There are several versions of the origin of the name of the river.

Arabic sources mention the river as early as 922. Then a large embassy caravan of Arabs moved around the borders of Bulgaria. Secretary Ibn-Fadlan made a note in his travel notes that the caravan crossed the Samur River – the southern border of Eastern Bulgaria. So the local nomads called the river.

The area extending from the Samara River to the southeast has been known since biblical times as the boundless steppe of Sama.

According to biblical stories Noah gave Africa to Ham , Europe – to Yasef , Asia – to Sam (Sim). The latter ended his life on the banks of the Volga.

Zemlya Sama gave the name to many toponyms. For example, the city of Samarkand, which was founded by the ruler Shamar. The city of Samaria was in Israel. In the Abbasid state of the Arabs, the capital was the city of Samarra – now it is the territory of Iraq. However, some scientists refute this theory.

Root Sam – Sham is often found in arid areas of the steppes: the city of Sam, Lake Sam, Mount Sameke, the village of Shamak, Kamysh – Samara lakes, Kamysh – Samara – the right tributary of the Urals.

The second part of the toponym Samar – Ar – among the peoples of the east means a river. It turns out that “Sam + ar” is a river in the steppe .

In different languages, words with the same root as the name of our city mean phenomena, one way or another connected with the river.

In Arabic samur means beaver, otter.

In Kyrgyz sardar it is a basin, a jug. Scientists suggest that in the Turkic dialects this could be called “the bend of the river, its steep part. ”

There are also values ​​that can be indirectly tied to our area.

In Mongolian, samar means – walnut, walnut.

Turkic for bag.

In old Russian samara, samarka – long-sleeved clothes were called.

Translated from Sanskrit, the name of our city means summer. Here you can also recall the English word summer.

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Ancient Khazaria > Rubric in Samara

and map of Venetian travelers

Disputes about how old Samara is has been going on for a long time. We know well that the city was founded in 1586 by order of Fyodor Ioannovich, son of Ivan the Terrible, and in fact by the will of Boris Godunov. The fortress as part of the Zasechnaya line was set up by Prince Grigory Zasekin together with Saratov and Tsaritsyn (Volgograd). But Samara was already listed in the royal lists as a habitable place on the Middle Volga. Also, many people know that in 1357 Metropolitan Alexy of Moscow, the saint of our Samara, sailed here to the Golden Horde and back, he asked the hermit what the name of this place was, and received the answer: Samara. The metropolitan predicted a bright future for the city. And after only 10 years, the ship of the Venetians of the Pizzigano brothers landed on our shore. On their portolan map (map of ports), a town was accurately marked, which was called Samar. This map has been perfectly preserved to this day. We also know that the fortified city of Samar did not stand in its present place, but at the mouth of the Dry Samarka, thirty kilometers from the city, where Samara once flowed into the Volga.
It’s just that over the centuries the river has changed its course.
But when, after all, was the city founded, in the root of the word of which a literally sacred meaning is hidden: “Samar” – “sham-ar” – in ancient languages ​​meaning “sacred land”? We would like to invite you on this historic journey.

In the world, including in Rus’, it was customary to give names to cities from the names of small rivers that flow into large ones. This is an ancient tradition. The name of our city is derived from the tributary of the Volga – Samara. There is the river Voronezh, the rivers Vyatka, Kazanka, Moscow, finally, and so on – settlements were formed on their banks, and then the largest Russian cities grew.
But the name Samara is special. And we are not the only happy owners of the river with such a beautiful oriental name!
There is a tributary of the Samara near the Dnieper, the Amur also has its own tributary Samara. There are many settlements in Russia called Samara. But these are already multiplied derivatives. The ancient city of Samarra stands near Baghdad – the Samarra culture from the Fertile Crescent region is seven to eight thousand years old!
And of course – biblical Samaria! Everyone remembers the legend of the Good Samaritan who helped a beaten Jew.

At the beginning of the first millennium BC, the Kingdom of Israel broke up into two states
– Judea with its capital in Jerusalem (smaller southern) and Samaria (northern, larger) with Shomron as its capital. What does Samara mean in translation. It’s just that the name Samara came to us from the Greek language (including through the Gospel), in which, as you know, the letter “Sh” does not exist. Who could call our river and the ancient town by the biblical name
– Samara? This is in view of the fact that the legendary Central Russian principalities did not really exist at that time. The pagan tribes of the Drevlyans, Polyans, Northerners and our other Slavic ancestors lived in central Rus’. But Asia and the Volga region, including our Samara open spaces, were occupied by the huge Eurasian empire of the Khazars. Lev Gumilyov wrote a lot about it – he devoted his whole life to studying this topic. It is the Khazars who will become the main threat to the young Russian principalities, the word “Khazarin” will become a household word, meaning “ruthless enemy”, “foreigner”, “a stranger living by foreign laws.”

If we go down to the Volga embankment and look at that bank, which since childhood we call “the Volga”, you know, we are looking at the territory of the Khazar Khaganate itself, when we ourselves are standing on the territory of the Bulgar kingdom, subject to the Khazars.

Who are these Khazars? How did you end up on the banks of the Volga and become a great force? And how are they involved in the birth of the name of our city – Samara?

In the 4th century A.D. e. vast expanses of Eurasia – from the western coast of the Black Sea to the Pacific Ocean – were occupied by the Turkic Khaganate. The territory of modern Samara was included in the zone of his influence as a remote and wild province. The Turks fought with China, Iran, Byzantium. Then the power of the kaganate was shaken and in 603, under blows from China, it was divided into two parts – western and eastern. The Samara Territory was part of the territory of the Western Turkic Khaganate during its heyday. In 704, after tribal wars and civil strife, the Western Khaganate also ceased to exist. One of the major peoples of the Western Khaganate was the Turkic-speaking Khazars, who lived in Ciscaucasia, according to one of the scientific versions, the descendants of the Huns.
They intercepted the baton of statehood!

By that time there was a rapid strengthening of the Arab world in all directions – the Arabs, having conquered half of the civilized world, are besieging even Constantinople (!) – and the Khazars are moving away from the dangerous Caucasian border into the depths of the Volga and Don regions. In the lower reaches of the Volga (then Itil), their capital Itil, named after the great river, grows and flourishes. At various times, as a neighbor, the vassal was included in the Khaganate and Volga Bulgaria.
There were a lot of Jewish communities on the territory of pagan Khazaria, presumably driven out by Muslims from the Middle East. In the middle of the 8th century, starting with the commander Bulan, the entire military elite of the Khazars transferred from paganism to Judaism. And when the descendants of Bulan, Obadiah and Hanukkah, take power in Khazaria, Judaism becomes the state religion of Khazaria. Strong in these decades, Khazaria flourishes not so much due to raids and conquests, but due to transit trade.

At the beginning of the 10th century, major clashes began between the Khazars and the growing Russ. The beloved soldier’s song of the tsarist period (to the famous words of Pushkin from “Prophetic Oleg”) well reflects this confrontation of a thousand years ago: and fires!

This time is the era of the first Russian princes Igor, Oleg and Svyatoslav and the time of the campaigns of the pagan Rus against Byzantium and the hated Khazars.

Khazaria during this period was pressed by Muslims from the south, and Russian pagans from the east, and again Muslims from the northeast – the Volga Bulgaria converted to Islam in spite of the Khazars and asked for help from fellow believers from Central Asia. Apparently, by the middle of the 10th century, their affairs were so bad that they even contacted the Caliphate of Cordoba to help them against their old enemies – the Central Asian Muslims.

Shatter the evil and dangerous Khazars on our banks of the Volga in 964-965. Prince Svyatoslav, grandson of Rurik. It will pass from the Middle Volga to the Lower – first it will overturn the Volga Bulgaria, and then the Khazars – it will ruin Itil. After this defeat, the Khazars will drastically surrender their positions and will gradually decline, giving way to other large peoples. But first they will ask for help from Khorezm, and for this the Khazars will change their religion and begin to convert to Islam. By the way, this is from the broken Volga Bulgaria in 9In the 86th year, ambassadors to Kyiv will come to Vladimir Svyatoslavich on the subject of the adoption of Islam by the Russians, but, as we know, they will get a turn from the gate. And the Khazars at the same time offered to accept Judaism, but it didn’t work out either.

Rus’ had its own future.
As for the Khazars themselves, they will later dissolve among the Polovtsians, Russians, Oguzes and other large peoples. And they will remain only in legends, because they will not leave any great cultural heritage behind.
But here’s the thing. The biblical name Samara itself could appear in the Don region (with the same tributary Samara) and the Middle Volga (with our Samara) only in those years when the Khazar empire was at its best! Moreover, at such a height that even after their fall, these rivers and cities were not renamed. This could only happen between the end of the 8th century, when Khazaria converted to Judaism and was at the peak of its power, and the middle of the 10th century, when the Slavs of Svyatoslav destroyed its power.
But the second question arises: why “Samara”?

Not without reason did I mention the Good Samaritan. Jesus used this parable to say that, despite religious differences and enmity, all people are brothers. The Jews could not stand the Samaritans and were at enmity with them. After Israel broke up into Judea and Samaria, ten of the twelve tribes of Israel lived in Samaria. Big win, I must say! Here is her, Samaria, in 722 BC. and captured by the Assyrians. All the tribes were brought out and settled in other lands of the empire, and Samaria was settled by other tribes – Gutians, Chaldeans, Arameans and others. The new inhabitants of Samaria, mixed-mixed, hit paganism. These atheists were called by the Jews contemptuously “Samaritans”. And a Jew from Judea would hardly call the river or the city Samara! But the scattered ten tribes continued to exist and multiply throughout the Middle East and beyond! And they, being Jews by faith, kept in their hearts the memory of ancient Samaria as an integral part of the Kingdom of Israel! And when the entire Middle East and Central Asia became Muslim, there is nothing surprising in the fact that the giant Jewish diaspora, out of harm’s way, crossed the Caucasus Range and began to look for new lands to inhabit. And the Volga region became such a land. It was they, the descendants of the inhabitants of Samaria, who gave their faith to the pagan Khazars and, having created, albeit for a couple of centuries, their civilization, assigned a sacred name for them to rivers and settlements.

Sherlock Holmes used to say, looking at the corner of a scroll in someone else’s pocket: “I date this manuscript…” And so on. So, I date the origin of Samara to the second half of the 9th century. It is impossible to confirm this, but historical facts and logic speak for themselves.

Let’s look again at the portolan map of the Pizzigano brothers, dated to the 14th century, literally dotted with towns that grew along the banks of the Volga and its tributaries. Before us is not terra incognita, but a specific working map. A well-written sailing guide, a guide for 14th-century merchant tourists – where to sail, where to land on the shore and in which direction to continue their journey.
But the XIV century and the Venetian brothers still need to be reached!.