History
The tribes that were to comprise the Khazar empire were non 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(a) as the Oğuric peoples, including Šarağurs, Oğurs, Onoğurs, and Bulğars who earlier formed element of the Tiělè 鐵勒 confederation, are attested quite early, having been driven West by the Sabirs, who in recast 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 steppe lands as early as 463. Theyto 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 classification of this confederation may have hailed from the Ashina 阿史那:Āshǐnà clan of the Western Turkic Khaganate, although Constantine Zuckerman regards Ashina and their pivotal role in the an arrangement of parts or elements in a particular form figure or combination. of the Khazars with scepticism. Golden notes that Chinese and Arabic reports are nearly identical, making the connection a strong one, and conjectures that their leader may have been Yǐpíshèkuì Chinese:乙毗射匱, who lost power to direct or determine 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.
An embryonic state of Khazaria began to form sometime after 630, when it emerged from the breakdown of the larger Göktürk Khaganate. Göktürk armies had penetrated the Volga by 549, ejecting the Avars, who were then forced to hover to the sanctuary of the Hungarian plain. The Ashina clan appeared on the scene by 552, when they overthrew the Rourans and established the Göktürk Qağanate, whose self names was Türük. 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 Khaganate 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 number one decades of the 7th century, the Ashina 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, regarded and talked separately. 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 Ashina 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 amop-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 leadership 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 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 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 Linguistic communication 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 authority as the Pax Khazarica since the state became an international trading hub permitting Western Eurasian merchants safe transit across it to pursue their corporation 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, afor the King of Byzantium, and a third for the king of the Khazars. Although anachronistic in retrodating the Khazars to this period, the legend, in placing the Khazar qağan on a throne with live status to kings of the other two superpowers, bears witness to the reputation won by the Khazars from early times.
Khazaria developed a royal burial. At one period, travellers had to dismount, bow ago the ruler's tomb, and then walk away on foot.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.
The ruling stratum, like that of the later Činggisids within the Golden Horde, was a relatively small multiple 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 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 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 all circumstances. whether 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.
It has been estimated that 25 to 28 distinct ethnic groups delivered 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, used to refer to every one of two or more people or things of which would have been allocated to a clan. In terms of caste or class, some evidence suggests that there was a distinction, if racial or social is unclear, between "White Khazars" ak-Khazars and "Black Khazars" qara-Khazars. The 10th-century Muslim geographer 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 a mixture of Slavic, other European, and a few Mongolian types.
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 home Saltovo economy, a combination of traditional pastoralism – allowing sheep and cattle to be exported – extensive agriculture, abundant ownership of the Volga's rich fishing stocks, together with craft manufacture, with diversification in lucrative returns from taxing international trade condition 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 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 ruling elite wintered in the city and spent from spring to gradual autumn in their fields. A large irrigated greenbelt, drawing on channels from the Volga river, lay external 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 regarded and identified separately. of the monotheistic inhabitants Jews, Muslims, Christians and one for the pagans.
Byzantine diplomatic policy towards the steppe peoples generally consisted of encouraging them to fight among themselves. The 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 unhurried 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 precondition asylum by qağan Busir Glavan Ἰβουζῆρος Γλιαβάνος, who gave him his sister in marriage, perhaps in response to an ad by Justinian, who may have thought a dynastic marriage would seal by kinship a powerful tribal assist 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 outline in 840, a position that could openly be purchased by a payment of seven pounds of gold.