176 CHAPTER 4
divided into summer and winter ones. Initially, the so-called kuren24 form of
nomadism emerged, followed by the aul one, during which parts of the impov-
erished population remained in the winter pastures even during summer
(with time these turned into permanent settlements, referred to as stoibishcha,
‘stopping places’ or herding camps). This impoverished population began to
engage in agriculture and in some cases—also in handicrafts (such as pottery-
making).25 It is this from of nomadic economy in both its varieties that is con-
sidered inherent to the initial stage of settlement of the Bulgar population in
the Don area, which according to S. Pletneva began in the eighth century.26
“The third stage of nomadism is actually not “nomadism” in the fullest
sense of the word. By this stage, the major part of the population had already
become sedentary and was involved in agriculture and in various handicrafts
[.. .] At first it was obviously [.. .] only the old and the ailing, i.e. people that
were actually unable to migrate [.. .] the poorest members of the nomadic
societies. They were the ones who, in order to survive, began to plow the
ground, adjacent to the winter camps, creating vegetable patches, gardens and
fields”.27 In Khazaria, this stage began during the eighth century. According to
S. Pletneva, an exact chronological threshold between the second and third
stage of nomadism cannot be accurately set. She assumes that all three types
of the nomadic economy coexisted between the eighth and the ninth centu-
ries. Thus, the sedentary Khazar society preserved both varieties of the sec-
ond stage of the nomadic economy (the kuren and aul one). At the same time,
S. Pletneva speaks of a permanent sedentariness among the population.28
At the final stage of nomadism the nomads could no longer call themselves
nomads, since by then only the elite of the society was involved in nomadic
pastoralism. “The majority of the population was agricultural, and also bred
various types of livestock, quite often in the form of transhumance (in Alpine
pastures in the foothills and in the steppes, along the upper reaches of rivers,
where meadows were vast and rich in succulent greenery)”, says S. Pletneva.29
In her last, summarizing work, S. Pletneva allows for another possible
explanation of the development of the Bulgar population’s economy along the
24 Kuren is a term, borrowed from the thirteenth-century Eastern writer Rashid Al-Din,
that denotes the positioning of the tribe in a circle with the elder situated in the middle
(Pletneva 1967, 69).
25 Pletneva 1982, 37–38.
26 Pletneva 1982, 52; Pletneva 1967, 13–19 and 181.
27 Pletneva 1982, 77–78.
28 Pletneva 1967, 19–20 and 181.
29 Pletneva 1982, 78–79.