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The Khazars (/kəˈzɑːrz/) were a semi-nomadic Turkic people who established a major commercial empire in the late 6th century CE spanning the south of modern European Russia, southern Ukraine, and western Kazakhstan. It was the most powerful polity to emerge from the break-up of the Western Turkic Khaganate. Astride a major artery of commerce between Eastern Europe and West Asia, Khazaria became one of the foremost trading empires of the early medieval world, commanding the western marches of the Silk Road and playing a key commercial role as a crossroad between China, West Asia, and Kievan Rus'. For some three centuries (c. 650–965), the Khazars dominated the vast area extending from the Volga-Don steppes to the eastern Crimea and the northern Caucasus.
Although they were a confederation of different Turkic-speaking peoples, the precise origins and nature of the Khazars are uncertain, since there is no surviving record in the Khazar language and the state was multilingual and polyethnic. Their native religion is thought to have been Tengrism, like that of the North Caucasian Huns and other Turkic peoples, although their multiethnic population seems to have included pagans, Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Although there is evidence that the ruling elite of the Khazars had converted to Rabbinic Judaism in the 8th century, the scope of the conversion to Judaism within the khanate remains uncertain.
The Khazars are variably believed to have contributed to the ethnogenesis of numerous peoples, including the Hazaras, Hungarians, Kazakhs, the Don and Zaporozhian Cossacks, Kumyks, Krymchaks, Crimean Karaites, Csángós, Mountain Jews, and Subbotniks. The late 19th century saw the emergence of the Khazar myth, the theory that the core of today's Ashkenazi Jews are descended from a hypothetical Khazarian Jewish diaspora that migrated westward into France and Germany. Linguistic and genetic studies have not supported the theory, and despite occasional support, most scholars view it with considerable skepticism. The theory is sometimes associated with antisemitism.
In Oghuz Turkic languages, as well as in Iran, the Caspian Sea is still named the "Khazar Sea".
Gyula Németh, following Zoltán Gombocz, derived Khazar from a hypothetical *Qasar reflecting a Turkic root qaz- ("to ramble, to roam") being an hypothetical retracted variant of Common Turkic kez-; however, András Róna-Tas objected that *qaz- is a ghost word. In the fragmentary Tes and Terkhin inscriptions of the Uyğur empire (744–840) the form Qasar is attested, although uncertainty remains whether this represents a personal or tribal name, gradually other hypotheses emerged. Louis Bazin derived it from Turkic qas- ("tyrannise, oppress, terrorise") on the basis of its phonetic similarity to the Uyğur tribal name, Qasar. Róna-Tas connects qasar with Kesar, the Pahlavi transcription of the Roman title Caesar.
D. M. Dunlop tried to link the Chinese term for "Khazars" to one of the tribal names of the Uyğur, or Toquz Oğuz, namely the Qasar (Ch. 葛薩 Gésà). The objections are that Uyğur 葛薩 Gésà/Qasar was not a tribal name but rather the surname of the chief of the 思结 Sijie tribe (Sogdian: Sikari) of the Toquz Oğuz (Ch. 九姓 jĭu xìng), and that in Middle Chinese the ethnonym "Khazars" was always prefaced with Tūjué, then still reserved for Göktürks and their splinter groups, (Tūjué Kěsà bù:突厥可薩部; Tūjué Hésà:突厥曷薩) and "Khazar's" first syllable is transcribed with different characters (可 and 曷) than 葛, which is used to render the syllable Qa- in the Uyğur word Qasar. While it is far from given that the Khazars are not signifying a multi-ethnic and multi-lingual cluster of peoples and clans, some more nomadic, some less, it doesn't exclude that some clans, or splintergroups, or even rulers has identified with the name(s) of the Khazars, in the variety of ways it has been expressed.
After their conversion it is reported that they adopted the Hebrew script, and it is likely that, although speaking a Turkic language, the Khazar chancellery under Judaism probably corresponded in Hebrew.
Determining the origins and nature of the Khazars is closely bound with theories of their languages, but analysis of their languages' origins is difficult, since no indigenous records in the Khazar language survive, and the state was polyglot and polyethnic. Whereas the royal or ruling elite probably spoke an eastern variety of the Common Turkic, the subject tribes appear to have spoken varieties of Oghuric languages, a language variously identified with the Bulgar, Chuvash, and the Hunnic language.
The latter is based upon the assertion of the Persian historian Istakhri that the Khazar language was different from any other known tongue, although his account also likened it to Bulğaric. Alano-As was also widely spoken. Eastern Common Turkic, the language of the royal house and its core tribes, in all likelihood remained the language of the ruling elite in the same way that Mongol continued to be used by the rulers of the Golden Horde, alongside of the Kipchak languages spoken by the bulk of the Turkic tribesmen that constituted the military force of this part of the Činggisid empire. Similarity, Oğuric, like Qipčaq Turkic in the Jočid realm, functioned as one of the languages of government. One method for tracing their origins consists in the analysis of the possible etymologies behind the ethnonym "Khazar".
For most of its history, Khazaria served as a buffer state between the Byzantine Empire, the nomads of the northern steppes, and the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates, having previously been Byzantium's proxy against the rival Sasanian Empire. Around 900, the Byzantines began encouraging the Alans to attack Khazaria; this move aimed to weaken Khazar control over Crimea and the Caucasus and facilitate imperial diplomacy and proselytising towards the powerful Kievan Rus' in the north. By 969, Sviatoslav I of Kiev, the ruler of Kievan Rus', along with his allies, conquered the Khazar capital of Atil, ushering the decline and disintegration of Khazaria by the mid 11th century.
Joseph, one of the Khazar rulers, wrote in his Reply to Hasdai ibn Shaprut, that the Khazars were descendants of "Kozar", one of the ten sons of Togarmah (the others being Uygur, Tiros, Avar, Oguz, Bisal, Tarna, Sanar, Bulgar, and Savir).
The tribes that were to comprise the Khazar empire were not 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 as Oghuric speakers, including the Saragurs, Oğurs, Onogurs, and Bulgars, who earlier formed part of the Tiele (Tiělè) confederation, are attested quite early, having been driven west by the Sabirs, who in turn fled the Pannonian Avars, and began to flow into the Volga–Caspian–Pontic zone from as early as the 4th century and are recorded by Priscus to reside in the western Eurasian Steppe as early as 463. They appear to 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 peoples, proto-Mongols, Uralic speakers, and Paleosiberian peoples vanquished the Rouran Khaganate of the hegemonic Pannonian Avars in 552 who swept westwards, taking in their train other steppe nomads and peoples from Sogdia.
The ruling family of this confederation may have hailed from the Ashina tribe of the Western Turkic Khaganate, although Constantin Zuckerman regards Ashina and their pivotal role in the formation of the Khazars with scepticism. Golden notes that Chinese and Arabic reports are almost identical, making the connection a strong one, and conjectures that their leader may have been Irbis Seguy, who lost power or was killed around 651. Moving west, the confederation reached the land of the Akatziri, 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 First Turkic Khaganate of the Göktürks. Göktürk armies had penetrated the Volga by 549, ejecting the Avars, who were then forced to flee to the sanctuary of the Pannonian Basin. The Ashina clan appeared on the scene by 552, when they overthrew the Rourans and established the First Turkic Khaganate, whose self designation was Tür(ü)k. By 568, these Göktürks were probing for an alliance with Byzantium to attack the Sasanian Empire. An internecine war broke out between the senior eastern Göktürks and the junior Western Turkic Khaganate some decades later, when on the death of Taspar Qaghan, a succession dispute led to a dynastic crisis between Taspar's chosen heir, the Apa Qaghan, and the ruler appointed by the tribal high council, Āshǐnà Shètú, the Ishbara Qaghan.
By the first decades of the 7th century, the Ashina Tong Yabghu Qaghan managed to stabilise the Western division. 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, each 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 comprising five tribes. The Duōlù challenged the Avars in the Kuban River-Sea of Azov area while the Khazar Khaghanate consolidated further westwards, led apparently by an Ashina dynasty. With a resounding victory over the tribes in 657, engineered by General Su Dingfang, Chinese overlordship was imposed to their East after a final mop-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 rule or, as under Asparukh of Bulgaria, 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 Khazar Khaghanate thus took shape from the ruins of this nomadic empire, which broke up under pressure from the armies of the Tang dynasty 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 Onoghur-Bulghar union, sometime around 670, a properly constituted Khazar Khaghanate emerges, becoming the westernmost successor state of the formidable Göktürk Khaghanate after its disintegration. According to Omeljan Pritsak, the language of the Onoghur-Bulghar 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 domination as the Pax Khazarica because the state became an international trading hub that permitted Western Eurasian merchants safe passage across it to conduct business without interference. The high status soon to be accorded this empire to the north is attested by the Fars-Nama (c. 1100), which relates that the Sasanian emperor, Khosrau I, placed three thrones by his own, one for the King of China, a second for the King of Byzantium, and a third for the King of the Khazars. Although anachronistic in retrodating the Khazars to this period, the legend, by placing the Khazar khagan on a throne of equal status to the rulers of the other two superpowers, attests to the reputation the Khazars had long enjoyed.
Khazaria developed a diarchy (dual leadership) typical among Turkic nomads, consisting of a khagan-bek and a khagan. The emergence of this system may be deeply entwined with the conversion to Judaism. According to Arabic sources, the khagan-bek was called an ʾīšā and the greater a khagan (Arabic: خاقان, romanised: ḫāqān); the former managed and commanded the military, while the greater king's role was primarily sacral, less concerned with daily affairs.
The greater king was recruited from the Khazar house of notables (ahl bayt maʿrūfīn) and, in an initiation ritual, was nearly strangled until he declared the number of years he wished to reign, on the expiration of which he would be ritually killed by the nobles. Similarly, Ahmad ibn Fadlan wrote that there was a maximum limit on the number of years of a king's reign. If a khagan had reigned for at least forty years, his courtiers and subjects felt his ability to reason would become impaired by old age. They would then execute him. The deputy ruler would enter the presence of the reclusive greater king only with great ceremony, approaching him barefoot to prostrate himself in the dust and then light a piece of wood as a purifying fire, while waiting humbly and calmly to be summoned.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Khazaria”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.