it is possible that this new Atil was only destroyed in the middle of the 11th century. Samosdelka site The archaeological remains of Atil have never been positively identified. It has been hypothesized that they were washed away by the rising level of the Caspian Sea. However, beginning in 2003 Dmitri Vasilyev of Astrakhan State University led a series of excavations at the Samosdelskoye site near the village of Samosdelka (Russian: Самосделка) in the Volga Delta. Vasilyev connected artifacts from the site with Khazar, Oghuz and Bulgar culture, leading him to believe that he had discovered the site of Saqsin. The matter is still unresolved. In 2006 Vasilyev announced his belief that the lowest stratum at the Samosdelka site was identical with the site of Atil. In 2008, this team of Russian archaeologists announced that they had discovered the ruins of Atil. Gallery References Further reading Barthold, W. (1996). "Khazar". Encyclopaedia of Islam (Brill Online). Eds.: P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W.P. Heinrichs. Brill. Kevin Alan Brook. The Jews of Khazaria. 2nd ed. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2006. Douglas Morton Dunlop (1997). "Itil". Encyclopaedia Judaica (CD-ROM Edition Version 1.0). Ed. Cecil Roth. Keter Publishing House. Douglas M. Dunlop. The History of the Jewish Khazars, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1954. Peter B. Golden. Khazar Studies: An Historio-Philological Inquiry into the Origins of the Khazars. Budapest: Akademia Kiado, 1980. Norman Golb and Omeljan Pritsak, Khazarian Hebrew Documents of the Tenth Century. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1982. Thomas S. Noonan. "The Khazar Economy." Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 9 (1995–1997): 253–318. Thomas S. Noonan. "Les Khazars et le commerce oriental." Les Échanges au Moyen Age: Justinien, Mahomet, Charlemagne: trois empires dans l'économie médiévale, pp. 82–85. Dijon: Editions Faton S.A., 2000. Thomas S. Noonan. "The Khazar Qaghanate and its Impact on the Early Rus' State: The translatio imperii from Itil to Kiev." Nomads in the Sedentary World, eds. Anatoly Mikhailovich Khazanov and André Wink, pp. 76–102. Richmond, England: Curzon Press, 2001. Omeljan Pritsak. "The Khazar Kingdom's Conversion to Judaism." (Journal Article in Harvard Ukrainian Studies, 1978) D. Vasilyev (Д. Васильев), "The Itil Dream (at the excavation site of the ancient capital of the Khazar Khaganate)" (Итиль-мечта (на раскопках древнего центра Хазарского каганата)) Sources External links Russian archaeologists find long-lost Jewish capital Atil entry from Dead Cities (in Russian) Geography of Astrakhan Oblast Defunct towns in Russia Khazar towns