Khazars

Kingdom of Khazaria
Khazar Qağanate
618?–1048?
Khazar Khaganate, 650–850
Capital		Balanjar (650-720 ca.) Semender(720s-750) Atil (750-ca.967-969)
Languages		Turkic Khazar
Religion		Tengriism, Shamanism, Christianity,[1] Slavic Paganism, Judaism,[2] and Islam
Political structure		Khazar Qağanate
Khagan
-	618–628	Tong Yabghu
-	9th century	Obadiah
-	9th century	Zachariah
-	9th century	Bulan
-	9th century	Benjamin
-	9th century	Aaron
-	9th century	Khan Tuvan
-	10th century	Joseph
-	10th century	Manasseh
Historical era		Middle Ages
-	Established	618?
-	Disestablished	1048?
Population
-	7th century[3] est.	1,400,000
Currency		Yarmaq

History of the Turkic peoples Pre-14th century
Turkic Khaganate 552–744
Western Turkic
Eastern Turkic
Avar Khaganate 564–804
Khazar Khaganate 618–1048
Old Great Bulgaria 632–668
Volga Bulgaria
Turgesh Khaganate 699–766
Uyghur Khaganate 744–840
Kara-Khanid Khanate 840–1212
Western Kara-Khanid
Eastern Kara-Khanid
Pecheneg Khanates 860–1091	Kimek Khanate 743–1035
Kipchak Khanates 1067–1239	Oghuz Yabgu State 750–1055
Shatuo Dynasties 923–979
Later Tang Dynasty
Later Jin Dynasty
Later Han Dynasty (Northern Han)
Ghaznavid Empire 963–1186
Seljuq Empire 1037–1194
Khwarazmian Dynasty 1077–1231
Seljuq Sultanate of Rum 1092–1307
Delhi Sultanate 1206–1526
Mamluk Dynasty
Khilji Dynasty
Tughlaq Dynasty
Cairo Sultanate 1250–1517
Bahri Dynasty
Other Turkic Dynasties  in Anatolia Artuqid Dynasty Saltuqid Dynasty in Azerbaijan Ahmadili Dynasty Ildenizid Dynasty in Egypt Tulunid Dynasty Ikhshidid Dynasty in The Levant Burid Dynasty Zengid Dynasty
This box: view talk edit

Part of a series on the
History of Tatarstan
Great Bulgaria
Khazars
Volga Bulgaria
Kipchaks
Mongol invasion
Golden Horde
Khanate of Kazan
Muscovy
Kazan Governorate
Idel-Ural State
Tatar ASSR
Republic of Tatarstan
Tatarstan portal
v t e

Part of a series on the
History of Russia
Early Slavs / Rus' pre-9th century Volga Bulgaria 7th–13th century Khazar Khaganate 7th–10th century Rus' Khaganate 8th–9th century Kievan Rus' 9th–12th century Vladimir-Suzdal 12th–14th century Novgorod Republic 12th–15th century Tatar Yoke 13th–15th century Grand Duchy 1283–1547 Tsardom of Russia 1547–1721 Russian Empire 1721–1917 Russian Republic 1917 Russian SFSR / Soviet Union 1917–1991 Russian Federation 1992–present
Timeline
Russia portal
v t e

Part of a series on the
History of Ukraine
Ancient history Trypillian–Cucuteni culture Yamna culture Catacomb culture Cimmeria Taurica Scythia Bosporan Kingdom Sarmatia Zarubintsy culture Chernyakhov culture Hunnic Empire
Middle Ages Early East Slavs Onoghuria White Croatia Rus' Khaganate Khazars Kievan Rus' Galicia–Volhynia Cumania Mongol invasion of Rus' Golden Horde Principality of Moldavia Grand Duchy of Lithuania Crimean Khanate
Cossacks Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth Zaporozhian Host Khmelnytsky Uprising The Ruin Cossack Hetmanate Left bank Sloboda Ukraine Right bank Danube
Early modern Russian Empire Little Russia New Russia Habsburg Monarchy Kingdom of Galicia Bukovina Carpathian Ruthenia
Early 20th-century Ukraine during World War I Ukraine after the Revolution Ukrainian Civil War Ukrainian People's Republic West Ukrainian People's Republic Ukrainian State Directorate of Ukraine
Soviet era Ukrainian SSR Communist Party of Ukraine Holodomor Ukraine in World War II Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists Chernobyl
Modern Cassette Scandal Orange Revolution Russia–Ukraine gas disputes
Topics by history Name of Ukraine Historical regions Christianity in Ukraine
Ukraine portal
v t e

The Khazars (Greek: Χάζαροι, Hebrew: כוזרים (Kuzarim),^[4] Turkish: Hazarlar, Tatar: Xäzärlär, Arabic: خزر‎ (khazar), Russian: Хазары, Persian: خزر‎,Latin: Gazari^[5][6]/Cosri^[7]/Gasani^[8][9]) were a semi-nomadic Turkic people who created the most powerful Western steppe empire, Khazaria, between the late 7th and 10th centuries. Astride a major artery of commerce between northern Europe and southwestern Asia, Khazaria became one of the foremost trading emporia of the medieval world, commanding the western marches of the Silk Road and played a key commercial role as a crossroad between China, the Middle East, and European Russia.^[10][11] For some three centuries (c. 650–965) the Khazars dominated the vast area extending from the Volga-Don steppes to the eastern Crimea and the northern Caucasus^[12]

Khazaria long served as a buffer state between the Byzantine empire and both the nomads of the northern steppes and the Umayyad empire, after serving as Byzantium's proxy against the Sassanid Persian empire. The alliance was dropped around 900 CE., as Byzantium began to encourage the Alans to attack Khazaria and weaken its hold on Crimea and the Caucasus, while seeking to obtain an entente with the rising Rus' power to Khazaria's north, which it aspired to convert to Christianity.^[13] Between 965 and 969, the Kievan Rus ruler Sviatoslav I of Kiev conquered the capital Atil and destroyed the Khazar state.

Beginning in the 8th century, the Khazar royalty and notable segments of the aristocracy converted to Judaism; the populace appears to have been multi-confessional—a mosaic of pagan, Muslim, Jewish and Christian worshippers—and polyethnic.^[14] A modern theory, that the core of Ashkenazi Jewry emerged from a hypothetical Khazarian Jewish diaspora, is now viewed with scepticism by most scholars, but occasionally supported by others. This Khazarian hypothesis is sometimes associated with antisemitism and anti-Zionism.

Etymology

Gyula Németh, following Zoltán Gombocz, derived Xazar from a hypothetical *Qasar reflecting a Turkic root qaz- ("to ramble, to roam") being an hypothetical velar variant of Common Turkic kez-.^[15] With the publication of the fragmentary Tes and Terkhin inscriptions of the Uyğur empire (744-840) where the form 'Qasar' is attested, though uncertainty remains whether this represents a personal or tribal name, gradually other hypotheses emerged. Louis Bazin derived it from Turkic qas- ("tyrannize, oppress, terrorize") on the basis of its phonetic similarity to the Uyğur tribal name, Qasar.^[16] András Róna-Tas connects it with Kesar, the Pahlavi transcription of the Roman title Caesar.^[17]

D.M.Dunlop tried to link the Chinese term for "Khazars" to one of the tribal names of the Uyğur Toquz Oğuz, namely the Gésà.^[18][19] The objections are that Uyğur Gesa/Qasar was not a tribal name but rather the surname of the chief of the Sikari tribe of the Toquz Oğuz, and that in Middle Chinese the ethnonym "Khazars", always prefaced with the word Tūjué signifying 'Türk' (Tūjué Kěsà bù:突厥可薩部; Tūjué Hésà:突厥曷薩), is transcribed with different characters than that used to render the Qa- in the Uyğur word 'Qasar'.^[20][21][22] After their conversion it is reported that they adopted the Hebrew script,^[23] and it is likely that, though speaking a Türkic language, the Khazar chancellery under Judaism probably corresponded in Hebrew.^[24]

Tribal origins and early history

The tribes^[25] constituting the Khazar union were, according to the most widely approved view, basically Turkic groups, such as the Oğuric peoples, including Šarağurs, Oğurs, Onoğurs, and Bulğars, who formed part of the Tiĕlè (鐵勒) confederation. These tribes, many driven out of their homelands by the Sabirs, who in turn fled the Asian Avars, began to flow into the Volga-Caspian-Pontic zone from as early as the 4th century CE and are recorded by Priscus to reside in the Western Eurasian steppelands as early as 463.^[26][27] They appear to stem from Mongolia and South Siberia in the aftermath of the fall of the Hunnic/Xiōngnú nomadic polities. A variegated tribal federation led by these Tűrks, probably comprising a complex assortment of Iranian,^[28] proto-Mongolic, Uralic, and Palaeo-Siberian clans, vanquished the Rouran Khaganate of the hegemonic central Asian Avars in 552 and swept westwards, taking in their train other steppe nomads and peoples from the Sogdian kingdom.^[29]

The ruling family of this confederation may have hailed from the Āshǐnà (阿史那) clan of the West Türkic tribes,^[30] though Constantine Zuckerman regards Āshǐnà and their pivotal role in the formation of the Khazars with scepticism.^[31] Golden notes that Chinese and Arabic reports are almost identical, making the connection a strong one, and conjectures that their leader may have been Yǐpíshèkuì (Chinese:乙毗射匱), who lost power or was killed around 651.^[32] Moving west, the confederation reached the land of the Akat(z)ir,^[33] who had been important allies of Byzantium in fighting off Attila's army.

Rise of the Khazar state

An embryonic state of Khazaria began to form sometime after 630,^[34] when it emerged from the breakdown of the larger Göktürk qağanate. Göktürk armies had penetrated the Volga by 549, ejecting the Avars, who were then forced to flee to the sanctuary of the Hungarian plain. The Āshǐnà clan whose tribal name was 'Türk' (the strong one) appear on the scene by 552, when they overthrew the Rourans and established the Göktürk qağanate.^[35] By 568, these Göktürks were probing for an alliance with Byzantium to attack Persia. An internecine war broke out between the senior eastern Göktürks and the junior West Turkic Qağanate some decades later, when on the death of Taspar Qağan, a succession dispute led to a dynastic crisis between Taspar's chosen heir, the Apa Qağan, and the ruler appointed by the tribal high council, Āshǐnà Shètú (阿史那摄图), the Ishbara Qağan. By the first decades of the 7th century, the Āshǐnà yabgu Tong managed to stabilize the Western division, but on his death, after providing crucial military assistance to Byzantium in routing the Sassanid army in the Persian heartland,^[36][37] the Western Turkic Qağanate dissolved under pressure from the encroaching Tang dynasty armies and split into two competing federations, each consisting of five tribes, collectively known as the "Ten Arrows" (On Oq). Both briefly challenged Tang hegemony in eastern Turkestan. To the West, two new nomadic states arose in the meantime, the Bulğar conferation, under Qubrat, the Duōlù clan leader, and the Nǔshībì subconfederation, also consisting of five tribes.^[38] The Duōlù challenged the Avars in the Kuban River-Sea of Azov area while the Khazar Qağanate consolidated further westwards, led apparently by an Āshǐnà dynasty. With a resounding victory over the tribes in 657, engineered by General Sū Dìngfāng (蘇定方), Chinese overlordship was imposed to their East after a final mop-up operation in 659, but the two confederations of Bulğars and Khazars fought for supremacy on the western steppeland, and with the ascendency of the latter, the former either succumbed to Khazar rule or, as under Asperukh, Qubrat's son, shifted even further west across the Danube to lay the foundations of the Bulğar state in the Balkans (c. 679).^[39][40]

The Qağanate of the Khazars thus took shape out of the ruins of this nomadic empire as it broke up under pressure from the Tang dynasty armies to the east sometime between 630-650.^[32] After their conquest of the lower Volga region to the East and an area westwards between the Danube and the Dniepr, and their subjugation of the Onoğur -Bulğar union, sometime around 670, a properly constituted Khazar Qağanate emerges,^[41] becoming the westernmost successor state of the formidable Göktürk Qağanate after its disintegration. According to Omeljan Pritsak, the language of the Onoğur-Bulğar federation was to become the lingua franca of Khazaria^[42] as it developed into what Lev Gumilev called a 'steppe Atlantis' (stepnaja Atlantida/ Степная Атлантида).^[43] The high status soon to be accorded this empire to the north is attested by Ibn al-Balḫî's Fârsnâma (c. 1100), which relates that the Sassanid Shah, Ḫusraw 1, Anûsîrvân, placed three thrones by his own, one for the King of China, a second for the King of Byzantium, and a third for the king of the Khazars. Though anachronistic in retrodating the Khazars to this period, the legend, in placing the Khazar qağan on a throne with equal status to kings of the other two superpowers, bears witness to the reputation won by the Khazars from early times.^[44][45]

The Khazar state: culture and institutions

Royal Diarchy and sacral Qağanate

Khazaria developed ^[46] two notable institutions: Dual kingship, a typical Turkic nomadic structure, consisting of a shad/bäk and a qağan,^[47] and a sacral Qağanate. The emergence of this system may be deeply entwined with the conversion to Judaism.^[48] In Arabic sources, the lesser king was called îšâ and the greater king Xazar xâqân, the former managing both state and civilian affairs and the administration of the military, while the greater king's role was titular, not commanding obedience. He was recruited from the Khazar house of notables (ahl bait ma'rûfīn) in a throttliing ritual where the candidate is almost strangled until he declares the number of years he wishes to reign, on the expiration of which he was killed.^{[49][50][51][52]} The deputy ruler would enter the presence of the reclusive greater king only with great ceremony, approaching him barefoot to prostrate himself in the dust and then light a piece of wood as a purifying fire, while waiting humbly and calmly to be summoned.^[53] Particularly elaborate rituals accompanied a royal burial. At one period, travellers had to dismount, bow before the ruler's tomb, and then walk away on foot.^[54] Subsequently, the charismatic sovereign's burial place was hidden from view, with a palatial structure ('Paradise') constructed and then hidden under rerouted river water to avoid disturbance by evil spirits and later generations. Such a royal burial ground (qoruq) is typical of inner Asian peoples.^[55] Both the îšâ and the xâqân converted to Judaism sometime in the 8th century, while the rest, according to the Persian traveller Ahmad ibn Rustah, probably followed the old Tūrkic religion.^[56][57]

The ruling elite

The ruling strata, like that of the later Činggisids within the Golden Horde, was a relatively small group that differed ethnically and linguistically from its subject peoples. This is thought to have been the Alano-As and Oğuric Turkic tribes, who were numerically superior within Khazaria.^[58] The Khazar Qağans, while taking wives and concubines from the subject populations, were protected by a Khwârazmian guard corps or comitatus called the Ursiyya.^[59][60] But unlike many other local polities, they hired soldiers (mercenaries) (the junûd murtazîqa in al-Mas'ûdî).^[61] At the peak of their empire, the Khazars ran a centralised fiscal administration, with a standing army of some 7-12,000 men, which could, at need, be multipied two or three times that number by inducting reserves from their nobles' retinues.^[62][63] Other figures for the permanent standing army indicate that it numbered as many as one hundred thousand. They controlled and exacted tribute from 25-30 different nations and tribes inhabiting the vast territories between the Caucasus, the Aral Sea, the Ural Mountains, and the Ukrainian steppes.^[64] Khazar armies were led by the Qağan Bek and commanded by subordinate officers known as tarkhans. When the bek sent out a body of troops, they would not retreat under any circumstances. If they were defeated, every one who returned was killed.^[65]

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 Kündür, but their responsibilities are unknown.

The people

It has been estimated that from 25 to 28 distinct ethnic groups made up the population of the Khazar Qağanate, aside from the ethnic elite. The ruling elite seems to have been constituted out of nine tribes/clans, themselves ethnically heterogeneous, spread over perhaps nine provinces or principalities, each of which would have been allocated to a clan.^[50] In terms of caste or class, some evidence suggests that there was a distinction, whether racial or social is unclear, between "White Khazars" (ak-Khazars) and "Black Khazars" (qara-Khazars).^[50] The 10th-century Muslim geographer al-Iṣṭakhrī 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".^[66] 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 confused by the names given to the two groups.^[67] However, Khazars are generally described by early Arab sources as having a white complexion, blue eyes, and reddish hair.^[68][69] The name of the presumed founding Āshǐnà clan itself may reflect an etymology suggestive of a darkish colour.^[70][71] The distinction appears to have survived the collapse of the Khazarian empire. Later Russian chronicles, commenting on the role of the Khazars in the magyarization of Hungary, refer to them as "White Oghurs" and Magyars as "Black Ogurs".^[72]

Economy

The import and export of foreign wares, and the revenues derived from taxing their transit, was a key hallmark of the Khazar economy, though it is said also to have produced isinglass.^[73] Distinctively among the nomadic steppe polities, the Khazar Qağanate developed a self-sufficient domestic economy, a combination of traditional pastoralism - allowing sheep and cattle to be exported - extensive agriculture, abundant use of the Volga's rich fishing stocks, together with craft manusfacture, with a diversification in lucrative returns from taxing international trade given its pivotal control of major trade routes. The Khazars constituted one of the two great furnishers of slaves to the Muslim market (the other being the Iranian Sâmânid amîrs), supplying it with captured Slavs and tribesmen from the Eurasian northlands.^[74] It was profits from the latter which enabled it to maintain a standard army of Khwarezm Muslim troops. The capital Atil reflected the division: Kharazān on the western bank where the king and his Khazar elite, with a retinue of some 4,000 attendants, dwelt, and Itil proper to the East, inhabited by Jews, Christians, Muslims and slaves and by craftsmen and foreign merchants.^[75] The ruling elite wintered in the city and spent from spring to late autumns in their fields. A large irrigated greenbelt, drawing on channels from the Volga river, lay outside the capital, where meadows and vineyards extended for some 20 farsakhs(ca.60 miles?).^[76] While customs duties were imposed on traders, and tribute and tithes were exacted from 25-30 tribes, with a levy of one sable skin, squirrel pelt, sword, dirham per hearth or ploughsare, or hides, wax, honey and livestock, depending on the zone. Trade disputes were handled by a commercial tribunal in Atil consisting of 7 judges, two for each of the monotheistic inhabitants (Jews, Muslims, Christians) and one for the pagans.^[77]

Linguistics

Determining the origins and nature of the Khazars is closely bound with theories of their languages, but it is a matter of intricate difficulty since no indigenous records in the Khazar language survive, and the state itself was polyglot and polyethnic.^[78] Whereas the royal or ruling elite probably spoke an eastern variety of Shaz Turkic, the subject tribes appear to have spoken varieties of Lir Turkic, such as Oğuric, a language variously identified with Bulğaric, Chuvash, and Hungarian (the latter based upon the assertion of the Persian historian al-Iṣṭakhrī that the Khazar language was different from any other known tongue).^[79][80] One method for tracing their origins consists in analysis of the possible etymologies behind the ethnonym Khazar itself.

Religion

Tengriism

Direct sources for Khazar religion are not many, but in all likelihood they originally practiced a traditional Turkic form of cultic practices known as Tengriism, which focused on the sky god Tengri. Something of its nature may be deduced from what we know of the rites and beliefs of contiguous tribes, such as the North Caucasian Huns. Horse sacrifices were made to this supreme deity. Rites involved offerings to fire, water, and the moon, to remarkable creatures, and to "gods of the road" (cf.Old Türk yol tengri, perhaps a god of fortune). Sun amulets were widespread as cultic ornaments. A tree cult was also maintained. Whatever was struck by lightning, man or object, was considered a sacrifice to the high god of heaven. The afterlife, to judge from excavations of aristocratic tumuli, was much a continuation of life on earth, warriors being interred with their weapons, horses, and sometimes with human sacrifices: the funeral of one tudrun in 711-12 saw 300 soldiers killed to accompany him to the otherworld. Ancestor worship was observed. The key religious figure appears to have been a shamanizing qam,^[81] and it was these (qozmím) that were, according to the Khazar Hebrew conversion stories, driven out.

Many sources suggest, and a notable number of scholars have argued, that the charismatic Āshǐnà clan played a germinal role in the early Khazar state, though Zuckerman dismisses the widespread notion of their pivotal role as a 'phantom'. The Āshǐnà were closely associated with the Tengri cult, whose practices involved rites performed to assure a tribe of heaven's protective providence.^[82] The qağan was deemed to rule by virtue of qut, "the heavenly mandate/good fortune to rule."^[83]

Judaism

The conversion of Khazars to Judaism is reported overwhelmingly by external sources and in the Khazar Correspondence, Hebrew documents whose authenticity was long doubted and challenged,^[84] but now widely accepted among specialists as either authentic or as reflecting internal Khazar traditions.^{[85][86][87][88]} Archaeological evidence for conversion, on the other hand, remains elusive,^[89] and may reflect either the incompleteness of excavations, or that the stratum of actual adherents was thin.^[90] Conversion of steppe or peripheral tribes to a universal religion is fairly well attested phenomenon,^[91] and the Khazar conversion to Judaism, though unusual, was not unique.^[92][93] On Khazaria's southern flank, both Islam and Byzantine Christianity were proselytising great powers. Byzantine success in the north was sporadic, though Armenian and Albanian missions from Derbend built churches extensively in maritime Daghestan, then a Khazar district,^[94] Buddhism also had exercised an attraction on leaders of both the Eastern (552-742) and Western Qağanates (552-659), the latter being the progenitor of the Khazar state.^[95] In 682, according to the Armenian chronicle of Movsês Dasxuranc'i, the king of Caucasian Albania, Varaz Trdat, dispatched a bishop Israyêl to convert Caucasian "Huns" who were subject to the Khazars, and managed to bring Alp Ilut'uêr, a son-in-law of the Khazar qağan, and his army, to abandon their shamanizing cults and join the Christian fold.^[96][97] The Arab Georgian martyr St Abo who converted to Christianity within the Khazar kingdom around 779-80, describes local Khazars as irreligious.^[98] Some reports register a Christian majority at Samandar,^[99] or Muslim majorities^[100] in various areas of Khazaria. Also Jews from both the Islamic world and Byzantium are known to have migrated to Khazaria during periods of persecution under Heraclius, Justinian II, Leo III, and Romanus Lakapēnos.^[101][102] The pattern is one of an elite conversion preceding large-scale adoption of the new religion by the general population, which often resisted the imposition.^[95] One important condition for mass conversion was a settled urban state, where churches, synagogues or mosques provided a focus for religion, as opposed to the free nomadic lifestyle of life on the open steppes.^[103] A tradition of the Iranian Judeo-Tats claims that their ancestors were responsible for the Khazar conversion.^[104]

Both the date of the conversion, and the extent of its influence beyond the elite,^[105] often minimized in scholarship,^[106] are a matter of dispute,^[107] but at some point between 740 CE and 920 CE, the Khazar royalty and nobility appear to have converted to Judaism, in part, it is argued, perhaps to deflect competing pressures from Arabs and Byzantines to accept either Islam or Orthodoxy.^[108][109] Christian of Stavelot in his Expositio in Matthaeum Evangelistam (ca.860-870s) refers to them as descendants of Gog and Magog, who were circumcised and observed all the laws of Judaism.^[110] New numismatic evidence of coins dated 837/8 bearing the inscriptions arḍ al-ḫazar (Land of the Khazars), or Mûsâ rasûl Allâh (Moses the messenger of God, in imitation of the Islamic coin phrase: Muḥammad rasûl Allâh) suggest to many the conversion took place in that decade.^[111] Olsson argues that the 837/8 evidence marks only the beginning of a long and difficult official Judaization that concluded some decades later.^[112] Another view holds that by the 10th century, while the royal clan officially claimed Judaism, a non-normative variety of Islamisation took place among the majority of Khazars.^[113]

By the 10th century, the letter of King Joseph asserts that, after the royal conversion, "Israel returned (yashuvu yisra'el) with the people of Qazaria (to Judaism) in complete repentance (bi-teshuvah shelemah).^[114] Persian historian Ibn al-Faqîh wrote that 'all the Khazars are Jews, but they have been Judaized recently'. Ibn Fadlân, based on his Caliphal mission (921-922) to the Volga Bulğars, also reported that 'the core element of the state, the Khazars, were Judaized',^[115] something underwritten by the Qaraite scholar Ya'kub Qirqisânî around 937.^[116] The conversion appears to have occurred against a background of frictions arising from both an intensification of Byzantine missionary activity in from the Crimea to the Caucasus, and Arab attempts to wrest control over the latter in the 8th century CE,^[117] and a revolt, put down, by the Khavars around the mid-9th century is often invoked as in part influenced by their refusal to accept Judaism.^[118] Modern scholars generally^[119] see the conversion as a slow process through three stages, which accords with Richard Eaton's model of syncretic inclusion, gradual identification and, finally, displacement of the older tradition.^[120][121]

Some time between 954 and 961, Ḥasdai ibn Shaprūṭ wrote a letter of inquiry addressed to the ruler of Khazaria, and received a reply from Joseph of Khazaria. The exchanges of this Khazar Correspondence, together with the Schechter Letter discovered in the Cairo Geniza and the famous platonizing dialogue^[122] by Judah Halevi, Sefer ha-Kuzari ('The Khazar'), which plausibly drew on such sources,^[123][124] provide us with the only direct evidence of the indigenous traditions^[125] concerning the conversion. King Bulan^[126] is said to have driven out the sorcerers,^[127] and to have received angelic visitations exhorting him to find the true religion, upon which, accompanied by his vizier, he travelled to desert mountains of Warsān on a seashore, where he came across a cave in which Jews used to celebrate the Sabbath. Here he was circumcised.^[128] Bulan is then said to have convened a royal debate between exponents of the three Abrahamic religions. He decided to convert when he was convinced of Judaism's superiority. Many scholars situate this c. 740CE, a date supported by Halevi's own account.^[129][130] The details are both Judaic ^[131] and Türkic: a Türkic ethnogonic myth speaks of an ancestral cave in which the Āshǐnà were conceived from the mating of their human ancestor and a wolf ancestress.^{[132][133][134]} These accounts suggest that there was a rationalizing syncretism of native pagan traditions with Jewish law, by melding through the motif of the cave, a site of ancestral ritual and repository of forgotten sacred texts, Türkic myths of origin and Jewish notions of redemption of Israel's fallen people.^[135] It is generally agreed they adopted Rabbinical rather than Qaraite Judaism.^[136]

Ibn Fadlan reports that the settlement of disputes in Khazaria was adjudicated by judges hailing each from his community, be it Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or Pagan.^[137] Some evidence suggests that the Khazar king saw himself as a defender of Jews even beyond the kingdom's frontiers, retaliating against Muslim or Christian interests in Khazaria in the wake of Islamic and Byzantine persecutions of Jews abroad.^[138][139] Ibn Fadlan recounts specifically an incident in which the king of Khazaria destroyed the minaret of a mosque in Atil as revenge for the destruction of a synagogue in Dâr al-Bâbûnaj, and allegedly said he would have done worse were it not for a fear that the Muslims might retaliate in turn against Jews.^[136][140] Ḥasdai ibn Shaprūṭ sought information on Khazaria in the hope he might discover 'a place on this earth where harassed Israel can rule itself' and wrote that, were it to prove true that Khazaria had such a king, he would not hesitate to forsake his high office and his family in order to emigrate there.^[141]

Abraham Harkavy ^[142] noted in 1877 that an Arabic commentary on Isaiah 48:14, variously ascribed to Saadia Gaon or to the Karaite scholar Benjamin Nahâwandî, interpreted "The Lord hath loved him" as a reference "to the Khazars, who will go and destroy Babel" (i.e., Babylonia), a name used to designate the country of the Arabs. This has been taken as an indication of hopes by Persian Jews that the Khazars might overthrow the caliphate.^{[143][citation needed]}

In 965, as the Qağanate was struggling against the victorious campaign of the Rus' prince Sviatislav, the Islamic historian Ibn al-Athîr mentions that Khazaria, attacked by the Oğuz, sought help from Khwarezm, but their appeal was rejected because they were regarded as 'infidals' (al-kuffâr:pagans). Save for the king, the Khazarians are said to have converted to Islam in order to secure an alliance, and the Turks were, with Khwarezm's military assistance repelled. It was this that, according to Ibn al-Athîr, led the Jewish king of Khazar to convert to Islam.^[144]

Khazars and Byzantium

Byzantine diplomatic policy towards the steppe peoples generally consisted of encouraging them to fight among themselves. The Pechenegs provided great assistance to the Byzantines in the 9th century in exchange for regular payments.^[145] Byzantium also sought alliances with the Göktürks against common enemies: in the early 7th century, one such alliance was brokered with the Western Tűrks against the Persian Sassanids in the Byzantine–Sassanid War of 602–628. The Byzantines called Khazaria Tourkía', and by the 9th. century refers to the Khazars as 'Turks'.^[146] During the period leading up to and after the siege of Constantinople in 626, Heraclius sought help via emissaries, and eventually personally, from a Göktürk chieftain^[147] of the Western Tűrkic Qağanate, Tong Yabghu Qağan, in Tiflis, plying him with gifts and the promise of marriage to his daughter, Epiphania.^[148] Tong Yabghu responded by sending a large force to ravage the Persian empire, marking the start of the Third Perso-Turkic War.^[149] A joint Byzantine-Tűrk operation breached the Caspian gates and sacked Derbent in 627. Together they then besieged Tiflis, where the Byzantines used traction trebuchets (ἑλέπόλεις) to breach the walls, one of their first known uses by the Byzantines.^{[citation needed]} After the campaign, Tong Yabghu is reported, perhaps with some exaggeration, to have left some 40,000 troops behind with Heraclius.^[150] Though occasionally identified with Khazars, the Göktürk identification is more probable since the Khazars only emerged from that group after the fragmentation of the former sometime after 630.^[34] Sassanid Persia never recovered from the devastating defeat wrought by this invasion.^[151]

Once the Khazars emerged as a power, the Byzantines also began to form alliances, dynastic and military, with them. In 695, the last Heraclian emperor, Justinian II, nicknamed the slit-nosed (ὁ ῥινότμητος) after he was mutilated and deposed, was exiled to Cherson in the Crimea, where a Khazar governor (tudun) presided. He escaped into Khazar territory in 704 or 705 and was given asylum by qağan Busir Glavan (Ἰβουζήρος Γλιαβάνος), who gave him his sister in marriage, perhaps in response to an offer by Justinian who may have thought a dynastic marriage would seal by kinship a powerful tribal support for his attempts to regain the throne.^[152] The Khazarian spouse thereupon changed her name to Theodora.^[153] Busir was offered a bribe by the Byzantine usurper, Tiberius III, to kill Justinian. Warned by Theodora, Justinian escaped, murdering two Khazar officials in the process. He fled to Bulgaria, whose Khan Tervel helped him regain the throne. Upon his reinstallment, and despite Busir's treachery during his exile, he sent for Theodora; Busir complied, and she was crowned as Augusta, suggesting that both prized the alliance.^[154]

Decades later, Leo III (ruled 717-741) made a similar alliance to coordinate strategy against a common enemy, the Muslim Arabs. He sent an embassy to the Khazar qağan Bihar and married his son, the future Constantine V (ruled 741-775), to Bihar's daughter, a princess referred to as Tzitzak, in 732. On converting to Christianity, she took the name Irene. Constantine and Irene had a son, the future Leo IV (775-780), who thereafter bore the sobriquet, "the Khazar".^[155][156] Leo died in mysterious circumstances after his Athenian wife bore him a son, Constantine VI, who on his majority co-ruled with his mother, the dowager. He proved unpopular, and his death ended the dynastic link of the Khazars to the Byzantine throne.^{[citation needed]} By the 8th century, Khazars dominated the Crimea (650-c.950), and even extended their influence into the Byzantine peninsula of Cherson until it was wrested back in the 10th century.^[157] Khazar and Farghânian (Φάργανοι) mercenaries constituted part of the imperial Byzantine Hetaireia bodyguard after its formation in 840, a position that could openly be purchased by a payment of 7 pounds of gold.^[158][159]

Arab–Khazar wars

During the 7th and 8th centuries, the Khazars fought a series of wars against the Umayyad Caliphate and its Abbasid successor. The First Arab-Khazar War began during the first phase of Muslim expansion. By 640, Muslim forces had reached Armenia; in 642 they launched their first raid across the Caucasus under Abd ar-Rahman ibn Rabiah. In 652 Arab forces advanced on the Khazar capital, Balanjar, but were defeated, suffering heavy losses; according to Arab historians such as al-Tabari, both sides in the battle used catapaults against the opposing troops. A number of Russian sources give the name of a Khazar khagan from this period as Irbis and describe him as a scion of the Göktürk royal house, the Ashina. Whether Irbis ever existed is open to debate, as is whether he can be identified with one of the many Göktürk rulers of the same name.

Due to the outbreak of the First Muslim Civil War and other priorities, the Arabs refrained from repeating an attack on the Khazars until the early 8th century.^[160] The Khazars launched a few raids into Transcaucasian principalities under Muslim dominion, including a large-scale raid in 683–685 during the Second Muslim Civil War that rendered much booty and many prisoners.^[161] There is evidence from the account of al-Tabari that the Khazars formed a united front with the remnants of the Göktürks in Transoxiana.

The Second Arab-Khazar War began with a series of raids across the Caucasus in the early 8th century. The Umayyads tightened their grip on Armenia in 705 after suppressing a large-scale rebellion. In 713 or 714, Umayyad general Maslamah conquered Derbent and drove deeper into Khazar territory. The Khazars launched raids in response into Albania and Iranian Azerbaijan but were driven back by the Arabs under Hasan ibn al-Nu'man.^[162] The conflict escalated in 722 with an invasion by 30,000 Khazars into Armenia inflicting a crushing defeat. Caliph Yazid II responded, sending 25,000 Arab troops north, swiftly driving the Khazars back across the Caucasus, recovering Derbent, and advancing on Balanjar. The Arabs broke through the Khazar defense and stormed the city; most of its inhabitants were killed or enslaved, but a few managed to flee north.^[161] Despite their success, the Arabs had not yet defeated the Khazar army, and they retreated south of the Caucasus.

In 724, Arab general al-Jarrah ibn Abdallah al-Hakami inflicted a crushing defeat on the Khazars in a long battle between the rivers Cyrus and Araxes, then moved on to capture Tiflis, bringing Caucasian Iberia under Muslim suzerainty. The Khazars struck back in 726, led by a prince named Barjik, launching a major invasion of Albania and Azerbaijan; by 729, the Arabs had lost control of northeastern Transcaucasia and were thrust again into the defensive. In 730, Barjik invaded Iranian Azerbaijan and defeated Arab forces at Ardabil, killing the general al-Djarrah al-Hakami and briefly occupying the town. Barjik was defeated and killed the next year at Mosul, where he directed Khazar forces from a throne mounted with al-Djarrah's severed head. Arab armies led first by the prince Maslamah ibn Abd al-Malik and then by Marwan ibn Muhammad (later Caliph Marwan II) poured across the Caucasus and in 737 defeated a Khazar army led by Hazer Tarkhan, briefly occupying Atil itself. The Qağan was forced to accept terms involving conversion to Islam, and to subject himself to the Caliphate, but the accommodation was short-lived as a combination of internal instability among the Umayyads and Byzantine support undid the agreement within three years, and the Khazars re-asserted their independence.^[163] The adoption of Judaism by the Khazars, which in this theory would have taken place around 740, may have been part of this re-assertion of independence.

Whatever the impact of Marwan's campaigns, warfare between the Khazars and the Arabs ceased for more than two decades after 737. Arab raids continued until 741, but their control in the region was limited as maintaining a large garrison at Derbent further depleted the already overstretched army. A third Muslim civil war soon broke out, leading to the Abbasid Revolution and the fall of the Umayyad dynasty in 750.

In 758, the Abbasid Caliph al-Mansur attempted to strengthen diplomatic ties with the Khazars, ordering Yazid ibn Usayd al-Sulami, one of his nobles and the military governor of Armenia, to take a royal Khazar bride. Yazid married a daughter of Khazar Khagan Baghatur, but she died inexplicably, possibly in childbirth. Her attendants returned home, convinced that some Arab faction had poisoned her, and her father was enraged. Khazar general Ras Tarkhan invaded south of the Caucasus in 762–764, devastating Albania, Armenia, and Iberia, and capturing Tiflis. Thereafter relations became increasingly cordial between the Khazars and the Abbasids, whose foreign policies were generally less expansionist than the Umayyads, broken only by a series of raids in 799 over another failed marriage alliance.

The rise of the Rus' and the collapse of the Khazarian state

By the 9th century, groups of Varangian Rus', developing a powerful warrior-merchant system, began probing south down the waterways controlled by the Khazars and their protectorate, the Volga Bulgarians, partially in pursuit of the Arab silver which flowed north for hoarding through the Khazarian-Volga Bulgarian trading zones,^[164] partially to trade in furs and ironwork.^[165] Northern mercantile fleets passing Atil were tithed, as they were at Byzantine Cherson.^[166] Their presence may have prompted the formation of a Rus' state by convincing the Slavs, Merja and the Chud' to unite to protect common interests against Khazarian exactions of tribute. It is often argued that a Rus' Khaganate modelled on the Khazarian state had formed to the east, and that the Varangian chieftain of the coalition appropriated the title of qağan (khagan) as early as the 830s: the title survived to denote the princes of Kievan Rus', whose capital, Kiev, is often associated with a Khazarian foundation.^{[167][168][169][170]} The construction of the Sarkel fortress, with technical assistance from Khazaria's Byzantine ally at the time, together with the minting of an autonomous Khazar coinage around the 830s may have been a defensive measure against emerging threats from Varangians to the north and from the Magyars on the eastern steppe.^[171][172] By 860, the Rus' had penetrated as far as Kiev and, via the Dnieper, Constantinople.^[173]

Alliances often shifted. Byzantium, threatened by Varangian Rus raiders, would assist Khazaria, and Khazaria at times allowed the northerners to pass through their territory in exchange for a portion of the booty.^[174] From the beginning of the 10th century, the Khazars found themselves fighting on multiple fronts as nomadic incursions were exacerbated by uprisings by former clients and invasions from former allies. The pax Khazarica was caught in a pincer movement between steppe Pechenegs and the strengthing of an emergent Rus' power to the north, both undermining Khazaria'ìs tributary empire.^[175] According to the Schechter Text, the Khazar ruler King Benjamin, ca.880-890 fought a battle against the allied forces of five lands whose moves were perhaps encouraged by Byzantium^[176] Though Benjamin was victorious, his son Aaron II faced another invasion, this time led by the Alans, whose leader had converted to Christianity and entered into an alliance with Byzantium, which, under Leo VI the Wise, encouraged them against the Khazars.

By the 880s, Khazar control of the Middle Dnieper from Kiev, where they collected tribute from Eastern Slavic tribes, began to wane as Oleg of Novgorod wrested control of the city from the Varangian warlords Askold and Dir, and embarked on what was to prove to be the foundation of a Rus' empire.^[177] The Khazars had initially allowed the Rus' to use the trade route along the Volga River, and raid southwards. According to al-Masudi, the qağan is said to have given his assent on the condition that the Rus' give him half of the booty.^[174] In 913, however, two years after Byzantium concluded a peace treaty with the Rus' (911), A Varangian foray, with Khazar connivance, through Arab lands led to a request to the Khazar throne by the Khwârazmian Islamic guard for permission to retaliate against the large Rus' contingent on its return. The purpose was to revenge the violence the Rus' razzia had inflicted on their fellow Muslim believers.^[178] The Rus' force was thoroughly routed and massacred.^[179] The Khazar rulers closed the passage down the Volga to 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 protect the mouth of the river (Itil-Volga) and prevent the Rus arriving in their ships from setting off by sea against the Ishmaelites and (equally) all (their) enemies from setting off by land to Bab. '^[180]

The Rus' warlords launched several wars against the Khazar Qağanate, and raided down to the Caspian sea. The Schechter Letter relates the story of a campaign against Khazaria by HLGW (recently identified as Oleg of Chernigov) around 941 in which Oleg was defeated by the Khazar general Pesakh.^[181] The Khazar alliance with the Byzantine empire began to collapse in the early 10th century. Byzantine and Khazar forces may have clashed in the Crimea, and by the 940s emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus 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. Sviatoslav I finally succeeded in destroying Khazar imperial power in the 960s, in a circular sweep that overwhelmed the Khazar fortresses like Sarkel and Tamatarkha, reached as far as the Caucasian Kassogians/Circassians and then back to Kiev.^[182] Sarkel fell in 965, with the capital city of Atil following, c. 968 or 969.

In the Russian chronicle the vanquishing of the Khazar traditions is associated with Vladimir's conversion in 986.^[183] 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'.^{[citation needed]} Whether these were Jews who had settled in Kiev or emissaries from some Jewish Khazar remnant state is unclear. Conversion to one of the faiths of the people of Scripture was a precondition to any peace treaty with the Arabs, whose Bulgar envoys had arrived in Kiev after 985.^[144]

A visitor to Atil wrote soon after the sacking of the city that its vineyards and garden had been razed, that not a grape or raisin remained in the land, and not even alms for the poor were available.^[184] An attempt to rebuilt may have been undertaken, since Ibn Hawqal and al-Muqaddasi refer to it after that date, but by Al-Biruni's time (1048) it was in ruins^[185]

Aftermath: Impact, decline and dispersion

Though Poliak argued that the Khazar kingdom did not wholly succumb to Sviatislav's campaign, but lingered on until 1224, when the Mongols invaded Rus',^[186][187] by most accounts, the Rus'-Oghuz campaigns left Khazaria devastated, with perhaps many Khazarian Jews in flight,^[188] and leaving behind at best a minor rump state. It left little trace, except for some placenames,^[189] and much of its population was undoubtedly absorbed in successor hordes.^[190]Al-Muqaddasi, writing ca.985, mentions Khazar beyond the Caspian sea as a district of 'woe and squalor', with honey, many sheep and Jews.^[191] Kedrenos mentions a joint Rus'-Byzantine attack on Khazaria in 1016, which defeated its ruler Georgius Tzul. The name suggests Christian affiliations. The account concludes by saying, that after Tzul's defeat, the Khazar ruler of "upper Media", Senaccherib, had to sue for peace and submission.^[192] In 1024 Mstislav of Chernigov (one of Vladimir's sons) marched against his brother Yaroslav with an army that included "Khazars and Kassogians" in a repulsed attempt to restore a kind of 'Khazarian'-type dominion over Kiev.^[182]Ibn al-Athir's mention of a 'raid of Faḍlūn the Kurd against the Khazars' in 1030 CE, in which 10,000 of his men were vanquished by the latter, has been taken (by ) as a reference such a Khazar remnant, but Barthold identified this Faḍlūn as Faḍl ibn Muḥammad and the 'Khazars' as either Georgians or Abkhazians.^[193][194] A Kievian prince named Oleg, grandson of Jaroslav was reportedly kidnapped by "Khazars" in 1079 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 Sviatoslavich, son of a prince of Chernigov, gave himself the title "Archon of Khazaria".^[182] 1083 Oleg is said to have revenged himself on the Khazars after his brother Roman was killed by their allies, the Polovtsi/Cumans. After one more conflict with these Polovtsi in 1106, the Khazars fade from history.^[195]

By the end of the 12th century, Petachiah of Ratisbon reported traveling through what he called "Khazaria", and had little to remark on other than describing its minim (sectaries) living amidst desolation in perpetual mourning.^[196] The reference seems to be to Karaites.^[197] The Franciscan missionary William of Rubruck likewise found in the lower Volga area where Ital once lay only impoverished pastures.^[76] Giovanni di Plano Carpini, the papal legate to the court of the Mongol Khan Guyuk at that time, mentioned an otherwise unattested Jewish tribe, the Brutakhi, perhaps in the Volga region. Though connections are made to the Khazars, the link is based merely on a common attribution of Judaism.^[198]

The 10th century Zoroastrian Dênkart registered the collapse of Khazar power in attributing its eclipse to the enfeebling effects of 'false' religion.^[199] The decline was contemporary to that suffered by the Transoxiana Sāmānid empire to the east, both events paving the way for the rise of the Great Seljuq Empire, whose founding traditions mention Khazar connections.^[200][201] Whatever successor entity survived, it could not longer function as a bulwark against the pressure east and south of nomad expansions. By 1043, Kimeks and Qipchaqs, thrusting westwards, pressured the Oğuz, who in turn pushed the Pechenegs west towards Byzantium's Balkan provinces.^[202]

Khazaria nonetheless left its mark on the rising states and some of their traditions and institutions. Much earlier, Tzitzak, the Khazar wife of Leo III introduced into the Byzantine court the distinctive kaftan or riding habit of the nomadic Khazars, the tzitzakion (τζιτζάκιον), and this was adopted as a solemn element of imperial dress.^[203] The orderly hierarchical system of succession by 'scales' (lestvichnaia sistema:лествичная система) to the Grand Principate of Kiev was arguably modeled on Khazar institutions, via the example of the Rus' Khaganate.^[204]

The proto-Hungarian Pontic tribe, while perhaps threatening Khazaria as early as 839 (Sarkel), developed its institutional models, such as the dual rule of a ceremonial kende-kündü and a gyula administering practical and military administration, under Khazar tutelage. A dissident group of Khazars, the Qabars, joined the Hungarians in their flight from the Pechenegs as they moved into Pannonia. Elements within the Hungarian population can be viewed as perpetuating Khazar traditions as a successor state. Byzantine sources refer to Hungary as Western Tourkia in contrast to Khazaria, Eastern Tourkia. The gyula line produced the kings of medieval Hungary through descent from Árpád, while the Qabars retained their traditions longer, and were known as "black Hungarians" (fekete magyarság). Some archeological evidence from Čelarevo suggests the Qabars practiced Judaism^{[205][206][207]} since warrior graves with Jewish symbols were found there, including menorahs, shofars, etrogs, lulavs, candlesnuffers, ash collectors, inscriptions in Hebrew, and a six-pointed star identical to the Star of David.^[208][209]

The Khazar state was the only Jewish state to rise between the Fall of the Second Temple (67-70 CE) and the establishment of Israel (1948),^[210] and its example stimulated messianic aspirations for a return to Israel as early as Judah Halevi.^[211] In the time of the Egyptian vizier Al-Afdal Shahanshah (d.1121), one Solomon ben Duji, often identified as a Khazarian Jew,^[212] attempted to stir up a messianic crusade for the liberation of, and return of all Jews to, Palestine. He wrote to many Jewish communities to enlist support. He eventually moved to Kurdistan where his son Menachem some decades later assumed the title of Messiah and, raising an army for this purpose, took the fortress of Amadiya north of Mosul. His project was opposed by the rabbinical authorities and he was poisoned in his sleep. One theory maintains that the Star of David, until then a decorative motif or magical emblem, began to assume its national value in late Jewish tradition from its earlier symbolic use in Menachem's crusade.^[213]

The word Khazar, as an ethnonym, was last used in the 13th century by a people in the North Caucasus believed to practice Judaism.^[214] The nature of a hypothetical Khazar diaspora, Jewish or otherwise, is disputed. Avraham ibn Daud mentions encountering rabbinical students descended from Khazars as far away as Toledo, Spain in the 1160s.^[215] Khazar communities persisted here and there. Many Khazar mercenaries served in the armies of the Islamic Caliphates and other states. Documents from medieval Constantinople attest to a Khazar community mingled with the Jews of the suburb of Pera.^[216] and Khazar merchants were active in both Constantinople and Alexandria in the 12th. century.^[217]

Khazar origins for, or suggestions Khazars were absorbed by many peoples, have been made regarding the Slavic Judaising Subbotniks, the Bukharan Jews, the Muslim Kumyks, Kazakhs, Nogais,^{[citation needed]} the Cossacks of the Don region, the Turkic-speaking Krymchak Jews and the and their Crimean neighbours the Karaites to the Moldavian Csángós, the Mountain Jews and others.^{[218][219][220]} Turkic-speaking Karaites (in the Crimean Tatar language, Qaraylar) from Crimea to Poland and Lithuania have claimed Khazar origins. Specialists in Khazar history question the connection,^[221][222] Scholarship is likewise sceptical of claims that the Tatar-speaking Krymchak Jews of the Crimea descend from Khazars.^[223]

A popular, if in academic terms minoritarian, thesis holds that the Khazar Jewish population went into a northern diaspora and had a significant impact on the rise of Ashkenazi Jews. Connected to this thesis is the theory, expounded by Paul Wexler, that the grammar of Yiddish contains a Khazar substrate.^[224]

Ashkenazi-Khazar theories

Several scholars have suggested that the Khazars did not disappear after the dissolution of their Empire, but migrated West to eventually form part of the core of the later Ashkenazi Jewish population of Europe. This hypothesis is greeted with scepticism or caution by most scholars.^[225][226]

Abraham Eliyahu Harkavi suggested as early as 1869 that there might be a link between the Khazars and European Jews^[227] but the theory that Khazar converts formed a major proportion of Ashkenazi was first proposed to a Western public in a lecture by Ernest Renan in 1883.^[228][229] Occasional suggestions emerged that there was a small Khazar component in East European Jews in works by Joseph Jacobs (1886), Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, a critic of anti-Semitism, (1893)^[230] Maksymilian Ernest Gumplowicz,^[231] and by the Russian-Jewish anthropologist Samuel Weissenberg.^[232] In 1909 Hugo von Kutschera developed the notion into a book-length study,^[233] arguing Khazars formed the foundational core of the modern Ashkenazi.^[234] Maurice Fishberg introduced the notion to an American audience in 1911.^[235] The idea was also taken up by the Polish-Jewish economic historian and General Zionist Yitzhak Schipper in 1918^[236][237] and by scholarly anthropologists, such as Roland B. Dixon (1923), and by writers like H. G. Wells (1921) who used it to argue that "The main part of Jewry never was in Judea",^[238][239] a thesis that was to have a political echo in later opinion.^[240][241] In 1932, Samuel Krauss ventured the theory that the biblical Ashkenaz referred to northern Asia Minor, and identified it with the Khazars, a position immediately disputed by Jacob Mann.^[242] Ten years later, in 1942, Abraham N. Poliak, later professor for the history of the Middle Ages at Tel Aviv University, published a Hebrew monograph in which he concluded that the East European Jews came from Khazaria.^[243][244] D.M. Dunlop, writing in 1954, thought very little evidence backed what he regarded as a mere assumption, and argued that the Ashkenazi-Khazar descent theory went far beyond what our imperfect records permit.^[245] Léon Poliakov, while assuming the Jews of Western Europe resulted from a "panmixia" in the Ist millennium, asserted in 1955 that it was widely assumed that Europe's Eastern Jews descended from a mixture of Khazarian and German Jews.^[246] Poliak's work found some support in Salo Wittmayer Baron and Ben-Zion Dinur,^[247][248] but was dismissed by Bernard Weinryb as a fiction (1962).^[249]

The Khazar-Ashkenazi hypothesis came to the attention of a much wider public with the publication of Arthur Koestler's The Thirteenth Tribe in 1976.^[250] which was both positively reviewed and dismissed as a fantasy, and a somewhat dangerous one. Israel's ambassador to Britain branded it 'an anti-Semitic action financed by the Palestinians,' while Bernard Lewis claimed that the idea was not supported by any evidence whatsoever, and had been abandoned by all serious scholars.^[250][251] Raphael Patai, however, registered some support for the idea that Khazar remnants had played a role in the growth of Eastern European Jewish communities,^[252] and several amateur researchers, such as Boris Altschüler (1994)^[253] and Kevin Alan Brook,^[254] kept the thesis in the public eye. The theory has been occasionally manipulated to deny Jewish nationhood.^[250][255] Recently, a variety of approaches, from linguistics (Paul Wexler)^[256] to historiography (Shlomo Sand)^[257] and population genetics (Eran Elhaik a geneticist from the University of Sheffield)^[258] has revived support for and interest in the theory. In broad academic perspective, both the idea that the Khazars converted en masse to Judaism, and the suggestion they emigrated to form the core population of Ashkenazi Jewry, remain highly polemical issues.^[259]

Use in anti-Semitic polemics

Maurice Fishberg and Roland B Dixon's works were later exploited in racist and religious polemical literature in both Britain, in British Israelism, and the United States.^[260] Particularly after the publication of Burton J. Hendrick's The Jews in America (1923)^[261] it began to enjoy a vogue among advocates of immigration restriction in the 1920s; racial theorists^[262] like Lothrop Stoddard; anti-Semitic conspiracy-theorists like the Ku Klux Klan's Hiram Wesley Evans; anti-communist polemicists like John O. Beaty^[263] and Wilmot Robertson, whose views influenced David Duke.^[264] According to Yehoshafat Harkabi (1968) and others,^[265] it played a role in Arab anti-Zionist polemics, and took on an anti-semitic edge. Bernard Lewis, noting in 1987 that Arab scholars had dropped it, remarked that it only occasionally emerged in Arab political discourse.^[266] It has also played some role in Soviet anti-semitic chauvinism^[267] and Slavic Eurasian historiography, particularly in the works of scholars like Lev Gumilev.^[268] Although the Khazar hypothesis never played any major role in anti-semitism,^[269][270] and though the existence of a Jewish kingdom north of the Caucasus had formerly long been denied by Christian religious commentators,^[271] it came to be exploited by the White supremicist Christian movement ^[272] and even by terrorist esoteric cults like Aum Shinrikyō.^[273]

Genetic studies

The hypothesis of Khazarian ancestry in Ashkenazi has also been a subject of discussion in the new field of population genetics, wherein claims have been made concerning evidence both for and against it. The general conclusion is that, if traces of descent from Khazars exist in the Ashkenazi gene pool, the contribution would be quite minor,^{[274][275][276][277][278]} or insignificant.^[279] Eran Elhaik argued in 2012 for a significant Khazar component, using Caucasian populations, Georgians, Armenians and Azerbaijanis, as proxies.^[258] In October 2013, a study found "A substantial prehistoric European ancestry amongst Ashkenazi maternal lineages" - weakening the claim for Khazarian ancestry in Ashkenazi Jews.^[280][281]

According to Nadia Abu El-Haj, the issues of origins are generally complicated by the difficulties of writing history via genome studies and the biases of emotional investments in different narratives, depending on whether the emphasis lies on direct descent or on conversion within Jewish history. The lack of Khazar DNA samples that might allow verification also present difficulties.^[282]

In literature

The Kuzari is an influential work written by the medieval Spanish Jewish philosopher and poet Rabbi Yehuda Halevi (c. 1075–1141). Divided into five essays ("ma'amarim" (namely, Articles)), it takes the form of a fictional dialogue between the pagan king of the Khazars and a Jew who was invited to instruct him in the tenets of the Jewish religion. The intent of the work - though based on Ḥasdai ibn Shaprūṭ's correspondence with the Khazar king -was not historical, but rather to defend Judaism as a revealed religion, written in the context, firstly of Karaite challenges to the Spanish rabbinical intelligentsia, and then against temptations to adapt Aristotelianism and Islamic philosophy to the Jewish faith.^[283] Originally written in Arabic, it was translated into Hebrew by Judah ibn Tibbon).^[122] Benjamin Disraeli's early novel Alroy (1833) draws on Menachem ben Solomon's story.^[284] The question of mass religious conversion and the indeterminability of the truth of stories about identity and conversion are central themes of Milorad Pavić's bestselling mystery story Dictionary of the Khazars.^[285] H.N. Turteltaub's Justinian, Marek Halter's Book of Abraham and Wind of the Khazars, and Michael Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road allude to or feature elements of Khazar history or create fictional Khazar characters.^[286]

Cities associated with the Khazars

Atil, Khazaran, Samandar; in the Caucasus, Balanjar, Kazarki, Sambalut, and Samiran; in Crimea and the Taman region, Kerch, Theodosia, (modern Güzliev), Samkarsh (also called Tmutarakan, Tamatarkha), and Sudak. In the Don valley Sarkel. A number of Khazar settlements have been discovered in the Mayaki-Saltovo region. Some scholars suppose that the Khazar settlement of Sambat on the Dnieper refers to the later Kiev.^[287]

See also

Conversion to Judaism Gazaria (Genoese colonies) History of the Jews in Russia and the Soviet Union History of Kiev History of Turkish-Jewish Relations Jewish Polish history origins to 1600s List of Khazar rulers Rus' Khaganate Rus'–Byzantine War (860) Rus'–Byzantine War (907) Rus'–Byzantine War (941) Rus'–Byzantine War (968-971) Turkic peoples

Notes

References

External links

• Lecture on the Jews of Khazaria by Dr. Henry Ambramson
• The Kievan Letter scan in the Cambridge University Library collection.
• Khazaria.com
• Resources - Medieval Jewish History - The Khazars The Jewish History Resource Center, Project of the Dinur Center for Research in Jewish History, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
• Khazar Historic Maps at the Wayback Machine (archived October 26, 2009)
• The Kitab al-Khazari of Judah Hallevi, full English translation at sacred-texts.com
• Ancient lost capital of the Khazar kingdom found

v t e Turkic topics Languages Afshar Altay Äynu Azerbaijani Bashkir Bulgar Chagatai Chulym Chuvash Crimean Tatar Cuman Dolgan Fuyü Gïrgïs Gagauz Hunnic Ili Turki Karachay-Balkar Karaim Karakalpak Karamanli Turkish Kazakh Khakas Khalaj Khazar Khorasani Turkic Kipchak Krymchak Kumyk Kypchak group Kyrgyz Nogai Old Turkic Ottoman Turkish Pecheneg Qashqai Sakha Salar Shor Tatar Tofa Turkic Avar Turkish Turkmen Tuvan Urum Uyghur Uzbek Peoples Ahiska Altays Avars Azerbaijanis Balkars Bashkirs Bulgars Chulyms Chuvashs Crimean Tatars Cumans Dolgans Dughlats Gagauz Huns Iraqi Turkmen Karachays Karaites Karakalpaks Karapapak Karluks Kazakhs Khakas Khalajs Khazars Khorasani Turks Kimek Kipchaks Krymchaks Kumandins Kumyks Kyrgyz Naimans Nogais Oghuz Turks Qashqai Qizilbash Salar Shatuo Syrian Turkmens Tatars Telengit Teleuts Tofalar Turgesh Turkish people in Bulgaria Turkish Cypriots in Kosovo in the Republic of Macedonia in Romania in Western Thrace Turkmens Tuvans Uyghur Uzbeks Yakuts Yugur Politics Kemalist ideology Pan-Turkism Turanism Origins Turkestan History Timeline 500-1300 migration Nomadic empire Tian Shan / Altai Mountains Ötüken Locations Sovereign states Azerbaijan Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus1 Turkey Turkmenistan Uzbekistan Autonomous areas Altai Republic Bashkortostan Chuvash Republic Gagauzia Kabardino-Balkaria Karachay-Cherkessia Karakalpakstan Khakassia Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic Sakha Republic Tatarstan Tuva Xinjiang Studies Old Turkic script Proto-Turkic language Turkology Religions Turkic mythology Shamanism Islam Alevism Batiniyya/Hurufiyya–Bektashism Malamati/Qalandari–Bektashis Kadiri/Rufai–Khalwati/Bayramis Zahidiyye/Safaviyya–Kızılbaşism Tengrist movement Organizations Turkic Council International Organization of Turkic Culture (TÜRKSOY) Organization of the Eurasian Law Enforcement Agencies with Military Status (TAKM) 1 State with limited international recognition.

v t e Khazaria Byzantium Bulgaria Abbasids Arab–Khazar wars Kipchaks Meshchera Pax Khazarica Radhanites Rus Volga trade route Dnieper trade route Khazar rulers Irbis Busir Bihar Parsbit Zachariah Bulan Obadiah Benjamin Aaron II Joseph David George Other figures Alp Iluetuer Alp Tarkhan Balgatzin Barjik Hazer Tarkhan HLGW John of Gothia Lebedias Leo IV Papatzys Pesakh Ras Tarkhan Serach Sfengus Sviatoslav Theodora Tzitzak Yitzhak ha-Sangari Places Atil Azaq Balanjar Bar Chersonesos Daghestan Güsliyev Golden Hills Kaffa Kavkaz Kazarki Kerch Kerem Khamlij Khazaran Khumar Levedia Saltovo-Mayaki Samandar Sambalut Sambat Samiran Samosdelka Saqsin Sarkel Semikarakorsk Sudak Taman Tamatarkha Tributaries Abkhazians Alani Arsiya Baranjars Barsils Bashkirs Burtas Crimean Goths East Slavs Huns Juhuri Kabars Kassogs Lazica Lezgins Magyars Mordvins Oghuz Onogurs Pechenegs Sabirs Sarir Volga Bulgars Scholars Mikhail Artamonov Vasili Barthold D.M. Dunlop Norman Golb Peter B. Golden Lev Gumilev Alexander Harkavy Thomas S. Noonan Svetlana Pletneva Omeljan Pritsak Other topics Khazar Correspondence Khazar language Kuzari Kievian Letter Mandgelis Document Red Jews Schechter Letter Khazars in fiction The Thirteenth Tribe Category Template

v t e Turkic peoples Altays Avars Afshar Azerbaijanis Balkars Bashkirs Bulgars Chulyms Chuvashs Crimean Tatars Cumans Dolgans Dughlats Gagauz Huns Iraqi Turkmen Karachays Crimean Karakalpaks Karapapak Karluks Kazakhs Khakas Khalajs Khazars Khorasani Turks Kızılbaş Kimek Kipchaks Krymchaks Kumandins Kumyks Kyrgyz Naimans Nogais Oghuz Turks Qashqai Qizilbash Salar Shatuo Syrian Turks Tatars Telengits Teleuts Tofalar Turgesh Turks of Turkey Turks in Bulgaria Turkish Cypriots Turks in Egypt Turks in Kosovo Turks in the Republic of Macedonia Turks of Meshketi Turks of Romania Turks of Western Thrace Turkmens Tuvans Uyghur Uzbeks Yakuts Yugur

v t e History of the Jews in Europe Sovereign states Albania Andorra Armenia Austria Azerbaijan Belarus Belgium Bosnia and Herzegovina Bulgaria Croatia Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Finland France Georgia Germany Greece Hungary Iceland Ireland Italy Kazakhstan Latvia Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Macedonia Malta Moldova Monaco Montenegro Netherlands Norway Poland Portugal Romania Russia San Marino Serbia Slovakia Slovenia Spain Sweden Switzerland Turkey Ukraine United Kingdom England Northern Ireland Scotland Wales States with limited recognition Abkhazia Kosovo Nagorno-Karabakh Northern Cyprus South Ossetia Transnistria Dependencies and other territories Åland Faroe Islands Gibraltar Guernsey Jersey Isle of Man Svalbard

v t e Autonomous Republic of Crimea topics History Bosporan Kingdom Scythia Kipchaks Goths Khazars Crimean campaigns Crimean Khanate Crimean War more... Geography Arabat Spit Arabat Bay Azov Sea Crimean Mountains Kerch Strait Perekop isthmus Syvash Vyalova cave system more... Subdivisions Cities Raions Urban-type settlements more... Politics President of Ukraine (head of state) Mejlis (Tartar assembly) President of Crimea (former) Prime Minister of Crimea Verkhovna Rada (parliament) more on government... on politics... Economy Crimea Air Crimean Trolleybus more... Culture Anthem Coat of arms Flag Visitor attractions more... Demographics Peoples Armenians Germans Goths Karaites Krymchaks Tatars list more... Languages Crimean Tatar Krymchak Religion Christianity in Ukraine Moscow Patriarchate Islam Protestantism Kiev Patriarchate Roman Catholicism local diocese Autocephalous (UAOC) Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church local diocese Judaism more...