Around the time of the fall of Rome- indeed, a partial cause of it- there were a series of great migration from Central Asia, across the steppe, into Eastern Europe. The early Khazars were a Turkic tribe that participated in this movement of peoples. They worshipped the shamanistic gods of their Turkic peoples, primarily Tengri, Lord of the Sky, but also Umay, the fertility goddess, Kuaru, god of thunder, Erlik, god of death, and many others. A Khagan, or ruler, who performed poorly, was ritually put to death. These early Khazars also had strong cultural influences from Confucian China, including a belief in a Mandate of Heaven. The Khazars themselves claimed descent from Kozar, son of Togarmeh, son of Japheth, son of Noah; however, this was likely introduced only after the Khazars' exposure to the Hebrew bible.
By the 7th Century, the Khazars had become a force to be reckonned with, controlling much of the Caucasus and having conquered Crimea from the Goths. Allying themselves to the Eastern Roman Empire, they overran Georgia and helped Byzantium oppose the last Zoroastrian dynasty in Persia, the Sassanid. In 650, the Umayyad Caliphate's forces were defeated by the Khazars after a terrible battle at Balanjar. A close alliance between Khazaria and Byzantium was solidified in the 700's by marriage ties- Leo III's wife, Tzitzak, was Khagan Bihar's daughter, and their son, who reigned as Leo IV, was known as Leo the Khazar. Tzitzak also started a fashion craze in Constantinople for her Khazar robe, known as the tzitzakion.
Expansion of the Khazar state
Peace with the Caliphate was brief; the Second Arab-Khazar War broke out in the 710's and lasted until 758. In 737 the Arabs briefly occupied the Khazar capital of Atil. They were, however, repulsed; and the victorious Khazars adopted Judaism as their state religion, perhaps as a sign of independence from the Christian Greeks and the Muslim Arabs. In one account, the Kuzari by Spanish rabbi Judah Halevi, the Khazar Khagan, hearing a rabbi, priest, and imam debate, picks Judaism upon learning that it preceds and is foundational to the other two Monotheistic religions, and as such is held in some regard by both of them. Other scholars have recited economic or nationalistic motives.
A Khazar silver coin in the style of the Caliphate's; the Arabic inscription read "Moses is the prophet of God"
Regardless, the Khazar state reached its high point in the 800s. In the West, it occupied Kiev and the Crimea; in the north it controlled the Bulgars, in the South it dominated Georgia and reached the forbidding peaks of the Caucasus, and in the East it stretched as far into Central Asia as the Sea of Aral.
Khazaria in 850
The first Khazar khagan to convert to Judaism was called Bulan, meaning elk, but took the Hebrew name Sabriel upon his conversion. St. Cyril, the famous missionary to the Slavs, visited the nation in the time of the Khagan Zechariah and failed to convert it. The Khazars corresponded actively with the Jews of the Islamic world; some of the correspondence between the Khagan Joseph and the Hasdai ibn Shaprut, the Jewish foreign secretary to Abd ar-Rahman III, Caliph of Cordoba, still exist. Persian Jews, especially, believed that the Khazars would fulfill the ancient prophecy of Isaiah 48:14, "he LORD hath loved him: he will do his pleasure on Babylon, and his arm [shall be on] the Chaldeans", Babylon taken to mean Baghdad and the Caliphate. In the commentary of Egyptian rabbi Saadia Gaon on the verse, "this refers to the Khazars, who will go and destroy Babylon".
A Khazar engraving depicting the Star of David
Eventually, however, the Khaganate fell on hard times. Pressured by both Islam and Byzantine and Rus Christianity, and the movement of new steppe peoples like the Pechenegs into the region, the Khazars also suffered a serious internal revolt, the Kabar Rebellion, and lost the vassalage of first the Magyars, then other tribes. Between 967 and 969 CE, Sviatoslav I Rurikovich, who had made the Kievan Rus the largest state in Europe through constant warfare and conquest, sacked Atil, thus destroying the empire and breaking the back of Khazar power. In 972 Sviatoslavl was slaughtered by the Pechenegs; their khan made his skull into a drinking chalice.
Small Jewish Khazar princes and rulers continue to be mentioned in sources of the time for decades afterward. And in 1066, nearly 100 years after the fall of the state, Isaac Kuzari broods alone in old Atil.
The blood of the Bulanid Khagans runs in his veins; but Khazaria is weak. Still, much has changed in the last century, and perhaps some of it can be exploited. The Rus have broken into numerous squabling principalities; the Bulgars, ancient enemies, have embraced Islam, and the Alans, once friends and vassals, have adopted Christianity. A new Turkish dynasty, the Seljuk, has occupied Persia and established a protectorate over the Abbasid Caliphs; and the old powers, the Romans and the Fatimid Caliph in Egypt, quiver in fear before it. The Kipchaks have driven the Pechenegs from the steppe, the Pechenegs have driven the Magyars from the Danube Basin, and the Magyars, in turn, have formed the Christain Kingdom of Hungary. Divide and conquer is the only reasonable strategy to restore the lost Khazar glory; even so, Khazaria is the single weakest state on the Pontic Steppe, and all the others covet the strategic and still wealthy city if Atil at the mouth of the Volga.
"And God will spread you out unto all the nations--from one end of the world to the other--and there you will worship other gods of wood and stone whom neither you nor your ancestors knew" (Deuteronomy 28:64). In all nations of the Earth, the Children of Israel cry out unto the Lord, forced to worship the Kaba Stone in Mecca or Christ the man-god with and his wooden Holy Cross. The blood of Isaac, the last Khagan, boils at the iniquities of the heathen, but his resolve is shaken as he realizes how scattered and powerless are the worshippers of the one God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, against the heathen enemy.
And so Isaac must put his faith in the Lord, as his people have done for three thousand years and, if necessary, will for another three thousand. But Isaac is a descendant of the Khazars, a pragmatic and worldly people who have long known that heaven helps those who help themselves. The path will be long and treacherous, but Isaac or his descendants will recall the Exiles and return to Jerusalem, or like Simon Bar Kochba in his final, futile rebellion against the Romans almost one thousand years earlier, they they will fall gloriously in the attempt.
By the 7th Century, the Khazars had become a force to be reckonned with, controlling much of the Caucasus and having conquered Crimea from the Goths. Allying themselves to the Eastern Roman Empire, they overran Georgia and helped Byzantium oppose the last Zoroastrian dynasty in Persia, the Sassanid. In 650, the Umayyad Caliphate's forces were defeated by the Khazars after a terrible battle at Balanjar. A close alliance between Khazaria and Byzantium was solidified in the 700's by marriage ties- Leo III's wife, Tzitzak, was Khagan Bihar's daughter, and their son, who reigned as Leo IV, was known as Leo the Khazar. Tzitzak also started a fashion craze in Constantinople for her Khazar robe, known as the tzitzakion.
Expansion of the Khazar state
Peace with the Caliphate was brief; the Second Arab-Khazar War broke out in the 710's and lasted until 758. In 737 the Arabs briefly occupied the Khazar capital of Atil. They were, however, repulsed; and the victorious Khazars adopted Judaism as their state religion, perhaps as a sign of independence from the Christian Greeks and the Muslim Arabs. In one account, the Kuzari by Spanish rabbi Judah Halevi, the Khazar Khagan, hearing a rabbi, priest, and imam debate, picks Judaism upon learning that it preceds and is foundational to the other two Monotheistic religions, and as such is held in some regard by both of them. Other scholars have recited economic or nationalistic motives.
A Khazar silver coin in the style of the Caliphate's; the Arabic inscription read "Moses is the prophet of God"
Regardless, the Khazar state reached its high point in the 800s. In the West, it occupied Kiev and the Crimea; in the north it controlled the Bulgars, in the South it dominated Georgia and reached the forbidding peaks of the Caucasus, and in the East it stretched as far into Central Asia as the Sea of Aral.
Khazaria in 850
The first Khazar khagan to convert to Judaism was called Bulan, meaning elk, but took the Hebrew name Sabriel upon his conversion. St. Cyril, the famous missionary to the Slavs, visited the nation in the time of the Khagan Zechariah and failed to convert it. The Khazars corresponded actively with the Jews of the Islamic world; some of the correspondence between the Khagan Joseph and the Hasdai ibn Shaprut, the Jewish foreign secretary to Abd ar-Rahman III, Caliph of Cordoba, still exist. Persian Jews, especially, believed that the Khazars would fulfill the ancient prophecy of Isaiah 48:14, "he LORD hath loved him: he will do his pleasure on Babylon, and his arm [shall be on] the Chaldeans", Babylon taken to mean Baghdad and the Caliphate. In the commentary of Egyptian rabbi Saadia Gaon on the verse, "this refers to the Khazars, who will go and destroy Babylon".
A Khazar engraving depicting the Star of David
Eventually, however, the Khaganate fell on hard times. Pressured by both Islam and Byzantine and Rus Christianity, and the movement of new steppe peoples like the Pechenegs into the region, the Khazars also suffered a serious internal revolt, the Kabar Rebellion, and lost the vassalage of first the Magyars, then other tribes. Between 967 and 969 CE, Sviatoslav I Rurikovich, who had made the Kievan Rus the largest state in Europe through constant warfare and conquest, sacked Atil, thus destroying the empire and breaking the back of Khazar power. In 972 Sviatoslavl was slaughtered by the Pechenegs; their khan made his skull into a drinking chalice.
Small Jewish Khazar princes and rulers continue to be mentioned in sources of the time for decades afterward. And in 1066, nearly 100 years after the fall of the state, Isaac Kuzari broods alone in old Atil.
The blood of the Bulanid Khagans runs in his veins; but Khazaria is weak. Still, much has changed in the last century, and perhaps some of it can be exploited. The Rus have broken into numerous squabling principalities; the Bulgars, ancient enemies, have embraced Islam, and the Alans, once friends and vassals, have adopted Christianity. A new Turkish dynasty, the Seljuk, has occupied Persia and established a protectorate over the Abbasid Caliphs; and the old powers, the Romans and the Fatimid Caliph in Egypt, quiver in fear before it. The Kipchaks have driven the Pechenegs from the steppe, the Pechenegs have driven the Magyars from the Danube Basin, and the Magyars, in turn, have formed the Christain Kingdom of Hungary. Divide and conquer is the only reasonable strategy to restore the lost Khazar glory; even so, Khazaria is the single weakest state on the Pontic Steppe, and all the others covet the strategic and still wealthy city if Atil at the mouth of the Volga.
"And God will spread you out unto all the nations--from one end of the world to the other--and there you will worship other gods of wood and stone whom neither you nor your ancestors knew" (Deuteronomy 28:64). In all nations of the Earth, the Children of Israel cry out unto the Lord, forced to worship the Kaba Stone in Mecca or Christ the man-god with and his wooden Holy Cross. The blood of Isaac, the last Khagan, boils at the iniquities of the heathen, but his resolve is shaken as he realizes how scattered and powerless are the worshippers of the one God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, against the heathen enemy.
And so Isaac must put his faith in the Lord, as his people have done for three thousand years and, if necessary, will for another three thousand. But Isaac is a descendant of the Khazars, a pragmatic and worldly people who have long known that heaven helps those who help themselves. The path will be long and treacherous, but Isaac or his descendants will recall the Exiles and return to Jerusalem, or like Simon Bar Kochba in his final, futile rebellion against the Romans almost one thousand years earlier, they they will fall gloriously in the attempt.
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