Economy
The likely mainstay of the khaganate's economy was the Volga trade route. Early 9th-century coin hoards unearthed in Scandinavia frequently contain large quantities of dirhem coins minted in the Abbasid Caliphate and other Muslim polities, sometimes split into smaller pieces and inscribed with Runic signs. All in all, more than 228,000 Arabic coins have been recovered from over 1,000 hoards in European Russia and the Baltic region. Almost 90% of these arrived in Scandinavia by way of the Volga trade route. Unsurprisingly, the dirhem was the basis for the monetary system of Kievan Rus'.
Trade was the major source of income for the Rus, who according to ibn Rustah did not engage in agriculture: "They have no cultivated fields but depend for their supplies on what they can obtain from as-Saqaliba's land. They have no estates, villages, or fields; their only business is to trade in sable, squirrel, and other furs, and the money they take in these transactions they stow in their belts." Rus merchants travelled down the Volga, paying duties to the Bulghars and Khazars, to the ports of Gorgan and Abaskun on the southern shore of the Caspian Sea; on occasion they travelled as far as Baghdad.
Read more about this topic: Rus' Khaganate
Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“Even the poor student studies and is taught only political economy, while that economy of living which is synonymous with philosophy is not even sincerely professed in our colleges. The consequence is, that while he is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father in debt irretrievably.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of the Government. Every dollar that we carelessly waste means that their life will be so much the more meager. Every dollar that we prudently save means that their life will be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its most practical terms.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“Wise men read very sharply all your private history in your look and gait and behavior. The whole economy of nature is bent on expression. The tell-tale body is all tongues. Men are like Geneva watches with crystal faces which expose the whole movement.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)