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Khazars

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Peoples

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   The Khazars (Heb. sing. "Kuzari" כוזרי plur. "Kuzarim" כוזרים; Arab.
   خزر; Turk. sing. "Hazar" plur. Hazarlar; Greek Χαζάροι; Russ. Хазары;
   Tat. sing Xäzär plur. Xäzärlär; Crimean Tatar: sing. Hazar, plur.
   Hazarlar Persian خزر; Latin "Gazari" or "Cosri") were a semi- nomadic
   Turkic people from Central Asia, many of whom converted to Judaism. The
   name 'Khazar' seems to be tied to a Turkic verb form meaning
   "wandering" ('gezer' in modern Turkish). In the 7th century CE they
   founded an independent Khaganate in the Northern Caucasus along the
   Caspian Sea, where over time Judaism became the state religion. At
   their height, they and their tributaries controlled much of what is
   today southern Russia, western Kazakhstan, eastern Ukraine, large
   portions of the Caucasus (including Dagestan, Azerbaijan, and Georgia),
   and the Crimea.

   The Khazars were important allies of the Byzantine Empire against the
   Sassanid empire, and were a major regional power at their height. They
   fought a series of successful wars against the Arab Caliphates,
   probably preventing an Arab invasion of Eastern Europe. By the end of
   the tenth century, their power was broken by the Kievan Rus, and the
   Khazars largely disappeared from history.

Origins and prehistory

   The site of the Khazar fortress at Sarkel. Aerial photo from
   excavations conducted by Mikhail Artamonov in the 1930s.
   Enlarge
   The site of the Khazar fortress at Sarkel. Aerial photo from
   excavations conducted by Mikhail Artamonov in the 1930s.

   The origins of the Khazars are unclear. Following their conversion to
   Judaism, the Khazars themselves traced their origins to Kozar, a son of
   Togarmeh. Togarmeh is mentioned in Genesis in the Hebrew scriptures as
   a grandson of Japheth. It is unlikely, however, that he was regarded as
   an ancestor before the introduction of Biblical traditions to Khazaria.

   Some historians have looked for possible connections between the
   Khazars and the lost tribes of Israel, but modern scholars generally
   consider them to be Turks who migrated from the East. 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. 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.

   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 is not well understood. They were divided
   between Ak-Khazars ("White Khazars") and Kara-Khazars ("Black
   Khazars"). The Arab writer 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. Most scholars, however, dispute this. Many Turkic
   nations had similar division between a "white" ruling warrior caste and
   a "black" class of commoners; the distinction is not believed by most
   scholars to have had anything to do with race. It is likely that
   Istakhri was himself confused by the name given to the two groups.
   Peter Golden speculated that the Khazar ethnos was a conglomerate of
   Oghuric and common Turkic nations, including the Sabirs and North
   Caucasian Huns as well as elements of the Gokturks.

Rise

Formation of the Khazar state

   Map of the Western (purple) and Eastern (blue) Gokturk khaganates at
   their height, c. 600 CE. Lighter areas show direct rule; darker areas
   show spheres of influence.
   Enlarge
   Map of the Western (purple) and Eastern (blue) Gokturk khaganates at
   their height, c. 600 CE. Lighter areas show direct rule; darker areas
   show spheres of influence.

   Early Khazar history is intimately tied with that of the Gokturk
   empire, founded when the Ashina clan overthrew the Juan Juan in 552 CE.
   With the collapse of the Gokturk 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 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 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.
   The Pontic steppe, c. 650, showing the early territory of the Khazars
   and their neighbors.
   Enlarge
   The Pontic steppe, c. 650, showing the early territory of the Khazars
   and their neighbors.

   A number of Russian sources give the name of a Khazar khagan, Irbis,
   from this period, and describe him as a scion of the Gokturk 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 Gokturk
   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
   600s. In the mid 700s 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 700s. In 704/ 705 Justinian II, exiled in
   Cherson, escaped into Khazar territory and married 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

   Expansion of the Caliphate to 750 CE. From The Historical Atlas by
   William R. Shepherd, 1923 Courtesy of The General Libraries, The
   University of Texas at Austin
   Enlarge
   Expansion of the Caliphate to 750 CE.
   From The Historical Atlas by William R. Shepherd, 1923
   Courtesy of The General Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin

   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 Ardebil 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 739, 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"; e.g. "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 favour and was typically ritually
   executed. Historians have sometimes wondered, only half in jest, if 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. Cherson, Sudak, Kerch and other
   Crimean cities possessed Jewish communities, as did Gorgippa, and
   Samkarsh / Tmutarakan was said to have had a Jewish majority as early
   as the 670s. The original Jewish settlers were joined by waves of
   immigration fleeing persecution in the Byzantine Empire, Sassanid
   Persia (particularly during the Mazdak revolts), and later within 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 is
   conceivable that they too played a role in the conversion.
   Map of the world, c. 820 CE, showing the Khazar Empire in larger
   geopolitical context.
   Enlarge
   Map of the world, c. 820 CE, showing the Khazar Empire in larger
   geopolitical context.

   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, most scholars
   believed that only the upper classes converted to Judaism; there is
   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, details 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) did not 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 building
   synagogues. Jewish figures such as Saadia Gaon made positive references
   to the Khazars, and they are excoriated in contemporary Karaite
   writings as "bastards"; it is therefore unlikely that they adopted
   Karaism as some (such as Avraham Firkovich) have proposed.

   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" (i.e., Babylonia), a name used
   to designate the country of the Arabs. From the Khazar Correspondence
   it is 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 would have destroyed all the mosques in the country
   had he not been afraid that the Muslims would in turn destroy all the
   synagogues in their lands.

Other religions

   Besides Judaism, other religions probably practiced in areas ruled by
   the Khazars include Greek Orthodox, Nestorian, and Monophysite
   Christianity, Zoroastrianism as well as Norse, Finnic, and Slavic
   cults. Religious toleration was maintained for the kingdom's three
   hundred plus years. The "apostle of the Slavs", Saint Cyril, is said to
   have attempted the conversion of Khazars without enduring results. Many
   Khazars reportedly were converts to Christianity and Islam. (See
   "Judiciary", below.)

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.

Army

   Khazar warrior with captive, based on reconstruction by Norman
   Finkelshteyn of image from an 8th-century ewer found in Romania
   (original at [1])
   Enlarge
   Khazar warrior with captive, based on reconstruction by Norman
   Finkelshteyn of image from an 8th-century ewer found in Romania
   (original at )

   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

   Map of Eurasia showing the trade network of the Radhanites, c. 870 CE,
   as reported in the account of ibn Khordadbeh in the Book of Roads and
   Kingdoms.
   Enlarge
   Map of Eurasia showing the trade network of the Radhanites, c. 870 CE,
   as reported in the account of ibn Khordadbeh in the Book of Roads and
   Kingdoms.

   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
   off of 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 copies of Arab dirhems. Coins of the Caliphate were in
   widespread use due to their reliable silver content. Merchants from as
   far away as China, Great Britain, 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 Kovavlev 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:
     * Along the Caspian coast and Volga delta:

          Atil; Khazaran; Samandar

     * In the Caucasus:

          Balanjar; Kazarki; Sambalut; Samiran

     * In Crimea and Taman region:

          Kerch (also called Bospor); Theodosia; Güzliev (modern
          Eupatoria); Samkarsh (also called Tmutarakan, Tamatarkha); Sudak
          (also called Sugdaia)

     * In the Don valley:

          Sarkel

     * Numerous Khazar settlements have been discovered in the
       Mayaki-Saltovo region. On the Dnieper, the Khazars founded a
       settlement called Sambat, which was part of what would become the
       city of Kiev. Chernihiv is also thought to have started as a Khazar
       settlement.

Tributary and subject nations

   Map of the Khazar Khaganate and surrounding states, c. 820 CE. Area of
   direct Khazar control shown in dark blue, sphere of influence in
   purple. Other boundaries shown in dark red.
   Enlarge
   Map of the Khazar Khaganate and surrounding states, c. 820 CE. Area of
   direct Khazar control shown in dark blue, sphere of influence in
   purple. Other boundaries shown in dark red.

   Numerous nations were tributaries of the Khazars. A client king subject
   to Khazar overlordship was called an " Elteber". At various times,
   Khazar vassals included:

   In the Pontic steppes, Crimea and Turkestan

          The Pechenegs ; the Oghuz; the Crimean Goths; the Crimean Huns (
          Onogurs?); the early Magyars

   In the Caucasus

          Georgia; Abkhazia; various Armenian principalities; Arran; the
          North Caucasian Huns; Lazica; the Caucasian Avars; the Kassogs;
          and the Lezgins.

   On the Upper Don and Dneiper

          Various East Slavic tribes such as the Derevlians and the
          Vyatichs; various early Rus' polities

   On the Volga

          Volga Bulgaria; the Burtas; various Finno-Ugrian forest tribes
          such as the Mordvins and Ob-Ugrians; the Bashkir; the Barsils

Decline and fall

   In the 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 and Joseph, who subdued
   rebellious client states such as the Alans and led victorious wars
   against Rus invaders.
   A much reduced Khazaria and surrounding states, c. 950 CE
   Enlarge
   A much reduced Khazaria and surrounding states, c. 950 CE

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 is 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

   Svyatoslav (seated in the boat), the destroyer of the Khazar Khaganate.
   From Klavdiy Lebedev (1852–1916), Svyatoslav's meeting with Emperor
   John, as described by Leo the Deacon.
   Enlarge
   Svyatoslav (seated in the boat), the destroyer of the Khazar Khaganate.
   From Klavdiy Lebedev (1852–1916), Svyatoslav's meeting with Emperor
   John, as described by Leo the Deacon.

   The alliance with the Byzantines began to collapse in the early 900s,
   possibly as a result of the conversion to Judaism. 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, often at
   Byzantine instigation. 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 Byzantine-inspired 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 would give them any chance at all they would 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 descendents 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
   did not 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.

Debate

Date and extent of the conversion

   The date of the conversion, 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. The relatively
   sudden shift in burial customs during the mid 800s suggests a more
   widespread conversion, which hypothesis has been recently championed by
   Kevin A. Brook.

Alleged Khazar ancestry of Ashkenazim

   The novelist Arthur Koestler alleged in a book (in The Thirteenth
   Tribe), that modern Ashkenazi Jews are of Khazarian ancestry rather
   than Jewish. 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.

   DNA studies demonstrate that Ashkenazi Y-Chromosome Jews originated in
   Middle Eastern populations, as has the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of at
   least 40% of the current Ashkenazi population. So although Khazars
   might have been absorbed into the Jewish population it is unlikely that
   they formed a large percentage of the ancestors of modern Ashkenazim.

   Another criticism that has been leveled against Koestler's work is that
   he largely appropriated his history from such sources as D.M. Dunlop,
   sometimes without proper attribution. Moreover, it has been pointed out
   that his more speculative second half (discussing his 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.

   Other critics of the Khazar-Ashkenazi theory have stated that the prime
   motive for even the small degree of acceptance of these ideas is
   because they have become political and anti-Zionist in nature. The
   Khazar theory has been adopted by many anti-Zionists, especially in the
   Arab world; such proponents of the theory argue that if Ashkenazi Jews
   are primarily Khazar in origin, then they would be outside the scope of
   God's promise of Canaan to Israelites as recorded in the Bible. This
   ignores, of course, the fact that the Biblical promise explicitly
   includes converts, and the fact that over half of Israeli Jews are not
   Ashkenazi. (see Demographics of Israel, Jewish exodus from Arab lands)
   Some have countered that such charges of a political motive are not
   relevant to the core of the argument; in any event, Koestler himself
   was emphatically pro- Zionist based upon secular considerations.

   The Khazar claim has also served as a catalyst for state anti-Semitism
   in the Soviet Union and a justification for conquest by Russian
   nationalists.

   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 is 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.

   Anti-Semites and anti-Zionists use the alleged Khazarian ancestry of
   Ashkenazi Jews as a means of dismissing Jewish claims to Israel.

In 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.

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