FALL
1
In discussing Russian-Byzantine
relations in the ninth and tenth centuries, I have been able to
quote at length from two detailed sources; Constantine's De
Administrando and the Primary Russian Chronicle. But on
the Russian-Khazar confrontation during the same period - to
which we now turn - we have no comparable source material; the
archives of Itil, if they ever existed, have gone with the
wind, and for the history of the last hundred years of the
Khazar Empire we must again fall back on the disjointed, casual
hints found in various Arab chronicles and
geographies.
The
period in question extends from circa 862 - the Russian
occupation of Kiev - to circa 965 - the destruction of
Itil by Svyatoslav. After the loss of Kiev and the retreat of
the Magyars into Hungary, the former western dependencies of
the Khazar Empire (except for parts of the Crimea) were no
longer under the Kagan's control; and the Prince of Kiev could
without hindrance address the Slavonic tribes in the Dnieper
basin with the cry, "Pay nothing to the Khazars!"1
The
Khazars may have been willing to acquiesce in the loss of their
hegemony in the west, but at the same time there was also a
growing encroachment by the Rus on the east, down the Volga and
into the regions around the Caspian. These Muslim lands
bordering on the southern half of the "Khazar Sea" -
Azerbaijan, Jilan, Shirwan, Tabaristan, Jurjan - were tempting
targets for the Viking fleets, both as objects of plunder and
as trading posts for commerce with the Muslim Caliphate. But
the approaches to the Caspian, past Itil through the Volga
delta, were controlled by the Khazars - as the approaches to
the Black Sea had been while they were still holding Kiev. And
"control" meant that the Rus had to solicit permission for each
flotilla to pass, and pay the 10 per cent customs due - a
double insult to pride and pocket.
For
some time there was a precarious modus vivendi. The
Rus flotillas paid their due, sailed into the Khazar Sea and
traded with the people around it. But trade, as we saw,
frequently became a synonym for plunder. Some time between 864
and 8842 a Rus expedition attacked the port of Abaskun in
Tabaristan. They were defeated, but in 910 they returned,
plundered the city and countryside and carried off a number of
Muslim prisoners to be sold as slaves. To the Khazars this must
have been a grave embarrassment, because of their friendly
relations with the Caliphate, and also because of the crack
regiment of Muslim mercenaries in their standing army. Three
years later - AD 913 - matters came to a head in an armed
confrontation which ended in a bloodbath.
This
major incident - already mentioned briefly (Chapter III, 3) has
been described in detail by Masudi, while the Russian Chronicle
passes it over in silence. Masudi tells us that "some time
after the year of the Hegira 300 [AD 912-913] a Rus
fleet of 500 ships, each manned by 100 persons" was approaching
Khazar territory:
- When the ships of the Rus came to
the Khazars posted at the mouth of the strait ... they sent
a letter to the Khazar king, requesting to be allowed to
pass through his country and descend his river, and so enter
the sea of the Khazars ... on condition that they should
give him half of what they might take in booty from the
peoples of the sea-coast. He granted them permission and
they ... descended the river to the city of Itil and passing
through, came out on the estuary of the river, where it
joins the Khazar Sea. From the estuary to the city of Itil
the river is very large and its waters abundant. The ships
of the Rus spread throughout the sea. Their raiding parties
were directed against Jilan, Jurjan, Tabaristan, Abaskun on
the coast of Jurjan, the naphtha country [Baku] and
the region of Azerbaijan.... The Rus shed blood, destroyed
the women and children, took booty and raided and burned in
all directions....2a
They even sacked the city of Ardabil -
at three days' journey inland. When the people recovered from
the shock and took to arms, the Rus, according to their classic
strategy, withdrew from the coast to the islands near Baku. The
natives, using small boats and merchant vessels, tried to
dislodge them.
- But the Rus turned on them and
thousands of the Muslims were killed or drowned. The Rus
continued many months in this sea.... When they had
collected enough booty and were tired of what they were
about, they started for the mouth of the Khazar river,
informing the king of the Khazars, and conveying to him rich
booty, according to the conditions which he had fixed with
them.... The Arsiyah [the Muslim mercenaries in the
Khazar army] and other Muslims who lived in Khazaria
learned of the situation of the Rus, and said to the king of
the Khazars: leave us to deal with these people. They have
raided the lands of the Muslims, our brothers, and have shed
blood and enslaved women and children. And he could not
gainsay them. So he sent for the Rus, informing them of the
determination of the Muslims to fight
them.
The
Muslims [of Khazaria] assembled and went forth to
find the Rus, proceeding downstream [on land, from Itil
to the Volga estuary]. When the two armies came within
sight of each other, the Rus disembarked and drew up in
order of battle against the Muslims, with whom were a number
of Christians living in Itil, so that they were about 15000
men, with horses and equipment. The fighting continued for
three days. God helped the Muslims against them. The Rus
were put to the sword. Some were killed and others were
drowned. of those slain by the Muslims on the banks of the
Khazar river there were counted about
30000....2b
Five thousand of the Rus escaped, but
these too were killed, by the Burtas and the Bulgars.
This
is Masudi's account of this disastrous Rus incursion into the
Caspian in 912-13. It is, of course, biased. The Khazar ruler
comes out of it as a double- crossing rascal who acts, first as
a passive accomplice of the Rus marauders, then authorizes the
attack on them, but simultaneously informs them of the ambush
prepared by "the Muslims" under his own command. Even of the
Bulgars, Masudi says "they are Muslims" - although Ibn Fadlan,
visiting the Bulgars ten years later, describes them as still
far from being converted. But though coloured by religious
prejudice, Masudi's account provides a glimpse of the dilemma
or several dilemmas - confronting the Khazar leadership. They
may not have been unduly worried about the misfortunes suffered
by the people on the Caspian shores; it was not a sentimental
age. But what if the predatory Rus, after gaining control of
Kiev and the Dnieper, were to establish a foothold on the
Volga? Moreover, another Rus raid into the Caspian might bring
down the wrath of the Caliphate - not on the Rus themselves,
who were beyond its reach, but on the innocent - well, nearly
innocent - Khazars.
Relations
with the Caliphate were peaceful, yet nevertheless precarious,
as an incident reported by Ibn Fadlan indicates. The Rus raid
described by Masudi took place in 912-13; Ibn Fadlan's mission
to Bulgar in 921-2. His account of the incident in question is
as follows:3
- The Muslims in this city
[Itil] have a cathedral mosque where they pray and
attend on Fridays. It has a high minaret and several
muezzins [criers who call for prayer from the
minaret]. When the king of the Khazars was informed in
a.H. 310 [AD 922] that the Muslims had destroyed the
synagogue which was in Dar al-Babunaj [unidentified
place in Muslim territory], he gave orders to destroy
the minaret, and he killed the muezzins. And he said: "If I
had not feared that not a synagogue would be left standing
in the lands of Islam, but would be destroyed, I would have
destroyed the mosque too."
The episode testifies to a nice
feeling for the strategy of mutual deterrence and the dangers
of escalation. It also shows once more that the Khazar rulers
felt emotionally committed to the fate of Jews in other parts
of the world.
2
Masudi's account of the 912-13 Rus
incursion into the Caspian ends with the words: "There has been
no repetition on the part of the Rus of what we have described
since that year." As coincidences go, Masudi wrote this in the
same year - 943 - in which the Rus repeated their incursion
into the Caspian with an even greater fleet; but Masudi could
not have known this. For thirty years, after the disaster of
913, they had lain off that part of the world; now they felt
evidently strong enough to try again; and it is perhaps
significant that their attempt coincided, within a year or two,
with their expedition against the Byzantines, under the
swashbuckling Igor, which perished under the Greek fire.
In
the course of this new invasion, the Rus gained a foothold in
the Caspian region in the city of Bardha, and were able to hold
it for a whole year. In the end pestilence broke out among the
Rus, and the Azerbaijanis were able to put the survivors to
flight. This time the Arab sources do not mention any Khazar
share in the plunder - nor in the fighting. But Joseph does in
his letter to Hasdai, written some years later: "I guard the
mouth of the river and do not permit the Rus who come in their
ships to invade the land of the Arabs ... I fight heavy wars
with them."*[In the so cal1ed "long version" of the same
letter (see Appendix III), there is another sentence which may
or may not have been added by a copyist: "If I allowed them for
one hour, they would destroy all the country of the Arabs as
far as Baghdad..." Since the Rus sat on the Caspian not for an
hour, but for a year, the boast sounds rather hollow - though a
little less so if we take it to refer not to the past but to
the future.]
Whether
or not on this particular occasion the Khazar army participated
in the fighting, the fact remains that a few years later they
decided to deny the Russians access to the "Khazar Sea" and
that from 943 onward we hear no more of Rus incursions into the
Caspian.
This
momentous decision, in all likelihood motivated by internal
pressures of the Muslim community in their midst, involved the
Khazars in "heavy wars" with the Rus. Of these, however, we
have no records beyond the statement in Joseph's letter. They
may have been more in the nature of skirmishes except for the
one major campaign of AD 965, mentioned in the Old Russian
Chronicle, which led to the breaking up of the Khazar
Empire.
3
The leader of the campaign was Prince
Svyatoslav of Kiev, son of Igor and Olga. We have already heard
that he was "stepping light as a leopard" and that he
"undertook many campaigns" - in fact he spent most of his reign
campaigning. In spite of the constant entreaties of his mother,
he refused to be baptized, "because it would make him the
laughing stock of his subjects". The Russian Chronicle also
tells us that "on his expeditions he carried neither waggons
nor cooking utensils, and boiled no meat, but cut off small
strips of horseflesh, game or beef, and ate it after roasting
it on the coals. Nor did he have a tent, but he spread out a
horse-blanket under him, and set his saddle under his head; and
all his retinue did likewise."4 When he attacked the enemy, he
scorned doing it by stealth, but instead sent messengers ahead
announcing: "I am coming upon you."
To
the campaign against the Khazars, the Chronicler devotes only a
few lines, in the laconic tone which he usually adopts in
reporting on armed conflicts:
- Svyatoslav went to the Oka and the
Volga, and on coming in contact with the Vyatichians [a
Slavonic tribe inhabiting the region south of modern
Moscow], he inquired of them to whom they paid tribute.
They made answer that they paid a silver piece per
ploughshare to the Khazars. When they [the Khazars]
heard of his approach, they went out to meet him with their
Prince, the Kagan, and the armies came to blows. When the
battle thus took place, Svyatoslav defeated the Khazars and
took their city of Biela Viezha.4a
Now Biela Viezha - the White Castle -
was the Slavonic name for Sarkel, the famed Khazar fortress on
the Don; but it should be noted that the destruction of Itil,
the capital, is nowhere mentioned in the Russian Chronicle - a
point to which we shall return.
The
Chronicle goes on to relate that Svyatoslav "also conquered the
Yasians and the Karugians" [Ossetians and
Chirkassians], defeated the Danube Bulgars, was defeated by
the Byzantincs, and on his way back to Kiev was murdered by a
horde of Pechenegs. "They cut off his head, and made a cup out
of his skull, overlayed it with gold, and drank from it."5
Several
historians have regarded the victory of Svyatoslav as the end
of Khazaria - which, as will be seen, is demonstrably wrong.
The destruction of Sarkel in 965 signalled the end of the
Khazar Empire, not of the Khazar state - as 1918 signalled the
end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but not of Austria as a
nation. Khazar control of the far-flung Slavonic tribes -
which, as we have seen, stretched to the vicinity of Moscow -
had now come to a definite end; but the Khazar heartland
between Caucasus, Don and Volga remained intact. The approaches
to the Caspian Sea remained closed to the Rus, and we hear of
no further attempt on their part to force their way to it. As
Toynbee pointedly remarks: "The Rhus succeeded in destroying
the Khazar Steppe-empire, but the only Khazar territory that
they acquired was Tmutorakan on the Tanian peninsula
[facing the Crimea], and this gain was ephemeral.... It
was not till half-way through the sixteenth century that the
Muscovites made a permanent conquest, for Russia, of the river
Volga ... to the river's dbouchure into the Caspian
Sea."6
4
After the death of Svyatoslav, civil
war broke out between his sons, out of which the youngest,
Vladimir, emerged victorious. He too started life as a pagan,
like his father, and he too, like his grandmother Olga, ended
up as a repentant sinner, accepted baptism and was eventually
canonized. Yet in his youth St Vladimir seemed to have followed
St Augustine's motto: Lord give me chastity, but not yet. The
Russian Chronicle is rather severe about this:
- Now Vladimir was overcome by lust
for women. He had three hundred concubines at Vyshgorod,
three hundred at Belgorod, and two hundred at Berestovo. He
was insatiable in vice. He even seduced married women and
violated young girls, for he was a libertine like Solomon.
For it is said that Solomon had seven hundred wives and
three hundred concubines. He was wise, yet in the end he
came to ruin. But Vladimir, though at first deluded,
eventually found salvation. Great is the Lord, and great his
power and of his wisdom there is no end.
7
Olga's baptism, around 957 did not cut
much ice, even with her own son. Vladimir's baptism, AD 989,
was a momentous event which had a lasting influence on the
history of the world.
It
was preceded by a series of diplomatic manoeuvrings and
theological discussions with representatives of the four major
religions - which provide a kind of mirror image to the debates
before the Khazar conversion to Judaism. Indeed, the Old
Russian Chronicle's account of these theological disputes
constantly remind one of the Hebrew and Arab accounts of King
Bulan's erstwhile Brains Trust - only the outcome is different.
This
time there were four instead of three contestants - as the
schism between the Greek and the Latin churches was already an
accomplished fact in the tenth century (though it became
official only in the eleventh).
The
Russian Chronicle's account of Vladimir's conversion first
mentions a victory he achieved against the Volga Bulgars,
followed by a treaty of friendship. "The Bulgars declared: 'May
peace prevail between us till stone floats and straw sinks.'"
Vladimir returned to Kiev, and the Bulgars sent a Muslim
religious mission to convert him. They described to him the
joys of Paradise where each man will be given seventy fair
women. Vladimir listened to them "with approval", but when it
came to abstinence from pork and wine, he drew the
line.
"'Drinking,' said he, 'is the joy
of the Russes. We cannot exist without that
pleasure.'"8
Next
came a German delegation of Roman Catholics, adherents of the
Latin rite. They fared no better when they brought up, as one
of the main requirements of their faith, fasting according to
one's strength. "... Then Vladimir answered: 'Depart hence; our
fathers accepted no such principle.'"9
The
third mission consisted of Khazar Jews. They came off worst.
Vladimir asked them why they no longer ruled Jerusalem. "They
made answer: 'God was angry at our forefathers, and scattered
us among the Gentiles on account of our sins.' The Prince then
demanded: 'How can you hope to teach others while you
yourselves are cast out and scattered abroad by the hand of
God? Do you expect us to accept that fate also?'"
The
fourth and last missionary is a scholar sent by the Greeks of
Byzantium. He starts with a blast against the Muslims, who are
"accursed above all men, like Sodom and Gomorrah, upon which
the Lord let fall burning stones, and which he buried and
submerged.... For they moisten their excrement, and pour the
water into their mouths, and annoint their beards with it,
remembering Mahomet.... Vladimir, upon hearing these
statements, spat upon the earth, saying: 'This is a vile
thing.'"10
The
Byzantine scholar then accuses the Jews of having crucified
God, and the Roman Catholics - in much milder terms - of having
"modified the Rites". After these preliminaries, he launches
into a long exposition of the Old and New Testaments, starting
with the creation of the world. At the end of it, however,
Vladimir appears only half convinced, for when pressed to be
baptized he replies, "I shall wait yet a little longer." He
then sends his own envoys, "ten good and wise men", to various
countries to observe their religious practices. In due time
this commission of inquiry reports to him that the Byzantine
Service is "fairer than the ceremonies of other nations, and we
knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth".
But
Vladimir still hesitates, and the Chronicle continues with a
non-sequitur: "After
a year had passed, in 988, Vladimir proceeded with an armed
force against Cherson, a Greek city...."11 (We remember that
control of this important Crimean port had been for a long time
contested between Byzantines and Khazars.) The valiant
Chersonese refused to surrender. Vladimir's troops constructed
earthworks directed at the city walls, but the Chersonese "dug
a tunnel under the city wall, stole the heaped-up earth and
carried it into the city, where they piled it up". Then a
traitor shot an arrow into the Rus camp with a message: "There
are springs behind you to the east, from which water flows in
pipes. Dig down and cut them off" When Vladimir received this
information, he raised his eyes to heaven and vowed that if
this hope was realized, he would be baptized.12
He
succeeded in cutting off the city's water supply, and Cherson
surrendered. Thereupon Vladimir, apparently forgetting his vow,
"sent messages to the Emperors Basil and Constantine [joint
rulers at the time], saying: 'Behold, I have captured your
glorious city. I have also heard that you have an unwedded
sister. Unless you give her to me to wife, I shall deal with
your own city as I have with Cherson.'"
The
Emperors replied: "If you are baptized you shall have her to
wife, inherit the Kingdom of God, and be our companion in the
faith."
And
so it came to pass. Vladimir at long last accepted baptism, and
married the Byzantine Princess Anna. A few years later Greek
Christianity became the official religion not only of the
rulers but of the Russian people, and from 1037 onward the
Russian Church was governed by the Patriarch of
Constantinople.
5
It was a momentous triumph of
Byzantine diplomacy. Vernadsky calls it "one of those abrupt
turns which make the study of history so fascinating ... and it
is interesting to speculate on the possible course of history
had the Russian princes ... adopted either of these faiths
[Judaism or Islam] instead of Christianity.... The
acceptance of one or another of these faiths must necessarily
have determined the future cultural and political development
of Russia. The acceptance of Islam would have drawn Russia into
the circle of Arabian culture - that is, an Asiatic-Egyptian
culture. The acceptance of Roman Christianity from the Germans
would have made Russia a country of Latin or European culture.
The acceptance of either Judaism or Orthodox Christianity
insured to Russia cultural independence of both Europe and
Asia."13
But
the Russians needed allies more than they needed independence,
and the East Roman Empire, however corrupt, was still a more
desirable ally in terms of power, culture and trade, than the
crumbling empire of the Khazars. Nor should one underestimate
the role played by Byzantine statesmanship in bringing about
the decision for which it had worked for more than a century.
The Russian Chronicle's naive account of Vladimir's game of
procrastination gives us no insight into the diplomatic
manoeuvrings and hard bargaining that must have gone on before
he accepted baptism - and thereby, in fact, Byzantine tutelage
for himself and his people. Cherson was obviously part of the
price, and so was the dynastic marriage to Princess Anna. But
the most important part of the deal was the end of the
Byzantine-Khazar alliance against the Rus, and its replacement
by a Byzantine-Russian alliance against the Khazars. A few
years later, in 1016, a combined Byzantine-Russian army invaded
Khazaria, defeated its ruler, and "subdued the country" (see
below, IV, 8).
Yet
the cooling off towards the Khazars had already started, as we
have seen, in Constantine Porphyrogenitus's day, fifty years
before Vladimir's conversion. We remember Constantine's musings
on "how war is to be made on Khazaria and by whom". The passage
quoted earlier on (II, 7) continues:
- If the ruler of Alania does not
keep the peace with the Khazars but considers the friendship
of the Emperor of the Romans to be of greater value to him,
then, if the Khazars do not choose to maintain friendship
and peace with the Emperor, the Alan can do them great harm.
He can ambush their roads and attack them when they are off
their guard on their route to Sarkel and to "the nine
regions" and to Cherson ... Black Bulgaria [the Volga
Bulgars] is also in a position to make war on the
Khazars.14
Toynbee, after quoting this passage,
makes the following, rather touching comment:
- If this passage in Constantine
Porphyrogenitus's manual for the conduct of the East Roman
Imperial Government's foreign relations had ever fallen into
the hands of the Khazar Khaqan and his ministers, they would
have been indignant. They would have pointed out that
nowadays Khazaria was one of the most pacific states in the
world, and that, if she had been more warlike in her earlier
days, her arms had never been directed against the East
Roman Empire. The two powers had, in fact, never been at war
with each other, while, on the other hand, Khazaria had
frequently been at war with the East Roman Empire's enemies,
and this to the Empire's signal advantage.
Indeed, the
Empire may have owed it to the Khazars that she had survived
the successive onslaughts of the Sasanid Persian Emperor
Khusraw II Parviz and the Muslim Arabs.... And thereafter
the pressure on the Empire of the Arabs' onslaught had been
relieved by the vigour of the Khazars' offensive-defensive
resistance to the Arabs' advance towards the Caucasus. The
friendship between Khazaria and the Empire had been
symbolized and sealed in two marriage-alliances between
their respective Imperial families. What, then, had been in
Constantine's mind when he had been thinking out ways of
tormenting Khazaria by inducing her neighbours to fall upon
her?15
The answer to Toynbee's rhetorical
question is obviously that the Byzantines were inspired by
Realpolitik - and that, as already said, theirs was
not a sentimental age. Nor is ours.
6
Nevertheless, it turned out to be a
short-sighted policy. To quote Bury once more:
- The first principle of Imperial
policy in this quarter of the world was the maintenance of
peace with the Khazars. This was the immediate consequence
of the geographical position of the Khazar Empire, lying as
it did between the Dnieper and the Caucasus. From the
seventh century, when Heraclius had sought the help of the
Khazars against Persia, to the tenth, in which the power of
Itil declined, this was the constant policy of the Emperors.
It was to the advantage of the Empire that the Chagan should
exercise an effective control over his barbarian
neighbours.16
This "effective control" was now to be
transferred from the Khazar Kagan to the Rus Kagan, the Prince
of Kiev. But it did not work. The Khazars were a Turkish tribe
of the steppes, who had been able to cope with wave after wave
of Turkish and Arab invaders; they had resisted and subdued the
Bulgars, Burtas, Pechenegs, Ghuzz, and so on. The Russians and
their Slav subjects were no match for the nomad warriors of the
steppes, their mobile strategy and guerilla tactics.*[The
most outstanding Russian epic poem of the period, "The Lay of
Igor's Host", describes one of the disastrous campaigns of the
Russians against the Ghuzz.] As a result of constant nomad
pressure, the centres of Russian power were gradually
transferred from the southern steppes to the wooded north, to
the principalities of Galiczia, Novgorod and Moscow. The
Byzantines had calculated that Kiev would take over the role of
Itil as the guardian of Eastern Europe and centre of trade;
instead, Kiev went into rapid decline. It was the end of the
first chapter of Russian history, followed by a period of
chaos, with a dozen independent principalities waging endless
wars against each other.
This
created a power vacuum, into which poured a new wave of
conquering nomads - or rather a new off-shoot of our old
friends the Ghuzz, whom Ibn Fadlan had found even more
abhorrent than the other Barbarian tribes which he was obliged
to visit. These "pagan and godless foes", as the Chronicle
describes them, were called Polovtsi by the Russians, Kumans by
the Byzantines, Kun by the Hungarians, Kipchaks by their fellow
Turks. They ruled the steppes as far as Hungary from the late
eleventh to the thirteenth century (when they, in turn, were
swamped by the Mongol invasion).*[One substantial branch of
the Kumans, fleeing from the Mongols, was granted asylum in
Hungary in 1241, and merged with the native population. "Kun"
is still a frequent surname in Hungary.] They also fought
several wars against the Byzantines. Another branch of the
Ghuzz, the Seljuks (named after their ruling dynasty) destroyed
a huge Byzantine army in the historic battle of Manzikert
(1071) and captured the Emperor Romanus IV Diogenes. Henceforth
the Byzantines were unable to prevent the Turks from gaining
control of most provinces of Asia Minor - the present-day
Turkey - which had previously been the heartland of the East
Roman Empire.
One
can only speculate whether history would have taken a different
course if Byzantium had not abandoned its traditional policy,
maintained throughout the three previous centuries, of relying
on the Khazar stronghold against the Muslim, Turkish and Viking
invaders. Be that as it may, Imperial Realpolitik turned out to
have been not very realistic.
7
During the two centuries of Kuman
rule, followed by the Mongol invasion, the eastern steppes were
once more plunged into the Dark Ages, and the later history of
the Khazars is shrouded in even deeper obscurity than their
origin.
The
references to the Khazar state in its final period of decline
are found mainly in Muslim sources; but they are, as we shall
see, so ambiguous that almost every name, date and geographical
indication is open to several interpretations. Historians,
famished for facts, have nothing left but a few bleached bones
to gnaw at like starving bloodhounds, in the forlorn hope of
finding some hidden morsel to sustain them.
In
the light of what has been said before, it appears that the
decisive event precipitating the decline of Khazar power was
not Svyatoslav's victory, but Vladimir's conversion. How
important was in fact that victory, which nineteenth-century
historians*[Following a tradition set by Fraehn in 1822, in
the Memnoirs of the Russian Academy.] habitually
equated with the end of the Khazar state? We remember that the
Russian Chronicle mentions only the destruction of Sarkel, the
fortress, but not the destruction of Itil, the capital. That
Itil was indeed sacked and devastated we know from several Arab
sources, which are too insistent to be ignored; but when and by
whom it was sacked is by no means clear. Ibn Hawkal, the
principal source, says it was done by the Rus who "utterly
destroyed Khazaran, Samandar and Itil" - apparently believing
that Khazaran and Itil were different towns, whereas we know
that they were one twin-town; and his dating of the event
differs from the Russian Chronicle's dating of the fall of
Sarkel which Ibn Hawkal does not mention at all, just as the
Chronicle does not mention the destruction of Itil.
Accordingly, Marquart suggested that Itil was sacked not by
Svyatoslav's Rus, who only got as far as Sarkel, but by some
fresh wave of Vikings. To complicate matters a little more, the
second Arab source, ibn Miskawayh, says that it was a body of
"Turks" which descended on Khazaria in the critical year 965.
By "Turks" he may have meant the Rus, as Barthold maintained.
But it could also have been a marauding horde of Pechenegs, for
instance. It seems that we shall never know who destroyed Itil,
however long we chew the bones.
And
how seriously was it destroyed? The principal source, Ibn
Hawkal, first speaks of the "utter destruction" of Itil, but
then he also says, writing a few years later, that "Khazaran is
still the centre on which the Rus trade converges". Thus the
phrase "utter destruction" may have been an exaggeration. This
is the more likely because he also speaks of the "utter
destruction" of the town of Bulghar, capital of the Volga
Bulgars. Yet the damage which the Rus caused in Bulghar could
not have been too important, as we have coins that were minted
there in the year 976-7 - only about ten years after
Svyatoslav's raid; and in the thirteenth century Buighar was
still an important city. As Dunlop put it:
- The ultimate source of all
statements that the Russians destroyed Khazaria in the tenth
century is no doubt Ibn Hawkal ... Ibn Hawkal, however,
speaks as positively of the destruction of Bulghar on the
middle Volga. It is quite certain that at the time of the
Mongol attacks in the thirteenth century Bulghar was a
flourishing cornmunity. Was the ruin of Khazaria also
temporary?17
It obviously was. Khazaran-Itil, and
the other towns of the Khazars, consisted mostly of tents,
wooden dwellings and "round houses" built of mud, which were
easily destroyed and easily rebuilt; only the royal and public
buildings were of brick.
The
damage done must nevertheless have been serious, for several
Arab chroniclers speak of a temporary exodus of the population
to the Caspian shore or islands. Thus Ibn Hawkal says the
Khazars of Itil fled from the Rus to one of the islands of the
"naphta coast" [Baku], but later returned to Itil and
Khazaran with the aid of the Muslim Shah of Shirwan. This
sounds plausible since the people of Shirwan had no love for
the Rus who had plundered their shores earlier on. Other Arab
chroniclers, Ibn Miskawayh and Muqaddasi (writing later than
Ibn HIawkal), also speak of an exodus of Khazars and their
return with Muslim help. According to Ibn Miskawayh, as a price
for this help "they all adopted Islam with the exception of
their king". Muquadassi has a different version, which does not
refer to the Rus invasion; he only says that the inhabitants of
the Khazar town went down to the sea and came back converted to
Islam. The degree of his reliability is indicated by the fact
that he describes Bulghar as being closer to the Caspian than
Itil, which amounts to placing Glasgow south of
London.*[Yet one modern authority, Barthold, called him
"one of the greatest geographers of all time".[Quoted by
Dunlop (1954), p. 245]]
In
spite of the confused and biased nature of these accounts,
which seems all too obvious, there is probably some truth in
them. The psychological shock of the invasion, the flight to
the sea, and the necessity of buying Muslim help may have led
to some deal which gave the Muslim community in Khazaria a
greater say in the affairs of state; we remember a similar deal
with Marwan two centuries earlier (I, 7), which involved the
Kagan himself, but left no mark on Khazar
history.
According
to yet another Arab source - Biruni, who died in 1048 - Itil,
in his time, was in ruins - or rather, once more in ruins.18 It
was rebuilt again, but henceforth it went under the name of
Saksin.*["The probability is that Saksin was identical
with, or at least at no great distance from Khazaran-ltil, and
the name may be the older Sarisshin revived" (Dunlop, P.248,
quoting Minorski).] It figures repeatedly in the chronicles
well into the twelfth century as "a large town on the Volga,
surpassed by none in Turkestan",19 and eventually, according to
one source, became the victim of inundations. Another century
later the Mongol ruler Batu built his capital on its site.20
In
summing up what the Russian Chronicle and the Arab sources tell
us about the catastrophe of 965, we can say that Itil was
devastated to an unknown extent by the Rus or some other
invaders, but rebuilt more than once; and that the Khazar state
emerged from the ordeal considerably weakened. But there can be
little doubt that inside its shrunken frontiers it survived for
at least another two hundred years, i.e., to the middle of the
twelfth century, and perhaps - though more doubtfully - until
the middle of the thirteenth.
8
The first non-Arab mention of Khazaria
after the fatal year 965 seems to occur in a travel report by
Ibrahim Ibn Jakub, the Spanish-Jewish ambassador to Otto the
Great, who, writing probably in 973, describes the Khazars as
still flourishing in his time.21 Next in chronological order is
the account in the Russian Chronicle of Jews from Khazaria
arriving in Kiev AD 986, in their misfired attempt to convert
Vladimir to their faith.
As
we enter the eleventh century, we read first of the already
mentioned joint Byzantine-Rus campaign of 1016 against
Khazaria, in which the country was once more defeated. The
event is reported by a fairly reliable source, the
twelfth-century Byzantine chronicler Cedrenus.22 A considerable
force was apparently needed, for Cedrenus speaks of a Byzantine
fleet, supported by an army of Russians. The Khazars evidently
had the qualities of a Jack-in-the-Box, derived from their
Turkish origin, or Mosaic faith, or both. Cedrenus also says
that the name of the defeated Khazar leader was Georgius Tzul.
Georgius is a Christian name; we know from an earlier report
that there were Christians as well as Muslims in the Kagan's
army.
The
next mention of the Khazars is a laconic entry in the Russian
Chronicle for the year 1023, according to which
"[Prince] Mtislav marched against his brother
[Prince] Yaroslav with a force of Khazars and
Kasogians".*[The Kasogians or Kashaks were a Caucasian
tribe under Khazar rule and may or may not have been the
ancestors of the Cossacks.] Now Mtislav was the ruler of
the shortlived principality of Tmutorakan, centred on the
Khazar town of Tamatarkha (now Taman) on the eastern side of
the straights of Kerch. This, as already said, was the only
Khazar territory that the Rus occupied after their victory of
965. The Khazars in Mtislav's army were thus probably levied
from the local population by the Russian prince. lSeven years
later (AD 1030) a Khazar army is reported to have defeated a
Kurdish invading force, killed 10000 of its men and captured
their equipment. This would be added evidence that the Khazars
were still very much alive and kicking, if one could take the
report at face value. But it comes from a single twelfthcentury
Arab source, ibn-al-Athir, not considered very reliable.
Plodding
on in our chronology, anxious to pick up what morsels of
evidence are left, we come across a curious tale about an
obscure Christian saint, Eustratius. Around AD 1100, he was
apparently a prisoner in Cherson, in the Crimea, and was
ill-treated by his "Jewish master", who forced ritual Passover
food on him.23 One need not put much trust in the authenticity
of the story (St Eustratius is said to have survived fifteen
days on the cross); the point is that it takes a strong Jewish
influence in the town for granted - in Cherson of all places, a
town nominally under Christian rule, which the Byzantines tried
to deny to the Khazars, which was conquered by Vladimir but
reverted later (circa 990) to Byzantium.
They
were still equally powerful in Tinutorakan. For the year 1079
the Russian Chronicle has an obscure entry: "The Khazars
[of Tmutorakan] took Oleg prisoner and shipped him
overseas to Tsargrad [Constantinople]." That is all.
Obviously the Byzantines were engaged in one of their
cloak-and- dagger intrigues, favouring one Russian prince
against his competitors. But we again find that the Khazars
must have wielded considerable power in this Russian town, if
they were able to capture and dispatch a Russian prince. Four
years later Oleg, having come to terms with the Byzantines, was
allowed to return to Tmutorakan where "he slaughtered the
Khazars who had counseled the death of his brother and had
plotted against himself". Oleg's brother Roman had actually
been killed by the Kipchak-Kumans in the same year as the
Khazars captured Oleg. Did they also engineer his brother's
murder by the Kumans? Or were they victims of the Byzantines'
Macchiavellian game of playing off Khazars and Rus against each
other? At any rate, we are approaching the end of the eleventh
century, and they are still very much on the
scene.
A
few years later, sub anno 1106, the Russian Chronicle
has another laconic entry, according to which the Polovtsi,
i.e., the Kumans, raided the vicinity of Zaretsk (west of
Kiev), and the Russian prince sent a force out to pursue them,
under the command of the three generals Yan, Putyata and "Ivan,
the Khazar". This is the last mention of the Khazars in the Old
Russian Chronicle, which stops ten years later, in
1116.
But
in the second half of the twelfth century, two Persian poets,
Khakani (circa 1106-90) and the better-known Nizami
(circa 1141-1203) mention in their epics a joint
Khazar-Rus invasion of Shirwan during their lifetime. Although
they indulged in the writing of poetry, they deserve to be
taken seriously as they spent most of their lives as civil
servants in the Caucasus, and had an intimate knowledge of
Caucasian tribes. Khakani speaks of "Dervent Khazars" - Darband
being the defile or "turnstile" between the Caucasus and the
Black Sea, through which the Khazars used to raid Georgia in
the good o1d days of the seventh century, before they developed
a more sedate style of life. Did they revert, towards the end,
to the unsettled nomad-warrior habits of their youth?
After
- or possibly before - these Persian testimonies, we have the
tantalizingly short and grumpy remarks of that famed Jewish
traveller, Rabbi Petachia of Regensburg, quoted earlier on (II,
8). We remember that he was so huffed by the lack of Talmudic
learning among the Khazar Jews of the Crimean region that when
he crossed Khazaria proper, he only heard "the wailing of women
and the barking of dogs". Was this merely a hyperbole to
express his displeasure, or was he crossing a region devastated
by a recent Kuman raid? The date is between 1170 and 1185; the
twelfth century was drawing to its close, and the Kumans were
now the omnipresent rulers of the steppes.
As
we enter the thirteenth century, the darkness thickens, and
even our meagre sources dry up. But there is at least one
reference which comes from an excellent witness. It is the last
mention of the Khazars as a nation, and is dated between
1245-7. By that time the Mongols had already swept the Kumans
out of Eurasia and established the greatest nomad empire the
world had as yet seen, extending from Hungary to
China.
In
1245, Pope Innocent IVsent a mission to Batu Khan, grandson of
Jinghiz Khan, ruler of the western part of the Mongol Empire,
to explore the possibilities of an understanding with this new
world power - and also no doubt to obtain information about its
military strength. Head of this mission was the sixty-year-old
Franciscan friar, Joannes de Plano Carpini. He was a
contemporary and disciple of St Francis of Assisi, but also an
experienced traveller and Church diplomat who had held high
offices in the hierarchy. The mission set out on Easter day
1245 from Cologne, traversed Germany, crossed the Dnieper and
the Don, and arrived one year later at the capital of Batu Khan
and his Golden Horde in the Volga estuary: the town of Sarai
Batu, alias Saksin, alias Itil.
After his return to the west,
Carpini wrote his celebrated Historica Mongolorum. It contains,
amidst a wealth of historical, ethnographical and military
data, also a list of the people living in the regions visited
by him. In this list, enumerating the people of the northern
Caucasus, he mentions, along with the Alans and Circassians,
the "Khazars observing theJewish religion". It is, as already
said, the last known mention of them before the curtain falls.
But
it took a long time until their memory was effaced. Genovese
and Venetian merchants kept referring to the Crimea as
"Gazaria" and that name occurs in Italian documents as late as
the sixteenth century. This was, however, by that time merely a
geographical designation, commemorating a vanished
nation.
9
Yet even after their political power
was broken, they left marks of Khazar-Jewish influence in
unexpected places, and on a variety of
people.
Among them were the Seljuk, who
may be regarded as the true founders of Muslim Turkey. Towards
the end of the tenth century, this other offshoot of the Ghuzz
had moved southwards into the vicinity of Bokhara, from where
they were later to erupt into Byzantine Asia Minor and colonize
it. They do not enter directly into our story, but they do so
through a back-door, as it were, for the great Seljuk dynasty
seems to have been intimately linked with the Khazars. This
Khazar connection is reported by Bar Hebracus (1226-86), one of
the greatest among Syriac writers and scholars; as the name
indicates, he was of Jewish origin, but converted to
Christianity, and ordained a bishop at the age of twenty.
Bar
Hebraeus relates that Seljuk's father, Tukak, was a commander
in the army of the Khazar Kagan, and that after his death,
Seljuk himself, founder of the dynasty, was brought up at the
Kagan's court. But he was an impetuous youth and took liberties
with the Kagan, to which the Katoun - the queen - objected; as
a result Seljuk had to leave, or was banned from the
court.24
Another contemporary source,
ibn-al-Adim's History of Aleppo, also speaks of
Seljuk's father as "one of the notables of the Khazar Turks";25
while a third, Ibn Hassul,26 reports that Seljuk "struck the
King of the Khazars with his sword and beat him with a mace
which he had in his hand...." We also remember the strong
ambivalent attitude of the Ghuzz towards the Khazars, in Ibn
Fadlan's travellogue.
Thus there seems to have been an
intimate relationship between the Khazars and the founders of
the Seljuk dynasty, followed by a break. This was probably due
to the Seljuks' conversion to Islam (while the other Ghuzz
tribes, such as the Kumans, remained pagans). Nevertheless, the
Khazar-Judaic influence prevailed for some time even after the
break. Among the four sons of Seljuk, one was given the
exclusively Jewish name of Israel; and one grandson was called
Daud (David). Dunlop, usually a very cautious author,
remarks:
- In view of what has already been
said, the suggestion is that these names are due to the
religious influence among the leading families of the Ghuzz
of the dominant Khazars. The "house of worship" among the
Ghuzz mentioned by Qazwini might well have been a
synagogue.27
We may add here that - according to
Artamonov - specifically Jewish names also occurred among that
other Ghuzz branch, the Kumans. The sons of the Kuman Prince
Kobiak were called Isaac and Daniel.
10
Where the historians' resources give
out, legend and folklore provide useful hints.
The
Primary Russian Chronicle was compiled by monks; it is
saturated with religious thought and long biblical excursions.
But parallel with the ecclesiastical writings on which it is
based, the Kiev period also produced a secular literature - the
so-called bylina, heroic epics or folk-songs, mostly
concerned with the deeds of great warriors and semi-legendary
princes. The "Lay of Igor's Host", already mentioned, about
that leader's defeat by the Kumans, is the best known among
them. The bylina were transmitted by oral tradition
and - according to Vernadsky "were still chanted by peasants in
remote villages of northern Russia in the beginning of the
twentieth century".28
In
striking contrast to the Russian Chronicle, these epics do not
mention by name the Khazars or their country; instead they
speak of the "country of the Jews" (Zemlya
Jidovskaya), and of its inhabitants as "Jewish heroes"
(Jidovin bogatir) who ruled the steppes and fought the
armies of the Russian princes. One such hero, the epics tell
us, was a giant Jew, who came "from the Zemlya
Jidovskaya to the steppes of Tsetsar under Mount Sorochin,
and only the bravery of Vladimir's general, Ilya Murometz,
saved Vladimir's army from the Jews".29 There are several
versions of this tale, and the search for the whereabouts of
Tsetsar and Mount Sorochin provided historians with another
lively game. But, as Poliak has pointed out, "the point to
retain is that in the eyes of the Russian people the
neighbouring Khazaria in its final period was simply 'the
Jewish state', and its army was an army of Jews".30 This
popular Russian view differs considerably from the tendency
among Arab chroniclers to emphasize the importance of the
Muslim mercenaries in the Khazar forces, and the number of
mosques in Itil (forgetting to count the synagogues).
The
legends which circulated among Western Jews in the Middle Ages
provide a curious parallel to the Russian bylina.
To
quote Poliak again: "The popular Jewish legend does not
remember a 'Khazar' kingdom but a kingdom of the 'Red Jews'."
And Baron comments:
- The Jews of other lands were
flattered by the existence of an independent Jewish state.
Popular imagination found here a particularly fertile field.
Just as the biblically minded Slavonic epics speak of "Jews"
rather than Khazars, so did western Jews long after spin
romantic tales around those "red Jews", so styled perhaps
because of the slight Mongolian pigmentation of many
Khazars.31
11
Another bit of semi-legendary,
semi-historical folklore connected with the Khazars survived
into modern times, and so fascinated Benjamin Disraeli that he
used it as material for a historical romance: The Wondrous
Tale of Alroy.
In
the twelfth century there arose in Khazaria a Messianic
movement, a rudimentary attempt at a Jewish crusade, aimed at
the conquest of Palestine by force of arms. The initiator of
the movement was a Khazar Jew, one Solomon ben Duji (or Ruhi or
Roy), aided by his son Menahem and a Palestinian scribe. "They
wrote letters to all the Jews, near and far, in all the lands
around them.... They said that the time had come in which God
would gather Israel, His people from all lands to Jerusalem,
the holy city, and that Solomon Ben Duji was Elijah, and his
son the Messiah."*[The main sources for this movement are a
report by the Jewish traveller Benjamin of Tudela (see above,
II, 8); a hostile account by the Arab writer Yahya al-Maghribi,
and two Hebrew manuscripts found in the Cairo Geniza (see
above, II, 7). They add up to a confusing mosaic; I have
followed Baron's careful interpretation (Vol. III, p.204; Vol.
IV, pp.202-4, and notes).]
These
appeals were apparently addressed to the Jewish communities in
the Middle East, and seemed to have had little effect, for the
next episode takes place only about twenty years later, when
young Menahem assumed the name David al-Roy, and the title of
Messiah. Though the movement originated in Khazaria, its centre
soon shifted to Kurdistan. Here David assembled a substantial
armed force - possibly of local Jews, reinforced by Khazars -
and succeeded in taking possession of the strategic fortress of
Amadie, north-east of Mosul. From here he may have hoped to
lead his army to Edessa, and fight his way through Syria into
the Holy Land.
The
whole enterprise may have been a little less quixotic than it
seems now, in view of the constant feuds between the various
Muslim armies, and the gradual disintegration of the Crusader
strongholds. Besides, some local Muslim commanders might have
welcomed the prospect of a Jewish crusade against the Christian
Crusaders. Among
the Jews of the Middle East, David certainly aroused fervent
Messianic hopes. One of his messengers came to Baghdad and -
probably with excessive zeal - instructed its Jewish citizens
to assemble on a certain night on their flat roofs, whence they
would be flown on clouds to the Messiah's camp. A goodly number
of Jews spent that night on their roofs awaiting the miraculous
flight.
But
the rabbinical hierarchy in Baghdad, fearing reprisals by the
authorities, took a hostile attitude to the pseudo-Messiah and
threatened him with a ban. Not surprisingly, David al-Roy was
assassinated - apparently in his sleep, allegedly by his own
father-in-law, whom some interested party had bribed to do the
deed. His
memory was venerated, and when Benjamin of Tudela travelled
through Persia twenty years after the event, "they still spoke
lovingly of their leader". But the cult did not stop there.
According to one theory, the six-pointed "shield of David"
which adorns the modern Israeli flag, started to become a
national symbol with David al-Roy's crusade. "Ever since,"
writes Baron, "it has been suggested, the six-cornered 'shield
of David', theretofore mainly a decorative motif or a magical
emblem, began its career toward becoming the chief
national-religious symbol of Judaism. Long used interchangeably
with the pentagram or the 'seal of Solomon', it was attributed
to David in mystic and ethical German writings from the
thirteenth century on, and appeared on the Jewish flag in
Prague in 1527."32 Baron
appends a qualifying note to this passage, pointing out that
the connection between al-Roy and the six-pointed star "still
awaits further elucidation and proof". However that may be, we
can certainly agree with Baron's dictum which concludes his
chapter on Khazaria:
- During the half millenium of its
existence and its aftermath in the East European
communities, this noteworthy experiment in Jewish statecraft
doubtless exerted a greater influence on Jewish history than
we are as yet able to envisage.
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