Semikarakorsk

Semikarakorsk stands on the lower course of the Don, among the river channels and steppe lands that have long formed the home of the Don Cossacks. An older stronghold once guarded this stretch of river: the Khazar fortress of Semikarakorsk, built in the eighth or ninth century, had walls of mud brick and a citadel faced in fired brick.

The Cossack town of Semikarakory is recorded in the seventeenth century. Like other Don settlements, it belonged to a river society whose people fished, kept livestock and took part in the military life of the Cossack host. The old Khazar fortress and the later Cossack settlement recall successive powers that made the Don a frontier as well as a route through the steppe.