Itil (Chuv. Atăl, Atil Asil , Isil , Astil , Edil , tat. Idel, Idel ; Idil [1] ) - the Turkic name Volga or Kama . It is still in Kazakh ( Edіl ), Chuvash , Tatar , Bashkir , Kalmyk , Mongolian , Karachay-Balkarian and Nogai languages.
The new name changed the Iranian form of Ra , fixed by Herodotus . It appeared in the period of the Great Migration of Peoples , as a result of which the Turkic population began to prevail in the Volga steppes. The known forms of hydronym go back to the Old Turkic word with the sound "Ethyl / Ertil", the origin and the initial meaning of which are not clear. Perhaps the word Irtes is associated with the same hydronym. [2] An older point of view links the lineage to the name of the Hun chief Attila , but at present it has few supporters.
In Byzantine sources, the name "Itil" dates from the 6th century , in Arabic, Western European and Jewish - from the 10th century . The spelling variants are varied, since the word was alien for all "written" languages. In the scientific literature there are two equal forms - Itil (s) and Atil (s). In medieval Arabic, according to the explanation in the geographical dictionary of Yakuta al-Rumi , both vowels were pronounced through [and].
The most detailed medieval description of the river was left by the Arabian geography . However, the views of the medieval Arabs on the river bed throughout its length did not coincide with the modern ones. For this reason, the concept of "Itil" can not always be identified with the entire Volga. Thus, the Arabic geographical tradition accepted the Kama as the upper riverbed of the Volga, which is formally true, since at the confluence of these two rivers, the Kama is deeper and more correct to assume that the Volga flows into the Kama, and not vice versa. The sources of the river were searched far to the east of Siberia . It is not by chance that the White River, which flows through the territory of modern Bashkortostan , in Turkic (that is, in Bashkir , Tatar and Chuvash languages) is called the White Volga ( Agidel ). It was later thought that Itil began at the confluence of Ak-Idel and Kara-Idel ( r. Ufa ), where the city of Ufa is now located.
Notes
- ↑ s: Pedigree_turek_ (Abulgazi; Sablukov) / 1-2 # r1, a13
- Әhmәtyanov R. G. Tatar telenң Kyskacha Tarih-etymologik sүlegle. - Kazan: Tat. whale. Nәshr. 2001. p. 76. ISBN 5-298-01004-0 (in the Tatar language)
Literature
- Novoseltsev A.P. Khazar state and its role in the history of Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. - M .: Science, 1990. - 264 p. - ISBN 5-02-009552-4 .
- Podosinov A.V. Once again about the most ancient name of the Volga // The most ancient states of Eastern Europe. 1998 M., 2000. Pp. 230-239.