---
alexmoeller@... wrote:
> Toponymy and ethnic Realities at the Lower Danube
>
> in the 10th Century.
>
> "The deserted Cities" in the Constantine
> Porphyrogenitus'
> De administrando imperio
>
>
> Stelian Brezeanu,
>
> University of Bucharest
>
>
> "On this side of the Dniester river,
> towards the
> part that faces Bulgaria, at the crossings of this
> same river,
> are deserted cities: the first city is that called
> by the
> Pechenegs Aspron, because its stores look very
> white; the
> second city is Toungatai; the third city is
> Kraknakatai; the
> fourth city is Salmakatai; the fifth city is
> Sakakatai; the
> sixth city is Giaioukatai. Among these buildings of
> the
> ancient cities are found some distinctive traces of
> churches,
> and crosses hewn out of porous stone, whence some
> preserve a
> tradition that once on a time Romans had settlements
> there".
>
>
>
> The savant-emperor's text raises some
> problems that
> are difficult to be interpreted and that have
> discouraged the
> modern scholars to approach it.
>
> First, while the first among the six
> "deserted
> cities" is not difficult to be identified - since
> Aspron means
> "white" in the Pecheneg language, as it resulted
> also from the
> text, it could only be Rom. Cetatea Alba or Sl.
> Bielograd, on
> the right bank of the Dniester, on the river mouth
> to the
> Black Sea -,
******GK: The best short account of the history of
Bilhorod Dnistrovs'kyj is a Russian language article
by M. Shlapak which can be found at the city's
official website: [WARNING!!! See below before
clicking]
http://www.tira2500.org/?go=history/stcon
It is very fair, and mentions all the possibilities
for the obscure period between ca. 600-1250 AD. Prior
to the foundation of the Genoese factory under the
suzerainty of the Golden Horde, everything is
speculative (the antique Tira was destroyed by fire in
the late 4th c.) The hinterland was solidly Slavic
from the 6th century, but there is no clear evidence
of a fortress before the Genoese, when two of them
seem to simultaneously appear (the "white" fortress
and the "black" fortress, the former on the west and
the latter on the east bank of the Dnister). Only the
"white" fortress will have a big future, becoming the
Bilhorod/Cetatea Alba/Akerman of the future. It was
taken from the Tartars by the Lithuanians ca. 1362,
and from the Lithuanians by the Moldavians in ca.
1377/1378; then from the Moldavians by the Turks in
1484, and three centuries later by the Russians.It was
part of Rumania after 1918, then went to the U.S.S.R.
in 1940 (more temporary shifts during WW II) and is
now in Ukraine. Shlapak's article points out that the
identification of the later Bilhorod with the 10th c.
"ruined city" of Aspron is very doubtful.
WARNING!!! The site is infected, but if you have
Norton or McAfee they should clear things up for you,
as my Norton did for me.
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