The article is devoted to establishing the route of the campaign of the Arab commander Mervan against Khazaria and the localization of the city of al-Baida - the penultimate capital of Khazaria. There is no special work dedicated to this city. But in the first monographic works on Khazaria, it was believed that the city of al-Bayda was located in the lower reaches of the Volga River. A. P. Novoseltsev reasonably refuted this option, proving that the Arab commander Mervan did not reach the lower reaches of the Volga during the campaign of 737. However, he also believes that G. al-Bayda and Semender are the same thing, which does not correspond to reality. Almost all Arab-Persian authors, when listing the Khazar cities, simultaneously give both Semender and Baidu. Based on the comparison of the data of Arab historians al-Kufi and others, the author comes to the conclusion that the city of al-Bayda was located on the site of a multi-layered Khazar settlement called “Tatar settlement” near the city of Stavropol. Only after the capture of the city of al-Bayd by Mervan did the khakan decide to move the capital to the lower reaches of the Volga under the name of Itil. Excavations of this extremely interesting archaeological site will provide answers to the ethnic, political and socio-economic history of the mysterious Khazaria.
Khizriev Kh. A. About the route of Mervan's campaign against Khazaria and localization of the city of al-Baida Kaspiyskiy region: politika, ekonomika, kultura [The Caspian Region: Politics, Economics, Culture]. 2022, no. 4 (72), pp. 9–11. https://doi.org/10.54398/1818510Х_2022_4_9.
