The Khazars

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Kingdom of Khazaria
Eastern Tourkia 
ממלכת הכוזרים
Khazar Khaganate
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Khazar Khaganate, 650–850
CapitalBalanjar (650-720 ca.)
Samandar (720s-750)
Atil (750-ca.965-969)
LanguagesTurkic Khazar
ReligionTengriism,
Buddhism
Judaism,[1]
Christianity,
Islam,
Paganism,
Religious syncretism[2]
Political structureKhazar Khaganate
Khagan
 - 618–628Tong Yabghu
 - 9th centuryBulan
 - 9th centuryObadiah
 - 9th centuryZachariah
 - 9th centuryManasseh
 - 9th centuryBenjamin
 - 10th centuryAaron
 - 10th centuryJoseph
 - 10th centuryDavid
Historical eraMiddle Ages
 - Established650?
 - Disestablished1048?
Population
 - 7th century[3] est.1,400,000 
CurrencyYarmaq
History of the Turkic peoples
History of the Turkic peoples
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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 what for its duration was the most powerful polity to emerge from the breakup of the western Turkish steppe empire, known as the Khazar Khanate or Khazaria.[10] 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 Kievan Rus'.[11][12] 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.[13]
Khazaria long served as a buffer state between the Byzantine empire and both the nomads of the northern steppes and theUmayyad empire, after serving as Byzantium's proxy against the Sassanid Persian empire. The alliance was dropped around 900. 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 the north, which it aspired to convert to Christianity.[14] 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, Khazar royalty and notable segments of the aristocracy converted to Judaism; the populace appears to have been multi-confessional—a mosaic of pagan, Tengrist, Jewish, Christian and Muslim worshippers—and polyethnic.[15] A modern theory, that the core of Ashkenazi Jewry emerged from a hypothetical Khazarian Jewish diaspora, is now viewed with scepticism by most scholars,[16] but occasionally supported by others.[17] This Khazarian hypothesis is sometimes associated with antisemitism and anti-Zionism.

Etymology[edit]

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-.[18] 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.[19] András Róna-Tas connects it with Kesar, the Pahlavi transcription of the Roman title Caesar.[20]
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.[21][22]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 characters different from those used to render the Qa- in the Uyğur word 'Qasar'.[23][24][25]
After their conversion it is reported that they adopted the Hebrew script,[26] and it is likely that, though speaking a Türkic language, the Khazar chancellery under Judaism probably corresponded in Hebrew.[27] In Expositio in Matthaeum Evangelistam, Khazars are referred to as the Hunnic descentants of Gog and Magog and said to be circumcised and observing all the laws of Judaism.

Tribal origins and early history[edit]

The tribes[28] that were to comprise the Khazar empire were not an ethnic union, but a congeries of steppe nomads and peoples who came to be subordinated, and subscribed to a core Tűrkic leadership.[29] Many Tűrkic groups, such as the Oğuric peoples, including Šarağurs, Oğurs, Onoğurs, and Bulğars who earlier formed part of the Tiĕlè (鐵勒) confederation, are attested quite early, having been driven West by the Sabirs, who in turn fled the Asian Avars, and 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.[30][31] 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,[32] 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 Sogdiana.[33]
The ruling family of this confederation may have hailed from the Āshǐnà (阿史那) clan of the West Türkic tribes,[34] though Constantine Zuckerman regards Āshǐnà and their pivotal role in the formation of the Khazars with scepticism.[35] 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.[36] Moving west, the confederation reached the land of the Akat(z)ir,[37]who had been important allies of Byzantium in fighting off Attila's army.

Rise of the Khazar state[edit]

An embryonic state of Khazaria began to form sometime after 630,[38] 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 theHungarian 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.[39] By 568, these Göktürks were probing for an alliance with Byzantium to attackPersia. 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,[40][41] 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, Old Great Bulgaria under Qubrat, the Duōlù clan leader, and the Nǔshībì subconfederation, also consisting of five tribes.[42] 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).[43][44]
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.[36] 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,[45] 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 thelingua franca of Khazaria[46] as it developed into what Lev Gumilev called a 'steppe Atlantis' (stepnaja Atlantida/ Степная Атлантида).[47] 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.[48][49]

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