The Khazars (, ; Persian: خزر‎, Azerbaijani:
Xəzərlər; Turkish: Hazarlar; Bashkir: Хазарлар;
Tatar: Хәзәрләр, Xäzärlär; Hebrew:
כוזרים‎, Kuzarim;, Xazar; Ukrainian:
Хоза́ри, Chozáry; Russian: Хаза́ры,
Hazáry; Hungarian: Kazárok; Xazar; Greek:
Χάζαροι, Cházaroi; Latin: Gazari/Gasani)
were a 
semi-nomadic Turkic people with a confederation
of Turkic-speaking tribes that in the late
6th century CE established a major commercial
empire covering the southeastern section of
modern European Russia. The Khazars created
what for its duration was the most powerful
polity to emerge from the break-up of the
Western Turkic Khaganate. Astride a major
artery of commerce between Eastern Europe
and Southwestern Asia, Khazaria became one
of the foremost trading emporia of the medieval
world, commanding the western marches of the
Silk Road and playing a key commercial role
as a crossroad between China, the Middle East
and Kievan Rus'. For some three centuries
(c. 650–965) the Khazars dominated the vast
area extending from the Volga-Don steppes
to the eastern Crimea and the northern Caucasus.Khazaria
long served as a buffer state between the
Byzantine Empire and both the nomads of the
northern steppes and the Umayyad Caliphate,
after serving as Byzantium's proxy against
the Sasanian Persian empire. The alliance
was dropped around 900. Byzantium began to
encourage the Alans to attack Khazaria and
weaken its hold on Crimea and the Caucasus,
while seeking to obtain an entente with the
rising Rus' power to the north, which it aspired
to convert to Christianity. Between 965 and
969, the Kievan Rus' ruler Sviatoslav I of
Kiev conquered the capital Atil and destroyed
the Khazar state.
Determining the origins and nature of the
Khazars is closely bound with theories of
their languages, but it is a matter of intricate
difficulty since no indigenous records in
the Khazar language survive, and the state
was polyglot and polyethnic. The native religion
of the Khazars is thought to have been Tengrism,
like that of the North Caucasian Huns and
other Turkic peoples. The polyethnic populace
of the Khazar Khaganate appears to have been
a multiconfessional mosaic of pagan, Tengrist,
Jewish, Christian and Muslim worshippers.
The ruling elite of the Khazars was said by
Judah Halevi and Abraham ibn Daud to have
converted to Rabbinic Judaism in the 8th century,
but the scope of the conversion within the
Khazar Khanate remains uncertain.
Proposals of Khazar origins have been made
regarding the Bukharan Jews, the Muslim Kumyks,
Kazakhs, the Cossacks of the Don region, the
Turkic-speaking Krymchaks and their Crimean
neighbours the Karaites to the Moldavian Csángós,
the Mountain Jews, Subbotniks and others.
In the late 19th century, a theory emerged
that the core of today's Ashkenazi Jews descended
from a hypothetical Khazarian Jewish diaspora
who had migrated westward from modern Russia
and Ukraine into modern France and Germany.
This theory still finds occasional support,
but most scholars view it with scepticism.
The theory is sometimes associated with antisemitism
and anti-Zionism.
== Etymology ==
Gyula Németh, following Zoltán Gombocz,
derived Xazar from a hypothetical *Qasar reflecting
a Turkic root qaz- ("to ramble, to roam")
being an hypothetical velar variant of Common
Turkic kez-. In the fragmentary Tes and Terkhin
inscriptions of the Uyğur empire (744–840)
the form 'Qasar' is attested, though uncertainty
remains whether this represents a personal
or tribal name, gradually other hypotheses
emerged. Louis Bazin derived it from Turkic
qas- ("tyrannize, oppress, terrorize") on
the basis of its phonetic similarity to the
Uyğur tribal name, Qasar. András Róna-Tas
connects it with Kesar, the Pahlavi transcription
of the Roman title Caesar.D. M. Dunlop tried
to link the Chinese term for "Khazars" to
one of the tribal names of the Uyğur Toquz
Oğuz, namely the Gésà. The objections are
that Uyğur Gesa/Qasar was not a tribal name
but rather the surname of the chief of the
思结 Sijie tribe (Khotanese: Sikari) of
the Toquz Oğuz, and that in Middle Chinese
the ethnonym "Khazars", always prefaced with
the word Tūjué (Tūjué Kěsà bù:突厥可薩部;
Tūjué Hésà:突厥曷薩), is transcribed
with characters different from those used
to render the Qa- in the Uyğur word 'Qasar'.After
their conversion it is reported that they
adopted the Hebrew script, and it is likely
that, though speaking a Türkic language,
the Khazar chancellery under Judaism probably
corresponded in Hebrew. In Expositio in Matthaeum
Evangelistam, Gazari, presumably Khazars,
are referred to as the Hunnic people living
in the lands of Gog and Magog and said to
be circumcised and omnem Judaismum observat,
observing all the laws of Judaism.
While the Khazar language went extinct centuries
ago, modern Turkic languages still refer to
the Caspian Sea as the "Khazar Sea" (cf. Khazar
University and Khazar Islands in Baku, Azerbaijan).
== Linguistics ==
Determining the origins and nature of the
Khazars is closely bound with theories of
their languages, but it is a matter of intricate
difficulty, since no indigenous records in
the Khazar language survive, and the state
was polyglot and polyethnic. Whereas the royal
or ruling elite probably spoke an eastern
variety of Shaz Turkic, the subject tribes
appear to have spoken varieties of Lir Turkic,
such as Oğuric, a language variously identified
with Bulğaric, Chuvash, and Hunnish (the
latter based upon the assertion of the Persian
historian al-Iṣṭakhrī that the Khazar
language was different from any other known
tongue). One method for tracing their origins
consists in analysis of the possible etymologies
behind the ethnonym "Khazar".
== History ==
=== Tribal origins and early history ===
The tribes that were to comprise the Khazar
empire were not an ethnic union, but a congeries
of steppe nomads and peoples who came to be
subordinated, and subscribed to a core Turkic
leadership. Many Turkic groups, such as the
Oğuric peoples, including Šarağurs, Oğurs,
Onoğurs, and Bulğars who earlier formed
part of the Tiĕlè (鐵勒) confederation,
are attested quite early, having been driven
West by the Sabirs, who in turn fled the Asian
Avars, and began to flow into the Volga-Caspian-Pontic
zone from as early as the 4th century CE and
are recorded by Priscus to reside in the Western
Eurasian steppelands as early as 463. They
appear to stem from Mongolia and South Siberia
in the aftermath of the fall of the Hunnic/Xiōngnú
nomadic polities. A variegated tribal federation
led by these Turks, probably comprising a
complex assortment of Iranian, proto-Mongolic,
Uralic, and Palaeo-Siberian clans, vanquished
the Rouran Khaganate of the hegemonic central
Asian Avars in 552 and swept westwards, taking
in their train other steppe nomads and peoples
from Sogdiana.The ruling family of this confederation
may have hailed from the Āshǐnà (阿史那)
clan of the West Türkic tribes, though Constantine
Zuckerman regards Āshǐnà and their pivotal
role in the formation of the Khazars with
scepticism. Golden notes that Chinese and
Arabic reports are almost identical, making
the connection a strong one, and conjectures
that their leader may have been Yǐpíshèkuì
(Chinese:乙毗射匱), who lost power or
was killed around 651. Moving west, the confederation
reached the land of the Akatziroi, who had
been important allies of Byzantium in fighting
off Attila's army.
=== Rise of the Khazar state ===
An embryonic state of Khazaria began to form
sometime after 630, when it emerged from the
breakdown of the larger Göktürk Qağanate.
Göktürk armies had penetrated the Volga
by 549, ejecting the Avars, who were then
forced to flee to the sanctuary of the Hungarian
plain. The Āshǐnà clan whose tribal name
was 'Türk' (the strong one) appear on the
scene by 552, when they overthrew the Rourans
and established the Göktürk Qağanate. By
568, these Göktürks were probing for an
alliance with Byzantium to attack Persia.
An internecine war broke out between the senior
eastern Göktürks and the junior West Turkic
Qağanate some decades later, when on the
death of Taspar Qağan, a succession dispute
led to a dynastic crisis between Taspar's
chosen heir, the Apa Qağan, and the ruler
appointed by the tribal high council, Āshǐnà
Shètú (阿史那摄图), the Ishbara Qağan.
By the first decades of the 7th century, the
Āshǐnà yabgu Tong managed to stabilise
the Western division, but upon his death,
after providing crucial military assistance
to Byzantium in routing the Sasanian army
in the Persian heartland, the Western Turkic
Qağanate dissolved under pressure from the
encroaching Tang dynasty armies and split
into two competing federations, each consisting
of five tribes, collectively known as the
"Ten Arrows" (On Oq). Both briefly challenged
Tang hegemony in eastern Turkestan. To the
West, two new nomadic states arose in the
meantime, Old Great Bulgaria under Kubrat,
the Duōlù clan leader, and the Nǔshībì
subconfederation, also consisting of five
tribes. The Duōlù challenged the Avars in
the Kuban River-Sea of Azov area while the
Khazar Qağanate consolidated further westwards,
led apparently by an Āshǐnà dynasty. With
a resounding victory over the tribes in 657,
engineered by General Sū Dìngfāng (蘇定方),
Chinese overlordship was imposed to their
East after a final mop-up operation in 659,
but the two confederations of Bulğars and
Khazars fought for supremacy on the western
steppeland, and with the ascendency of the
latter, the former either succumbed to Khazar
rule or, as under Asparukh, Kubrat's son,
shifted even further west across the Danube
to lay the foundations of the First Bulgarian
Empire in the Balkans (c. 679).The Qağanate
of the Khazars thus took shape out of the
ruins of this nomadic empire as it broke up
under pressure from the Tang dynasty armies
to the east sometime between 630–650. After
their conquest of the lower Volga region to
the East and an area westwards between the
Danube and the Dniepr, and their subjugation
of the Onoğur-Bulğar union, sometime around
670, a properly constituted Khazar Qağanate
emerges, becoming the westernmost successor
state of the formidable Göktürk Qağanate
after its disintegration. According to Omeljan
Pritsak, the language of the Onoğur-Bulğar
federation was to become the lingua franca
of Khazaria as it developed into what Lev
Gumilev called a 'steppe Atlantis' (stepnaja
Atlantida/ Степная Атлантида).
Historians have often referred to this period
of Khazar domination as the Pax Khazarica
since the state became an international trading
hub permitting Western Eurasian merchants
safe transit across it to pursue their business
without interference. The high status soon
to be accorded this empire to the north is
attested by Ibn al-Balḫî's Fârsnâma (c.
1100), which relates that the Sasanian Shah,
Ḫusraw 1, Anûsîrvân, placed three thrones
by his own, one for the King of China, a second
for the King of Byzantium, and a third for
the king of the Khazars. Though anachronistic
in retrodating the Khazars to this period,
the legend, in placing the Khazar qağan on
a throne with equal status to kings of the
other two superpowers, bears witness to the
reputation won by the Khazars from early times.
=== Khazar state: culture and institutions
===
==== Royal Diarchy with sacral Qağanate ====
Khazaria developed a Dual kingship governance
structure, typical among Turkic nomads, consisting
of a shad/bäk and a qağan. The emergence
of this system may be deeply entwined with
the conversion to Judaism. According to Arabic
sources, the lesser king was called îšâ
and the greater king Khazar xâqân; the former
managed and commanded the military, while
the greater king's role was primarily sacral,
less concerned with daily affairs. The greater
king was recruited from the Khazar house of
notables (ahl bait ma'rûfīn) and, in an
initiation ritual, was nearly strangled until
he declared the number of years he wished
to reign, on the expiration of which he would
be killed by the nobles. The deputy ruler
would enter the presence of the reclusive
greater king only with great ceremony, approaching
him barefoot to prostrate himself in the dust
and then light a piece of wood as a purifying
fire, while waiting humbly and calmly to be
summoned. Particularly elaborate rituals accompanied
a royal burial. At one period, travellers
had to dismount, bow before the ruler's tomb,
and then walk away on foot. Subsequently,
the charismatic sovereign's burial place was
hidden from view, with a palatial structure
('Paradise') constructed and then hidden under
rerouted river water to avoid disturbance
by evil spirits and later generations. Such
a royal burial ground (qoruq) is typical of
inner Asian peoples. Both the îšâ and the
xâqân converted to Judaism sometime in the
8th century, while the rest, according to
the Persian traveller Ahmad ibn Rustah, probably
followed the old Tūrkic religion.
==== Ruling elite ====
The ruling stratum, like that of the later
Činggisids within the Golden Horde, was a
relatively small group that differed ethnically
and linguistically from its subject peoples,
meaning the Alano-As and Oğuric Turkic tribes,
who were numerically superior within Khazaria.
The Khazar Qağans, while taking wives and
concubines from the subject populations, were
protected by a Khwârazmian guard corps, or
comitatus, called the Ursiyya. But unlike
many other local polities, they hired soldiers
(mercenaries) (the junûd murtazîqa in al-Mas'ûdî).
At the peak of their empire, the Khazars ran
a centralised fiscal administration, with
a standing army of some 7–12,000 men, which
could, at need, be multiplied two or three
times that number by inducting reserves from
their nobles' retinues. Other figures for
the permanent standing army indicate that
it numbered as many as one hundred thousand.
They controlled and exacted tribute from 25–30
different nations and tribes inhabiting the
vast territories between the Caucasus, the
Aral Sea, the Ural Mountains, and the Ukrainian
steppes. Khazar armies were led by the Qağan
Bek (pronounced as Kagan Bek) and commanded
by subordinate officers known as tarkhans.
When the bek sent out a body of troops, they
would not retreat under any circumstances.
If they were defeated, every one who returned
was killed.Settlements were governed by administrative
officials known as tuduns. In some cases,
such as the Byzantine settlements in southern
Crimea, a tudun would be appointed for a town
nominally within another polity's sphere of
influence. Other officials in the Khazar government
included dignitaries referred to by ibn Fadlan
as Jawyshyghr and Kündür, but their responsibilities
are unknown.
==== Demographics ====
It has been estimated that from 25 to 28 distinct
ethnic groups made up the population of the
Khazar Qağanate, aside from the ethnic elite.
The ruling elite seems to have been constituted
out of nine tribes/clans, themselves ethnically
heterogeneous, spread over perhaps nine provinces
or principalities, each of which would have
been allocated to a clan. In terms of caste
or class, some evidence suggests that there
was a distinction, whether racial or social
is unclear, between "White Khazars" (ak-Khazars)
and "Black Khazars" (qara-Khazars). The 10th-century
Muslim geographer al-Iṣṭakhrī claimed
that the White Khazars were strikingly handsome
with reddish hair, white skin, and blue eyes,
while the Black Khazars were swarthy, verging
on deep black, as if they were "some kind
of Indian". Many Turkic nations had a similar
(political, not racial) division between a
"white" ruling warrior caste and a "black"
class of commoners; the consensus among mainstream
scholars is that Istakhri was confused by
the names given to the two groups. However,
Khazars are generally described by early Arab
sources as having a white complexion, blue
eyes, and reddish hair. The name of the presumed
founding Āshǐnà clan may reflect an etymology
suggestive of a darkish colour. The distinction
appears to have survived the collapse of the
Khazarian empire. Later Russian chronicles,
commenting on the role of the Khazars in the
magyarisation of Hungary, refer to them as
"White Oghurs" and Magyars as "Black Ogurs".
Studies of the physical remains, such as skulls
at Sarkel, have revealed a mixture of Slavic,
other European, and a few Mongolian types.
==== Economy ====
The import and export of foreign wares, and
the revenues derived from taxing their transit,
was a hallmark of the Khazar economy, though
it is said also to have produced isinglass.
Distinctively among the nomadic steppe polities,
the Khazar Qağanate developed a self-sufficient
domestic Saltovo economy, a combination of
traditional pastoralism – allowing sheep
and cattle to be exported – extensive agriculture,
abundant use of the Volga's rich fishing stocks,
together with craft manufacture, with a diversification
in lucrative returns from taxing international
trade given its pivotal control of major trade
routes. The Khazars constituted one of the
two great furnishers of slaves to the Muslim
market (the other being the Iranian Sâmânid
amîrs), supplying it with captured Slavs
and tribesmen from the Eurasian northlands.
It was profits from the latter which enabled
it to maintain a standing army of Khwarezm
Muslim troops. The capital Atil reflected
the division: Kharazān on the western bank
where the king and his Khazar elite, with
a retinue of some 4,000 attendants, dwelt,
and Itil proper to the East, inhabited by
Jews, Christians, Muslims and slaves and by
craftsmen and foreign merchants. The ruling
elite wintered in the city and spent from
spring to late autumns in their fields. A
large irrigated greenbelt, drawing on channels
from the Volga river, lay outside the capital,
where meadows and vineyards extended for some
20 farsakhs (ca. 60 miles?). While customs
duties were imposed on traders, and tribute
and tithes were exacted from 25–30 tribes,
with a levy of one sable skin, squirrel pelt,
sword, dirham per hearth or ploughshare, or
hides, wax, honey and livestock, depending
on the zone. Trade disputes were handled by
a commercial tribunal in Atil consisting of
seven judges, two for each of the monotheistic
inhabitants (Jews, Muslims, Christians) and
one for the pagans.
=== Khazars and Byzantium ===
Byzantine diplomatic policy towards the steppe
peoples generally consisted of encouraging
them to fight among themselves. The Pechenegs
provided great assistance to the Byzantines
in the 9th century in exchange for regular
payments. Byzantium also sought alliances
with the Göktürks against common enemies:
in the early 7th century, one such alliance
was brokered with the Western Tűrks against
the Persian Sasanians in the Byzantine–Sasanian
War of 602–628. The Byzantines called Khazaria
Tourkía, and by the 9th century referred
to the Khazars as 'Turks'. During the period
leading up to and after the siege of Constantinople
in 626, Heraclius sought help via emissaries,
and eventually personally, from a Göktürk
chieftain of the Western Tűrkic Qağanate,
Tong Yabghu Qağan, in Tiflis, plying him
with gifts and the promise of marriage to
his daughter, Epiphania. Tong Yabghu responded
by sending a large force to ravage the Persian
empire, marking the start of the Third Perso-Turkic
War. A joint Byzantine-Tűrk operation breached
the Caspian gates and sacked Derbent in 627.
Together they then besieged Tiflis, where
the Byzantines may have deployed an early
variety of traction trebuchets (ἑλέπόλεις)
to breach the walls. After the campaign, Tong
Yabghu is reported, perhaps with some exaggeration,
to have left some 40,000 troops behind with
Heraclius. Though occasionally identified
with Khazars, the Göktürk identification
is more probable since the Khazars only emerged
from that group after the fragmentation of
the former sometime after 630. Some scholars
argued that Sasanian Persia never recovered
from the devastating defeat wrought by this
invasion.
Once the Khazars emerged as a power, the Byzantines
also began to form alliances with them, dynastic
and military. In 695, the last Heraclian emperor,
Justinian II, nicknamed the slit-nosed (ὁ
ῥινότμητος) after he was mutilated
and deposed, was exiled to Cherson in the
Crimea, where a Khazar governor (tudun) presided.
He escaped into Khazar territory in 704 or
705 and was given asylum by qağan Busir Glavan
(Ἰβουζήρος Γλιαβάνος),
who gave him his sister in marriage, perhaps
in response to an offer by Justinian, who
may have thought a dynastic marriage would
seal by kinship a powerful tribal support
for his attempts to regain the throne. The
Khazarian spouse thereupon changed her name
to Theodora. Busir was offered a bribe by
the Byzantine usurper, Tiberius III, to kill
Justinian. Warned by Theodora, Justinian escaped,
murdering two Khazar officials in the process.
He fled to Bulgaria, whose Khan Tervel helped
him regain the throne. Upon his reinstalment,
and despite Busir's treachery during his exile,
he sent for Theodora; Busir complied, and
she was crowned as Augusta, suggesting that
both prized the alliance.Decades later, Leo
III (ruled 717–741) made a similar alliance
to co-ordinate strategy against a common enemy,
the Muslim Arabs. He sent an embassy to the
Khazar qağan Bihar and married his son, the
future Constantine V (ruled 741–775), to
Bihar's daughter, a princess referred to as
Tzitzak, in 732. On converting to Christianity,
she took the name Irene. Constantine and Irene
had a son, the future Leo IV (775–780),
who thereafter bore the sobriquet, "the Khazar".
Leo died in mysterious circumstances after
his Athenian wife bore him a son, Constantine
VI, who on his majority co-ruled with his
mother, the dowager. He proved unpopular,
and his death ended the dynastic link of the
Khazars to the Byzantine throne. By the 8th
century, Khazars dominated the Crimea (650-c.950),
and even extended their influence into the
Byzantine peninsula of Cherson until it was
wrested back in the 10th century. Khazar and
Farghânian (Φάργανοι) mercenaries
constituted part of the imperial Byzantine
Hetaireia bodyguard after its formation in
840, a position that could openly be purchased
by a payment of seven pounds of gold.
=== Arab–Khazar wars ===
During the 7th and 8th centuries, the Khazars
fought a series of wars against the Umayyad
Caliphate and its Abbasid successor. The First
Arab-Khazar War began during the first phase
of Muslim expansion. By 640, Muslim forces
had reached Armenia; in 642 they launched
their first raid across the Caucasus under
Abd ar-Rahman ibn Rabiah. In 652 Arab forces
advanced on the Khazar capital, Balanjar,
but were defeated, suffering heavy losses;
according to Persian historians such as al-Tabari,
both sides in the battle used catapults against
the opposing troops. A number of Russian sources
give the name of a Khazar khagan from this
period as Irbis and describe him as a scion
of the Göktürk royal house, the Ashina.
Whether Irbis ever existed is open to debate,
as is whether he can be identified with one
of the many Göktürk rulers of the same name.
Due to the outbreak of the First Muslim Civil
War and other priorities, the Arabs refrained
from repeating an attack on the Khazars until
the early 8th century. The Khazars launched
a few raids into Transcaucasian principalities
under Muslim dominion, including a large-scale
raid in 683–685 during the Second Muslim
Civil War that rendered much booty and many
prisoners. There is evidence from the account
of al-Tabari that the Khazars formed a united
front with the remnants of the Göktürks
in Transoxiana.
The Second Arab-Khazar War began with a series
of raids across the Caucasus in the early
8th century. The Umayyads tightened their
grip on Armenia in 705 after suppressing a
large-scale rebellion. In 713 or 714, Umayyad
general Maslamah conquered Derbent and drove
deeper into Khazar territory. The Khazars
launched raids in response into Albania and
Iranian Azerbaijan but were driven back by
the Arabs under Hasan ibn al-Nu'man. The conflict
escalated in 722 with an invasion by 30,000
Khazars into Armenia inflicting a crushing
defeat. Caliph Yazid II responded, sending
25,000 Arab troops north, swiftly driving
the Khazars back across the Caucasus, recovering
Derbent, and advancing on Balanjar. The Arabs
broke through the Khazar defence and stormed
the city; most of its inhabitants were killed
or enslaved, but a few managed to flee north.
Despite their success, the Arabs had not yet
defeated the Khazar army, and they retreated
south of the Caucasus.
In 724, Arab general al-Jarrah ibn Abdallah
al-Hakami inflicted a crushing defeat on the
Khazars in a long battle between the rivers
Cyrus and Araxes, then moved on to capture
Tiflis, bringing Caucasian Iberia under Muslim
suzerainty. The Khazars struck back in 726,
led by a prince named Barjik, launching a
major invasion of Albania and Azerbaijan;
by 729, the Arabs had lost control of northeastern
Transcaucasia and were thrust again into the
defensive. In 730, Barjik invaded Iranian
Azerbaijan and defeated Arab forces at Ardabil,
killing the general al-Djarrah al-Hakami and
briefly occupying the town. Barjik was defeated
and killed the next year at Mosul, where he
directed Khazar forces from a throne mounted
with al-Djarrah's severed head. In 737, Marwan
Ibn Muhammad entered Khazar territory under
the guise of seeking a truce. He then launched
a surprise attack in which The Qaghan fled
north and the Khazars surrendered. The Arabs
did not have resources to influence affairs
of Transcaucasia. The Qağan was forced to
accept terms involving conversion to Islam,
and to subject himself to the Caliphate, but
the accommodation was short-lived as a combination
of internal instability among the Umayyads
and Byzantine support undid the agreement
within three years, and the Khazars re-asserted
their independence. The suggestion that the
Khazars adopted Judaism as early as 740 is
based on the idea that, in part, it was, a
re-assertion of independence with regard to
both Byzantium and the Caliphate, while conforming
to a general Eurasian trend to embrace a world
religion.Whatever the impact of Marwan's campaigns,
warfare between the Khazars and the Arabs
ceased for more than two decades after 737.
Arab raids continued until 741, but their
control in the region was limited as maintaining
a large garrison at Derbent further depleted
the already overstretched army. A third Muslim
civil war soon broke out, leading to the Abbasid
Revolution and the fall of the Umayyad dynasty
in 750.
In 758, the Abbasid Caliph al-Mansur attempted
to strengthen diplomatic ties with the Khazars,
ordering Yazid ibn Usayd al-Sulami, one of
his nobles and the military governor of Armenia,
to take a royal Khazar bride. Yazid married
a daughter of Khazar Khagan Baghatur, but
she died inexplicably, possibly in childbirth.
Her attendants returned home, convinced that
some Arab faction had poisoned her, and her
father was enraged. Khazar general Ras Tarkhan
invaded south of the Caucasus in 762–764,
devastating Albania, Armenia, and Iberia,
and capturing Tiflis. Thereafter relations
became increasingly cordial between the Khazars
and the Abbasids, whose foreign policies were
generally less expansionist than the Umayyads,
broken only by a series of raids in 799 over
another failed marriage alliance.
=== Rise of the Rus' and the collapse of the
Khazarian state ===
By the 9th century, groups of Varangian Rus',
developing a powerful warrior-merchant system,
began probing south down the waterways controlled
by the Khazars and their protectorate, the
Volga Bulgarians, partially in pursuit of
the Arab silver that flowed north for hoarding
through the Khazarian-Volga Bulgarian trading
zones, partially to trade in furs and ironwork.
Northern mercantile fleets passing Atil were
tithed, as they were at Byzantine Cherson.
Their presence may have prompted the formation
of a Rus' state by convincing the Slavs, Merja
and the Chud' to unite to protect common interests
against Khazarian exactions of tribute. It
is often argued that a Rus' Khaganate modelled
on the Khazarian state had formed to the east,
and that the Varangian chieftain of the coalition
appropriated the title of qağan (khagan)
as early as the 830s: the title survived to
denote the princes of Kievan Rus', whose capital,
Kiev, is often associated with a Khazarian
foundation. The construction of the Sarkel
fortress, with technical assistance from Khazaria's
Byzantine ally at the time, together with
the minting of an autonomous Khazar coinage
around the 830s, may have been a defensive
measure against emerging threats from Varangians
to the north and from the Magyars on the eastern
steppe. By 860, the Rus' had penetrated as
far as Kiev and, via the Dnieper, Constantinople.
Alliances often shifted. Byzantium, threatened
by Varangian Rus' raiders, would assist Khazaria,
and Khazaria at times allowed the northerners
to pass through their territory in exchange
for a portion of the booty. From the beginning
of the 10th century, the Khazars found themselves
fighting on multiple fronts as nomadic incursions
were exacerbated by uprisings by former clients
and invasions from former allies. The pax
Khazarica was caught in a pincer movement
between steppe Pechenegs and the strengthing
of an emergent Rus' power to the north, both
undermining Khazaria's tributary empire. According
to the Schechter Text, the Khazar ruler King
Benjamin (ca.880–890) fought a battle against
the allied forces of five lands whose moves
were perhaps encouraged by Byzantium. Though
Benjamin was victorious, his son Aaron II
faced another invasion, this time led by the
Alans, whose leader had converted to Christianity
and entered into an alliance with Byzantium,
which, under Leo VI the Wise, encouraged them
to fight against the Khazars.
By the 880s, Khazar control of the Middle
Dnieper from Kiev, where they collected tribute
from Eastern Slavic tribes, began to wane
as Oleg of Novgorod wrested control of the
city from the Varangian warlords Askold and
Dir, and embarked on what was to prove to
be the foundation of a Rus' empire. The Khazars
had initially allowed the Rus' to use the
trade route along the Volga River, and raid
southwards. See Caspian expeditions of the
Rus'. According to Al-Mas‘udi, the qağan
is said to have given his assent on the condition
that the Rus' give him half of the booty.
In 913, however, two years after Byzantium
concluded a peace treaty with the Rus' in
911, a Varangian foray, with Khazar connivance,
through Arab lands led to a request to the
Khazar throne by the Khwârazmian Islamic
guard for permission to retaliate against
the large Rus' contingent on its return. The
purpose was to revenge the violence the Rus'
razzias had inflicted on their fellow Muslim
believers. The Rus' force was thoroughly routed
and massacred. The Khazar rulers closed the
passage down the Volga to the Rus', sparking
a war. In the early 960s, Khazar ruler Joseph
wrote to Hasdai ibn Shaprut about the deterioration
of Khazar relations with the Rus': 'I protect
the mouth of the river (Itil-Volga) and prevent
the Rus arriving in their ships from setting
off by sea against the Ishmaelites and (equally)
all (their) enemies from setting off by land
to Bab.'
The Rus' warlords launched several wars against
the Khazar Qağanate, and raided down to the
Caspian sea. The Schechter Letter relates
the story of a campaign against Khazaria by
HLGW (recently identified as Oleg of Chernigov)
around 941 in which Oleg was defeated by the
Khazar general Pesakh. The Khazar alliance
with the Byzantine empire began to collapse
in the early 10th century. Byzantine and Khazar
forces may have clashed in the Crimea, and
by the 940s emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus
was speculating in De Administrando Imperio
about ways in which the Khazars could be isolated
and attacked. The Byzantines during the same
period began to attempt alliances with the
Pechenegs and the Rus', with varying degrees
of success. Sviatoslav I finally succeeded
in destroying Khazar imperial power in the
960s, in a circular sweep that overwhelmed
Khazar fortresses like Sarkel and Tamatarkha,
and reached as far as the Caucasian Kassogians/Circassians
and then back to Kiev. Sarkel fell in 965,
with the capital city of Atil following, c.
968 or 969.
In the Russian chronicle the vanquishing of
the Khazar traditions is associated with Vladimir's
conversion in 986. According to the Primary
Chronicle, in 986 Khazar Jews were present
at Vladimir's disputation to decide on the
prospective religion of the Kievan Rus'. Whether
these were Jews who had settled in Kiev or
emissaries from some Jewish Khazar remnant
state is unclear. Conversion to one of the
faiths of the people of Scripture was a precondition
to any peace treaty with the Arabs, whose
Bulgar envoys had arrived in Kiev after 985.A
visitor to Atil wrote soon after the sacking
of the city that its vineyards and garden
had been razed, that not a grape or raisin
remained in the land, and not even alms for
the poor were available. An attempt to rebuild
may have been undertaken, since Ibn Hawqal
and al-Muqaddasi refer to it after that date,
but by Al-Biruni's time (1048) it was in ruins.
=== Aftermath: impact, decline and dispersion
===
Though Poliak argued that the Khazar kingdom
did not wholly succumb to Sviatoslav's campaign,
but lingered on until 1224, when the Mongols
invaded Rus', by most accounts, the Rus'-Oghuz
campaigns left Khazaria devastated, with perhaps
many Khazarian Jews in flight, and leaving
behind at best a minor rump state. It left
little trace, except for some placenames,
and much of its population was undoubtedly
absorbed in successor hordes. Al-Muqaddasi,
writing ca.985, mentions Khazar beyond the
Caspian sea as a district of 'woe and squalor',
with honey, many sheep and Jews. Kedrenos
mentions a joint Rus'-Byzantine attack on
Khazaria in 1016, which defeated its ruler
Georgius Tzul. The name suggests Christian
affiliations. The account concludes by saying,
that after Tzul's defeat, the Khazar ruler
of "upper Media", Senaccherib, had to sue
for peace and submission. In 1024 Mstislav
of Chernigov (one of Vladimir's sons) marched
against his brother Yaroslav with an army
that included "Khazars and Kassogians" in
a repulsed attempt to restore a kind of 'Khazarian'-type
dominion over Kiev. Ibn al-Athir's mention
of a 'raid of Faḍlūn the Kurd against the
Khazars' in 1030 CE, in which 10,000 of his
men were vanquished by the latter, has been
taken as a reference to such a Khazar remnant,
but Barthold identified this Faḍlūn as
Faḍl ibn Muḥammad and the 'Khazars' as
either Georgians or Abkhazians. A Kievian
prince named Oleg, grandson of Jaroslav was
reportedly kidnapped by "Khazars" in 1079
and shipped off to Constantinople, although
most scholars believe that this is a reference
to the Cumans-Kipchaks or other steppe peoples
then dominant in the Pontic region. Upon his
conquest of Tmutarakan in the 1080s Oleg Sviatoslavich,
son of a prince of Chernigov, gave himself
the title "Archon of Khazaria". In 1083 Oleg
is said to have exacted revenge on the Khazars
after his brother Roman was killed by their
allies, the Polovtsi/Cumans. After one more
conflict with these Polovtsi in 1106, the
Khazars fade from history.By the end of the
12th century, Petachiah of Ratisbon reported
travelling through what he called "Khazaria",
and had little to remark on other than describing
its minim (sectaries) living amidst desolation
in perpetual mourning. The reference seems
to be to Karaites. The Franciscan missionary
William of Rubruck likewise found only impoverished
pastures in the lower Volga area where Ital
once lay. Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, the
papal legate to the court of the Mongol Khan
Guyuk at that time, mentioned an otherwise
unattested Jewish tribe, the Brutakhi, perhaps
in the Volga region. Though connections are
made to the Khazars, the link is based merely
on a common attribution of Judaism.
The 10th century Zoroastrian Dênkart registered
the collapse of Khazar power in attributing
its eclipse to the enfeebling effects of 'false'
religion. The decline was contemporary to
that suffered by the Transoxiana Sāmānid
empire to the east, both events paving the
way for the rise of the Great Seljuq Empire,
whose founding traditions mention Khazar connections.
Whatever successor entity survived, it could
not longer function as a bulwark against the
pressure east and south of nomad expansions.
By 1043, Kimeks and Qipchaqs, thrusting westwards,
pressured the Oğuz, who in turn pushed the
Pechenegs west towards Byzantium's Balkan
provinces.Khazaria nonetheless left its mark
on the rising states and some of their traditions
and institutions. Much earlier, Tzitzak, the
Khazar wife of Leo III introduced into the
Byzantine court the distinctive kaftan or
riding habit of the nomadic Khazars, the tzitzakion
(τζιτζάκιον), and this was adopted
as a solemn element of imperial dress. The
orderly hierarchical system of succession
by 'scales' (lestvichnaia sistema:лествичная
система) to the Grand Principate of
Kiev was arguably modelled on Khazar institutions,
via the example of the Rus' Khaganate.The
proto-Hungarian Pontic tribe, while perhaps
threatening Khazaria as early as 839 (Sarkel),
practiced their institutional model, such
as the dual rule of a ceremonial kende-kündü
and a gyula administering practical and military
administration, as tributaries of the Khazars.
A dissident group of Khazars, the Qabars,
joined the Hungarians in their migration westwards
as they moved into Pannonia. Elements within
the Hungarian population can be viewed as
perpetuating Khazar traditions as a successor
state. Byzantine sources refer to Hungary
as Western Tourkia in contrast to Khazaria,
Eastern Tourkia. The gyula line produced the
kings of medieval Hungary through descent
from Árpád, while the Qabars retained their
traditions longer, and were known as "black
Hungarians" (fekete magyarság). Some archaeological
evidence from Čelarevo suggests the Qabars
practised Judaism since warrior graves with
Jewish symbols were found there, including
menorahs, shofars, etrogs, lulavs, candlesnuffers,
ash collectors, inscriptions in Hebrew, and
a six-pointed star identical to the Star of
David.
The Khazar state was not the only Jewish state
to rise between the fall of the Second Temple
(67–70 CE) and the establishment of Israel
(1948). A second state in Yemen also adopted
Judaism in the 4th century, lasting until
the rise of Islam..
The Khazar kingdom is said to have stimulated
messianic aspirations for a return to Israel
as early as Judah Halevi. In the time of the
Egyptian vizier Al-Afdal Shahanshah (d.1121),
one Solomon ben Duji, often identified as
a Khazarian Jew, attempted to advocate for
a messianic effort for the liberation of,
and return of all Jews to, Palestine. He wrote
to many Jewish communities to enlist support.
He eventually moved to Kurdistan where his
son Menachem some decades later assumed the
title of Messiah and, raising an army for
this purpose, took the fortress of Amadiya
north of Mosul. His project was opposed by
the rabbinical authorities and he was poisoned
in his sleep. One theory maintains that the
Star of David, until then a decorative motif
or magical emblem, began to assume its national
value in late Jewish tradition from its earlier
symbolic use by Menachem.The word Khazar,
as an ethnonym, was last used in the 13th
century by a people in the North Caucasus
believed to practice Judaism. The nature of
a hypothetical Khazar diaspora, Jewish or
otherwise, is disputed. Avraham ibn Daud mentions
encountering rabbinical students descended
from Khazars as far away as Toledo, Spain
in the 1160s. Khazar communities persisted
here and there. Many Khazar mercenaries served
in the armies of the Islamic Caliphates and
other states. Documents from medieval Constantinople
attest to a Khazar community mingled with
the Jews of the suburb of Pera. Khazar merchants
were active in both Constantinople and Alexandria
in the 12th. century.
== Religion ==
=== Tengrism ===
Direct sources for Khazar religion are not
many, but in all likelihood they originally
engaged in a traditional Turkic form of cultic
practices known as Tengrism, which focused
on the sky god Tengri. Something of its nature
may be deduced from what we know of the rites
and beliefs of contiguous tribes, such as
the North Caucasian Huns. Horse sacrifices
were made to this supreme deity. Rites involved
offerings to fire, water, and the moon, to
remarkable creatures, and to "gods of the
road" (cf. Old Türk yol tengri, perhaps a
god of fortune). Sun amulets were widespread
as cultic ornaments. A tree cult was also
maintained. Whatever was struck by lightning,
man or object, was considered a sacrifice
to the high god of heaven. The afterlife,
to judge from excavations of aristocratic
tumuli, was much a continuation of life on
earth, warriors being interred with their
weapons, horses, and sometimes with human
sacrifices: the funeral of one tudrun in 711-12
saw 300 soldiers killed to accompany him to
the otherworld. Ancestor worship was observed.
The key religious figure appears to have been
a shamanising qam, and it was these (qozmím)
that were, according to the Khazar Hebrew
conversion stories, driven out.
Many sources suggest, and a notable number
of scholars have argued, that the charismatic
Āshǐnà clan played a germinal role in the
early Khazar state, though Zuckerman dismisses
the widespread notion of their pivotal role
as a 'phantom'. The Āshǐnà were closely
associated with the Tengri cult, whose practices
involved rites performed to assure a tribe
of heaven's protective providence. The qağan
was deemed to rule by virtue of qut, "the
heavenly mandate/good fortune to rule."
=== 
Christianity ===
Khazaria long served as a buffer state between
the Byzantine empire and both the nomads of
the northern steppes and the Umayyad empire,
after serving as Byzantium's proxy against
the Sasanian Persian empire. The alliance
was dropped around 900. Byzantium began to
encourage the Alans to attack Khazaria and
weaken its hold on Crimea and the Caucasus,
while seeking to obtain an entente with the
rising Rus' power to the north, which it aspired
to convert to Christianity.On Khazaria's southern
flank, both Islam and Byzantine Christianity
were proselytising great powers. Byzantine
success in the north was sporadic, though
Armenian and Albanian missions from Derbend
built churches extensively in maritime Daghestan,
then a Khazar district, Buddhism also had
exercised an attraction on leaders of both
the Eastern (552–742) and Western Qağanates
(552–659), the latter being the progenitor
of the Khazar state. In 682, according to
the Armenian chronicle of Movsês Dasxuranc'i,
the king of Caucasian Albania, Varaz Trdat,
dispatched a bishop Israyêl to convert Caucasian
"Huns" who were subject to the Khazars, and
managed to bring Alp Ilut'uêr, a son-in-law
of the Khazar qağan, and his army, to abandon
their shamanising cults and join the Christian
fold.The Arab Georgian martyr St Abo, who
converted to Christianity within the Khazar
kingdom around 779-80, describes local Khazars
as irreligious. Some reports register a Christian
majority at Samandar, or Muslim majorities
=== 
Judaism ===
The conversion of Khazars to Judaism is reported
by external sources and in the Khazar Correspondence,
though doubts persist. Hebrew documents, whose
authenticity was long doubted and challenged,
are now widely accepted by specialists as
either authentic or as reflecting internal
Khazar traditions. Archaeological evidence
for conversion, on the other hand, remains
elusive, and may reflect either the incompleteness
of excavations, or that the stratum of actual
adherents was thin. Conversion of steppe or
peripheral tribes to a universal religion
is a fairly well attested phenomenon, and
the Khazar conversion to Judaism, though unusual,
would not have been unique. Other scholars
have concluded that the conversion of the
Khazar elite to Judaism never happened. A
few scholars, Moshe Gil, recently seconded
by Shaul Stampfer, dismiss the conversion
as a myth.Jews from both the Islamic world
and Byzantium are known to have migrated to
Khazaria during periods of persecution under
Heraclius, Justinian II, Leo III, and Romanus
Lakapēnos. For Simon Schama, Jewish communities
from the Balkans and the Bosphoran Crimea,
especially from Panticapaeum, began migrating
to the more hospitable climate of pagan Khazaria
in the wake of these persecutions, and were
joined there by Jews from Armenia. The Geniza
fragments, he argues, make it clear the Judaising
reforms sent roots down into the whole of
the population. The pattern is one of an elite
conversion preceding large-scale adoption
of the new religion by the general population,
which often resisted the imposition. One important
condition for mass conversion was a settled
urban state, where churches, synagogues or
mosques provided a focus for religion, as
opposed to the free nomadic lifestyle of life
on the open steppes. A tradition of the Iranian
Judeo-Tats claims that their ancestors were
responsible for the Khazar conversion. A legend
traceable to the 16th-century Italian rabbi
Judah Moscato attributed it to Yitzhak ha-Sangari.Both
the date of the conversion, and the extent
of its influence beyond the elite, often minimised
in some scholarship, are a matter of dispute,
but at some point between 740 and 920 CE,
the Khazar royalty and nobility appear to
have converted to Judaism, in part, it is
argued, perhaps to deflect competing pressures
from Arabs and Byzantines to accept either
Islam or Orthodoxy.The earliest surviving
Arabic text that refers to Khazar Jewishness
appears to be that of ibn Rustah, a Persian
scholar who wrote an encyclopedic work on
geography in the early tenth century. It is
believed that ibn Rustah derived much of his
information from the works of his contemporary
Abu al Jayhani based in Central Asia.
Christian of Stavelot in his Expositio in
Matthaeum Evangelistam (ca. 860–870s) refers
to Gazari, presumably Khazars, as living in
the lands of Gog and Magog, who were circumcised
and omnem Judaismum observat—observing all
the laws of Judaism. New numismatic evidence
of coins dated 837/8 bearing the inscriptions
arḍ al-ḫazar (Land of the Khazars), or
Mûsâ rasûl Allâh (Moses is the messenger
of God, in imitation of the Islamic coin phrase:
Muḥammad rasûl Allâh) suggest to many
the conversion took place in that decade.
Olsson argues that the 837/8 evidence marks
only the beginning of a long and difficult
official Judaization that concluded some decades
later. A 9th-century Jewish traveller, Eldad
ha-Dani, is said to have informed Spanish
Jews in 883 that there was a Jewish polity
in the East, and that fragments of the legendary
Ten Lost Tribes, part of the line of Simeon
and half-line of Manasseh, dwelt in “the
land of the Khazars”, receiving tribute
from some 25 to 28 kingdoms. Another view
holds that by the 10th century, while the
royal clan officially claimed Judaism, a non-normative
variety of Islamisation took place among the
majority of Khazars.By the 10th century, the
letter of King Joseph asserts that, after
the royal conversion, "Israel returned (yashuvu
yisra'el) with the people of Qazaria (to Judaism)
in complete repentance (bi-teshuvah shelemah).
Persian historian Ibn al-Faqîh wrote that
'all the Khazars are Jews, but they have been
Judaized recently'. Ibn Fadlân, based on
his Caliphal mission (921–922) to the Volga
Bulğars, also reported that 'the core element
of the state, the Khazars, were Judaized',
something underwritten by the Qaraite scholar
Ya'kub Qirqisânî around 937. The conversion
appears to have occurred against a background
of frictions arising from both an intensification
of Byzantine missionary activity from the
Crimea to the Caucasus, and Arab attempts
to wrest control over the latter in the 8th
century CE, and a revolt, put down, by the
Khavars around the mid-9th century is often
invoked as in part influenced by their refusal
to accept Judaism. Modern scholars generally
see the conversion as a slow process through
three stages, which accords with Richard Eaton's
model of syncretic inclusion, gradual identification
and, finally, displacement of the older tradition.Some
time between 954 and 961, Ḥasdai ibn Shaprūṭ,
from al-Andalus (Muslim Spain), wrote a letter
of inquiry addressed to the ruler of Khazaria,
and received a reply from Joseph of Khazaria.
The exchanges of this Khazar Correspondence,
together with the Schechter Letter discovered
in the Cairo Geniza and the famous platonizing
dialogue by Judah Halevi, Sefer ha-Kuzari
('The Khazar'), which plausibly drew on such
sources, provide us with the only direct evidence
of the indigenous traditions concerning the
conversion. King Bulan is said to have driven
out the sorcerers, and to have received angelic
visitations exhorting him to find the true
religion, upon which, accompanied by his vizier,
he travelled to desert mountains of Warsān
on a seashore, where he came across a cave
rising from the plain of Tiyul in which Jews
used to celebrate the Sabbath. Here he was
circumcised. Bulan is then said to have convened
a royal debate between exponents of the three
Abrahamic religions. He decided to convert
when he was convinced of Judaism's superiority.
Many scholars situate this c. 740 CE, a date
supported by Halevi's own account. The details
are both Judaic and Türkic: a Türkic ethnogonic
myth speaks of an ancestral cave in which
the Āshǐnà were conceived from the mating
of their human ancestor and a wolf ancestress.
These accounts suggest that there was a rationalising
syncretism of native pagan traditions with
Jewish law, by melding through the motif of
the cave, a site of ancestral ritual and repository
of forgotten sacred texts, Türkic myths of
origin and Jewish notions of redemption of
Israel's fallen people. It is generally agreed
they adopted Rabbinical rather than Qaraite
Judaism.Ibn Fadlan reports that the settlement
of disputes in Khazaria was adjudicated by
judges hailing each from his community, be
it Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or Pagan. Some
evidence suggests that the Khazar king saw
himself as a defender of Jews even beyond
the kingdom's frontiers, retaliating against
Muslim or Christian interests in Khazaria
in the wake of Islamic and Byzantine persecutions
of Jews abroad. Ibn Fadlan recounts specifically
an incident in which the king of Khazaria
destroyed the minaret of a mosque in Atil
as revenge for the destruction of a synagogue
in Dâr al-Bâbûnaj, and allegedly said he
would have done worse were it not for a fear
that the Muslims might retaliate in turn against
Jews. Ḥasdai ibn Shaprūṭ sought information
on Khazaria in the hope he might discover
'a place on this earth where harassed Israel
can rule itself' and wrote that, were it to
prove true that Khazaria had such a king,
he would not hesitate to forsake his high
office and his family in order to emigrate
there.Abraham Harkavy noted in 1877 that an
Arabic commentary on Isaiah 48:14, ascribed
to Saadia Gaon or to the Karaite scholar Benjamin
Nahâwandî, interpreted "The Lord hath loved
him" as a reference "to the Khazars, who will
go and destroy Babel" (i.e., Babylonia), a
name used to designate the country of the
Arabs. This has been taken as an indication
of hopes by Jews that the Khazars might succeed
in destroying the Caliphate.
=== Islam ===
In 965, as the Qağanate was struggling against
the victorious campaign of the Rus' prince
Sviatoslav, the Islamic historian Ibn al-Athîr
mentions that Khazaria, attacked by the Oğuz,
sought help from Khwarezm, but their appeal
was rejected because they were regarded as
'infidels' (al-kuffâr:pagans). Save for the
king, the Khazarians are said to have converted
to Islam in order to secure an alliance, and
the Turks were, with Khwarezm's military assistance
repelled. It was this that, according to Ibn
al-Athîr, led the Jewish king of Khazar to
convert to Islam.
== Claims of Khazar ancestry ==
Claims of Khazar origins for peoples, or suggestions
that Khazars were absorbed by them, have been
made regarding the Slavic Judaising Subbotniks,
the Muslim Karachays, Kumyks, Kazakhs, Avars,
the Cossacks of the Don region, the Turkic-speaking
Krymchaks and their Crimean neighbours the
Karaites to the Moldavian Csángós, the Hungarians,
the Mountain Jews and others. Turkic-speaking
Crimean Karaites (known in the Crimean Tatar
language as Qaraylar), some of whom migrated
in 19th century from Crimea to Poland and
Lithuania have claimed Khazar origins. Specialists
in Khazar history question the connection.
Scholarship is likewise sceptical of claims
that the Tatar-speaking Krymchak Jews of the
Crimea descend from Khazars.
=== Ashkenazi-Khazar theories ===
Several scholars have suggested that the Khazars
did not disappear after the dissolution of
their Empire, but migrated west to eventually
form part of the core of the later Ashkenazi
Jewish population of Europe. This hypothesis
is greeted with scepticism or caution by most
scholars. The German Orientalist Karl Neumann,
in the context of an earlier controversy about
possible connections between Khazars and the
ancestors of the Slavic peoples, suggested
as early as 1847 emigrant Khazars might have
influenced the core population of Eastern
European Jews.The theory was then taken up
by Abraham Eliyahu Harkavi in 1869, when he
also claimed a possible link between the Khazars
and Ashkenazi, but the theory that Khazar
converts formed a major proportion of Ashkenazi
was first proposed to a Western public in
a lecture by Ernest Renan in 1883. Occasional
suggestions emerged that there was a small
Khazar component in East European Jews in
works by Joseph Jacobs (1886), Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu,
a critic of anti-Semitism, (1893) Maksymilian
Ernest Gumplowicz, and by the Russian-Jewish
anthropologist Samuel Weissenberg. In 1909
Hugo von Kutschera developed the notion into
a book-length study, arguing Khazars formed
the foundational core of the modern Ashkenazi.
Maurice Fishberg introduced the notion to
American audiences in 1911. The idea was also
taken up by the Polish-Jewish economic historian
and General Zionist Yitzhak Schipper in 1918.
Scholarly anthropologists, such as Roland
B. Dixon (1923), and writers like H. G. Wells
(1921) used it to argue that "The main part
of Jewry never was in Judea", a thesis that
was to have a political echo in later opinion.
In 1932, Samuel Krauss ventured the theory
that the biblical Ashkenaz referred to northern
Asia Minor, and identified it with the Khazars,
a position immediately disputed by Jacob Mann.
Ten years later, in 1942, Abraham N. Polak
(sometimes referred to as Poliak), later professor
for the history of the Middle Ages at Tel
Aviv University, published a Hebrew monograph
in which he concluded that the East European
Jews came from Khazaria. D.M. Dunlop, writing
in 1954, thought very little evidence backed
what he regarded as a mere assumption, and
argued that the Ashkenazi-Khazar descent theory
went far beyond what "our imperfect records"
permit. Léon Poliakov, while assuming the
Jews of Western Europe resulted from a "panmixia"
in the Ist millennium, asserted in 1955 that
it was widely assumed that Europe's Eastern
Jews descended from a mixture of Khazarian
and German Jews. Poliak's work found some
support in Salo Wittmayer Baron and Ben-Zion
Dinur, but was dismissed by Bernard Weinryb
as a fiction (1962). Bernard Lewis is of the
opinion that the word in Cairo Geniza interpreted
as Khazaria is actually Hakkari and therefore
it relates to the Kurds of the Hakkari mountains
in southeast Turkey.The Khazar-Ashkenazi hypothesis
came to the attention of a much wider public
with the publication of Arthur Koestler's
The Thirteenth Tribe in 1976. which was both
positively reviewed and dismissed as a fantasy,
and a somewhat dangerous one. Israel's ambassador
to Britain branded it "an anti-Semitic action
financed by the Palestinians", while Bernard
Lewis claimed that the idea was not supported
by any evidence whatsoever, and had been abandoned
by all serious scholars. Raphael Patai, however,
registered some support for the idea that
Khazar remnants had played a role in the growth
of Eastern European Jewish communities, and
several amateur researchers, such as Boris
Altschüler (1994), kept the thesis in the
public eye. The theory has been occasionally
manipulated to deny Jewish nationhood. Recently,
a variety of approaches, from linguistics
(Paul Wexler) to historiography (Shlomo Sand)
and population genetics (Eran Elhaik, a geneticist
from the University of Sheffield) have emerged
to keep the theory alive. In broad academic
perspective, both the idea that the Khazars
converted en masse to Judaism, and the suggestion
they emigrated to form the core population
of Ashkenazi Jewry, remain highly polemical
issues.One thesis, held that the Khazar Jewish
population went into a northern diaspora and
had a significant impact on the rise of Ashkenazi
Jews. Connected to this thesis is the theory,
expounded by Paul Wexler, that the grammar
of Yiddish contains a Khazar substrate. In
2018, Kevin Alan Brook cited genetic data
to argue against the claim that Ashkenazim
have any amount of Khazarian ancestry.
==== Use in anti-Semitic polemics ====
According to Michael Barkun, the Khazar hypothesis
never played any major role in anti-Semitism,
though he writes that histories of the latter
rather oddly overlook the influence it has
exercised on American antisemites since the
restrictions on immigration in the 1920s.
Maurice Fishberg and Roland B Dixon's works
were later exploited in racist and religious
polemical literature in both Britain, in British
Israelism, and the United States. Particularly
after the publication of Burton J. Hendrick's
The Jews in America (1923) it began to enjoy
a vogue among advocates of immigration restriction
in the 1920s; racial theorists like Lothrop
Stoddard; anti-Semitic conspiracy-theorists
like the Ku Klux Klan's Hiram Wesley Evans;
anti-communist polemicists like John O. Beaty
and Wilmot Robertson, whose views influenced
David Duke. According to Yehoshafat Harkabi
(1968) and others, it played a role in Arab
anti-Zionist polemics, and took on an anti-semitic
edge. Bernard Lewis, noting in 1987 that Arab
scholars had dropped it, remarked that it
only occasionally emerged in Arab political
discourse. It has also played some role in
Soviet anti-Semitic chauvinism and Slavic
Eurasian historiography, particularly in the
works of scholars like Lev Gumilev. it came
to be exploited by the White supremacist Christian
movement and even by terrorist esoteric cults
like Aum Shinrikyō.
==== Genetic studies ====
The hypothesis of Khazarian ancestry in Ashkenazi
has also been a subject of discussion in the
field of population genetics, wherein claims
have been made concerning evidence both for
and against it. Eran Elhaik argued in 2012
for a significant Khazar component in the
paternal line based on the study of Y-DNA
of Ashkenazi Jews using Caucasian populations,
Georgians, Armenians and Azerbaijani Jews,
as proxies. The evidence from historians he
used has been criticised by Shaul Stampfer
and the technical response to such a position
is dismissive, arguing that, if traces of
descent from Khazars exist in the Ashkenazi
gene pool, the contribution would be quite
minor, or insignificant.According to Nadia
Abu El-Haj, the issues of origins are generally
complicated by the difficulties of writing
history via genome studies and the biases
of emotional investments in different narratives,
depending on whether the emphasis lies on
direct descent or on conversion within Jewish
history. The lack of Khazar DNA samples that
might allow verification also presents difficulties.
=== Crimean Karaite claims ===
In 1839, Abraham Firkovich was appointed by
the Russian government as a researcher into
the origins of the Jewish sect known as the
Karaites. In 1846, one of his acquaintances
the Russian orientalist Vasilii Vasil'evich
Grigor'ev (1816–1881) theorised that the
Crimean Karaites were of Khazar stock. Firkovich
vehemently rejected the idea. The allegation,
though unfamiliar to the Karaites themselves
at the time, was quickly taken up by outsiders.
Firkovich successfully petitioned the Russian
government to exempt the Karaites from anti-Jewish
laws on the grounds that Karaites had immigrated
to Europe before the crucifixion of Jesus
and thus could not be held responsible for
his death. He travelled widely and amassed
a large collection of Judaic artefacts, visiting
Egypt and Palestine, as well as the Caucasus
and Crimea.
The authenticity of his collection has been
widely challenged among historians, and today
Firkovich is widely regarded as a forger who
falsified older documents and changed the
dates on tombstones, and also exaggerated
the size and importance of the kingdom. Many
Karaim deny Israelite origins and consider
themselves to be descendants of the Khazars,
while specialists in Khazar history also question
the connection.Brook's genetic study of European
Karaites found no evidence of a Khazar or
Turkic origin for any uniparental lineage
but did reveal the European Karaites' links
to Egyptian Karaites and to Rabbinical Jewish
communities.
== In literature ==
The Kuzari is an influential work written
by the medieval Spanish Jewish philosopher
and poet Rabbi Yehuda Halevi (c. 1075–1141).
Divided into five essays (ma'amarim), it takes
the form of a fictional dialogue between the
pagan king of the Khazars and a Jew who was
invited to instruct him in the tenets of the
Jewish religion. The intent of the work, although
based on Ḥasdai ibn Shaprūṭ's correspondence
with the Khazar king, was not historical,
but rather to defend Judaism as a revealed
religion, written in the context, firstly
of Karaite challenges to the Spanish rabbinical
intelligentsia, and then against temptations
to adapt Aristotelianism and Islamic philosophy
to the Jewish faith. Originally written in
Arabic, it was translated into Hebrew by Judah
ibn Tibbon.Benjamin Disraeli's early novel
Alroy (1833) draws on Menachem ben Solomon's
story. The question of mass religious conversion
and the indeterminability of the truth of
stories about identity and conversion are
central themes of Milorad Pavić's best-selling
mystery story Dictionary of the Khazars.H.N.
Turteltaub's Justinian, Marek Halter's Book
of Abraham and Wind of the Khazars, and Michael
Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road allude to or
feature elements of Khazar history or create
fictional Khazar characters.
== Cities associated with the Khazars ==
Atil, Khazaran, Samandar; in the Caucasus,
Balanjar, Kazarki, Sambalut, and Samiran;
in Crimea and the Taman region, Kerch, Theodosia,
Yevpatoria (Güzliev), Samkarsh (also called
Tmutarakan, Tamatarkha), and Sudak; and in
the Don valley, Sarkel. A number of Khazar
settlements have been discovered in the Mayaki-Saltovo
region. Some scholars suppose that the Khazar
settlement of Sambat on the Dnieper refers
to the later Kiev.
== See also ==
List of Turkic dynasties and countries
Gog and Magog
History of Kiev
Kuzari
List of Khazar rulers
Rus' Khaganate
Rus'–Byzantine War (860)
Rus'–Byzantine War (907)
Rus'–Byzantine War (941)
Rus'–Byzantine War (968-971)
Turkic peoples
Yarmaq
== Notes ==
== References ==
== 
External links ==
The Kievan Letter scan in the Cambridge University
Library collection.
Khazaria.com
Resources – Medieval Jewish History – The
Khazars The Jewish History Resource Center,
Project of the Dinur Center for Research in
Jewish History, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Khazar Historic Maps at the Wayback Machine
(archived 26 October 2009)
The Kitab al-Khazari of Judah Hallevi, full
English translation at sacred-texts.com
Ancient lost capital of the Khazar kingdom
found
