• About the time when Charlemagne was crowned Emperor of the West, the eastern confines of Europe between the Caucasus and the Volga were ruled by a Jewish state, known as the Khazar Empire.
• At the peak of its power, from the seventh to the tenth centuries AD, it played a significant part in shaping the destinies of mediaeval, and consequently of modern, Europe.
• `In the period with which we are concerned,` wrote Bury, `it is probable that the Khan of the Khazars was of little less importance in view of the imperial foreign policy than Charles the Great and his successors.`2 The country of the Khazars, a people of Turkish stock, occupied a strategic key position at the vital gateway between the Black Sea and the Caspian, where the great eastern powers of the period confronted each other.
• But equally, or even more important both from the point of view of Byzantine diplomacy and of European history, is the fact that the Khazar armies effectively blocked the Arab avalanche in its most devastating early stages, and thus prevented the Muslim conquest of Eastern Europe.
• Professor Dunlop of Columbia University, a leading authority on the history of the Khazars, has given a concise summary of this decisive yet virtually unknown episode: The Khazar country … lay across the natural line of advance of the Arabs.
• As it was, on the line of the Caucasus the Arabs met the forces of an organized military power which effectively prevented them from extending their conquests in this direction.
• The wars of the Arabs and the Khazars, which lasted more than a hundred years, though little known, have thus considerable historical importance.
• It can … scarcely be doubted that but for the existence of the Khazars in the region north of the Caucasus, Byzantium, the bulwark of European civilization in the east, would have found itself outflanked by the Arabs, and the history of Christendom and Islam might well have been very different from what we know.3 It is perhaps not surprising, given these circumstances, that in 732 – after a resounding Khazar victory over the Arabs – the future Emperor Constantine V married a Khazar princess.
• In due time their son became the Emperor Leo IV, known as Leo the Khazar.
• But by that time the impetus of the Muslim Holy War was spent, the Caliphate was rocked by internal dissensions, and the Arab invaders retraced their steps across the Caucasus without having gained a permanent foothold in the north, whereas the Khazars became more powerful than they had previously been.
• A few years later, probably AD 740, the King, his court and the military ruling class embraced the Jewish faith, and Judaism became the state religion of the Khazars.
• No doubt their contemporaries were as astonished by this decision as modern scholars were when they came across the evidence in the Arab, Byzantine, Russian and Hebrew sources.
• His book on The Magyar Society in the Eighth and Ninth Centuries4 has several chapters on the Khazars, as during most of that period the Hungarians were ruled by them.
• It reads: Our investigations cannot go into problems pertaining to the history of ideas, but we must call the reader`s attention to the matter of the Khazar kingdom`s state religion.
• It was the Jewish faith which became the official religion of the ruling strata of society.
• We shall, however, confine ourselves to the remark that this official conversion – in defiance of Christian proselytizing by Byzantium, the Muslim influence from the East, and in spite of the political pressure of these two powers – to a religion which had no support from any political power, but was persecuted by nearly all – has come as a surprise to all historians concerned with the Khazars, and cannot be considered as accidental, but must be regarded as a sign of the independent policy pursued by that kingdom.
• What is in dispute is the fate of the Jewish Khazars after the destruction of their empire, in the twelfth or thirteenth century.
• One of the earliest factual references to the Khazars occurs in a Syriac chronicle by `Zacharia Rhetor`,† dating from the middle of the sixth century.
• He kept a minute account not only of the diplomatic negotiations, but also of the court intrigues and goings-on in Attila`s sumptuous banqueting hall – he was in fact the perfect gossip columnist, and is still one of the main sources of information about Hun customs and habits.
• But Priscus also has anecdotes to tell about a people subject to the Huns whom he calls Akatzirs – that is, very likely, the Ak-Khazars, or `White` Khazars (as distinct from the `Black` Kara-Khazars).‡ The Byzantine Emperor, Priscus tells us, tried to win this warrior race over to his side, but the greedy Khazar chieftain, named Karidach, considered the bribe offered to him inadequate, and sided with the Huns.
• Attila defeated Karidach`s rival chieftains, installed him as the sole ruler of the Akatzirs, and invited him to visit his court.
• For, as one cannot stare into the sun`s disc, even less could one look into the face of the greatest god without suffering injury.` Attila must have been pleased, for he confirmed Karidach in his rule.
• Priscus`s chronicle confirms that the Khazars appeared on the European scene about the middle of the fifth century as a people under Hunnish sovereignty, and may be regarded, together with the Magyars and other tribes, as a later offspring of Attila`s horde.
• 5 The collapse of the Hun Empire after Attila`s death left a power-vacuum in Eastern Europe, through which once more, wave after wave of nomadic hordes swept from east to west, prominent among them the Uigurs and Avars.
• During the second half of the sixth century they became the dominant force among the tribes north of the Caucasus.
• But they too were crushingly defeated (circa 641), and as a result the nation split into two: some of them migrated westward to the Danube, into the region of modern Bulgaria, others north-eastward to the middle Volga, the latter remaining under Khazar suzerainty.
• But before becoming a sovereign state, the Khazars still had to serve their apprenticeship under another short-lived power, the so-called West Turkish Empire, or Turkut kingdom.
• This first Turkish state – if one may call it that – lasted for a century (circa 550–650) and then fell apart, leaving hardly any trace.
• However, it was only after the establishment of this kingdom that the name `Turk` was used to apply to a specific nation, as distinct from other Turkic-speaking peoples like the Khazars and Bulgars.† The Khazars had been under Hun tutelage, then under Turkish tutelage.
• After the eclipse of the Turks in the middle of the seventh century it was their turn to rule the `Kingdom of the North`, as the Persians and Byzantines came to call it.
• According to one tradition,15 the great Persian King Khusraw (Chosroes) Anushirwan (the Blessed) had three golden guest-thrones in his palace, reserved for the Emperors of Byzantium, China and of the Khazars.
• 6 Thus during the first few decades of the seventh century, just before the Muslim hurricane was unleashed from Arabia, the Middle East was dominated by a triangle of powers: Byzantium, Persia, and the West Turkish Empire.
• The first two of these had been waging intermittent war against each other for a century, and both seemed on the verge of collapse; in the sequel, Byzantium recovered, but the Persian kingdom was soon to meet its doom, and the Khazars were actually in on the kill.
• They were still nominally under the suzerainty of the West Turkish kingdom, within which they represented the strongest effective force, and to which they were soon to succeed; accordingly, in 627, the Roman Emperor Heraclius concluded a military alliance with the Khazars – the first of several to follow – in preparing his decisive campaign against Persia.
• But to see that remarkable event in its proper perspective, one should have at least some sketchy idea of the habits, customs and everyday life among the Khazars prior to the conversion.
• One is a letter, purportedly from a Khazar king, to be discussed in Chapter 2; the other is a travelogue by an observant Arab traveller, Ibn Fadlan, who – like Priscus – was a member of a diplomatic mission from a civilized court to the Barbarians of the North.
• The court was that of the Caliph al Muktadir, and the diplomatic mission travelled from Baghdad through Persia and Bukhara to the land of the Volga Bulgars.
• The official pretext for this grandiose expedition was a letter of invitation from the Bulgar king, who asked the Caliph (a) for religious instructors to convert his people to Islam, and (b) to build him a fortress which would enable him to defy his overlord, the King of the Khazars.
• The invitation – which was no doubt prearranged by earlier diplomatic contacts – also provided an opportunity to create goodwill among the various Turkish tribes inhabiting territories through which the mission had to pass, by preaching the message of the Koran and distributing huge amounts of gold bakhshish.
• The opening paragraphs of our traveller`s account read:* This is the book of Ahmad ibn-Fadlan ibn-al-Abbas, ibn-Rasid, ibn-Hammad, an official in the service of [General] Muhammed ibn-Sulaȳman, the ambassador of [Caliph] al Muktadir to the King of the Bulgars, in which he relates what he saw in the land of the Turks, the Khazars, the Rus, the Bulgars, the Bashkirs and others, their varied kinds of religion, the histories of their kings, and their conduct in many walks of life.
• The letter of the King of the Bulgars reached the Commander of the Faithful, al Muktadir; he asked him therein to send him someone to give him religious instruction and acquaint him with the laws of Islam, to build him a mosque and a pulpit so that he may carry out his mission of converting the people all over his country; he also entreated the Caliph to build him a fortress to defend himself against hostile kings.* Everything that the King asked for was granted by the Caliph.
• But as far as the customs and institutions of the Khazars` pagan neighbours are concerned, this probably makes not much difference; and the glimpses we get of the life of these nomadic tribes convey at least some idea of what life among the Khazars may have been during that earlier period – before the conversion – when they adhered to a form of Shamanism similar to that still practised by their neighbours in Ibn Fadlan`s time.
• The progress of the mission was slow and apparently uneventful until they reached Khwarizm, the border province of the Caliphate south of the Sea of Aral.
• In fact his attempts to disregard the Caliph`s instructions to let the mission pass might have been due to other motives: he realized that the mission was indirectly aimed against the Khazars, with whom he maintained a flourishing trade and friendly relations.
• Here they hibernated for three months, because of the intense cold – a factor which looms large in many Arab travellers` tales: The river was frozen for three months, we looked at the landscape and thought that the gates of the cold Hell had been opened for us.
• Once, when I came out of the bath and got home, I saw that my beard had frozen into a lump of ice, and I had to thaw it in front of the fire.
• Masudi says that in the Khazar army `seven thousand of them* ride with the King, archers with breast plates, helmets, and coats of mail.
• None of the kings in this part of the world has a regular standing army except the King of the Khazars.` And Ibn Hawkal: `This king has twelve thousand soldiers in his service, of whom when one dies, another person is immediately chosen in his place.` Here we have another important clue to the Khazar dominance: a permanent professional army, with a Praetorian Guard which, in peacetime, effectively controlled the ethnic patchwork, and in times of war served as a hard core for the armed horde, which, as we have seen, may have swollen at times to a hundred thousand or more.† 15 The capital of this motley empire was at first probably the fortress of Balanjar in the northern foothills of the Caucasus; after the Arab raids in the eighth century it was transferred to Samandar, on the western shore of the Caspian; and lastly to Itil in the estuary of the Volga.
• The western half was surrounded by a fortified wall, built of brick; it contained the palaces and courts of the Kagan and the Bek, the habitations of their attendants† and of the `pure-bred Khazars`.
• Across the river, on the east bank, lived `the Muslims and idol worshippers`;38 this part also housed the mosques, markets, baths and other public amenities.
• Several Arab writers were impressed by the number of mosques in the Muslim quarter and the height of the principal minaret.
• Here is what al-Masudi, known as `the Herodotus among the Arabs`, has to say on this subject in his oft-quoted work Meadows of Gold Mines and Precious Stones: The custom in the Khazar capital is to have seven judges.
• In his [the Khazar King`s] city are many Muslims, merchants and craftsmen, who have come to his country because of his justice and the security which he offers.
• In reading these lines by the foremost Arab historian, written in the first half of the tenth century,‡ one is tempted to take a perhaps too idyllic view of life in the Khazar kingdom.
• Thus we read in the article `Khazars` in the Jewish Encyclopaedia: `In a time when fanaticism, ignorance and anarchy reigned in Western Europe, the Kingdom of the Khazars could boast of its just and broad-minded administration.`* This, as we have seen, is partly true; but only partly.
• He also has something to say about another archaic custom – regicide: `The period of the king`s rule is forty years.
• If he exceeds this time by a single day, his subjects and attendants kill him, saying “His reasoning is already dimmed, and his insight confused”.` Istakhri has a different version of it: When they wish to enthrone this Kagan, they put a silken cord round his neck and tighten it until he begins to choke.
• Then they ask him: `How long doest thou intend to rule?` If he does not die before that year, he is killed when he reaches it.
• Frazer laid great emphasis on the connection between the concept of the King`s divinity, and the sacred obligation to kill him after a fixed period, or when his vitality is on the wane, so that the divine power may find a more youthful and vigorous incarnation.† It speaks in Istakhri`s favour that the bizarre ceremony of `choking` the future King has been reported in existence apparently not so long ago among another people, the Kok-Turks.
• They tighten a ribbon of silk round his neck, without quite strangling him; then they loosen the ribbon and ask him with great insistence: `For how many years canst thou be our Khan?` The king, in his troubled mind, being unable to name a figure, his subjects decide, on the strength of the words that have escaped him, whether his rule will be long or brief.40 We do not know whether the Khazar rite of slaying the King (if it ever existed) fell into abeyance when they adopted Judaism, in which case the Arab writers were confusing past with present practices – as they did all