Gennady Afanasiev

The article considers the origins of the architecture at Levoberezhnoye Tsimlyanskoye, which some scholars believe to be the site of Sarkel. M.I. Artamonov, P.A. Rappoport and S.A. Pletneva have put forth several arguments in favor of the assumption that it were local “Eurasian” and not Byzantine architects who had built Sarkel for the Khazars. The arguments include the following: the walls of the fortress were built without any foundations in the native soil, the bricks are not of Byzantine format, the fortress in not Byzantine in layout. The author believes that the above arguments are unfounded. Calculations show that the ground could hold the weight of the fortress even without underground foundations. The format of the bricks from Leveberezhnoye has many parallels at Byzantine sites. The author is of the opinion that Roman-Byzantine fortifi cation architecture from the 1st – 2nd cc. to the 9th c. offers analogies of the layout at Levoberezhnoye. Hence it is possible to give credence to the Byzantine sources which mention a fortress that Byzantine architects built for the Khazars by order of the Emperor Theophilus.