I think it is too small,as for this map:
As you see,it was alot bigger in 850,So what happened in 17 years?
As you see,it was alot bigger in 850,So what happened in 17 years?
As a side note: I like these German names. Byzantinisches. ^.^
Tribal Invasion CB, plus it is fun being a horde and absolutely wrecking Europe's shit. Slowly create Tataria and use invasion CBs to rampage all the way to the Rhine, then switch to someone opposite the Rhine and try to take advantage of the Cuman super empire when it inevitably collapses.Vanilla de jure setup is all sorts of wrong there to maintain a proper Khazaria till Grand Princes or Cumans invade and mortally cripple it. Oh wait, that former never happens, the latter happens a century and a half too early. Why would you want to play in the steppe anyways, when you can play vikings and soon Indians?
Sounds weird.
Only the upper class converted to Judaism. It barely makes sense in game to even have Itil being Jewish.Also, it doesn't really make sense that the region's population ISN'T Jewish either.
Vanilla de jure setup is all sorts of wrong there to maintain a proper Khazaria till Grand Princes or Cumans invade and mortally cripple it. Oh wait, that former never happens, the latter happens a century and a half too early. Why would you want to play in the steppe anyways, when you can play vikings and soon Indians?
Oh. I never see the population form into Judaism anyways.Only the upper class converted to Judaism. It barely makes sense in game to even have Itil being Jewish.
anyway the khazar kingdom was living it s last years in the timeframe.
No one cares about it...
Last I checked it used to immediately spend 800 for a new holding.Khazaria does not fall very often in my games or does so later in them than usual. Even AI is not that stupid as to not use the 1000 gold it was given to something useful.
* my personal pet peeve - Samandar that doesn't belong to Khazaria
Except Samandar was later recaptured. It is specifically mentioned as one of Svyatoslav's targets. One contemporary Muslim historian claims that it was ruled by a Jew in the early 10th century if memory serves, and I don't think anyone contends that its population remained Khazarian.Samandar and Derbent had been lost to the Muslims since the end of the Second-Arab Khazar War, which ended with the capture of Itil and Khazar conversion to Islam in 737.
Only the upper class converted to Judaism. It barely makes sense in game to even have Itil being Jewish.
You Don't Know that. NO ONE knows that. Do NOT claim knowledge no one has access to yet.
This is my biggest pet peeve. You can say whether it was likely or not that the population was or wasn't jewish but there are no records going either way definitively saying one way or the other what the population's faith was. Why are you even so damn sure of yourself?
Sorry if that came out sounding hostile, I'm not holding any resentment, but how can you claim such a thing without evidence, which no one has?
Because:
1) We have found several settlements from Khazaria dating to after the period of conversion. Only one (what we think is Itil) had any Jewish symbols in it.
2) We only have one letter written in Hebrew not from the upper class, which is the Kievian Letter, which was still probably sent to the former upper class of the city after it was taken during the slow decline.
3) Even in the Kievian Letter, we don't know if they were even Khazars. There were several names in the letter, ranging from Slavic, to Hebrew to Turkic names.
4) Several Arabic visitors described the country as being Pagan, even after conversion. The only spot that they described people following Judaism was the area surrounding what was left of Itil in the 1000s.
5) The upper and lower classes were clearly divided, even in terms of culture and race. The upper class was described as fair skinned with reddish hair and the lower class was described as darker skinned, almost Indian. Quote from Wikipedia: "The 10th-century Muslim geographer al-Iṣṭakhrī claimed that the White Khazars were strikingly handsome with reddish hair, white skin, and blue eyes, while the Black Khazars were swarthy, verging on deep black, as if they were "some kind of Indian"." Coming from this, it can be assumed that the upper and lower population most likely had different religious backgrounds as well, similar to the early conversion of Islam with the Volga Bulgarians, and the Cumans entering Hungary during the Mongol Invasions.
I mainly look at how the old Uyghur Khaganate worked, which had most of its upper class practicing Manicheism, but most of its population still Tengriist or Buddhist.
I could be wrong, but this is what I've taken from all my reading about the Khazars. I am of course limited in what I could know, being still in High School in the Bible Belt, where a book about Judaism would never reach a school, and even less of a chance of one about the Khazars.