Madzhar

(also Madzhary), a medieval city of the Golden Horde dating from the 13th to 16th centuries, located on the Kuma River (the ruins are on the eastern outskirts of the city of Prikumsk in Stavropol’ Krai). The city is mentioned in 13th-century Arab sources and 14th-century Russian chronicles. At its zenith (13th and 14th centuries), it was a major trade and artisan center on the caravan routes connecting Transcaucasia and Asia Minor with the mouths of the Don and the Volga. The city also minted its own coins. Madzhar had an ethnically mixed population, including Mongols, Polovtsy, Russians, and Alani.

The excavations conducted by V. A. Gorodtsov (1907) and an expedition of the Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1967) uncovered the remains of numerous buildings made of sun-dried and fired brick—multiroom dwellings, madrasahs, mosques, and mausoleums, many of which were decorated with glazed tiles, majolica, mosaics, and relief inscriptions. The finds included the remains of ceramic plumbing, various implements, and hand-crafted articles.