Rus' Khaganate - Economy

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.