cemetery in 5th c./From Itil-Kama Archaeology. - Kazan, 1976.
2 Ibid. p. 107.
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Fig. 18. Movement of Ugrs (Ogors) to the Upper Kama (according to V. F.Gening)

We have to admit that even such a talented and objective historian as V.F. Gening, after the devastating resolution of the (Communist Party of Soviet Union) Central Committee “On condition and improvement measures for mass-political and ideological work in the Tatar party organization” of 1944, like the other historians and archaeologists, had to write only in a negative sense about the Huns. He divvied to them only a minor role in the history of the Itil and Ural area, and also described them as a source of threat or invasion that resulted in the mass “migration of peoples” in the 3rd - 4th cc. to that region (Fig. 18).

But was there an invasion at all?

The European scientists of the 18th c. explained many natural phenomena by cataclysms, i.e. natural disasters and calamities. They sought to explain the same way, not without a bias, the the not understood or insufficiently researched historical events. For example, the collapse of the moribund backward Roman slave-holding system under an onslaught of new feudal relations, introduced by the Huns, they explained with the so-called invasion of the Huns, who, incidentally, indeed were destroyers of the predatory slave-holding systems from China and Persia to Rome. The powerful eastern empire of the Huns in the north of China, had existed for nearly three centuries, a normal duration for any ancient and medieval states, it split naturally into separate kingdoms still in the early our era.63

The European scientists of the new time were already writing works about the Itil Huns' state at a full blast, while the Soviet historians still were chewing on the myth of the “Hunic invasion”. As a result of this “invasion” for some reasons the “Great Migration of Peoples” mainly fell only on the Itil and Ural regions. To be fair, a concentrated on the Huns historian A.N.Bernshtam in a cautious manner noted that before the European campaign for nearly two centuries the Huns were “accumulating” in the Southern Urals.¹

A famous ethnically Tatar scientist, a Sorbonne professor Sadri Maksoud Areal, with references to multiple sources, and to the work of the German historian Hirth (“Huns on the Itil”), wrote that according to the plan of destruction the fragmented Huns approved by the (Chinese) emperor, in 93 AD began a general Chinese offensive, they executed anybody who fell into their hands. A part of the defeated Huns retreated to the Altai, and some broke through to the Itil, and created a new Hunnic state between the Urals, Itil and the Caucasus.²

The invasions, or large organized military campaigns, as evidenced by the historical examples, could be carried out in the period of creation, blossoming of the states and empires, and not a few centuries after their breakup.

Thus, was completely disregarded the creation not only of the new Hunnic state, but also of the sufficiently long enough period of its development and blossom. During that period, the Hun state becomes a real force, capable not only to come to the international arena, and not only to face the equal to China in might another slave-holding Roman Empire, but also to destroy it; on its ruins later arose new feudal states of the Europe.

In respect to the barbarism of the Huns it should be stated that it is too was exaggerated by tendentious fabrications of the authors of the type like the Roman the court historian of the 4th c. Ammian Marcellin, who is often quoted by the modern textbook editions because of his sharply negative attitude toward the Huns. Many negative traits he ascribed to the Huns were taken from the older sources. For example, that the Huns did not know a fire, and therefore to cook raw meat they laid it on the backs of horses, galloped, and then ate the so “cooked” meat, he copied word for word from the Herodotus writings, who attributed such meat “cooking techniques” to a some particularly savage tribe of the ancient Scythians.

Now we know that the Huns had their written language, that a part of the Itil and Urals Huns professed Buddhism and Hinduism of an early form. From the archaeological excavations in the Baikal region settlements is known that before their migration, the Huns knew brick construction, and they knew cast iron a thousand years before the Europeans. In the Altai kurgans, because of the natural conditions of permafrost, were preserved and reached us the objects of magnificent works of the Hun's art, like carpet embroidery or thousands of sculptures made by artistic casting. In the Turayev kurgans in the Kama area was found an interesting and rich collection of weaponry: daggers, chain link helmets, chain link arms, stirrups, and long two-handed steel swords, yet unknown in Europe.

Located between the Kuban (according to ancient Armenian sources Hunan, Kuman, Kuban, i.e. the land of Huns)³ and the North Ural region Sibir (after the name of the city Isker, i.e. the land of Iskils) the major tribal alliance or early feudal state of the Hunnic-Ugrian tribes existed from the 3rd to the 7th cc. For it, like for any other feudal state, was typical a progressively developing commodity-monetary relations, which in the later Khazar and Bulgar states grew into coin minting and monetary circulation.уи

1 Bernstam A.N. Essays on history of the Huns. - Leningrad, 1951.
2 Sadri Maksudi Areal. Türkic history and law. - Kazan, 2002.
3 Gukasyan V.L. Türkizms in Albanian sources / / ST. - 1977. No 2.
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That was an alliance of the Hunnic and Finno-Ugric early medieval Ogor tribes, the meaning of the term is the concept “union”, i.e. a state. This Hunnic word explained S.Maksudi, this is the ancient Türkic oguz, i.e. tribal confederacy, altered in the West as a result of rhotacism, perhaps under an influence of the Finno-Ugric language. It looks that the bulk of the Ugro-Finns came to the Itil and Urals regions in the 3rd century from the east together with the Huns, because they had higher culture, on the overall similar to the Huns' culture, than the local population of older rare and small clan settlements. V.F. Gening, who traced migration of the tribes archaeologically, calls them with the general term “Ugric peoples”.

Very important and interesting is the fact that in this period of early feudal state formation а mass of the Huns came to the Itil region not only from the east or south, but also from the southwest from the N.Pontic and the North Caucasus. For example, one of the major tribes were Savirs that in the form Sapir are mentioned by Apollonius of Rhodes still in the 3rd c. BC in the N.Pontic, i.e. during the existence of the Zarubinets culture. Stephen of Byzantium in his vast geographical dictionary reports that Sapirs are the people of the Pontic region, now called with b - Sabirs.¹

Later, the Savirs or Suvars are often mentioned in the North Caucasus and the Itil region. They Likely, in appearance they differed from the eastern Huns, because they were often called “European Huns”. For example, historian Makian, who lived in the 4th c., tells that “on the ground for Borysthenes Alans inhabit the so-called “European Huns”.² Thus, it seems, for the first time we meet not only with the self-designation endonym, but also with Imenkov migration, who according to the archaeological data moved from the southwest from beyond the Itil.³

The message of Stephen of Byzantium about Savirs as “people of Pontus region”, the subsequent mentions of Savirs or Suvars in the North Caucasus and in the Middle Itil, where during the Middle Ages stood a city of the same name (Nur-Suvar), shows that not everything can be explained with the “Hunnic invasion”, and that the western sources of the Imenkov culture during the “assembling of the state” period are not accidental.

From the outset, the Huns' supreme power looked at the other peoples as allies and trading partners. The history of the Itil and Ural does not know examples of linguistic or religious oppression of tribes or peoples at a level of national scale. Such federation was quite strong, because is was based on voluntary confederation. Its weakness was the local princes who could grow disgruntled with the policy of the federal power and secede at any time, thus weakening the state. The Hun state practiced such federal form of organization of the tribes even much earlier. The Chinese historians have noted, for example, that Kangar/Kangju was a state, i.e. political, and not ethnic entity, which ruled many other subordinated “possessions”.⁴

1 Latyshev V.V. Reports of the ancient writers, Greek and Latin, about Scythia and Caucasus, SPb, 1904-1906, Part 1-2, pp. 262, 413
2 Ibid.
3 Gening V.F. Essay on Kama ethnic cultures in the Iron Age.//Proceedings of KFAN, 1959, p.183.
4 Bichurin N. Ya. Collection of information on peoples in Central Asia in ancient times, Leningrad, 1950. - Vol. 2. p. 186.
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Evidently, due to the written sources, we also know the brief ancient history of the launch of the Empire of the Huns and Ugro-Finns between the Urals and the Caucasus. The ancient geographer Ptolemy of the 2nd c. first mentions the Huns together with Sarmats in the Caspian depression.¹

A Byzantine historian Theophylact Simocatta, a contemporary of Emperor Maurice and Phocas (582-610), writes that one of the “oldest leaders” of the Ogor tribe was called Hunni. It is noteworthy that Simocatta mentions him in connection with the story of the tribes “living near the Caucasus and extending to the North”.² It should be added that Ogors apparently really lived in the north, in the Itil and Urals region. It is known that in the 6th c. the Türkic Kagan first defeated Ogors, and then went to the Caucasus against the Colchis. The word Ogors (Onogurs, Kuturogurs, Utraogurs, etc.) is not an ethnonym of a tribe. In the ancient Türkic language the word is a phonetic variant of the word Oguz meaning a “Union of tribes”.³

The records about the Hunni's activities could be taken as a possible coincident, if about him, i.e. about the “leader Hunni of the Huns” and his actions did not record in more detail the Chinese chronicles, completely independent from the Byzantine sources.

It should be noted that the Chinese sources of that time, talking about the Huns, refer specifically to them, and not to the northern tribes at large, they are more consistent and are better informed about the ongoing political struggles through the Huns, who renewed their ties with the Chinese. For example, of exceptional interest is the message of the historians of the younger Han dynasty (Later Han, 後漢書, Houhon Shu) that the possession which preceded the Huns, the “possession Yantsai (Yancai, 奄蔡 = Vast steppe = Tr. Alan) was renamed to Alanya (Alanliao 阿蘭聊)”.⁴ Apparently, that was the initial period of the Hun dominations, when disappeared the Sarmatian tribal union and appeared a new, more powerful confederacy of the Alan tribes, of which Ammianus Marcellinus wrote, “little by little, they subjugated in many victories the neighboring nations, and spread their name on them...”.

Apparently, the Huns subsequently annexed the northern allied tribes of the Suvar Huns (Imenkovs), etc. The history of the house Wei House (Book of Wei, 魏書, Wei Shu) of the 5th c. reported on the seizure of power by the Huns, “Once the Huns, killing The Sude ruler, seized his lands. The Ruler Hunni was a fourth generation after that event.”

The city Sude of Chinese sources may be the Suvar broadly or the city Sibir (Isker), which on the brothers Pizzigani maps of the 1367 is shown slightly north-east of the Bulgar cities on the left bank of the Kama river. During the Kipchak Khanate (author: Golden Horde) it was a prominent, rich with furs city that became the capital of the Siberian Khanate. Archeologists have traced a more ancient “Ostyak” layer of the fort.⁵

Pizzigani AD 1367 map showing relative location of Kama, Itil and Don cities
200 years before the quite non-Mongol Russian army destroyed them
and 550 years before the Russian textbooks, encyclopedias, and historians instituted systematic fraud

Thus, the minting of the coins, which appeared later in the capital city Itil or Hazaran (Khazaran, “Khazars' land”) did not come about from nowhere. It was preceded in the Itil and Urals area an intensive circulation of cast metal money of their own production, the bronze ingots.

The bronze ingots as commodity money, i.e. raw material used for the manufacture of brass ornaments and various handicrafts, were more widespread than the vessels of precious metal (Fig. 19).

1 Ptolemy K. Geography. Antique geography. Moscow, 1953. p. 321.
2 Simocatta Th. History. Moscow, 1957. p. 159.
3 Sadri Maksudi Areal. Türkic history and law. Kazan, 2002, p. 317.
4 Bichurin N. Ya. Op. Cited, V.2. p. 229.
5 Pignatti V.N. Isker (Kuchum's city)//Yearbook of Tobolsk museum. 1915. Vol. 25. p. 20.
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The enterprising Imenkovs had workshops where such ingots were cast. For the earlier periods, were critical the level of social development and the availability of.

The raw material components for casting bronze ingots were brought from the Ural range, Imenkovs had strong contacts with its tribes. A distinctive feature was that artisans made them by not on order, as other objects, but sale to those who sought raw materials for casting various products. So gradually, the bars were becoming “commodity of commodities”, i.e. “intermediaries” at the exchanges.

While the suggested model for the rise of the unit of exchange is convincing, the postulation of free trade between the consumers and producers of raw materials is not supported by historical examples. The documented examples always describe the supply side as tributary dependents, obligated to supply a prescribed inventory in defined quantities in exchange for allied relations, patronage, or marital union. The tributary system ensured a sufficient and constantly replenished stock of raw materials. The distribution on the consumer side may have been a patronage or a free trade. Thus, although the ingots could have served as monetary units on both sides, the supply of the raw materials was outside of the free market. This social compact is known from the first records on the chain of supply well into the Modern Age. The social contrast between the two sides of the exchange remained distinct and acute.

The tributary aspect of the Urals ore production is attested by the toponym Kyshtim for the ore-mining area, in Türkic kyshtim is “tributary, subordinate”, and like other Türkic generic appellations, it became a local substitute for ethnonym, and eventually toponym.

If a fairly valuable vessel of precious metal was used for collective sacrifices to the protector of the tribe, Buddha or Tengri, the discovery of bronze ingots among the personal belongings buried in the cemeteries, kurgans, or found in the cultural layers of the fortifications indicates that they were fairly widespread as a form of personal property and equivalent at exchanges. While the vessels as precious metal objects needed an evaluation, the bronze ingots, with guaranteed quality and permanent weight established by the ruling power, did not need such an assessment, which also contributed to their wide distribution as “intermediaries” of exchange.

In both instances, buried or sediment, the function of the monetary units is the same, it is a necessity needed for living or for a travel to Tengri for reincarnation. The deceased were furnished with the same travel necessities as they needed for travel during their lifetime, stone implements in the Stone Age, metal implements in the Metal Age, and monetary implements in the Money Age.

The earliest known bronze ingots were found in rich kurgans near the village Turaevo of the Elabuga district in Tatarstan, dated by the end of 4th - the beginning of 5th c. The unique Turayevo cemetery contains burials with interred military commanders with rich complement of weaponry, left by the tribes related to the Imenkovs.¹ The ingots were about 1 X 1 cm square cross-section metal rods 20 cm in length. Apparently, they were cast for internal exchange and distribution, but a final form (triangular cross-section tapered at the ends) they attained later, and more widespread distribution of the ingots, that lasted till the 10th – 12th cc. is also associated with the Imenkovs.

1 Gening V.F. Turaev cemetery in 5th c./From Itil-Kama Archaeology. - Kazan, 1976, p. 88
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Apparently, Imenkovs not only were casting bars, but also produced from them various crafts and decorations. For example, a bronze ingot was found in fairly rich burial near village Rozhdestveno in the Laish district of Tatarstan, and in a corner of one of the inhumations was found a set of tools with a miniature iron anvil, two hammers, two limestone molds for casting small ornamental decorations, and remains of a small leather pouch with metal shavings, apparently a blank.¹

Near a village Sherbet in the Spassky region of Tatarstan, not far from the Bulgar fortress, was found a hoard of 73 bronze ingots (of them 4 were halves). They were found near two ancient brass casting shops placed 15 meters apart. In the cultural layer of one of the shops was found a B-shaped buckle, in form close to the findings in the North Caucasus and Crimea, and typical for the5th - 7th cc. The chemical composition of the metal residue in crucibles, and also the foundry slag composition completely duplicate the bronze ingots.² Consequently, they were produced locally, manufactured in a kind of a “mint yard” located in the center of a large settlement.

The bronze ingots of a Sherbet treasure were trihedral bars of about 18.5 cm in length, weighing from 70 to 111 g. The chemical composition of the ingots is homogeneous, a complex alloy of brass of four components. The copper in the ingots is a base (62-64%), while in each of the tested ingot zinc is always present in an amount of 30%. The tin ranges from 0.8 to 2%, lead is 4-5%. The brass alloys with such composition are noted for the ease of casting, lasting orrosion, resistance, and and are good for crafting. The traces of silver, bismuth, nickel, antimony, and iron found in the composition are alloy admixtures from the ore.

Especially notable is the manufacturing weight norm of the ingots. The ingots had a certain set weight. Out of 69 intact ingots, 45 (i.e. more than half) weigh from 98 to 106 g, with predominant weight of 102-106 g (39 ea.).

A comparison of these weights with the weight of the Persian silver coins found in the the Itil and Urals area is interesting. The Sasanid drachmas were minted in two weight standards: the earlier ones at 3,55-3,88 g, and relatively late at 4.19-4.30 g. The Sasanid weight system of a second period could affect the weight system of the Imenkov (Iskil - Ephtalite) ingot manufacture, since at the time of the appearance of their own metal money were used the Persian coins of that time. To establish the theoretically possible weight norm in the ingot manufacturing, should be verified the weight of the Persian drachmas of that period.

It appear that the weight drachma of 4.26 g, like the Sasanid coins of the second period (with weight 4.19 - 4.30 g), has a direct connection with the weight of the bronze ingots. The bronze ingots were calculated to the weight of 25 drachmas (4.26 g X 25 = 106 g), or one-quarter of a larger standard weight of 426 g (lb).

The expressed in drachmas weight standard for manufactured ingots, and their wide spread are sufficiently convincing arguments in favor of the thesis that the bronze ingots really were metallic money.

Probably, the export aspect was also a consideration for unified weight standard. The Urals mines were a source of copper from the dawn of the Copper Age, and the copper deposits could be one of the enticements for the Huns and Ephthalites to move into the area in force. Throughout the entire Bronze Age and into the Iron Age the Urals mines were one of the major metallurgical centers in the north-center Eurasia, consistently filling in demand for metals in a huge area of Eurasia. The Kargala (Kargaly) mines were a powerful industrial center of the antiquity, and on its basis emerged an influential center of education that in the Islamic period developed into a center of Islamic education.

1 Starostin P.N. Rozhdestvennyi cemetery / / Report theses at the sections on results of field studies in 1971, Moscow, 1972. - p. 82; Starostin P.N., Kuzmin S.V. Burial of a foundrywoman from fifth Rozhdestvennyi cemetery. Questions of ancient and medieval archeology in Eastern Europe. Moscow, 1978. p. 170.
2 Sidorov V.N., Starostin P.N. Remains of early medieval foundries in Sherbet settlement// UCA. 1970.
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The spread of bronze ingots covers an extensive territory and reflects the intensity of trade contacts. They are not rare in the rich burials and cultural layers in early medieval settlements in the Itil and Ural regions. I've found such a bar in the Perm regional museum among the finds of the Rodanov culture (9th- 15th cc.) (Komi-Permians)

The most striking evidence of the wide spread of the bronze ingots are the finds of Izhevsk archaeologists. The Udmurt NII (Scientific Research Institute) has two ingots of larger size (one is split in half) of the same form, but much heavier in weight. They are triangular, with thickened middle part. The length of the intact ingot is 42 cm, width in the middle 2 cm, weight 400 g. Apparently, ingots were made to weigh 1 pound. The weight of the split half is 200 g. Interestingly, these exactly identical ingots were found in different monuments. The first bar was found in the fort Idna-Kar, the second was found in the fort Gurya Kala (excavations of M.G.Ivanova). In a rich male burial in Pokrovsky cemetery in Malopurga region of the Udmurtia Republic (excavations of T.I.Ostanina) among a sacrificial complex (i.e. the Tengrian-type travel inventory) was found a bronze ingot of a usual form. The ingot length is 16.1 cm, thickness 0.8 cm, weight 71.5 g. An identical ingot (broken into three parts, fragments coincide) is a bronze artifact collection of the Udmurt regional museum. The Museum received the ingot in 1927 from exploratory survey of the cemetery Mydlan Shai conducted by A.P. Smirnov. The ingot length is 21 cm, width 1 cm, weight of 100 g.

Chronologically, circulation of ingots covers a large time span. In the Middle Itil area, it covers 4th - 7th cc. (Turayev kurgans. The ingots are dated by 4th - 5th cc., and the ingots of Rozhdestveno cemetery and the Sherbet hoard are dated by 5th - 7th cc.). The beginning circulation of the bronze ingots can be conditionally stated as 4th c. But actually the bronze ingots apparently started circulation not earlier tan the middle of the 4th c., when the internal and external exchanges in the tribal milieu became more intense.

According to the author's conclusions, the Eastern Huns broke through to the Itil area after 93 AD, the western Savirs ~ “Asphalt-Savarts” ~ Suvars ~ Iskils ~ Ephthalites joined in, creating the Hunnic state. In Bactria, the Ephthalites are known from 355, hence the Ephthalites under the name Savirs were members of the Itil Hunnic state from approximately 2nd c., and prior to that essentially were a local entity in the vicinity of the Bactria. In the Behistun inscription of ca 480 BC, Savirs go under Sapardia [Sabir] next to the Hunae [Huns]. According to the author, from 100 to 300 AD, the Huns and Savirs did not have their monetary currency.

Apparently, the intensive circulation of ingots in the Middle Itil waned from the 7th c., the time of the appearance of the foreign coin circulation, maybe not very intense yet. In the territory north of Kama, the circulation ingots continued relatively longer. For example, in the fort Idna Kar an ingot was found in a layer of 10th - 11th cc., and in the settlement Gurya-Kala in the layer of the 11th -12th cc. This attests that individual “money courts”, i.e. the Imenkov shops casting bronze ingots of rather complex composition continued to operate not only in the Khazar, but also in the Bulgar periods.

Thus, as show the hoards and occasional finds of sometimes split for small trade bronze ingots, in the Itil and Ural region, under an influence of intensive inflow of precious metals, no later than in the 4th c. consolidated its own monetary-weight system, which blossomed by the5th - 6th cc.

The fact that the ingot or grivna system waned in the Itil area by the 7th c., but continued blossoming in the Fennic areas till the 12th c. and in the Rus areas till the 15th c. indicates that the Rus and Kama areas were outliers of the Itil area.

During that period, into circulation came numerous bronze Khorezm coins and Sassanid silver drachmas, dated by the same period. The emergence of a large number of foreign coins was due to consolidation of feudal relations among the Itil region tribes, when were created the necessary prerequisites for the establishment of commodity-money relations and for the birth of the Huno-Ugric state extending from the northern Caucasus to Siberia, the population of which Constantine Porphyrogenitus called “Asfalts-Savarts”.
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Encountering of different names for at first glance apparently the same tribes is explained by the Türkic historical linguistic realities. For example, Constantine Porphyrogenitus in his book “De Administrando Imperia”, describing the remaining in their historic homeland in the area of the river Bola (Sl. Belaya = White) Magyars, writes that in ancient times for some reason they were called “Asfals-Savarts” (Sabartoi asphaloi ~ Σάβαρτοι όίσφαλοι).

First, everywhere in his book he calls the Magyars as Turks, the reasons for this follow below. Secondly, the Asfals-Savarts of Constantine VII are the Ephtalites-Suvars, but at а first glance the form of the compound is not clear. The trick is that in the word Ephtalite the plural ending -it was dropped (Ephtalit > Ephtal > Ethtal > Asphal), while in the second word Suvar the plural ending -it has been added. This means that we see there a single term with the necessary plural ending at the end: Askel (Iskil)-Suvars (a la As-Tokhars, with a single ending -lar or archaic -it at the end of the compound > As-Tokharlar or As-Tokharit). The Iskils are known to be one of the tribes of the ancient Bulgars. Apparently it was a prestigious appellation for the tribes, in this case Suvars, with the origin ascending back to antiquity (And it is much more, with the Chinese annals defining Iskils/Esegs/Seklers as the most potent tribe of the Huns, see Yu.Zuev The Strongest Tribe - Ezgil).

Still the ancient writers, in particular Herodotus, noted that to conduct a trade with the Scythians, a merchant must have seven interpreters for seven Scythian languages. The Eskolots spoke one of these languages, according to Herodotus their name carries a meaning of royal. Notably, the ethnonym Aces, or Ises was quite widespread in the ancient Türkic world, and at different latitudes. Such spread of this ethnonym apparently is due to its origin from the notable Türkic os, us, or uza, i.e. higher, senior in the sense of “supreme”¹. The word Eskolot after es- contains a possessive affix -k-, the word il (ail), and the plural suffix -at. The "History” of the Byzantine author Simocatta also gives the name of one of the Bulgar tribes in a plural form Barselt.

Thus, the word Eskolot, in our case Ephtalite (since the Hunnic alphabet did not have a letter f, it is Iskalit), formed according to all the rules of the ancient Türkic language, it can be translated as ails (tribes) of the supreme rules, in other words, the supreme ails.

A heavy damage to the well-being of the Ogors, i.e. the Hunno-Ugric or Ephthalite state, inflicted the Türkic Kagan Istemi, crushing it in the 560s in alliance with the Persian Shah. Indeed, by the 7th c.. is observed some desolation of the Imenkov settlements.

A relatively rapid spread among the Hunnic, and not only the Hunnic tribes, gained the politicized ethnonym Türks. Therefore, it is no accident that Constantine Porphyrogenitus, speaking of the Magyars, is constantly calling them the Türks.

Back in the early medieval sources, such as “History of Alvans (Agvans)” (7th c.), the ethnonyms Türk, Hun, or Khazar were used as synonyms.² Th.Simocatta (7th c.) also wrote that “these were the Huns... whom most is more used to call Turks”.³

Such rapid and broad dissemination of that term among the Khazars, Suvars, Bulgars and Ugrs, apparently is due to the very meaning of the term, which in the early period had more political, prestigious than an ethnic meaning in the modern sense of this word. The word törüg in the ancient Türkic language means “state”, and the word törügk with the possessive affix apparently meant belonging or inclusion of a tribe to that larger state body, the Türkic Kaganate, that could guaranty peace and tranquility.

1 OTD, pp. 628, 629.
2 Gukasyan V.L. Türkizms in Albanian sources / / ST. - 1977. No 2.
3 Simocatta Th. Op. Cited, p. 36.
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