138 CHAPTER 2
The Byzantine emperor would have hardly taken into consideration which
Bulgars were free and which not, when calling them “black”. This definition
stems from the Byzantine tradition, from where it probably was transferred
into the contractual relations between Byzantium and Kievan Rus’. It is quite
possible it was adopted from Danube Bulgaria. There it would be most logi-
cal that “black” was used for Bulgars who remained subordinate to the Khazar
khagan (assuming that the interpretation of S. Pletneva is correct). Far more
complicated would be the assessment of the lands this Bulgar community
inhabited.
According to V. Sedov, the origin of the name of the Slavic tribe Severians is
Iranian and means “black”.56 It is worth wondering whether the name was also
used for the compact Bulgar community that inhabited the Severski Donets
area, in immediate vicinity to the Severians. Also of particular interest is the
question whether the Sabirs who are mentioned between the fifth and the sev-
enth centuries in Dagestan, along with the Khazars, Bulgars, Barsils and other
related tribes, could have a connection to this Bulgar community.57 In subse-
quent centuries, in almost every place that the Bulgars chose to settle, a tribe
with an ethnonym similar to that of the Sabirs is mentioned. The second most
important urban and commercial center of Volga Bulgaria was Suwar. And
Severi is the name of one of the tribes of Danube Bulgaria. Accounts regarding
the Bulgars in Asia Minor indicate that in that part of the continent during the
twelfth century there were two adjacent areas, known as Bulgar and Suwar.58
To equalize the meaning of these names would, of course, be only hypotheti-
cal. However, in the steppe world the division into “white” and “black” is tradi-
tional and combines different semantic features (both in terms of social status
and in terms of direction: typically “black” means “north”).59 In this sense, only
a part of the Bulgars in the Khazar Khaganate may have been “black”, instead of
all of the descendants of the tribes that remained under the rule of Batbayan.
Of particular interest is also the semantic preservation of the name “black”
as a reference to the communities around the Severski Donets. This was also
56 Sedov 1982, 137–138.
57 Artamonov 1962, 78, 83–84, 131; according to Mavrodin 1945, 186–189, there is a direct link
between the Sabirs and the Black Bulgars and the creators of the Saltovo culture were
Sabiro-Bulgars.
58 Tupkova-Zaimova 2003, 48. Unfortunately, the dissertation of M. Daskalov “Plemeto severi
v Severoiztochna Bulgariia i Ukraina” (Sofia, 1995) remained unattainable for me.
59 According to Turkic notions, for example, “north” as a direction means left/female. It is in
opposition to “south” as right/male (L’vova, Oktiabr’skaia, Sagalaev, and Usmanova 1988,
43–45).