The Khazar state (650-969) was a major medieval power. It was formed by a union of tribes in the southeast of Europe. The Khazar Khaganate was considered the most dangerous Jewish power in history. He controlled the territory of the Middle and Lower Volga regions, the North Caucasus, the Azov region, the current northwestern part of Kazakhstan, the northern region of Crimea, as well as all of Eastern Europe to the Dnieper.

Khazar Khaganate. History

This tribal union emerged from the Western Turkic union. Initially, the core of the Khazar state was located in the northern region of present-day Dagestan. Subsequently, it moved (under pressure from the Arabs) to the lower reaches of the Volga. The political dominance of the Khazars extended at one time to some

It should be noted that the origin of the people themselves is not fully understood. It is believed that after the adoption of Judaism, the Khazars perceived themselves as descendants of Kozar, who was the son of Togarmekh. According to the Bible, the latter was the son of Japhet.

According to some historians, the Khazar Khaganate has some connection with the lost Israelite tribes. At the same time, most researchers tend to believe that the nationality still has Turkic roots.

The rise of the Khazar people is associated with the development with the rulers of which the first (presumably) had In 552, a huge empire was formed by the Altai Turks. Soon it was divided into two parts.

By the second half of the 6th century, the Turks extended their power to the Caspian-Black Sea steppes. During the Iranian-Byzantine war (602-628), the first evidence of the existence of the Khazars appeared. Then they were the main part of the army.

In 626, the Khazars invaded the territory of modern Azerbaijan. Having plundered Caucasian Alania and united with the Byzantines, they stormed Tbilisi.

By the end of the 7th century, most of the Crimea, the North Caucasus and the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov were under the control of the Khazars. There is no exact information about how far their power extended east of the Volga. However, there is no doubt that the Khazar Khaganate, spreading its influence, stopped the flow of nomads who followed to Europe from Asia. This, in turn, created favorable conditions for the development of settled Slavic peoples and Western European countries.

The Khazar Khaganate controlled the territory where quite a lot of Jewish communities lived. Around 740, Bulan (one of the princes) converted to Judaism. Apparently, this contributed to the strengthening of his clan. At the same time, the ruling pagan dynasty of the Khazars began to lose authority.

A descendant of Prince Bulan - Obadiah - at the beginning of the ninth century, took the second post in the empire, concentrating real power in his hands. Since then, a system of dual government has been formed. Nominally, the main representatives of the royal family remained in the country, however, in reality, the beks of the Bulanid family carried out the reign on their behalf.

After the establishment of a new administrative order, the Khazar Khaganate began to develop international transit trade, reorienting itself from conquest campaigns.

In the 9th century, in connection with a new wave, new nomadic tribes began to cross the Volga.

The Old Russian state became a new enemy of the Khazars. The Varangian squads, who came to Eastern Europe, began to successfully challenge the power over the Slavs. Thus, the Radimichi in 885, the northerners in 884 and the glade in 864 were freed from the Khazar domination.

In the period from the end of the 9th to the first half of the 10th century, Khazaria weakened, but continued to be a very influential empire. To a greater extent, this was made possible thanks to skillful diplomacy and a well-trained army.

In the death of the Khazar Khaganate, the decisive role belongs to the Old Russian state. Svyatoslav in 964 freed the Vyatichi (the last dependent tribe). The following year, the prince defeated the Khazar army. A few years later (in 968-969) the prince defeated Semender and Itil (the capitals of the Khazar Empire in different periods). This moment is considered the official end of independent Khazaria.

Since the 6th century A.D. e. appear in Syriac, Armenian, Byzantine, Latin and Chinese manuscripts the first information about a previously unknown people who settled in the territory of the Lower Volga region and the eastern part of the North Caucasus. And in subsequent centuries there are many references to them in Arabic and Persian sources. The Arabs in their annals called them - "Alkhazar", the Armenians called them - "Khazirk", in the "Initial Russian Chronicle" they are called - "Kozar", in the Jewish medieval writing they appeared under the name "Kuzar", "Kuzarim". In modern Russian, this people is called - "Khazars".

Byzantine writers of those times ranked the Khazars among the Turkic peoples. Many Arab writers also believed, although there were those among them who attributed the Khazars to Georgians or Armenians; and in one Armenian source they were associated with the Chinese; and in the Georgian chronicle - with the Scythians; there were also cases when they were considered a people similar to the Slavs. In fact, the name "Khazars" covered many tribes of various origins, numerous nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples, the remnants of the Huns who passed through the southern Russian steppes - and Turkic elements prevailed there.

The cradle of the Khazars was the Caspian steppes of the Northern Ciscaucasia, that is, the territory of modern Dagestan. The Khazars were a warlike people, back in the 6th century - as part of other Turkic tribes - they went on campaigns in Transcaucasia and temporarily captured Georgia and Armenia, and the Persian Shah even built a giant wall with many defensive towers to protect against them.

The Khazar Khaganate was formed in the middle of the 7th century AD, and its capital was first the city of Semender on the territory of present-day Dagestan, and then Itil - on the Lower Volga. In the seventh century, the Khazars pushed back to the west, to the Danube, the Bulgarians and captured the Azov steppes. Northern Black Sea region and part of the steppe Crimea. This is how a federation of different tribes arose, which was headed by the Khazar (Turkic) clan, and all the tribes and peoples that were part of it enjoyed sufficient freedom, to the extent that they could independently go on campaigns, conclude their own agreements and adopt the religion that they desired.

The Khazar Khaganate had two supreme rulers. One of them is the main king, a kagan, who always belonged to the same family of noble origin, and the Arab geographer Istakhri described the custom of his election: “When they want to appoint someone as kagan, they bring him in and begin to strangle him with a silk cord. When he is close to giving up his spirit, they say to him: “How long do you want to reign?” He answers: “So many and so many years ...” This custom was associated with faith in the divine power of the kagan: he himself semi-forgetfulness determined the period of stay in his body of this divine power.If a misfortune fell upon the country - drought, ruin, defeat in the war, then this kagan was killed, because the divine power dried up in him, and instead of him they chose a new kagan, whom they began to worship But the actual power in the country belonged to another king - kagan-bek.

The Khazars came into contact with the Slavic tribes: Polans, northerners, Vyatichi and Radimichi at different times saw the Khazars and paid tribute to them. They waged long wars with the Arab caliphate, and played an important role in the history of the Eastern European peoples, shielding them from the Arabs and withstanding the attacks of the previously invincible Arab armies. Khazaria also helped Byzantium, because it pulled back the Arab forces, which otherwise would have threatened the Byzantine Empire. By the 8th century, the Khazar state had become the most powerful political and military force in Eastern Europe, and Kievan Rus could subsequently arise and develop behind this protective fence.

The Khazars were at first pagans, one of the many pagan peoples of Eastern Europe, they made sacrifices to fire and water, worshiped the moon, trees, the most revered deity Tengri Khan. In the first half of the 8th century AD. part of the Khazars of the Northern Ciscaucasia, led by their ruler named Bulan (Sabriel), adopted Judaism. Jews expelled from Sasanian Iran lived in those places, and from them, most likely, the Jewish religion came to the Khazars.

The legend tells that an angel appeared in a dream to the Khazar ruler Bulan and said: “Oh, Bulan! The Lord sent me to you to say: I heard your prayer and your prayer. Here I I bless you and multiply you, I will continue your kingdom until the end of time and deliver all your enemies into your hand. "The angel promised Bulan power and glory if he accepts the Jewish religion, and after that Bulan went on a campaign to the Caucasus and really won several impressive victories there From many sources it is known that in 730-731 AD the Khazars won major victories in Caucasian Albania (present-day Azerbaijan), - Bulan's adoption of Judaism is timed to these years.But before he did this, the emperor of Byzantium and the ruler of Muslims They sent him rich gifts and sent scholars to persuade him to their religions. Bulan arranged a dispute in which a Christian, a Muslim and a Jew took part, but did not make any decision. And then he asked the Christian priest: "What do you think, which religion is better - Israelis or Ismailis?" To this the priest replied: "The faith of the Israelites is better than the faith of the Ismailians." Then Bulan asked the Muslim Qadi: "What do you think, what faith ra is better - Christian or Israeli?" Qadi replied: "Israeli is better." And then Bulan said: "If so, then you yourself admitted that the religion of the Israelites is the best, and therefore I choose the faith of Israel, which was the faith of Abraham. May Almighty God help me!"

This whole story about Bulan became known to us from a letter from the Khazar Khagan Yosef to a Spanish Jew from Cordoba named Hasdai ibn Shaprut.

Two versions of his letter Yosef to Hasdai ibn Shaprut have survived to this day: a short and lengthy version of his first letter. It was written in Hebrew, and it is possible that it was not written by the kagan himself, but by one of his close associates - the Jews. Yosef reported that his people come from the clan of Togarma. Togarma was the son of Japhet and the grandson of Noah. Togarma had ten sons, and one of them was called Khazar. It was from him that the Khazars went. At first, Yosef reported, the Khazars were few in number, “they waged war with peoples who were more numerous and stronger than them, but with the help of God they drove them away and occupied the whole country ... After that, generations passed until one king appeared to them, the name who was Bulan. He was a wise and God-fearing man, who trusted with all his heart in God. He eliminated fortune-tellers and idolaters from the country and sought protection and patronage from God." After Bulan, who converted to Judaism, King Yosef listed all the Khazar Jewish Kagans, and all of them have Jewish names: Obadiah, Khizkiyahu, Menashe, Hanukkah, Yitzhak, Zvulun, again Menashe, Nissim, Menachem, Benyamin, Aaron, and finally the author of the letter - Yosef. He wrote about his country that in it “no one hears the voice of the oppressor, there is no enemy and there are no bad accidents ... The country is fertile and fat, consists of fields, vineyards and orchards. All of them are irrigated from rivers. We have a lot of all kinds fruit trees. With the help of the Almighty, I live in peace."

Yosef was the last ruler of the powerful Khazar Khaganate, and when he sent his letter to distant Spain - no later than 961 AD, he did not yet know that the days of his kingdom were already numbered.

At the end of the VIII - beginning of the IX century AD. The Khazar Khagan Ovadia made Judaism the state religion. This could not have happened by chance, from scratch: there must have already been a sufficient number of Jews in Khazaria, in today's language - a kind of "critical mass" close to the court of the ruler, who influenced the adoption of such a decision.

Even under Bulan, who was the first to accept Judaism, many Jews moved to the Eastern Ciscaucasia, fleeing the persecution of Muslims. Under Ovadia, as noted by the Arab historian Masudi, "many Jews moved to the Khazars from all Muslim cities and from Rum (Byzantium), because the king of Rum persecuted the Jews in his empire in order to seduce them into Christianity." Jews settled entire quarters of the Khazar cities, especially in the Crimea. Many of them also settled in the capital of Khazaria - Itil. Kagan Yosef wrote about those times: Obadiah "corrected the kingdom and strengthened the faith according to the law and the rule. He built houses of assembly and houses of teaching and gathered many wise men of Israel, gave them a lot of silver and gold, and they explained to him twenty-four books of the Holy Scriptures, the Mishna , Talmud and the whole order of prayers".

This reform of Ovadias apparently did not go smoothly. The Khazar aristocracy in the outlying provinces rebelled against the central government. She had Christians and Muslims on her side; the rebels called on the help of the Magyars from beyond the Volga, and Ovadia hired nomadic Guzes.

Judaism continued to be the state religion, and the Jews lived in peace on the territory of the Khazar Khaganate. All historians of those times noted the religious tolerance of the Khazar Jewish rulers. Jews, Christians, Muslims and pagans lived peacefully under their rule.

There were attempts to make Christianity the state religion of Khazaria. For this purpose, he went there in 860 AD. the famous Cyril - the creator of Slavic writing. He took part in a dispute with a Muslim and a Jew, and although it is written in his "Life" that he won the dispute, the kagan still did not change his religion, and Cyril returned with nothing. Upon learning that the Muslims in their lands had destroyed the synagogue, the Khazar Khagan even ordered the destruction of the minaret of the main mosque in Itil and the execution of the muezzins. At the same time, he said: "If I, really, were not afraid that in the countries of Islam there would not be a single undestroyed synagogue, I would definitely destroy the mosque."

After the adoption of Judaism, Khazaria developed the most hostile relations with Byzantium. First, Byzantium set the Alans against the Khazars, then the Pechenegs, then the Kiev prince Svyatoslav, who defeated the Khazars.

Khazaria warrior

Today, historians explain the reasons for the fall of the Khazar Khaganate in different ways. Some believe that this state has weakened as a result of constant wars with its surrounding enemies. Others claim that the adoption of Judaism by the Khazars - a peaceful religion - contributed to a decrease in the fighting spirit of nomadic warlike tribes. There are historians today who explain this by the fact that the Jews, with their religion, turned the Khazars from a "nation of warriors" into a "nation of merchants." The Russian chronicle reports that the Kievan prince Svyatoslav took the capital of the Khazars Itil, took Semender on the Caspian Sea, took the Khazar city of Sarkel on the Don - later known as Belaya Vezha - and returned to Kyiv. After that, for several more years in a row, the Guz tribes freely plundered the defenseless land.

The Khazars soon returned to their destroyed capital, Itil, restored it, but, as Arab historians note, not Jews, but Muslims already lived there. At the end of the tenth century, the son of Svyatoslav Vladimir again went to the Khazars, took possession of the country and imposed tribute on them. And again the cities of Khazaria were destroyed, the capital turned into ruins; only the Khazar possessions in the Crimea and on the shores of the Sea of ​​Azov survived. In 1016 A.D. Greeks and Slavs destroyed the last Khazar fortifications in the Crimea and captured their kagan George Tsulu, who was already a Christian.

Karaites in Crimea - according to one version, the descendants of the Khazar tribes

Some researchers now believe that the Khazar Khaganate did not completely disintegrate at the end of the tenth century, but continued to exist as an independent, small state until the invasion of the Mongols. In any case, in the eleventh century, the Khazars are still mentioned in Russian chronicles as participants in a conspiracy against Prince Oleg Tmutarakansky, but this is the last mention of them in European sources. And only in the descriptions of Jewish travelers of subsequent centuries, the Crimean peninsula was still called Khazaria for a long time.

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In the Early Middle Ages in Eastern Europe, next to Kievan Rus, there was such a powerful state as the Khazar Khaganate. The Khazars themselves were originally a Caucasian tribe that lived on the territory of modern Dagestan. Then this people migrated and settled along the shores of the Caspian Sea and in the lower reaches of the Terek. At that time, the level of the Caspian Sea was 8 meters lower than today. Therefore, the Volga delta was extremely large and reached the Buzachi Peninsula. All these lands abounded in fish and grapes brought by the Khazars from the Caucasus.

The enemies of the Caspian Khazars were Burtases and Bulgars. In the VI century, both of them were subjugated by the Turks. Then the winners began dynastic strife. At the same time, some Turks leaned on the Bulgars, others on the Khazars. The Khazars and their allies won. The Bulgars fled to the Middle Volga, where they founded the city of Great Bulgar. Another part of the Bulgar horde, headed by Khan Asparukh, went to the Danube. There she mixed with the local tribes of the Slavs and laid the foundation for the Bulgarian people.

In the 7th-8th centuries, the Khazars were attacked by the Arabs. The Turks helped them in this war. These people were very brave and warlike. It was the Turks who were the first to master such a rider's weapon as a saber. In the middle of the 7th century, the Turkic dynasty was defeated by the Chinese Tang dynasty (618-907). The representative of the broken dynasty fled to the Khazars. They accepted him and made him their khan, as the khan-Turk suited them.

He wandered with his headquarters in the lower reaches of the Volga, migrated to the Terek in the spring, spent the summer between the Terek, the Kuban and the Don, and returned to the Volga with the advent of winter. Such a khan did not need to be maintained. He did not demand taxes, but was fed by his own nomadic economy. It was the Turkic khans, having become the head of the Khazars, who organized their defense against the Arabs. They advanced from Azerbaijan through Derbent to the Terek and the Volga. But their invasion was repulsed. After that, a joint Turkic-Khazar state was formed in the Caspian Sea.

Khazars and the Jewish people

The history of various peoples is notable for the migration of the population. At the same time, migrations are very different. It happens that people move to a foreign territory and completely adapt to it. This is what happened to the Slavs. From the upper reaches of the Vistula, they spread to the Baltic, the Adriatic and the Aegean Seas. At the same time, they managed to settle everywhere. But the Vandals, Sueves and Goths mixed with the local population and disappeared.

At all times, there was another migration: a group of merchants or conquerors created their own small colony on foreign territory. These include the British, who colonized India and the French, who created African colonies. The first did not become Indians, and the second did not become Negroes. After working and serving away from home, they returned. For the Khazars, the Jewish people, or rather, its Persian and Byzantine branches, became colonizers.

The Persians and Byzantines forced the Jews out of their lands, and they found shelter north of the Terek. Trade routes passed here, and the Khazars who lived in these places did not show aggression towards the refugees. Those, using their literacy, began to master and develop occupations that were unusual for the local population. Trade, diplomacy, education were in their hands.

At the beginning of the 9th century, the Jewish population of the Khazar Khaganate added political power to its intellectual and economic power. The wise Obadiah seized the actual power in the state. He expelled the Turks, who made up the military class. At the same time, he relied on mercenary units of the Guzes and Pechenegs. The Khazar Turks resisted, but were defeated and retreated to Hungary.

In the 9th century, the Baghdad Caliphate began to fall apart. His main city, Baghdad, sucked all the juice out of the subject areas and gave nothing in return. As a result, Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia broke away. Egypt, Eastern Iran, Central Asia separated, and the Deylem region separated off the southern coast of the Caspian Sea. This area was inhabited by extremely warlike people, and they professed Islam in the form of Shiism.

Khazar Khaganate on the map

They captured part of Azerbaijan up to Derbent, the western regions of Persia and conquered Baghdad. Thus, a convenient route from the Volga along the coast of the Caspian Sea to Baghdad was under the control of the Daylemites. And they didn't let anyone through.

As a result, the Jewish government of the Khazar Khaganate found itself in a difficult situation, as trade routes to the south were cut off. Prior to this, the Jews recruited warriors from Gurgan and paid them high wages. But the Kurgans refused to fight against the Daylamite Muslims, since they were co-religionists. And then the Khazar Khaganate was forced to hire the Rus on the same terms.

The Russians encountered the Daylamites in 913 and were defeated by the Muslims. In an unsuccessful campaign, the entire Russian squad perished, and Khazaria after that, for two decades, was occupied with minor conflicts with the Slavs and the emerging Kiev principality.

In 939, a very important historical event took place. The Russian Prince Igor captured the city of Samkerts (Taman), which belongs to the Khazars and is located on the banks of the Kerch Strait. In response to this, in 940, the Khazar army under the command of the Jew Pesach moved against the Rus. He liberated Samkerts, crossed the Kerch Strait with an army and marched along the southern coast of Crimea. Then Pesach crossed Perekop, reached Kyiv and imposed tribute on the Russian principality. All these events are told in the Tale of Bygone Years.

In 943, the Khazars again sent the Rus as tributaries to the Caspian for a war with the Daylemites. The Russian squad captured the Berdaa fortress in the lower reaches of the Kura River. But after this victory, dysentery began among the Russian soldiers. It turned out to be more terrible than enemy sabers. The Rus hastily plunged into the boats and sailed away from the inhospitable shores. But no one returned home.

For Kievan Rus, the Khazar Khaganate became an extremely serious problem, which in its significance surpassed the war with Byzantium. As a result, in the summer of 964, the young Kyiv prince Svyatoslav began a campaign against the Khazars. He did not lead his squad from Kyiv to the Volga through the steppes. The Rus ascended the Dnieper to the upper reaches and dragged the rooks to the Oka. Along the Oka and the Volga, Svyatoslav reached the capital of Khazaria, the city of Itil.

Itil was located on a large island 18 km wide. It was formed by two Volga channels: the Volga itself from the west and Akhtuba from the east. In those days, the Akhtuba River was as full-flowing as the Volga. The city had a stone synagogue, a king's palace, large wooden houses. There was a stone mosque, as Muslims were treated politely.

Warriors of Svyatoslav against the Khazars

The squad of Svyatoslav surrounded the city, but many Khazars had previously fled to the Volga delta and hid in the labyrinth of the canal. But the Jewish population of Itil remained outside the city walls. It came out to fight the Russians and was utterly defeated.

After that, Svyatoslav moved to the Terek and surrounded the second most important city in the Khaganate, Semender. Its inhabitants did not resist for long. They surrendered to the mercy of the victors. The Rus took horses, oxen, carts from the population and moved home through the Don. On the way, they stormed the Sarkel fortress and destroyed it.

As a result of the campaign of 964-965, Svyatoslav excluded the Volga, the middle course of the Terek and part of the Middle Don from the zone of influence of the Khazars. But the main achievement of the campaign was that Kievan Rus regained its independence and stopped paying tribute to the Khazar Khaganate.

Sunset of the Khazar Khaganate

In the 80s of the X century, many Khazars converted to Islam and received help from Khorezm. The Kagan and his court returned to Itil again, but in 985 the Kyiv prince Vladimir organized a new campaign against Khazaria and imposed tribute on it. In the XI century, the Khazars completely lost their political influence in the region. They could not resist the Polovtsians and began to leave their ancestral lands.

In the XII century, instead of Itil, the city of Saksin appeared. Muslim Khazars lived in it, but there were few of them. But the Jewish Khazars migrated to Europe, where they disappeared among other Jews. Nomads began to dominate the former lands of the kaganate. These territories united into a single whole only during the Golden Horde.

Alexey Starikov

In the 7th-10th centuries, the state of the nomadic Khazar Turks occupied the vast territories of the modern post-Soviet republics from Central Asia and the North Caucasus in the east to modern Ukraine and Crimea in the southwest. The Khazar Khaganate, like most other huge empires, resembled a colossus with feet of clay. A motley conglomeration of various peoples lived on its territory: Savirs, Bulgars, Huns, Turkuts, Ugrians, Khazars, Slavs, Arabs, Jews and many others who spoke different languages ​​and professed different religions. At a certain stage in the development of statehood (we cannot confidently say when exactly - perhaps in 740, and possibly later, at the end of the 8th - beginning of the 9th century or, according to other assumptions, c. 860), the ruling elite of Khazaria declares Judaism the state religion of the kaganate. However, other faiths were also practiced on the territory of the kaganate: Islam, Christianity and shamanism.

The collapse of the Khazar state and the development of scientific interest in it in the 19th century

In 965-968, the Kyiv prince Svyatoslav inflicted the strongest defeat on Khazaria. After that, the state of the Khazars, they themselves and even their name almost completely disappear from the political map of medieval Europe. An exciting story about the disappearance of a huge powerful empire, the destruction of its cities and settlements and the almost complete dissolution of the Khazars among the peoples of neighboring states, became the subject of heated debate and discussion, starting, probably, with the Jewish writer and poet of the XII century Yehuda Halevi and ending with orientalists, theologians, historians , nationalists and ideological leaders of modern and contemporary times.

According to H. Fren (1823), the history of medieval Russia was so closely connected with the Khazars that the latter became an important object of study in pre-revolutionary Russia. A classic example of the growing interest in the Khazar theme in Russia at the beginning of the 19th century is the well-known poem by Alexander Pushkin, in which the prophetic Oleg is going to “take revenge on the unreasonable Khazars.” This phrase will later become known to every Soviet schoolchild. In addition to the “Song of the Prophetic Oleg”, the poet will turn to the Khazar theme once again - in the poem “Ruslan and Lyudmila”, one of the heroes of which is the rival of the knight Ruslan, “full of passionate thoughts, the young Khazar Khan Ratmir”.

Among Russian historians at that time, there were two main trends in the interpretation of the history of the Khazars. Conservative historians (Tatishchev, Karamzin, Nechvolodov) considered the exemption from paying tribute to the Khazars and the successful campaign of Prince Svyatoslav as decisive events in the process of the formation of the ancient Russian state and the Russian people. These researchers spoke about the Khazar yoke, about the confrontation between the forest and the steppe, and represented the Khazars as dangerous enemies of Kievan Rus. Liberal historians, on the contrary, wrote about the positive side of relations between Khazaria and Russia, about their symbiosis.

In the 80s of the XX century, on the wave of interest in the fiction book “Khazar Dictionary” - a rather talented digression into the medieval Khazar theme, written by the famous Serbian writer Milorad Pavić, the attention of the general public to the Khazars and Khazar history became even stronger.

Theories about the descendants of the Khazars

It is paradoxical, but true: a purely scientific problem - the history of the medieval Khazar state - has become a serious topic in the political games of European nationalists of the XX-XXI centuries. Some of them tried (and are trying) to use the history of the Khazars to legitimize their political demands, others declare themselves the “only” and “real” descendants of the Khazars, others are trying to rewrite the medieval history of the Russian, Ukrainian and Jewish peoples using the “Khazar myth”.

Especially often the subject of various kinds of pseudo-historical speculations is the question of where the Khazars who disappeared in the 10th-11th centuries actually disappeared and who, accordingly, are the heirs of their culture and statehood. This question has given rise to a huge number of absolutely pseudo-academic and, at times, completely absurd theories masquerading as historical research. For example, based on the phonetic similarity between the words Cossack / Cossack and Khazar / Khazar, the ideologists of the Ukrainian Cossacks of the 18th century declared their origin from the Khazars. So, in 1710, the Cossack ataman Joseph Kirilenko wrote in a letter to the hetman that the Moscow tsars had never been the natural rulers of the “Cossack people” since the reign of the “Cossack kagans”.

The Jew Arthur Koestler considered the Khazars to be “the thirteenth tribe of Israel,” from which all Ashkenazi (i.e. European) Jewry descended. Lev Gumilyov believed that the descendants of the Khazars were Slavs - wanderers and Don Cossacks. The romantic Karaite nationalist Abraham Firkovich created a Karaite version of the conversion of the Khazars to Judaism, thereby seeking to show the superiority of the Karaites over the Jewish Rabanites. Another Karaite, Seraya Shapshal, went even further and began to assert that the Karaites are the direct - and only - descendants of the Khazars. However, the Karaites are by no means the only ethnic group that declared their Khazar origin. The second most significant contender for the Khazar heritage is, perhaps, the modern Crimean Jews-Krymchaks. Like the Karaites, they renounce their Jewish origin and claim to be descendants of the Khazars.

However, among European Jews there were also applicants for the “Khazar inheritance”! In the 20s-30s. 20th century Polish-Jewish historians, along with Karaites, begin to study the history of the Khazars, in particular the history of the founding of Jewish settlements in Poland. Some of them (primarily M. Gumplovich and I. Schipper) concluded that the Khazars played an important role in the formation of European Jewry and, moreover, that the Khazar Jewish proselytes could constitute a significant proportion of the medieval Jews of Poland and Eastern Europe.

Recently, the book "When and how you became Jews" by Tel Aviv University professor and historian Shlomo Sand has made a big noise. An Israeli scholar argues that a nation like the Jews simply does not exist, and the claims of Jews about their origin from the Middle East are just a myth to justify the existence of the State of Israel. European Jews, according to the words, are the descendants of the Khazar Turks.

Some researchers and nationalists wrote about the Khazar origin of the Mountain Jews of the Caucasus, Slavic Judaists-Subbotniks and Kazakhs.

So who are the actual descendants of the Khazars?

In our opinion, this question cannot be answered unambiguously. As noted by M.I. Artamonov, “the search for the descendants of the Khazars remains unsuccessful” mainly due to the fact that the Khazars were assimilated by the nomadic Cumans (Cumans) in the 11th-13th centuries. Thus, hardly any modern people can really claim descent from the Khazars. The unprecedented variety of selfish use of Khazar history, carried out at different times by representatives of various political movements and ethnic groups, multiplied by a tangled tangle of Turkic-Jewish historical and religious motives, makes the Khazar theme a unique example of the ideological distortion of medieval history.

Will the 21st century bring new patterns of using Khazar history for political and ideological purposes? There is no doubt that changes in the highest ideological spheres can also affect the interpretation of the Khazar myth, and who knows, maybe in the near future, researchers with some amazement will discover new “heirs” of Pushkin’s unreasonable Khazars.

Secrets of the Russian Khaganate Galkina Elena Sergeevna

What was the Khazar Khaganate?

The Khazar state existed in the 7th - 10th centuries. The capitals are the cities of Semender on the Sulak River in Dagestan and Atil at the mouth of the Volga. The Kaganate was formed by the Finno-Ugric tribe of the Savirs and several Turkic tribes that invaded the Eastern Ciscaucasia in the 6th century. Among these Turks there was also the Ko-sa tribe - according to scientists, it gave the name to the people of the Khazars. The Khazar Khaganate was an influential force in Eastern Europe, and therefore a lot of written evidence has been preserved about it in Arabic and Persian literature, among the Byzantines. Khazars are mentioned in Russian chronicles. There are actually Khazar sources, among which the most important is the letter of the 10th century. from the Khazar king Joseph to the Spanish Jew Hasdai ibn Shafrut, in which the king briefly tells the whole history of Khazaria. But despite the many sources, very little is known about Khazaria. We will consider only what happened before and during the existence of the Russian Khaganate, that is, until the first half of the 9th century.

This is what the quintessence of the history of the Khazars of the 7th - early 9th century looks like. from written sources. At first, the Khazars roamed in the Eastern Ciscaucasia, from the Caspian Sea to Derbent, and in the 7th century. entrenched on the Lower Volga and on part of the Crimean peninsula. Then the Khazars were formally dependent on the Turkic Khaganate, which by the 7th century. weakened. And in the first quarter of the 7th c. the emerging Khazar state was already independent, but was not yet called a khaganate. After all, the kagan in the Eurasian steppes is a title that was equated with the imperial among the Europeans, and the kaganate is a strong and powerful state, under whose rule there are many tribes.

Near the Khazars, in the Western Ciscaucasia, in the 7th century. races - another nomadic state was supposed - Great Bulgaria. In the 660s. the Khazars, in alliance with the North Caucasian Alans, defeated it, pursuing the Bulgarians, according to Tsar Joseph, to the Dun River, by which one should understand not the Danube, but the Don, judging by the words of the Byzantine chronicle of Theophanes the Confessor. From that moment, according to some scholars, Khazaria became a khanate.

It is known that the Khazars made constant raids on the lands of the Arab Caliphate in Transcaucasia. Already since the 20s. 7th century Periodic invasions of the Khazars into the region of Derbent begin with the aim of robbing this rich shopping center. These actions of the Khazars and the tribes of the Caucasian Alans allied to them prompted the Arab commander Mervan ibn Muhammad to set out on a campaign against Khazaria. In 737, Mervan took the capital of Khazaria - Semender, and the kagan, saving his life, promised him to convert to Islam. However, this did not happen.

To Khazaria, located on the most important in Eastern Europe in the 7th - 9th centuries. Volga-Baltic trade route, in the middle of the VIII century. Jewish merchants arrived, probably from Khorezm and Byzantium. The Khazar legend says that King Bulan preferred Judaism to Christianity and Islam, since the Muslim and Christian preachers both recognized the law of Moses. So Khazaria became the only state of the Middle Ages, where the head and the highest nobility professed Judaism, but not in an orthodox form (the Khazar Jews did not yet know the Talmud, they considered themselves descendants of Noah's son Japhet, and not Sim, and the kagan and his entourage contained large harems).

Both ordinary people and the Khazar nobility led a nomadic lifestyle, the main occupation was cattle breeding. From the Turks, the Khazars retained a rigid system of social organization - "eternal ale". In the center of it was a horde - the headquarters of the kagan, who "held ale", that is, he headed the union of clans and tribes. The highest class were the Tarkhans - the tribal aristocracy, and among them the most noble were those who came from the clan of the kagan. Initially, the state was ruled by a kagan, but gradually, in the 7th - 8th centuries. the situation has changed. The “deputy” of the kagan, the shad, who commanded the army and collected taxes, became his co-ruler (they began to call him kagan-bek). And by the beginning of the IX century. The kagan lost real power and became a sacred, symbolic figure. Now he was appointed bek from people of a certain noble family. A candidate for kagan was strangled with a silk rope, and when he began to choke, they asked how long he wanted to rule. If the kagan died before the term he named, this was considered normal. Otherwise, he was killed. During the life of the kagan, he had the right to see only the kagan-bek. If there was a famine or an epidemic in the country, the kagan was killed because they thought that he had lost his sacred power. The guard guarding the rulers was hired and consisted of 30,000 Muslims and Russ.

9th century was the heyday of Khazaria. At the end of the 8th - at the beginning of the 9th century. a descendant of Prince Bulan, Obadiah, carried out a religious reform, adopting Rabbinic Judaism, which recognized the Talmud, as the state religion. Despite some opposition, obviously, Obadiah was able to unite part of the Khazar nobility around him.

All this information about the lifestyle and social structure of the Khazars is known from Arab-Persian sources (the Arabs often had to deal with the Khazars in the Caucasus) and from a letter from Tsar Joseph. According to the testimony of contemporaries, no "grandness" of this state is felt, as well as in the description of its borders, which was carefully considered earlier.

The economy of Khazaria, according to eyewitnesses, also does not correspond to the most powerful state in Eastern Europe, on which all the surrounding tribes depended. The well-known geographer Muqaddasi, describing the general situation of the Khazars, speaks of their extreme poverty: "there is no livestock, no fruits." In the Dagestan territories of the Khazars, fields, orchards and vineyards are marked, which was traditional in this area even before the Khazars. Fundamental information about the Khazar economy is reported by Istakhri and Ibn Haukal:

“The Khazars do not produce anything and do not export anything except fish glue”.

According to the anonymous author of The Limits of the World, already quoted earlier, Khazaria supplied cattle and slaves. Moreover, the territory from which the slaves were supplied was limited to the lands of the Khazar Pechenegs. The Khazars did not produce anything else and lived off transit trade, because they were at the southern end of the Volga-Baltic route: the Khazars bought furs from the Rus, Bulgars and in Kuyab and resold them all over the world. But geographers of the al-Balkhi school already write about this, whose information refers mainly to the tenth century. Neither in "Hudud al-Alam", nor in other works that preserved the data of the first half of the 9th century, such a scale of transit trades is reported.

Moreover, it is necessary to repeat once again that not a single Arabic or Persian author mentions Russ and Slavs dependent on the Khazars! Not even King Joseph talks about it. Some conflicts between these tribes are mentioned only by the "Genealogy of the Turks" - a source that developed in the Khazar-Persian environment in the 8th - 10th centuries. and known from manuscripts of the 12th-14th centuries. This genealogy personifies the relations between peoples, transferring them to the legendary ancestors. According to this source, Rus was the brother of Khazar and, having invaded the land of the latter, settled there. Saklab, the nephew of Rus and Khazar, tried to settle in the region of Rus, Khazar and Kimer (the legendary ancestor of the Bulgars and Burtases). After Saklab failed to settle in the south, he reached the place where "the Slavic land is now located." Even here there is no mention of any dependence of the Slavs on the Khazars. On the contrary, it indicates the Slavic expansion in the direction south of the Dnieper region. What kind of expansion is - we will consider later.

Monuments of the Khazar era in Dagestan

Thus, as of the VIII - the beginning of the IX century. neither the data of authentic (that is, simultaneous) written sources, nor archaeological materials confirm the existence of a huge Khazar Khaganate, allegedly stretching from the Lower Volga to the Dnieper. Jewish-Khazar correspondence and Arab-Persian geographers localize Khazaria in the eastern Ciscaucasia and in the Volga delta, and the Sarkel fortress (Left-bank Tsimlyansk settlement) is called the extreme border point from the west in Joseph's letter, and until the 30s. 9th century and the lower reaches of the Don were not included in the Khazar Khaganate.

Archeological data fully confirm this location of Khazaria. QMS is a cultural and historical community that has developed among several different ethnic groups that are not connected by a single state due to similar natural habitat conditions and generally common types of economic activity. This KIO also includes the cultures of the Alans of the North Caucasus (craniological type, ceramics, fortification, applied art - similarity with the forest-steppe version of the SMK), Volga and Danube Bulgaria (craniological type, burial rite, ceramics, fortification, house building, applied art, craft - similarity with the Proto-Bulgarian variants).

On the lower Volga and in eastern Dagestan, where contemporaries localize Khazaria, the Dagestan and extremely unexplored Lower Volga variants of the QMS are distinguished, least of all associated with the QMS "in the narrow sense." At the same time, the Khazar ethnos in its “pure form” has not yet been identified (under-kurgan burials with ditches can be interpreted no more clearly than “Turkic”), the cities of Itil, Semender, Belenjer have not yet been discovered. Therefore, there is every reason to agree at a new level with the conclusions of B. A. Rybakov, A. G. Kuzmin, G. S. Fedorov: The Khazar Khaganate by the beginning of the 9th century. was a small semi-nomadic state, which had some influence only due to its position on the Silk and Volga-Baltic trade routes. Ideas about the huge size of Khazaria, thanks to which in the VIII - IX centuries. Eastern Slavs explored new lands, do not correspond to reality.

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