Afatkun: Vyatka or the Rozhdestvenskoe Settlement: Historiography of the Question

The article examines the 19th – 21st centuries historiography of the localization of the town of Afatkun, mentioned in the 14th – early 15th centuries encyclopedias of the Mamluk period by employees of the state Chancellery of Egypt al-Umari and al-Qalqashandi. According to the encyclopedias, Afatkun was located north of the city of Bulgar. The most common versions of researchers are: Afatkun is the land of the Visu or Vogul people or these peoples themselves; Afatkun is the Rozhdestvenskoye settlement archaeological site on the Upper Kama; Afatkun is one of the cities of Vyatka land with the Russian name Vyatka. It is established that for the most accurate localization of this settlement, a combination of four factors is necessary: identification of the correct reading of the name and its interpretation; translation into the metric system of the number of days of travel from Bulgar to this locality; astronomical and mathematical calculation of the northern latitude of the locality based on the duration of the shortest night in it; the time of appearance of this locality in the Egyptian encyclopedias. Considering all factors, it was found that at present the most well-grounded is the A. N. Polyak — V. V. Napolskykh version that the town, correctly read as Afatkun, was located on the territory of the somewhat later formed Vyatka land, named in the al-Qalqashandi encyclopedia by the same name, and is identified with the Russian name Vyatka. This means that the toponym Vyatka appeared in the al-Umari encyclopedia about 25–30 years earlier than in the all-Russian chronicles.