Forgotten Empire of the Khazars
After reading the title of this article, the reader will first of all remember Pushkin's "Song of the Prophetic Oleg":
Take revenge on the unreasonable Khazars.
Their villages and fields for a violent raid
He doomed swords and fires ...
The Slavs (Krivichi) and Chud pay tribute to the Varangians, and the Polans, Northerners and Vyatichi pay tribute to the Khazars. Radziwill chronicle. End of the XNUMXth century
So, in The Tale of Bygone Years, the chronicler begins the Russian history with the mention of the tribute that the Khazars collected from the Slavic tribes of the Middle Dnieper. Nestor the chronicler tells how the steppe-Khazars approached the land of the meadows - the then inhabitants of Kyiv, and demanded tribute from them, and the meadows gave them tribute with swords, in which the Khazars saw an unkind sign! Later, this happened, the chronicler concludes his story - the Russian princes began to own the Khazars.
As Alexander Sergeevich wrote, the Khazars were “avenged”, but not by Oleg and not by his son Igor, but by Igor’s heir, Svyatoslav, who in the 960s defeated the once powerful Khazar state, leaving no stone unturned from him ...
Where did the Khazars come from?
If we rewind a little from the Khazar history, then the Khazars were by no means the first inhabitants of the steppe zone of Eurasia, who sought to impose tribute on settled farmers and townspeople.
In the XNUMXth century, the Hunnic state, which terrified the whole of Eurasia, collapsed, and it was replaced, presumably from Central Asia, by a new wave of conquerors - the Turks, who replaced other nomads in these steppes - the Iranian-speaking Sarmatians and Alans, and created their own state - the Turkic Khaganate, where the title of the ruler of this nomadic formation - "kagan" (khan of khans), was equated with the title of the emperor himself!
Turkic Khaganate
By the end of the XNUMXth century, during the period of the greatest expansion of the Khaganate, this state controlled a huge territory, which included the territories of modern Northern China, Mongolia, Altai, Central Asia, Crimea and the North Caucasus!
But, as is always the case with unstable and nomadic states, in 603 the Turkic Khaganate broke up into two warring groups of Turks - the Western Turkic and Eastern Turkic Khaganates.
Map of the Western Turkic and Eastern Turkic Khaganates
The possessions of the newly formed Western Turkic Khaganate stretched from Central Asia to the Urals and the Black Sea steppes and included a large number of different peoples. And it was through this territory that the most important trade routes passed, where the interests of the largest eastern powers clashed and a struggle was fought for control over them, which led to constant wars and changes in territories.
And it was there, in the Western Turkic Khaganate - in the steppes of the Eastern Ciscaucasia, that our heroes ended up - the Khazars, who separated in the 620s into a tribal union already as an independent political unit.
The Khazars, being confederates in the Western Turkic Khaganate, in the middle of the 610th century were in contact with the Persians and even helped the Byzantine emperor Heraclius (r. 641-650) in his campaign against the Persians. But as a result of the invasion of Chinese troops, long intertribal wars and dynastic civil strife in the XNUMXs, the Western Turkic Khaganate disintegrates, and a new state, the Khazar Khaganate, becomes its full political heir.
Origin of the Khazars
The origin of the Khazars is very confusing and still causes heated debate, because it is completely incomprehensible to which linguistic and ethnic Turkic group of peoples they previously belonged. Yes, and the language of the Khazars is as much a mystery as the Khazars themselves, since nothing has survived from it, except for the names and titles of the rulers, which also do not exactly indicate what type of Turkic language (like Oghuz or like Kypchaks) they spoke. Even having already become a state, ethnically it was very diverse, consisting of Turks, Slavs, Iranians, Germans, Finno-Ugric peoples and many other groups.
It is generally accepted that the Khazars, as a people, descended from a huge variety of Turkic tribes, possibly from Central Asia (the theory of Uighur origin), the Urals or even the North Caucasus. They were indeed very ethnically disparate, retaining different skin tones (white and black Khazars) and anthropological types, which would be evident throughout Khazar history.
There is also an opinion that the Savir tribes played an important role in the process of Khazar ethnogenesis.* - originally from the regions of Western Siberia.
Thus, by the Khazars, we must mean a conglomeration of nationalities. Before us is a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional education. The formation of this conglomerate was largely facilitated by the geographical position of Khazaria.
Some descriptions of this people, which have come down to our time, are taken from the annals of an unknown chronicler. Here is what he writes about them:
And here is how the medieval Arab geographer Abu Ishak al-Istakhri describes the Khazars* (approximately 908-951), whose observations of a man, undoubtedly literate, for contemporaries are one of the most important sources on the Khazar theme:
And the medieval author Moses Kaghankatvatsi describes them as
Further strengthening of the Khaganate
Immediately after the fall of the Western Turkic Khaganate and the formation of the Khazarian Khaganate on its ruins, political events begin to develop very quickly!
In 680, after the Khazars completely defeated the state of Great Bulgaria, the newly formed Khazar Khaganate, which entered the historical arena, became the only centralized and strong state between the Black and Caspian Seas and fully established its political influence in this region. In the territories conquered by the Khazars, a kind of ethnic union was established, the principle of which was the expression by the conquered tribes of obedience to the Khazar Khagan and the payment of tribute to him on the terms of protecting them from external enemies, preserving their own form of power and freedom of religion.
So, a new state was formed on a vast territory, which during its heyday at the beginning of the Middle Ages controlled a huge piece of the south of modern Russia: from Astrakhan to Western Ukraine.
The presence of the Khazars in this territory left a significant mark on history. They were intermediaries in the trade of goods between Europe and the Silk Road and possessed such a strong military force that their power was equal to that of the Byzantine Empire and the Arab Caliphate.
Khazar Khaganate
On their southern border, the already strengthened Khazars began to threaten Sisanid Iran, it was not for nothing that the Iranian rulers began to strengthen the fortress of Derbent in the Caspian Sea so that the Khazars would not break into the territory subject to Iran through the Caspian Gates.
Khazar warrior
Continuing to move further south, in Transcaucasia, the Khazars clashed with the Arabs, which led to long (from 650 to 737 years) and bloody wars that were fought with varying success, where the Arabs raided the Khazar cities of Semender* and Belenger* were replaced by the actions of the Khazar army on the territory of Iran (the campaign of 721 and the victory of the Khazars near Ardabil in 730). As a result, this war ended with the complete defeat of the army of the Khazar commander Khazar-Tarkhan and the capture of the headquarters of the Khazar Khagan Al-Bayda by the Arabs under the command of the last Arab caliph from the Umayyad dynasty, Marwan II, in 737.
But the results of this war were contradictory. The Arab Umayyad Caliphate collapsed in 751, thanks to which the Khazar Khaganate quickly recovered from this defeat in the XNUMXth century, and a time of economic recovery began there. On the territory controlled by the Khazars, the Saltov-Mayak archaeological culture arises, which is identified with the material culture of the Khazar Khaganate, and the regions of the Taman Peninsula and Crimea begin to be settled by the settled population of the Don River basin and the Seversky Donets, where minting of coins begins...
In the 834th century (about XNUMX), the Khazars built the city of Sarkel (Belaya Vezha) on the lower Don, and Itil, the capital of the Khazar Khaganate.* - turned into a major trading post.
Reconstruction of a dwelling of the Saltovo-Mayak culture. Divnogorye, Voronezh Region]
Khazar archaeological sites are for us evidence of the formation of urban culture in those places where previously only vast steppes stretched, through which the wind walked. But, unfortunately, these monuments preserved for contemporaries only inscriptions made in Turkic runes, which have not been deciphered so far.
Archaeological excavations in the territories controlled by the Khazars speak of a high and self-sufficient culture.
In the area of the Don and Seversky Donets rivers, there was a large iron smelting center for this region, whose products were tools for crafts and agriculture. During the excavations, complete sets of tools for crafts were found - these are hammers and hammers, anvils, metal shears, tongs, etc. Of the weapons, sabers were found, which were the main weapons Khazar army, spearheads and arrowheads.
Sarkel fortress. Reconstruction
On the territory of modern southeastern Ukraine there was a copper smelting center, the ore of which was brought there from the foothills of the Caucasus. Silver, bronze and copper fittings for horse harness and military belts, as well as jewelry, were products of our own production.
The beginning of decline
After an unprecedented civilizational upsurge, the political situation in the Khazar Khaganate began to change already at the beginning of the XNUMXth century and was characterized by the growth of centrifugal forces in the Black Sea and Don steppes. The first cracks in the state of the Khazars began with some kind of internal conflict, which in our historiography is usually called the civil war in Khazaria, although this name is not entirely acceptable, since in the Khazaria of the XNUMXth century there was no civil society and citizens in our understanding - it was a society with a subservient culture. A more appropriate name for this conflict is internecine war.
The only written source about the civil war in Khazaria is the text of the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus that has survived to this day.* (905–959):
Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus
It follows from the text of Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus that an internecine war took place in the kaganate, in which the Khazar rulers and rebels (whose ethnic and social affiliation is not indicated in the text) acted as opposing sides. Well, the result of this war was the victory of the Khazar government, the destruction of part of the rebels and the flight of the other part to the land of the Pechenegs (Pachinakia), where they settled with the Hungarians.
The decline of Khazaria and its causes
The result of the campaign of Prince Svyatoslav in 965 and the constant raids of the Pechenegs and Guzes in 965-969. there was a complete ruin of the country, the destruction of cities and, as a result, the fall of the kaganate, which at the end of the XNUMXth century had already completely ceased to exist as a state.
But, apparently, the reasons for the collapse of the Khazars were within the Khaganate itself, and not in constant and exhausting wars with neighbors. The inability of the Khazar Khaganate to repel external threats was just a symptom of the crisis of the entire system. After all, the civil war in the Khaganate at the beginning of the XNUMXth century and the wars with the Arab Caliphate were much larger events, but the Khazar state after these upheavals still survived and survived, but the decline of the state began from the end of the XNUMXth century.
Khazar decoration
The Khazars, as a people, went exactly the same historical path as their predecessors, who created their short-lived states in the steppe part of Eurasia - the Huns and Turks, and with the fall of the Khazar Khaganate, all social and ethnic ties collapsed, and the titular people disappeared.
In modern historiography, there are several versions of the reasons for the decline of the Khazar state.
One of them - a version of the economic crisis - was proposed by the famous Soviet and Russian ethnologist and orientalist L. N. Gumilyov (1912–1992). In his opinion, the trade routes that passed through Khazaria, and which were almost the main source of income for this state, were disrupted due to the political crisis in China at the turn of the XNUMXth century, due to which the Great Silk Road was disorganized.
Khazar "Coin of Moses". The coin dates back to around 800.
Another reason for the decline, which, according to L.N. Gumilyov, had an impact on the stable position of Khazaria, is the struggle in the West Frankish kingdom between the Capetian dukes of Ile-de-France and the last of the kings of the Carolingian dynasty.
Well, if we consider the reasons for the collapse of the kaganate from the point of view of the theory of ethnogenesis*, then by the end of the XNUMXth century the Khazars had already completely lost their activity (or, as Gumilyov aptly put it, passionarity*).
The cumulative result of all these processes was the defeat of Khazaria from more active (passionate) neighbors!
The main event that prompted the fall of the Khazar Khaganate was the campaign of Svyatoslav in 965. This military campaign of his is very well described in The Tale of Bygone Years. True, in the "Tale of Bygone Years" there are no direct indications of the destruction of the Khazar state in 965, it only testifies to the defeat of the Khazars and the ruin of their main cities.
This campaign, rather, resembled a classic medieval predatory raid, which could only weaken the country or serve as a significant impetus to the collapse of the state, which was already in a state of serious crisis.
Acceptance of Judaism
Information from a few written sources about the adoption of Judaism by the Khazar elite adds religious and political motives to the discussion about the role of the Khazars in the history of early statehood among the peoples of Eurasia, in particular, among the Eastern Slavs.
In about 740, part of the Khazars converted to Judaism, led by the commander Bulan, who later became king (bek), and at first Bulan and his entourage kept their conversion to Judaism secret, hiding it even from their people.
Interestingly, the legend about the choice of faith among the Khazars was about the same as that of the Kyiv prince Vladimir, after almost a century and a half. Envoys from the Byzantine Empire and the Arab Caliphate actively persuaded the Khazar ruler to their faith. But already at the end of the XNUMXth - beginning of the XNUMXth centuries, one of his descendants, King Obadiah, declared Judaism the state religion of Khazaria.
At the same time, the conversion of a powerful people to Judaism is not at all an ordinary event, so there was every reason to believe that this event should have caused a wave of responses in various written sources of that period. However, in the case of the Khazars, such evidence is practically non-existent.
Even in terms of the scale of treatment, there are discrepancies among specialists. Some believe that only the royal family and the surrounding part of the higher nobility converted to Judaism. Others, in particular Israeli historians, insist on the widespread dissemination of this religion among all the Khazars, as well as on its penetration into the environment of the peoples subordinate to the Khazars.
In more recent times, the history of the conversion of the Khazars to Judaism has long served as a source of pride for the Jews and an argument in favor of the Jewish religion. But the texts that have come down to us, testifying to the conversion of the Khazars to Judaism, are recognized as controversial, as well as the absence of any archaeological or other material evidence indicating a mass conversion of the people, which generally casts doubt on both the scale and the very historicity of this fact...
Some historians studying this unique state believe that the conversion of Khazaria to Judaism demonstrated to many neighbors its spiritual independence from neighboring Byzantium and the Arab Caliphate.
But among researchers there is another, completely opposite opinion: experts believe that Judaism, which allegedly existed in the Khazar Khaganate, is nothing more than an ordinary medieval hoax coming from a Jew from Cordoba, an Andalusian scientist and personal physician who ruled there in the XNUMXth century caliph.
Hasdai ben Shapruta wrote a letter in Hebrew addressed to Tsar Joseph, who was then ruling in Khazaria, handed it over with the Radanite merchants* and received a response letter from Joseph, written in Hebrew, where the ruler told him in detail about the history and geography of his country and how his ancestors converted to Judaism, about his relations with powerful neighbors - Byzantium, the Arab Caliphate and the Rus. Here is what he reports:
Further, the Khazar king lists the tribes subject to him:
You also asked me about my place of residence. Know that I live by this river, with the help of the Almighty, and there are three cities on it. In one lives the queen; this city where I was born. He is great, has 50 to 50 farsakhs* in length (and width). Jews, Christians and Ismailis live in the second city... It is of medium size, has a length and width of 8 by 8 farsakhs. In the third city I myself live, my princes, servants and servants and butlers close to me. It is located in the form of a circle, has a length and width of 3 by 3 farsakhs. A river flows between these walls. This is my stay until winter."
Correspondence published in Russian
Many historians doubted the authenticity of the letter of the Khazar king.
The role and significance of the Khazar state
Khazaria played a significant geopolitical role in the history of the Eastern European countries - it was a barrier that covered them from the invasion of the Arabs (as Poitiers defended the Franks in his time) and stopped further Arab expansion into Europe.
Here is what A. Koestler writes in his book “The Thirteenth Tribe”:
There can hardly be any doubt that if it were not for the Khazars, who inhabited the regions north of the Caucasus, then Byzantium, the stronghold of European civilization in the east, would have been outflanked by the Arabs, and then the history of Christianity and Islam would be very different from what we know today.
some memory
The Khazar heritage is preserved today in sayings and proverbs in the Caucasus. Here is what the Kumyks say about the wealth of the Khazars: “The Khazars are gone - the treasury of Kumykia is gone (dried out). That I have a Khazar treasury or something?
It is considered bad luck for us to give knives. And the Khazars never took tribute from the tribes with swords and daggers, and weapons in general. They just bought it.
In Russian folk tales, the protagonist is Kazarin, who came from the "Land of the Zhidovinskaya", with whom Russian heroes are fighting. There are suggestions that Koschey, who kidnaps the princess, is the name of Khazarin.
Vladimir Svyatoslavich, like his son Yaroslav the Wise, was called the title of kagan in the "Sermon on Law and Grace".
Afterword
In this article, I tried to trace the history of the Khazars and the Khazar Khaganate from the beginning to its end, using the few existing sources. I deliberately did not pay much attention to the Byzantine-Khazar and Russian-Khazar relations.
He did not write about the role of the Khazars in Crimean affairs, he did not pay attention at all to the mission of the Enlightener of the Slavs Constantine (Cyril) to Khazaria (860) and his dispute with the Muslim imam and the Jewish rabbi, which took place in the presence of the Khazar kagan himself.
There is nothing about Bulan - the ancestor of the dynasty of the Khazar rulers and his successor Obadiah - the reformer of the Khazar state. There is nothing about the descendants of the Khazars - Crimean Karaites, Chuvashs and, possibly, Dagestan Tats. I did not mention the civil war in Khazaria associated with the adoption of Judaism, nor did I describe in more detail the process of converting the Khazars to a new faith.
He did not pay any attention to the campaigns of the Rus in the Caspian Sea. Almost nothing has been written about the Saltov-Mayak culture, which, in all likelihood, coincides with the political borders of the Khazar state.
Why is that? But because for a more detailed description of the historical episodes that I did not include in the story, I would need not an article, but a whole book ...
Notes
*Abu Ishaq al-Istakhri (ca. 908–951). Arabic geographer. Traveled around Iran, visited a number of countries in Central, South and West Asia. He wrote the "Book of Ways and Countries", which is a collection of geographical maps with explanatory notes. His work influenced the writings of many Arab and Persian geographers.
*Savirs. Nomadic tribes, at the beginning of the VI century, came to the North Caucasus, where they briefly became the leading military force. In the middle of the XNUMXth century, they were defeated by the Avars and defeated by Sasanian Iran. Later, the Savirs were known in the Middle Volga region, where they joined the Volga Bulgars. Orientalist and ethnographer L. N. Gumilyov believed that the descendants of the Savirs, who became glorified, became northerners. It is believed that the name of Siberia came from the name of the Savirs.
*Radanites - itinerant Jewish merchants who during the early Middle Ages controlled trade links between the Islamic East and Christian Europe along the Silk Road and other trade routes, creating the first permanent trading network in history, stretching from China and India to Western Europe. Historians do not rule out that it was the Radanites who brought the Jewish faith to Khazaria.
*Passionarity - an overabundance of human energy, for the sake of some lofty goals. Passionarity generates in a person an irresistible inner desire for vigorous activity aimed at a sharp change in his life and his environment. These changes are more valuable for the passionary than his own life. At the same time, passionate activity can easily give rise to both feats and crimes.
*Passionary theory of ethnogenesis - a certain historical process of interaction of ethnic groups with the landscape, as well as with other ethnic groups. The theory was put forward by Lev Gumilyov (1912-1992), but did not meet with the understanding and support of scientists either in the USSR or abroad.
*Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (905-959) - emperor of Byzantium from the Macedonian dynasty (sometimes this dynasty is called Armenian). Known as one of the most educated people of his era, he was the author of many works, in particular, he describes the visit (in 957) of Princess Olga to Constantinople and her baptism. In his book "On the Management of the Empire" (circa 950), he outlines the economic and political structure of Rus'. He was poisoned by his son Roman II the Younger.
*Marvan II (Marvan the Deaf) (688-750) - the last, fourteenth, Arab caliph from the Umayyad dynasty, who ruled in Damascus.
*farsakh (farsang) - a measure of length of ancient Persian origin. The approximate distance that the caravan travels before the next rest. Or the distance that can be walked in an hour. 1 farsang roughly corresponds to Western European 1 league.
*Semender. The identification of this city is controversial.
Today, the role of Semender is claimed by the village of Tarki, located not far from Makhachkala, but, perhaps, according to archaeologists, this city was located elsewhere.
*Belenger. Another Caspian city of the Khazars. Identification is also controversial. According to some scholars, this city may have stood on the site known today as the Verkhnechiryurt settlement (Kizilyurt district of Dagestan). It was flooded during the construction of the Sulak hydroelectric power station.
*Itil (river) - the Turkic name of the Volga.
*Itil (city) - the capital of the Khazar Khaganate in the middle of the VIII - X centuries. According to medieval sources, it was located in the Volga delta, but archaeological searches for Itil have not yet yielded results, and its exact location remains unknown. A possible candidate for the role of Itil is the Samosdelskoye settlement near the village of Samosdelka.
*«A Word on Law and Grace”- the speech of the Kyiv Metropolitan Hilarion in the middle of the XNUMXth century, where he glorifies the baptist of Rus', Prince Vladimir Svyatoslavich and his son Yaroslav the Wise. The Lay provides a theological understanding of the place of the Russian Church in the history of the Divine economy of salvation. It is one of the oldest monuments of ancient Russian literature.
What to read:
1. L. N. Gumilyov "Discovery of Khazaria"
2. M. I. Artamonov "History of the Khazars"
3. S. A. Pletneva "Khazars"
4. A. Koestler "The Thirteenth Tribe"
5. D. Dunlop “History of the Khazar-Jews. Religion of the higher clans"
6. A. P. Novoseltsev "The Khazar state and its role in the history of Eastern Europe and the Caucasus"
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