The Bulgars, came to the Middle Volga Region in the end of the VII century and subdued the Turkic and Ugric tribes very quickly. The Bulgar tribe not only developed new lands in the Lower Kama and the Volga region, but also moved to the North. At the same time they formed a state and began building cities. One of the reasons of these social changes in the Bulgar state was the development of the Baltic-Volga trade way, the Great Volga Way, and Vikings travels on it. Bulgars’ contacts with Scandinavians occurred to the period of intensive trade and economical relations of different peoples on the Volga Way. Among the fragments, dated the X century, from the cities of the Volga Region Bulgaria, there is a whole set of things of the Northern-European origin. The most interesting of them are Carolingiens swords and accessories (swords, their small parts, and scabbard points). Comparing them with other fragments, including elements of clothes, one can come to conclusion, that their character is not occasional. All of them in any case are connected with military life, and the swords, as rare and expensive armoury, had been used mainly by the military nobility.

New types of armoury, which hadn’t been known as belonging to Bulgars before, show the distribution of common European methods of armed fighting, which characterized feudal communities. Besides, a number of finds, connected with female Scandinavian clothes with claps, are of special interest. Buried treasures of coins have been found on the trade ways of early Middle Ages.Drawing maps of these finds has shown that all of them are located near early city centers of Bulgaria, such as Bolgar, Bilyar, and Balymer, ancient settlements, situated close to Staraya Maina and Starye Nokhraty, and particular near Kazan. It should be mentioned, that such concentration of prestigious goods is a characteristic of Russia and Hungary in the period of state system formation. Perhaps, a whole city net of trade and commercial centers, and trade factories in the mouths of rivers, fragments of which were found in the Upper Kama and Kazan regions, began developing alongside big cities. Similar Bulgar settlements dated the X-XII centuries were found in the Kazan region near the villages Russky Urmat, Unma, Sosnovka, Churilino and Buzha. All of this was the basis for founding a city near the mouth of the Kazanka River, which became an administrative, economical and religious centre of the region.

According to the archeological researches, initially Kazan occupied the North-Eastern part of the Kremlin hill. The citadel was protected rather well. During the excavations on the Kremlin hill of the last decade, began by Professor A. Kh. Khalikov and continued by F. Sh. Khuzin and Professor A. G. Mukhamadiyev, archeologists made several discoveries, which helped to define the date of early settling and to imagine its character. Among the finds there are fragments of pots, made of rough material with wavy ornament, which is a characteristic of pottery traditions of Khazar kaganat up to the end of the X century. There is also a fragment of oriental dirkhem, a necklace, made of glass and gems, cupper bracelets and a bronze cover for harness. A leaden pendant (or a seal?) with a Czech coin impression was quite a sensation. According to the definition of professor Ya. Khaskova from Prague, it dates 929-930. She didn’t only notice Bulgar contacts with the Middle European countries, but also insisted on correcting the time of first minting in Czechia, thus, dating it one hundred years earlier. Taking into consideration all these materials, the first Bulgar settlement on the Kremlin hill in the period from the X to the XI centuries had a trade and commercial character and took an active part in the trade on the Volga Way.

The city became bigger gradually. Its functions had been changing. In 1977-1978 in the district of the Kremlin garden with the southern floor side A. Kh. Khalikov found the rest of the bank of 12 meters width and up to 2 meters height. On the top of the bank there was a white-stone wall of 4,5 meters width and a ditch (up to 14 meters width and 5 meters depth) in front of it. In the 1990th the data was corrected and expanded, after the fragments of similar walls had been found on the Northern, Western and Eastern sides of the Western part of the Kremlin Hill. There might have been gates in the shape of tower, several banks and wooden walls as framework in the north-eastern part of the city. All of this surrounded a territory of 5 hectares approximately. A lot of Bulgar pottery, arrow-heads and other elements of armoury, harness and every-day goods (iron locks and keys) have been found on the ground. Fragments of the Near-Eastern watering vessels and glass bracelets from Ancient Russia were also found there. All these things let us consider the Kazan of the XII-XIII centuries to have been a strong citadel and important trade and commercial centre in the north-western parts of the Bulgar Volga Region. It could be possible, that the existence of such a strong citadel in the mouth of the Kazanka river, where a number of Bulgar settlement were situated, was connected with growing expansion of the princes of Vladimir and Suzdal in the Middle Volga region.