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Khazars

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History of
Russia

Early East
Slavs

Khazars

Kievan
Rus'

Vladimir-Suzdal

Novgorod
Republic

Volga
Bulgaria

Mongol
invasion

Golden Horde

Muscovy

Khanate of
Kazan

Russian
Empire

Revolution
of 1905

Revolution
of 1917

Civil War

Soviet
Union

Russian
Federation

The site of the Khazar fortress at Sarkel. Aerial photo from
excavations conducted by Mikhail Artamonov in
the 1930s.

The Khazars (Heb. sing.
"Kuzari" כוזרי plur. "Kuzarim" כוזרים; Arab. خزر; Turk. sing.
"Hazar" plur. Hazarlar; Greek Χαζάροι; Russ. Хазары; Tat. sing Xäzär
plur. Xäzärlär; Crimean Tatar:
sing. Hazar, plur. Hazarlar Persian خزر; Latin "Gazari" or
"Cosri") were a semi-nomadic Turkic people from Central
Asia, many of whom converted to Judaism. The name 'Khazar' seems
to be tied to a Turkic verb form
meaning "wandering" ('gezer' in modern Turkish). In the 7th
century CE they founded an independent Khaganate in the Northern Caucasus
along the Caspian Sea, where over time
Judaism became the state religion. At their height, they and their tributaries
controlled much of what is today southern Russia, western Kazakhstan,
eastern Ukraine, large portions of the
Caucasus (including Dagestan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, etc.), and
the Crimea.

The Khazars were important allies of the Byzantine Empire
against the Sassanid empire, and
were a major regional power at their height. They fought a series of successful
wars against the Arab
Caliphates,
probably preventing an Arab invasion of Eastern Europe. By the
end of the tenth century, their power
was broken by the Kievan Rus, and the Khazars
largely disappeared from history. The theoretical Khazar contribution to the
bloodline of modern Ashkenazi Jews proposed by
some historians is politically sensitive. Current genetic studies show that
Jewish Y-DNA tends to come from Middle Eastern populations whereas studies that
take into account mtDNA show no relation to middle eastern ethnic groups. [1] So although
Khazars might have been absorbed into the Jewish population it is unlikely that
they formed a large percentage of the ancestors of modern Ashkenazim. [2]

Contents

1 Origins and
prehistory

2 Tribes

3 Rise

3.1 Formation of the Khazar
state

3.2 Khazars and
Byzantium

3.3 Second Khazar-Arab
war

4 Khazar religion

4.1 Turkic
shamanism

4.2 Conversion to Judaism
and relations with world Jewry

4.3 Other
religions

5 Government

5.1 Khazar
Kingship

5.2 Army

5.3 Other
officials

5.4 Judiciary

6 Economic
position

6.1 Trade

6.2 Khazar
coinage

7 Extent of
influence

7.1 Khazar towns

7.2 Tributary and subject
nations

8 Decline and fall

8.1 Rise of Rus

8.2 Kabar rebellion and the
departure of the Magyars

8.3 Diplomatic isolation
and military threats

9 Khazars outside of
Khazaria

10 Late references to the
Khazars

10.1 Jewish
sources

10.2 Muslim
sources

10.3 Kievan Rus
sources

10.4 Byzantine, Georgian
and Armenian sources

10.5 Western
sources

11 Debate

11.1 Date and extent of the
conversion

11.2 Khazar ancestry of
Ashkenazim

12 In fiction

13 See also

14 Notes

15 Resources

15.1 Books written before
1915

16 External links

[edit]

Origins and prehistory

The origins of the Khazars are unclear. Following their conversion to
Judaism, the Khazars themselves traced their origins to Kozar, a son of Togarmeh. Togarmeh is mentioned
in the Hebrew scriptures as a
grandson of Japheth. It is unlikely,
however, that he was regarded as an ancestor before the introduction of Biblical
traditions to Khazaria.

Some historians have looked for possible connections between the Khazars and
the lost tribes of
Israel, but modern scholars generally consider them to be Turks who migrated
from the East. Scholars in the former USSR considered the Khazars to be
an indigenous people of
the North Caucasus. Some
scholars, such as D.M. Dunlop, considered the
Khazars to be connected with a Tiele confederation tribe
called He'san
in Chinese sources
from the 7th-century (Suishu, 84).
However, the Khazar language appears
to have been an Oghuric
tongue, similar to that spoken by the early Bulgars. Therefore, a Hunnish
origin has also been postulated. Since the Turkic peoples were never ethnically
homogenous, these ideas need not be deemed mutually exclusive. It is likely that
the Khazar nation was made up of tribes from various ethnic backgrounds, as
steppe nations traditionally absorbed those they conquered.

Armenian
chronicles contain references to the Khazars as early as the late second
century. These are generally regarded as anachronisms, and most
scholars believe that they actually refer to Sarmatians or Scythians. Priscus relates
that one of the nations in the Hunnish confederacy was called Akatziroi.
Their king was named Karadach or Karidachus. Some,
going on the similarity between Akatziroi and "Ak-Khazar" (see below), have
speculated that the Akatziroi were early proto-Khazars.

Dmitri Vasil'ev of Astrakhan State
University recently hypothesized that the Khazars moved in to the Pontic
steppe region only in the late 500s, and originally lived in Transoxiana. According to
Vasil'ev, Khazar populations remained behind in Transoxiana under Pecheneg and Oghuz suzerainty,
possibly remaining in contact with the main body of their people.

[edit]

Tribes

The Khazars' tribal structure is not well understood. They appear, like many
Turkic nations, to have been divided between Ak-Khazars ("White Khazars") and
Kara-Khazars ("Black Khazars"). Writers such as Graetz mistakenly believed that
these were racial designations; in fact, such distinctions have nothing to do
with physical appearance or racial identification. The White-Black distinction
is a common social division in Eurasian nomadic tribes, with the "White" group
representing the nobility, warrior elite and ruling classes, and the "Black"
group making up the commoners, tradesmen, etc.

Peter Golden speculated that the Khazar ethnos was a conglomerate of Oghuric and common Turkic
nations, including the Sabirs and North Caucasian
Huns as well as elements of the Gokturks.

[edit]

Rise

[edit]

Formation of the Khazar state

Map of the Western (purple) and Eastern (blue) Gokturk khaganates at their
height, c. 600 CE. Lighter areas show direct rule; darker areas show spheres of
influence.

Early Khazar history is intimately tied with that of the Gokturk empire, founded when
the Ashina clan
overthrew the Juan Juan in 552 CE. With the collapse of the
Gokturk empire / tribal confederation due to internal conflict in the seventh century, the
western half of the Turk empire itself split into two confederations, the Bulgars, led by
the Dulo
clan, and the Khazars, led by the Ashina clan, the traditional
rulers of the Gok Turk empire. By 670, the Khazars had broken the
Bulgar confederation, leaving the three Bulgar remnants on the Volga, the Black Sea
and the Danube.

The first significant appearance of the Khazars in history is their aid to
the campaign of the Byzantine emperor Heraclius
against the Sassanid Persians. The Khazar ruler Ziebel
(sometimes identified as Tong
Yabghu Khagan of the West Turks) aided the Byzantines in overrunning Georgia. A marriage
was even contemplated between Ziebel's son and Heraclius' daughter, but never
took place.

During the 7th and 8th
centuries the Khazar fought a series of wars against the Umayyad Caliphate, which was
attempting simultaneously to expand its influence into Transoxiana and the Caucasus.
The first war was fought in the early 650 and ended with the defeat of an
Arab force led by Abd ar-Rahman ibn
Rabiah outside the Khazar town of Balanjar, after a battle in
which both sides used siege engines on the
others' troops.

The Pontic steppe, c. 650,
showing the early territory of the Khazars and their
neighbors.

A number of Russian sources give the name of a Khazar khagan, Irbis, from
this period, and describe him as a scion of the Gokturk royal house, the Ashina.
Whether Irbis ever existed is open to debate, as is the issue of whether he can
be identified with one of the many Gokturk rulers of the same name.

Several further conflicts erupted in the decades that followed, with Arab
attacks and Khazar raids into Kurdistan and Iran. There is evidence from the
account of al-Tabari that the Khazars formed a united front with the remnants of
the Gok Turks in Transoxiana.

[edit]

Khazars and Byzantium

Khazar overlordship over most of the Crimea dates back to the late 600s. In the mid 700s the rebellious Crimean
Goths were put down and their city, Doros (modern Mangup) occupied. A
Khazar tudun was resident at Cherson in the 690s, despite the fact that this
town was nominally subject to the Byzantine Empire.

They are also known to have been allied with the Byzantine Empire during
at least part of the 700s. In 704/705 Justinian II, exiled in Cherson, escaped
into Khazar territory and married the sister of the Khagan, Busir. With the aid of his wife,
he escaped from Busir, who was intriguing against him with the usurper Tiberius
III, murdering two Khazar officials in the process. He fled to Bulgaria, whose
Khan Tervel
helped him regain the throne. The Khazars later provided aid to the rebel
general Bardanes, who seized the throne
in 711 as Emperor Philippicus.

The Byzantine emperor Leo III married his
son Constantine (later Constantine V Kopronymous)
to the Khazar princess Tzitzak (daughter of the Khagan
Bihar) as part of the
alliance between the two empires. Tzitzak, who was baptized as Irene, became famous for her
wedding gown, which started a fashion craze in Constantinople for a type of robe
(for men) called tzitzakion. Their son Leo (Leo IV) would be
better known as "Leo the Khazar".

[edit]

Second Khazar-Arab war

Expansion of the Caliphate to 750 CE.
From
The Historical Atlas by William R. Shepherd, 1923
Courtesy of The General
Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin

Hostilities broke out again with the Caliphate in the 710s, with raids back and forth
across the Caucasus but few decisive battles. The Khazars, led by a prince named
Barjik, invaded
northwestern Iran and
defeated the Umayyad forces at Ardebil in 730, killing the Arab
warlord al-Djarrah
al-Hakami and briefly occupying the town. They were defeated the next year
at Mosul, where
Barjik directed Khazar forces from a throne mounted with al-Djarrah's severed
head, and Barjik was killed. Arab armies led first by the Arab prince Maslamah ibn Abd
al-Malik and then by Marwan ibn Muhammad (later Caliph Marwan II) poured across the
Caucasus and eventually (in 737) defeated a Khazar army led by
Hazer
Tarkhan, briefly occupying Atil itself and possibly forcing
the Khagan to convert to Islam. The instability of the Umayyad regime made a
permanent occupation impossible; the Arab armies withdrew and Khazar
independence was re-asserted. It has been speculated that the adoption of Judaism (which in
this theory would have taken place around 740) was part of this re-assertion
of independence.

It is worth noting that around 739, Arab sources give the name of
the ruler of the Khazars as Parsbit or Barsbek, a woman who
appears to have directed military operations against them. This suggests that
women could have very high positions within the Khazar state, possibly even as a
stand-in for the khagan.

Although they stopped the Arab expansion into Eastern Europe for some
time after these wars, the Khazars were forced to withdraw behind the Caucasus.
In the ensuing decades they extended their territories from the Caspian
Sea in the east (Many cultures still call the Caspian Sea "Khazar Sea"; e.g.
"Hazar Denizi" in Turkish, "Bahr ul-Khazar" in Arabic, "Darya-ye Khazar" in
Persian) to the steppe region north of Black Sea in the west, as far
west at least as the Dnieper River.

In 758, the Abbasid Caliph Abdullah al-Mansur
ordered Yazid
ibn Usayd al-Sulami, one of his nobles and military governor of Armenia, to take a
royal Khazar bride and make peace. Yazid took home a daughter of Khagan Baghatur, the
Khazar leader. Unfortunately, the girl died inexplicably, possibly in
childbirth. Her attendants returned home, convinced that some Arab faction had
poisoned her, and her father was enraged. A Khazar general named Ras
Tarkhan invaded what is now northwestern Iran, plundering and raiding for
several months. Thereafter relations between the Khazars and the Abbasid Caliphate
(whose foreign policies were generally less expansionist than its Umayyad
predecessor) became increasingly cordial.

[edit]

Khazar religion

[edit]

Turkic shamanism

Originally, the Khazars practiced traditional Turkic shamanism, focused on the sky god Tengri, but were heavily
influenced by Confucian ideas imported from
China, notably that
of the Mandate of Heaven. The
Ashina clan were
considered to be the chosen of Tengri and the kaghan was the incarnation of the
favor the sky-god bestowed on the Turks. A kaghan who failed had clearly lost
the god's favor and was typically ritually executed.
Historians have sometimes wondered, only half in jest, if the Khazar tendency to
occasionally execute their rulers on religious grounds led those rulers to seek
out other religions.

The Khazars worshipped a number of deities subordinate to Tengri, including
the fertility goddess Umay, Kuara, a thunder god, and Erlik, the god of
death.

[edit]

Conversion to Judaism and relations with world Jewry

Jewish
communities had existed in the Greek cities of the Black Sea coast since late
classical times. Cherson, Sudak, Kerch and other Crimean cities
possessed Jewish communities, as did Gorgippa, and Samkarsh / Tmutarakan was said to have
had a Jewish majority as early as the 670s. The original Jewish settlers
were joined by waves of immigration fleeing persecution in the Byzantine Empire, Sassanid Persia [3] (particularly
during the Mazdak
revolts), and later within the Islamic world. Jewish merchants
such as the Radhanites regularly traded
in Khazar territory, and may have wielded significant economic and political
influence. Though their origins and history are somewhat unclear, the Mountain
Jews also lived in or near Khazar territory and may have been allied with or
subject to Khazar overlordship; it is conceivable that they too played a role in
the conversion.

Map of the world, c. 820 CE, showing the Khazar Empire in
larger geopolitical context.

At some point in the last decades of the 8th century or the early 9th
century, the Khazar royalty and nobility
converted to Judaism, and part of the general
population followed. The extent of the conversion is debated. Ibn
al-Faqih reported in the 10th century that "all the
Khazars are Jews." Notwithstanding this statement, most scholars believed that
only the upper classes converted to Judaism; there is some support for this in
contemporary Muslim texts. However, recent archeological excavations have
uncovered widespread shifts in burial practices. Around the mid 800s burials in
Khazaria began to take on a decidedly Jewish flavor. Grave goods disappeared
almost altogether. Judging by interment evidence, by 950 Judaism had become widespread
among all classes of Khazar society.

The apostle of the Slavs, Cyril,
is said to have attempted their conversion without enduring results.

Essays in the Kuzari, written by Yehuda
Halevi, details a moral liturgical reason for the conversion which some
consider a moral tale. Some researchers have suggested part of the reason for
this mass conversion was political expediency to maintain a degree of neutrality:
the Khazar empire was between growing populations, Muslims to the east and Christians to the west.
Both religions recognized Judaism as a forebear and worthy of some respect. The
exact date of the conversion is hotly contested. It may have occurred as early
as 740 or as late as the mid 800s. Recently-discovered numismatic
evidence suggests that Judaism was the established state religion by c. 830, and though St. Cyril
(who visited Khazaria in 861) did not identify the Khazars as
Jews, the khagan of that period, Zachariah, had a biblical Hebrew name. Some
medieval sources give the name of the rabbi who oversaw the conversion
of the Khazars as Isaac Sangari or Yitzhak
ha-Sangari.

The first Jewish Khazar king was named Bulan which means "elk", though some
sources give him the Hebrew name Sabriel. A later king, Obadiah, strengthened
Judaism, inviting rabbis into the kingdom and
building synagogues. Jewish figures
such as Saadia Gaon made positive
references to the Khazars, and they are excoriated in contemporary Karaite writings
as "bastards"; it is therefore unlikely that they adopted Karaism as some (such
as Avraham Firkovich)
have proposed.

The Khazars enjoyed close relations with the Jews of the Levant and Persia. The Persian Jews, for
example, hoped that the Khazars might succeed in conquering the Caliphate (Harkavy, in Kohut
Memorial Volume, p. 244). The high esteem in which the Khazars were held among
the Jews of the Orient may be seen in the application to them, in an Arabic commentary on Isaiah ascribed by
some to Saadia Gaon, and by others
to Benjamin Nahawandi,
of Isaiah 48:14:
"The Lord hath loved him." "This," says the commentary, "refers to the Khazars,
who will go and destroy Babel" (i.e., Babylonia), a name used to
designate the country of the Arabs (Harkavy in "Ha-Maggid." 1877, p. 357).

Likewise, the Khazar rulers viewed themselves as the protectors of
international Jewry, and corresponded with
foreign Jewish leaders (the letters exchanged
between the Khazar ruler Joseph and the Spanish
rabbi Hasdai ibn Shaprut
have been preserved). They were known to retaliate against Muslim or Christian
interests in Khazaria for persecution of Jews abroad. Ibn Fadlan relates that
around 920 the Khazar
ruler received information that Muslims had destroyed a synagogue in the land of
Babung, in Iran; he gave orders
that the minaret of the mosque in his capital should be
broken off, and the muezzin executed. He further
declared that he would have destroyed all the mosques in the country had he not
been afraid that the Muslims would in turn destroy all the synagogues in their
lands.

[edit]

Other religions

Besides Judaism, other religions
probably practiced in areas ruled by the Khazars include Greek Orthodox,
Nestorian,
and Monophysite Christianity, Zoroastrianism as well as
Norse, Finnic, and Slavic cults. Religious
toleration was maintained for the kingdom's three hundred plus years. The
"apostle of the Slavs", Saint Cyril, is said to have
attempted their conversion without enduring results. Many Khazars reportedly
were converts to Christianity and Islam. (See "Judiciary", below.)

[edit]

Government

[edit]

Khazar Kingship

Main Articles: Khagan; Khagan Bek; for names of
Khazar rulers see List of Khazar
rulers.

Khazar kingship was divided between the khagan and the Bek or Khagan Bek. Contemporary Arab
historians related that the Khagan was purely a spiritual ruler or figurehead
with limited powers, while the Bek was responsible for administration and
military affairs.

Both the Khagan and the Khagan Bek lived in Itil. The Khagan's palace,
according to Arab sources, was on an island in the Volga River. He was reported
to have 25 wives, each the daughter of a client ruler; this may, however, have
been an exaggeration.

In the Khazar
Correspondence, King Joseph identifies
himself as the ruler of the Khazars and makes no reference to a colleague. It
has been disputed whether Joseph was a Khagan or a Bek; his description of his
military campaigns make the latter probable. A third option is that by the time
of the Correspondence (c. 950-960) the Khazars had merged the two
positions into a single ruler, or that the Beks had somehow supplanted the
Khagans or vice versa.

[edit]

Army

Khazar warrior with captive, based on reconstruction by
Norman Finkelshteyn of image from an 8th-century ewer found in Romania (original
at [1])

Khazar armies were led by the Khagan Bek and commanded by
subordinate officers known as
tarkhans. A
famous tarkhan referred to in Arab sources as Ras or As
Tarkhan led an invasion of Armenia in 758. The army included regiments of
Muslim
auxiliaries known as Arsiyah, of Khwarezmian or Alan extraction, who were quite
influential. These regiments were exempt from campaigning against their fellow
Muslims. Early Russian sources sometimes
referred to the city of Khazaran (across the Volga
River from Atil)
as Khvalisy
and the Khazar (Caspian) sea as Khvaliskoye. According to
some scholars such as Omeljan Pritsak, these
terms were East Slavic
versions of "Khwarezmian" and referred to these mercenaries.

In addition to the Bek's standing army, the Khazars could call upon tribal
levies in times of danger and were often joined by auxiliaries from subject
nations.

[edit]

Other officials

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 Kundur, but
their responsibilities are unknown.

[edit]

Judiciary

Muslim sources report that the Khazar supreme court consisted of two Jews,
two Christians, two Muslims, and a
"heathen" (whether this is a Turkic shaman or a priest of Slavic or Norse
religion is unclear), and a citizen had the right to be judged according to the
laws of his religion. Some have argued that this configuration is unlikely, as a
Beit Din, or rabbinical court, requires three members. It is therefore possible
that as practitioners of the state religion, the Jews had three judges on the
Supreme Court rather than two, and that the Muslim sources were attempting to
downplay their influence. A Muslim or Christian court can function
with only one or two judges.

[edit]

Economic position

[edit]

Trade

Map of Eurasia showing the trade network of the Radhanites,
c. 870 CE, as reported in the account of ibn Khordadbeh in the Book of Roads and
Kingdoms.

The Khazars occupied a prime trade nexus. Goods from western
Europe travelled east to Central Asia and China and vice versa, and the Muslim
world could only interact with northern Europe via Khazar intermediaries. The Radanites, a
guild of medieval Jewish merchants, had a trade route that ran through Khazaria,
and may have been instrumental in the Khazars' conversion to Judaism.

No Khazar paid taxes to the central government. Revenue came from a 10% levy
on goods transiting through the region, and from tribute paid by subject
nations. The Khazars exported honey, furs, wool, millet and other cereals, fish, and slaves. D.M. Dunlop and Artamanov
asserted that the Khazars produced no material goods themselves, living solely
off of trade. This theory has been refuted by discoveries over the last
half-century, which include pottery and glass factories.

[edit]

Khazar coinage

See also: Numismatics

Khazar coin minted in imitation
of Caliphate dirhem and bearing the legend
"Moses is the prophet of God", early 9th c. CE. Image from the website of the Swedish Economic
Museum.

The Khazars are known to have minted silver coins, called Yarmaqs. Many of these were
copies of Arab dirhems. Coins of the Caliphate
were in widespread use due to their reliable silver content. Merchants from as
far away as China,
Great
Britain, and Scandinavia accepted them
regardless of their inability to read the Arab writing. Thus issuing imitation
dirhems was away to ensure acceptance of Khazar coinage in foreign lands.

Some surviving examples bear the legend "Ard al-Khazar" (Arabic for "land of
the Khazars"). In 1999 a hoard of silver coins was discovered on
the property of the Spillings farm in the Swedish island of Gotland. Among the
coins were several dated 837/8 CE and bearing the legend, in Arabic
script, "Moses
is the Prophet of God" (a modification of the Muslim coin inscription "Muhammad is the
Prophet of God"). In "Creating Khazar Identity through Coins", Roman Kovavlev
postulated that these dirhems were a special commemorative issue
celebrating the adoption of Judaism by the Khazar ruler Bulan.

[edit]

Extent of influence

The Khazar Khaganate was, at its height, an immensely powerful state. The
Khazar heartland was on the lower Volga and the Caspian coast as far south as Derbent. In
addition, from the late 600s the Khazars controlled most of the Crimea and the northeast littoral
of the Black
Sea. By 800 Khazar holdings included most of the Pontic steppe as far west
as the Dneiper and as far east as the Aral Sea (some Turkic history atlases show
the Khazar sphere of influence extending well east of the Aral). During the
Khazar-Arab war of the early 700s, some Khazars evacuated to the Ural foothills, and some
settlements may have remained.

[edit]

Khazar towns

Khazar towns included:

Along the Caspian coast and Volga delta:

Atil; Khazaran; Samandar

In the Caucasus:

Balanjar; Kazarki; Sambalut; Samiran

In Crimea
and Taman region:

Kerch (also
called Bospor); Theodosia; Gusliyev (modern Eupatoria);
Samkarsh
(also called Tmutarakan, Tamatarkha); Sudak (also called
Sugdaia)

In the Don valley:

Sarkel

Numerous Khazar settlements have been discovered in the Mayaki-Saltovo region.
On the Dnieper, the Khazars founded a
settlement called Sambat, which was part of what would become the city of Kiev. Chernihiv is
also thought to have started as a Khazar settlement.

[edit]

Tributary and subject nations

Map of the Khazar Khaganate and surrounding
states, c. 820 CE. Area of direct Khazar control shown in dark blue, sphere of
influence in purple. Other boundaries shown in dark red.

Numerous nations were tributaries of the Khazars. A client-king subject to
Khazar overlordship was called an "Elteber". At various times,
Khazar vassals included:

In the Pontic steppes, Crimea and Turkestan

The Pechenegs ; the Oghuz; the Crimean Goths; the
Crimean Huns (Onogurs?); the
early Magyars

In the Caucasus

Georgia; Abkhazia;
various Armenian principalities; Arran; the North Caucasian
Huns; Lazica; the Caucasian Avars; the
Kassogs; and the Lezgins.

On the Upper Don and Dneiper

Various East Slavic tribes such as
the Derevlians and the Vyatichs;
various early Rus
polities

On the Volga

Volga Bulgaria; the Burtas; various Finno-Ugrian forest
tribes such as the Mordvins and Ob-Ugrians; the Bashkir; the Barsils

[edit]

Decline and fall

[edit]

Rise of Rus

A much reduced Khazaria and surrounding states, c. 950
CE

Originally the Khazars were probably allied with various Norse factions who controlled
the region around Novgorod and regularly
travelled through Khazar-held territory to attack territories around the Black
and Caspian Seas. By 913, however, the Khazars were
engaged in open hostilities with Norse marauders. The Khazar
fortress of Sarkel, constructed with Byzantine aid around 830, may have been
constructed as a defense against Rus incursions, as well as
attacks by nomadic
people such as the Pechenegs.

In the 10th century the empire
began to decline due to the attacks of both Vikings from Kievan Rus
and various Turkic tribes. It enjoyed a brief revival under the strong rulers
Aaron and Joseph, who subdued rebellious client states such as the Alans and led
victorious wars against Rus invaders.

[edit]

Kabar rebellion and the departure of the Magyars

At some point in the ninth century (as reported by Constantine
Porphyrogenitus) a group of three Khazar clans called the Kabars revolted against the
Khazar government. Omeljan Pritsak and
others have speculated that the revolt had something to do with a rejection of
rabbinic Judaism; this is unlikely as it is believed that both the Kabars and
mainstream Khazars had pagan, Jewish (both rabbinic and Karaite), Christian, and Muslim
members. Pritsak maintained that the Kabars were led by the Khagan Khan-Tuvan
Dyggvi in a war against the Bek. In any event Pritsak cited no primary source
for his propositions in this matter. The Kabars were defeated and joined a
confederacy led by the Magyars. It has been speculated that "Hungarian" derives
from the Turkic word "Onogur", or "Ten Arrows", referring to seven Finno-Ugric tribes and the
three tribes of the Kabars.

In the closing years of the ninth century the Khazars and Oghuz allied to
attack the Pechenegs, who had been attacking both nations. The Pechenegs were
driven westward, where they forced out the Magyars (Hungarians) who had
previously inhabited the Don-Dnieper basin in vassalage to Khazaria. Under the
leadership of the chieftain Lebedias and later Arpad, the Hungarians
moved west into modern-day Hungary. The departure of the
Hungarians led to an unstable power vacuum and the loss of Khazar control over
the steppes north of the Black Sea.

[edit]

Diplomatic isolation and military threats

Svyatoslav (seated in the boat), the destroyer of the Khazar
Khaganate.
From Klavdiy Lebedev (1852–1916), Svyatoslav's meeting with Emperor John, as
described by Leo the Deacon.

The alliance with the Byzantines began to collapse in the early 900s, possibly as a result of the
conversion to Judaism. Byzantine and Khazar forces may have clashed in the
Crimea, and by the 940s Constantine VII
Porphyrogentius 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.

From the beginning of the tenth century, the Khazars found themselves
fighting on multiple fronts as nomadic incursions were exacerbated by uprisings
by former clients and invasions from former allies, often at Byzantine
instigation. According to the Schechter Text, the
Khazar ruler Benjamin ben Menahem
fought a war against a coalition of "'SY, TWRQY, 'BM, and PYYNYL," who were
instigated and aided by "MQDWN". MQDWN or Macedon refers to the Byzantine
Empire in many medieval Jewish writings; the other entities named have been
tenuously identified by scholars including Omeljan Pritsak with the Burtas, Oghuz
Turks, Volga Bulgars and Pechenegs,
respectively. Though Benjamin was victorious, his son Aaron II had to face
another Byzantine-inspired invasion, this time led by the Alans. Aaron defeated the Alans
with Oghuz help, yet within a few years the Oghuz and Khazars were enemies.

Ibn
Fadlan reported Oghuz hostility to the Khazars during his journey c. 921.
Some sources, discussed by Tamara Rice, claim that Seljuk, the eponymous progenitor
of the Seljuk Turks, began his
career as an Oghuz soldier in Khazar service in the early and mid tenth century,
rising to high rank before he fell out with the Khazar rulers and departed for
Khwarazm.

The Rus warlords Oleg of Novgorod and Sviatoslav I of
Kiev launched several wars against the Khazar khaganate, often with
Byzantine connivance. The Schechter Letter relates the story of a campaign
against Khazaria by HLGW (Oleg) around 941 (in which Oleg was defeated by
the Khazar general Pesakh; this calls into
question the timeline of the Primary Chronicle and
other related works.

Sviatoslav finally succeeded in destroying Khazar imperial power in the 960s. The Khazar
fortresses of Sarkel and Tamatarkha fell to the Rus in
965, with the capital
city of Atil
following circa 967 or
969.

[edit]

Khazars outside of Khazaria

Khazar communities existed outside of those areas under Khazar overlordship.
Many Khazar mercenaries served in the
armies of the Caliphate and other Islamic states.
Documents from medieval Constantinople attest to
a Khazar community mingled with the Jews of the suburb of Pera. Christian Khazars also lived
in Constantinople, and some served in its armies. The Patriarch Photius I of
Constantinople was once angrily referred to by the Emperor as "Khazar-face",
though whether this refers to his actual lineage or is a generic insult is
unclear. Abraham ibn Daud
reported Khazar rabbinical students, or rabbinical
students who were the descendents of Khazars, in 12th century Spain. Jews from Kiev and
elsewhere in Russia, who may or may not have been Khazars, were reported in
France, Germany and England. The Kabars who settled in Hungary in the
late ninth and early tenth centuries may have included Jews among their number.
Many Khazar Jews probably fled foreign conquest into Hungary and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. There
they likely merged with local Jews and ensuing waves of Jewish immigration from
Germany and Western Europe. They most likely did not constitute the dominant
group within Eastern European Jewry, as Arthur Koestler
maintained (see below). Polish legends speak of Jews being
present in Poland
before the establishment of the Polish monarchy. Polish coins from the 12th and
13th centuries sometimes bore Slavic inscriptions written in the Hebrew alphabet [2]
[3]
though connecting these coins to Khazar influence is purely a matter of
speculation.

[edit]

Late references to the Khazars

The Pontic steppes, c.1015.
The areas in pale blue are those possibly still under Khazar
control.

There is debate as to the temporal and geographic extent of Khazar polities
following Sviatoslav's sack
of Atil in 967/9, or even whether any such states existed. The Khazars may have
retained control over some areas in the Caucasus for another two centuries, but
sparse historical records make this difficult to confirm.

The evidence of later Khazar polities includes the fact that Sviatoslav did
not occupy the Volga basin after he destroyed Atil, and departed relatively
quickly to embark on his campaign in Bulgaria. The permanent
conquest of the Volga basin seems to have been left to later waves of steppe
peoples like the Kipchaks.

[edit]

Jewish sources

A letter in Hebrew dated AM 4746 (985–986) refers to "our lord David, the
Khazar prince" who lived in Taman. The letter said that this
David was visited by envoys from Kievan Rus to ask about religious matters —
this could be connected to the Vladimir conversion which took place during the
same time period. Taman was a principality of Kievan Rus around 988, so this successor state (if that
is what it was) may have been conquered altogether. The authenticity of this
letter, the Mandgelis Document, has however been questioned by such scholars as
D. M.
Dunlop.

Abraham ibn Daud, a twelfth-century Spanish rabbi, reported meeting Khazar
rabbinical students in Toledo, and that they
informed him that the "remnant of them is of the rabbinic faith." This reference
indicates that some Khazars maintained ethnic, if not political, autonomy at
least two centuries after the sack of Atil.

Petachiah of
Ratisbon, a thirteenth-century rabbi and traveler, reported traveling
through "Khazaria", though he gave few details of its inhabitants except to say
that they lived amidst desolation in perpetual mourning.

He further related:

Whilst at Baghdad [I] saw ambassadors from the kings of Meshech, for
Magog (medieval Christian writers said that the Khazars lived in the land
of Gog and Magog) is
about ten days' journey from thence. The land extends as far as the Mountains
of Darkness (a term often used to describe the Caucasus).
Beyond the Mountains of Darkness are the sons of Jonadab, son of Rechab (an
official in the court of King Josiah of Judah). To the
seven kings of Meshech an angel appeared in a dream, bidding them to give up
the laws and statutes, and to embrace the laws of Moses, son of Amram. If not, he
threatened to lay waste their country. However, they delayed until the angel commenced to
lay waste their country, when the kings of Meshech and all the inhabitants of
their countries became proselytes, and they sent to the head of the
academy (i.e., the Gaon of Sura or Pumbedita) a
request to send them some disciples of the wise. Every disciple that is poor
goes there to teach them the law and Babylonian Talmud. From the land of Egypt
the disciples go there to study. He saw the ambassadors visit the grave of
[the prophet] Ezekiel…"

The account of the conversion of the "seven kings of Meshech" is extremely
similar to the accounts of the Khazar conversion given in the Kuzari, and in King Joseph's
Reply. It is possible that Meshech refers to the Khazars, or to some
Judaized polity influenced by them. Arguments against this possibility include
the reference to "seven kings" (though this, in turn, could refer to seven
successor tribes or state micropolities).

[edit]

Muslim sources

Ibn
Hawqal and al-Muqaddasi refer to Atil
after 969, indicating that it may have been rebuilt. Al-Biruni (mid-1000s) reported that
Atil was in ruins, and did not mention the later city of Saqsin which was built nearby, so
it is possible that this new Atil was only destroyed in the middle of the
eleventh century. Even assuming al-Biruni's report was not an anachronism, there
is no evidence that this "new" Atil was populated by Khazars rather than by Pechenegs or a
different tribe.

Ibn
al-Athir, who wrote around 1200, described "the raid
of Fadhlun the Kurd against the Khazars". Fadhlun the Kurd has been identified
as al-Fadhl ibn Muhammad al-Shaddadi, who ruled Arran and other parts
of Azerbaijan in the 1030s.
According to the account he attacked the Khazars but had to flee when they
ambushed his army and killed 10,000 of his men. Two of the great early 20th
century scholars on Eurasian nomads, Marquart
and Barthold, disagreed about
this account. Marquart believed that this incident refers to some Khazar remnant
that had reverted to paganism and nomadic life. Barthold, (and more recently,
Kevin Brook), took a much more skeptical approach and said that ibn al-Athir
must have been referring to Georgians or Abkhazians. There is no evidence to
decide the issue one way or the other.

[edit]

Kievan Rus sources

In 986 Khazar Jews were present at Vladimir's disputation to decide on the
prospective religion of the Kievian Rus. Whether these were Jews who had settled
in Kiev or emissaries from some Jewish Khazar remnant state is unclear. The
whole incident is regarded by a few radical scholars as a fabrication, but the
reference to Khazar Jews (after the destruction of the Khaganate) is still
relevant. Heinrich Graetz alleged
that these were Jewish missionaries from the Crimea, but provided no reference
to primary sources for his allegation.

In 1023 the Primary Chronicle
reports that Mstislav (one of Vladimir's
sons) marched against his brother Yaroslav with an army that included "Khazars
and Kasogs". Kasogs were an early Circassian people. "Khazars"
in this reference is considered by most to be intended in the generic sense, but
some have questioned why the reference reads "Khazars and Kasogs", when
"Khazars" as a generic would have been sufficient. Even if the reference is to
Khazars, of course, it does not follow that there was a Khazar state in this
period. They could have been Khazars under the rule of the Rus.

A Kievian prince named Oleg (not to be
confused with Oleg of Kiev) was
reportedly kidnapped by "Khazars" in 1078 and shipped off to Constantinople, although
most scholars believe that this is a reference to the Kipchaks or other steppe
peoples then dominant in the Pontic region.

[edit]

Byzantine, Georgian and Armenian sources

Kedrenos
documented a joint attack on the Khazar state in Kerch, ruled by Georgius
Tzul, by the Byzantines and Russians in 1016. Following 1016, there are
more ambiguous references in Eastern Christian sources to Khazars that may or
may not be using "Khazars" in a general sense (the Byzantines and Arabs, for
example, called all steppe people "Turks"; before them the
Romans had called them all
"Scythians"). Jewish Khazars
were also mentioned in a Georgian chronicle as a group that inhabited Derbent in the
late 1100s.

At least one 12th-century Byzantine source refers to tribes practicing Mosaic law and living
in the Balkans;
see Khalyzians. The connection
between this group and the Khazars is rejected by most modern Khazar
scholars.

[edit]

Western sources

Giovanni di Plano
Carpini, a thirteenth century Papal legate to the court of the Mongol Khan Guyuk, gave a list of
the nations the Mongols had conquered in his account. One of them, listed among
tribes of the Caucasus, Pontic steppe and the Caspian region, was the "Brutakhi, who
are Jews." The identity of the Brutakhi is unclear. Giovanni later refers to the
Brutakhi as shaving their heads. Though Giovanni refers to them as Kipchaks,
they may have been a remnant of the Khazar people. Alternatively, they may have
been Kipchak converts to Judaism (possibly connected to the Krymchaks or the Crimean Karaites).

[edit]

Debate

[edit]

Date and extent of the conversion

The date of the conversion, and whether it occurred as one event or as a
sequence of events over time, is widely disputed. The issues surrounding this
controversy are discussed above.

The number of Khazars who converted to Judaism is also hotly contested. D.M.
Dunlop was of the opinion that only the upper class converted; this was the
majority view until relatively recently. The relatively sudden shift in burial
customs during the mid 800s suggests a more widespread conversion, which
hypothesis has been recently championed by Kevin A. Brook.

[edit]

Khazar ancestry of Ashkenazim

Arthur Koestler

Some historians, and most famously the non-historian novelist Arthur Koestler (in
The Thirteenth
Tribe), have proposed that Jewish Khazars are the ancestors of most or
all Ashkenazi (Eastern European)
Jews, but the idea is controversial and is not supported by mainstream
researchers. Recent genetic studies appear to demonstrate that Middle
Eastern elements dominate the Ashkenazi male line (see, e.g., Y-chromosomal
Aaron), but that the female line appears to have a substantially different
history. Some have argued this suggests Middle Eastern men marrying into local
European
communities [4]meaning
that Ashkenazim are either not related to Jewish Khazars or that Jewish Khazars
represent only a small element of Ashkenazi ancestry rather than the dominant
element suggested by Koestler. The theory for the most part is considered to
have been widely discredited. Some historians and scientists recognize the need
to specifically test the Khazar theory, rather than generalizing based on
studies of other non-Khazar populations.[5]

Another criticism that has been levelled against Koestler's work is that he
largely appropriated his history from such sources as D.M. Dunlop, sometimes
without proper attribution. Moreover, it has been pointed out that his more
speculative second half (discussing his theories about Ashkenazi descent) is
largely unsupported; to the extent that Koestler referred to place-names and
documentary evidence his analysis has been described as a mixture of flawed
etymologies and misinterpreted primary sources.

Other critics of the Khazar-Ashkenazi theory have stated that the prime
motive for even the small degree of acceptance of these ideas is because they
have become political and anti-Zionist in nature. The
Khazar theory has been adopted by many anti-Zionists, especially in the Arab
world; such proponents of the theory argue that if Ashkenazi Jews are primarily
Khazar in origin, then they would be outside the scope of God's promise of Canaan to Israelites as recorded in the
Bible. This
ignores, of course, the fact that the Biblical promise explicitly includes
converts, and the fact that over half of Israeli Jews are not Ashkenazi. Some
have countered that such charges of a political motive are not relevant to the
core of the argument; in any event, Koestler himself was emphatically pro-Zionist based upon
secular
considerations.

The Khazar claim has also served as a catalyst for state antisemitism in the
Soviet Union and a justification for conquest by Russian nationalists. [6]

Others have claimed Khazar origins for such groups as the Karaim, Krymchaks, Mountain
Jews, and Gruzim. There is little evidence
to support any of these theories, although it is possible that some Khazar
descendants found their way into these communities. Non-Jewish groups who claim
at least partial descent from the Khazars include the Kumyks and Crimean Tatars; as with
the above-mentioned Jewish groups, these claims are subject to a great deal of
controversy and debate.

[edit]

In fiction

Main article: Khazars in
fiction

The question of mass religious conversion is a central theme in Milorad
Pavić's international bestselling novel Dictionary of the
Khazars. The novel, however, contained many invented elements and had little
to do with actual Khazar history. More recently, several novels, including H.N.
Turteltaub's Justinian (about the life of Justinian II) and Marek
Halter's Book of Abraham and Wind of the Khazars have dealt
either directly or indirectly with the topic of the Khazars and their role in
history.

[edit]

See also

Avraham Firkovich

Hisdai ibn Shaprut

History of Kiev

History
of the Jews in Russia and the Soviet Union

Kevin Alan Brook

Khazar
Correspondence

Khazar language

Khazars in fiction

Kievian Letter

Jewish
Polish history origins to 1600s

Lev
Gumilev

List of Khazar
rulers

Saqsin

Schechter Letter

Soviet Union

[edit]

Notes

^ In
DNA, New Clues to Jewish Roots by Nicholas Wade (New York
Times) May 14, 2002

^ The Y
Chromosome Pool of Jews as Part of the Genetic Landscape of the Middle
East by Almut Nebel, Dvora Filon, Bernd Brinkmann, Partha P. Majumder,
Marina Faerman, Ariella Oppenheim (The American Journal of Human
Genetics, Volume 69, number 5. pp. 1095-1112) (brief)

^ Levy ____.

[edit]

Resources

Doron M. Behar, Ene Metspalu,
Toomas Kivisild, Alessandro Achilli, Yarin Hadid, Shay Tzur, Luisa Pereira,
Antonio Amorim, Lluı´s Quintana-Murci, Kari Majamaa, Corinna Herrnstadt, Neil
Howell, Oleg Balanovsky, Ildus Kutuev, Andrey Pshenichnov, David Gurwitz,
Batsheva Bonne-Tamir, Antonio Torroni, Richard Villems, and Karl Skorecki.
"The Matrilineal Ancestry of Ashkenazi Jewry: Portrait of a Recent Founder
Event." The American Journal of Human Genetics, March, 2006.

Kevin Alan Brook.
The Jews of Khazaria, 1st ed., Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson,
1999. (Second edition forthcoming)

Kevin Alan Brook. "Are
Russian Jews Descended from the Khazars?" Khazaria.com

Kevin Alan Brook.
"Tales about Jewish Khazars in the Byzantine Empire Resolve an Old Debate".
Los Muestros, No. 54, p. 27.

Douglas M. Dunlop.
The History of the Jewish Khazars, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1954.

Douglas M. Dunlop. "The Khazars." The Dark Ages: Jews in Christian
Europe, 711-1096. 1966.

Peter B. Golden.
Khazar Studies: An Historio-Philological Inquiry into the Origins of the
Khazars. Budapest: Akademia Kiado, 1980.

Peter B. Golden. "Khazar Turkic Ghulâms in Caliphal Service" (Journal
Article in Journal Asiatique, 2004.)

Peter B. Golden. "Khazar Turkic Ghulâms in Caliphal Service: Onomastic
Notes" (Journal Article in Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi, 1993.)

Peter B. Golden. "Khazars" (Book Chapter in Turkish-Jewish Encounters:
Studies on Turkish-Jewish Relations through the Ages, 2001.)

Norman Golb and Omeljan Pritsak,
Khazarian Hebrew Documents of the Tenth Century. Ithaca: Cornell Univ.
Press, 1982.

Roman K. Kovalev.
"What Does Historical Numismatics Suggest About the Monetary History of
Khazaria in the Ninth Century? – Question Revisited." Archivum Eurasiae
Medii Aevi 13 (2004): 97–129.

Roman K. Kovalev. "Creating Khazar Identity through Coins: The Special
Issue Dirhams of 837/8." East Central and Eastern Europe in the Early
Middle Ages, ed. Florin Curta, pp. 220–253. Ann Arbor, MI: University
of Michigan Press, 2005.

Habib Levy, et al. Comprehensive History of the Jews of Iran:
The Outset of the Diaspora. George W. Maschke, trans. Mazda Publishers,
1999.

Timothy S. Miller, "The Legend of Saint Zotikos According to Constantine
Akropolites." Analecta Bollandiana vol. 112, 1994, pp. 339-376.

Thomas S. Noonan.
"Did the Khazars Possess a Monetary Economy? An Analysis of the Numismatic
Evidence." Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 2 (1982): 219-267.

Thomas S. Noonan. "What Does Historical Numismatics Suggest About the
History of Khazaria in the Ninth Century?" Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi
3 (1983): 265-281.

Thomas S. Noonan. "Why Dirhams First Reached Russia:
The Role of Arab-Khazar Relations in the Development of the Earliest Islamic
Trade with Eastern Europe."
Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 4 (1984): 151-282.

Thomas S. Noonan. "Khazaria as an Intermediary between Islam and Eastern
Europe in the Second Half of the Ninth Century: The Numismatic Perspective."
Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 5 (1985): 179-204.

Thomas S. Noonan. "Byzantium and the Khazars: a special relationship?"
Byzantine Diplomacy: Papers from the Twenty-fourth Spring Symposium of
Byzantine Studies, Cambridge, March 1990, ed. Jonathan
Shepard and Simon Franklin, pp. 109-132. Aldershot, England: Variorium,
1992.

Thomas S. Noonan. "What Can Archaeology Tell Us About the Economy of
Khazaria?" The Archaeology of the Steppes: Methods and Strategies - Papers
from the International Symposium held in Naples 9-12 November 1992, ed.
Bruno Genito, pp. 331-345. Napoli, Italy: Istituto Universitario Orientale,
1994.

Thomas S. Noonan. "The Khazar Economy." Archivum Eurasiae Medii
Aevi 9 (1995-1997): 253-318.

Thomas S. Noonan. "The Khazar-Byzantine World of the Crimea in the Early
Middle Ages: The Religious Dimension." Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 10
(1998-1999): 207-230.

Thomas S. Noonan. "Les Khazars et le commerce oriental." Les Échanges
au Moyen Age: Justinien, Mahomet, Charlemagne: trois empires dans l'économie
médiévale, pp. 82-85. Dijon: Editions Faton S.A., 2000.

Thomas S. Noonan. "The Khazar Qaghanate and its Impact on the Early Rus'
State: The translatio imperii from Itil to Kiev." Nomads in the Sedentary
World, eds. Anatoly Mikhailovich Khazanov and André Wink, pp. 76-102.
Richmond, England: Curzon Press, 2001.

Omeljan Pritsak. "The Khazar Kingdom's Conversion to Judaism." (Journal Article in
Harvard Ukrainian Studies, 1978)

Omeljan Pritsak. "The Pre-Ashkenazic Jews of Eastern Europe in Relation to
the Khazars, the Rus', and the Lithuanians". Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in
HIstorical Perspective, ed. Howard Aster and Peter J. Potichnyj. Edmonton,
Alberta: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 1990. p. 7.

Tamara Talbot Rice. The Seljuks in Asia
Minor. Thames and Hudson, London, 1961. pp.18-19.

Zolitor, Jeff, Wolfe, Peter "The Khazars" Philadelphia: Conference of the
Congress of Secular Jewish Organizations, (2002), Canadian Jewish Outlook
(Sept/Oct 2002) /www.csjo.org/pages/essays/essaykhazars.htm

Vital, David (1999): A People Apart: A History of the Jews in
Europe. Oxford University Press. ISBN
0198219806

[edit]

Books written before 1915

Itinéraires de la Terre Sainte, Carmody, (Brussels, 1847)

Sur le Khazars. Vivien St. Martin. (Paris, 1851)

Ibn Dasta, translated by Chwolson, (St. Petersburg, 1869)

Der khazarische Königsbrief, Cassel, (Berlin, 1877)

Der Ursprung der Magyaren, Vambéry, (Leipzig, 1882)

Das Buch se-Chazari, Hirschfield, (Breslau, 1885)

Pre- and Proto-historic Finns, Abercromby, (London, 1898)

Osteuropäische und Ostasiatische Streifzüge, Marquart, (Leipzig,
1903)

Jewish Quarterly Review, Volume iii, Pages 181–219, "An Unknown
Khazar Document," (n.s., Philadelphia, 1913)

Accounts of Oriental writers were published at St. Petersburg by Fraehn,
(1821), and by Harkavy, (1874 et seq.)

[edit]

External links

The Khazars by Yair Davidiy

German Wikipedia map
showing expansion of the Khazar Khaganate

Khazaria.com

Eurasian Nomads

Khazar Historic Maps

Norman
Finkelshteyn's Jewish Warriors – The Khazar Khaganate

The Kitab al-Khazari of
Judah Hallevi, full English translation at sacred-texts.com

Khazar and
West-Turkish dining habits

Article on the Khazar
military for wargamers

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazars"

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