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. The Byzantine Emperor and
historian, Constantine Porphyrogenitus (913-959), must have
been well aware of this when he recorded in his treatise on
court protocol
.1 that letters addressed to the
Pope in Rome, and similarly those to the Emperor of the West,
had a gold seal worth two solidi attached to them, whereas
messages to the King of the Khazars displayed a seal worth
three solidi. This was not flattery, but Realpolitik.
"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. It acted as a buffer protecting
Byzantium against invasions by the lusty barbarian tribesmen of
the northern steppes - Bulgars, Magyars, Pechenegs, etc. - and,
later, the Vikings and the Russians. 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. Within a few years
of the death of Muhammad (AD 632) the armies of the
Caliphate, sweeping northward through the wreckage of two
empires and carrying all before them, reached the great
mountain barrier of the Caucasus. This barrier once passed,
the road lay open to the lands of eastern Europe. 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. The Franks of Charles Martel on the
field of Tours turned the tide of Arab invasion. At about
the same time the threat to Europe in the east was hardly
less acute. ... The victorious Muslims were met and held by
the forces of the Khazar kingdom. ... 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. .Ironically,
the last battle in the war, AD 737, ended in a Khazar defeat.
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. One of the most recent
comments is to be found in a work by the Hungarian Marxist
historian, Dr Antal Bartha. 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. Yet their conversion to Judaism is discussed in
a single paragraph, with obvious embarrassment. 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. Needless to say, the acceptance of the Jewish faith
as the state religion of an ethnically non-Jewish people
could be the subject of interesting speculations. 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.
Which leaves us only slightly more
bewildered than before. Yet whereas the sources differ in minor
detail, the major facts are beyond dispute. .What
is in dispute is the fate of the Jewish Khazars after the
destruction of their empire, in the twelfth or thirteenth
century. On this problem the sources are scant, but various
late mediaeval Khazar settlements are mentioned in the Crimea,
in the Ukraine, in Hungary, Poland and Lithuania. The general
picture that emerges from these fragmentary pieces of
information is that of a migration of Khazar tribes and
communities into those regions of Eastern Europe - mainly
Russia and Poland - where, at the dawn of the Modern Age, the
greatest concentrations of Jews were found. This has lead
several historians to conjecture that a substantial part, and
perhaps the majority of eastern Jews - and hence of world Jewry
- might be of Khazar, and not of Semitic Origin.
.The
far-reaching implications of this hypothesis may explain the
great caution exercised by historians in approaching this
subject - if they do not avoid it altogether. Thus in the 1973
edition of the Encyclopaedia Judaica the article
"Khazars" is signed by Dunlop, but there is a separate section
dealing with "Khazar Jews after the Fall of the Kingdom",
signed by the editors, and written with the obvious intent to
avoid upsetting believers in the dogma of the Chosen
Race:
- The Turkish-speaking Karaites
[a fundamentalist Jewish sect] of the Crimea,
Poland, and elsewhere have affirmed a connection with the
Khazars, which is perhaps confirmed by evidence from
folklore and anthropology as well as language. There seems
to be a considerable amount of evidence attesting to the
continued presence in Europe of descendants of the
Khazars.
How important, in quantitative terms,
is that "presence" of the Caucasian sons of Japheth in the
tents of Shem? One of the most radical propounders of the
hypothesis concerning the Khazar origins of Jewry is the
Professor of Mediaeval Jewish History at Tel Aviv University,
A. N. Poliak. His book Khazaria (in Hebrew) was
published in 1944 in Tel Aviv, and a second edition in 1951.5
In his introduction he writes that the facts demand
-
- a new approach, both to the
problem of the relations between the Khazar Jewry and other
Jewish communities, and to the question of how far we can go
in regarding this [Khazar] Jewry as the nucleus of
the large Jewish settlement in Eastern Europe. ... The
descendants of this settlement - those who stayed where they
were, those who emigrated to the United States and to other
countries, and those who went to Israel - constitute now the
large majority of world Jewry.
This was written before the full
extent of the holocaust was known, but that does not alter the
fact that the large majority of surviving Jews in the world is
of Eastern European - and thus perhaps mainly of Khazar -
origin. If so, this would mean that their ancestors came not
from the Jordan but from the Volga, not from Canaan but from
the Caucasus, once believed to be the cradle of the Aryan race;
and that genetically they are more closely related to the Hun,
Uigur and Magyar tribes than to the seed of Ab raham, Isaac and
Jacob. Should this turn out to be the case, then the term
"anti-Semitism" would become void of meaning, based on a
misapprehension shared by both the killers and their victims.
The story of the Khazar Empire, as it slowly emerges from the
past, begins to look like the most cruel hoax which history has
ever perpetrated.
2
"Attila was, after all, merely the
king of a kingdom of tents. His state passed away - whereas the
despised city of Constantinople remained a power. The tents
vanished, the towns remained. The Hun state was a whirlwind.
...".Thus
Cassel,6 a nineteenth-century orientalist, implying that the
Khazars shared, for similar reasons, a similar fate. Yet the
Hun presence on the European scene lasted a mere eighty
years,*[From circa 372, when the Huns first started to move
westward from the steppes north of the Caspian, to the death of
Attila in 453.] whereas the kingdom of the Khazars held its
own for the best part of four centuries. They too lived chiefly
in tents, but they also had large urban settlements, and were
in the process of transformation from a tribe of nomadic
warriors into a nation of farmers, cattle-breeders, fishermen,
vine-growers, traders and skilled craftsmen. Soviet
archaeologists have unearthed evidence for a relatively
advanced civilization which was altogether different from the
"Hun whirlwind". They found the traces of villages extending
over several miles,7 with houses connected by galleries to huge
cattlesheds, sheep-pens and stables (these measured 3-31/2 x
10-14 metres and were supported by columns.8 Some remaining
ox-ploughs showed remarkable craftsmanship; so did the
preserved artefacts - buckles, clasps, ornamental saddle
plates..Of
particular interest were the foundations, sunk into the ground,
of houses built in a circular shape.9 According to the Soviet
archaeologists, these were found all over the territories
inhabited by the Khazars, and were of an earlier date than
their "normal", rectangular buildings. Obviously the
round-houses symbolize the transition from portable, dome-
shaped tents to permanent dwellings, from the nomadic to a
settled, or rather semi-settled, existence. For the
contemporary Arab sources tell us that the Khazars only stayed
in their towns - including even their capital, Itil - during
the winter; come spring, they packed their tents, left their
houses and sallied forth with their sheep or cattle into the
steppes, or camped in their cornfields or
vineyards..The
excavations also showed that the kingdom was, during its later
period, surrounded by an elaborate chain of fortifications,
dating from the eighth and ninth centuries, which protected its
northern frontiers facing the open steppes. These fortresses
formed a rough semi-circular arc from the Crimea (which the
Khazars ruled for a time) across the lower reaches of the
Donetz and the Don to the Volga; while towards the south they
were protected by the Caucasus, to the west by the Black Sea,
and to the east by the "Khazar Sea", the Caspian.* ["To
this day, the Muslims, recalling the Arab terror of the Khazar
raids, still call the Caspian, a sea as shifting as the nomads,
and washing to their steppe-land parts, Bahr-ul-Khazar
- "the Khazar Sea"." (W. E. 0. Allen, A History of the
Georgian People, London 1952).] However, the northern
chain of fortifications marked merely an inner ring, protecting
the stable core of the Khazar country; the actual boundaries of
their rule over the tribes of the north fluctuated according to
the fortunes of war. At the peak of their power they controlled
or exacted tribute from some thirty different nations and
tribes inhabiting the vast territories between the Caucasus,
the Aral Sea, the Ural Mountains, the town of Kiev and the
Ukrainian steppes. The people under Khazar suzerainty included
the Bulgars, Burtas, Ghuzz, Magyars (Hungarians), the Gothic
and Greek colonies of the Crimea, and the Slavonic tribes in
the north-western woodlands. Beyond these extended dominions,
Khazar armies also raided Georgia and Armenia and penetrated
into the Arab Caliphate as far as Mosul. In the words of the
Soviet archaeologist M. I. Artamonov:10
- Until the ninth century, the
Khazars had no rivals to their supremacy in the regions
north of the Black Sea and the adjoining steppe and forest
regions of the Dnieper. The Khazars were the supreme masters
of the southern half of Eastern Europe for a century and a
hall, and presented a mighty bulwark, blocking the
Ural-Caspian gateway from Asia into Europe. During this
whole period, they held back the onslaught of the nomadic
tribes from the East.
Taking a bird's-eye view of the
history of the great nomadic empires of the East, the Khazar
kingdom occupies an intermediary position in time, size, and
degree of civilization between the Hun and Avar Empires which
preceded, and the Mongol Empire that succeeded it.
3
But who were these remarkable people -
remarkable as much by their power and achievements as by their
conversion to a religion of outcasts? The descriptions that
have come down to us originate in hostile sources, and cannot
be taken at face value. "As to the Khazars," an Arab chronicler
11 writes, "they are to the north of the inhabited earth
towards the 7th clime, having over their heads the
constellation of the Plough. Their land is cold and
wet.
Accordingly their complexions are
white, their eyes blue, their hair flowing and predominantly
reddish, their bodies large and their natures cold. Their
general aspect is wild." .After
a century of warfare, the Arab writer obviously had no great
sympathy for the Khazars. Nor had the Georgian or Armenian
scribes, whose countries, of a much older culture, had been
repeatedly devastated by Khazar horsemen. A Georgian chronicle,
echoing an ancient tradition, identifies them with the hosts of
Gog and Magog - "wild men with hideous faces and the manners of
wild beasts, eaters of blood".12 An Armenian writer refers to
"the horrible multitude of Khazars with insolent, broad,
lashless faces and long falling hair, like women".13 Lastly,
the Arab geographer Istakhri, one of the main Arab sources, has
this to say:14 "The Khazars do not resemble the Turks. They are
black-haired, and are of two kinds, one called the
Kara-Khazars, [Black Khazars] who are swarthy verging
on deep black as if they were a kind of Indian, and a white
kind [Ak-Khazars], who are strikingly
handsome.".This
is more flattering, but only adds to the confusion. For it was
customary among Turkish peoples to refer to the ruling classes
or clans as "white", to the lower strata as "black". Thus there
is no reason to believe that the "White Bulgars" were whiter
than the "Black Bulgars", or that the "White Huns" (the
Ephtalites) who invaded India and Persia in the fifth and sixth
centuries were of fairer skin than the other Hun tribes which
invaded Europe. Istakhri's black-skinned Khazars - as much else
in his and his colleagues' writings - were based on hearsay and
legend; and we are none the wiser regarding the Khazars'
physical appearance, or their ethnic
Origins..The
last question can only be answered in a vague and general way.
But it is equally frustrating to inquire into the origins of
the Huns, Alans, Avars, Bulgars, Magyars, Bashkirs, Burtas,
Sabirs, Uigurs, Saragurs, Onogurs, Utigurs, Kutrigurs,
Tarniaks, Kotragars, Khabars, Zabenders, Pechenegs, Ghuzz,
Kumans, Kipchaks, and dozens of other tribes or people who at
one time or another in the lifetime of the Khazar kingdom
passed through the turnstiles of those migratory playgrounds.
Even the Huns, of whom we know much more, are of uncertain
origin; their name is apparently derived from the Chinese
Hiung-nu, which designates warlike nomads in general,
while other nations applied the name Hun in a similarly
indiscriminate way to nomadic hordes of all kinds, including
the "White Huns" mentioned above, the Sabirs, Magyars and
Khazars.*[It is amusing to note that while the British in
World War I used the term "Hun" in the same pejorative sense,
in my native Hungary schoolchildren were taught to look up to
"our glorious Hun forefathers" with patriotic pride An
exclusive rowing club in Budapest was called "Hunnia", and
Attila is still a popular first name.] .In
the first century AD, the Chinese drove these disagreeable Hun
neighbours westward, and thus started one of those periodic
avalanches which swept for many centuries from Asia towards the
West. From the fifth century onward, many of these
westward-bound tribes were called by the generic name of
"Turks". The term is also supposed to be of Chinese origin
(apparently derived from the name of a hill) and was
subsequently used to refer to all tribes who spoke languages
with certain common characteristics - the "Turkic" language
group. Thus the term Turk, in the sense in which it was used by
mediaeval writers - and often also by modern ethnologists -
refers primarily to language and not to race. In this sense the
Huns and Khazars were "Turkic" people.*[But not the
Magyars, whose language belongs to the Finno-Ugrian language
group.] The Khazar language was supposedly a Chuvash
dialect of Turkish, which still survives in the Autonomous
Chuvash Soviet Republic, between the Volga and the Sura. The
Chuvash people are actually believed to be descendants of the
Bulgars, who spoke a dialect similar to the Khazars. But all
these connections are rather tenuous, based on the more or less
speculative deductions of oriental philologists. All we can say
with safety is that the Khazars were a "Turkic" tribe, who
erupted from the Asian steppes, probably in the fifth century
of our era..The
origin of the name Khazar, and the modern derivations to which
it gave rise, has also been the subject of much ingenious
speculation. Most likely the word is derived from the Turkish
root gaz, "to wander", and simply means "nomad". Of
greater interest to the non-specialist are some alleged modern
derivations from it: among them the Russian Cossack and the
Hungarian Huszar - both signifying martial
horsemen;*[Huszar is probably derived via the Serbo-Croat
from Greek references to Khazars.] and also the German
Ketzer - heretic, i.e., Jew. If these derivations are
correct, they would show that the Khazars had a considerable
impact on the imagination of a variety of peoples in the Middle
Ages.
4
Some Persian and Arab chronicles
provide an attractive combination of legend and gossip column.
They may start with the Creation and end with stop-press
titbits. Thus Yakubi, a ninth-century Arab historian, traces
the origin of the Khazars back to Japheth, third son of Noah.
The Japheth motive recurs frequently in the literature, while
other legends connect them with Abraham or Alexander the Great.
.One
of the earliest factual references to the Khazars occurs in a
Syriac chronicle by "Zacharia Rhetor",*[It was actually
written by an anonymous compiler and named after an earlier
Greek historian whose work is summarized in the
compilation.] dating from the middle of the sixth century.
It mentions the Khazars in a list of people who inhabit the
region of the Caucasus. Other sources indicate that they were
already much in evidence a century earlier, and intimately
connected with the Huns. In AD 448, the Byzantine Emperor
Theodosius II sent an embassy to Attila which included a famed
rhetorician by name of Priscus. 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 "Akatzirs" are also
mentioned as a nation of warriors by Jordanes, the great Goth
historian, a century later, and the so- called "Geographer of
Ravenna" expressly identifies them with the Khazars. This is
accepted by most modern authorities. (A notable exception was
Marquart, but see Dunlop's refutation of his views, op. cit.,
pp. 7f.) Cassel, for instance, points out that Priscus's
pronunciation and spelling follows the Armenian and Georgian:
Khazir.] 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. Karidach thanked
him profusely for the invitation, and went on to say that "it
would be too hard on a mortal man to look into the face of a
god. 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. The
Khazars during most of this period seemed to be happily
occupied with raiding the rich trans-Caucasian regions of
Georgia and Armenia, and collecting precious plunder. During
the second half of the sixth century they became the dominant
force among the tribes north of the Caucasus. A number of these
tribes - the Sabirs, Saragurs, Samandars, Balanjars, etc. - are
from this date onward no longer mentioned by name in the
sources: they had been subdued or absorbed by the Khazars. The
toughest resistance, apparently, was offered by the powerful
Bulgars. 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. We shall frequently
encounter both Danube Bulgars and Volga Bulgars in the course
of this narrative. .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. It was a
confederation of tribes, held together by a ruler: the Kagan or
Khagan*[Or Kaqan or Khaqan or Chagan, etc. Orientalists
have strong Idiosyncrasies about spelling (see Appendix I). I
shall stick to Kagan as the least offensive to Western eyes.
The h in Khazar, however, is general usage.] - a title
which the Khazar rulers too were subsequently to adopt. 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.*[This, however, did not prevent the
name "Turk" still being applied indiscriminately to any nomadic
tribe of the steppes as a euphemism for Barbarian, or a synonym
for "Hun". It led to much confusion in the interpretation of
ancient sources.]
.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. No state
visits from these potentates materialized, and the golden
thrones - if they existed - must have served a purely symbolic
purpose. But whether fact or legend, the story fits in well
with Emperor Constantine's official account of the triple gold
seal assigned by the Imperial Chancery to the ruler 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. There are
several versions of the role played by the Khazars in that
campaign which seems to have been somewhat inglorious - but the
principal facts are well established. The Khazars provided
Heraclius with 40000 horsemen under a chieftain named Ziebel,
who participated in the advance into Persia, but then -
presumably fed up with the cautious strategy of the Greeks -
turned back to lay siege on Tiflis; this was unsuccessful, but
the next year they again joined forces with Heraclius, took the
Georgian capital, and returned with rich plunder. Gibbon has
given a colourful description (based on Theophanes) of the
first meeting between the Roman Emperor and the Khazar
chieftain.16
- ...To the hostile league of
Chosroes with the Avars, the Roman emperor opposed the
useful and honourable alliance of the Turks.*[By
"Turks", as the sequel shows, he means the Khazars.] At
his liberal invitation, the horde of Chozars transported
their tents from the plains of the Volga to the mountains of
Georgia; Heraclius received them in the neighbourhood of
Tiflis, and the khan with his nobles dismounted from their
horses, if we may credit the Greeks, and fell prostrate on
the ground, to adore the purple of the Caesar. Such
voluntary homage and important aid were entitled to the
warmest acknowledgements; and the emperor, taking off his
own diadem, placed it on the head of the Turkish prince,
whom he saluted with a tender embrace and the appellation of
son. After a sumptuous banquet, he presented Ziebel with the
plate and ornaments, the gold, the gems, and the silk, which
had been used at the Imperial table, and, with his own hand,
distributed rich jewels and earrings to his new allies. In a
secret interview, he produced a portrait of his daughter
Eudocia, condescended to flatter the barbarian with the
promise of a fair and august bride, and obtained an
immediate succour of forty thousand horse...
Eudocia (or Epiphania) was the only
daughter of Heraclius by his first wife. The promise to give
her in marriage to the "Turk" indicates once more the high
value set by the Byzantine Court on the Khazar alliance.
However, the marriage came to naught because Ziebel died while
Eudocia and her suite were on their way to him. There is also
an ambivalent reference in Theophanes to the effect that Ziebel
"presented his son, a beardless boy" to the Emperor - as a
quid pro quo? .There
is another picturesque passage in an Armenian chronicle,
quoting the text of what might be called an Order of
Mobilization issued by the Khazar ruler for the second campaign
against Persia: it was addressed to "all tribes and peoples
[under Khazar authority], inhabitants of the mountains
and the plains, living under roofs or the open sky, having
their heads shaved or wearing their hair long".17
.This
gives us a first intimation of the heterogeneous ethnic mosaic
that was to compose the Khazar Empire. The "real Khazars" who
ruled it were probably always a minority - as the Austrians
were in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy.
7
The Persian state never recovered from
the crushing defeat inflicted on it by Emperor Heraclius in
627. There was a revolution; the King was slain by his own son
who, in his turn, died a few months later; a child was elevated
to the throne, and after ten years of anarchy and chaos the
first Arab armies to erupt on the scene delivered the coup
de grace to the Sassanide Empire. At about the same time,
the West Turkish confederation dissolved into its tribal
components. A new triangle of powers replaced the previous one:
the Islamic Caliphate - Christian Byzantium and the newly
emerged Khazar Kingdom of the North. It fell to the latter to
bear the brunt of the Arab attack in its initial stages, and to
protect the plains of Eastern Europe from the invaders.
.In
the first twenty years of the Hegira - Mohammed's flight to
Medina in 622, with which the Arab calendar starts - the
Muslims had conquered Persia, Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and
surrounded the Byzantine heartland (the present-day Turkey) in
a deadly semi-circle, which extended from the Mediterranean to
the Caucasus and the southern shores of the Caspian. The
Caucasus was a formidable natural obstacle, but no more
forbidding than the Pyrenees; and it could be negotiated by the
pass of Dariel*[Now called the Kasbek pass.] or
bypassed through the defile of Darband, along the Caspian
shore. .This
fortified defile, called by the Arabs Bab al Abwab,
the Gate of Gates, was a kind of historic turnstile through
which the Khazars and other marauding tribes had from time
immemorial attacked the countries of the south and retreated
again. Now it was the turn of the Arabs. Between 642 and 652
they repeatedly broke through the Darband Gate and advanced
deep into Khazaria, attempting to capture Balanjar, the nearest
town, and thus secure a foothold on the European side of the
Caucasus. They were beaten back on every occasion in this first
phase of the Arab-Khazar war; the last time in 652, in a great
battle in which both sides used artillery (catapults and
ballistae). Four thousand Arabs were killed, including their
commander, Abdal-Rahman ibn-Rabiah; the rest fled in disorder
across the mountains..For
the next thirty or forty years the Arabs did not attempt any
further incursions into the Khazar stronghold. Their main
attacks were now aimed at Byzantium. On several
occasions*[AD 669, 673-8, 717-18.] they laid siege to
Constantinople by land and by sea; had they been able to
outflank the capital across the Caucasus and round the Black
Sea, the fate of the Roman Empire would probably have been
sealed. The Khazars, in the meantime, having subjugated the
Bulgars and Magyars, completed their western expansion into the
Ukraine and the Crimea. But these were no longer haphazard
raids to amass booty and prisoners; they were wars of conquest,
incorporating the conquered people into an empire with a stable
administration, ruled by the mighty Kagan, who appointed his
provincial governors to administer and levy taxes in the
conquered territories. At the beginning of the eighth century
their state was sufficiently consolidated for the Khazars to
take the offensive against the Arabs..From
a distance of more than a thousand years, the period of
intermittent warfare that followed (the so-called 'second Arab
war", 722-37) looks like a series of tedious episodes on a
local scale, following the same, repetitive pattern: the Khazar
cavalry in their heavy armour breaking through the pass of
Dariel or the Gate of Darband into the Caliph's domains to the
south; followed by Arab counter-thrusts through the same pass
or the defile, towards the Volga and back again. Looking thus
through the wrong end of the telescope, one is reminded of the
old jingle about the noble Duke of York who had ten thousand
men; "he marched them up to the top of the hill. And he marched
them down again." In fact, the Arab sources (though they often
exaggerate) speak of armies of 100000, even of 300000, men
engaged on either side - probably outnumbering the armies which
decided the fate of the Western world at the battle of Tours
about the same time..The
death-defying fanaticism which characterized these wars is
illustrated by episodes such as the suicide by fire of a whole
Khazar town as an alternative to surrender; the poisoning of
the water supply of Bab al Abwab by an Arab general; or by the
traditional exhortation which would halt the rout of a defeated
Arab army and make it fight to the last man: "To the Garden,
Muslims, not the Fire" - the joys of Paradise being assured to
every Muslim soldier killed in the Holy War.
.At
one stage during these fifteen years of fighting the Khazars
overran Georgia and Armenia, inflicted a total defeat on the
Arab army in the battle of Ardabil (AD 730) and advanced as far
as Mosul and Dyarbakir, more than half-way to Damascus, capital
of the Caliphate. But a freshly raised Muslim army stemmed the
tide, and the Khazars retreated homewards across the mountains.
The next year Maslamah ibn-Abd-al-Malik, most famed Arab
general of his time, who had formerly commanded the siege of
Constantinople, took Balanjar and even got as far as Samandar,
another large Khazar town further north. But once more the
invaders were unable to establish a permanent garrison, and
once more they were forced to retreat across the Caucasus. The
sigh of relief experienced in the Roman Empire assumed a
tangible form through another dynastic alliance, when the heir
to the throne was married to a Khazar princess, whose son was
to rule Byzantium as Leo the Khazar. .The
last Arab campaign was led by the future Caliph Marwan II, and
ended in a Pyrrhic victory. Marwan made an offer of alliance to
the Khazar Kagan, then attacked by surprise through both
passes. The Khazar army, unable to recover from the initial
shock, retreated as far as the Volga. The Kagan was forced to
ask for terms; Marwan, in accordance with the routine followed
in other conquered countries, requested the Kagan's conversion
to the True Faith. The Kagan complied, but his conversion to
Islam must have been an act of lip-service, for no more is
heard of the episode in the Arab or Byzantine sources - in
contrast to the lasting effects of the establishment of Judaism
as the state religion which took place a few years
later.*[The probable date for the conversion is around AD
740 - see below.] Content with the results achieved, Marwan
bid farewell to Khazaria and marched his army back to
Transcaucasia - without leaving any garrison, governor or
administrative apparatus behind. On the contrary, a short time
later he requested terms for another alliance with the Khazars
against the rebellious tribes of the south. .It
had been a narrow escape. The reasons which prompted Marwan's
apparent magnanimity are a matter of conjecture - as so much
else in this bizarre chapter of history. Perhaps the Arabs
realized that, unlike the relatively civilized Persians,
Armenians or Georgians, these ferocious Barbarians of the North
could not be ruled by a Muslim puppet prince and a small
garrison. Yet Marwan needed every man of his army to quell
major rebellions in Syria and other parts of the Omayad
Caliphate, which was in the process of breaking up. Marwan
himself was the chief commander in the civil wars that
followed, and became in 744 the last of the Omayad Caliphs
(only to be assassinated six years later when the Caliphate
passed to the Abbasid dynasty). Given this background, Marwan
was simply not in a position to exhaust his resources by
further wars with the Khazars. He had to content himself with
teaching them a lesson which would deter them from further
incursions across the Caucasus. .Thus
the gigantic Muslim pincer movement across the Pyrenees in the
west and across the Caucasus into Eastern Europe was halted at
both ends about the same time. As Charles Martel's Franks saved
Gaul and Western Europe, so the Khazars saved the eastern
approaches to the Volga, the Danube, and the East Roman Empire
itself. On this point at least, the Soviet archaeologist and
historian, Artamonov, and the American historian, Dunlop, are
in full agreement. I have already quoted the latter to the
effect that but for the Khazars, "Byzantium, the bulwark of
European civilization to the East, would have found itself
outflanked by the Arabs", and that history might have taken a
different course..Artamonov
is of the same opinion:18
- Khazaria was the first feudal
state in Eastern Europe, which ranked with the Byzantine
Empire and the Arab Caliphate.... It was only due to the
powerful Khazar attacks, diverting the tide of the Arab
armies to the Caucasus, that Byzantium withstood
them....
Lastly, the Professor of Russian
History in the University of Oxford, Dimitry Obolensky:19 "The
main contribution of the Khazars to world history was their
success in holding the line of the Caucasus against the
northward onslaught of the Arabs.".Marwan
was not only the last Arab general to attack the Khazars, he
was also the last Caliph to pursue an expansionist policy
devoted, at least in theory, to the ideal of making Islam
triumph all over the world. With the Abbasid caliphs the wars
of conquest ceased, the revived influence of the old Persian
culture created a mellower climate, and eventually gave rise to
the splendours of Baghdad under Harun al Rashid.
8
During the long lull between the first
and second Arab wars, the Khazars became involved in one of the
more lurid episodes of Byzantine history, characteristic of the
times, and of the role the Khazars played in it.
.In
AD 685 Justinian II, Rhinotmetus, became East Roman Emperor at
the age of sixteen. Gibbon, in his inimitable way, has drawn
the youth's portrait:20
- His passions were strong; his
understanding was feeble; and he was intoxicated with a
foolish pride.... His favourite ministers were two beings
the least susceptible of human sympathy, a eunuch and a
monk; the former corrected the emperor's mother with a
scourge, the latter suspended the insolvent tributaries,
with their heads downwards, over a slow and smoky
fire.
After ten years of intolerable misrule
there was a revolution, and the new Emperor, Leontius, ordered
Justinian's mutilation and banishment:21
- The amputation of his nose,
perhaps of his tongue, was imperfectly performed; the happy
flexibility of the Greek language could impose the name of
Rhinotmetus ("Cut-off Nose"); and the mutilated tyrant was
banished to Chersonae in Crim-Tartary, a lonely settlement
where corn, wine and oil were imported as foreign
luxuries.*[The treatment meted out to Justinian was
actually regarded as an act of leniency: the general
tendency of the period was to humanize the criminal law by
substituting mutilation for capital punishment - amputation
of the hand (for thefts) or nose (fornication, etc.) being
the most frequent form. Byzantine rulers were also given to
the practice of blinding dangerous rivals, while
magnanimously sparing their lives.] .During
his exile in Cherson, Justinian kept plotting to regain his
throne. After three years he saw his chances improving when,
back in Byzantium, Leontius was de-throned and also had his
nose cut off. Justinian escaped from Cherson into the
Khazar-ruled town of Doros in the Crimea and had a meeting
with the Kagan of the Khazars, King Busir or Bazir. The
Kagan must have welcomed the opportunity of putting his
fingers into the rich pie of Byzantine dynastic policies,
for he formed an alliance with Justinian and gave him his
sister in marriage. This sister, who was baptized by the
name of Theodora, and later duly crowned, seems to have been
the only decent person in this series of sordid intrigues,
and to bear genuine love for her noseless husband (who was
still only in his early thirties). The couple and their band
of followers were now moved to the town of Phanagoria (the
present Taman) on the eastern shore of the strait of Kerch,
which had a Khazar governor. Here they made preparations for
the invasion of Byzantium with the aid of the Khazar armies
which King Busir had apparently promised. But the envoys of
the new Emperor, Tiberias III, persuaded Busir to change his
mind, by offering him a rich reward in gold if he delivered
Justinian, dead or alive, to the Byzantines. King Busir
accordingly gave orders to two of his henchmen, named
Papatzes and Balgitres, to assassinate his brother-in-law.
But faithful Theodora got wind of the plot and warned her
husband. Justinian invited Papatzes and Balgitres separately
to his quarters, and strangled each in turn with a cord.
Then he took ship, sailed across the Black Sea into the
Danube estuary, and made a new alliance with a powerful
Bulgar tribe. Their king, Terbolis, proved for the time
being more reliable than the Khazar Kagan, for in 704 he
provided Justinian with 15000 horsemen to attack
Constantinople. The Byzantines had, after ten years, either
forgotten the darker sides of Justinian's former rule, or
else found their present ruler even more intolerable, for
they promptly rose against Tiberias and reinstated Justinian
on the throne. The Bulgar King was rewarded with "a heap of
gold coin which he measured with his Scythian whip" and went
home (only to get involved in a new war against Byzantium a
few years later)..Justinian's
second reign (704-711) proved even worse than the first; "he
considered the axe, the cord and the rack as the only
instruments of royalty".22 He became mentally unbalanced,
obsessed with hatred against the inhabitants of Cherson,
where he had spent most of the bitter years of his exile,
and sent an expedition against the town. Some of Cherson's
leading citizens were burnt alive, others drowned, and many
prisoners taken, but this was not enough to assuage
Justinian's lust for revenge, for he sent a second
expedition with orders to raze the city to the ground.
However, this time his troops were halted by a mighty Khazar
army; whereupon Justinian's representative in the Crimea, a
certain Bardanes, changed sides and joined the Khazars. The
demoralized Byzantine expeditionary force abjured its
allegiance to Justinian and elected Bardanes as Emperor,
under the name of Philippicus. But since Philippicus was in
Khazar hands, the insurgents had to pay a heavy ransom to
the Kagan to get their new Emperor back. When the
expeditionary force returned to Constantinople, Justinian
and his son were assassinated and Philippicus, greeted as a
liberator, was installed on the throne only to be deposed
and blinded a couple of years later. .The
point of this gory tale is to show the influence which the
Khazars at this stage exercised over the destinies of the
East Roman Empire - in addition to their role as defenders
of the Caucasian bulwark against the Muslims.
Bardanes-Philippicus was an emperor of the Khazars' making,
and the end of Justinian's reign of terror was brought about
by his brother-in-law, the Kagan. To quote Dunlop: "It does
not seem an exaggeration to say that at this juncture the
Khaquan was able practically to give a new ruler to the
Greek empire."23
9
From the chronological point of view,
the next event to be discussed should be the conversion of the
Khazars to Judaism, around AD 740. 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..Alas,
we have no lively eyewitness reports, such as Priscus's
description of Attila's court. What we do have are mainly
second-hand accounts and compilations by Byzantine and Arab
chroniclers, which are rather schematic and fragmentary - with
two exceptions. 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:*[The
following quotations are based on Zeki Validi Togan's German
translation of the Arabic text and the English translation of
extracts by Blake and Frye, both slightly paraphrased in the
interest of readability.]
- This is the book of Ahmad
ibn-Fadlan ibn-al-Abbas, ibn-Rasid, ibn-Hammad, an official
in the service of [General] Muhammed ibn-Sulayman,
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.*[i.e., as later passages show, the King of the
Khazars.] Everything that the King asked for was granted
by the Caliph. I was chosen to read the Caliph's message to
the King, to hand over the gifts the Caliph sent him, and to
supervise the work of the teachers and interpreters of the
Law....[There follow some details about the financing of
the mission and names of participants.] And so we
started on Thursday the 11th Safar of the year 309 [June
21, AD 921] from the City of Peace [Baghdad, capital
of the Caliphate].
The date of the expedition, it will he
noted, is much later than the events described in the previous
section. 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. Here the governor in charge
of the province tried to stop them from proceeding further by
arguing that between his country and the kingdom of the Bulgars
there were "a thousand tribes of disbelievers" who were sure to
kill them. 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. In the end, however,
he had to give in, and the mission was allowed to proceed to
Gurganj on the estuary of the Amu-Darya. 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. Verily I saw
that the market place and the streets were totally empty
because of the cold.... 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. I stayed for
some days in a house which was inside of another house
[compound?] and in which there stood a Turkish felt
tent, and I lay inside the tent wrapped in clothes and furs,
but nevertheless my cheeks often froze to the
cushion....
Around the middle of February the thaw
set in. The mission arranged to join a mighty caravan of 5000
men and 3000 pack animals to cross the northern steppes, and
bought the necessary supplies: camels, skin boats made of camel
hides for crossing rivers, bread, millet and spiced meat for
three months. The natives warned them about the even more
frightful cold in the north, and advised them what clothes to
wear:
- So each of us put on a Kurtak,
[camisole] over that a woollen Kaftan, over that a
buslin, [fur-lined coat] over that a burka [fur
coat]; and a fur cap, under which only the eyes could be
seen; a simple pair of underpants, and a lined pair, and
over them the trousers; house shoes of kaymuht [shagreen
leather] and over these also another pair of boots; and
when one of us mounted a camel, he was unable to move
because of his clothes.
Ibn Fadlan, the fastidious Arab, liked
neither the climate nor the people of Khwarizm:
- They are, in respect of their
language and constitution, the most repulsive of men. Their
language is like the chatter of starlings. At a day's
journey there is a village called Ardkwa whose inhabitants
are called Kardals; their language sounds entirely like the
croaking of frogs.
They left on March 3 and stopped for
the night in a caravanserai called Zamgan - the gateway to the
territory of the Ghuzz Turks. From here onward the mission was
in foreign land, "entrusting our fate to the all-powerful and
exalted God". During one of the frequent snow-storms, Ibn
Fadlan rode next to a Turk, who complained: "What does the
Ruler want from us? He is killing us with cold. If we knew what
he wants we would give it to him." Ibn Fadlan: "All he wants is
that you people should say: "There is no God save Allah"." The
Turk laughed: "If we knew that it is so, we should say so."
.There
are many such incidents, which Ibn Fadlan reports without
appreciating the independence of mind which they reflect. Nor
did the envoy of the Baghdad court appreciate the nomadic
tribesmen's fundamental contempt for authority. The following
episode also occurred in the country of the powerful Ghuzz
Turks, who paid tribute to the Khazars and, according to some
sources, were closely related to them:24
- The next morning one of the Turks
met us. He was ugly in build, dirty in appearance,
contemptible in manners, base in nature; and we were moving
through a heavy rain. Then he said: "Halt." Then the whole
caravan of 3000 animals and 5000 men halted. Then he said:
"Not a single one of you is allowed to go on." We halted
then, obeying his orders.*[Obviously the leaders of the
great caravan had to avoid at all costs a conflict with the
Ghuzz tribesmen.] Then we said to him: "We are friends
of the Kudarkin [Viceroy]". He began to laugh and
said: "Who is the Kudarkin? I shit on his beard." Then he
said: "Bread." I gave him a few loaves of bread. He took
them and said: "Continue your journey; I have taken pity on
you."
The democratic methods of the Ghuzz,
practised when a decision had to be taken, were even more
bewildering to the representative of an authoritarian
theocracy:
- They are nomads and have houses of
felt. They stay for a while in one place and then move on.
One can see their tents dispersed here and there all over
the place according to nomadic custom. Although they lead a
hard life, they behave like donkeys that have lost their
way. They have no religion which would link them to God, nor
are they guided by reason; they do not worship anything.
Instead, they call their headmen lords; when one of them
consults his chieftain, he asks: "O lord, what shall I do in
this or that matter?" The course of action they adopt is
decided by taking counsel among themselves; but when they
have decided on a measure and are ready to carry it through,
even the humblest and lowliest among them can come and
disrupt that decision.
The sexual mores of the Ghuzz - and
other tribes - were a remarkable mixture of liberalism and
savagery:
- Their women wear no veils in the
presence of their men or strangers. Nor do the women cover
any parts of their bodies in the presence of people. One day
we stayed at the place of a Ghuzz and were sitting around;
his wife was also present. As we conversed, the woman
uncovered her private parts and scratched them, and we all
saw it. Thereupon we covered our faces and said: "May God
forgive me." The husband laughed and said to the
interpreter: "Tell them we uncover it in your presence so
that you may see and restrain yourselves; but it cannot be
attained. This is better than when it is covered up and yet
attainable." Adultery is alien to them; yet when they
discover that someone is an adulterer they split him in two
halves. This they do by bringing together the branches of
two trees, tie him to the branches and then let both trees
go, so that the man tied to them is torn in two.
He does not say whether the same
punishment was meted out to the guilty woman. Later on, when
talking about the Volga Bulgars, he describes an equally savage
method of splitting adulterers into two, applied to both men
and women. Yet, he notes with astonishment, Bulgars of both
sexes swim naked in their rivers, and have as little bodily
shame as the Ghuzz..As
for homosexuality - which in Arab countries was taken as a
matter of course - Ibn Fadlan says that it is "regarded by the
Turks as a terrible sin". But in the only episode he relates to
prove his point, the seducer of a "beardless youth" gets away
with a fine of 400 sheep. .Accustomed
to the splendid baths of Baghdad, our traveller could not get
over the dirtiness of the Turks. "The Ghuzz do not wash
themselves after defacating or urinating, nor do they bathe
after seminal pollution or on other occasions. They refuse to
have anything to do with water, particularly in
winter....".When
the Ghuzz commander-in-chief took off his luxurious coat of
brocade to don a new coat the mission had brought him, they saw
that his underclothes were "fraying apart from dirt, for it is
their custom never to take off the garment they wear close to
their bodies until it disintegrates". Another Turkish tribe,
the Bashkirs, 'shave their beards and eat their lice. They
search the folds of their undergarments and crack the lice with
their teeth." When Ibn Fadlan watched a Bashkir do this, the
latter remarked to him: "They are delicious."
.All
in all, it is not an engaging picture. Our fastidious
traveller's contempt for the barbarians was profound. But it
was only aroused by their uncleanliness and what he considered
as indecent exposure of the body; the savagery of their
punishments and sacrificial rites leave him quite indifferent.
Thus he describes the Bulgars' punishment for manslaughter with
detached interest, without his otherwise frequent expressions
of indignation: "They make for him [the delinquent] a
box of birchwood, put him inside, nail the lid on the box, put
three loaves of bread and a can of water beside it, and suspend
the box between two tall poles, saying: "We have put him
between heaven and earth, that he may be exposed to the sun and
the rain, and that the deity may perhaps forgive him." And so
he remains suspended until time lets him decay and the winds
blow him away.".He
also describes, with similar aloofness, the funeral sacrifice
of hundreds of horses and herds of other animals, and the
gruesome ritual killing of a Rus*[Rus: the Viking founders
of the early Russian settlements - see below, Chapter III.]
slave girl at her master's bier. About pagan religions he has
little to say. But the Bashkirs' phallus cult arouses his
interest, for he asks through his interpreter one of the
natives the reason for his worshipping a wooden penis, and
notes down his reply: "Because I issued from something similar
and know of no other creator who made me." He then adds that
'some of them [the Bashkirs] believe in twelve deities,
a god for winter, another for summer, one for the rain, one for
the wind, one for the trees, one for men, one for the horse,
one for water, one for the night, one for the day, a god of
death and one for the earth; while that god who dwells in the
sky is the greatest among them, but takes counsel with the
others and thus all are contented with each other's doings....
We have seen a group among them which worships snakes, and a
group which worships fish, and a group which worships
cranes....".Among
the Volga Bulgars, Ibn Fadlan found a strange
custom:
- When they observe a man who excels
through quickwittedness and knowledge, they say: "for this
one it is more befitting to serve our Lord." They seize him,
put a rope round his neck and hang him on a tree where he is
left until he rots away.
Commenting on this passage, the
Turkish orientalist Zeki Validi Togan, undisputed authority on
Ibn Fadlan and his times, has this to say:25 "There is nothing
mysterious about the cruel treatment meted out by the Bulgars
to people who were overly clever. It was based on the simple,
sober reasoning of the average citizens who wanted only to lead
what they considered to be a normal life, and to avoid any risk
or adventure into which the "genius" might lead them." He then
quotes a Tartar proverb: "If you know too much, they will hang
you, and if you are too modest, they will trample on you." He
concludes that the victim 'should not be regarded simply as a
learned person, but as an unruly genius, one who is too clever
by half". This leads one to believe that the custom should be
regarded as a measure of social defence against change, a
punishment of non-conformists and potential innovators.*[In
support of his argument, the author adduces Turkish and Arabic
quotations in the original, without translation - a nasty habit
common among modern experts in the field.] But a few lines
further down he gives a different interpretation:
- Ibn Fadlan describes not the
simple murder of too-clever people, but one of their pagan
customs: human sacrifice, by which the most excellent among
men were offered as sacrifice to God. This ceremony was
probably not carried out by common Bulgars, but by their
Tabibs, or medicine men, i.e. their shamans, whose
equivalents among the Bulgars and the Rus also wielded power
of life and death over the people, in the name of their
cult. According to Ibn Rusta, the medicine men of the Rus
could put a rope round the neck of anybody and hang him on a
tree to invoke the mercy of God. When this was done, they
said: "This is an offering to God."
Perhaps both types of motivation were
mixed together: 'since sacrifice is a necessity, let's
sacrifice the trouble-makers". .We
shall see that human sacrifice was also practised by the
Khazars - including the ritual killing of the king at the end
of his reign. We may assume that many other similarities
existed between the customs of the tribes described by Ibn
Fadlan and those of the Khazars. Unfortunately he was debarred
from visiting the Khazar capital and had to rely on information
collected in territories under Khazar dominion, and
particularly at the Bulgar court.
10
It took the Caliph's mission nearly a
year (from June 21, 921, to May 12, 922) to reach its
destination, the land of the Volga Bulgars. The direct route
from Baghdad to the Volga leads across the Caucasus and
Khazaria - to avoid the latter, they had to make the enormous
detour round the eastern shore of the "Khazar Sea", the
Caspian. Even so, they were constantly reminded of the
proximity of the Khazars and its potential dangers.
.A
characteristic episode took place during their sojourn with the
Ghuzz army chief (the one with the disreputable underwear).
They were at first well received, and given a banquet. But
later the Ghuzz leaders had second thoughts because of their
relations with the Khazars. The chief assembled the leaders to
decide what to do:
- The most distinguished and
influential among them was the Tarkhan; he was lame and
blind and had a maimed hand. The Chief said to them: "These
are the messengers of the King of the Arabs, and I do not
feel authorized to let them proceed without consulting you."
Then the Tarkhan spoke: "This is a matter the like of which
we have never seen or heard before; never has an ambassador
of the Sultan travelled through our country since we and our
ancestors have been here. Without doubt the Sultan is
deceiving us; these people he is really sending to the
Khazars, to stir them up against us. The best will be to cut
each of these messengers into two and to confiscate all
their belongings." Another one said: "No, we should take
their belongings and let them run back naked whence they
came." Another said: "No, the Khazar king holds hostages
from us, let us send these people to ransom
them."
They argued among themselves for seven
days, while Ibn Fadlan and his people feared the worst. In the
end the Ghuzz let them go; we are not told why. Probably Ibn
Fadlan succeeded in persuading them that his mission was in
fact directed against the Khazars. The Ghuzz had earlier on
fought with the Khazars against another Turkish tribe,
the Pechenegs, but more recently had shown a hostile attitude;
hence the hostages the Khazars took..The
Khazar menace loomed large on the horizon all along the
journey. North of the Caspian they made another huge detour
before reaching the Bulgar encampment somewhere near the
confluence of the Volga and the Kama. There the King and
leaders of the Bulgars were waiting for them in a state of
acute anxiety. As soon as the ceremonies and festivities were
over, the King sent for Ibn Fadlan to discuss business. He
reminded Ibn Fadlan in forceful language ("his voice sounded as
if he were speaking from the bottom of a barrel") of the main
purpose of the mission to wit, the money to be paid to him 'so
that I shall be able to build a fortress to protect me from the
Jews who subjugated me". Unfortunately that money - a sum of
four thousand dinars - had not been handed over to the mission,
owing to some complicated matter of red tape; it was to be sent
later on. On learning this, the King - "a personality of
impressive appearance, broad and corpulent" - seemed close to
despair. He suspected the mission of having defrauded the
money: ""What would you think of a group of men who are given a
sum of money destined for a people that is weak, besieged, and
oppressed, yet these men defraud the money?" I replied: "This
is forbidden, those men would be evil." He asked: "Is this a
matter of opinion or a matter of general consent?" I replied:
"A matter of general consent."" .Gradually
Ibn Fadlan succeeded in convincing the King that the money was
only delayed,*[Apparently it did arrive at some time, as
there is no further mention of the matter.] but not to
allay his anxieties. The King kept repeating that the whole
point of the invitation was the building of the fortress
"because he was afraid of the King of the Khazars". And
apparently he had every reason to be afraid, as Ibn Fadlan
relates:
- The Bulgar King's son was held as
a hostage by the King of the Khazars. It was reported to the
King of the Khazars that the Bulgar King had a beautiful
daughter. He sent a messenger to sue for her. The Bulgar
King used pretexts to refuse his consent. The Khazar sent
another messenger and took her by force, although he was a
Jew and she a Muslim; but she died at his court. The Khazar
sent another messenger and asked for the Bulgar King's other
daughter. But in the very hour when the messenger reached
him, the Bulgar King hurriedly married her to the Prince of
the Askil, who was his subject, for fear that the Khazar
would take her too by force, as he had done with her sister.
This alone was the reason which made the Bulgar King enter
into correspondence with the Caliph and ask him to have a
fortress built because he feared the King of the
Khazars.
It sounds like a refrain. Ibn Fadlan
also specifies the annual tribute the Bulgar King had to pay
the Khazars: one sable fur from each household in his realm.
Since the number of Bulgar households (i.e., tents) is
estimated to have been around 50000, and since Bulgar sable fur
was highly valued all over the world, the tribute was a
handsome one.
11
What Ibn Fadlan has to tell us about
the Khazars is based - as already mentioned - on intelligence
collected in the course of his journey, but mainly at the
Bulgar court. Unlike the rest of his narrative, derived from
vivid personal observations, the pages on the Khazars contain
second-hand, potted information, and fall rather flat.
Moreover, the sources of his information are biased, in view of
the Bulgar King's understandable dislike of his Khazar overlord
- while the Caliphate's resentment of a kingdom embracing a
rival religion need hardly be stressed. .The
narrative switches abruptly from a description of the Rus court
to the Khazar court:
- Concerning the King of the
Khazars, whose title is Kagan, he appears in public only
once every four months. They call him the Great Kagan. His
deputy is called Kagan Bek; he is the one who commands and
supplies the armies, manages the affairs of state, appears
in public and leads in war. The neighbouring kings obey his
orders. He enters every day into the presence of the Great
Kagan, with deference and modesty, barefooted, carrying a
stick of wood in his hand. He makes obeisance, lights the
stick, and when it has burned down, he sits down on the
throne on the King's right. Next to him in rank is a man
called the K-nd-r Kagan, and next to that one, the Jawshyghr
Kagan. .It
is the custom of the Great Kagan not to have social
intercourse with people, and not to talk with them, and to
admit nobody to his presence except those we have mentioned.
The power to bind or release, to mete out punishment, and to
govern the country belongs to his deputy, the Kagan
Bek..It
is a further custom of the Great Kagan that when he dies a
great building is built for him, containing twenty chambers,
and in each chamber a grave is dug for him. Stones are
broken until they become like powder, which is spread over
the floor and covered with pitch. Beneath the building flows
a river, and this river is large and rapid. They divert the
river water over the grave and they say that this is done so
that no devil, no man, no worm and no creeping creatures can
get at him. After he has been buried, those who buried him
are decapitated, so that nobody may know in which of the
chambers is his grave. The grave is called "Paradise" and
they have a saying: "He has entered Paradise". All the
chambers are spread with silk brocade interwoven with
threads of gold. .It
is the custom of the King of the Khazars to have twenty-five
wives; each of the wives is the daughter of a king who owes
him allegiance. He takes them by consent or by force. He has
sixty girls for concubines, each of them of exquisite
beauty.
Ibn Fadlan then proceeds to give a
rather fanciful description of the Kagan's harem, where each of
the eighty-five wives and concubines has a "palace of her own",
and an attendant or eunuch who, at the King's command, brings
her to his alcove "faster than the blinking of an
eye..After
a few more dubious remarks about the "customs" of the Khazar
Kagan (we shall return to them later), Ibn Fadlan at last
provides some factual information about the country:
- The King has a great city on the
river Itil [Volga] on both banks. On one bank live
the Muslims, on the other bank the King and his court. The
Muslims are governed by one of the King's officials who is
himself a Muslim. The law-suits of the Muslims living in the
Khazar capital and of visiting merchants from abroad are
looked after by that official. Nobody else meddles in their
affairs or sits in judgment over them.
Ibn Fadlan's travel report, as far as
it is preserved, ends with the words:
- The Khazars and their King are all
Jews.*[This sounds like an exaggeration in view of the
existence of a Muslim community in the capital. Zeki Validi
accordingly suppressed the word "all". We must assume that
"the Khazars" here refers to the ruling nation or tribe,
within the ethnic mosaic of Khazaria, and that the Muslims
enjoyed legal and religious autonomy, but were not
considered as "real Khazars".] The Bulgars and all their
neighbours are subject to him. They treat him with
worshipful obedience. Some are of the opinion that Gog and
Magog are the Khazars.
12
I have quoted Ibn Fadlan's odyssey at
some length, not so much because of the scant information he
provides about the Khazars themselves, but because of the light
it throws on the world which surrounded them, the stark
barbarity of the people amidst whom they lived, reflecting
their own past, prior to the conversion. For, by the time of
Ibn Fadlan's visit to the Bulgars, Khazaria was a surprisingly
modern country compared to its neighbours. .The
contrast is evidenced by the reports of other Arab
historians,*[The following pages are based on the works of
lstakhri, al- Masudi, Ibn Rusta and Ibn Hawkal (see Appendix
II).] and is present on every level, from housing to the
administration of justice. The Bulgars still live exclusively
in tents, including the King, although the royal tent is "very
large, holding a thousand people or more".26 On the other hand,
the Khazar Kagan inhabits a castle built of burnt brick, his
ladies are said to inhabit "palaces with roofs of teak",27 and
the Muslims have several mosques, among them "one whose minaret
rises above the royal castle".28 .In
the fertile regions, their farms and cultivat ed areas
stretched out continuously over sixty or seventy miles. They
also had extensive vineyards. Thus Ibn Hawkal: "In Kozr
[Khazaria] there is a certain city called Asmid
[Samandar] which has so many orchards and gardens that
from Darband to Serir the whole country is covered with gardens
and plantations belonging to this city. It is said that there
are about forty thousand of them. Many of these produce
grapes."29 .The
region north of the Caucasus was extremely fertile. In AD 968
Ibn Hawkal met a man who had visited it after a Russian raid:
"He said there is not a pittance left for the poor in any
vineyard or garden, not a leaf on the bough.... [But]
owing to the excellence of their land and the abundance of its
produce it will not take three years until it becomes again
what it was." Caucasian wine is still a delight, consumed in
vast quantities in the Soviet Union. lHowever, the royal
treasuries' main source of income was foreign trade. The sheer
volume of the trading caravans plying their way between Central
Asia and the Volga-Ural region is indicated by Ibn Fadlan: we
remember that the caravan his mission joined at Gurganj
consisted of "5000 men and 3000 pack animals". Making due
allowance for exaggeration, it must still have been a mighty
caravan, and we do not know how many of these were at any time
on the move. Nor what goods they transported - although
textiles, dried fruit, honey, wax and spices seem to have
played an important part. A second major trade route led across
the Caucasus to Armenia, Georgia, Persia and Byzantium. A third
consisted of the increasing traffic of Rus merchant fleets down
the Volga to the eastern shores of the Khazar Sea, carrying
mainly precious furs much in demand among the Muslim
aristocracy, and slaves from the north, sold at the slave
market of Itil. On all these transit goods, including the
slaves, the Khazar ruler levied a tax of ten per cent. Adding
to this the tribute paid by Bulgars, Magyars, Burtas and so on,
one realizes that Khazaria was a prosperous country - but also
that its prosperity depended to a large extent on its military
power, and the prestige it conveyed on its tax collectors and
customs officials. .Apart
from the fertile regions of the south, with their vineyards and
orchards, the country was poor in natural resources. One Arab
historian (Istakhri) says that the only native product they
exported was isinglass. This again is certainly an
exaggeration, yet the fact remains that their main commercial
activity seems to have consisted in re-exporting goods brought
in from abroad. Among these goods, honey and candle-wax
particularly caught the Arab chroniclers' imagination. Thus
Muqaddasi: "In Khazaria, sheep, honey and Jews exist in large
quantities."30 It is true that one source - the Darband
Namah - mentions gold or silver mines in Khazar
territory, but their location has not been ascertained. On the
other hand, several of the sources mention Khazar merchandise
seen in Baghdad, and the presence of Khazar merchants in
Constantinople, Alexandria and as far afield as Samara and
Fergana.
.Thus Khazaria was by no means
isolated from the civilized world; compared to its tribal
neighbours in the north it was a cosmopolitan country, open to
all sorts of cultural and religious influences, yet jealously
defending its independence against the two ecclesiastical world
powers. We shall see that this attitude prepared the ground for
the coup de theatre - or coup d'tat - which
established Judaism as the state religion. .The
arts and crafts seem to have flourished, including haute
couture. When the future Emperor Constantine V married the
Khazar Kagan's daughter (see above, section 1), she brought
with her dowry a splendid dress which so impressed the
Byzantine court that it was adopted as a male
ceremonial robe; they called it tzitzakion, derived
from the Khazar-Turkish pet- name of the Princess, which was
Chichak or "flower" (until she was baptized Eirene). "Here,"
Toynbee comments, "we have an illuminating fragment of cultural
history."31 When another Khazar princess married the Muslim
governor of Armenia, her cavalcade contained, apart from
attendants and slaves, ten tents mounted on wheels, "made of
the finest silk, with gold-and silver-plated doors, the floors
covered with sable furs. Twenty others carried the gold and
silver vessels and other treasures which were her dowry".32 The
Kagan himself travelled in a mobile tent even more luxuriously
equipped, carrying on its top a pomegranate of gold.
13
Khazar art, like that of the Bulgars
and Magyars, was mainly imitative, modelled on
Persian-Sassanide patterns. The Soviet archaeologist Bader33
emphasized the role of the Khazars in the spreading of
Persian-style silver-ware towards the north. Some of these
finds may have been re-exported by the Khazars, true to their
role as middlemen; others were imitations made in Khazar
workshops - the ruins of which have been traced near the
ancient Khazar fortress of Sarkel.*[Unfortunately, Sarkel,
the most important Khazar archaeological site has been flooded
by the reservoir of a newly built hydro-electric station.]
The jewellery unearthed within the confines of the fortress was
of local manufacture.34 The Swedish archaeologist T. J. Arne
mentions ornamental plates, clasps and buckles found as far as
Sweden, of Sassanide and Byzantine inspiration, manufactured in
Khazaria or territories under their influence.35
.Thus
the Khazars were the principal intermediaries in the spreading
of Persian and Byzantine art among the semi-barbaric tribes of
Eastern Europe. After his exhaustive survey of the
archaeological and documentary evidence (mostly from Soviet
sources), Bartha concludes:
- The sack of Tiflis by the Khazars,
presumably in the spring of AD 629, is relevant to our
subject.... [During the period of occupation] the
Kagan sent out inspectors to supervise the manufacture of
gold, silver, iron and copper products. Similarly the
bazaars, trade in general, even the fisheries, were under
their control.... [Thus] in the course of their
incessant Caucasian campaigns during the seventh century,
the Khazars made contact with a culture which had grown out
of the Persian Sassanide tradition. Accordingly, the
products of this culture spread to the people of the steppes
not only by trade, but by means of plunder and even by
taxation.... All the tracks that we have assiduously
followed in the hope of discovering the origins of Magyar
art in the tenth century have led us back to Khazar
territory.36
The last remark of the Hungarian
scholar refers to the spectacular archaeological finds known as
the "Treasure of Nagyszentmiklos" (see frontispiece). The
treasure, consisting of twentythree gold vessels, dating from
the tenth century, was found in 1791 in the vicinity of the
village of that name.*[It now belongs to Rumania and is
called Sinnicolaul Mare.] Bartha points out that the figure
of the "victorious Prince" dragging a prisoner along by his
hair, and the mythological scene at the back of the golden jar,
as well as the design of other ornamental objects, show close
affinities with the finds in Novi Pazar in Bulgaria and in
Khazar Sarkel. As both Magyars and Bulgars were under Khazar
suzerainty for protracted periods, this is not very surprising,
and the warrior, together with the rest of the treasure, gives
us at least some idea of the arts practised within the Khazar
Empire (the Persian and Byzantine influence is predominant, as
one would expect).*[The interested reader will find an
excellent collection of photographs in Gyula
L·szlÛ's The Art of the Migration Period
(although his historical comments have to be treated with
caution).] .One
school of Hungarian archaeologists maintains that the tenth
century gold-and silversmiths working in Hungary were actually
Khazars.37 As we shall see later on (see III, 7, 8), when the
Magyars migrated to Hungary in 896 they were led by a dissident
Khazar tribe, known as the Kabars, who settled with them in
their new home. The Kabar-Khazars were known as skilled gold
and silversmiths; the (originally more primitive) Magyars only
acquired these skills in their new country. Thus the theory of
the Khazar origin of at least some of the archaeological finds
in Hungary is not implausible - as will become clearer in the
light of the Magyar-Khazar nexus discussed later on.
14
Whether the warrior on the golden jar
is of Magyar or Khazar origin, he helps us to visualise the
appearance of a cavalryman of that period, perhaps belonging to
an elite regiment. Masudi says that in the Khazar army 'seven
thousand of them*[Istakhri has 12000.] ride with the
King, archers with breast plates, helmets, and coats of mail.
Some are lancers, equipped and armed like the Muslims.... 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.*[According to Masudi, the "Royal Army"
consisted of Muslims who "immigrated from the neighbourhood of
Kwarizm. Long ago, after the appearance of Islam, there was war
and pestilence in their territory, and they repaired to the
Khazar king.... When the king of the Khazars is at war with the
Muslims, they have a separate place in his army and do not
fight the people of their own faith" [Quoted by Dunlop
(1954), p. 206] That the army "consisted" of Muslims is of
course an exaggeration, contradicted by Masudi himself a few
lines later, where he speaks of the Muslim contingent having a
"separate place" in the Khazar army. Also, lbn Hawkal says that
"the king has in his train 4000 Muslims and this king has 2000
soldiers in his service". The Kwarizmians probably formed a
kind of Swiss Guard within the army, and their compatriots"
talk of "hostages" (see above, section 10) may refer to them.
Vice versa, the Byzantine Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus
had a corps d'Èlite of Khazar guardsmen
stationed at the gates of his palace. This was a privilege
dearly bought: "These guards were so well remunerated that they
had to purchase their posts for considerable sums, on which
their salaries represented an annuity varying from about 2.25
to 4 per cent." (Constantine, De Ceremoniis, pp.
692-3). For example, "a Khazar who received 7.4s. had paid for
enrolment 302.8s." (Bury, p. 228n).]
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.
.We
have several descriptions of Itil, which are fairly consistent
with each other. It was a twin city, built on both sides of the
river. The eastern half was called Khazaran, the western half
Itil;*[The town was in different periods also mentioned
under different names, e.g., al-Bayada, "The White City".]
the two were connected by a pontoon bridge. 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*[Masudi places these
buildings on an island, close to the west bank, or a
peninsula.] and of the "pure-bred Khazars". The wall had
four gates, one of them facing the river. 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. They also kept stressing the autonomy enjoyed by the
Muslim courts and clergy. 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. Of these two are for the Muslims,
two are for the Khazars, judging according to the Torah
(Mosaic law), two for the Christians, judging according to
the Gospel and one for the Saqualibah, Rus and other pagans,
judging according to pagan law.... 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. They have a principal mosque and a
minaret which rises above the royal castle, and other
mosques there besides, with schools where the children learn
the Koran.
In reading these lines by the foremost
Arab historian, written in the first half of the tenth
century,*[Supposedly between AD 943 and 947.] 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."*[Jewish Encyclopaedia, published
1901-6. In the Encyclopaedia Judaica, 1971, the
article on the Khazars by Dunlop is of exemplary
objectivity.] .This,
as we have seen, is partly true; but only partly. There is no
evidence of the Khazars engaging in religious persecution,
either before or after the conversion to Judaism. In this
respect they may be called more tolerant and enlightened than
the East Roman Empire, or Islam in its early stages. On the
other hand, they seem to have preserved some barbaric rituals
from their tribal past. We have heard Ibn Fadlan on the
killings of the royal gravediggers. 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.
Bury39 is doubtful whether to believe
this kind of Arab traveller's lore, and one would indeed be
inclined to dismiss it, if ritual regicide had not been such a
widespread phenomenon among primitive (and not-so-primitive)
people. 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.*[Frazer wrote a special treatise on
these lines on "The Killing of the Khazar Kings"
(Folklore, XXVIII, 1917).] .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.
Zeki Validi quotes a French anthropologist, St Julien, writing
in 1864:
When the new Chief has been elected,
his officers and attendants ... make him mount his horse. 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 the time,
compiling earlier travellers' reports, and attributing them to
contemporaries. However that may be, the point to be retained,
and which seems beyond dispute, is the divine role attributed
to the Kagan, regardless whether or not it implied his ultimate
sacrifice. We have heard before that he was venerated, but
virtually kept in seclusion, cut off from the people, until he
was buried with enormous ceremony. The affairs of state,
including leadership of the army, were managed by the Bek
(sometimes also called the Kagan Bek), who wielded all
effective power. On this point Arab sources and modern
historians are in agreement, and the latter usually describe
the Khazar system of government as a "double kingship", the
Kagan representing divine, the Bek secular, power.
.The
Khazar double kingship has been compared - quite mistakenly, it
Seems - with the Spartan dyarchy and with the superficially
similar dual leadership among various Turkish tribes. However,
the two kings of Sparta, descendants of two leading families,
wielded equal power; and as for the dual leadership among
nomadic tribes,*[Alfˆldi has suggested that the two
leaders were the commanders of the two wings of the horde
(quoted by Dunlop, p. 159, n. 123).] there is no evidence
of a basic division of functions as among the Khazars. A more
valid comparison is the system of government in Japan, from the
Middle Ages to 1867, where secular power was concentrated in
the hands of the shogun, while the Mikado was worshipped from
afar as a divine figurehead.
.Cassel41 has suggested an
attractive analogy between the Khazar system of government and
the game of chess. The double kingship is represented on the
chess-board by the King (the Kagan) and the Queen (the Bek).
The King is kept in seclusion, protected by his attendants, has
little power and can only move one short step at a time. The
Queen, by contrast, is the most powerful presence on the board,
which she dominates. Yet the Queen may be lost and the game
still continued, whereas the fall of the King is the ultimate
disaster which instantly brings the contest to an end.
.The
double kingship thus seems to indicate a categorical
distinction between the sacred and the profane in the mentality
of the Khazars. The divine attributes of the Kagan are much in
evidence in the following passage from Ibn Hawkal: *[Ibn
Hawkal, another much-travelled Arab geographer and historian,
wrote his Oriental Geography around AD 977. The
passage here quoted is virtually a copy of what Istakhri wrote
forty years earlier, but contains less obscurities, so I have
followed Ouseley's translation (1800) of Ibn
Hawkal.]
- The Khacan must be always of the
Imperial race [Istakhri: "...of a family of
notables"]. No one is allowed to approach him but on
business of importance: then they prostrate themselves
before him, and rub their faces on the ground, until he
gives orders for their approaching him, and speaking. When a
Khacan ... dies, whoever passes near his tomb must go on
foot, and pay his respects at the grave; and when he is
departing, must not mount on horseback, as long as the tomb
is within view. So absolute is the authority of this
sovereign, and so implicitly are his commands obeyed, that
if it seemed expedient to him that one of his nobles should
die, and if he said to him, "Go and kill yourself," the man
would immediately go to his house, and kill himself
accordingly. The succession to the Khacanship being thus
established in the same family [Istakhri: "in a family
of notables who possess neither power nor riches"]; when
the turn of the inheritance arrives to any individual of it,
he is confirmed in the dignity, though he possesses not a
single dirhem [coin]. And I have heard from persons
worthy of belief, that a certain young man used to sit in a
little shop at the public market-place, selling petty
articles [Istakhri: 'selling bread"]; and that the
people used to say, "When the present Khacan shall have
departed, this man will succeed to the throne"
[Istakhri: "There is no man worthier of the Khaganate
than he"]. But the young man was a Mussulman, and they
give the Khacanship only to Jews. The Khacan has a throne
and pavilion of gold: these are not allowed to any other
person. The palace of the Khacan is loftier than the other
edifices.42
The passage about the virtuous young
man selling bread, or whatever it is, in the bazaar sounds
rather like a tale about Harun al Rashid. If he was heir to the
golden throne reserved for Jews, why then was he brought up as
a poor Muslim? If we are to make any sense at all of the story,
we must assume that the Kagan was chosen on the strength of his
noble virtues, but chosen among members of the "Imperial Race"
or "family of notables". This is in fact the view of Artamonov
and Zeki Validi. Artamonov holds that the Khazars and other
Turkish people were ruled by descendants of the Turkut dynasty,
the erstwhile sovereigns of the defunct Turk Empire (cf. above,
section 3). Zeki Validi suggests that the "Imperial Race" or
"family of notables", to which the Kagan must belong, refers to
the ancient dynasty of the Asena, mentioned in Chinese sources,
a kind of desert aristocracy, from which Turkish and Mongol
rulers traditionally claimed descent. This sounds fairly
plausible and goes some way towards reconciling the
contradictory values implied in the narrative just quoted: the
noble youth without a dirhem to his name - and the pomp and
circumstance surrounding the golden throne. We are witnessing
the overlap of two traditions, like the optical interference of
two wave-patterns on a screen: the asceticism of a tribe of
hard-living desert nomads, and the glitter of a royal court
prospering on its commerce and crafts, and striving to outshine
its rivals in Baghdad and Constantinople. After all, the creeds
professed by those sumptuous courts had also been inspired by
ascetic desert- prophets in the past..All
this does not explain the startling division of divine and
secular power, apparently unique in that period and region. As
Bury wrote:43 "We have no information at what time the active
authority of the Chagan was exchanged for his divine nullity,
or why he was exalted to a position resembling that of the
Emperor of Japan, in which his existence, and not his
government, was considered essential to the prosperity of the
State." .A
speculative answer to this question has recently been proposed
by Artamonov. He suggests that the acceptance of Judaism as the
state religion was the result of a coup d'Ètat,
which at the same time reduced the Kagan, descendant of a pagan
dynasty whose allegiance to Mosaic law could not really be
trusted, to a mere figurehead. This is a hypothesis as good as
any other - and with as little evidence to support it. Yet it
seems probable that the two events - the adoption of Judaism
and the establishment of the double kingship - were somehow
connected.*[Before the conversion the Kagan was still
reported to play an active role - as, for instance, in his
dealings with Justinian. To complicate matters further, the
Arab sources sometimes refer to the "Kagan" when they clearly
mean the "Bek" (as "kagan" was the generic term for "ruler"
among many tribes), and they also use different names for the
Bek, as the following list shows (after Minorsky, Hudud al
Alam, p. 451):