Atil, also Itil, was the capital of the Khazar Khaganate from the mid-8th century to the late 10th century.
Known to have been situated on the Silk Road, in the vicinity of the Caspian Sea, its precise location has long been unknown.
Image: В поисках Итиля
Image: Brick field Atil 2014
Image: Brick wall Atil 2014
Image: Potsherds (close up) Atil 2014
The Khazars were a nomadic Turkic people that, in the late 6th-century CE, established a major commercial empire covering the southeastern section of modern European Russia, southern Ukraine, Crimea, and Kazakhstan. They created what for its duration was the most powerful polity to emerge from the break-up of the Western Turkic Khaganate. Astride a major artery of commerce between Eastern Europe and Southwestern Asia, Khazaria became one of the foremost trading empires of the early medieval world, commanding the western marches of the Silk Road and playing a key commercial role as a crossroad between China, the Middle East and Kievan Rus'. For some three centuries the Khazars dominated the vast area extending from the Volga-Don steppes to the eastern Crimea and the northern Caucasus.
Khazar Khaganate, 650–850
Site of the Khazar fortress at Sarkel (aerial photo from excavations conducted by Mikhail Artamonov in the 1950s).
Sviatoslav I of Kiev (in boat), destroyer of the Khazar Khaganate.
Seal discovered in excavations at Khazar sites. However, rather than having been made by Jews, these appear to be shamanistic sun discs.