Everything about The Khazars totally explained
The
Khazars were a semi-
nomadic
Turkic people who dominated the
Pontic steppe and the North
Caucasus from the 7th to the 10th century CE. The name 'Khazar' seems to be tied to a
Turkic verb form meaning "wandering".
In the
7th century CE, the Khazars founded an independent
Khaganate in the Northern
Caucasus along the
Caspian Sea. Although the Khazars were initially
Tengri shamanists, many of them converted to
Christianity,
Islam, and other religions. During the eighth or ninth century the
state religion became
Judaism. At their height, the Khazar khaganate and its tributaries controlled much of what is today southern
Russia, western
Kazakhstan, eastern
Ukraine,
Azerbaijan, large portions of the Caucasus (including
Circassia,
Dagestan,
Chechnya, and parts of
Georgia), and the
Crimea.
Between
965 and
969, their sovereignty was broken by
Sviatoslav I of Kiev, and they became a subject people of
Kievan Rus'. Gradually displaced by the Rus, the
Kipchaks, and later the conquering
Mongol Golden Horde, the Khazars largely disappeared as a culturally-distinct people.
Origins and prehistory
The origins of the Khazars are unclear. Following their
conversion to Judaism, the Khazars themselves traced their origins to
Kozar, a son of
Togarmah. Togarmah is mentioned in
Genesis in the
Bible as a grandson of
Japheth.
Scholars in the former
USSR considered the Khazars to be an
indigenous people of the
North Caucasus. Some scholars, such as
D.M. Dunlop, considered the Khazars to be connected with a
Uyghur or
Tiele confederation tribe called
He'san in
Chinese sources from the
7th-century (Suishu, 84). However, the
Khazar language appears to have been an
Oghuric tongue, similar to that spoken by the early
Bulgars and corresponding to the modern day
Chuvash dialects. Therefore, a
Hunnish origin has also been postulated. Since the Turkic peoples were never ethnically homogenous, these ideas need not be deemed mutually exclusive. It is likely that the Khazar nation was made up of tribes from various ethnic backgrounds, as steppe nations traditionally absorbed those they conquered. Their name is accordingly derived from Turkic *
qaz-, meaning "to wander, flee."
Armenian chronicles contain references to the Khazars as early as the late
second century. These are generally regarded as
anachronisms, and most scholars believe that they actually refer to
Sarmatians or
Scythians.
Priscus relates that one of the nations in the
Hunnish confederacy was called
Akatziroi. Their king was named
Karadach or Karidachus. Some, going on the similarity between Akatziroi and "Ak-Khazar" (see below), have speculated that the Akatziroi were early proto-Khazars.
Dmitri Vasil'ev of
Astrakhan State University recently hypothesized that the Khazars moved in to the Pontic steppe region only in the late
500s, and originally lived in
Transoxiana. According to Vasil'ev, Khazar populations remained behind in Transoxiana under
Pecheneg and
Oghuz suzerainty, possibly remaining in contact with the main body of their people.
Tribes
The Khazars' tribal structure isn't well understood. They were divided between Ak-Khazars ("White Khazars") and Kara-Khazars ("Black Khazars"). The Muslim Geographer al-
Istakhri claimed that the White Khazars were strikingly handsome with reddish hair, white skin and blue eyes while the Black Khazars were swarthy verging on deep black as if they were "some kind of
Indian". However, many Turkic nations had a similar (political, not racial) division between a "white" ruling warrior caste and a "black" class of commoners; the consensus among mainstream scholars is that Istakhri was himself confused by the name given to the two groups.
Rise
Formation of the Khazar state
Early Khazar history is intimately tied with that of the
Göktürk empire, founded when the
Ashina clan overthrew the
Juan Juan in
552 CE. With the collapse of the Göktürk empire due to internal conflict in the
seventh century, the western half of the Turk empire split into a number of tribal confederations, among whom were the
Bulgars, led by the
Dulo clan, and the Khazars, led by the
Ashina clan, the traditional rulers of the Gok Turk empire. By
670, the Khazars had broken the Bulgar confederation, causing various tribal groups to migrate and leaving two remnants of Bulgar rule -
Volga Bulgaria, and the
Bulgarian khanate [later EMPIRE] on the
Danube River.
The first significant appearance of the Khazars in history is their aid to the campaign of the
Byzantine emperor
Heraclius against the
Sassanid Persians. The Khazar ruler Ziebel (sometimes identified as
Tong Yabghu Khagan of the West Turks) aided the Byzantines in overrunning
Georgia. A marriage was even contemplated between Ziebel's son and Heraclius' daughter, but never took place. During these campaigns, the Khazars may have been ruled by
Mo-ho-shad and their forces may have been under the command of his son
Buri-shad.
During the
7th and
8th centuries the Khazar fought a series of wars against the
Umayyad Caliphate, which was attempting simultaneously to expand its influence into
Transoxiana and the
Caucasus. The first war was fought in the early
650 and ended with the defeat of an Arab force led by
Abd ar-Rahman ibn Rabiah outside the Khazar town of
Balanjar, after a battle in which both sides used
siege engines on the others' troops.
A number of Russian sources give the name of a Khazar khagan,
Irbis, from this period, and describe him as a scion of the Göktürk royal house, the Ashina. Whether Irbis ever existed is open to debate, as is the issue of whether he can be identified with one of the many
Göktürk rulers of the same name.
Several further conflicts erupted in the decades that followed, with Arab attacks and Khazar raids into
Kurdistan and
Iran. There is evidence from the account of al-Tabari that the Khazars formed a united front with the remnants of the Gok Turks in Transoxiana.
Khazars and Byzantium
Khazar overlordship over most of the
Crimea dates back to the late 7th century. In the mid-8th century the rebellious
Crimean Goths were put down and their city,
Doros (modern Mangup) occupied. A Khazar tudun was resident at
Cherson in the
690s, despite the fact that this town was nominally subject to the
Byzantine Empire.
They are also known to have been allied with the
Byzantine Empire during at least part of the eighth century. In
704/
705 Justinian II, exiled in
Cherson, escaped into Khazar territory and married
Theodora, the sister of the Khagan
Busir. With the aid of his wife, he escaped from Busir, who was intriguing against him with the usurper
Tiberius III, murdering two Khazar officials in the process. He fled to
Bulgaria, whose Khan
Tervel helped him regain the throne. The Khazars later provided aid to the rebel general
Bardanes, who seized the throne in
711 as Emperor
Philippicus.
The Byzantine emperor
Leo III married his son Constantine (later
Constantine V Kopronymous) to the Khazar princess
Tzitzak (daughter of the Khagan
Bihar) as part of the alliance between the two empires. Tzitzak, who was baptized as
Irene, became famous for her wedding gown, which started a fashion craze in Constantinople for a type of robe (for men) called
tzitzakion. Their son Leo (
Leo IV) would be better known as "Leo the Khazar".
Second Khazar-Arab war
Hostilities broke out again with the Caliphate in the
710s, with raids back and forth across the Caucasus but few decisive battles. The Khazars, led by a prince named
Barjik, invaded northwestern
Iran and defeated the
Umayyad forces at
Ardabil in
730, killing the Arab warlord
al-Djarrah al-Hakami and briefly occupying the town. They were defeated the next year at
Mosul, where Barjik directed Khazar forces from a throne mounted with al-Djarrah's severed head, and Barjik was killed. Arab armies led first by the Arab prince
Maslamah ibn Abd al-Malik and then by Marwan ibn Muhammad (later Caliph
Marwan II) poured across the Caucasus and eventually (in
737) defeated a Khazar army led by
Hazer Tarkhan, briefly occupying
Atil itself and possibly forcing the Khagan to convert to Islam. The instability of the Umayyad regime made a permanent occupation impossible; the Arab armies withdrew and Khazar independence was re-asserted. It has been speculated that the adoption of
Judaism (which in this theory would have taken place around
740) was part of this re-assertion of
independence.
It is worth noting that around
729, Arab sources give the name of the ruler of the Khazars as
Parsbit or Barsbek, a woman who appears to have directed military operations against them. This suggests that women could have very high positions within the Khazar state, possibly even as a stand-in for the khagan.
Although they stopped the
Arab expansion into
Eastern Europe for some time after these wars, the Khazars were forced to withdraw behind the Caucasus. In the ensuing decades they extended their territories from the
Caspian Sea in the east (many cultures still call the Caspian Sea "Khazar Sea"; for example "Xəzər dənizi" in
Azeri, "Hazar Denizi" in Turkish, "Bahr ul-Khazar" in Arabic, "Darya-ye Khazar" in Persian) to the steppe region north of
Black Sea in the west, as far west at least as the
Dnieper River.
In
758, the
Abbasid Caliph Abdullah
al-Mansur ordered
Yazid ibn Usayd al-Sulami, one of his nobles and military governor of
Armenia, to take a royal Khazar bride and make peace. Yazid took home a daughter of Khagan
Baghatur, the Khazar leader. Unfortunately, the girl died inexplicably, possibly in childbirth. Her attendants returned home, convinced that some Arab faction had poisoned her, and her father was enraged. A Khazar general named
Ras Tarkhan invaded what is now northwestern Iran, plundering and raiding for several months. Thereafter relations between the Khazars and the
Abbasid Caliphate (whose foreign policies were generally less expansionist than its Umayyad predecessor) became increasingly cordial.
Khazar religion
Turkic shamanism
Originally, the Khazars practiced traditional Turkic
shamanism, focused on the sky
god Tengri, but were heavily influenced by
Confucian ideas imported from
China, notably that of the
Mandate of Heaven. The
Ashina clan were considered to be the chosen of Tengri and the kaghan was the incarnation of the favor the sky-god bestowed on the Turks. A kaghan who failed had clearly lost the god's favor and was typically
ritually executed. Historians have sometimes wondered, only half in jest, whether the Khazar tendency to occasionally execute their rulers on religious grounds led those rulers to seek out other religions.
The Khazars worshipped a number of deities subordinate to Tengri, including the fertility
goddess Umay,
Kuara, a thunder god, and
Erlik, the god of death.
Conversion to Judaism and relations with world Jewry
Jewish communities had existed in the Greek cities of the
Black Sea coast since late classical times.
Chersonesos,
Sudak,
Kerch and other Crimean cities possessed Jewish communities, as did
Gorgippia, and
Samkarsh /
Tmutarakan was said to have had a Jewish majority as early as the
670s. Jews fled from Byzantium to Khazaria as a consequence of persecution under
Heraclius,
Justinian II,
Leo III, and
Romanos I. These were joined by other Jews fleeing from
Sassanid Persia (particularly during the
Mazdak revolts), and, later, the
Islamic world. Jewish merchants such as the
Radhanites regularly traded in Khazar territory, and may have wielded significant economic and political influence. Though their origins and history are somewhat unclear, the
Mountain Jews also lived in or near Khazar territory and may have been allied with or subject to Khazar overlordship; it's conceivable that they too played a role in the conversion.
At some point in the last decades of the
8th century or the early
9th century, the Khazar
royalty and
nobility converted to
Judaism, and part of the general population followed. The extent of the conversion is debated.
Ibn al-Faqih reported in the 10th century that "all the Khazars are Jews." Notwithstanding this statement, some scholars believe that only the upper classes converted to Judaism; there's some support for this in contemporary Muslim texts. However, recent archeological excavations have uncovered widespread shifts in burial practices. Around the mid-800s burials in Khazaria began to take on a decidedly Jewish flavor. Grave goods disappeared almost altogether. Judging by interment evidence, by
950 Judaism had become widespread among all classes of Khazar society.
Essays in the
Kuzari, written by
Yehuda Halevi, detail a moral liturgical reason for the conversion which some consider a moral tale. Some researchers have suggested part of the reason for this mass conversion was political expediency to maintain a degree of
neutrality: the Khazar empire was between growing populations,
Muslims to the east and
Christians to the west. Both religions recognized Judaism as a forebear and worthy of some respect. The exact date of the conversion is hotly contested. It may have occurred as early as 740 or as late as the mid-
800s. Recently discovered
numismatic evidence suggests that Judaism was the established state religion by c.
830, and though
St. Cyril (who visited Khazaria in
861) didn't identify the Khazars as Jews, the khagan of that period,
Zachariah, had a biblical Hebrew name. Some medieval sources give the name of the
rabbi who oversaw the conversion of the Khazars as
Isaac Sangari or
Yitzhak ha-Sangari.
The first Jewish Khazar king was named
Bulan which means "
elk", though some sources give him the Hebrew name
Sabriel. A later king,
Obadiah, strengthened Judaism, inviting
rabbis into the kingdom and built
synagogues. Jewish figures such as
Saadia Gaon made positive references to the Khazars, and they're excoriated in contemporary
Karaite writings as "bastards"; it's therefore unlikely that they adopted Karaism as some (such as
Avraham Firkovich) have proposed.
According to the
Schechter Letter, early Khazar Judaism was centered on a
tabernacle similar to that mentioned in the
Book of Exodus. Archaeologists at
Rostov-on-Don have tentatively identified a folding altar unearthed at
Khumar as part of such a construct.
The Khazars enjoyed close relations with the Jews of the
Levant and
Persia. The Persian Jews, for example, hoped that the Khazars might succeed in conquering the Caliphate. The high esteem in which the Khazars were held among the Jews of the Orient may be seen in the application to them, in an
Arabic commentary on
Isaiah ascribed by some to Saadia Gaon, and by others to
Benjamin Nahawandi, of
Isaiah 48:14: "The Lord hath loved him." "This," says the commentary, "refers to the Khazars, who will go and destroy
Babel" (for example,
Babylonia), a name used to designate the country of the Arabs. From the
Khazar Correspondence it's apparent that two Spanish Jews, Judah ben Meir ben Nathan and Joseph Gagris, had succeeded in settling in the land of the Khazars. Saadia, who had a fair knowledge of the kingdom of the Khazars, mentions a certain Isaac ben Abraham who had removed from
Sura to Khazaria.
Likewise, the Khazar rulers viewed themselves as the protectors of international
Jewry, and corresponded with foreign Jewish leaders (
the letters exchanged between the Khazar ruler
Joseph and the Spanish rabbi
Hasdai ibn Shaprut have been preserved). They were known to retaliate against Muslim or Christian interests in Khazaria for persecution of Jews abroad.
Ibn Fadlan relates that around
920 the Khazar ruler received information that Muslims had destroyed a synagogue in the land of
Babung, in
Iran; he gave orders that the
minaret of the
mosque in his capital should be broken off, and the
muezzin executed. He further declared that he'd have destroyed the mosque entirely had he not been afraid that the Muslims would in turn destroy all the synagogues in their lands. Similarly, during the persecutions of Byzantine Jews under
Romanos I, the Khazar government retaliated by attacking Byzantine interests in the Crimea.
The theory that the majority of
Ashkenazic Jews are the descendants of the non-Semitic converted Khazars was advocated by various racial theorists in the 20th century, especially following the publication of Arthur Koestler's
The Thirteenth Tribe. Despite recent genetic evidence to the contrary, and a lack of any real mainstream scholarly support, this belief is still popular among groups such as the
Christian Identity Movement,
Black Hebrews,
British Israelitists and others (particularly Arabs) who claim that they, rather than Jews, are the true descendants of the Israelites, or who seek to usurp the connection between Ashkenazi Jews and Israel in favor of their own. For more detail on this controversy,
see below.
Other religions
Besides
Judaism, other religions probably practiced in areas ruled by the Khazars included
Greek Orthodox,
Nestorian, and
Monophysite Christianity,
Zoroastrianism as well as
Norse,
Finnic, and
Slavic cults. The Khazar government tolerated a wide array of religious practices within the Khaganate. Many Khazars reportedly were converts to Christianity and Islam. (See "Judiciary", below.)
A
Greek Orthodox bishop was resident at Atil and was subject to the authority of the
Metropolitan of
Doros. The "apostle of the Slavs",
Saint Cyril, is said to have attempted the conversion of Khazars without enduring results. Khazaran had a sizable Muslim quarter with a number of
mosques. A Muslim officer, the
khazz, represented the Muslim community in the royal court.
Government
Khazar kingship
Khazar kingship was divided between the
khagan and the
Bek or
Khagan Bek. Contemporary Arab historians related that the Khagan was purely a spiritual ruler or figurehead with limited powers, while the Bek was responsible for administration and military affairs.
Both the Khagan and the Khagan Bek lived in Itil. The Khagan's palace, according to Arab sources, was on an island in the Volga River. He was reported to have 25 wives, each the daughter of a client ruler; this may, however, have been an exaggeration.
In the
Khazar Correspondence,
King Joseph identifies himself as the ruler of the Khazars and makes no reference to a colleague. It has been disputed whether Joseph was a Khagan or a Bek; his description of his military campaigns make the latter probable. A third option is that by the time of the Correspondence (c. 950-
960) the Khazars had merged the two positions into a single ruler, or that the Beks had somehow supplanted the Khagans or vice versa.
The Khazar dual kingship may have influenced other people; power was similarly divided among the early
Hungarian people between the sacral king, or
kende, and the military king, or
gyula. Similarly, according to
Ibn Fadlan, the early
Oghuz Turks had a warlord, the
Kudarkin, who was subordinate to the reigning
yabghu.
Army
Khazar armies were led by the
Khagan Bek and commanded by subordinate
officers known as
tarkhans. A famous tarkhan referred to in
Arab sources as
Ras or As Tarkhan led an invasion of
Armenia in
758. The army included regiments of
Muslim auxiliaries known as
Arsiyah, of
Khwarezmian or
Alan extraction, who were quite influential. These regiments were exempt from campaigning against their fellow Muslims. Early
Russian sources sometimes referred to the city of
Khazaran (across the
Volga River from
Atil) as
Khvalisy and the Khazar (
Caspian) sea as
Khvaliskoye. According to some scholars such as
Omeljan Pritsak, these terms were
East Slavic versions of "Khwarezmian" and referred to these
mercenaries.
In addition to the Bek's standing army, the Khazars could call upon tribal levies in times of danger and were often joined by
auxiliaries from subject nations.
Other officials
Settlements were governed by administrative officials known as
tuduns. In some cases (such as the Byzantine settlements in southern
Crimea), a tudun would be appointed for a town nominally within another polity's
sphere of influence.
Other officials in the Khazar government included dignitaries referred to by
ibn Fadlan as
Jawyshyghr and
Kundur, but their responsibilities are unknown.
Judiciary
Muslim sources report that the Khazar supreme court consisted of two
Jews, two
Christians, two
Muslims, and a "heathen" (whether this is a Turkic shaman or a priest of Slavic or Norse religion is unclear), and a citizen had the right to be judged according to the laws of his religion. Some have argued that this configuration is unlikely, as a Beit Din, or rabbinical court, requires three members. It is therefore possible that as practitioners of the state religion, the Jews had three judges on the Supreme Court rather than two, and that the Muslim sources were attempting to downplay their influence. A
Muslim or
Christian court can function with only one or two judges.
Economic position
Trade
The Khazars occupied a prime
trade nexus. Goods from western Europe travelled east to Central Asia and China and vice versa, and the Muslim world could only interact with northern Europe via Khazar intermediaries. The
Radhanites, a guild of medieval Jewish merchants, had a trade route that ran through Khazaria, and may have been instrumental in the Khazars' conversion to Judaism.
No Khazar paid taxes to the central government. Revenue came from a 10% levy on goods transiting through the region, and from tribute paid by subject nations. The Khazars exported
honey,
furs,
wool,
millet and other
cereals,
fish, and
slaves. D.M. Dunlop and Artamanov asserted that the Khazars produced no material goods themselves, living solely on trade. This theory has been refuted by discoveries over the last half-century, which include pottery and glass factories.
Khazar coinage
The Khazars are known to have minted silver coins, called
Yarmaqs. Many of these were imitations of Arab
dirhems with corrupted Arabic letters. Coins of the Caliphate were in widespread use due to their reliable silver content. Merchants from as far away as
China,
England, and
Scandinavia accepted them regardless of their inability to read the Arab writing. Thus issuing imitation dirhems was a way to ensure acceptance of Khazar coinage in foreign lands.
Some surviving examples bear the legend "Ard al-Khazar" (Arabic for "land of the Khazars"). In 1999 a hoard of
silver coins was discovered on the property of the Spillings farm in the
Swedish island of
Gotland. Among the coins were several dated 837/8 CE and bearing the legend, in
Arabic script, "
Moses is the Prophet of God" (a modification of the Muslim coin inscription "
Muhammad is the Prophet of God"). In "Creating Khazar Identity through Coins", Roman Kovalev postulated that these dirhems were a special
commemorative issue celebrating the adoption of Judaism by the Khazar ruler Bulan.
Extent of influence
The Khazar Khaganate was, at its height, an immensely powerful state. The Khazar heartland was on the lower Volga and the Caspian coast as far south as
Derbent. In addition, from the late 600s the Khazars controlled most of the
Crimea and the northeast littoral of the
Black Sea. By 800 Khazar holdings included most of the Pontic steppe as far west as the Dneiper and as far east as the Aral Sea (some Turkic history atlases show the Khazar sphere of influence extending well east of the Aral). During the Khazar-Arab war of the early 700s, some Khazars evacuated to the
Ural foothills, and some settlements may have remained.
Khazar towns
Khazar towns included:
Tributary and subject nations
Many nations were tributaries of the Khazars. A
client king subject to Khazar overlordship was called an "
Elteber". At various times, Khazar vassals included:
Pontic steppes, Crimea and Turkestan
The
Pechenegs ; the
Oghuz; the
Crimean Goths; the Crimean
Huns (
Onogurs?); the early
Magyars
Caucasus
Georgia;
Abkhazia; various
Armenian principalities;
Arran; the
North Caucasian Huns;
Lazica; the
Caucasian Avars; the
Kassogs; and the
Lezgins.
Upper Don and Dneiper
Various
East Slavic tribes such as the
Derevlians and the
Vyatichs; various early
Rus' polities
Volga
Volga Bulgaria; the
Burtas; various
Finno-Ugrian forest tribes such as the
Mordvins and
Ob-Ugrians; the
Bashkir; the
Barsils
Decline and fall
The ninth century is sometimes known as the
Pax Khazarica, a period of Khazar
hegemony over the
Pontic steppe that allowed trade to flourish and facilitated trans-Eurasian contacts. However, in the early 10th century the empire began to decline due to the attacks of both
Vikings from
Kievan Rus and various Turkic tribes. It enjoyed a brief revival under the strong rulers
Aaron II and
Joseph, who subdued rebellious client states such as the
Alans and led victorious wars against Rus invaders.
Kabar rebellion and the departure of the Magyars
At some point in the ninth century (as reported by
Constantine Porphyrogenitus) a group of three Khazar clans called the
Kabars revolted against the Khazar government.
Omeljan Pritsak and others have speculated that the revolt had something to do with a rejection of rabbinic Judaism; this is unlikely as it's believed that both the Kabars and mainstream Khazars had pagan, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim members. Pritsak maintained that the Kabars were led by the Khagan Khan-Tuvan Dyggvi in a war against the Bek. In any event Pritsak cited no primary source for his propositions in this matter. The Kabars were defeated and joined a confederacy led by the Magyars. It has been speculated that "Hungarian" derives from the Turkic word "Onogur", or "Ten Arrows", referring to seven
Finno-Ugric tribes and the three tribes of the Kabars.
In the closing years of the ninth century the Khazars and Oghuz allied to attack the Pechenegs, who had been attacking both nations. The Pechenegs were driven westward, where they forced out the Magyars (
Hungarians) who had previously inhabited the Don-Dnieper basin in vassalage to Khazaria. Under the leadership of the chieftain
Lebedias and later
Arpad, the Hungarians moved west into modern-day
Hungary. The departure of the Hungarians led to an unstable power vacuum and the loss of Khazar control over the steppes north of the Black Sea.
Diplomatic isolation and military threats
The alliance with the Byzantines began to collapse in the early
900s. Byzantine and Khazar forces may have clashed in the Crimea, and by the
940s Constantine VII Porphyrogentius was speculating in
De Administrando Imperio about ways in which the Khazars could be isolated and attacked. The Byzantines during the same period began to attempt alliances with the Pechenegs and the Rus, with varying degrees of success.
From the beginning of the tenth century, the Khazars found themselves fighting on multiple fronts as nomadic incursions were exacerbated by uprisings by former clients and invasions from former allies. According to the
Schechter Text, the Khazar ruler
Benjamin ben Menahem fought a war against a coalition of "'SY, TWRQY, 'BM, and PYYNYL," who were instigated and aided by "MQDWN". MQDWN or
Macedon refers to the Byzantine Empire in many medieval Jewish writings; the other entities named have been tenuously identified by scholars including Omeljan Pritsak with the
Burtas,
Oghuz Turks,
Volga Bulgars and
Pechenegs, respectively. Though Benjamin was victorious, his son
Aaron II had to face another invasion, this time led by the
Alans. Aaron defeated the Alans with Oghuz help, yet within a few years the Oghuz and Khazars were enemies.
Ibn Fadlan reported Oghuz hostility to the Khazars during his journey c. 921. Some sources, discussed by Tamara Rice, claim that
Seljuk, the eponymous progenitor of the
Seljuk Turks, began his career as an Oghuz soldier in Khazar service in the early and mid-tenth century, rising to high rank before he fell out with the Khazar rulers and departed for
Khwarazm.
Rise of Rus
Originally the Khazars were probably allied with various
Norse factions who controlled the region around
Novgorod. The
Rus' Khaganate, an early Rus polity in northwestern Russia, was probably heavily influenced by the Khazars. The Rus' regularly travelled through Khazar-held territory to attack territories around the Black and Caspian Seas; in one such raid, the Khagan is said to have given his assent on the condition that the Rus' give him half of the booty. In addition, the Khazars allowed the Rus to use the
trade route along the Volga River. This alliance was apparently fostered by the hostility between the Khazars and Arabs. At a certain point, however, the Khazar connivance to the sacking of the Muslim lands by the
Varangians led to a backlash against the Norsemen from the Muslim population of the Khaganate. The Khazar rulers closed the passage down the Volga for the Rus', sparking a war. In the early 960s, Khazar ruler
Joseph wrote to
Hasdai ibn Shaprut about the deterioration of Khazar relations with the Rus: "I have to wage war with them, for if I'd give them any chance at all they'd lay waste the whole land of the Muslims as far as
Baghdad."
The Rus warlords
Oleg of Novgorod and
Sviatoslav I of Kiev launched several wars against the Khazar khaganate, often with Byzantine connivance. The Schechter Letter relates the story of a campaign against Khazaria by HLGW (Oleg) around
941 (in which Oleg was defeated by the Khazar general
Pesakh; this calls into question the timeline of the
Primary Chronicle and other related works on the history of the Eastern Slavs.
Sviatoslav finally succeeded in destroying Khazar imperial power in the
960s. The Khazar fortresses of
Sarkel and
Tamatarkha fell to the Rus in
965, with the capital city of
Atil following circa
967 or
969. A visitor to Atil wrote soon after the sacking of the city: "The Rus attacked, and no grape or raisin remained, not a leaf on a branch."
Khazars outside Khazaria
Khazar communities existed outside those areas under Khazar overlordship. Many Khazar
mercenaries served in the armies of the
Caliphate and other
Islamic states. Documents from medieval
Constantinople attest to a Khazar community mingled with the Jews of the suburb of
Pera. Christian Khazars also lived in Constantinople, and some served in its armies. The
Patriarch Photius I of Constantinople was once angrily referred to by the Emperor as "Khazar-face", though whether this refers to his actual lineage or is a generic insult is unclear.
Abraham ibn Daud reported Khazar
rabbinical students, or rabbinical students who were the descendants of Khazars, in 12th century
Spain. Jews from Kiev and elsewhere in Russia, who may or may not have been Khazars, were reported in France, Germany and England.
The
Kabars who settled in
Hungary in the late ninth and early tenth centuries may have included Jews among their number. Many Khazar Jews probably fled foreign conquest into Hungary and elsewhere in
Eastern Europe. There they likely merged with local Jews and ensuing waves of Jewish immigration from Germany and Western Europe. They most likely didn't constitute the dominant group within Eastern European Jewry, as
Arthur Koestler maintained (see below).
Polish legends speak of Jews being present in
Poland before the establishment of the Polish monarchy. Polish coins from the 12th and 13th centuries sometimes bore Slavic inscriptions written in the
Hebrew alphabet though connecting these coins to Khazar influence is purely a matter of speculation.
Late references to the Khazars
There is debate as to the temporal and geographic extent of Khazar polities following
Sviatoslav's sack of Atil in 967/9, or even whether any such states existed. The Khazars may have retained control over some areas in the Caucasus for another two centuries, but sparse historical records make this difficult to confirm.
The evidence of later Khazar polities includes the fact that Sviatoslav didn't occupy the Volga basin after he destroyed Atil, and departed relatively quickly to embark on his campaign in
Bulgaria. The permanent conquest of the Volga basin seems to have been left to later waves of steppe peoples like the
Kipchaks.
Jewish sources
A letter in Hebrew dated
AM 4746 (
985–
986) refers to "our lord David, the Khazar prince" who lived in
Taman. The letter said that this David was visited by envoys from Kievan Rus to ask about religious matters — this could be connected to the Vladimir conversion which took place during the same time period. Taman was a principality of Kievan Rus around
988, so this
successor state (if that's what it was) may have been conquered altogether. The authenticity of this letter, the
Mandgelis Document, has however been questioned by such scholars as
D. M. Dunlop.
Abraham ibn Daud, a twelfth-century Spanish rabbi, reported meeting Khazar rabbinical students in
Toledo, and that they informed him that the "remnant of them is of the rabbinic faith." This reference indicates that some Khazars maintained ethnic, if not political, autonomy at least two centuries after the sack of Atil.
Petachiah of Ratisbon, a thirteenth-century rabbi and traveler, reported traveling through "Khazaria", though he gave few details of its inhabitants except to say that they lived amidst desolation in perpetual mourning.
He further related:
Whilst at Baghdad [I] saw ambassadors from the kings of Meshech, for Magog (medieval Christian writers said that the Khazars lived in the land of Gog and Magog) is about ten days' journey from thence. The land extends as far as the Mountains of Darkness (a term often used to describe the [[Caucasus(geographic region) |
The account of the conversion of the "seven kings of Meshech" is extremely similar to the accounts of the Khazar conversion given in the
Kuzari, and in
King Joseph's Reply. It is possible that Meshech refers to the Khazars, or to some Judaized polity influenced by them. Arguments against this possibility include the reference to "seven kings" (though this, in turn, could refer to seven successor tribes or state micropolities).
Muslim sources
Ibn Hawqal and
al-Muqaddasi refer to Atil after 969, indicating that it may have been rebuilt.
Al-Biruni (mid-
1000s) reported that Atil was in ruins, and didn't mention the later city of
Saqsin which was built nearby, so it's possible that this new Atil was only destroyed in the middle of the eleventh century. Even assuming al-Biruni's report wasn't an anachronism, there's no evidence that this "new" Atil was populated by Khazars rather than by
Pechenegs or a different tribe.
Ibn al-Athir, who wrote around
1200, described "the raid of Fadhlun the Kurd against the Khazars". Fadhlun the Kurd has been identified as
al-Fadhl ibn Muhammad al-Shaddadi, who ruled
Arran and other parts of
Azerbaijan in the 1030s. According to the account he attacked the Khazars but had to flee when they ambushed his army and killed 10,000 of his men. Two of the great early 20th century scholars on Eurasian nomads,
Marquart and
Barthold, disagreed about this account. Marquart believed that this incident refers to some Khazar remnant that had reverted to paganism and nomadic life. Barthold, (and more recently, Kevin Brook), took a much more skeptical approach and said that ibn al-Athir must have been referring to Georgians or Abkhazians. There is no evidence to decide the issue one way or the other.
Kievan Rus sources
According to the
Primary Chronicle, in 986 Khazar Jews were present at
Vladimir's
disputation to decide on the prospective religion of the Kievian Rus. Whether these were Jews who had settled in Kiev or emissaries from some Jewish Khazar remnant state is unclear. The whole incident is regarded by a few radical scholars as a fabrication, but the reference to Khazar Jews (after the destruction of the Khaganate) is still relevant.
Heinrich Graetz alleged that these were Jewish missionaries from the Crimea, but provided no reference to primary sources for his allegation.
In
1023 the
Primary Chronicle reports that
Mstislav (one of Vladimir's sons) marched against his brother Yaroslav with an army that included "Khazars and Kasogs". Kasogs were an early
Circassian people. "Khazars" in this reference is considered by most to be intended in the generic sense, but some have questioned why the reference reads "Khazars and Kasogs", when "Khazars" as a generic would have been sufficient. Even if the reference is to Khazars, of course, it doesn't follow that there was a Khazar state in this period. They could have been Khazars under the rule of the Rus.
A Kievian prince named
Oleg (not to be confused with
Oleg of Kiev) was reportedly kidnapped by "Khazars" in
1078 and shipped off to
Constantinople, although most scholars believe that this is a reference to the Kipchaks or other steppe peoples then dominant in the Pontic region. Upon his conquest of
Tmutarakan in the 1080s Oleg gave himself the title "
Archon of Khazaria".
Byzantine, Georgian and Armenian sources
Kedrenos documented a joint attack on the Khazar state in
Kerch, ruled by
Georgius Tzul, by the Byzantines and Russians in
1016. Following 1016, there are more ambiguous references in Eastern Christian sources to Khazars that may or may not be using "Khazars" in a general sense (the Byzantines and Arabs, for example, called all steppe people "
Turks"; before them the
Romans had called them all "
Scythians"). Jewish Khazars were also mentioned in a Georgian chronicle as a group that inhabited
Derbent in the late
1100s.
At least one 12th-century Byzantine source refers to tribes practicing
Mosaic law and living in the
Balkans; see
Khalyzians. The connection between this group and the Khazars is rejected by most modern Khazar scholars.
Western sources
Giovanni di Plano Carpini, a thirteenth century Papal legate to the court of the
Mongol Khan
Guyuk, gave a list of the nations the Mongols had conquered in his account. One of them, listed among tribes of the Caucasus, Pontic steppe and the Caspian region, was the "
Brutakhi, who are Jews." The identity of the Brutakhi is unclear. Giovanni later refers to the Brutakhi as shaving their heads. Though Giovanni refers to them as Kipchaks, they may have been a remnant of the Khazar people. Alternatively, they may have been Kipchak converts to Judaism (possibly connected to the
Krymchaks or the
Crimean Karaites).
Khazar place names today
Today, various place names invoking
Khazar persist. Indeed, the
Caspian Sea, traditionally known as the
Hyrcanian Sea and
Mazandaran Sea in
Persian, came to be known to
Iranians as the
Khazar Sea as an alternative name. Many other cultures still call the Caspian Sea "Khazar Sea";
for example "Xəzər dənizi" in Azerbaijani, "Hazar Denizi" in Turkish, "Bahr ul-Khazar" in Arabic, "Darya-ye Khazar" in Persian.
Debate
Date and extent of the conversion
The date of the conversion of the Khazars to Judaism, and whether it occurred as one event or as a sequence of events over time, is widely disputed. The issues surrounding this controversy are discussed above.
The number of Khazars who converted to Judaism is also hotly contested.
D.M. Dunlop was of the opinion that only the upper class converted; this was the majority view until relatively recently. Analysis of recent archaeological grave evidence by such scholars as
Kevin A. Brook asserts that the sudden shift in burial customs, with the abandonment of pagan-style burial with grave goods and the adoption of simple shroud burials during the mid-800s suggests a more widespread conversion.
Alleged Khazar ancestry of Ashkenazim
The theory that all or most
Ashkenazi ("European") Jews might be descended from Khazars (rather than Semitic groups in the Middle East) dates back to the late nineteenth century, and is frequently cited to assert that most modern Jews aren't descended from Israelites and/or to refute Israeli claims to territory also sought by Palestinians. It was first publicly proposed in lecture given by
Ernest Renan on January 27, 1883, titled "Judaism as a Race and as Religion." It was repeated in articles in
The Dearborn Independent in 1923 and 1925, and popularized by racial theorist
Lothrop Stoddard in a 1926 article in the
Forum titled "The Pedigree of Judah", where he argued that Ashkenazi Jews were a mix of people, of which the Khazars were a primary element. Stoddard's views were "based on nineteenth and twentieth-century concepts of race, in which small variations on facial features as well as presumed accompanying character traits were deemed to pass from generation to generation, subject only to the corrupting effects of marriage with members of other groups, the result of which would lower the superior stock without raising the inferior partners." This theory was adopted by
British Israelites, who saw it as a means of invalidating the claims of Jews (rather than themselves) to be the true descendants of the ancient Israelites, and was supported by early anti-Zionists.
In 1951
Southern Methodist University professor John O. Beaty published
The Iron Curtain over America, a work which claimed that "Khazar Jews" were "responsible for all of America's - and the world's - ills beginning with World War I". The book repeated a number of familiar antisemitic claims, placing responsibility for U.S. involvement in World Wars I and II and the Bolshevik revolution on these Khazars, and insisting that Khazar Jews were attempting to subvert Western Christianity and establish communism throughout the world. The American millionaire J. Russell Maguire gave money towards its promotion, and it was met with enthusiasm by hate groups and the extreme right. By the 1960s the Khazar theory had become a "firm article of faith" amongst
Christian Identity groups. In 1971
Glubb Pasha also took up this theme, insisting that Palestinians were more closely related to the ancient Judeans than were Jews. According to
Benny Morris:
Of course an anti-Zionist (as well as an anti-Semitic) point is being made here: The Palestinians have a greater political right to Palestine than the Jews do, as they, not the modern-day Jews, are the true descendants of the land's Jewish inhabitantsowners.
The theory gained further support when the novelist
Arthur Koestler devoted his popular book
The Thirteenth Tribe (1976) to the topic. Koestler's historiography has been attacked as highly questionable by many historians; it has also been pointed out that his discussion of theories about Ashkenazi descent is largely unsupported; to the extent that Koestler referred to place-names and documentary evidence his analysis has been described as a mixture of flawed etymologies and misinterpreted primary sources. Commentors have also noted that Koestler mischaracterized the sources he cited, particularly
D.M. Dunlop's
History of the Jewish Khazars (1954).
Koestler himself was pro-
Zionist based on
secular considerations, and didn't see alleged Khazar ancestry as diminishing the claim of Jews to Israel, which he felt was based on the United Nations mandate, and not on Biblical covenants or genetic inheritance. In his view, "The problem of the Khazar infusion a thousand years ago ... is irrelevant to modern Israel". In addition, he was apparently "either unaware of or oblivious to the use anti-Semites had made to the Khazar theory since its introduction at the turn of the century."
Nevertheless, in the Arab world the Khazar theory has been adopted by anti-Zionists such proponents argue that if Ashkenazi Jews are primarily Khazar and not Semitic in origin, they'd have no historical claim to Israel, nor would they be the subject of
God's
Biblical promise of
Canaan to the
Israelites, thus undermining the theological basis of both
Jewish religious Zionists and
Christian Zionists. In the 1970s and 80s the Khazar theory was also advanced by some Russian
chauvinist antisemites, particularly the historian
Lev Gumilyov, who portrayed "Judeo-Khazars" as having repeatedly sabotaged Russia's development since the 7th century.
According to
Bernard Lewis:
This theory… is supported by no evidence whatsoever. It has long since been abandoned by all serious scholars in the field, including those in Arab countries, where the Khazar theory is little used except in occasional political polemics.
Recently however, the theory has been revived by Tel Aviv University Israeli historian Professor Shlomo Sand in his book "Matai ve'ech humtza ha'am hayehudi?" ("When and How the Jewish People Was Invented?").
DNA Evidence
Most Jews, including Ashkenazi Jews, don't exhibit the oriental features of the Khazars, who were likely of Central Asian Turkish origin. Modern DNA studies on the
Y chromosome of Jews worldwide have also discredited the Khazar origin theory for the vast majority of Jews, including the Ashkenazi.
A study published by the
National Academy of Sciences found that "The results support the hypothesis that the paternal gene pools of Jewish communities from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East descended from a common Middle Eastern ancestral population, and suggest that most Jewish communities have remained relatively isolated from neighboring non-Jewish communities during and after the Diaspora."
(External Link
). Researchers express surprise at the remarkable genetic uniformity they found among modern Jews, no matter where the
diaspora has become dispersed around the world. Contradicting the "mongrel" theory, DNA demonstrated substantially less inter-marriage among Jews over the last 3000 years than found in other populations.
"The results accord with Jewish history and tradition and refute theories like those holding that Jewish communities consist mostly of converts from other faiths, or that they're descended from the Khazars, a medieval Turkish tribe that adopted Judaism."
(External Link)
Morever, "The analysis provides genetic witness that these communities have, to a remarkable extent, retained their biological identity separate from their host populations, evidence of relatively little intermarriage or conversion into Judaism over the centuries."
Id. And another finding, paradoxical but unsurprising, is that by the yardstick of the Y chromosome, the world's Jewish communities are closely related to Syrians and Palestinians, suggesting that all are descended from a common ancestral population that inhabited the Middle East some four thousand years ago.
Id.
This study found that "The extremely close affinity of Jewish and non-Jewish Middle Eastern populations observed ... supports the hypothesis of a common Middle Eastern origin.", as does the
mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of at least 40% of the current Ashkenazi population. So although Khazars could possibly have been absorbed into the modern Jewish population as we know it today, it's unlikely that they formed a large percentage of the ancestors of modern Jews.
DNA analysis further determined that modern Jews of the priesthood tribe -- or "Cohanim" -- share a common ancestor in Israel dating back about 3000 years, 1700 years older than the Khazar conversion to Judaism. This result is consistent for all Jewish populations around the world.
(External Link)
"Using a combination of molecular genetics and mathematical analysis, the scientists arrived at an estimated date for the most recent common ancestor of contemporary Cohanim. According to this analysis, the common ancestor lived between the Exodus (approx. 1000 B.C.E) and the destruction of the first Temple (586 B.C.E.), consistent with the biblical account. Similar results were obtained based on analysis of either Sephardi or Ashkenzi communities, confirming the ancestral link of the two communities which had been separated for more than 500 years."
(External Link) "To date the original high priest, the research team used a formula based on a commonly accepted mutation rate. This formula yieded some 106 generations for both Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews, or between 2,650 and 3,180 years, depending on whether a generation is counted as 25 or 30 years."
Other claims of descent
Others have claimed Khazar origins for such groups as the
Karaim,
Krymchaks,
Mountain Jews, and
Georgian Jews. There is little evidence to support any of these theories, although it's possible that some Khazar descendants found their way into these communities. Non-Jewish groups who claim at least partial descent from the Khazars include the
Kumyks and
Crimean Tatars; as with the above-mentioned Jewish groups, these claims are subject to a great deal of controversy and debate.
Fiction
The question of mass religious conversion is a central theme in
Milorad Pavić's international bestselling novel
Dictionary of the Khazars. The novel, however, contained many invented elements and had little to do with actual Khazar history. More recently, several novels, including
H.N. Turteltaub's
Justinian (about the life of Justinian II) and
Marek Halter's
Book of Abraham and
Wind of the Khazars have dealt either directly or indirectly with the topic of the Khazars and their role in history.
In 2007, the
New York Times Magazine serialized a novel by
Michael Chabon entitled
Gentlemen of the Road which features 10th century Khazar characters.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Khazars'.
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