Jew vs Zionism also known as Khazar

[Asif]

The Khazar Heritage Web Site
The Thirteenth Tribe by Arthur Koestler
Rise and Fall of the Khazars
"In Khazaria, sheep, honey, and Jews exist in large quantities." Muqaddasi,
Descriptio Imperii Moslemici (tenth century).
CHAPTER ONE, PART 1:
RISE AND FALL OF THE KHAZARS

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 givena 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.

PART 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 5 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.

PART 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 chronicler11
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.

PART 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.

PART 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.

PART 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.

PART 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.

PART 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

PART 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.

PART 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.

PART 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.

PART 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.

However, 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.

PART 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 László'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.

PART 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
'seventhousand 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'élite 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])

PART 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.38a

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 : "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, (Alföldi 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"].41a 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"];41b 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"].41c 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'état, 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:

Const. Porphyr. Khaqan Bek

Ibn Rusta Khazar Khaqan Aysha

Masudi Khaqan Malik

Istakhri Malik Khazar Khaqan Khazar*

Ibn Hawkal Khaqan Khazar Malik Khazar or Bek

Gardezi Khazar Khaqan Abshad

[Chris Tucker]

Asif <asif...@sprint.ca> cut and pasted a bunch of total fiction in message
news:qerj4.12029$MI4.1...@newscontent-01.sprint.ca...

However, as Asif well knows, the truth about the Khazars can be found at
www.hatewatch.org

Did Modern Jews Descend from the Khazers?

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Many anti-Semites complain that modern Jews are not the Biblical Jews but
are descended from the Khazars. The Khazars converted to Judaism and thus
modern day Jews, it is claimed, are imposters who have no claim on the Land
of Israel, Eretz Yisrael. This claim will be discussed in the following
sections.

It is also interesting to note that the same anti-Semites who complain about
the alleged contents of the Talmud, which was completed no later than 500
C.E. also claim that the Jews of today are "self-styled Jews" descended from
the Khazars who converted to Judaism in 740 C.E. Some even claim that the
"true" descendants of the Biblical Jews are the modern day "Aryans". So
according to this "logic" the Talmud which they complain about would
actually be an "Aryan" book and not that of the modern Jews! Its difficult
to see how they can reconcile these two seemingly contradictory positions.

David S. Maddison(dmad...@geocities.com)

RESPONSE (1)

THE HISTORICAL EVIDENCE
As for Ashkenazim being Khazars, for one thing there were Jews on the Rhine
(who came with the Romans) long before there was a Khazaria and even before
many Germanic tribes settled there. In fact, the word Ashkenaz means Germany
in Hebrew. Second, even if a group of Khazars abandoned their own homeland
and adopted Jewish peoplehood by conversion it still doesn't negate their
right to the land of Israel. Even Moses's wives weren't born Hebrews and
Ruth the Moabitess was a convert (see Book of Ruth). Unlike the Germans,
membership in the Jewish peoplehood is not based soley on blood.

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RESPONSE (2)

DESCENDED FROM KHAZARS?
The following article addresses the issues of the Khazars with reference to
a particular anti-Semitic film where the same claim is made. From "The Other
Israel - Is it Really Accurate", 1990 Dennis Green, Stuart Hayward, Phillip
Woodfield Opposition to Anti-Semitism, Incorporated, Christchurch, New
Zealand.

In the film, Ted Pike makes the assertion (as have most anti-Semitic groups,
including the Nazis) that the Jews of European origin, the "Askhenazim" (who
comprise almost 80% of today's Jewry), are actually descended from a
medieval people called the Khazars, who converted to Judaism in the 8th
century. The logic of the argument goes something like this; if 80% of all
the Jews in tile world are not really Jews, then, firstly, these Jews have
absolutely no claim, biblical or otherwise, to the Land of Israel. Secondly,
these Jews are in no way the people of God, and thus, have no place in the
promises or plans of God. Thirdly, if the vast majority of present-day Jews
are not Jews (therefore, not Semitic) at all, then it cannot be considered
"anti-Semitic" to oppose them.

Pike states that 'Today, the Askhenazim, or Khazars, form the majority,
Around 80 %, of those who call themselves Jews." He claims that the Mongols
drove the Khazar-jews into Germany, Poland and Russia in the 13th century,
and that these, not "real" Jews, are the people who now make up most of the
population of Israel. Quite simply, this is not true, as the basic analysis
below will show.

The Khazars were a confederation of Turkish tribes who established a major
commercial empire in the second half of the 6th century. As a trading
nation, they were faced with a dilemma; tile Christians would not trade
freely with Muslim nations, and the Muslim nations would not trade freely
with the Christian nations. The Khazars did not want to be recognized as
being more partial to one faith than the other. Therefore, around 740 C.E.,
King Bulan adopted Judaism, and thus, as a "neutral" people, the Khazars
could trade more freely with both the Christian and Muslim nations that
bordered Khazaria. It should be noted, however, that it was only the "ruling
class" that adopted Judaism, not the general Khazar population, as Ted Pike
and the other anti-Semites claim (1). These Khazar-Jews had little, if any,
contact with the central Jewish organisation in Iraq, or with the Jews who
still lived in Palestine (as the Romans had renamed the province of Judea in
135 C.E.). These Khazar-jews had, in fact, closer links with the (Christian)
Byzantine Empire, as can been seen by the fact that several Byzantine
emperors, including Justinian II (704) and Constantine V (732), had
Khazarian wives.

By the 10th century the Khazar empire, faced with the growing strength of
the Pechenegs to their north and west, and of the Russians around Kiev,
suffered a decline. Khazar power was crushed in 965 when the ruler of Kiev,
Svyatoslav, launched a harsh military campaign against them. Many Khazars,
including some of those who had converted to Judaism, moved into Bohemia,
Russia, Germany, and the Ukraine.

The main error with Pike's argument is his belief that the Khazar-jews are
the ancestors of all those Jews who have lived in Northern or Eastern
Europe, and therefore, the Askhenazim (Jews of European origin) are not
really Jews at all. This argument can be demolished very simply, by showing
that there were very large Jewish communities in Northern and Eastern Europe
before the Khazar-Jews arrived there, and that these (with perhaps a tiny
percentage of Khazar-jews) are the ancestors of the Askhenazim. Thus, these
Jews are clearly descended from the Jews of the Bible.

The first Jews to reach Germany were merchants who went there in the wake of
the Roman legions, and settled in the Roman-founded Rhine towns. The
earliest detailed record of a Jewish community in Germany, referring to
Cologne, is found in imperial decrees issued in 321 and 331 C.E. (2)

There were Jews in Russia from the first centuries C.E., although numbers
there were small for several centuries. However, Jews emigrated to the
Caucasus and beyond, and formed countless communities, at the time of the
wars between the Muslims and Persians during the 7th century.(3)

Jews arrived in Pannonia (Yugoslavia) and Romania in the Third Century(4),
and in Hungary not long after. France also had large numbers of Jews living
there from an early period; Objects identified as Jewish because of the
menorah portrayed on them have been discovered around Arles (first, fourth
and early fifth centuries) and Bordeaux and the neighboring region (third
and early fourth centuries) Evidence of Jewish communities is abundant from
465 onwards.

Jews were, of course, living in all Mediterranean countries for many
centuries B.C.E. and, as has been shown, were living in most other European
lands from a very early period. Thus, the claim of Ted Pike (and most other
anti-Semitic groups) that the European Jews are from Khazar stock, falls
flat on its face. There may be a tiny minority of present-day Jews who are
descended from Khazar-Jews, but almost all European Jews are descended
directly from the Jews of the Bible.

(1) Encyclopaedia Judaica, Vol. 10, col. 944
(2) Encyclopaedia Judaica, Vol. 7, col. 458
(3) Encyclopaedia Judaica, Vol. 14, col. 433
(4) Encyclopaedia Judaica, Vol. 16, col. 868

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RESPONSE (3)

WHO IS A JEW?
This is also an exract of an article that addresses the lies presented in
the anti-Semitic video "The Other Israel". David S. Maddison
(madd...@connexus.net.au)

The video alleges that the Ashkenazim are Khazars and only the Sephardim are
authentic Jews. In other words, that the majority of Jews in thhe world
today are descended from a heathen, nomad people from central Asia, and not
from Abraham.

In support of this contention it states that Jewish missionaries went to
Khazaria and as a result the king was converted in A.D. 740 and Rabbinic
Judaism became the state religion. It is averred that by the 10th century
the Khazari people had convinced themselves that they were descended from
Abraham, that they settled in Poland, and that they were the Polish Jews
from whom the Ashkenazim, who make up the greater part of Jewry today, were
descended. There is enough truth in this assertion to make it seem plausible
but unfortunately it flies against the facts.

The Jews who went to Khazaria did not go as missionaries, in the sense that
we send out miissionaries today. When the Moslems overan Babylon, the Jews
were either expelled or freed to pay half their produce as tribute (13), and
when Leo became the Byzantine Emperor one of the measures he passed was for
the compulsory conversion of all Jews to Christianity. As a result of these
persecutions many Jews from Persia and Greece went to Khazaria to live.(2,3)

In about A.D.700 the Khazar king was converted to Islam and later to
Judaism. A later king, Obadiah, greatly strengthened Judaism, inviting
rabbis into his Kingdom and building synagogues. Their Judaism - limited no
doubt in any case to a comparitively small group (only the king, his
attendants and the Khazars of his kind) - was always superficial and they
were liable to relapse into paganism. They became what could best be called
Judaized Turks. Religious toleration was maintained for the Kingdom's 300
years, with clear traces of Christianity being found among them for the
whole historical period. The predominating element in the country were the
Muslims, and they formed the royal army(3). In the 10th century, "probably
in 965, Khazar leaders appealed to a neighbouring Islamic state for help
against invasion but were told that the price of assistance was Khazaria's
conversion to Islam. According to Muslim historians the kingdom that had
embraced Judaism around 740 suddenly abandoned it less than two and a half
centuries later. But this did not save them and by the end of the eleventh
century the Khazar empire was no more."(1) There are persistent references
to the Khazars as Muslims after A.D. 965(3).

To encourage their own people, Jewish writers have tended to exaggerate the
importance of the Khazar conversions to Judaism, leaving out unpalatable
facts. The smallest group among the Khazars were the Jews, most of them
being Muslims and Christians. The king and his court were Jews for much of
their 300 years history and because religious toleration was maintained many
persecuted Jews fled there. The fact is that rather than convince themselves
by the 10th century that they were Jews descended from Abraham, they found
it expedient to convert to Islam.

On the linguistic side, well known Turcologist, A.N.Poliak, regards the
Karaite Jews in Poland and the Crimea as the principal present-day
representatives of the ancient Khazars, (Karaitism is a minor sect of
Judaism quite distinct from mainstream Judaisni) and 'investigations have
tended to establish the absence of western influences in Yiddish, though on
the other hand affinities with German dialects of the east and south-east
have been indicated.'(3)

This is not to say that the occasional occurrence of a fair, light skinned,
eastern European Jew doesn't indicate the possibility of some admixture of
Khazar blood. However from the thirteenth century there came a great
movement across the face of Europe, which was to continue for the next four
centuries, to the hospitable lands of Poland and Lithuania.(5)' 'For long
generations, therefore, Poland continued to appear in the light of a land of
promise for the Jews of northern Europe, and to receive a perpetual
accession of new settlers - refugees escaping from massacre, young men
seeking opportunity, merchants from as far afield as Italy or the Balkans.
In 1500, the number of Jews in the country is estimated to have been only
50,000 souls; a century and a half later, it had risen to half a million.
...so from the beginning of the sixteenth century the overwhelming mass if
Askenazic Jewry, the remants of the communities of medieval england and
France and Germanym with others from further afield - became concentrated in
Poland abd the surrounding Slavonic territories. It is from them that the
majority of the Jews in the world today are descended." (4).

REFERENCES

(1) Abba Eban, (1984). Heritage, Civilisation and the Jews
(2) Martin Gilbert, (1969). Jewish History Atlas
(3) D.M. Dunlop, (1987). The History of the Jewish Khazars
(4) Cecil Roth, (1970). A History of the Jews
(5) Chaim Bermant, (1977). The Jews
(13) David J. Goldberg and John D. Rayner, (1987). The Jewish People,Their
History and Their Religion.

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RESPONSE 4

THE GENETIC EVIDENCE
Apart from the historical evidence proving that a vast majority of
present-day Jews did not descend from the Khazars, there is now also genetic
evidence. Among the Jews there is the class of priests called Cohanim who
served in the Temple and who now carry surnames such as "Cohen" and many
variations on that name. Cohanim comprise of about 5% of the male Jewish
population. There are strict rules of marriage for the Cohanim and the title
is only passed through the male line. Also, converts cannot become Cohanim
(but their children will be if they have a Cohen as a father). The priestly
line is descended directly from the Aaron of the bible so it is expected
that all Cohanim would carry some common genetic features.

In recently published work (1) it was found that 54% of self-identified
Cohanim had common genetic features that were revealed by analysis of their
DNA. Specifically, a component of the Y-chromosone, an allele YAP+ DYS19,
was identified that showed up only 1.5% of the time in Cohanim but 18.4% of
the time in a random selection of non-Cohanim Jews and there were other
genetic differences apparent as well. (The same differences were apparent
for both Sepphardic and Askhenazic Jews also proving a common origin
pre-dating a later split between the two groups.)

The large number of Cohanim among present-day Jews and the fact that they
have a common genetic lineage traceable to Israel at the time of the Temple,
demonstrates that modern Jews come from a population pool derived from
Israel and not from the Khazars. The Khazars could not have developed their
own lineage of Cohanim anyway, since being a Cohen is a male-inherited
status which converts (the Khazars) could not have obtained.

(1) Skorecki K; Selig S; Blazer S; Bradman R; Bradman N; Waburton PJ;
Ismajlowicz M; Hammer MF (1997) Y chromosomes of Jewish priests. Nature,
385:32.

David S. Maddison(dmad...@geocities.com)