For most of its history, Khazaria served as a
buffer state between the
Byzantine Empire, the nomads of the northern steppes, and the
Umayyad and
Abbasid Caliphates, having previously been Byzantium's
proxy against the rival
Sasanian Empire. Around 900, the Byzantines began encouraging the
Alans to attack Khazaria; this move aimed to weaken Khazar control over Crimea and the Caucasus and facilitate imperial diplomacy and
proselytising towards the powerful
Kievan Rus' in the north. By 969,
Sviatoslav I of Kiev, the ruler of Kievan Rus', along with his allies, conquered the Khazar capital of
Atil, ushering the decline and disintegration of Khazaria by the mid 11th century.
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
Oghuric speakers, including the
Saragurs, Oğurs,
Onogurs, and
Bulgars, who earlier formed part of the
Tiele (Tiělè) confederation, are attested quite early, having been driven west by the
Sabirs, who in turn fled the
Pannonian Avars, and began to flow into the
Volga–
Caspian–
Pontic zone from as early as the 4th century and are recorded by
Priscus to reside in the western
Eurasian Steppe 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 peoples,
proto-Mongols,
Uralic speakers, and
Paleosiberian peoples vanquished the
Rouran Khaganate of the hegemonic Pannonian Avars in 552 who swept westwards, taking in their train other steppe nomads and peoples from
Sogdia. The ruling family of this confederation may have hailed from the
Ashina tribe of the
Western Turkic Khaganate, although
Constantin Zuckerman regards Ashina 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
Irbis Seguy, who lost power or was killed around 651. Moving west, the confederation reached the land of the
Akatziri, 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
First Turkic Khaganate of the
Göktürks. Göktürk armies had penetrated the Volga by 549, ejecting the Avars, who were then forced to flee to the sanctuary of the
Pannonian Basin. The Ashina clan appeared on the scene by 552, when they overthrew the Rourans and established the First Turkic Khaganate, whose self designation was
Tür(ü)k. By 568, these Göktürks were probing for an alliance with Byzantium to attack the
Sasanian Empire. An
internecine war broke out between the senior eastern Göktürks and the junior
Western Turkic Khaganate some decades later, when on the death of
Taspar Qaghan, a
succession dispute led to a dynastic crisis between Taspar's chosen heir, the
Apa Qaghan, and the ruler appointed by the tribal high council, Āshǐnà Shètú, the
Ishbara Qaghan. By the first decades of the 7th century, the Ashina
Tong Yabghu Qaghan managed to stabilise the Western division. 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 comprising five tribes. The Duōlù challenged the Avars in the
Kuban River-
Sea of Azov area while the Khazar Khaghanate consolidated further westwards, led apparently by an Ashina dynasty. With a resounding victory over the tribes in 657, engineered by General
Su Dingfang, 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 of Bulgaria, Kubrat's son, shifted even further west across the Danube to lay the foundations of the
First Bulgarian Empire in the Balkans (). The Khazar Khaghanate thus took shape from the ruins of this nomadic empire, which broke up under pressure from the armies of the Tang dynasty to the east sometime between 630 and 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
Onoghur-
Bulghar union, sometime around 670, a properly constituted Khazar Khaghanate emerges, becoming the westernmost
successor state of the formidable Göktürk Khaghanate after its disintegration. According to
Omeljan Pritsak, the language of the Onoghur-Bulghar 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 because the state became an international trading hub that permitted Western Eurasian merchants safe passage across it to conduct business without interference. The high status soon to be accorded this empire to the north is attested by the
Fars-Nama (c. 1100), which relates that the Sasanian emperor,
Khosrau I, 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. Although anachronistic in retrodating the Khazars to this period, the legend, by placing the Khazar khagan on a throne of equal status to the rulers of the other two superpowers, attests to the reputation the Khazars had long enjoyed.
Khazar state: culture and institutions Royal Diarchy with sacral Qağanate Khazaria developed a
diarchy (dual leadership) typical among Turkic nomads, consisting of a
khagan-bek and a
khagan. The emergence of this system may be deeply entwined with the conversion to Judaism. According to
Arabic sources, the khagan-bek was called an ʾīšā and the greater a khagan (); 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 bayt maʿrūfīn) 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
ritually killed by the nobles. Similarly,
Ahmad ibn Fadlan wrote that there was a maximum limit on the number of years of a king's reign. If a khagan had reigned for at least forty years, his courtiers and subjects felt his ability to reason would become impaired by old age. They would then execute him. 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 riverwater to avoid disturbance by evil spirits and later generations. Such a
qoruq '
taboo' royal burial ground is typical of inner Asian peoples. Both the ʾīšā and the ḫāqān converted to
Rabbinic Judaism sometime in the 8th century, while the rest, according to the Persian traveller
Ahmad ibn Rustah, probably continued to follow traditional 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
Khwarazmian guard corps, or
comitatus 'warband' called the
Arsiyah. But unlike many other local polities, they hired mercenary soldiers (the
junūd murtazīqa in
al-Masudi). 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 noble 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 to 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 khagan-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, survivors were executed. 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
jāwashīghar and
kündür, but their responsibilities are unknown.
Demographics It has been estimated that 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 ethnonym in the Tang Chinese annals, Ashina, often accorded a key role in the Khazar leadership, may reflect an Eastern Iranian or
Tokharian word (
Khotanese Saka âşşeina-āššsena "blue"):
Middle Persian axšaêna ("dark-coloured"):
Tokharian A âśna ("blue", "dark"). 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 Oghurs". Studies of the physical remains, such as skulls at
Sarkel, have revealed individuals belonging to the 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, although 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 diversification in lucrative returns from taxing international trade given its pivotal control of major trade routes. The
Khazar slave trade constituted one of the two great furnishers of slaves to
the Muslim market to
slavery in the Abbasid Caliphate (the other being the
Iranian Sâmânid amîrs), supplying it with captured Slavs and tribesmen from the Eurasian northlands. It profited 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 Khazar Khaghanate played a key role in the trade between Europe and the Muslim world in the early Middle Ages. People taken captive during the Viking raids in Europe, such as Ireland, could be transported to
Hedeby or
Brännö in Scandinavia and from there via the
Volga trade route to Russia, where slaves and furs were sold to Muslim merchants in exchange for Arab silver
dirham and
silk, which have been found in
Birka,
Wollin and
Dublin; during the 8th- and 9th-century this trade route between Europe and the
Abbasid Caliphate passed via the Khazar Kaghanate, until it was supplanted in the 10th-century by the route of
Volga Bulgaria,
Khwarazm, and the
Samanid slave trade. The ruling elite wintered in the city and spent from spring to late autumn 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 (c. 60 miles). While customs duties were imposed on traders, and tribute and tithes were exacted from 25 to 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 Turkic Khaganate,
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. Although 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 khagan
Busir Glavan (Ἰβουζῆρος 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 khagan
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, the 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 of them 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, the 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 enough resources to influence the affairs of Transcaucasia. The Qağan was forced to accept terms involving his conversion to Islam, and subject himself to the rule of the Caliphate, but the accommodation was short-lived because 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 their independence from the rule of both regional powers, Byzantium and the Caliphate, while it also conformed to a general Eurasian trend to embrace a
world religion. Whatever the impact of Marwan's campaigns was, warfare between the Khazars and the Arabs ceased for more than two decades after 737. Arab raids continued to occur until 741, but their control of the region was limited because maintaining a large garrison at Derbent further depleted their 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 during childbirth. Her attendants returned home, convinced that some members of another Arab faction had poisoned her, and her father was enraged. The Khazar general
Ras Tarkhan invaded regions which were located south of the Caucasus in 762–764, devastating Albania, Armenia, and Iberia, and capturing Tiflis. Thereafter, relations between the Khazars and the Abbasids became increasingly cordial, because the foreign policies of the Abbasids were generally less expansionist than the foreign policies of the Umayyads, relations between the Khazars and the Abbasids were ultimately broken by a series of raids which occurred in 799, the raids occurred after another marriage alliance failed. After the Khazars assumed control of
Transcaucasia, at some time they set up towns including Samiran, Samsakly, Sambalut, Samakha, and Samkalak - with the common fragment "Sam" meaning "top" or "high" or "main".
Khazars and Hungarians Around 830, a rebellion broke out in the Khazar khaganate. As a result, three
Kabar tribes of the Khazars (probably the majority of ethnic Khazars) joined the Hungarians and moved through
Levedia to what the Hungarians call the
Etelköz, the territory between the
Carpathians and the
Dnieper River. The Hungarians faced their first attack by the
Pechenegs around 854, though other sources state that an attack by Pechenegs was the reason for their departure to Etelköz. The new neighbours of the Hungarians were the
Varangians and the eastern
Slavs. From 862 onwards, the Hungarians (already referred to as the
Ungri) along with their allies, the Kabars, started a series of raids from the Etelköz into the Carpathian Basin, mostly against the
Eastern Frankish Empire (Germany) and
Great Moravia, but also against the
Lower Pannonian principality and
Bulgaria. Then they together ended up at the outer slopes of Carpathians, and settled there.
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 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. in the 1950s). 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 strengthening 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. Although 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 khagan 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." (in boat), destroyer of the Khazar Khaganate. 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. A further factor undermining the Khazar Qağanate was a shift in Islamic routes at this time, as Muslims in Khwarazmia forged trade links with the recently converted Volga Bulgarian Muslims, a move which may have caused a drastic drop, perhaps up to 80%, in the revenue base of Khazaria, and consequently, a crisis in its ability to pay for its defence.
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 Although 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 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. After one more conflict with these Polovtsi in 1106, the Khazars fade from history. By the 13th century they survived in Russian folklore only as "Jewish heroes" in the "land of the Jews". (
zemlya Jidovskaya). 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. Although connections are made to the Khazars, the link is based merely on a common attribution of Judaism. s, c. 1015 (areas in blue possibly still under Khazar control). 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 no 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
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 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 ==