• Sinor,1 `in the second half of the eighth century that the Khazar empire reached the acme of its glory` – that is, between the conversion of Bulan and the religious reform under Obadiah.
• A living symbol of their power was the Emperor Leo the Khazar, who ruled Byzantium in 775–80 – so named after his mother, the Khazar Princess `Flower` – the one who created a new fashion at the court.
• We remember that her marriage took place shortly after the great Khazar victory over the Muslims in the battle of Ardabil, which is mentioned in the letter of Joseph and other sources.
• The two events, Dunlop remarks, `are hardly unrelated`.2 However, amidst the cloak-and-dagger intrigues of the period, dynastic marriages and betrothals could be dangerous.
• Attila promptly claimed her as his bride, together with half the Empire as her dowry; and when Valentinian refused, Attila invaded Gaul.
• We remember the fury of the Bulgar King about the abduction of his daughter, and how he gave this incident as the main reason for his demand that the Caliph should build him a fortress against the Khazars.
• If we are to believe the Arab sources, similar incidents (though with a different twist) led to the last flare-up of the Khazar–Muslim wars at the end of the eighth century, after a protracted period of peace.
• According to al-Tabari, in AD 798,* the Caliph ordered the Governor of Armenia to make the Khazar frontier even more secure by marrying a daughter of the Kagan.
• The Kagan promptly invaded Armenia and took (according to two Arab sources3) 50 000 prisoners.
• The Arab sources relate at least one more eighth-century incident of a misfired dynastic marriage followed by a Khazar invasion; and for good measure the Georgian Chronicle has a particularly gruesome one to add to the list (in which the royal Princess, instead of being poisoned, kills herself to escape the Kagan`s bed).
• But the recurrent mention in the chronicles of bartered brides and poisoned queens leaves little doubt that this theme had a powerful impact on people`s imagination, and possibly also on political events.
• 2 No more is heard about Khazar-Arab fighting after the end of the eighth century.
• As we enter the ninth, the Khazars seemed to enjoy several decades of peace – at least, there is little mention of them in the chronicles, and no news is good news in history.
• In 833, or thereabouts, the Khazar Kagan and Bek sent an embassy to the East Roman Emperor Theophilus, asking for skilled architects and craftsmen to build them a fortress on the lower reaches of the Don.
• The Emperor responded with alacrity.
• Thus came Sarkel into being, the famous fortress and priceless archaeological site, virtually the only one that yielded clues to Khazar history – until it was submerged in the Tsimlyansk reservoir, adjoining the Volga–Don canal.
• He does not mention the curious fact (discovered by Soviet archaeologists while the site was still accessible) that the builders also used marble columns of Byzantine origin, dating from the sixth century, and probably salvaged from some Byzantine ruin; a nice example of Imperial thrift.5 The potential enemy against whom this impressive fortress was built by joint Roman–Khazar effort, were those formidable and menacing newcomers on the world scene, whom the West called Vikings or Norsemen, and the East called Rhous or Rhos or Rus.
• Two centuries earlier, the conquering Arabs had advanced on the civilized world in a gigantic pincer movement, its left prong reaching across the Pyrenees, its right prong across the Caucasus.
• Now, during the Viking Age, history seemed to create a kind of mirror image of that earlier phase.
• According to the Primary Russian Chronicle, by 859 – that is, some twenty-five years after Sarkel was built – the tribute from the Slavonic peoples was `divided between the Khazars and the Varangians from beyond the Baltic Sea`.
• – i.e., the more northerly Slavonic people – while the Khazars continued to levy tribute on the Viatichi, the Seviane, and, most important of all, the Polyane in the central region of Kiev.
• Three years later if we can trust the dating (in the Russian Chronicle), the key town of Kiev on the Dnieper, previously under Khazar suzerainty, passed into Rus hands.
• According to the Chronicle, Novgorod was at the time ruled by the (semi-legendary) Prince Rurik (Hrörekr), who held under his sway all the Viking settlements, the northern Slavonic, and some Finnish people.
• Two of Rurik`s men, Oskold and Dir, on travelling down the Dnieper, saw a fortified place on a mountain, the sight of which they liked; and were told that this was the town of Kiev, and that it `paid tribute to the Khazars`.
• Some twenty years later Rurik`s son Oleg [Helgi] came down and put Oskold and Dir to death, and annexed Kiev to his sway.` Kiev soon outshone Novgorod in importance: it became the capital of the Varangians and `the mother of Russian towns`; while the principality which took its name became the cradle of the first Russian state.
• The Russian Chronicle keeps referring to heroes coming from Zemlya Zhidovskaya, `the country of the Jews`; and the `Gate of the Khazars` in Kiev kept the memory of its erstwhile rulers alive till modern times.
• 6 We have now progressed into the second half of the ninth century and, before continuing with the tale of the Russian expansion, must turn our attention to some vital developments among the people of the steppes, particularly the Magyars.
• `The problem of their origin and early wanderings have long perplexed scholars`, Macartney wrote;17 elsewhere he calls it `one of the darkest of historical riddles`.18 About their origin all we know with certainty is that the Magyars were related to the Finns, and that their language belongs to the so-called Finno-Ugrian language family, together with that of the Vogul and Ostyak people living in the forest regions of the northern Urals.
• At an unknown date during the early centuries of the Christian era this nomadic tribe was driven out of its erstwhile habitat in the Urals and migrated southward through the steppes, eventually settling in the region between the Don and the Kuban rivers.
• For a while they were part of a federation of semi-nomadic people, the Onogurs (`The Ten Arrows` or ten tribes); it is believed that the name `Hungarian` is a Slavonic version of that word;19 while `Magyar` is the name by which they have called themselves from time immemorial.
• It is a remarkable fact that during this whole period, while other tribes were engaged in a murderous game of musical chairs, we have no record of a single armed conflict between Khazars and Magyars, whereas each of the two was involved at one time or another in wars with their immediate or distant neighbours: Volga Bulgars, Danube Bulgars, Ghuzz, Pechenegs, and so on – in addition to the Arabs and the Rus.
• Paraphrasing the Russian Chronicle and Arab sources, Toynbee writes that throughout this period the Magyars `took tribute`, on the Khazars` behalf, from the Slav and Finn peoples in the Black Earth Zone to the north of the Magyars` own domain of the Steppe, and in the forest zone to the north of that.
• The evidence for the use of the name Magyar by this date is its survival in a number of place-names in this region of northerly Russia.
• These place-names presumably mark the sites of former Magyar garrisons and outposts.`20 Thus the Magyars dominated their Slavonic neighbours, and Toynbee concludes that in levying tribute, `the Khazars were using the Magyars as their agents, though no doubt the Magyars made this agency profitable for themselves as well`.21 The arrival of the Rus radically changed this profitable state of affairs.
• 9 The close cooperation between Khazars and Magyars came to an end when the latter, AD 896, said farewell to the Eurasian steppes, crossed the Carpathian mountain range, and conquered the territory which was to become their lasting habitat.
• During the closing decades of the ninth century yet another uncouth player joined the nomad game of musical chairs: the Pechenegs.* What little we know about this Turkish tribe is summed up in Constantine`s description of them as an insatiably greedy lot of Barbarians who for good money can be bought to fight other Barbarians and the Rus.
• They lived between the Volga and the Ural rivers under Khazar suzerainty; according to Ibn Rusta,30 the Khazars `raided them every year` to collect the tribute due to them.
• Toward the end of the ninth century a catastrophe (of a nature by no means unusual) befell the Pechenegs: they were evicted from their country by their eastern neighbours.
• The displaced Pechenegs tried to settle in Khazaria, but the Khazars beat them off.* The Pechenegs continued their westward trek, crossed the Don and invaded the territory of the Magyars.
• The Magyars in turn were forced to fall back further west into the region between the Dnieper and the Sereth rivers.
• They called this region Etel-Köz, `the land between the rivers`.
• They seem to have settled there in 889; but in 896 the Pechenegs struck again, allied to the Danube Bulgars, whereupon the Magyars withdrew into present-day Hungary.
• This, in rough outline, is the story of the Magyars` exit from the eastern steppes, and the end of the Magyar–Khazar connection.
• His sanctity, however, protected him from harm.34 Another chronicle35 mentions that the Magyars, and the Kabars, came into conflict with the Franks in 881; and Constantine tells us that, some ten years later, the Magyars `made war upon Simeon (ruler of the Danube Bulgars) and trounced him soundly, and came as far as Preslav, and shut him up in the fortress called Mundraga, and returned home.`36 How is one to reconcile all these valiant deeds with the series of retreats from the Don into Hungary, which took place in the same period?
• It seems that the answer is indicated in the passage in Constantine immediately following the one just quoted: … But after Symeon the Bulgar again made peace with the Emperor of the Greeks, and got security, he sent to the Patzinaks, and made an agreement with them to make war on and annihilate the Magyars.
• And when the Magyars went away on a campaign, the Patzinaks with Symeon came against the Magyars, and completely annihilated their families, and chased away miserably the Magyars left to guard their land.
• Thus the bulk of the army was `away on a campaign` when their land and families were attacked; and to judge by the chronicles mentioned above, they were `away` raiding distant countries quite frequently, leaving their homes with little protection.
• They could afford to indulge in this risky habit as long as they had only their Khazar overlords and the peaceful Slavonic tribes as their immediate neighbours.
• The Magyars seem to have acquired the raiding habit only in the second half of the ninth century – about the time when they received that critical blood-transfusion from the Khazars.
• They also taught the Magyars `those very peculiar and characteristic tactics employed since time immemorial by every Turkish nation – Huns, Avars, Turks, Pechenegs, Kumans – and by no other … light cavalry using the old devices of simulated flight, of shooting while fleeing, of sudden charges with fearful, wolf-like howling.`37 These methods proved murderously effective during the ninth and tenth centuries when Hungarian raiders invaded Germany, the Balkans, Italy and even France – but they did not cut much ice against the Pechenegs, who used the same tactics, and could howl just as spine-chillingly.