Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [27]
But this was not the end of the west’s troubles. For in the year 622, the Prophet Mohamet made the first hijra from Mecca and the mighty power of Islam began its explosive expansion. ‘To the Garden, Moslems, not the Fire,’ their leaders would cry as they went into battle: for those who fell were assured a place in heaven. From Arabia the Moslem armies swept through the Middle East, then eastwards to Persia and India, and westwards across North Africa and even into Spain. In another drive, they even reached the gates of Constantinople. And for centuries yet to come, Christian Europe was to tremble at the prophet’s name.
Lastly, to trouble the world yet further, came the Vikings.
Pirates, merchants, colonists, adventurers, from around the year 800 these Scandinavian voyagers burst upon the stage of history. They took over much of central England, they set up colonies in Iceland, Greenland, and even visited the North American coast. They founded the state of Normandy and swept round into the Mediterranean.
And it was one group of Swedish Vikings who, having founded trading colonies round the Baltic Sea, made their way down to the river system of that great eastern hinterland, the land of the Slavs.
Varangians, these norsemen were sometimes called. They set up a huge, north-south trading network – collecting goods at the Slav city of Novgorod in the north, and sailing down the Rivers Dniepr, Don and Volga. On the Black Sea coast, near the mouth of the Don, they set up a trading post known as Tmutarakan. And whether it was because they were fair, or because they traded or fought side by side with fair Alannic peoples in those southern lands, or for some other reason we do not know, these piratical norse merchants soon came to be known to the civilized southern world they entered by that ancient Iranian name still borne by some of the Alans – the word meaning ‘light’ or ‘shining’ – Rus.
And thus the new state of Russia was born.
High on the palisades the boy gazed out at the huge red star. His mind was in a fever of excitement.
Far below in the darkness lay the broad River Dniepr; the ice at its edges dimly reflected the star’s blood-red light. Behind the boy, the city of Kiev was silent.
It was nearly two centuries since this ancient Slav city by the Dniepr had become the capital of the state of Rus. Lying in rolling woodlands a day’s journey from the beginning of the southern steppe, it was the collecting point for all the trade from the northern forests that was to pass downriver to the faraway Black Sea and points beyond.
What could the star portend for the city? the boy wondered. Certainly it must be a sign from God.
For the land of Rus was Christian now. In the blessed year of Our Lord 988, Vladimir, Prince of Kiev had been baptized, with the Roman Emperor of Constantinople himself acting as his godfather. Did not many already, for this conversion, call Vladimir a saint? And was it not said that two of his sons, young Boris and Gleb, had also joined the blessed?
The story of their death, just half a century before, had immediately entered popular folklore. For in the springtime of their lives, these two royal princes, facing assassins sent by their wicked elder brother, had meekly submitted, spoken only of their love for each other, and commended their young souls to God. The sadness, the gentleness, of their deaths had touched the Slavs, and Boris and Gleb became the best-loved heroes of the land of Rus. The Passion-Sufferers, they were called.
Kiev was a city of churches now. In her streets one heard not only the sounds from the merchant boats upon the river, but also the chanting of monks and priests in a hundred churches; and the squat Byzantine cupolas of the greatest of these, covered with gold, gleamed warmly in the sun. ‘One day,’ the nobles claimed, ‘we shall be like