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13th Tribe Arthur Koesler
13th Tribe Arthur Koesler
Arthur Koestler
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ARTHUR KOESTLER was born in 1905 in Budapest. Though he studied science and psy-
chology in Vienna, at the age of twenty he became a foreign correspondent and worked
During the Spanish Civil War, which he covered from the Republican side, he was captured
and imprisoned for several months by the Nationalists, but was exchanged after international
protest. In 1939-40 he was interned in a French detention camp. After his release, due to
British government intervention, he joined the French Foreign Legion, subsequently escaped
to England, and joined the British Army.
Like many other intellectuals in the thir ties, Koestler saw in the Soviet experiment the only
hope and alternative to fascism. He became a member of the Communist Party in 1931, but
left it in disillusionment during the Moscow purges in 1938. His earlier books were mainly
concerned with these experiences, either in autobiographical form or in essays or political
novels. Among the latter, Darkness At Noon has been translated into thirty-three languages,
After
for World
various War 11,newspapers
European Mr. Koestlerinbecame a British
the Middle East, citizen, and allRussia
Paris, Berlin, his books
and since
Spain.1940
have been written in English, He now lives in London. but he frequently lectures at American
universities, and was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at
Stanford in 1964-65,
In 1968 Mr. Koestler received the Sonning Prize at the University of Copenhagen for his
contributions to European culture. He is also a Commander of the Order of the British Empire,
as well as one of the ten Companions of Literature, elected by the Royal Society of Literature.
His works are now being republished in a collected edition of twenty volumes.
2
The Thirteenth Tribe
Arthur Koestler
Rise
fines of Europe between the Caucasus and the Volga were ruled by a Jewish state,
known as the Khazar Empire. At the peak of its power, from the seventh to the tenth cen-
turies AD, it played a significant part in shaping the destinies of mediaeval, and consequently
of modern, Europe. The Byzantine Emperor and historian, Constantine Porphyrogenitus (913-
959), must have been well aware of this when he recorded in his treatise on court protocol.1
that letters addressed to the Pope in Rome, and similarly those to the Emperor of the West,
had a gold seal wor th two solidi attached to them, whereas messages to the King of the
Khazars displayed a seal worth three solidi. This was not flattery, but Realpolitik. "In the
period with which we are concerned," wrote Bur y, "it is probable that the Khan of the Khazars
was of little less importance in view of the imperial foreign policy than Charles the Great and
his successors.".2
The country of the Khazars, a people of Turkish stock, occupied a strategic key position at
the vital gateway between the Black Sea and the Caspian, where the great eastern powers of
the period confronted each other. It acted as a buffer protecting Byzantium against invasions
by the lusty barbarian tribesmen of the northern steppes Bulgars, Magyars, Pechenegs, etc.
and, later, the Vikings and the Russians. But equally, or even more important both from the
point of view of Byzantine diplomacy and of European history, is the fact that the Khazar
armies effectively blocked the Arab avalanche in its most devastating ear ly stages, and thus
prevented the Muslim conquest of Eastern Europe. Professor Dunlop of Columbia University,
a leading authority on the history of the Khazars, has givena concise summary of this decisive
yet virtually unknown episode:
The Khazar countr y . . . lay across the natural line of advance of the Arabs.
Within a few years of the death of Muhammad (AD 632) the armies of the
Caliphate, sweeping northward through the wreckage of two empires and carry-
ing all before them, reached the great mountain barrier of the Caucasus. This
barrier once passed, the road lay open to the lands of eastern Europe. As it
was, on the line of the Caucasus the Arabs met the forces of an organized mili-
tary power which effectively prevented them from extending their conquests in
this direction. The wars of the Arabs and the Khazars, which lasted more than
a hundred years, though little known, have thus considerable historical impor-
tance. The Franks of Charles Martel on the field of Tours turned the tide of Arab
invasion. At about the same time the threat to Europe in the east was hardly
less acute . . . The victorious Muslims were met and held by the forces of the
Khazar kingdom . . . It can . . . scarcely be doubted that but for the existence of
the Khazars in the region nor th of the Caucasus, Byzantium, the bulwark of
European civilization in the east, would have found itself outflanked by the
Arabs, and the histor y of Christendom and Islam might well have been ver y dif-
ferent from what we know.3
It is perhaps not surprising, given these circumstances, that in 732 after a resounding
Khazar victory over the Arabs the future Emperor Constantine V married a Khazar princess.
In due time their son became the Emperor Leo IV, known as Leo the Khazar.
Ironically, the last battle in the war, AD 737, ended in a Khazar defeat. But by that time the
3
impetus of the Muslim Holy War was spent, the Caliphate was rocked by internal dissensions,
and the Arab invaders retraced their steps across the Caucasus without having gained a per-
manent foothold in the nor th, whereas the Khazars became more powerful than they had pre-
viously been.
A few years later, probably AD 740, the King, his court and the military ruling class
embraced the Jewish faith, and Judaism became the state religion of the Khazars. No doubt
their contemporaries were as astonished by this decision as modern scholars were when they
came across the evidence in the Arab, Byzantine, Russian and Hebrew sources. One of the
most recent comments is to be found in a work by the Hungarian Marxist historian, Dr Antal
Bartha. His book on The Magyar Society in the Eighth and Ninth Centuries4 has several chap-
ters on the Khazars, as during most of that period the Hungarians were ruled by them. Yet
their conversion to Judaism is discussed in a single paragraph, with obvious embarrassment.
It reads:
Our investigations cannot go into problems pertaining to the history of ideas,
but we must call the reader's attention to the matter of the Khazar kingdom's
state religion. It was the Jewish faith which became the official religion of the
ruling strata of society. Needless to say, the acceptance of the Jewish faith as
the state religion of an ethnically non-Jewish people could be the subject of
interesting speculations. We shall, however, confine ourselves to the remark
that this official conversion in defiance of Christian proselytizing by
Byzantium, the Muslim influence from the East, and in spite of the political
pressure of these two powers to a religion which had no support from any
political power, but was persecuted by nearly all has come as a surprise to all
historians concerned with the Khazars, and cannot be considered as acciden-
tal, but must be regarded as a sign of the independent policy pursued by that
kingdom.
Which leaves us only slightly more bewildered than before. Yet whereas the sources differ
in minor detail, the major facts are beyond dispute.
What is in dispute is the fate of the Jewish Khazars after the destruction of their empire, in
the twelfth or thirteenth century. On this problem the sources are scant, but various late medi-
aeval Khazar settlements are mentioned in the Crimea, in the Ukraine, in Hungar y, Poland and
Lithuania. The general picture that emerges from these fragmentary pieces of information is
that of a migration of Khazar tribes and communities into those regions of Eastern Europe
mainly Russia and Poland where, at the dawn of the Modern Age, the greatest concentra-
tions of Jews were found. This has lead several historians to conjecture that a substantial
part, and perhaps the majority of eastern Jews and hence of wor ld Jewry might be of
Khazar, and not of Semitic Origin.
The far-reaching implications of this hypothesis may explain the great caution exercised by
historians in approaching this subject if they do not avoid it altogether. Thus in the 1973
edition of the Encyclopaedia Judaica the article "Khazars" is signed by Dunlop, but there is a
separate section dealing with "Khazar Jews after the Fall of the Kingdom", signed by the edi-
tors, and written with the obvious intent to avoid upsetting believers in the dogma of the
Chosen Race:
The Turkish-speaking Karaites [a fundamentalist Jewish sect] of the Crimea,
Poland, and elsewhere have affirmed a connection with the Khazars, which is
perhaps confirmed by evidence from folklore and anthropology as well as lan-
guage. There seems to be a considerable amount of evidence attesting to the
continued presence in Europe of descendants of the Khazars.
How important, in quantitative terms, is that "presence" of the Caucasian sons of Japheth
in the tents of Shem? One of the most radical propounders of the hypothesis concerning the
Khazar origins of Jewr y is the Professor of
Mediaeval Jewish Histor y at Tel Aviv University, A. N. Poliak. His book Khazaria (in
Hebrew)
was
that published in 1944 in Tel Aviv, and a second edition in 1951.5 In his introduction he writes
the facts demand
a new approach, both to the problem of the relations between the Khazar Jewr y
and other Jewish communities, and to the question of how far we can go in
regarding this [Khazar] Jewry as the nucleus of the large Jewish settlement in
Eastern Europe . . . The descendants of this settlement those who stayed
where they were, those who emigrated to the United States and to other coun-
tries, and those who went to Israel constitute now the large majority of wor ld
Jewry.
This was written before the full extent of the holocaust was known, but that does not alter
the fact that the large majority of surviving Jews in the world is of Eastern European and
thus perhaps mainly of Khazar origin. If so, this would mean that their ancestors came not
from the Jordan but from the Volga, not from Canaan but from the Caucasus, once believed to
be the cradle of the Ar yan race; and that genetically they are more closely related to the Hun,
Uigur and Magyar tribes than to the seed of Ab raham, Isaac and Jacob. Should this turn out
4
to be the case, then the term "anti-Semitism" would become void of meaning, based on a
misapprehension shared by both the killers and their victims. The story of the Khazar Empire,
as it slowly emerges from the past, begins to look like the most cruel hoax which history has
ever perpetrated.
PART 2
"Attila was, after all, merely the king of a kingdom of tents. His state passed
away whereas the despised city of Constantinople remained a power. The
tents vanished, the towns remained. The Hun state was a whirlwind . . ."
Thus Cassel,6 a nineteenth-century orientalist, implying that the Khazars shared, for simi-
lar reasons, a similar fate. Yet the Hun presence on the European scene lasted a mere
eighty years, (From circa 372, when the Huns first started to move westward from the
steppes north of the Caspian, to the death of Attila in 453), whereas the kingdom of the
Khazars held its own for the best part of four centuries. They too lived chiefly in tents, but
they also had large urban settlements, and were in the process of transformation from a tribe
of nomadic warriors into a nation of farmers, cattle-breeders, fishermen, vine-growers, traders
and skilled craftsmen. Soviet archaeologists have unearthed evidence for a relatively
advanced civilization which was altogether different from the "Hun whirlwind". They found the
traces of villages extending
and over several
(thesemiles,7 with3 houses connected
14 metresbyand
galleries
cattlesheds, sheep-pens stables measured 31/2 10 were to huge
supported by columns.8
did the preserved Some
ar tefacts remaining
buckles, ox-ploughs
clasps, showed
ornamental saddleremarkable
plates. craftsmanship; so
Of par ticular interest were the foundations, sunk into the ground, of houses built in a circu-
lar shape.9 According to the Soviet archaeologists, these were found all over the territories
inhabited by the Khazars, and were of an earlier date than their "normal", rectangular build-
ings. Obviously the round-houses symbolize the transition from por table, dome- shaped tents
to permanent dwellings, from the nomadic to a settled, or rather semi-settled, existence. For
the contemporary Arab sources tell us that the Khazars only stayed in their towns including
even their capital, Itil during the winter; come spring, they packed their tents, left their
houses and sallied for th with their sheep or cattle into the steppes, or camped in their corn-
fields or vineyards.
The excavations also showed that the kingdom was, during its later period, surrounded by
an elaborate chain of for tifications, dating from the eighth and ninth centuries, which pro-
tected its nor thern frontiers facing the open steppes. These fortresses formed a rough semi-
circular arc from the Crimea (which the Khazars ruled for a time) across the lower reaches of
the Donetz and the Don to the Volga; while towards the south they were protected by the
Caucasus, to the west by the Black Sea, and to the east by the "Khazar Sea", the Caspian.
("To this day, the Muslims, recalling the Arab terror of the Khazar raids, still call the Caspian,
a sea as shifting as the nomads, and washing to their steppe-land parts, Bahr-ul-Khazar
"the Khazar Sea"." (W. E. 0. Allen, A Histor y of the Georgian People, London 1952).) However,
the northern chain of fortifications mar ked merely an inner ring, protecting the stable core of
the Khazar country; the actual boundaries of their rule over the tribes of the north fluctuated
according to the fortunes of war. At the peak of their power they controlled or exacted tribute
from some thirty different nations and tribes inhabiting the vast territories between the
Caucasus, the Aral Sea, the Ural Mountains, the town of Kiev and the Ukrainian steppes. The
people under Khazar suzerainty included the Bulgars, Burtas, Ghuzz, Magyars (Hungarians),
the Gothic and Greek colonies of the Crimea, and the Slavonic tribes in the nor th-western
woodlands. Beyond these extended dominions, Khazar armies also raided Georgia and
Armenia and penetrated into the Arab Caliphate as far as Mosul. In the words of the Soviet
archaeologist M. I. Artamonov:1 0
Until the ninth century, the Khazars had no rivals to their supremacy in the
regions north of the Black Sea and the adjoining steppe and forest regions of
the Dnieper. The Khazars were the supreme master s of the southern half of
Eastern Europe for a century and a hall, and presented a mighty bulwark, block-
ing the Ural-Caspian gateway from Asia into Europe. During this whole period,
they held back the onslaught of the nomadic tribes from the East.
Taking a bird's-eye view of the history of the great nomadic empires of the East, the Khazar
kingdom occupies an intermediary position in time, size, and degree of civilization between
the Hun and Avar Empires which preceded, and the Mongol Empire that succeeded it.
5
PART
But 3 were these remarkable people remarkable as much by their power and achieve-
who
ments as by their conversion to a religion of outcasts? The descriptions that have come
down to us originate in hostile sources, and cannot be taken at face value. "As to the
Khazars," an Arab chronicler1 1 writes,
"they are to the nor th of the inhabited ear th towards the 7th clime, having over
their heads the constellation of the Plough. Their land is cold and wet.
SomeAccordingly
Persian and their
Arab complexions
chronicles provide an attractive
are white, their eyescombination of legend
blue, their hair and
flowing gos-
and
predominantly reddish, their bodies large and their natures cold. Their general
aspect is wild."
After a centur y of warfare, the Arab writer obviously had no great sympathy for the Khazars.
Nor had the Georgian or Armenian scribes, whose countries, of a much older culture, had
been repeatedly devastated by Khazar horsemen. A Georgian chronicle, echoing an ancient
tradition, identifies them with the hosts of Gog and Magog
"wild men with hideous faces and the manners of wild beasts, eaters of
blood".1 2
An Armenian writer refers to
"the horrible multitude of Khazars with insolent, broad, lashless faces and long
falling hair, like women".13
Lastly, the Arab geographer Istakhri, one of the main Arab sources, has this to say:1
4 "The Khazars do not resemble the Turks. They are black-haired, and are of two
kinds, one called the Kara-Khazars, [Black Khazars] who are swar thy verging on
deep black as if they were a kind of Indian, and a white kind [Ak-Khazars], who
are strikingly handsome.".
This is more flattering, but only adds to the confusion. For it was customary among Turkish
peoples to refer to the ruling classes or clans as "white", to the lower strata as "black". Thus
there is no reason to believe that the "White Bulgars" were whiter than the "Black Bulgars",
or that the "White Huns" (the Ephtalites) who invaded India and Persia in the fifth and sixth
centuries were of fairer skin than the other Hun tribes which invaded Europe. Istakhri's black-
skinned Khazars as much else in his and his colleagues' writings were based on hearsay
and legend; and we are none the wiser regarding the Khazars' physical appearance, or their
ethnic Origins.
The last question can only be answered in a vague and general way. But it is equally frus-
trating to inquire into the origins of the Huns, Alans, Avars, Bulgars, Magyars, Bashkir s,
Burtas, Sabirs, Uigurs, Saragurs, Onogurs, Utigurs, Kutrigurs, Tarniaks, Kotragars,
Zabenders,
Khabars, Pechenegs, Ghuzz, Kumans, Kipchaks, and dozens of other tribes or people who
at one time or another in the lifetime of the Khazar kingdom passed through the turnstiles of
those migratory playgrounds. Even the Huns, of whom we know much more, are of uncertain
origin; their name is apparently derived from the Chinese Hiung-nu, which designates warlike
nomads in general, while other nations applied the name Hun in a similarly indiscriminate way
to nomadic hordes of all kinds, including the "White Huns" mentioned above, the Sabirs,
Magyars and Khazars. (It is amusing to note that while the British in World War I used the
term "Hun" in the same pejorative sense, in my native Hungar y schoolchildren were taught to
look up to "our glorious Hun forefathers" with patriotic pride An exclusive rowing club in
Budapest was called "Hunnia", and Attila is still a popular first name).
In the first century AD, the Chinese drove these disagreeable Hun neighbours westward,
and thus star ted one of those periodic avalanches which swept for many centuries from Asia
towards the West. From the fifth century onward, many of these westward-bound tribes were
called by the generic name of "Turks". The term is also supposed to be of Chinese origin
(apparently derived from the name of a hill) and was subsequently used to refer to all tribes
who spoke languages with certain common characteristics the "Turkic" language group.
Thus the term Turk, in the sense in which it was used by mediaeval writer s and often also by
modern ethnologists refers primarily to language and not to race. In this sense the Huns
and Khazars were "Turkic" people. (But not the Magyars, whose language belongs to the
Finno-Ugrian language group). The Khazar language was supposedly a Chuvash dialect of
Turkish, which still survives in the Autonomous Chuvash Soviet Republic, between the Volga
and the Sura. The Chuvash people are actually believed to be descendants of the Bulgars,
who spoke a dialect similar to the Khazars. But all these connections are rather tenuous,
based on the more or less speculative deductions of oriental philologists. All we can say with
safety is that the Khazars were a "Turkic" tribe, who erupted from the Asian steppes, probably
in the fifth century of our era.
The origin of the name Khazar, and the modern derivations to which it gave rise, has also
been the subject of much ingenious speculation. Most likely the word is derived from the
Turkish root gaz, "to wander", and simply means "nomad". Of greater interest to the non-spe-
6
cialist are some alleged modern derivations from it: among them the Russian Cossack and
the Hungarian Huszar both signifying martial horsemen; (Huszar is probably derived via the
Serbo-Croat from Greek references to Khazars), and also the German Ketzer heretic, i.e.,
Jew. If these derivations are correct, they would show that the Khazars had a considerable
impact on the imagination of a variety of peoples in the Middle Ages.
PART 4
sip column. They may start with the Creation and end with stop-press titbits. Thus
Yakubi, a ninth-century Arab historian, traces the origin of the Khazars back to Japheth,
third son of Noah. The Japheth motive recurs frequently in the literature, while other legends
connect them with Abraham or Alexander the Great.
One of the earliest factual references to the Khazars occurs in a Syriac chronicle by
"Zacharia Rhetor", (It was actually written by an anonymous compiler and named after an ear-
lier Greek historian whose work is summarized in the compilation), dating from the middle of
the sixth century. It mentions the Khazars in a list of people who inhabit the region of the
Caucasus. Other sources indicate that they were already much in evidence a centur y earlier,
and intimately connected with the Huns. In AD 448, the Byzantine Emperor Theodosius II sent
an embassy to Attila which included a famed rhetorician by name of Priscus. He kept a minute
account not only of the diplomatic negotiations, but also of the court intrigues and goings-on
in Attila's sumptuous banqueting hall he was in fact the perfect gossip columnist, and is
still one of the main sources of information about Hun customs and habits. But Priscus also
has anecdotes to tell about a people subject to the Huns whom he calls Akatzirs that is,
ver y likely, the Ak-Khazars, or "White" Khazars (as distinct from the "Black" Kara-Khazars).
(The "Akatzirs" are also mentioned as a nation of warriors by Jordanes, the great Goth histo-
rian, a century later, and the so- called "Geographer of Ravenna" expressly identifies them
with the Khazars. This is accepted by most modern authorities. [A notable exception was
Marquar t, but see Dunlop's refutation of his views, op. cit., pp. 7f.] Cassel, for instance,
points out that Priscus's pronunciation and spelling follows the Armenian and Georgian:
Khazir). The Byzantine Emperor, Priscus tells us, tried to win this warrior race over to his side,
but the greedy Khazar chieftain, named Karidach, considered the bribe offered to him inade-
quate, and sided with the Huns. Attila defeated Karidach's rival chieftains, installed him as
the sole ruler of the Akatzirs, and invited him to visit his court. Karidach thanked him pro-
fusely for the invitation, and went on to say that "it would be too hard on a mortal man to look
into the face of a god. For, as one cannot stare into the sun's disc, even less could one look
into the face of the greatest god without suffering injury." Attila must have been pleased, for
he confirmed Karidach in his rule.
Priscus's chronicle confirms that the Khazars appeared on the European scene about the
middle of the fifth century as a people under Hunnish sovereignty, and may be regarded,
together with the Magyars and other tribes, as a later offspring of Attila's horde.
PART 5
through which once more, wave after wave of nomadic hordes swept from east to west,
prominent among them the Uigurs and Avars. The Khazars during most of this period
seemed to be happily occupied with raiding the rich trans-Caucasian regions of Georgia and
Armenia, and collecting precious plunder. During the second half of the sixth century they
became the dominant force among the tribes north of the Caucasus. A number of these
tribes the Sabirs, Saragurs, Samandars, Balanjars, etc. are from this date onward no
longer mentioned by name in the sources: they had been subdued or absorbed by the
Khazars. The toughest resistance, apparently, was offered by the powerful Bulgars. But they
too were crushingly defeated (circa 641), and as a result the nation split into two: some of
them migrated westward to the Danube, into the region of modern Bulgaria, others north-east-
ward to the middle Volga, the latter remaining under Khazar suzerainty. We shall frequently
encounter both Danube Bulgars and Volga Bulgars in the course of this narrative.
But before becoming a sovereign state, the Khazars still had to ser ve their apprenticeship
under another short-lived power, the so-called West Tur kish Empire, or Turkut kingdom. It was
a confederation of tribes, held together by a ruler: the Kagan or Khagan (Or Kaqan or Khaqan
or Chagan, etc. Orientalists have strong Idiosyncrasies about spelling [see Appendix I]. I shall
stick to Kagan as the least offensive to Western eyes. The h in Khazar, however, is general
usage), a title which the Khazar r ulers too were subsequently to adopt. This first Turkish
state if one may call it that lasted for a centur y (circa 550-650) and then fell apart, leaving
hardly any trace. However, it was only after the establishment of this kingdom that the name
"Turk" was used to apply to a specific nation, as distinct from other Turkic-speaking peoples
like the Khazars and Bulgars. (This, however, did not prevent the name "Turk" still being
applied indiscriminately to any nomadic tribe of the steppes as a euphemism for Barbarian, or
a synonym for "Hun". It led to much confusion in the interpretation of ancient sources).
The Khazars had been under Hun tutelage, then under Turkish tutelage. After the eclipse of
the Turks in the middle of the seventh centur y it was their tur n to rule the "Kingdom of the
Nor th", as the Persians and Byzantines came to call it. According to one tradition,1 5 the great
7
Persian King Khusraw (Chosroes) Anushirwan (the Blessed) had three golden guest-thrones in
his palace, reserved for the Emperors of Byzantium, China and of the Khazars. No state visits
from these potentates materialized, and the golden thrones if they existed must have
served a purely symbolic purpose. But whether fact or legend, the story fits in well with
Emperor Constantine's official account of the triple gold seal assigned by the Imperial
Chancery to the ruler of the Khazars.
PART 6
Thus during the first few decades of the seventh century, just before the Muslim hurricane
was unleashed from Arabia, the Middle East was dominated by a triangle of power s:
Byzantium, Persia, and the West Turkish Empire. The first two of these had been waging
intermittent war against each other for a century, and both seemed on the verge of collapse;
in the sequel, Byzantium recovered, but the Persian kingdom was soon to meet its doom, and
the Khazars were actually in on the kill.
They were still nominally under the suzerainty of the West Turkish kingdom, within which
they represented the strongest effective force, and to which they were soon to succeed;
accordingly, in 627, the Roman Emperor Heraclius concluded a military alliance with the
Khazars the first of several to follow in preparing his decisive campaign against Persia.
There are several versions of the role played by the Khazars in that campaign which seems to
have been somewhat inglorious but the principal facts are well established. The Khazars
provided Heraclius with 40000 horsemen under a chieftain named Ziebel, who participated in
the advance into Persia, but then presumably fed up with the cautious strategy of the
Greeks turned back to lay siege on Tiflis; this was unsuccessful, but the next year they
again joined forces with Heraclius, took the Georgian capital, and returned with rich plunder.
Gibbon has given a colourful description (based on Theophanes) of the first meeting between
the Roman Emperor and the Khazar chieftain.16
. . . To the hostile league of Chosroes with the Avars, the Roman emperor
opposed the useful and honourable alliance of the Turks. (By "Turks", as the
sequel shows, he means the Khazars). At his liberal invitation, the horde of
Chozars transpor ted their tents from the plains of the Volga to the mountains
of Georgia; Heraclius received them in the neighbourhood of Tiflis, and the
khan with his nobles dismounted from their horses, if we may credit the
Greeks, and fell prostrate on the ground, to adore the purple of the Caesar.
Such voluntar y homage and important aid were entitled to the warmest
acknowledgements; and the emperor, taking off his own diadem, placed it on
the head of the Turkish prince, whom he saluted with a tender embrace and the
appellation of son. After a sumptuous banquet, he presented Ziebel with the
plate and ornaments, the gold, the gems, and the silk, which had been used at
the Imperial table, and, with his own hand, distributed rich jewels and earrings
to his new allies. In a secret interview, he produced a por trait of his daughter
Eudocia, condescended to flatter the barbarian with the promise of a fair and
august bride, and obtained an immediate succour of forty thousand horse . . .
Eudocia (or Epiphania) was the only daughter of Heraclius by his first wife. The promise to
give her in marriage to the "Turk" indicates once more the high value set by the Byzantine
Court on the Khazar alliance. However, the marriage came to naught because Ziebel died
while Eudocia and her suite were on their way to him. There is also an ambivalent reference in
Theophanes to the effect that Ziebel "presented his son, a beardless boy" to the Emperor
as a quid pro quo?
There is another picturesque passage in an Armenian chronicle, quoting the text of what
might be called an Order of Mobilization issued by the Khazar ruler for the second campaign
against Persia: it was addressed to "all tribes and peoples [under Khazar authority], inhabi-
tants of the mountains and the plains, living under roofs or the open sky, having their heads
shaved or wearing their hair long".17
This gives us a first intimation of the heterogeneous ethnic mosaic that was to compose
the Khazar Empire. The "real Khazars" who ruled it were probably always a minority as the
Austrians were in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy.
PART 7
The Persian state never recovered from the crushing defeat inflicted on it by Emperor
Heraclius in 627. There was a revolution; the King was slain by his own son who, in his
turn, died a few months later; a child was elevated to the throne, and after ten years of
anarchy and chaos the first Arab armies to erupt on the scene delivered the coup de grace to
the Sassanide Empire. At about the same time, the West Turkish confederation dissolved into
its tribal components. A new triangle of powers replaced the previous one: the Islamic
Caliphate Christian Byzantium and the newly emerged Khazar Kingdom of the North. It fell to
the latter to bear the brunt of the Arab attack in its initial stages, and to protect the plains of
Eastern Europe from the invader s.
In the first twenty years of the Hegira Mohammed's flight to Medina in 622, with which
the Arab calendar starts the Muslims had conquered Persia, Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt,
8
and surrounded the Byzantine heartland (the present-day Turkey) in a deadly semi-circle,
which extended from the Mediterranean to the Caucasus and the southern shores of the
Caspian. The Caucasus was a formidable natural obstacle, but no more forbidding than the
Pyrenees; and it could be negotiated by the pass of Dariel (Now called the Kasbek pass), or
bypassed through the defile of Darband, along the Caspian shore.
This fortified defile, called by the Arabs Bab al Abwab, the Gate of Gates, was a kind of his-
toric turnstile through which the Khazars and other marauding tribes had from time immemor-
ial attacked the countries of the south and retreated again. Now it was the turn of the Arabs.
Between 642 and 652 they repeatedly broke through the Darband Gate and advanced deep
into Khazaria, attempting to capture Balanjar, the nearest town, and thus secure a foothold on
the European side of the Caucasus. They were beaten back on every occasion in this first
phase of the Arab-Khazar war; the last time in 652, in a great battle in which both sides used
artillery (catapults and ballistae). Four thousand Arabs were killed, including their commander,
Abdal-Rahman ibn-Rabiah; the rest fled in disorder across the mountains.
For the next thirty or forty years the Arabs did not attempt any further incursions into the
Khazar stronghold. Their main attacks were now aimed at Byzantium. On several occasions
(AD 669, 673-8,the
717-18),
capitalthey laidthe
siege to Constantinople byBlack
land and
Sea,by
thesea;
fatehad they been
able to outflank across Caucasus and round the of the
Roman Empire would probably have been sealed. The Khazars, in the meantime, having sub-
jugated the Bulgars and Magyars, completed their western expansion into the Ukraine and the
Crimea. But these were no longer haphazard raids to amass booty and prisoners; they were
wars of conquest, incorporating the conquered people into an empire with a stable adminis-
tration, ruled by the mighty Kagan, who appointed his provincial governors to administer and
levy taxes in the conquered territories. At the beginning of the eighth century their state was
sufficiently consolidated for the Khazars to take the offensive against the Arabs.
From a distance of more than a thousand years, the period of intermittent warfare that fol-
lowed (the so-called 'second Arab war", 722-37) looks like a series of tedious episodes on a
local scale, following the same, repetitive pattern: the Khazar cavalr y in their heavy armour
breaking through the pass of Dariel or the Gate of Darband into the Caliph's domains to the
south; followed by Arab counter-thrusts through the same pass or the defile, towards the
Volga and back again. Looking thus through the wrong end of the telescope, one is reminded
of the old jingle about the noble Duke of York who had ten thousand men; "he marched them
up to the top of the hill. And he marched them down again." In fact, the Arab sources (though
they often exaggerate) speak of armies of 100000, even of 300000, men engaged on either
side probably outnumbering the armies which decided the fate of the Western world at the
battle of Tours about the same time.
The death-defying fanaticism which characterized these wars is illustrated by episodes such
as the suicide by fire of a whole Khazar town as an alternative to sur render; the poisoning of
the water supply of Bab al Abwab by an Arab general; or by the traditional exhortation which
would halt the rout of a defeated Arab army and make it fight to the last man: "To the
Garden, Muslims, not the Fire" the joys of Paradise being assured to every Muslim soldier
killed in the Holy War.
At one stage during these fifteen years of fighting the Khazars overran Georgia and
Armenia, inflicted a total defeat on the Arab army in the battle of Ardabil (AD 730) and
advanced as far as Mosul and Dyarbakir, more than half-way to Damascus, capital of the
Caliphate. But a freshly raised Muslim army stemmed the tide, and the Khazars retreated
homewards across the mountains. The next year Maslamah ibn-Abd-al-Malik, most famed
Arab general of his time, who had formerly commanded the siege of Constantinople, took
Balanjar and even got as far as Samandar, another large Khazar town fur ther north. But once
more the invaders were unable to establish a permanent garrison, and once more they were
forced to retreat across the Caucasus. The sigh of relief experienced in the Roman Empire
assumed a tangible form through another dynastic alliance, when the heir to the throne was
married to a Khazar princess, whose son was to rule Byzantium as Leo the Khazar.
The last Arab campaign was led by the future Caliph Marwan II, and ended in a Pyr rhic vic-
tor y. Marwan made an offer of alliance to the Khazar Kagan, then attacked by surprise
through both passes. The Khazar army, unable to recover from the initial shock, retreated as
far as the Volga. The Kagan was forced to ask for terms; Marwan, in accordance with the rou-
tine followed in other conquered countries, requested the Kagan's conversion to the True
Faith. The Kagan complied, but his conversion to Islam must have been an act of lip-service,
for no more is heard of the episode in the Arab or Byzantine sources in contrast to the last-
ing effects of the establishment of Judaism as the state religion which took place a few years
later. (The probable date for the conversion is around AD 740 see below). Content with the
results achieved, Marwan bid farewell to Khazaria and marched his army back to
Transcaucasia without leaving any garrison, governor or administrative apparatus behind. On
the contrary, a short time later he requested terms for another alliance with the Khazars
against the rebellious tribes of the south.
It had been a narrow escape. The reasons which prompted Marwan's apparent magnanim-
ity are a matter of conjecture as so much else in this bizarre chapter of history. Perhaps the
Arabs realized that, unlike the relatively civilized Persians, Armenians or Georgians, these
ferocious Barbarians of the Nor th could not be ruled by a Muslim puppet prince and a small
garrison. Yet Marwan needed every man of his army to quell major rebellions in Syria and
other parts of the Omayad Caliphate, which was in the process of breaking up. Marwan him-
self was the chief commander in the civil wars that followed, and became in 744 the last of
9
the Omayad Caliphs (only to be assassinated six years later when the Caliphate passed to
the Abbasid dynasty). Given this background, Marwan was simply not in a position to exhaust
his resources by further wars with the Khazars. He had to content himself with teaching them
a lesson which would deter them from further incursions across the Caucasus.
Thus the gigantic Muslim pincer movement across the Pyrenees in the west and across the
Caucasus into Eastern Europe was halted at both ends about the same time. As Charles
Martel's Franks saved Gaul and Western Europe, so the Khazars saved the eastern
approaches to the Volga, the Danube, and the East Roman Empire itself. On this point at
least, the Soviet archaeologist and historian, Ar tamonov, and the American historian, Dunlop,
are in full agreement. I have already quoted the latter to the effect that but for the Khazars,
"Byzantium, the bulwar k of European civilization to the East, would have found itself out-
flanked by the Arabs", and that histor y might have taken a different course.
Artamonov is of the same opinion:1 8
Khazaria was the first feudal state in Eastern Europe, which ranked with the
Byzantine Empire and the Arab Caliphate . . . It was only due to the powerful
Khazar attacks, diverting the tide of the Arab armies to the Caucasus, that
Byzantium withstood them . . .
The letter of the King of the Bulgars reached the Commander of the Faithful, al
Muktadir ; he asked him therein to send him someone to give him religious
instruction and acquaint him with the laws of Islam, to build him a mosque and
a pulpit so that he may carry out his mission of conver ting the people all over
his country; he also entreated the Caliph to build him a for tress to defend him-
self against hostile kings (i.e., as later passages show, the King of the
11
Khazars). Everything that the King asked for was granted by the Caliph. I was
chosen to read the Caliph's message to the King, to hand over the gifts the
Caliph sent him, and to supervise the work of the teachers and interpreters of
the Law . . . (There follow some details about the financing of the mission and
names of par ticipants.] And so we star ted on Thursday the 11th Safar of the
year 309 [June 21, AD 921) from the City of Peace [Baghdad, capital of the
Caliphate].
The date of the expedition, it will he noted, is much later than the events described in the
previous section. But as far as the customs and institutions of the Khazars' pagan neigh-
bours are concerned, this probably makes not much difference; and the glimpses we get of
the life of these nomadic tribes convey at least some idea of what life among the Khazars
may have been during that earlier period before the conversion when they adhered to a
form of Shamanism similar to that still practised by their neighbours in Ibn Fadlan's time.
The progress of the mission was slow and apparently uneventful until they reached
Khwarizm, the border province of the Caliphate south of the Sea of Aral. Here the governor in
charge of the province tried to stop them from proceeding fur ther by arguing that between his
country and the kingdom of the Bulgars there were "a thousand tribes of disbelievers" who
were sure to kill them. In fact his attempts to disregard the Caliph's instructions to let the
mission pass might have been due to other motives: he realized that the mission was indi-
rectly aimed against the Khazars, with whom he maintained a flourishing trade and friendly
relations. In the end, however, he had to give in, and the mission was allowed to proceed to
Gurganj on the estuar y of the Amu-Dar ya. Here they hibernated for three months, because of
the intense cold a factor which looms large in many Arab travellers' tales:
The river was frozen for three months, we looked at the landscape and thought
that the gates of the cold Hell had been opened for us. Verily I saw that the
market place and the streets were totally empty because of the cold . . . Once,
when I came out of the bath and got home, I saw that my beard had frozen into
a lump of ice, and I had to thaw it in front of the fire. I stayed for some days in
a house which was inside of another house [compound?] and in which there
stood a Turkish felt tent, and I lay inside the tent wrapped in clothes and furs,
but never theless my cheeks often froze to the cushion . . .
Around the middle of February the thaw set in. The mission arranged to join a mighty cara-
van of 5000 men and 3000 pack animals to cross the northern steppes, and bought the nec-
essar y supplies: camels, skin boats made of camel hides for crossing rivers, bread, millet
and spiced meat for three months. The natives warned them about the even more frightful
cold in the north, and advised them what clothes to wear :
So each of us put on a Kur tak, [camisole] over that a woollen Kaftan, over that
a buslin, [fur-lined coat] over that a burka [fur coat]; and a fur cap, under
only
whichthe eyes could be seen; a simple pair of underpants, and a lined pair, and
over them the trousers; house shoes of kaymuht [shagreen leather] and over
these also another pair of boots; and when one of us mounted a camel, he was
unable to move because of his clothes.
Ibn Fadlan, the fastidious Arab, liked neither the climate nor the people of Khwarizm:
They are, in respect of their language and constitution, the most repulsive of
men. Their language is like the chatter of starlings. At a day's journey there is a
village called Ardkwa whose inhabitants are called Kardals; their language
sounds entirely like the croaking of frogs.
They left on March 3 and stopped for the night in a caravanserai called Zamgan the gate-
way to the ter ritor y of the Ghuzz Turks. From here onward the mission was in foreign land,
"entrusting our fate to the all-powerful and exalted God". During one of the frequent snow-
storms, Ibn Fadlan rode next to a Turk, who complained: "What does the Ruler want from us?
He is killing us with cold. If we knew what he wants we would give it to him." Ibn Fadlan:
"All he wants is that you people should say: "There is no God save Allah". The
Turk laughed: "If we knew that it is so, we should say so."
There are many such incidents, which Ibn Fadlan reports without appreciating the indepen-
dence of mind which they reflect. Nor did the envoy of the Baghdad court appreciate the
nomadic tribesmen's fundamental contempt for authority. The following episode also
occurred in the countr y of the powerful Ghuzz Turks, who paid tribute to the Khazars and,
according to some sources, were closely related to them:2 4
The next morning one of the Turks met us. He was ugly in build, dirty in appear-
ance, contemptible in manners, base in nature; and we were moving through a
heavy rain. Then he said: "Halt." Then the whole caravan of 3000 animals and
5000 men halted. Then he said: "Not a single one of you is allowed to go on."
12
We halted then, obeying his orders. (Obviously the leaders of the great caravan
had to avoid at all costs a conflict with the Ghuzz tribesmen). Then we said to
him: "We are friends of the Kudar kin [Viceroy]". He began to laugh and said:
"Who is the Kudarkin? I shit on his beard." Then he said: "Bread." I gave him a
few loaves of bread. He took them and said: "Continue your journey; I have
taken pity on you."
The democratic methods of the Ghuzz, practised when a decision had to be taken, were
even more bewildering to the representative of an authoritarian theocracy:
They are nomads and have houses of felt. They stay for a while in one place
and then move on. One can see their tents dispersed here and there all over
the place according to nomadic custom. Although they lead a hard life, they
behave like donkeys that have lost their way. They have no religion which would
link them to God, nor are they guided by reason; they do not worship anything.
Instead, they call their headmen lords; when one of them consults his chief-
tain, he asks: O lord, what shall I do in this or that matter? The course of
action they adopt is decided by taking counsel among themselves; but when
they have decided on a measure and are ready to carry it through, even the
humblest and lowliest among them can come and disrupt that decision.
The sexual mores of the Ghuzz and other tribes were a remarkable mixture of liberalism
and savager y:
Their women wear no veils in the presence of their men or strangers. Nor do
the women cover any par ts of their bodies in the presence of people. One day
we stayed at the place of a Ghuzz and were sitting around; his wife was also
present. As we conver sed, the woman uncovered her private par ts and
scratched them, and we all saw it. Thereupon we covered our faces and said:
May God forgive me. The husband laughed and said to the interpreter: Tell
them we uncover it in your presence so that you may see and restrain your-
selves; but it cannot be attained. This is better than when it is covered up and
yet attainable. Adultery is alien to them; yet when they discover that someone
is an adulterer they split him in two halves. This they do by bringing together
the branches of two trees, tie him to the branches and then let both trees go,
so that the man tied to them is torn in two.
He does not say whether the same punishment was meted out to the guilty woman. Later
on, when talking about the Volga Bulgars, he describes an equally savage method of splitting
adulterers into two, applied to both men and women. Yet, he notes with astonishment,
Bulgars of both sexes swim naked in their rivers, and have as little bodily shame as the
Ghuzz.
As for homosexuality which in Arab countries was taken as a matter of course Ibn
Fadlan says that it is regarded by the Turks as a terrible sin . But in the only episode he
relates to prove his point, the seducer of a beardless youth gets away with a fine of 400
sheep.
Accustomed to the splendid baths of Baghdad, our traveller could not get over the dirtiness
of the Turks. The Ghuzz do not wash themselves after defacating or urinating, nor do they
bathe after seminal pollution or on other occasions. They refuse to have anything to do with
water, par ticularly in winter . . . . When the Ghuzz commander-in-chief took off his luxurious
coat of brocade to don a new coat the mission had brought him, they saw that his under-
clothes were fraying apart from dir t, for it is their custom never to take off the garment they
wear close to their bodies until it disintegrates . Another Turkish tribe, the Bashkirs, shave
their beards and eat their lice. They search the folds of their undergarments and crack the
lice with their teeth . When Ibn Fadlan watched a Bashkir do this, the latter remarked to him:
They are delicious .
All in all, it is not an engaging picture. Our fastidious traveller's contempt for the barbarians
was profound. But it was only aroused by their uncleanliness and what he considered as inde-
cent exposure of the body; the savagery of their punishments and sacrificial rites leave him
quite indifferent. Thus he describes the Bulgars' punishment for manslaughter with detached
interest, without his otherwise frequent expressions of indignation: "They make for him [the
delinquent] a box of birchwood, put him inside, nail the lid on the box, put three loaves of
bread and a can of water beside it, and suspend the box between two tall poles, saying: "We
have put him between heaven and ear th, that he may be exposed to the sun and the rain, and
that the deity may perhaps forgive
him." And so he remains suspended until time lets him decay and the winds blow him
away."
He also describes, with similar aloofness, the funeral sacrifice of hundreds of horses and
herds of other animals, and the gruesome ritual killing of a Rus (Rus: the Viking founders of
the early Russian settlements see below, Chapter III.) slave girl at her master's bier.
About pagan religions he has little to say. But the Bashkirs' phallus cult arouses his inter-
est, for he asks through his interpreter one of the natives the reason for his worshipping a
wooden penis, and notes down his reply: "Because I issued from something similar and know
13
of no other creator who made me." He then adds that 'some of them [the Bashkirs] believe in
twelve deities, a god for winter, another for summer, one for the rain, one for the wind, one for
the trees, one for men, one for the horse, one for water, one for the night, one for the day, a
god of death and one for the earth; while that god who dwells in the sky is the greatest among
them, but takes counsel with the others and thus all are contented with each other's doings .
. . We have seen a group among them which worships snakes, and a group which worships
fish, and a group which worships cranes . . ."
Among the Volga Bulgars, Ibn Fadlan found a strange custom:
When they obser ve a man who excels through quickwittedness and knowledge,
they say: "for this one it is more befitting to ser ve our Lord." They seize him,
put a rope round his neck and hang him on a tree where he is left until he rots
away.
Commenting on this passage, the Tur kish orientalist Zeki Validi Togan, undisputed authority
on Ibn Fadlan and his times, has this to say:2 5 "There is nothing mysterious about the cruel
treatment meted out by the Bulgars to people who were overly clever. It was based on the sim-
ple, sober reasoning of the average citizens who wanted only to lead what they considered to
be a normal life, and to avoid any risk or adventure into which the "genius" might lead them."
He then quotes a Tartar proverb: "If you know too much, they will hang you, and if you are too
modest, they will trample on you." He concludes that the victim 'should not be regarded sim-
ply as a learned person, but as an unruly genius, one who is too clever by half". This leads
one to believe that the custom should be regarded as a measure of social defence against
change, a punishment of non-conformists and potential innovators. (In suppor t of his argu-
ment, the author adduces Turkish and Arabic quotations in the original, without translation a
nasty habit common among modern experts in the field.) But a few lines further down he
gives a different interpretation:
Ibn Fadlan describes not the simple murder of too-clever people, but one of
their pagan customs: human sacrifice, by which the most excellent among men
were offered as sacrifice to God. This ceremony was probably not carried out by
common Bulgars, but by their Tabibs, or medicine men, i.e. their shamans,
whose equivalents among the Bulgars and the Rus also wielded power of life
and death over the people, in the name of their cult. According to Ibn Rusta,
the medicine men of the Rus could put a rope round the neck of anybody and
hang him on a tree to invoke the mercy of God. When this was done, they said:
"This is an offering to God."
Perhaps both types of motivation were mixed together : 'since sacrifice is a necessity, let's
sacrifice the trouble-makers".
We shall see that human sacrifice was also practised by the Khazar s including the ritual
killing of the king at the end of his reign. We may assume that many other similarities existed
between the customs of the tribes described by Ibn Fadlan and those of the Khazar s.
Unfortunately he was debarred from visiting the Khazar capital and had to rely on information
collected in territories under Khazar dominion, and par ticularly at the Bulgar court.
PART 10
It took the Caliph's mission nearly a year (from June 21, 921, to May 12, 922) to reach its
destination, the land of the Volga Bulgars. The direct route from Baghdad to the Volga leads
across the Caucasus and Khazaria to avoid the latter, they had to make the enormous
detour round the eastern shore of the "Khazar Sea", the Caspian. Even so, they were con-
stantly reminded of the proximity of the Khazars and its potential dangers.
A characteristic episode took place during their sojourn with the Ghuzz army chief (the one
with the disreputable underwear). They were at first well received, and given a banquet. But
later the Ghuzz leaders had second thoughts because of their relations with the Khazars. The
chief assembled the leaders to decide what to do:
The most distinguished and influential among them was the Tarkhan; he was
lame and blind and had a maimed hand. The Chief said to them: "These are
the messengers of the King of the Arabs, and I do not feel authorized to let
them proceed without consulting you." Then the Tarkhan spoke: "This is a mat-
ter the like of which we have never seen or heard before; never has an ambas-
sador of the Sultan travelled through our country since we and our ancestors
have been here. Without doubt the Sultan is deceiving us; these people he is
really sending to the Khazars, to stir them up against us. The best will be to cut
each of these messengers into two and to confiscate all their belongings."
Another one said: "No, we should take their belongings and let them run back
naked whence they came." Another said: "No, the Khazar king holds hostages
from us, let us send these people to ransom them."
They argued among themselves for seven days, while Ibn Fadlan and his people feared the
worst. In the end the Ghuzz let them go; we are not told why. Probably Ibn Fadlan succeeded
14
in persuading them that his mission was in fact directed against the Khazars. The Ghuzz had
earlier on fought with the Khazars against another Tur kish tribe, the Pechenegs, but more
recently had shown a hostile attitude; hence the hostages the Khazars took.
The Khazar menace loomed large on the horizon all along the journey. North of the Caspian
they made another huge detour before reaching the Bulgar encampment somewhere near the
confluence of the Volga and the Kama. There the King and leaders of the Bulgars were waiting
for them in a state of acute anxiety. As soon as the ceremonies and festivities were over, the
King sent for Ibn Fadlan to discuss business. He reminded Ibn Fadlan in forceful language
("his voice sounded as if he were speaking from the bottom of a barrel") of the main purpose
of the mission to wit, the money to be paid to him 'so that I shall be able to build a fortress to
protect me from the Jews who subjugated me". Unfortunately that money a sum of four
thousand dinars had not been handed over to the mission, owing to some complicated mat-
ter of red tape; it was to be sent later on. On learning this, the King "a personality of impres-
sive appearance, broad and corpulent" seemed close to despair. He suspected the mission
of having defrauded the money:
"What would you think of a group of men who are given a sum of money des-
tined for a people that is weak, besieged, and oppressed, yet these men
defraud the money?" I replied: "This is forbidden, those men would be evil." He
asked: "Is this a matter of opinion or a matter of general consent?" I replied:
"A matter of general consent."
Gradually Ibn Fadlan succeeded in convincing the King that the money was only delayed,
(Apparently it did arrive at some time, as there is no fur ther mention of the matter). but not to
allay his anxieties. The King kept repeating that the whole point of the invitation was the build-
ing of the fortress "because he was afraid of the King of the Khazars". And apparently he had
ever y reason to be afraid, as Ibn Fadlan relates:
The Bulgar King's son was held as a hostage by the King of the Khazars. It was
repor ted to the King of the Khazars that the Bulgar King had a beautiful daugh-
ter. He sent a messenger to sue for her. The Bulgar King used pretexts to
refuse his consent. The Khazar sent another messenger and took her by force,
although he was a Jew and she a Muslim; but she died at his court. The Khazar
sent another messenger and asked for the Bulgar King's other daughter. But in
the ver y hour when the messenger reached him, the Bulgar King hurriedly mar-
ried her to the Prince of the Askil, who was his subject, for fear that the Khazar
would take her too by force, as he had done with her sister. This alone was the
reason which made the Bulgar King enter into correspondence with the Caliph
and ask him to have a fortress built because he feared the King of the
Khazars.
It sounds like a refrain. Ibn Fadlan also specifies the annual tribute the Bulgar King had to
pay the Khazars: one sable fur from each household in his realm. Since the number of Bulgar
households (i.e., tents) is estimated to have been around 50000, and since Bulgar sable fur
was highly valued all over the world, the tribute was a handsome one.
PART 11
What Ibn Fadlan has to tell us about the Khazars is based as already mentioned on
intelligence collected in the course of his journey, but mainly at the Bulgar cour t.
Unlike the rest of his narrative, derived from vivid personal observations, the pages
on the Khazars contain second-hand, potted information, and fall rather flat. Moreover, the
sources of his information are biased, in view of the Bulgar King's understandable dislike of
his Khazar overlord - while the Caliphate's resentment of a kingdom embracing a rival religion
need hardly be stressed.
The narrative switches abruptly from a description of the Rus court to the Khazar court:
Concerning the King of the Khazars, whose title is Kagan, he appears in public
only once ever y four months. They call him the Great Kagan. His deputy is
called Kagan Bek; he is the one who commands and supplies the armies, man-
ages the affairs of state, appears in public and leads in war. The neighbouring
kings obey his orders. He enters every day into the presence of the Great
Kagan, with deference and modesty, barefooted, carrying a stick of wood in his
hand. He makes obeisance, lights the stick, and when it has burned down, he
sits down on the throne on the King's right. Next to him in rank is a man called
the K-nd-r Kagan, and next to that one, the Jawshyghr Kagan.
It is the custom of the Great Kagan not to have social intercourse with people,
and not to talk with them, and to admit nobody to his presence except those
we have mentioned. The power to bind or release, to mete out punishment, and
to govern the country belongs to his deputy, the Kagan Bek.
15
It is a further custom of the Great Kagan that when he dies a great building is
built for him, containing twenty chambers, and in each chamber a grave is dug
for him. Stones are broken until they become like powder, which is spread over
the floor and covered with pitch. Beneath the building flows a river, and this
river is large and rapid. They diver t the river water over the grave and they say
that this is done so that no devil, no man, no worm and no creeping creatures
can get at him. After he has been buried, those who buried him are decapi-
tated, so that nobody may know in which of the chambers is his grave. The
grave is called "Paradise" and they have a saying: "He has entered Paradise".
All the chambers are spread with silk brocade interwoven with threads of gold.
It is the custom of the King of the Khazar s to have twenty-five wives; each of
the wives is the daughter of a king who owes him allegiance. He takes them by
consent or by force. He has sixty girls for concubines, each of them of exquisite
beauty.
Ibn Fadlan then proceeds to give a rather fanciful description of the Kagan's harem, where
each of the eighty-five wives and concubines has a "palace of her own", and an attendant or
eunuch who, at the King's command, brings her to his alcove "faster than the blinking of an
eye.
After a few more dubious remarks about the "customs" of the Khazar Kagan (we shall
return to them later), Ibn Fadlan at last provides some factual information about the countr y:
The King has a great city on the river Itil [Volga] on both banks. On one bank
live the Muslims, on the other bank the King and his cour t. The Muslims are
governed by one of the King's officials who is himself a Muslim. The law-suits
of the Muslims living in the Khazar capital and of visiting merchants from
abroad are looked after by that official. Nobody else meddles in their affairs or
sits in judgment over them.
Ibn Fadlan's travel report, as far as it is preserved, ends with the words:
The Khazars and their King are all Jews. (This sounds like an exaggeration in
view of the existence of a Muslim community in the capital. Zeki Validi accord-
ingly suppressed the word "all". We must assume that "the Khazars" here
refers to the ruling nation or tribe, within the ethnic mosaic of Khazaria, and
that the Muslims enjoyed legal and religious autonomy, but were not consid-
ered as "real Khazars".) The Bulgars and all their neighbours are subject to
him. They treat him with worshipful obedience. Some are of the opinion that
Gog and Magog are the Khazars.
PART 12
Ihave quoted Ibn Fadlan's odyssey at some length, not so much because of the scant infor-
mation he provides about the Khazars themselves, but because of the light it throws on the
world which surrounded them, the stark barbarity of the people amidst whom they lived,
reflecting their own past, prior to the conversion. For, by the time of Ibn Fadlan's visit to the
Bulgars, Khazaria was a surprisingly modern country compared to its neighbours.
The contrast is evidenced by the reports of other Arab historians, (The following pages are
based on the works of lstakhri, al- Masudi, Ibn Rusta and Ibn Hawkal [see Appendix II].), and
is present on every level, from housing to the administration of justice. The Bulgars still live
exclusively in tents, including the King, although the royal tent is "very large, holding a thou-
sand people or more".2 6 On the other hand, the Khazar Kagan inhabits a castle built of burnt
brick, his ladies are said to inhabit "palaces with roofs of teak",2 7 and the Muslims have sev-
eral mosques, among them "one whose minaret rises above the royal castle".2 8
In the fer tile regions, their farms and cultivat ed areas stretched out continuously over sixty
or seventy miles. They also had extensive vineyards. Thus Ibn Hawkal: "In Kozr [Khazaria]
there is a cer tain city called Asmid [Samandar] which has so many orchards and gardens that
from Darband to Serir the whole countr y is covered with gardens and plantations belonging to
this city. It is said that there are about forty thousand of them. Many of these produce
grapes."29
The region nor th of the Caucasus was extremely fer tile. In AD 968 Ibn Hawkal met a man
who had visited it after a Russian raid: "He said there is not a pittance left for the poor in any
vineyard or garden, not a leaf on the bough . . . [But] owing to the excellence of their land and
the abundance of its produce it will not take three years until it becomes again what it was."
Caucasian wine is still a delight, consumed in vast quantities in the Soviet Union.
However, the royal treasuries' main source of income was foreign trade. The sheer volume
of the trading caravans plying their way between Central Asia and the Volga-Ural region is indi-
cated by Ibn Fadlan: we remember that the caravan his mission joined at Gurganj consisted of
"5000 men and 3000 pack animals". Making due allowance for exaggeration, it must still
have been a mighty caravan, and we do not know how many of these were at any time on the
move. Nor what goods they transported although textiles, dried fruit, honey, wax and spices
16
seem to have played an impor tant part. A second major trade route led across the Caucasus
to Armenia, Georgia, Persia and Byzantium. A third consisted of the increasing traffic of Rus
merchant fleets down the Volga to the eastern shores of the Khazar Sea, carr ying mainly pre-
cious furs much in demand among the Muslim aristocracy, and slaves from the north, sold at
the slave market of Itil. On all these transit goods, including the slaves, the Khazar ruler
levied a tax of ten per cent. Adding to this the tribute paid by Bulgars, Magyars, Bur tas and so
on, one realizes that Khazaria was a prosperous country but also that its prosperity
depended to a large extent on its military power, and the prestige it conveyed on its tax col-
lectors and customs officials.
Apart from the fer tile regions of the south, with their vineyards and orchards, the country
was poor in natural resources. One Arab historian (Istakhri) says that the only native product
they exported was isinglass. This again is cer tainly an exaggeration, yet the fact remains that
their main commercial activity seems to have consisted in re-expor ting goods brought in from
abroad. Among these goods, honey and candle-wax par ticularly caught the Arab chroniclers'
imagination. Thus Muqaddasi: "In Khazaria, sheep, honey and Jews exist in large quanti-
ties."3
Khazar0territor
It is true thattheir
one source
location the
hasDarband
not been Namah mentions
On thegold orhand,
silverseveral
mines in
y, but ascertained. other of the
sources mention Khazar merchandise seen in Baghdad, and the presence of Khazar mer-
chants in Constantinople, Alexandria and as far afield as Samara and Fergana.
Thus Khazaria was by no means isolated from the civilized world; compared to its tribal
neighbours in the nor th it was a cosmopolitan countr y, open to all sorts of cultural and reli-
gious influences, yet jealously defending its independence against the two ecclesiastical
wor ld powers. We shall see that this attitude prepared the ground for the coup de theatre or
coup d'tat which established Judaism as the state religion.
The ar ts and crafts seem to have flourished, including haute couture. When the future
Emperor Constantine V married the Khazar Kagan's daughter (see above, section 1), she
brought with her dowry a splendid dress which so impressed the Byzantine court that it was
adopted as a male ceremonial robe; they called it tzitzakion, derived from the Khazar-Turkish
pet- name of the Princess, which was Chichak or "flower" (until she was baptized Eirene).
"Here," Toynbee comments, "we have an illuminating fragment of cultural histor y."3 1 When
another Khazar princess married the Muslim governor of Armenia, her cavalcade contained,
apar t from attendants and slaves, ten tents mounted on wheels, "made of the finest silk, with
gold-and silver-plated doors, the floors covered with sable furs. Twenty others carried the gold
and silver vessels and other treasures which were her dowr y".3 2 The Kagan himself travelled
in a mobile tent even more luxuriously equipped, carrying on its top a pomegranate of gold.
PART 13
Khazar art, like that of the Bulgars and Magyars, was mainly imitative, modelled on
Persian-Sassanide patterns. The Soviet archaeologist Bader33 emphasized the role of
the Khazars in the spreading of Persian-style silver-ware towards the nor th. Some of
these finds may have been re-expor ted by the Khazars, tr ue to their role as middlemen; oth-
ers were imitations made in Khazar workshops the ruins of which have been traced near the
ancient Khazar for tress of Sarkel. (Unfortunately, Sarkel, the most important Khazar archaeo-
logical site has been flooded by the reser voir of a newly built hydro-electric station). The jew-
archaeologist T. J. Arne mentions ornamental plates, clasps and buckles found as far as
ellery unear thed within the confines of the fortress was of local manufacture.3 4 The Swedish
Sweden, of Sassanide and Byzantine inspiration, manufactured in Khazaria or territories
under their influence.3 5
Thus the Khazars were the principal intermediaries in the spreading of Persian and
Byzantine ar t among the semi-barbaric tribes of Eastern Europe. After his exhaustive sur vey
of the archaeological and documentar y evidence (mostly from Soviet sources), Bar tha con-
cludes:
The sack of Tiflis by the Khazars, presumably in the spring of AD 629, is rele-
vant to our subject . . . [During the period of occupation] the Kagan sent out
inspectors to supervise the manufacture of gold, silver, iron and copper prod-
ucts. Similarly the bazaars, trade in general, even the fisheries, were under
their control . . . [Thus] in the course of their incessant Caucasian campaigns
during the seventh centur y, the Khazars made contact with a culture which had
grown out of the Persian Sassanide tradition. Accordingly, the products of this
culture spread to the people of the steppes not only by trade, but by means of
plunder and even by taxation.... All the tracks that we have assiduously fol-
lowed in the hope of discovering the origins of Magyar art in the tenth century
have led us back to Khazar territory.36
The last remark of the Hungarian scholar refers to the spectacular archaeological finds
known as the "Treasure of Nagyszentmiklos" (see frontispiece). The treasure, consisting of
twentythree gold vessels, dating from the tenth centur y, was found in 1791 in the vicinity of
the village of that name. (It now belongs to Rumania and is called Sinnicolaul Mare). Bar tha
points out that the figure of the "victorious Prince" dragging a prisoner along by his hair, and
the mythological scene at the back of the golden jar, as well as the design of other ornamen-
tal objects, show close affinities with the finds in Novi Pazar in Bulgaria and in Khazar Sarkel.
17
As both Magyar s and Bulgars were under Khazar suzerainty for protracted periods, this is not
ver y surprising, and the warrior, together with the rest of the treasure, gives us at least some
idea of the arts practised within the Khazar Empire (the Persian and Byzantine influence is
predominant, as one would expect). (The interested reader will find an excellent collection of
photographs in Gyula Laszlo's The Art of the Migration Period [although his historical com-
ments have to be treated with caution]).
One school of Hungarian archaeologists maintains that the tenth century gold-and silver-
smiths working in Hungar
migratedy to
were actually
in Khazars.3 7 Asled
webyshall see laterKhazar
on (seetribe,
III, 7, 8),
when the Magyars Hungary 896 they were a dissident
known as the Kabars, who settled with them in their new home. The Kabar-Khazars were
known as skilled gold and silversmiths; the (originally more primitive) Magyars only acquired
these skills in their new countr y. Thus the theory of the Khazar origin of at least some of the
archaeological finds in Hungary is not implausible as will become clearer in the light of the
Magyar-Khazar nexus discussed later on.
PART 14
Whether the warrior on the golden jar is of Magyar or Khazar origin, he helps us to visu-
alise the appearance of a cavalr yman of that period, perhaps belonging to an elite
regiment. Masudi says that in the Khazar army 'seventhousand of them (Istakhri has
12000). ride with the King, archers with breast plates, helmets, and coats of mail. Some are
lancers, equipped and armed like the Muslims . . . None of the kings in this par t of the world
has a regular standing army except the King of the Khazars." And Ibn Hawkal: "This king has
twelve thousand soldiers in his ser vice, of whom when one dies, another person is immedi-
ately chosen in his place."
Here we have another impor tant clue to the Khazar dominance: a permanent professional
army, with a Praetorian Guard which, in peacetime, effectively controlled the ethnic patchwork,
and in times of war served as a hard core for the armed horde, which, as we have seen, may
have swollen at times to a hundred thousand or more. (According to Masudi, the "Royal Army"
consisted of Muslims who "immigrated from the neighbourhood of Kwarizm. Long ago, after
the appearance of Islam, there was war and pestilence in their territory, and they repaired to
the Khazar king . . . When the king of the Khazars is at war with the Muslims, they have a sep-
arate place in his army and do not fight the people of their own faith" [Quoted by Dunlop
(1954), p. 206]. That the army "consisted" of Muslims is of course an exaggeration, contra-
dicted by Masudi himself a few lines later, where he speaks of the Muslim contingent having a
"separate place" in the Khazar army. Also, lbn Hawkal says that "the king has in his train
4000 Muslims and this king has 2000 soldiers in his service". The Kwarizmians probably
formed a kind of Swiss Guard within the army, and their compatriots" talk of "hostages" [see
above, section 10] may refer to them. Vice versa, the Byzantine Emperor Constantine
Porphyrogenitus had a corps d'elite of Khazar guardsmen stationed at the gates of his
palace. This was a privilege dearly bought: "These guards were so well remunerated that they
had to purchase their posts for considerable sums, on which their salaries represented an
annuity var ying from about 2.25 to 4 per cent." [Constantine, De Ceremoniis, pp. 692-3]. For
example, "a Khazar who received 7.4s. had paid for enrolment 302.8s." [Bury, p. 228n])
PART 15
The capital of this motley empire was at first probably the fortress of Balanjar in the north-
ern foothills of the Caucasus; after the Arab raids in the eighth centur y it was transferred
to Samandar, on the western shore of the Caspian; and lastly to Itil in the estuary of the
Volga.
We have several descriptions of Itil, which are fairly consistent with each other. It was a twin
city, built on both sides of the river. The eastern half was called Khazaran, the western half Itil;
(The town was in different periods also mentioned under different names, e.g., al-Bayada,
"The White City") the two were connected by a pontoon bridge. The western half was sur-
rounded by a fortified wall, built of brick; it contained the palaces and courts of the Kagan and
the Bek, the habitations of their attendants (Masudi places these buildings on an island,
close to the west bank, or a peninsula.) and of the "pure-bred Khazars". The wall had four
gates, one of them facing the river. Across the river, on the east bank, lived "the Muslims and
idol worshippers";3 8 this part also
werehoused the mosques, markets, baths andinother public
amenities. Several Arab writers impressed by the number of mosques the Muslim
quarter and the height of the principal minaret. They also kept stressing the autonomy
enjoyed by the Muslim cour ts and clergy. Here is what al-Masudi, known as "the Herodotus
among the Arabs", has to say on this subject in his oft-quoted work Meadows of Gold Mines
and Precious Stones:
The custom in the Khazar capital is to have seven judges. Of these two are for
the Muslims, two are for the Khazars, judging according to the Torah (Mosaic
law), two for the Christians, judging according to the Gospel and one for the
Saqualibah, Rus and other pagans, judging according to pagan law . . . In his
[the Khazar King's] city are many Muslims, merchants and craftsmen, who have
come to his country because of his justice and the security which he offers.
They have a principal mosque and a minaret which rises above the royal castle,
18
and other mosques there besides, with schools where the children learn the
Koran.38 a
In reading these lines by the foremost Arab historian, written in the first half of the tenth
centur y, (Supposedly between AD 943 and 947), one is tempted to take a perhaps too idyllic
view of life in the Khazar kingdom. Thus we read in the ar ticle "Khazars" in the : "In a time
when fanaticism, ignorance and anarchy reigned in Western Europe, the Kingdom of the
Khazars could boast of its just and broad-minded administration." (Jewish Encyclopaedia,
published 1901-6. In the Encyclopaedia Judaica, 1971, the article on the Khazars by Dunlop
is of exemplar y objectivity).
This, as we have seen, is par tly true; but only partly. There
is no evidence of the Khazars engaging in religious persecution, either before or after the
conversion to Judaism. In this respect they may be called more tolerant and enlightened than
the East Roman Empire, or Islam in its early stages. On the other hand, they seem to have
preserved some barbaric rituals from their tribal past. We have heard Ibn Fadlan on the
killings of the royal gravediggers. He also has something to say about another archaic custom
regicide: "The period of the king's rule is forty years. If he exceeds this time by a single day,
his subjects and attendants kill him, saying "His reasoning is already dimmed, and his insight
confused"."
Istakhri has a different version of it:
When they wish to enthrone this Kagan, they put a silken cord round his neck
and tighten it until he begins to choke. Then they ask him: "How long doest
thou intend to rule?" If he does not die before that year, he is killed when he
reaches it.
Bury39 is doubtful whether to believe this kind of Arab traveller's lore, and one would indeed
be inclined to dismiss it, if ritual regicide had not been such a widespread phenomenon
among primitive (and not-so-primitive) people. Frazer laid great emphasis on the connection
between the concept of the King's divinity, and the sacred obligation to kill him after a fixed
period, or when his vitality is on the wane, so that the divine power may find a more youthful
and vigorous incarnation. (Frazer wrote a special treatise on these lines on "The Killing of the
Khazar Kings" [Folklore, XXVIII, 1917]).
It speaks in Istakhri's favour that the bizarre ceremony of "choking" the future King has
been repor ted in existence apparently not so long ago among another people, the Kok-Turks.
Zeki Validi quotes a French anthropologist, St Julien, writing in 1864:
When the new Chief has been elected, his officers and attendants . . . make
him mount his horse. They tighten a ribbon of silk round his neck, without quite
strangling him; then they loosen the ribbon and ask him with great insistence:
"For how many years canst thou be our Khan?" The king, in his troubled mind,
being unable to name a figure, his subjects decide, on the strength of the
words that have escaped him, whether his rule will be long or brief.4
0
We do not know whether the Khazar rite of slaying the King (if it ever existed) fell into
abeyance when they adopted Judaism, in which case the Arab writers were confusing past
with present practices as they did all the time, compiling earlier travellers' reports, and
attributing them to contemporaries. However that may be, the point to be retained, and which
seems beyond dispute, is the divine role attributed to the Kagan, regardless whether or not it
implied his ultimate sacrifice. We have heard before that he was venerated, but vir tually kept
in seclusion, cut off from the people, until he was buried with enormous ceremony. The affairs
of state, including leadership of the army, were managed by the Bek (sometimes also called
the Kagan Bek), who wielded all effective power. On this point Arab sources and modern his-
torians are in agreement, and the latter usually describe the Khazar system of government as
a "double kingship", the Kagan representing divine, the Bek secular, power.
The Khazar double kingship has been compared quite mistakenly, it Seems with the
Spartan dyarchy and with the superficially similar dual leadership among various Turkish
tribes. However, the two kings of Sparta, descendants of two leading families, wielded equal
power; and as for the dual leadership among nomadic tribes, (Alfoldi has suggested that the
two leaders were the commanders of the two wings of the horde [quoted by Dunlop, p. 159, n.
123]), there is no evidence of a basic division of functions as among the Khazars. A more
valid comparison is the system of government in Japan, from the Middle Ages to 1867, where
secular power was concentrated in the hands of the shogun, while the Mikado was wor-
shipped from afar as a divine figurehead.
Cassel41 has suggested an attractive analogy between the Khazar system of government
and the game of chess. The double kingship is represented on the chess-board by the King
(the Kagan) and the Queen (the Bek). The King is kept in seclusion, protected by his atten-
dants, has little power and can only move one short step at a time. The Queen, by contrast, is
the most powerful presence on the board, which she dominates. Yet the Queen may be lost
and the game still continued, whereas the fall of the King is the ultimate disaster which
instantly brings the contest to an end.
The double kingship thus seems to indicate a categorical distinction between the sacred
and the profane in the mentality of the Khazars. The divine attributes of the Kagan are much
19
in evidence in the following passage from Ibn Hawkal (Ibn Hawkal, another much-travelled
Arab geographer and historian, wrote his Oriental Geography around AD 977. The passage
here quoted is virtually a copy of what Istakhri wrote forty years earlier, but contains less
obscurities, so I have followed Ouseley's translation [1800] of Ibn Hawkal):
The Khacan must be always of the Imperial race [Istakhri: " . . . of a family of
notables"].4 1a No one is allowed to approach him but on business of impor-
tance: then they prostrate themselves before him, and rub their faces on the
ground, until he gives orders for their approaching him, and speaking. When a
Khacan . . . dies, whoever passes near his tomb must go on foot, and pay his
respects at the grave; and when he is departing, must not mount on horse-
back, as long as the tomb is within view.
So absolute is the authority of this sovereign, and so implicitly are his com-
mands obeyed, that if it seemed expedient to him that one of his nobles should
die, and if he said to him, "Go and kill yourself," the man would immediately go
to his house, and kill himself accordingly. The succession to the Khacanship
being thus established in the same family [Istakhri: "in a family of notables
who possess neither power nor riches"];4 1b when the turn of the inheritance
arrives to any individual of it, he is confirmed in the dignity, though he pos-
sesses not a single dirhem [coin]. And I have heard from persons worthy of
belief, that a certain young man used to sit in a little shop at the public market-
place, selling petty articles [Istakhri: 'selling bread"]; and that the people used
to say, "When the present Khacan shall have departed, this man will succeed
to the throne" [Istakhri: "There is no man worthier of the Khaganate than
he"].41 c But the young man was a Mussulman, and they give the Khacanship
only to Jews.
The Khacan has a throne and pavilion of gold: these are not allowed to any
other person. The palace of the Khacan is loftier than the other edifices.42
The passage about the virtuous young man selling bread, or whatever it is, in the bazaar
sounds rather like a tale about Harun al Rashid. If he was heir to the golden throne reserved
for Jews, why then was he brought up as a poor Muslim? If we are to make any sense at all of
the story, we must assume that the Kagan was chosen on the strength of his noble virtues,
but chosen among members of the "Imperial Race" or "family of notables". This is in fact the
view of Artamonov and Zeki Validi. Artamonov holds that the Khazars and other Turkish peo-
ple were ruled by descendants of the Turkut dynasty, the er stwhile sovereigns of the defunct
Turk Empire (cf. above, section 3). Zeki Validi suggests that the "Imperial Race" or "family of
notables", to which the Kagan must belong, refers to the ancient dynasty of the Asena, men-
tioned in Chinese sources, a kind of deser t aristocracy, from which Turkish and Mongol rulers
traditionally claimed descent. This sounds fairly plausible and goes some way towards recon-
ciling the contradictory values implied in the narrative just quoted: the noble youth without a
dirhem to his name and the pomp and circumstance surrounding the golden throne. We are
witnessing the overlap of two traditions, like the optical interference of two wave-patterns on a
screen: the asceticism of a tribe of hard-living desert nomads, and the glitter of a royal court
prospering on its commerce and crafts, and striving to outshine its rivals in Baghdad and
Constantinople. After all, the creeds professed by those sumptuous courts had also been
inspired by ascetic desert- prophets in the past.
All this does not explain the startling division of divine and secular power, apparently unique
in that period and region. As Bury wrote:43
"We have no information at what time the active authority of the Chagan was
exchanged for his divine nullity, or why he was exalted to a position resembling
that of the Emperor of Japan, in which his existence, and not his government,
was considered essential to the prosperity of the State."
A speculative answer to this question has recently been proposed by Ar tamonov. He sug-
gests that the acceptance of Judaism as the state religion was the result of a coup d'etat,
which at the same time reduced the Kagan, descendant of a pagan dynasty whose allegiance
to Mosaic law could not really be trusted, to a mere figurehead. This is a hypothesis as good
as any other and with as little evidence to support it. Yet it seems probable that the two
events the adoption of Judaism and the establishment of the double kingship were some-
how connected. (Before the conversion the Kagan was still reported to play an active role
as, for instance, in his dealings with Justinian. To complicate matter s further, the Arab
sources sometimes refer to the "Kagan" when they clearly mean the "Bek" (as "kagan" was
20
the generic term for "ruler" among many tribes), and they also use different names for the
Bek, as the following list shows [after Minorsky, Hudud al Alam, p. 451:
Const. Porphyr. Khaqan Bek
Ibn Rusta Khazar Khaqan Aysha
Masudi Khaqan Malik
Istakhri Malik Khazar Khaqan Khazar*
Ibn Hawkal Khaqan Khazar Malik Khazar or Bek
Gardezi Khazar Khaqan Abshad
* The order of the rulers appears to have been changed]
21
References
1 Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De Cacromoniis l, p. 690.
2 Bury, J. B. (1912), p.402.
3 Dunlop, D. M. (1954), pp. ix-x.
4 Bartlia, A. (1968), p. 35.
5 Poliak, A. N. (1951).
6 Cassel, P. (1876).
7 Bartha, p.24.
8 Bartha, p.24 and notes.
9 Bartha, p. 24, n. 147-9.
10 Istoria Khazar, 1962.
11 Ibn-Said al-Maghribi, quoted by Dunlop, p.11
12 Schultze (1905), p. 23.
13 Marquar t, p. 44, n. 4
14 Quoted by Dunlop (1954), p. 96.
15 Ibn-aI-Balkhi, Fars Namak.
16 Gibbon, Vol. V, pp. 87-8.
17 Moses of Kalankatuk, quoted by Dunlop, p. 29.
18 Artamonov, M. 1. (1962).
19 Obolensky, D, (1971), P. 1712.
20 Gibbon, P. 79.
21 Gibbon, p. 180.
22 Gibbon, p. 182.
23 Op. cit., P. 176.
24 Zeki Validi, Exk. 36a.
25 Ibid., p. 50.
26 Ibid. p. 61.
27 Istakhri.
28 AI-Masudi.
29 Ibn Hawkal., also Istakhri (who was only 4000 gardens).
30 Muqaddasi, p. 355, quoted by Baron III, p. 197.
31 Toynbee, A (1973), p. 549
32 Zeki Validi, p. 120.
33 Quoted by Bar tha, p. 184,
34 Bartha, p. 139.
35 Quoted by Dunlop (1954), p. 231.
36 Bartha, pp. 143-5.
37 Laszlo, G. (1974), pp. 66f,
37a Quoted by Dunlop (1954). p206.
38 Hudud al Alam, No. 50.
39 Op. cit., p. 405.
40 St. Julien, Documents sur les Tou Kioue, quoted by Zeki Validi, p. z69.
41 Cassel,op. cit., P. 52.
42 Ibn Hawkal, pp. 189-90.
43 Op.cit., p. 405.
22
The Thirteenth Tribe
Arthur Koestler
Conversion
PART 1
THE religion of the Hebrews ,writes Bur y, had exercised a profound influence on the
creed of Islam, and it had been a basis for Christianity; it had won scattered proselytes;
but the conversion of the Khazar s to the undiluted religion of Jehova is unique in his-
tory. 1
What was the motivation of this unique event? It is not easy to get under the skin of a
Khazar prince covered, as it was, by a coat of mail. But if we reason in terms of power-pol-
itics, which obeys essentially the same rules throughout the ages, a fairly plausible analogy
offers itself.
At the beginning of the eighth century the world was polarized between the two super-pow-
ers representing Christianity and Islam. Their ideological doctrines were welded to power-pol-
itics pursued by the classical methods of propaganda, subversion and military conquest.
The Khazar Empire represented a Third Force, which had proved equal to either of them, both
as an adversary and an ally. But it could only maintain its independence by accepting neither
Christianity nor Islam for either choice would have automatically subordinated it to the
authority of the Roman Emperor or the Caliph of Baghdad.
There had been no lack of efforts by either court to conver t the Khazars to Christianity or
Islam, but all they resulted in was the exchange of diplomatic courtesies, dynastic inter-mar-
riages and shifting military alliances based on mutual self-interest. Relying on its military
strength, the Khazar kingdom, with its hinterland of vassal tribes, was determined to pre-
ser ve its position as the Third Force, leader of the uncommitted nations of the steppes.
At the same time, their intimate contacts with Byzantium and the Caliphate had taught the
Khazars that their primitive shamanism was not only barbaric and outdated compared to the
great monotheistic creeds, but also unable to confer on the leaders the spiritual and legal
authority which the rulers of the two theocratic world powers, the Caliph and the Emperor,
enjoyed. Yet the conversion to either creed would have meant submission, the end of inde-
pendence, and thus would have defeated its purpose. What could have been more logical
than to embrace a third creed, which was uncommitted towards either of the two, yet repre-
sented the venerable foundation of both?
The apparent logic of the decision is of course due to the deceptive clarity of hindsight. In
reality, the conversion to Judaism required an act of genius. Yet both the Arab and Hebrew
sources on the history of the conversion, however varied in detail, point to a line of reason-
ing as indicated above. To quote Bury once more:
There can be no question that the ruler was actuated by political motives in
adopting Judaism. To embrace Mohammadanism would have made him the
spiritual dependent of the Caliphs, who attempted to press their faith on the
Khazars, and in Christianity lay the danger of his becoming an ecclesiastical
vassal of the Roman Empire. Judaism was a reputable religion with sacred
books which both Christian and Mohammadan respected; it elevated him
above the heathen barbarians, and secured him against the interference of
Caliph or Emperor. But he did not adopt, along with circumcision, the intoler-
ance of the Jewish cult. He allowed the mass of his people to abide in their
heathendom and worship their idols.2
Though the Khazar cour t's conversion was no doubt politically motivated, it would still be
absurd to imagine that they embraced overnight, blindly, a religion whose tenets were
unknown to them. In fact, however, they had been well acquainted with Jews and their reli-
gious obser vances for at least a centur y before the conversion, through the continued influx
of refugees from religious persecution in Byzantium, and to a lesser extent from countries in
Asia Minor conquered by the Arabs. We know that Khazaria was a relatively civilized country
among the Barbarians of the Nor th, yet not committed to either of the militant creeds, and
so it became a natural haven for the periodic exodus of Jews under Byzantine rule, threat-
ened by forced conversion and other pressures. Persecution in varied forms had started with
Justinian I (527-65), and assumed par ticularly vicious forms under Heraclius in the seventh
century, Leo III in the eighth, Basil and Leo IV in the ninth, Romanus in the tenth. Thus Leo
III, who ruled during the two decades immediately preceding the Khazar conversion to
Judaism, attempted to end the anomaly [of the tolerated status of Jews] at one blow, by
23
ordering all his Jewish subjects to be baptized .3 Although the implementation of the order
seemed to have been rather ineffective, it led to the flight of a considerable number of Jews
from Byzantium. Masudi relates:
In this city [Khazaran-Itil] are Muslims, Christians, Jews and pagans. The Jews
are the king, his attendants and the Khazars of his kind. [i.e., presumably the
ruling tribe of White Khazars , see above, Chapter I, 3.] The king of the
Khazars had already become a Jew in the Caliphate of Harun al-Rashid [i.e.,
between AD 786 and 809; but it is generally assumed that Masudi used a
convenient historical landmark and that the conversion took place around AD
740.] and he was joined by Jews from all lands of Islam and from the countr y
of the Greeks [Byzantium]. Indeed the king of the Greeks at the present time,
the Year of the Hegira 332 [AD 943-4] has converted the Jews in his kingdom
to Christianity by coercion . . . Thus many Jews took flight from the country of
the Greeks to Khazaria . . . 3 a
The last two sentences quoted refer to events two hundred years after the Khazar conver-
sion, and show how persistently the waves of persecution followed each other over the cen-
turies. But the Jews were equally persistent. Many endured tor ture, and those who did not
have the strength to resist returned later on to their faith like dogs to their vomit , as one
Christian chronicler gracefully put it.4 Equally picturesque is the description of a Hebrew
writer5 of one
of method of forced conversion used under the Emperor Basil against the Jewish
community Oria in souther n Italy:
How did they force them? Anyone refusing to accept their erroneous belief
was placed in an olive mill under a wooden press, and squeezed in the way
olives are squeezed in the mill.
Another Hebrew source6 remarks on the persecution under the Emperor Romanus (the
Greek King to whom Masudi refers): And afterwards there will arise a King who will perse-
cute them not by destr uction, but mercifully by driving them out of the country. .The only
mercy shown by history to those who took to flight, or were driven to it, was the existence of
Khazaria, both before and after the conversion. Before, it was a refugee haven; after, it
became a kind of National Home. The refugees were products of a superior culture, and were
no doubt an important factor in creating that cosmopolitan, tolerant outlook which so
impressed the Arab chroniclers quoted before. Their influence and no doubt their proselytiz-
ing zeal [This was an age when converting unbelievers by force or persuasion was a foremost
concern. That the Jews, too, indulged in it is shown by the fact that, since the rule of
Justinian, Byzantine law threatened severe punishments for the attempt to conver t Christians
to Judaism, while for Jews molesting conver ts to Christianity the penalty was death by fire
(Sharf, p.25).] would have made itself felt first and foremost at the court and among leading
notables. They may have combined in their missionary effor ts theological arguments and
messianic prophecies with a shrewd assessment of the political advantages the Khazars
would derive from adopting a neutral religion.
The exiles also brought with them Byzantine ar ts and crafts, superior methods in agriculture
and trade, and the square Hebrew alphabet. We do not know what kind of script the Khazars
used987,
AD before that, us
informs butthat
the in
Fihrist of Ibn
his time the Nadim,7 a kindthe
Khazars used ofHebrew
universal bibliography
alphabet. written
It ser ved circa
the dual
purpose of scholarly discourse in Hebrew (analogous to the use of mediaeval Latin in the
West) and as a written alphabet for the various languages spoken in Khazaria (analogous to
the use of the Latin alphabet for the various vernaculars in Western Europe). From Khazaria
the Hebrew script seemed to have spread into neighbouring countries. Thus Chwolson reports
that inscriptions in a non-Semitic language (or possibly in two different non-Semitic lan-
guages) using Hebrew characters were found on two gravestones from Phanagoria and
Parthenit in the Crimea; they have not been deciphered yet. 8 [These inscriptions are a cate-
gory apart from the forgeries of Firkovitch, notorious among historians (see Appendix III).
Poliak (4/3) quoting Chwolson, D.A. (1865).] (The Crimea was, as we have seen, intermit-
tently under Khazar r ule; but it also had an old-established Jewish community, and the inscrip-
tions may even pre-date the conversion.) Some Hebrew letters (shin and tsadei) also found
their way into the Cyrillic alphabet,9 and furthermore, many Polish silver coins have been
found, dating from the twelfth or thirteenth century, which bear Polish inscriptions in Hebrew
lettering (e.g., Leszek krol Polski Leszek King of Poland), side by side with coins inscribed in
the Latin alphabet. Poliak comments:
These coins are the final evidence for the spreading of the Hebrew script from
Khazaria to the neighbouring Slavonic countries. The use of these coins was
not related to any question of religion. They were minted because many of the
Polish people were more used to this type of script than to the Roman script,
not considering it as specifically Jewish. 1 0
Thus while the conversion was no doubt inspired by opportunistic motives conceived as a
cunning political manoeuvre it brought in its wake cultural developments which could hardly
24
have been foreseen by those who star ted it. The Hebrew alphabet was the beginning; three
centuries later the decline of the Khazar state is marked by repeated outbreaks of a mes-
sianic Zionism, with pseudo-Messiahs like David El-Roi (hero of a novel by Disraeli) leading
quixotic crusades for the re-conquest of Jerusalem. [See below, Chapter IV, II.]
After the defeat by the Arabs in 737, the Kagan's forced adoption of Islam had been a for-
mality almost instantly revoked, which apparently left no impression on his people. In contrast
to this, the voluntar y conversion to Judaism was to produce deep and lasting effects.
PART 2
The circumstances of the conversion are obscured by legend, but the principal Arab and
Hebrew accounts of it have some basic features in common.
Al-Masudi's account of the Jewish rule in Khazaria, quoted earlier on, ends with a reference
to a previous work of his, in which he gave a description of those circumstances. That previ-
ous work of Masudi's is lost; but there exist two accounts which are based on tile lost book.
The first, by Dimaski (written in 1327), reiterates that at the time of Harun al Rashid, the
Byzantine Emperor forced the Jews to emigrate; these emigrants came to the Khazar country
where they found an intelligent but uneducated race to whom they offered their religion. The
natives found it better than their own and accepted it. 11
The second, much more detailed account is in al-Bakri's Book of Kingdoms and Roads
(eleventh century):
The reason for the conversion to Judaism of the King of the Khazars, who had
previously been a pagan, is as follows. He had adopted Christianity. [No other
source, as far as I know, mentions this. It may be a substitution more palatable
to Muslim readers for the Kagan's short-lived adoption of Islam prior to
Judaism.] Then he recognized its falsehood and discussed this matter, which
greatly worried him, with one of his high officials. The latter said to him: O king,
those in possession of sacred scriptures fall into three groups. Summon them
and ask them to state their case, then follow the one who is in possession of
the truth. .So he sent to the Christians for a bishop. Now there was with the
King a Jew, skilled in argument, who engaged him in disputation. He asked the
Bishop: What do you say of Moses, the son of Amran, and the Torah which
was revealed to him? The Bishop replied: Moses is a prophet and the Torah
speaks the truth. Then the Jew said to the King: He has already admitted the
truth of my creed. Ask him now what he believes in. .So the King asked him
and he replied: I say that Jesus the Messiah is the son of Mar y, he is the
Word, and he has revealed the mysteries in the name of God. Then said the
Jew to the King of the Khazars: He preaches a doctrine which I know not, while
he accepts my propositions. But the Bishop was not strong in producing evi-
dence. Then the King asked for a Muslim, and they sent him a scholarly, clever
man who was good at arguments. But the Jew hired someone who poisoned
him on the journey, and he died. And the Jew succeeded in winning the King for
his faith, so that he embraced Judaism.1 2
The Arab historians cer tainly had a gift for sugaring the pill. Had the Muslim scholar been
able to par ticipate in the debate he would have fallen into the same trap as the Bishop, for
both accepted the truth of the Old Testament, whereas the upholders of the New Testament
and of the Koran were each outvoted two to one. The King's approval of this reasoning is sym-
bolic: he is only willing to accept doctrines which are shared by all three their common
denominator and refuses to commit himself to any of the rival claims which go beyond that.
It is once more the principle of the uncommitted world, applied to theology.
The stor y also implies, as Bur y1 3 has pointed out, that Jewish influence at the Khazar court
must already have been strong before the formal conversion, for the Bishop and the Muslim
scholar have to be 'sent for , whereas the Jew is alreadv with him (the King).
PART 3
We now turn from the principal Arab source on the conversion Masudi and his com-
pilers to the principal Jewish source. This is the so-called Khazar
Correspondence : an exchange of letter s, in Hebrew, between Hasdai Ibn Shaprut,
the Jewish chief minister of the Caliph of Cordoba, and Joseph, King of the Khazar s or,
rather, between their respective scribes. The authenticity of the cor respondence has been
the subject of controversy but is now generally accepted with due allowance made for the
vagaries of later copyists. [A summary of the controversy will be found in Appendix III.]
The exchange of letters apparently took place after 954 and before 961, that is roughly at
the time when Masudi wrote. To appreciate its significance a word must be said about the
per sonality of Hasdai Ibn Shaprut perhaps the most brilliant figure in the Golden
Age (900-1200) of the Jews in Spain.
In 929, Abd-al-Rahman III, a member of the Omayad dynasty, succeeded in unifying the
Moorish possessions in the southern and central parts of the Iberian peninsula under his
rule, and founded the Western Caliphate. His capital, Cordoba, became the glory of Arab
25
Spain, and a focal centre of European culture with a librar y of 400000 catalogued volumes.
Hasdai, born 910 in Cordoba into a distinguished Jewish family, first attracted the Caliph's
attention as a medical practitioner with some remarkable cures to his credit. Abd-al-Rahman
appointed him his cour t physician, and trusted his judgment so completely that Hasdai was
called upon, first, to put the state finances in order, then to act as Foreign Minister and diplo-
matic trouble-shooter in the new Caliphate's complex dealings with Byzantium, the German
Emperor Otto, with Castile, Navarra, Arragon and other Christian kingdoms in the nor th of
Spain. Hasdai was a true uomo universale centuries before the Renaissance who, in
between affairs of state, still found the time to translate medical books into Arabic, to corre-
spond with the learned rabbis of Baghdad and to act as a Maecenas for Hebrew grammari-
ans and poets.
He obviously was an enlightened, yet a devoted Jew, who used his diplomatic contacts to
gather information about the Jewish communities dispersed in various parts of the world,
and to inter vene on their behalf whenever possible. He was par ticularly concerned about the
persecution of Jews in the Byzantine Empire under Romanus (see above, section I).
For tunately, he wielded considerable influence at the Byzantine cour t, which was vitally inter-
ested in procuring the benevolent neutrality of Cordoba during the Byzantine campaigns
against the Muslims of the East. Hasdai, who was conducting the negotiations, used this
opportunity to intercede on behalf of Byzantine Jewry, apparently with
According to his own account, Hasdai first heard of the existence of an independent
success.14
Jewish kingdom from some merchant traders from Khurasan in Persia; but he doubted the
truth of their story. Later he questioned the members of a Byzantine diplomatic mission to
Cordoba, and they confirmed the merchants' account, contributing a considerable amount of
factual detail about the Khazar kingdom, including the name Joseph of its present King.
Thereupon Hasdai decided to send couriers with a letter to King Joseph.
The letter (which will be discussed in more detail later on) contains a list of questions
about the Khazar state, its people, method of government, armed forces, and so on includ-
ing an inquir y to which of the twelve tribes Joseph belonged. This seems to indicate that
Hasdai thought the Jewish Khazars to hail from Palestine as the Spanish Jews did and
perhaps even to represent one of the Lost Tribes. Joseph, not being of Jewish descent,
belonged, of course, to none of the tribes; in his Reply to Hasdai, he provides, as we shall
see, a genealogy of a different kind, but his main concern is to give Hasdai a detailed if
legendary account of the conversion which took place two centuries earlier and the cir-
cumstances that led to it.
Joseph's narrative starts with a eulogy of his ancestor, King Bulan, a great conqueror and
a wise man who drove out the sorcerers and idolators from his land . Subsequently an
angel appeared to King Bulan in his dreams, exhorting him to worship the only true God, and
promising that in exchange He would bless and multiply Bulan's offspring, and deliver his
enemies into his hands, and make his kingdom last to the end of the world . This, of cour se,
is inspired by the stor y of the Covenant in Genesis; and it implies that the Khazars too
claimed the status of a Chosen Race, who made their own Covenant with the Lord, even
though they were not descended from Abraham's seed. But at this point Joseph's story
takes an unexpected turn. King Bulan is quite willing to ser ve the Almighty, but he raises a
difficulty:
Thou knowest, my Lord, the secret thoughts of my heart and thou hast
searched my kidneys to confirm that my tr ust is in thee; but the people over
which I rule have a pagan mind and I do not know whether they will believe
me. If I have found favour and mercy in thine eyes, then I beseech thee to
appear also to their Great Prince, to make him support me. .The Eternal One
granted Bulan's request, he appeared to this Prince in a dream, and when he
arose in the morning he came to the King and made it known to him . . .
There is nothing in Genesis, nor in the Arab accounts of the conver sion, about a great
prince whose consent has to be obtained. It is an unmistakable reference to the Khazar dou-
ble kingship. The Great Prince , apparently, is the Bek; but it is not impossible that the
King was the Bek, and the Prince the Kagan. Moreover according to Arab and Armenian
sources, the leader of the Khazar army which invaded Transcaucasia in 731 (i.e., a few years
before the presumed date of the conversion) was called Bulkhan .15
Joseph's letter continues by relating how the angel appeared once more to the dreaming
King and bade him to build a place of worship in which the Lord may dwell, for: the sky and
the skies above the sky are not large enough to hold me . King Bulan replies bashfully that
he does not possess the gold and silver required for such an enterprise, although it is my
duty and desire to carry it out . The angel reassures him: all Bulan has to do is to lead his
armies into Dariela and Ardabil in Armenia, where a treasure of silver and a treasure of gold
are awaiting him. This fits in with Bulan's or Bulkhan's raid preceding the conversion; and
also with Arab sources according to which the Khazars at one time controlled silver and gold
mines in the
loot, and Caucasus.1
builds 6 Bulan does
a Holy Tabernacle as the angel
equipped with atold him,coffer
sacred returns victoriously
[the Ark of thewith the
Covenant ], a candelabrum, an altar and holy implements which have been preserved to this
day and are still in my [King Joseph's] possession .
Joseph's letter, written in the second half of the tenth century, more than two hundred
years after the events it purports to describe, is obviously a mixture of fact and legend. His
26
description of the scant furnishings of the place of worship, and the paucity of the preserved
relics, is in marked contrast to the account he gives in other parts of the letter of the pre-
sent prosperity of his country. The days of his ancestor Bulan appear to him as remote antiq-
uity, when the poor but virtuous King did not even have the money to construct the Holy
Tabernacle which was, after all, only a tent.
However,Joseph's letter up to this point is merely the prelude to the real drama of the con-
version, which he now proceeds to relate. Apparently Bulan's renunciation of idolatr y in
favour of the only true God was only the first step, which still left the choice open between
the three monotheistic creeds. At least, this is what the continuation of Joseph's letter
seems to imply:
After these feats of arms [the invasion of Armenia], King Bulan's fame spread
to all countries. The King of Edom [Byzantium] and the King of the Ishmaelim
[the Muslims] heard the news and sent to him envoys with precious gifts and
money and learned men to convert him to their beliefs; but the king was wise
and sent for a Jew with much knowledge and acumen and put all three
together to discuss their doctrines.
So we have another Brains Trust, or round-table conference, just as in Masudi, with the dif-
ference that the Muslim has not been poisoned beforehand. But the pattern of the argument
is much the same. After long and futile discussions, the King adjourns the meeting for three
days, during which the discutants are left to cool their heels in their respective tents; then
he reverts to a stratagem. He convokes the discutants separately. He asks the Christian
which of the other two religions is nearer the tr uth, and the Christian answers, the Jews .
He confronts the Muslim with the same question and gets the same reply. Neutralism has
once more carried the day.
PART 4
So much for the conversion. What else do we learn from the celebrated Khazar
Correspondence ? To take Hasdai's letter first: it starts with a Hebrew poem, in the
then fashionable manner of the piyut, a rhapsodic verse form which contains hidden
allusions or riddles, and frequently acrostics. The poem exalts the military victories of the
addressee, King Joseph; at the same time, the initial letters of the lines form an acrostic
which spells out the full name of Hasdai bar Isaac bar Ezra bar Shapr ut, followed by the
name of Menahem ben Sharuk. Now this Menahem was a celebrated Hebrew poet, lexicog-
rapher and grammarian, a secretary and protg of Hasdai's. He was obviously given the task
of drafting the epistle to King Joseph in his most ornate style, and he took the opportunity to
immortalize himself by inserting his own name into the acrostic after that of his patron.
Several other works of Menahem ben-Sharuk are preserved, and there can be no doubt that
Hasdai's letter is his handiwork. [See Appendix III.]
After the poem, the compliments and diplomatic flourishes, the letter gives a glowing
account of the prosperity of Moorish Spain, and the happy condition of the Jews under its
Caliph Abd al Rahman, the like of which has never been known . . . And thus the derelict
sheep were taken into care, the arms of their persecutors were paralysed, and the yoke was
discarded. The countr y we live in is called in Hebrew Sepharad, but the Ishmaelites who
inhabit it call it al-Andalus.
Hasdai then proceeds to explain how he first heard about the existence of the Jewish king-
dom from the merchants of Khurasan, then in more detail from the Byzantine envoys, and he
repor ts what these envoys told him:
I questioned them [the Byzantines] about it and they replied that it was true,
and that the name of the kingdom is al-Khazar. Between Constantinople and
this country there is a journey of fifteen days by sea, [This probably refers to
the so-Called Khazarian route : from Constantinople across the Black Sea
and up the Don, then across the Don-Volga portage and down the Volga to Itil.
(An alternative, shorter route was from Constantinople to the east coast of
the Black Sea.)] but they said, by land there are many other people between
us and them. The name of the ruling king is Joseph. Ships come to us from
their land, bringing fish, fur s and all sorts of merchandise. They are in
alliance with us, and honoured by us. We exchange embassies and gifts. They
are powerful and have a fortress for their outposts and troops which go out on
forays from time to time. [The for tress is evidently Sar kel on the Don. They
are honoured by us fits in with the passage in Constantine Born-in-the-Purple
about the special gold seal used in letters to the Kagan. Constantine was the
Byzantine Emperor at the time of the Embassy to Spain.]
This bit of information offered by Hasdai to the Khazar King about the King's own country is
obviously intended to draw a detailed reply from Joseph. It was good psychology: Hasdai must
have known that criticism of erroneous statements flows easier from the pen than an original
exposition.
Next, Hasdai relates his earlier efforts to get in touch with Joseph. First he had sent a mes-
senger, a certain Isaac bar Nathan, with instructions to proceed to the Khazar court. But Isaac
27
got only as far as Constantinople, where he was cour teously treated, but prevented from con-
tinuing the journey. (Understandably so: given the Empire's ambivalent attitude towards the
Jewish kingdom, it was cer tainly not in Constantine's interest to facilitate an alliance between
Khazaria and the Cordoba Caliphate with its Jewish Chief Minister.) So Hasdai's messenger
returned to Spain, mission unaccomplished. But soon another oppor tunity offered itself: the
arrival at Cordoba of an embassy from Eastern Europe. Among its members were two Jews,
Mar Saul and Mar Joseph, who offered to deliver Hasdai's letter to King Joseph. (According to
Joseph's reply to Hasdai, it was actually delivered by a third person, one Isaac ben-Eliezer.)
Having thus described in detail how his letter came to be written, and his effor ts to have it
delivered, Hasdai proceeds to ask a series of direct questions which reflect his avidity for
more information about ever y aspect of the Khazar land, from its geography to its rites in
observing the Sabbath. The concluding passage in Hasdai's letter strikes a note quite differ-
ent from that of its opening paragraphs:
I feel the urge to know the truth, whether there is really a place on this ear th
where harassed Israel can rule itself, where it is subject to nobody. If I were to
know that this is indeed the case, I would not hesitate to forsake all honours,
to resign my high office, to abandon my family, and to travel over mountains
and plains, over land and water, until I arrived at the place where my Lord, the
[Jewish] King rules . . . And I also have one more request: to be informed
whether you have any knowledge of [the possible date] of the Final Miracle [the
coming of the Messiah] which, wandering from country to country, we are await-
ing. Dishonoured and humiliated in our dispersion, we have to listen in silence
to those who say: ever y nation has its own land and you alone possess not
even a shadow of a country on this earth .
The beginning of the letter praises the happy lot of the Jews in Spain; the end breathes the
bitterness of the exile, Zionist fer vour and Messianic hope. But these opposite attitudes have
always co-existed in the divided hear t of Jews throughout their histor y. The contradiction in
Hasdai's letter gives it an added touch of authenticity. How far his implied offer to enter into
the service of the Khazar King is to be taken seriously is another question, which we cannot
answer. Perhaps he could not either.
PART 5
King Joseph's reply is less accomplished and moving than Hasdai's letter. No wonder
as Cassel remarks: 'scholarship and culture reigned not among the Jews of the Volga,
but on the rivers of Spain . The highlight of the Reply is the stor y of the conversion,
already quoted. No doubt Joseph too employed a scribe for penning it, probably a scholarly
refugee from Byzantium. Never theless, the Reply sounds like a voice out of the Old Testament
compared to the polished cadences of the tenth-century modern statesman.
It starts with a fanfare of greetings, then reiterates the main contents of Hasdai's letter,
proudly emphasizing that the Khazar kingdom gives the lie to those who say that the Sceptre
of Judah has forever fallen from the Jews' hands and that there is no place on earth for a
kingdom of their own . This is followed by a rather cryptic remark to the effect that already
our fathers have exchanged friendly letters which are preserved in our archives and are known
to our elders . [This may refer to a ninth-century Jewish traveller, Eldad ha-Dani, whose fan-
tastic tales, much read in the Middle Ages, include mentions of Khazaria which, he says, is
inhabited by three of the lost tribes of Israel, and collects tributes from twenty-eight neigh-
bouring kingdoms. Eldad visited Spain around 880 and may or may not have visited the
Khazar countr y. Hasdai briefly mentions him in his letter to Joseph as if to ask what to make
of him.]
Joseph then proceeds to provide a genealogy of his people. Though a fierce Jewish nation-
alist, proud of wielding the 'sceptre of Judah , he cannot, and does not, claim for them
Semitic descent; he traces their ancestr y not to Shem, but to Noah's third son, Japheth; or
more precisely to Japheth's grandson, Togarma, the ancestor of all Turkish tribes. We have
found in the family registers of our fathers, Joseph asserts boldly, that Togarma had ten
sons, and the names of their offspring are as follows: Uigur, Dursu, Avars, Huns, Basilii,
Tarniakh, Khazars, Zagora, Bulgars, Sabir. We are the sons of Khazar, the seventh . . .
The identity of some of these tribes, with names spelt in the Hebrew script is rather dubi-
ous, but that hardly matter s; the characteristic feature in this genealogical exercise is the
amalgamation of Genesis with Turkish tribal tradition. [It also throws a sidelight on the fre-
quent description of the Khazars as the people of Magog. Magog, according to Genesis X, 2-3
was the much maligned uncle of Togarma.]
After the genealogy, Joseph mentions briefly some militar y conquests by his ancestors
which carried them as far as the Danube; then follows at great length the stor y of Bulan's
conversion. From this day onwards, Joseph continues, the Lord gave him strength and
aided him; he had himself and his followers circumcized and sent for Jewish sages who
taught him the Law and explained the Commandments. There follow more boasts about mili-
tary victories, conquered nations, etc., and then a significant passage:
After these events, one of his [Bulan's] grandsons became King; his name was
Obadiab, he was a brave and venerated man who reformed the Rule, fortified
28
the Law according to tradition and usage, built synagogues and schools,
assembled a multitude of Israel's sages, gave them lavish gifts of gold and sil-
ver, and made them interpret the twenty-four [sacred] books, the Mishna
[Precepts] and the Talmud, and the order in which the liturgies are to be said.
This indicates that, about a couple of generations after Bulan, a religious revival or reforma-
tion took place (possibly accompanied by a coup d'etat on the lines envisaged by Artamonov).
It seems indeed that the Judaization of the Khazars proceeded in several steps. We remem-
ber that King Bulan drove out the sorcerers and idolators before the angel appeared to him;
and that he made his Covenant with the true God before deciding whether He was the
Jewish, Christian or Muslim God. It seems highly probable that the conversion of King Bulan
and his followers was another intermediary step, that they embraced a primitive or rudimen-
tar y form of Judaism, based on the Bible alone, excluding the Talmud, all rabbinical literature,
and the obser vances derived from it. In this respect they resembled the Karaites, a funda-
mentalist sect which originated in the eighth century in Persia and spread among Jews all
over the world par ticularly in Little Khazaria , i.e., the Crimea. Dunlop and some other
authorities surmised that between Bulan and Obadiah (i.e., roughly between 740 and 800)
some form of Karaism prevailed in the country, and that orthodox Rabbinic Judaism was only
introduced in the course of Obadiah's religious reform. The point is of some importance
because Karaism apparently survived in Khazaria to the end, and villages of Turkish-speaking
Karaite Jews, obviously of Khazar origin, still existed in modern times (see below, Chapter V,
4).
Thus the Judaization of the Khazars was a gradual process which, triggered off by political
expediency, slowly penetrated into the deeper strata of their minds and eventually produced
the Messianism of their period of decline. Their religious commitment sur vived the collapse
of their state, and persisted, as we shall see, in the Khazar-Jewish settlements of Russia and
Poland.
PART 6
After mentioning Obadiah's religious reforms, Joseph gives a list of his successors:
Hiskia his son, and his son Manasseh, and Chanukah the brother of Obadiah,
and Isaac his son, Manasseh his son, Nissi his son, Menahem his son,
Benjamin his son, Aaron his son, and I am Joseph, son of Aaron the Blessed,
and we were all sons of Kings, and no stranger was allowed to occupy the
throne of our fathers.
Next, Joseph attempts to answer Hasdai's questions about the size and topography of his
countr y. But he does not seem to have a competent person at his court who could match the
skill of the Arab geographers, and his obscure references to other countries and nations add
little to what we know from Ibn Hawkal, Masudi and the other Persian and Arabic sources. He
claims to collect tribute from thirty-seven nations which seems a rather tall proposition; yet
Dunlop points out that nine of these appear to be tribes living in the Khazar heartland, and
the remaining twenty-eight agree quite well with Ibn Fadlan's mention of twenty-five wives,
each the daughter of a vassal king (and also with Eldad ha-Dani's dubious tales). We must
fur ther bear in mind the multitude of Slavonic tribes along the upper reaches of the Dnieper
and as far as Moscow, which, as we shall see, paid tribute to the Khazars.
However that may be, there is no reference in Joseph's letter to a royal harem only a men-
tion of a single queen and her maids and eunuchs'. These are said to live in one of the three
boroughs of Joseph's capital, Itil: in the second live Israelites, Ishmaelis, Christians and
other nations who speak other languages; the third, which is an island, I inhabit myself, with
the princes, bondsmen and all the servants that belong to me . . . . [This division of Itil into
three parts is also mentioned, as we have seen, in some of the Arab sources.]We live in the
town through the whole of winter, but in the month of Nisan [March- April] we set out and
ever yone goes to labour in his field and his garden; ever y clan has his hereditar y estate, for
which they head with joy and jubilation; no voice of an intruder can be heard there, no enemy
is to be seen. The countr y does not have much rain, but there are many rivers with a multi-
tude of big fish, and many sources, and it is generally fertile and fat in its fields and vine-
yards, gardens and orchards which are irrigated by the rivers and bear rich fruit ... and with
God's help I live in peace.
The next passage is devoted to the date of the coming of the Messiah:
We have our eyes on the sages of Jerusalem and Babylon, and although we live
far away from Zion, we have nevertheless heard that the calculations are erro-
neous owing to the great profusion of sins, and we know nothing, only the
Eternal knows how to keep the count. We have nothing to hold on only the
prophecies of Daniel, and may the Eternal speed up our Deliverance . . .
The concluding paragraph of Joseph's letter is a reply to Hasdai's apparent offer to enter
into the service of the Khazar king:
29
Thou hast mentioned in thy letter a desire to see my face. I too wish and long
to behold thy gracious face and the splendour of thy magnificence, wisdom and
greatness; I wish that thy words will come true, that I should know the happi-
ness to hold thee in my embrace and to see thy dear, friendly and agreeable
face; thou wouldst be to me as a father, and I to thee as a son; all my people
would kiss thy lips; we would come and go according to thy wishes and thy
wise counsel.
There is a passage in Joseph's letter which deals with topical politics, and is rather
obscure:
With the help of the Almighty I guard the mouth of the river [the Volga] and do
not permit the Rus who come in their ships to invade the land of the Arabs . . .
I fight heavy wars with them [the Rus] for if I allowed it they would devastate
the lands of Ishmael even to Baghdad.
Joseph here appears to pose as the defender of the Baghdad Caliphate against the
Norman-Rus raiders (see Chapter III). This might seem a little tactless in view of the bitter
hostility between the Omayad Caliphate of Cordoba (which Hasdai is ser ving) and the Abassid
Caliphs of Baghdad. On the other hand, the vagaries of Byzantine policy towards the Khazars
made it expedient for Joseph to appear in the role of a defender of Islam, regardless of the
schism between the two Caliphates. At least he could hope that Hasdai, the experienced
diplomat, would take the hint.
The meeting between the two correspondents if ever seriously intended never took
place. No fur ther letters if any were exchanged have been preser ved. The factual content
of the Khazar Correspondence is meagre, and adds little to what was already known from
other sources. Its fascination lies in the bizarre, fragmentary vistas that it conveys, like an
erratic searchlight focussing on disjointed regions in the dense fog that covers the period.
PART 7
Among other Hebrew sources, there is the Cambridge Document (so called after its pre-
sent location in the Cambridge University Library). It was discovered at the end of the
last century, together with other priceless documents in the Cairo Geniza , the store-
room of an ancient synagogue, by the Cambridge scholar, Solomon Schechter. The document
is in a bad state; it is a letter (or copy of a letter) consisting of about a hundred lines in
Hebrew; the beginning and the end are missing, so that it is impossible to know who wrote it
and to whom it was addressed. King Joseph is mentioned in it as a contemporary and
referred to as my Lord , Khazaria is called our land ; so the most plausible inference is that
the letter was written by a Khazar Jew of King Joseph's court in Joseph's lifetime, i.e., that it
is roughly contemporaneous with the Khazar Correspondence . Some authorities have fur-
ther suggested that it was addressed to Hasdai ibn Shaprut, and handed in Constantinople to
Hasdai's unsuccessful envoy, Isaac bar Nathan, who brought it back to Cordoba (whence it
found its way to Cairo when the Jews were expelled from Spain). At any rate, internal evidence
indicates that the document originated not later than in the eleventh century, and more likely
in Joseph's lifetime, in the tenth.
It contains another legendary account of the conversion, but its main significance is politi-
cal. The writer speaks of an attack on Khazaria by the Alans, acting under Byzantine instiga-
tion, under Joseph's father, Aaron the Blessed. No other Greek or Arab source seems to
mention this campaign. But there is a significant passage in Constantine Porphyrogenitus's
De Adminisdrando Imperio, written in 947-50, which lends some credibility to the unknown let-
ter-writer's statements:
Concerning Khazaria, how war is to be made upon them and by whom. As the
Ghuzz are able to make war on the Khazars, being near them, so likewise the
ruler of Alania, because the Nine Climates of Khazaria [the fer tile region nor th
of the Caucasus] are close to Alania, and the Alan can, if he wishes, raid them
and cause great damage and distress to the Khazars from that quarter.
Now, according to Joseph's Letter, the ruler of the Alans paid tribute to him, and whether in
fact he did or not, his feelings toward the Kagan were probably much the same as the Bulgar
King's. The passage in Constantine, revealing his efforts to incite the Alans to war against the
Khazars, ironically reminds one of Ibn Fadlan's mission with a parallel purpose. Evidently, the
days of the Byzantine-Khazar rapprochement were long past in Joseph's time. But I am antici-
pating later developments, to be discussed in Chapter III.
PART 8
About a century after the Khazar Correspondence and the presumed date of the
Cambridge Document, Jehuda Halevi wrote his once celebrated book, Kuzari, the
Khazars. Halevi (1085-1141) is generally considered the greatest Hebrew poet of
Spain; the book, however, was written in Arabic and translated later into Hebrew; its sub-title
is The Book of Proof and Argument in Defence of the Despised Faith .
30
Halevi was a Zionist who died on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem; the Kuzari, written a year
before his death, is a philosophical tract propounding the view that the Jewish nation is the
sole mediator between God and the rest of mankind. At the end of histor y, all other nations
will be converted to Judaism; and the conversion of the Khazars appears as a symbol or
token of that ultimate event. .In spite of its title, the tract has little to say about the Khazar
country itself, which serves mainly as a backdrop for yet another legendar y account of the
conversion the King, the angel, the Jewish scholar, etc. and for the philosophical and the-
ological dialogues between the King and the protagonists of the three religions.
However, there are a few factual references, which indicate that Halevi had either read the
correspondence between Hasdai and Joseph or had other sources of infor mation about the
Khazar country. Thus we are informed that after the appearance of the angel the King of the
Khazars revealed the secret of his dream to the General of his army , and the
General also looms large later on another obvious reference to the dual rule of Kagan and
Bek. Halevi also mentions the histories and books of the Khazars - which reminds one of
Joseph speaking of our archives , where documents of state are kept. Lastly, Halevi twice,
in different places of the book, gives the date of the conversion as having taken place 400
years ago and in the year 4500 (according to the Jewish calendar). This points to AD 740,
which is the most likely date. All in all, it is a poor har vest as far as factual statements are
concerned, from a book that enjoyed immense popularity among the Jews of the Middle
Ages. But the mediaeval mind was less attracted by fact than by fable, and the Jews were
more interested in the date of the coming of the Messiah than in geographical data. The
Arab geographer s and chroniclers had a similarly cavalier attitude to distances, dates and
the frontiers between fact and fancy.
This also applies to the famed German-Jewish traveller, Rabbi Petachia of Ratisbon, who
visited Eastern Europe and western Asia between 1170 and 1185. His travelogue, Sibub
Ha'olam, Journey around the World , was apparently written by a pupil, based on his notes
or on dictation. It relates how shocked the good Rabbi was by the primitive obser vances of
the Khazar Jews nor th of the Crimea, which he attributed to their adherence to the Karaite
heresy:
And the Rabbi Petachia asked them: Why do you not believe in the words of
the sages [i.e., the Talmudists]? They replied: Because our fathers did not
teach them to us. On the eve of the Sabbath they cut all the bread which they
eat on the Sabbath. They eat it in the dar k, and sit the whole day on one spot.
Their prayers consist only of the psalms.17 [Spending the Sabbath in the dark
was a well-known Karaite custom.]
So incensed was the Rabbi that, when he subsequently crossed the Khazar hear tland, all
he had to say was that it took him eight days, during which he heard the wailing of women
and the bar king of dogs .1 8
He does mention, however, that while he was in Baghdad, he had seen envoys from the
Khazar kingdom looking for needy Jewish scholars from Mesopotamia and even from Egypt,
to teach their children Torah and Talmud .
While few Jewish travellers from the West under took the hazardous journey to the Volga,
they recorded encounters with Khazar Jews at all principal centres of the civilized world.
Rabbi Petachia met them in Baghdad; Benjamin of Tudela, another famous traveller of the
twelfth century, visited Khazar notables in Constantinople and Alexandria; Ibraham ben
Daud, a contemporary of Judah Halevi's, repor ts that he had seen in Toledo some of their
descendants, pupils of the wise .1 9 Tradition has it that these were Khazar princes one is
tempted to think of Indian princelings sent to Cambridge to study. .Yet there is a curious
ambivalence in the attitude toward the Khazar s of the leaders of or thodox Jewry in the East,
centred on the Talmudic Academy in Baghdad. The Gaon (Hebrew for excellency ) who
stood at the head of the Academy was the spiritual leader of the Jewish settlements dis-
per sed all over the Near and Middle East, while the Exilarch, or Prince of Captivity , repre-
sented the secular power over these more or less autonomous communities. Saadiah Gaon
(882-942), most famous among the spiritua1 excellencies, who left voluminous writings,
repeatedly refers in them to the Khazars. He mentions a Mesopotamian Jew who went to
Khazaria to settle there, as if this were an every-day occurrence. He speaks obscurely of the
Khazar court; elsewhere he explains that in the biblical expression Hiram of Tyre , Hiram is
not a proper name but a royal title, like Caliph for the Ruler of the Arabs, and Kagan for the
King of the Khazars.
Thus Khazaria was ver y much on the map , in the literal and metaphorical sense, for the
leaders of the ecclesiastical hierarchy of oriental Jewry; but at the same time the Khazars
were regarded with certain misgivings, both on racial grounds and because of their sus-
pected leanings toward the Karaite heresy. One eleventh-century Hebrew author, Japheth ibn-
Ali, himself a Karaite, explains the word mamzer, bastard , by the example of the Khazars
who became Jews without belonging to the Race. His contemporary, Jacob ben-Reuben,
reflects the opposite side of this ambivalent attitude by speaking of the Khazars as a single
nation who do not bear the yoke of the exile, but are great warriors paying no tribute to the
Gentiles .
In summing up the Hebrew sources on the Khazars that have come down to us, one
senses a mixed reaction of enthusiasm, scepticism and, above all, bewilderment. A warrior-
nation of Turkish Jews must have seemed to the rabbis as strange as a circumcized unicorn.
31
During a thousand years of Dispersion, the Jews had forgotten what it was like to have a
king and a country. The Messiah was more real to them than the Kagan. .As a postscript to
the Arab and Hebrew sources relating to the conversion, it should be mentioned that the
apparently earliest Christian source antedates them both. At some date earlier than 864,
the Westphalian monk, Christian Druthmar of Aquitania, wrote a Latin treatise Expositio in
Evangelium Mattei, in which he reports that there exist people under the sky in regions
where no Christians can be found, whose name is Gog and Magog, and who are Huns;
among them is one, called the Gazari, who are circumcized and observe Judaism in its
entirety . This remark occurs apropos of Matthew 24.14 [ And this Gospel of the Kingdom
shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end
come. ] which has no apparent bearing on it, and no more is heard of the subject.
PART 9
At about the same time when Druthmar wrote down what he knew from hearsay about
the Jewish Khazars, a famed Christian missionary, sent by the Byzantine Emperor,
attempted to convert them to Christianity. He was no less a figure than St Cyril,
Apostle of the Slavs , alleged designer of the Cyrillic alphabet. He and his elder brother, St
Methodius, were entrusted with this and other proselytizing missions by the Emperor
Michael III, on the advice of the Patriarch Photius (himself apparently of Khazar descent, for
it is reported that the Emperor once called him in anger Khazar face ).
Cyril's proselytizing efforts seem to have been successful among the Slavonic people in
Eastern Europe, but not among the Khazars. He travelled to their countr y via Cherson in the
Crimea; in Cherson he is said to have spent six months learning Hebrew in preparation for
his mission; he then took the Khazarian Way - the Don-Volga por tage to Itil, and from
there travelled along the Caspian to meet the Kagan (it is not said where). The usual theo-
logical disputations followed, but they had little impact on the Khazar Jews Even the adula-
tor y Vita Constantine (Cyril's original name) says only that Cyril made a good impression on
the Kagan, that a few people were baptized and two hundred Christian prisoners were
released by the Kagan as a gesture of goodwill. It was the least he could do for the
Emperor's envoy who had gone to so much trouble.
There is a curious sidelight thrown on the story by students of Slavonic philology. Cyril is
credited by tradition not only with having devised the Cyrillic but also the Glagolytic alphabet.
The latter, according to Baron, was used in Croatia to the seventeenth centur y. Its indebt-
edness to the Hebrew alphabet in at least eleven characters, representing in part the
Slavonic sounds, has long been recognized . (The eleven characters are A, B, V, G, E, K, P,R,
S, Sch, T.) This seems to confirm what has been said earlier on about the influence of the
Hebrew alphabet in spreading literacy among the neighbours of the Khazars.
32
References
1 Bur y, op. cit., p. 401.
2 Ibid, p. 406.
3 Sharf, A. (1971), p. 61.
3a Quoted by Dunlop (1954), p. 89.
4 Ibid., p. 84.
5 Quoted by Sharf, p. 88.
6 The Visions of Daniel, a chronicle disguised as an ancient prophecy. Quoted by Sharf,
p. 201.
7 Quoted by Poliak, 413; Dunlop, p. 119.
8 Poliak (4/3) quoting Chwolson, D. A. (1865).
9 Poliak, 4/3; Baron Ill, p. 210 and n. 47.
10 Poliak, loc. cit.
11 Quoted by Marquart (1903),p. 6.
12 Quoted by Dunlop (1954), p. 90.
13 Bur y, op. cit., p. 408.
14 Sharf, p. 100n.
15 Bur y, p. 406n.
16 Dunlop (1954), p. 227.
17 Baron, S. W. (1957), Vol. Ill, p. 201f.
18 Dunlop, p. 220.
19 Baron, Vol III, p. 203.
33
The Thirteenth Tribe
Arthur Koestler
Decline
PART 1
IT was , wrote D. Sinor,1 in the second half of the eighth century that the Khazar empire
reached the acme of its glory that is, between the conversion of Bulan and the religious
reform under Obadiah. This is not meant to imply that the Khazar s owed their good fortune
to their Jewish religion. It is rather the other way round: they could afford to be Jews because
they were economically and militarily strong.
A living symbol of their power was the Emperor Leo the Khazar, who ruled Byzantium in 775-
80 so named after his mother, the Khazar Princess Flower the one who created a new
fashion at the cour t. We remember that her marriage took place shortly after the great Khazar
victory over the Muslims in the battle of Ardabil, which is mentioned in the letter of Joseph
and other sources. The two events, Dunlop remarks, are hardly unrelated .2
However, amidst the cloak-and-dagger intrigues of the period, dynastic marriages and
betrothals could be dangerous. They repeatedly gave cause or at least provided a pretext
for starting a war. The pattern was apparently set by Attila, the erstwhile overlord of the
Khazars. In 450 Attila is said to have received a message, accompanied by an engagement
ring, from Honoria, sister to the West Roman Emperor Valentinian III. This romantic and ambi-
tious lady begged the Hun chieftain to rescue her from a fate worse than death a forced
marriage to an old Senator and sent him her ring. Attila promptly claimed her as his bride,
together with half the Empire as her dowry; and when Valentinian refused, Attila invaded Gaul.
Several variations on this quasi-archetypal theme crop up throughout Khazar history. We
remember the fury of the Bulgar King about the abduction of his daughter, and how he gave
this incident as the main reason for his demand that the Caliph should build him a fortress
against the Khazars. If we are to believe the Arab sources, similar incidents (though with a dif-
ferent twist) led to the last flare-up of the Khazar-Muslim wars at the end of the eighth cen-
tury, after a protracted period of peace.
According to al-Tabari, in AD 798, [The date, however, is uncer tain. the Caliph ordered the
Governor of Armenia to make the Khazar frontier even more secure by marrying a daughter of
the Kagan. This governor was a member of the powerful family of the Barmecides (which, inci-
dentally, reminds one of the prince of that eponymous family in the Arabian Nights who invited
the beggar to a feast consisting of rich dish-covers with nothing beneath). The Barmecide
agreed, and the Khazar Princess with her suite and dowry was duly dispatched to him in a lux-
urious cavalcade (see I, 10). But she died in childbed; the newborn died too; and her
cour tiers, on their return to Khazaria, insinuated to the Kagan that she had been poisoned.
The Kagan promptly invaded Armenia and took (according to two Arab sources)3 50 000 pris-
oners. The Caliph was forced to release thousands of criminals from his gaols and arm them
to stem the Khazar advance.
The Arab sources relate at least one more eighth-century incident of a misfired dynastic
marriage followed by a Khazar invasion; and for good measure the Georgian Chronicle has a
particularly gruesome one to add to the list (in which the royal Princess, instead of being poi-
soned, kills herself to escape the Kagan's bed). The details and exact dates are, as usual,
doubtful,4 and of
the chronicles sobartered
is the real motivation
brides behindqueens
and poisoned these campaigns.
leaves littleBut thethat
doubt recur rent
this mention
theme had in
a powerful impact on people's imagination, and possibly also on political events.
PART 2
No more is heard about Khazar-Arab fighting after the end of the eighth century. As we
enter the ninth, the Khazars seemed to enjoy several decades of peace at least, there
is little mention of them in the chronicles, and no news is good news in history. The
southern frontiers of their country had been pacified; relations with the Caliphate had settled
down to a tacit non-aggression pact; relations with Byzantium continued to be definitely
friendly.
Yet in the middle of this comparatively idyllic period there is an ominous episode which fore-
34
34
shadowed new dangers. In 833, or thereabouts, the Khazar Kagan and Bek sent an embassy
to the East Roman Emperor Theophilus, asking for skilled architects and craftsmen to build
them a fortress on the lower reaches of the Don. The Emperor responded with alacrity. He
sent a fleet across the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov up the mouth of the Don to the strate-
gic spot where the fortress was to be built. Thus came Sarkel into being, the famous fortress
and priceless archaeological site, virtually the only one that yielded clues to Khazar history
until it was submerged in the Tsimlyansk reservoir, adjoining the Volga-Don canal. Constantine
Porphyrogenitus, who related the episode in some detail, says that since no stones were
available in the region, Sarkel was built of bricks, burnt in specially constructed kilns. He does
not mention the curious fact (discovered by Soviet archaeologists while the site was still
accessible) that the builders also used marble columns of Byzantine origin, dating from the
sixth century, and probably salvaged from some Byzantine ruin; a nice example of Imperial
thrift.5
The potential enemy against whom this impressive for tress was built by joint Roman-Khazar
effort, were those formidable and menacing newcomers on the world scene, whom the West
called Vikings or Norsemen, and the East called Rhous or Rhos or Rus.
Two centuries earlier, the conquering Arabs had advanced on the civilized world in a gigantic
pincer movement, its left prong reaching across the Pyrenees, its right prong across the
Caucasus. Now, during the Viking Age, history seemed to create a kind of mirror image of that
earlier phase. The initial explosion which had triggered off the Muslim wars of conquest took
place in the southernmost region of the known world, the Arabian desert. The Viking raids and
conquests originated in its northernmost region, Scandinavia. The Arabs advanced northward
by land, the Norsemen southward by sea and waterways. The Arabs were, at least in theory,
conducting a Holy War, the Vikings waged unholy wars of piracy and plunder ; but the results,
as far as the victims were concerned, were much the same. In neither case have historians
been able to provide convincing explanations of the economical, ecological or ideological rea-
sons which transformed these apparently quiescent regions of Arabia and Scandinavia quasi
overnight into volcanoes of exuberant vitality and reckless enterprise. Both eruptions spent
their force within a couple of centuries but left a permanent mark on the world. Both evolved
in this time-span from savagery and destructiveness to splendid cultural achievement.
About the time when Sarkel was built by joint Byzantine-Khazar effor ts in anticipation of
attack by the eastern Vikings, their western branch had already penetrated all the major
waterways of Europe and conquered half of Ireland. Within the next few decades they colo-
nized Iceland, conquered Normandy, repeatedly sacked Paris, raided Germany, the Rhne delta,
the gulf of Genoa, circumnavigated the Iberian peninsula and attacked Constantinople
through the Mediterranean and the Dardanelles - simultaneously with a Rus attack down the
Dnieper and across the Black Sea. As Toynbee wrote:6 In the ninth centur y, which was the
centur y in which the Rhos impinged on the Khazars and on the East Romans, the
Scandinavians were raiding and conquering and colonizing in an immense arc that eventually
extended south-westward . . . to North America and southeastward to . . . the Caspian Sea.
No wonder that a special prayer was inserted in the litanies of the West: A furore
Normannorum libera nos Domine. No wonder that Constantinople needed its Khazar allies as
a protective shield against the car ved dragons on the bows of the Viking ships, as it had
needed them a couple of centuries earlier against the green banners of the Prophet. And, as
on that earlier occasion, the Khazars were again to bear the brunt of the attack, and eventu-
ally to see their capital laid in ruins.
Not only Byzantium had reason to be grateful to the Khazars for blocking the advance of the
Viking fleets down the great waterways from the north. We have now gained a better under-
standing of the cryptic passage in Joseph's letter to Hasdai, written a century later :
With the help of the Almighty 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 the Rus].
PART 3
The par ticular brand of Vikings which the Byzantines called Rhos were called
Varangians by the Arab chroniclers. The most probable derivation of Rhos , according
to Toynbee, is from the Swedish word 'rodher', meaning rowers .7 As for Varangian , it
was used by the Arabs and also in the Russian Primary Chronicle to designate Norsemen or
Scandinavians;
branch of Vikingstheoriginated
Baltic wasfrom
actually called
eastern by them
Sweden, the Varangian
as distinct from theSea .8 Although
Norwegians andthis
Danes who raided Western Europe, their advance followed the same pattern. It was seasonal;
it was based on strategically placed islands which served as strongholds, armouries and sup-
ply bases for attacks on the mainland; and its nature evolved, where conditions were
favourable, from predatory raids and forced commerce to more or less permanent settle-
ments and ultimately, amalgamation with the conquered native populations. Thus the Viking
penetration of Ireland star ted with the seizure of the island of Rechru (Lambay) in Dublin Bay;
England was invaded from the isle of Thanet; penetration of the Continent started with the
conquest of the islands of Walcheren (off Holland) and Noirmoutier (in the estuary of the
Loire).
At the eastern extreme of Europe the Nor thmen were following the same blueprint for con-
quest. After crossing the Baltic and the Gulf of Finland they sailed up the river Volkhov into
35
35
Lake
TheIlmenArab chroniclers
(south of Leningrad), were so baffled whereby they
them found
that athey
convenient
contradict island
not only the Holmgard
each other,ofbut the
Icelandic
also themselves,Sagas. On across thisathey distance
built of a settlement
a few lines.which Our oldeventually
friend Ibn grewFadlan
into the is utterly
city ofdis-
Novgorod.*[Not
gusted by the filthy to be andconfused
obscenewith habits Nizhny
of theNovgorod
Rus whom(now he met re-named
at the VolgaGorky).] in the Fromlandhereof they
forayed
the Bulgars. on southward
The following on thepassage
great waterways:
on the Rus on occurs
the Volga
just before
into thehisCaspian,
account and of the onKhazars,
the
Dnieper
quoted earlierinto the on:Black Sea.
The former route led through the countries of the militant Bulgars and Khazars; the latter
acrossThey the territories
are the filthiest of various creatures
Slavonic of the tribes
Lord. whoIn the
inhabited
morning theanorth-western
servant girl brings outskir ts of
the Khazara basin Empire
full ofand water paid totribute
the master to theofKagan:
the household;
the Polyane he rinses
in the his
region
faceof andKiev;hairthe
Viatichi, in it,south
spitsofand Moscow;
blows his thenoseRadimishchy
into the basin,east ofwhichthe Dnieper;
the girl then
the Sever
handsyane on toon the river
Derna,the etc.*[Constantine
next person, whoPorphyrogenitus does likewise, until and theall who
Russianare inChronicle
the house arehavein fair
used agreement
concering the names and locations of these tribes and their subjection to the Khazars.]
Thesethat Slavs basin
seemed to blow to have theirdeveloped
noses, spit and wash
advanced their face
methods and hair inand
of agriculture, it.12were appar-
ently
In contrast
of a more to this,
timidIbn disposition
Rusta writes thanabouttheir the Turkish
same neighbours
time: They on arethecleanly
Volga,infor, regardas Bury
to put
their
it, theyclothing
became the andnatural
leaves prey it at that.1
of the 3Scandinavian raiders. These eventually came to pre-
Again,
fer Ibn Fadlan
the Dnieper, is indignant
in spite about the cataracts,
of its dangerous Rus copulating to the andVolga defecating
and the Don. in public,
It wasincluding
the
Dnieper
their King, whichwhereas became Ibnthe Rusta Great andWaterway
Gardezi know thenothing
Austrvegr of such
of therevolting
Nordic Sagas habits. fromBut theirthe
Baltic
own accounts
to the Black are equally
Sea, and dubious
thus toand Constantinople.
inconsistent. Thus They Ibn evenRusta:
gave Scandinavian
They honour names their to
the
guests
seven andmajor
are kind cataracts,
to strangersduplicating
who seek theirshelter
Slavonic withnames;
them, Constantine
and everyoneconscientiously
who is in misfor-
enumerates
tune among both them.14 versionsThey(e.g., do not Baru-fors
allow anyone in Norse, among Volnyithem in to
Slavonic,
tyrannize forthem,the billowy
and whoever water-
fall
among). them does wrong or is oppressive, they find out such a one and expel him from among
them.
These Varangian-Rus seem to have been a unique blend unique even among their brother
Vikings
But a few combining
paragraphs thefurther
traits ofdown pirates,he paints
robbers a quite
and meretricious
different picturemerchants, or rather whovignette,
traded on of
their
conditions
own terms,in Rusimposedsociety:by sword and battle-axe. They bartered furs, swords and amber in
exchange for gold, but their principal merchandise were slaves. A contemporary Arab chroni-
cler wrote:
Not one of them goes to satisfy a natural need alone, but he is accompanied
by three of his companions who guard him between them, and each one of
In thishas
them island
his sword
[Novgorod] because there
of thearelack
menoftosecurity
the number and treachery
of 100000,among and these them,
menifconstantly
for a man hasgo even
outatolittleraidwealth,
the Slavs hisin ownboats,
brother
and andthey his
seize
friend
the Slavs
who isand with
take them prisoner and they go to the Khazars and Bulgars and sell them
him
there. covet[Weitremember
and seek the to kill
slave and despoil
market him.15
in Itil, mentioned by Masudi]. They have
Regarding
no cultivated their mar lands, tialnor
vir seed,
tues, however,
and [live the by] sources
plunderare from Unanimous:
the Slavs. When a child
is born to them, they place a drawn sword in front of him and his father says: I
have neither
These peoplegold are vigorous
nor silver, and norcourageous
wealth which andI when
can bequeath
they descendto thee, on this
openis
ground,
thine none can escape
inheritance, from them
with it secure withoutfor
prosperity being destroyed
thyself. 9 and their women
taken possession
A modern historian, McEvedy, of, and themselves
has summed takenit upinto slaver y.1 6
nicely:
PART 4
Such Viking-Varangian
were the prospectsactivity, which now rangingfacedfrom the Iceland
Khazars.toSarkelthe borders
was builtof Turkestan,
just in time; from it
Constantinople to the Arctic circle, was of incredible vitality and daring, and it is
enabled
sad thatthem so muchto control
effort the wasmovements
wasted in plundering.
of the Rus flotillas
The Northern
along the heroes lower didreaches
not of
the Don deign andtothe trade
Don-Volga
until they porfailed
tage to (thevanquish;
Khazarian theyWaypreferred
). By andbloodstained,
large it seems glori-that
duringous thegold
first to century
a steady of their presence
mercantile on the0scene [Very roughly, 830 1.-930.] the plun-
profit.1
dering raids of the Rus were mainly directed against Byzantium (where, obviously, richer plun-
der
Thus
wasthe to be
Rushad), convoyswhereas sailingtheirsouthward
relations in with thethesummer
Khazars season
werewereessentially
at the same on a trading
time both
commercial
basis, thoughfleets not without
and militar friction
y armadas;
and intermittent
the two roles clashes.
wentAttogether,
any rate,and thewithKhazarseachwere fleet able
it
was
to control
impossible the Rus to foretell
trade routes at what andmoment
to levy their the merchants
10 per cent would
tax on turn
all into
cargoes warriors.
passing The size of
these
through fleets
their wascountry
formidable.to Byzantium
Masudi and speaksto the of aMuslim
Rus force lands.
entering the Caspian from the
Volga
They(in also912-13)
exertedassome comprising
culturalabout influence500 ships,
on theeach Nor thmen,
mannedwho, by 100for persons
all their .violent
Of these ways,
50000
had a naivemen, willingness
he says, 35000 to learn
werefrom killedthe inpeople
battle. with
[See whom
below,they Chapter
cameIV, into1.]contact.
Masudi The may
have
extentbeen of this
exaggerating,
influence isbut indicated
apparently by thenotadoption
much. Even of the at title
an earlyKaganstagebyofthe their
earlyexploits
Rus
(circa
rulers 860)
of Novgorod.
the Rus crossed This is the confirmed
Black Sea by both
and laidByzantine
siege on andConstantinople
Arab sources;with for instance,
a fleet vari- Ibn
ously
Rusta,estimated
after describing as numbering the island between
on which 200 Novgorod
and 230 ships. was built, states They have a king who
isIn
called
viewKagan of the Rus. unpredictability
Moreover, and Ibn Fadlan
proverbial reports
treacherousness
that the Kagan of Rus
thesehas formidable
a generalinvader who s,
the
leadsByzantines
the army and represents Khazars had him to toplay
the itpeople.
by earZeki as theValidi
sayinghasgoes.
pointed Forout a century
that such anddele-
a
half
gationafterof the for army tress
command
of Sar kel waswas unknown
built, trade among agreements
the Germanic and thepeople
exchange of theofNor embassies
th, where
with
the kingthe Rusmustalternated
be the foremost with savage warrior; wars.Validi
Only concludes
slowly and thatgradually
the Rus obviously
did the Northmen imitatedchangethe
their
Khazar character
system by of building
twin rule.permanentThis is notsettlements,
unlikely in becoming
view of theSlavonized
fact that the byKhazars
intermingling were the with
their
most subjects
prosperous andand vassals,
culturally
and finally,
advanced adopting
peoplethe withfaith
whomof the theByzantine
Rus in theChurch. early stagesBy that of
time,
their conquests
the closingmade yearsterritorial
of the tenth contact.
centurAnd y, the
thatRus contact
hadmust
become havetransformed
been fairlyinto intense,
since
Russiansthere. Thewas earlya colony Rusof princes
Rus merchants
and noblesinstill Itil bore
and Scandinavian
also a community names of which
Khazarhad Jews been
in
Slavonized:
Kiev. Rurik from Hroekr, Oleg from Helgi, Igor from Ingvar, Olga from Helga, and so on.
TheIt iscommercial
sad to report treaty
in this whichcontextPrince thatIgor-Ingvar
more than concluded
a thousandwith yearstheafter
Byzantines
the events in under
945 contains
adiscussion,
list of his companions,
the Soviet regime only threehas done of which
its best haveto expunge
Slavonicthe namesmemory
among of thefiftyKhazars'
Scandinavian his-
toric role and cultural achievements. On January
names.11 But the son of Ingvar and Helga assumed the Slavonic name Svyatoslav, and from12, 1952, The Times carried the following
there
news onward
item: the process of assimilation got into its stride, the Varangians gradually lost their
identity as a separate people, and the Norse tradition faded out of Russian history.
It is EARLY
difficultRUSSIANto form a CULTUREmental picture BELITTLED
of these bizarre people whose savagery sticks out
even in that savage age. The chronicles are biased, written by members of nations who had
suffered from the northern invaders; their own side of the story remains untold, for the rise of
Scandinavian
SOVIETliteratureHISTORIAN cameREBUKED
long after the Age of the Vikings, when their exploits had blos-
somed into legend. Even so, early Norse literature seems to confirm their unbridled lust for
battle, and the peculiar kind of frenzy which seized them on these occasions; they even had a
specialAnother
word for Soviet
it: berserksgangr
historian has been the berserk
criticized way. by Pravda for belittling the early cul-
36
37
36
37
ture and development of the Russian people. He is Professor Artamonov, who,
at a recent session of the Department of History and Philosophy at the USSR
Academy of Sciences, repeated a theor y which he had put forward in a book in
1937 that the ancient city of Kiev owed a great deal to the Khazar peoples. He
pictures them in the role of an advanced people who fell victim to the aggres-
sive aspirations of the Russians.
All these things, says Pravda, have nothing in common with historical facts.
The Khazar kingdom which represented the primitive amalgamation of different
tribes, played no positive role whatever in creating the statehood of the eastern
Slavs. Ancient sources testify that state formations arose among the eastern
Slavs long before any record of the Khazars.
The Khazar kingdom, far from promoting the development of the ancient
Russian State, retarded the progress of the eastern Slav tribes. The materials
obtained by our archaeologists indicate the high level of culture in ancient
Russia. Only by flouting the historical truth and neglecting the facts can one
speak of the superiority of the Khazar culture. The idealization of the Khazar
kingdom reflects a manifest sur vival of the defective views of the bourgeois
historians who belittled the indigenous development of the Russian people.
The erroneousness of this concept is evident. Such a conception cannot be
accepted by Soviet historiography.
Artamonov, whom I have frequently quoted, published (besides numerous articles in
learned journals) his first book, which dealt with the early histor y of the Khazars, in 1937. His
magnum opus, History of the Khazars, was apparently in preparation when Pravda struck. As a
result, the book was published only ten years later 1962 - carr ying a recantation in its final
section which amounted to a denial of all that went before and, indeed, of the author's life-
work. The relevant passages in it read:
The Khazar kingdom disintegrated and fell into pieces, from which the majority
merged with other related peoples, and the minority, settling in Itil, lost its
nationality and turned into a parasitic class with a Jewish coloration.
The Russians never shunned the cultural achievements of the East . . . But
from the Itil Khazars the Russians took nothing. Thus also by the way, the mili-
tant Khazar Judaism was treated by other peoples connected with it: the
Magyars, Bulgars, Pechenegs, Alans and Polovtsians . . . The need to struggle
with the exploiters from Itil stimulated the unification of the Ghuzz and the
Slavs around the golden throne of Kiev, and this unity in its turn created the
possibility and prospect for a violent growth not only of the Russian state sys-
tem, but also of ancient Russian culture. This culture had always been original
and never depended on Khazar influence. Those insignificant eastern elements
in Rus culture which were passed down by the Khazars and which one usually
bears in mind when dealing with the problems of culture ties between the Rus
and the Khazars, did not penetrate into the hear t of Russian culture, but
remained on the surface and were of shor t duration and small significance.
They offer no ground at all for pointing out a Khazar period in the history of
Russian culture.
The dictates of the Party line completed the process of obliteration which star ted with the
flooding of the remains of Sarkel.
PART 5
Intensive trading and cultural interchanges did not prevent the Rus from gradually eating
their way into the Khazar Empire by appropriating their Slavonic subjects and vassals.
According
Sarkel to the Primary
was built Russian
the tribute Chronicle,
from the Slavonicbypeoples
859 - that
wasis,divided
some twenty-five
between theyears after
Khazars
and the Varangians from beyond the Baltic Sea . The Varangians levied tribute on Chuds ,
Krivichians , etc. i.e., the more northerly Slavonic people while the Khazars continued to
levy tribute on the Viatichi, the Seviane, and, most important of all, the Polyane in the central
region of Kiev. But not for long. Three years later if we can trust the dating (in the Russian
Chronicle), the key town of Kiev on the Dnieper, previously under Khazar suzerainty, passed
into Rus hands.
This was to prove a decisive event in Russian histor y, though it apparently happened with-
out an armed struggle. According to the Chronicle, Novgorod was at the time ruled by the
(semilegendary) Prince Rurik (Hroekr), who held under his sway all the Viking settlements, the
northern Slavonic, and some Finnish people. Two of Rurik's men, Oskold and Dir, on travelling
down the Dnieper, saw a fortified place on a mountain, the sight of which they liked; and were
38
38
told that this was the town of Kiev, and that it paid tribute to the Khazars . The two settled in
the town with their families, gathered many Northmen to them, and ruled over the neighbour-
ing Slavs, even as Rurik ruled at Novgorod. Some twenty years later Rurik's son Oleg [Helgi]
came down and put Oskold and Dir to death, and annexed Kiev to his sway.
Kiev soon outshone Novgorod in importance: it became the capital of the Varangians and
the mother of Russian towns ; while the principality which took its name became the cradle
of the first Russian state.
Joseph's letter, written about a century after the Rus occupation of Kiev, no longer men-
tions it in his list of Khazar possessions. But influential Khazar-Jewish communities survived
both in the town and province of Kiev, and after the final destruction of their countr y they were
reinforced by large numbers of Khazar emigrants. The Russian Chronicle keeps referring to
heroes coming from Zemlya Zhidovskaya, the countr y of the Jews ; and the Gate of the
Khazars in Kiev kept the memor y of its erstwhile rulers alive till modern times.
PART 6
We have now progressed into the second half of the ninth century and, before continu-
ing with the tale of the Russian expansion, must turn our attention to some vital
developments among the people of the steppes, particularly the Magyars. These
events ran parallel with the rise of Rus power and had a direct impact on the Khazars and
on the map of Europe.
The Magyars had been the Khazars' allies, and apparently willing vassals, since the dawn
of the Khazar Empire. The problem of their origin and early wanderings have long perplexed
scholars , Macar tney wrote;1 7 elsewhere he calls it one of the darkest of historical rid-
dles .1 8 About their origin all we know with certainty is that the Magyars were related to the
Finns, and that their language belongs to the so-called Finno-Ugrian language family, together
with that of the Vogul and Ostyak people living in the forest regions of the northern Urals.
Thus they were originally unrelated to the Slavonic and Turkish nations of the steppes in
whose midst they came to live an ethnic curiosity, which they still are to this day. Modern
Hungary, unlike other small nations, has no linguistic ties with its neighbours; the Magyars
have remained an ethnic enclave in Europe, with the distant Finns as their only cousins.
At an unknown date during the early centuries of the Christian era this nomadic tribe was
driven out of its erstwhile habitat in the Urals and migrated southward through the steppes,
eventually settling in the region between the Don and the Kuban rivers. They thus became
neighbours of the Khazars, even before the latter's rise to prominence. For a while they were
par t of a federation of semi-nomadic people, the Onogurs ( The Ten Arrows or ten tribes); it
is believed
the name bythat the they
which namehave
Hungarian is a Slavonic
called themselves fromversion of that word;1 9 while Magyar is
time immemorial.
From about the middle of the seventh to the end of the ninth centuries they were, as
already said, subjects of the Khazar Empire. It is a remarkable fact that during this whole
period, while other tribes were engaged in a murderous game of musical chairs, we have no
record of a single armed conflict between Khazars and Magyars, whereas each of the two was
involved at one time or another in wars with their immediate or distant neighbours: Volga
Bulgars, Danube Bulgars, Ghuzz, Pechenegs, and so on in addition to the Arabs and the
Rus. Paraphrasing the Russian Chronicle and Arab sources, Toynbee writes that throughout
this period the Magyars took tribute , on the Khazars' behalf, from the Slav and Finn peoples
in the Black Earth Zone to the nor th of the Magyars' own domain of the Steppe, and in the for-
est zone to the north of that. The evidence for the use of the name Magyar by this date is its
sur vival in a number of place-names in this region of nor therly Russia. These place-names
presumably mark the sites of former Magyar garrisons and outposts. 2 0 Thus the Magyars
dominated their Slavonic neighbours, and Toynbee concludes that in levying tribute, the
Khazars were using the Magyars as their agents, though no doubt the Magyars made this
agency profitable for themselves as well .2 1
The arrival of the Rus radically changed this profitable state of affairs. At about the time
when Sarkel was built, there was a conspicuous movement of the Magyars across the Don to
its west bank. From about 830 onward, the bulk of the nation was re-settled in the region
between the Don and the Dnieper, later to be named Lebedia. The reason for this move has
been much debated among historians; Toynbee's explanation is both the most recent and the
most plausible:
We may . . . infer that the Magyars were in occupation of the Steppe to the
west of the Don by permission of their Khazar suzerains . . . Since the Steppe-
country had previously belonged to the Khazars, and since the Magyars were
the Khazars' subordinate allies, we may conclude that the Magyars had not
established themselves in this Khazar territory against the Khazars' will . . .
Indeed we may conclude that the Khazars had not merely permitted the
Magyars to establish themselves to the west of the Don, but had actually
planted them there to serve the Khazars' own purposes. The re-location of sub-
ject peoples for strategic reasons was a device that had been practised by pre-
vious nomad empire builders . . . In this new location, the Magyars could help
the Khazars to check the south-eastward and southward advance of tile Rhos.
The planting of the Magyars to the west of the Don will have been all of a piece
with the building of the fortress Sar kel on tile Don's eastern bank.22
39
39
PART 7
This arrangement worked well enough for nearly half a century. During this period the rela-
tion between Magyars and Khazars became even closer, culminating in two events which
left lasting marks on the Hungarian nation. First, the Khazars gave them a king, who
founded the first Magyar dynasty; and, second, several Khazar tribes joined the Magyars and
profoundly transformed their ethnic character.
The first episode is described by Constantine in De Administrando (circa 950), and is con-
firmed by the fact that the names he mentions appear independently in the first Hungarian
Chronicle (eleventh centur y). Constantine tells us that before the Khazars intervened in the
internal affairs of the Magyar tribes, these had no paramount king, only tribal chieftains; the
most prominent of these was called Lebedias (after whom Lebedia was later named):
And the Magyars consisted of seven hordes, but at that time they had no ruler,
either native or foreign, but there were certain chieftains among them, of which
the principal chieftain was the aforementioned Lebedias . . . And the Kagan,
the ruler of Khazaria, on account of their [the Magyars'] valour and militar y
assistance, gave their first chieftain, the man called Lebedias, a noble Khazar
lady as wife, that he might beget children of her; but Lebedias, by some
chance, had no family by that Khazar woman.
Another dynastic alliance which had misfired. But the Kagan was determined to strengthen
the ties which bound Lebedias and his tribes to the Khazar kingdom:
After a little time had passed, the Kagan, the ruler of Khazaria, told the
Magyars . . . to send to him their first chieftain. So Lebedias, coming before
the Kagan of Khazaria, asked him for the reason why he had sent for him. And
the Kagan said to him: We have sent for you for this reason: that, since you are
well-born and wise and brave and the first of the Magyars, we may promote you
to be the ruler of your race, and that you may be subject to our Laws and
Orders.
But Lebedias appears to have been a proud man; he declined, with appropriate expressions
of gratitude, the offer to become a puppet king, and proposed instead that the honour should
be bestowed on a fellow chieftain called Almus, or on Almus's son, Arpad. So the Kagan,
pleased at this speech , sent Lebedias with a suitable escor t back to his people; and they
chose Arpad to be their king. The ceremony of Arpad's installation took place after the cus-
tom and usage of the Khazars, raising him on their shields. But before this Arpad the Magyars
never had any other ruler; wherefore the ruler of Hungary is drawn from his race up to this
day.
This day in which Constantine wrote was circa 950, that is, a century after the event.
Arpad in fact led his Magyars in the conquest of Hungary; his dynasty reigned till 1301, and
his name is one of the first that Hungarian schoolboys learn. The Khazars had their fingers in
many historic pies.
PART 8
The second episode seems to have had an even more profound influence on the
Hungarian national character. At some unspecified date, Constantine tells us,23 there
was a rebellion (apostasia) of par t of the Khazar nation against their rulers. The insur-
gents consisted of three tribes, which were called Kavars [or Kabars], and which were of the
Khazars' own race. The Government prevailed; some of the rebels were slaughtered and
some fled the countr y and settled with the Magyars, and they made friends with one another.
They also taught the tongue of the Khazars to the Magyars, and up to this day they speak the
same dialect, but they also speak the other language of the Magyars. And because they
proved themselves more efficient in wars and the most manly of the eight tribes [i.e., the
seven original Magyar tribes plus the Kabars], and leaders in war, they were elected to be the
first horde, and there is one leader among them, that is in the [originally] three hordes of the
Kavars, who exists to this day.
To dot his i's, Constantine starts his next chapter with a list of the hordes of Kavars and
Magyars. First is that which broke off from the Khazars, this above-mentioned horde of the
Kavars. , etc.24 The horde or tribe which actually calls itself Magyar comes only third.
It looks as if the Magyars had received metaphorically and perhaps literally a blood
transfusion from the Khazars. It affected them in several ways. First of all we learn, to our sur-
prise, that at least till the middle of the tenth century both the Magyar and Khazar languages
were spoken in Hungar y. Several modern authorities have commented on this singular fact.
Thus Bury wrote: The result of this double tongue is the mixed character of the modern
Hungarian language, which has supplied specious argument for the two opposite opinions as
to
havetheceased
ethnical
to affinities of the
be bilingual Magyars.
long ago, they2 were
5 Toynbee26
so at theremarks thatofthough
beginnings the Hungarians
their state, as testi-
fied by some two hundred loan-words from the old Chuvash dialect of Turkish which the
Khazars spoke (see above, Chapter I, 3).
The Magyars, like the Rus, also adopted a modified form of the Khazar double-kingship.
40
40
Thus Gardezi: ... Their leader rides out with 20000 horsemen; they call him Kanda
[Hungarian: Kende] and this is the title of their greater king, but the title of the person who
effectively rules them is Jula. And the Magyars do whatever their Jula commands. There is
reason to believe that the first Julas of Hungary were Kabars.2 7
There is also some evidence to indicate that among the dissident Kabar tribes, who de
facto took over the leadership of the Magyar tribes, there were Jews, or adherents of a
judaizing religion .28 It seems quite possible as Artamonov and Bartha have suggested29
that the Kabar apostasia was somehow connected with, or a reaction against, the religious
reforms initiated by King Obadiah. Rabbinical law, strict dietary rules, Talmudic casuistry
might have gone ver y much against the grain of these steppe-warriors in shining armour. If
they professed a judaizing religion , it must have been closer to the faith of the ancient
desert-Hebrews than to rabbinical orthodoxy. They may even have been followers of the fun-
damentalist sect of Karaites, and hence considered heretics. But this is pure speculation.
PART 9
The close cooperation between Khazars and Magyars came to an end when the latter, AD
896, saidthefarewell
territor to the Eurasian
was to steppes,
become crossed the Carpathian
habitat. Themountain range, of
and
conquered y which their lasting circumstances
this migration are again controversial, but one can at least grasp its broad outlines.
During the closing decades of the ninth century yet another uncouth player joined the
nomad game of musical chairs: the pechenegs. [Or Paccinaks , or in Hungarian, Bescnyk .]
What little we know about this Turkish tribe is summed up in Constantine's description of
them as an insatiably greedy lot of Barbarians who for good money can be bought to fight
other Barbarians and the Rus. They lived between the Volga and the Ural rivers under Khazar
suzerainty; according to Ibn Rusta,3 0 the Khazars raided them every year to collect the trib-
ute due to them.
Toward the end of the ninth century a catastrophe (of a nature by no means unusual) befell
the Pechenegs: they were evicted from their country by their eastern neighbours. These neigh-
bours were none other than the Ghuzz (or Oguz) whom Ibn Fadlan so much disliked one of
the inexhaustible number of Turkish tribes which from time to time cut loose from their
Central-Asiatic moorings and drifted west. The displaced Pechenegs tried to settle in
Khazaria, but the Khazars beat them off. [This seems to be the plausible interpretation of
Constantine's statement that the Ghuzz and the Khazars made war on the Pecheisegs . [Cf.
Bury, p. 424.]] The Pechenegs continued their westward trek, crossed the Don and invaded
the territor y of the Magyars. The Magyars in turn were forced to fall back further west into the
region between the Dnieper and the Sereth rivers. They called this region Etel-Kz, the land
between the rivers . They seem to have settled there in 889; but in 896 the Pechenegs
struck again, allied to the Danube Bulgars, whereupon the Magyars withdrew into present-day
Hungary.
This, in rough outline, is the story of the Magyars' exit from the eastern steppes, and the
with a cer tain passion, that the Magyars suffered only one defeat, not two, at the hands of
end of the Magyar-Khazar connection. The details are contested; some historians31 maintain,
the Pechenegs, and that Etel-Kz was just another name for Lebedia, but we can leave these
quibbles to the specialists. More intriguing is the apparent contradiction between the image
of the Magyars as mighty warriors, and their inglorious retreat from successive habitats. Thus
we learn from the Chronicle of Hinkmar of Rheims3 2 that in 862 they raided the Fast Frankish
Empire the first of the savage incursions which were to terrorize Europe during the next cen-
tur y. We also hear of a fearful encounter which St Cyril, the Apostle of the Slavs, had with a
Magyar horde in 860, on his way to Khazaria. He was saying his prayers when they rushed at
him luporum more ululantes - howling in the manner of wolves . His sanctity, however, pro-
tected him from harm.3 3
33 Another chronicle34 mentions that the Magyars, and the Kabars,
came into conflict with the Franks in 881; and Constantine tells us that, some ten years later,
the Magyars made war upon Simeon (ruler of the Danube Bulgars) and trounced him
soundly, and came as far as Preslav, and shut him up in the fortress called Mundraga, and
returned home. 3 5
How is one to reconcile all these valiant deeds with the series of retreats from the Don into
Hungary, which took place in the same period? It seems that the answer is indicated in the
passage in Constantine immediately following the one just quoted:
. . . But after Symeon the Bulgar again made peace with the Emperor of the
Greeks, and got security, he sent to the Patzinaks, and made an agreement
with them to make war on and annihilate the Magyars. And when the Magyars
went away on a campaign, the Patzinaks with Symeon came against the
Magyars, and completely annihilated their families, and chased away miserably
the Magyars left to guard their land. But the Magyars returning, and finding
their countr y thus desolate and ruined, moved into the country occupied by
them today [i.e. Hungar y].
Thus the bulk of the army was away on a campaign when their land and families were
attacked; and to judge by the chronicles mentioned above, they were away raiding distant
countries quite frequently, leaving their homes with little protection. They could afford to
indulge in this risky habit as long as they had only their Khazar over lords and the peaceful
41
41
Slavonic tribes as their immediate neighbours. But with the advent of the land-hungry
Pechenegs the situation changed. The disaster described by Constantine may have been only
the last of a series of similar incidents. But it may have decided them to seek a new and
safer home beyond the mountains, in a country which they already knew from at least two pre-
vious forays.
There is another consideration which speaks in favour of this hypothesis. The Magyars
seem to have acquired the raiding habit only in the second half of the ninth century about
the time when they received that critical blood-transfusion from the Khazars. It may have
proved a mixed blessing. The Kabars, who were more efficient in war and more manly ,
became, as we saw, the leading tribe, and infused their hosts with the spirit of adventure,
which was soon to turn them into the scourge of Europe, as the Huns had earlier been. They
also taught the Magyars those very peculiar and characteristic tactics employed since time
immemorial by every Turkish nation Huns, Avars, Turks, Pechenegs, Kumans and by no
other . . . light cavalr y using the old devices of simulated flight, of shooting while fleeing, of
sudden charges with fearful, wolf-like howling. 3 6
These methods proved murderously effective during the ninth and tenth centuries when
Hungarian raiders invaded Germany, the Balkans, Italy and even France but they did not cut
much ice against the Pechenegs, who used the same tactics, and could howl just as spine-
chillingly.
Thus indirectly, by the devious logic of histor y, the Khazars were instrumental in the estab-
lishment of the Hungarian state, whereas the Khazars themselves vanished into the mist.
Macartney, pursuing a similar line of thought, went even further in emphasizing the decisive
role played by the Kabar transfusion:
The bulk of the Magyar nation, the true Finno-Ugrians, comparatively (although
not very) pacific and sedentary agriculturalists, made their homes in the undu-
the nomadic race of Kabars, true Turks, herdsmen, horsemen and fighters, the
lating country . . . west of the Danube. The plain of the Alfld was occupied by
Constantine's day still occupied pride of place as the first of the hordes of the
driving force and the army of the nation. This was the race which in
Magyars . It was, I believe, chiefly this race of Kabars which raided the Slavs
and Russians from the steppe; led the campaign against the Bulgars in 895; in
large par t and for more than half a century afterwards, was the terror of half
Europe.37
And yet the Hungarians managed to preserve their ethnic identity. The brunt of sixty years
of restless and remorseless warfare fell on the Kabars, whose ranks must have been thinned
by it to an extraordinary extent. Meanwhile the true Magyars, living in comparative peace,
increased their numbers. 3 8 They also succeeded, after the bilingual period, in preserving
trast to the Danube Bulgars, who lost their Original Turkish language, and now speak a
their original Finno-Ugric language in the midst of their German and Slav neighbours in con-
Slavonic dialect.
However, the Kabar influence continued to make itself felt in Hungary, and even after they
became separated by the Carpathian Mountains, the Khazar-Magyar connection was not com-
pletely severed. According to Vasiliev,39 in the tenth centur y the Hungarian Duke Taksony
invited an unknown number of Khazars to settle in his domains. It is not unlikely that these
immigrants contained a fair proportion of Khazarian Jews. We may also assume that both the
Kabars and the later immigrants brought with them some of their famed craftsmen, who
taught the Hungarians their arts (see above, Chapter I, 13).
In the process of taking possession of their new and permanent home, the Magyars had to
evict its former occupants, Moravians and Danube Bulgars, who moved into the regions where
they still live. Their other Slavonic neighbours too the Serbs and Croats were already more
or less in situ. Thus, as a result of the chain-reaction which star ted in the distant Urals
Ghuzz chasing Pechenegs, chasing Magyars, chasing Bulgars and Moravians, the map of mod-
ern Central Europe was beginning to take shape. The shifting kaleidoscope was settling into a
more or less stable jigsaw.
PART 10
We can now resume the stor y of the Rus ascent to power where we left it the blood-
less annexation of Kiev by Rurik's men around AD 862. This is also the approximate
date when the Magyars were pushed westward by the Pechenegs, thus depriving the
Khazars of protection on their western flank. It may explain why the Rus could gain control of
Kiev so easily.
But the weakening of Khazar militar y power exposed the Byzantines, too, to attack by the
Rus. Close to the date when the Rus settled in Kiev, their ships, sailing down the Dnieper,
crossed the Black Sea and attacked Constantinople. Bury has described the event with much
gusto:
In the month of June, AD 860, the Emperor [Michael III], with all his forces, was
marching against the Saracens. He had probably gone far when he received the
amazing tidings, which recalled him with all speed to Constantinople. A
Russian host had sailed across the Euxine [Black Sea] in two hundred boats,
42
42
entered the Bosphorus, plundered the monasteries and suburbs on its banks,
and overr un the Island of the Princes. The inhabitants of the city were utterly
demoralized by the sudden horror of the danger and their own impotence. The
troops (Tagmata) which were usually stationed in the neighbourhood of the city
were far away with the Emperor . . . and the fleet was absent. Having wrought
wreck and ruin in the suburbs, the barbarians prepared to attack the city. At
this crisis . . . the learned Patriarch, Photius, rose to the occasion; he under-
took the task of restoring the moral courage of his fellow-citizens . . . He
expressed the general feeling when he dwelt on the incongruity that the
Imperial city, queen of almost all the world , should be mocked by a band of
slaves [sic] a mean and barbarous crowd. But the populace was perhaps more
impressed and consoled when he resorted to the ecclesiastical magic which
had been used efficaciously at previous sieges. The precious garment of the
Virgin Mother was borne in procession round the walls of the city; and it was
believed that it was dipped in the waters of the sea for the purpose of raising a
storm of wind. No storm arose, but soon afterwards the Russians began to
retreat, and perhaps there were not many among the joyful citizens who did not
impute their relief to the direct inter vention of the queen of heaven.4
0
We may add, for the sake of piquantry, that the learned Patriarch , Photius, whose elo-
quence saved the Imperial city, was none other than Khazar face who had sent St Cyril on
his proselytizing mission. As for the Rus retreat, it was caused by the hurried return of the
Greek army and fleet; but Khazar face had saved morale among the populace during the
agonizing period of waiting.
Toynbee too has interesting comments to make on this episode. In 860, he writes, the
Russians perhaps came nearer to capturing Constantinople than so far they have ever come
since then .41 And he also shares the view expressed by several Russian historians, that the
attack by the eastern Nor thmen's Dnieper flotilla across the Black Sea was coordinated with
the simultaneous attack of a western Viking fleet, approaching Constantinople across the
Mediterranean and the Dardanelles:
Vasiliev and Paszkievicz and Vernadsky are inclined to believe that the two
naval expeditions that thus converged on the Sea of Marmara were not only
simultaneous but were concer ted, and they even make a guess at the identity
of the master mind that, in their view, worked out this strategic plan on the
grand scale. They suggest that Rurik of Novgorod was the same person as
Rorik of Jutland.42
This makes one appreciate the stature of the adversar y with whom the Khazars had to con-
tend. Nor was Byzantine diplomacy slow in appreciating it and to play the double game
which the situation seemed to demand, alternating between war, when it could not be
avoided, and appeasement in the pious hope that the Russians would eventually be con-
ver ted to Christianity and brought into the flock of the Eastern Patriarchate. As for the
Khazars, they were an important asset for the time being, and would be sold out on the first
decent or indecent opportunity that offered itself
PART 11
For the next two hundred years Byzantine-Russian relations alternated between armed con-
flict and treaties of friendship. Wars were waged in 860 (siege of Constantinople), 907,
941, 944, 969- 71; and treaties concluded in 838-9, 861,911,945, 957, 971. About the
contents of these more or less secret agreements we know little, but even what we know
shows the bewildering complexity of the game. A few years after the siege of Constantinople
the Patriarch Photius (still the same) reports that the Rus sent ambassadors to
Constantinople and according to the Byzantine for mula for pressurized proselytizing
besought the Emperor for Christian baptism . As Bur y comments:
We cannot say which, or how many, of the Russian settlements were repre-
sented by this embassy, but the object must have been to offer amends for the
recent raid, perhaps to procure the deliverance of prisoners. It is certain that
some of the Russians agreed to adopt Christianity . . . but the seed did not fall
on ver y fertile ground. For upwards of a hundred years we hear no more of the
Christianity of the Russians. The treaty, however, which was concluded between
AD 860 and 866, led probably to other consequences. 43
Among these consequences was the recruiting of Scandinavian sailors into the Byzantine
fleet by 902 there were seven hundred of them. Another development was the famous
Varangian Guard , an lite corps of Rus and other nordic mercenaries, including even
Englishmen. In the treaties of 945 and 971 the Russian rulers of the Principality of Kiev
undertook to supply the Byzantine Emperor with troops on request.4 4 In Constantine
genitus' day, i.e., the middle of the tenth centur y, Rus fleets on the Bosphorus were a cus-
potphyro-
tomary sight; they no longer caine to lay siege on Constantinople but to sell their wares. Trade
was meticulously well regulated (except when armed clashes intervened): according to the
43
43
Russian Chronicle, it was agreed in the treaties of 907 and 911 that the Rus visitors should
enter Constantinople through one city gate only, and not more thin fifty at a time, escorted by
officials; that they were to receive during their stay in the city as much grain as they required
and also up to Six months' supply of other provisions, in monthly deliveries, including bread,
wine, meat, fish, fruit and bathing facilities (if required). To make sure that all transactions
should be nice and proper, black-market dealings in currency were punished by amputation of
one hand. Nor were proselytizing efforts neglected, as the ultimate means to achieve peace-
ful coexistence with the increasingly powerful Russians.
But it was hard going. According to the Russian Chronicle, when Oleg, Regent of Kiev, con-
cluded the treaty of 911 with the Byzantines, the Emperors Leo and Alexander [joint rulers],
after agreeing upon the tribute and mutually binding themselves by oath, kissed the cross and
invited Oleg and his men to swear an oath likewise. According to the religion of the Rus, the
latter swore by their weapons and by their god Perun, as well as by Volos, the god of cattle,
and thus confirmed the treaty. 45
Nearly half a centur y and several battles and treaties later, victory for the Holy Church
seemed in sight: in 957 Princess Olga of Kiev (widow of Prince Igor) was baptized on the occa-
sion of her state visit to Constantinople (unless she had already been baptized once before
her departure which again is controversial).
The various banquets and festivities in Olga's honour are described in detail in De
Caerimonus, though we are not told how the lady reacted to the Disneyland of mechanical toys
displayed in the Imperial throne-room for instance, to the stuffed lions which emitted a fear-
ful mechanical roar. (Another distinguished guest, Bishop Liutprand, recorded that he was
able to keep his sang-froid only because he was forewarned of the surprises in store for visi-
tors.) The occasion must have been a major headache for the master of ceremonies (which
was Constantine himself), because not only was Olga a female sovereign, but her retinue, too,
was female; the male diplomats and advisers, eighty-two of them, marched self-effacingly in
the rear of the Russian delegation .46 [Nine kinsmen of Olga's, twenty diplomats, forty-three
commercial advisers, one priest, two interpreters, six servants of the diplomats and Olga's
special interpreter.]
Just before the banquet there was a small incident, symbolic of the delicate nature of
Russian-Byzantine relations. When the ladies of the Byzantine court entered, they fell on their
faces before the Imperial family, as protocol required. Olga remained standing but it was
noticed,
place bywith
beingsatisfaction,
seated, as that she slightly
the Muslim stateifguests
perceptibly inclined
had been, at aher head. She
separate was
table. 47put in her
The Russian Chronicle has a different, richly embroidered version of this state visit. When
the delicate subject of baptism was brought up, Olga told Constantine that if he desired to
baptize her, he should perform this function himself; otherwise she was unwilling to accept
baptism . The Emperor concurred, and asked the Patriarch to instruct her in the faith.
The Patriarch instructed her in prayer and fasting, in almsgiving and in the
maintenance of chastity. She bowed her head, and like a sponge absorbing
water, she eagerly drank in his teachings . . .
After her baptism, the Emperor summoned Olga and made known to her that
he wished her to become his wife. But she replied, How can you marry me,
after yourself baptizing me and calling me your daughter? For among Christians
that is unlawful, as you yourself must know. Then the Emperor said, Olga, you
have outwitted me. 48
When she got back to Kiev, Constantine sent a message to her, saying, 'Inasmuch as I
bestowed many gifts upon you, you promised me that on your return to Ros you would send
me many presents of slaves, wax and furs, and despatch soldier y to aid me.' Olga made
answer to the envoys that if the Emperor would spend as long a time with her in the Pochayna
as she had remained on the Bosphorus, she would grant his request. With these words, she
dismissed the envoys. 4 9
This Olga-Helga must have been a formidable Scandinavian Amazon. She was, as already
mentioned, the widow of Prince Igor, supposedly the son of Rurik, whom the Russian
Chronicle describes as a greedy, foolish and sadistic ruler. In 941 he had attacked the
Byzantines with a large fleet, and of the people they captured, some they butchered, others
they set up as targets and shot at, some they seized upon, and after binding their hands
behind their backs, they drove iron nails through their heads. Many sacred churches they gave
to the flames. 50 In the end they were defeated by the Byzantine fleet, spouting Greek fire
through tubes mounted in the prows of their ships. Upon seeing the flames, the Russians
cast themselves into the sea-water, but the survivors returned home [where] they related that
the Greeks had in their possession the lightning from heaven, and had set them on fire by
pouring it for th, so that the Russes could not conquer them. [Toynbee does not hesitate to
call this famous secret weapon of the Greeks napalm . It was a chemical of unknown com-
position, perhaps a distilled petroleum fraction, which ignited spontaneously on contact with
water, and could not be put out by water.] This episode was followed by another treaty of
friendship four years later. As a predominantly maritime nation, the Rus were even more
impressed by the Greek fire than others who had attacked Byzantium, and the lightning from
heaven was a strong argument in favour of the Greek Church. Yet they were still not ready for
44
44
conversion.
When Igor was killed in 945 by the Derevlians, a Slavonic people upon which he had
imposed an exorbitant tribute, the widowed Olga became Regent of Kiev. She star ted her rule
by taking fourfold revenge on the Derevlians: first, a Derevlian peace mission was buried
alive; then a delegation of notables was locked in a bath-house and burned alive; this was fol-
lowed by another massacre, and lastly the main town of the Derevlians was burnt down.
Olga's bloodlust seemed truly insatiable until her baptism. From that day onward, the
Chronicle informs us, she became the precursor of Christian Russia, even as daybreak pre-
cedes the sun, and as the dawn precedes the day. For she shone like the moon by night, and
she was radiant among the infidels like a pearl in the mire. In due course she was canonized
as the first Russian saint of the Or thodox Church.
PART 12
Yet in spite of the great to-do about Olga's baptism and her state visit to Constantine,
this was not the last word in the stormy dialogue between the Greek Church and the
Russians. For Olga's son, Svyatoslav, reverted to paganism, refused to listen to his
mother's entreaties, collected a numerous and valiant army and, stepping light like a leop-
ard, under took many campaigns 51 among them a war against the Khazars and another
against the Byzantines. It was only in 988, in the reign of his son, St Vladimir, that the ruling
dynasty of the Russians definitely adopted the faith of the Greek Orthodox Church about the
same time as Hungarians, Poles, and Scandinavians, including the distant Icelanders,
became converted to the Latin Church of Rome. The broad outlines of the lasting religious
divisions of the world were beginning to take shape; and in this process the Jewish Khazars
were becoming an anachronism. The growing rapprochement between Constantinople and
Kiev, in spite of its ups and downs, made the importance of Itil gradually dwindle; and the
presence of the Khazars athwart Rus-Byzantine trade-routes, levying their 10 per cent tax on
the increasing flow of goods, became an irritant both to the Byzantine treasury and the
Russian warrior merchants.
Symptomatic of the changing Byzantine attitude to their former allies was the surrender of
Cherson to the Russians. For several centuries Byzantines and Khazars had been bickering
and occasionally skirmishing, for possession of that important Crimean port; but when
Vladimir occupied Cherson in 987, the Byzantines did not even protest; for, as Bur y put it,
the sacrifice was not too dear a price for perpetual peace and friendship with the Russian
state, then becoming a great power .52
The sacrifice of Cherson may have been justified; but the sacrifice of the Khazar alliance
turned out to be, in the long run, a short-sighted policy.
45
45
References
1 In his article "Khazars" in the Enc. Brit. 1973 edition.
2 Op. cit., p. 177.
3 Bar Hebraeus and al-Manbiji, quoted by Dunlop, p. 181.
4 Marquar t (pp. 5, 416), Dunlop (p. 42n) and Bury (p. 408) all give slightly different
dates.
5 Bartha, p. 27f
6 Op. cit., p. 547
7 Op. cit., p. 446n,
8 Toynbee, p. 446; Bury, p. 422n
9 Gardezi (circa. 1050), paraphrasing in earlier repor t by Ibn Rusta (circa 905), quoted
by Macar tney, C. A. (1930), p. 20.
10 The Penquin Atlas of Mediaeval Histor y, 1961, p. 58.
11 Toynbee, p. 446.
12 Zeki Validi, p, 85f.
13 Ibn Rusta, quoted by Macartney, p, 214.
14 Loc. cit.
15 Ibn Rusta, quoted by Macartney, p, 215.
16 Ibid., pp 214-15.
17 Op. cit., p. i.
18 Ibid., p. v.
19 Toynbee, p. 419; Macar tney, p. 176.
20 Toynbee, p. 418.
21 Ibid., p. 454.
22 Loc. cit.
23 De Administrando, ch. 39-40.
24 Toynbee, p, 426.
25 Op. cit., p. 4.26.
26 Op. cit., p. 427.
27 Macartney, pp. 127ff.
28 Baron, Vol. III, pp. 211f., 332.
29 Bartha, pp. 99, 113.
30 Quoted by Dunlop (1954), p. 105.
31 Cf, Bur y, p. 424.
32 Macartney, Guillemain.
33 Quoted by Macar tney. p. 71.
34 Loc. cit.
35 The Annals of Admont, quoted by Macar tney, p. 76.
36 De Administrando, ch. 40.
37 Macartney, p. 123.
38 Ibid., p. 122.
39 Ibid., p. 123.
40 Quoted by Dunlop (1954), p. 262.
41 Bury, p, 419f.
42 Op. Cit., p. 448.
43 Ibid., p. 447.
44 Op. Cit., p. 422.
45 Toynbee., p. 448.
46 Russian Chronicle, p. 65.
47 Toynbee, p. 504.
48 Loc. cit.
49 Russian Chronicle, p. 82.
50 Ibid., p. 83.
51 Ibid., p. 72.
52 Ibid., p. 84.
53 Bury, p. 418.
46
46
The Thirteenth Tribe
Arthur Koestler
Fall
PART 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
Primar y 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 Hungar y, the former western dependencies of the Khazar Empire (except for par ts of the
Crimea) were no longer under the Kagan's control; and the Prince of Kiev could without hin-
drance 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 cus-
toms 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 por t 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 ver y large and its waters abundant. The ships of the Rus
spread throughout the sea. Their raiding par ties 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 . . . 2
a
They even sacked the city of Ardabil - at three days' journey inland. When the people recov-
ered from the shock and took to arms, the Rus, according to their classic strategy, withdrew
47
from the coast to the islands near Baku. The natives, using small boats and merchant ves-
sels, 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 col-
lected 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 chil-
dren. 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, proceed-
ing downstream [on land, from Itil to the Volga estuar y]. 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 Bur tas 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 com-
mand. 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 conver ted. But though coloured
by religious prejudice, Masudi's account provides a glimpse of the dilemma or several dilem-
mas - 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 predator y 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 never theless 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 dan-
gers of escalation. It also shows once more that the Khazar r ulers felt emotionally committed
to the fate of Jews in other parts of the world.
PART 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 par t of the
world; now they felt evidently strong enough to tr y 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 sur vivors 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 year s later:
48
"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 called "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 countr y 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 par ticular 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, how-
ever, 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.
PART 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 "under took 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 horse-
flesh, 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
for tress 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, over layed 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 territor y 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 con-
quest, for Russia, of the river Volga ... to the river's dbouchure into the Caspian
Sea."6
PART 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 bap-
tism 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:
49
Now Vladimir was overcome by lust for women. He had three hundred concu-
bines 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.
PART 7
Olga's baptism, around 957 did not cut much ice, even with her own son. Vladimir's bap-
tism, AD 989, was a momentous event which had a lasting influence on the histor y 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 centur y (though it became official
only in the eleventh). .The Russian Chronicle's account of Vladimir's conversion first men-
tions 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 Ger man 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: 'Depar t 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 four th and last missionary is a scholar sent by the Greeks of Byzantium. He star ts 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 cru-
cified 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 repor ts 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 impor tant 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 sup-
ply, and Cherson surrendered. Thereupon Vladimir, apparently forgetting his vow, "sent mes-
sages 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.
PART 5
50
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 centur y. 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 peo-
ple. Cherson was obviously par t 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 star ted, 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 indig-
nant. 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 sur vived 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 friend-
ship 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?1
5
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.
PART 6
theThis "effective
Prince of Kiev.control" wasnot
But it did now to beThe
work. transferred
Khazars from
were the Khazartribe
a Turkish Kagan to the
of the Rus Kagan,
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 histor y, followed by a period of chaos, with a dozen
independent principalities waging endless wars against each other. .This created a power vac-
uum, 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
Hungar y 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 Manziker t (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 heart-
land of the East Roman Empire.
One can only speculate whether histor y 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 ver y realistic.
PART 7
During the two centuries of Kuman rule, followed by the Mongol invasion, the eastern
steppes were
Khazars once more
is shrouded plunged
in even intoobscurity
deeper the Darkthan
Ages, andorigin.
their the later histor y of the
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 geo-
graphical 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-centur y 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 destruc-
tion 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 "utter ly 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, Marquar t 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 compli-
cate 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 destr uction" 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 impor tant, as we have coins that were minted
there in the year 976-7 - only about ten years after Svyatoslav's raid; and in the thir teenth
52
centur y 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 IbnHawkal ... 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 thir teenth 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
conver ted 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 psy-
chological 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 dis-
tance 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 catastro-
phe 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.
PART 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, writ-
ing 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 conver t Vladimir to their faith.
As we enter the eleventh centur y, 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 repor ted 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, sup-
por ted 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 shor tlived 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 twelfthcentur y Arab source, ibn-al-Athir, not consid-
ered very reliable.
53
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 mas-
ter", who forced ritual Passover food on him.23 One need not put much trust in the authen-
ticity 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 cap-
tured 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 year s later, sub anno 1106, the Russian Chronicle has another laconic entr y, accord-
ing 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 year s later, in 1116.
But in the second half of the twelfth centur y, two Persian poets, Khakani (circa 1106-90)
and the better-known Nizami (circa 1141-1203) mention in their epics a joint Khazar-Rus inva-
sion 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 dis-
pleasure, 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 dr y 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 estuar y: 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 militar y data, also a list of the people living
in the regions visited by him. In this list, enumerating the people of the nor thern Caucasus,
he mentions, along with the Alans and Circassians, the "Khazars observing theJewish reli-
gion". 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.
PART 9
54
Towards the end of the tenth centur y, this other offshoot of the Ghuzz had moved south-
wards 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 con-
ver ted 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
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 impor tance 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 par ticularly 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.3 1
PART 11
Another bit of semi-legendary, semi-historical folklore connected with the Khazars sur-
vived into modern times, and so fascinated Benjamin Disraeli that he used it as material
for a historical romance: The Wondrous Tale of Alroy.
55
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 initia-
tor 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 repor t 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 assem-
bled 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 cr usade 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 memor y 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
between al-Roy and the six-pointed star "still awaits further elucidation and proof". However
1527."32 .Baron appends a qualifying note to this passage, pointing out that the connection
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 notewor thy experiment in Jewish statecraft doubt-
less exerted a greater influence on Jewish history than we are as yet able to
envisage.
56
References
1 Russian Chronicle, p. 84.
2 Dunlop (1954), p. 238.
2a Quoted by Dunlop (1954), p. 2 10.
2b Quoted by Dunlop (1954), pp. 211-12.
3 Quoted by Zeki Validi.
4 Russian Chronicle, p. 84.
4a ibid., p. 84.
5 Ibid., p. go.
6 Toynbee, Op. cit., p. 451.
7 Russian Chronicle, p. 94.
8 Ibid., p. 97.
9 Ibid., p. 97.
10 Ibid., p. 98.
11 Ibid., p. 111.
12 Ibid., p. 112,
13 Vernadsky, G. (1948), pp. 29. 33.
14 De Admirdstrando, chs. 10-12.
15 Toynbee, p. 508.
16 Bur y, Op. cit., p. 414.
17 Op, cit., p. 250.
18 Quoted by Dunlop (1954), p. 245.
19 Zeki Validi, p. 206.
20 Ahmad Tusi (twelfth century), quoted by Zeki Validi, p. 205.
21 Dunlop (1954), p. 249.
22 Baron. Vol. IV, p. 174.
23 Quoted by Dunlop (19s4), p. 251.
24 Kievo Pechershii Paterik, quoted by Baron, Vol. IV, p. 192.
25 Quoted by Dunlop (1954), p. 260.
26 Quoted by Zeki Validi, p. 143.
27 Ibid, p. xxvii.
28 Dunlop (1954), p. 261.
29 Vernadsky, p. 44.
30 Poliak, ch. VII.
31 Loc. cit.
32 Baron., Vol. Ill, p. 204.
33 Baron, loc. cit.
57
The Thirteenth Tribe
Arthur Koestler
58
58
rich landowner, and apparently a financial and diplomatic genius. His signature appears on
various peace treaties and financial agreements, among them one guaranteeing the payment
of 2000 marks by the Austrian ruler Leopold II to the King of Hungar y. One is irresistibly
reminded of a similar role played by the Spanish Jew Hasdai ibn Shaprut at the court of the
Caliph of Cordoba. Comparing similar episodes from the Palestinian Diaspora in the west and
the Khazar Diaspora in the east of Europe, makes the analogy between them appear perhaps
less tenuous..It is also worth mentioning that when King Endre was compelled by his rebel-
lious nobles to issue, reluctantly, the Golden Bull, he kept Teka in office against the Bull's
express provisions. The Royal Chamberlain held his post happily for another eleven years,
until papal pressure on the King made it advisable for Teka to resign and betake himself to
Austria, where he was received with open arms. However, King Endre's son Bela IV, obtained
papal permission to call him back. Teka duly returned, and perished during the Mongol inva-
sion.*[I am indebted to Mrs St G. Saunders for calling my attention to the Teka episode,
which seems to have been overlooked in the literature on the Khazars.]4
3
The Khazar origin of the numerically and socially dominant element in the Jewish popula-
tion of Hungary during the Middle Ages is thus relatively well documented. It might seem
that Hungary constitutes a special case, in view of the early Magyar-Khazar connection;
but in fact the Khazar influx into Hungary was merely a par t of the general mass-migration
from the Eurasian steppes toward the West, i.e., towards Central and Eastern Europe. The
Khazars were not the only nation which sent offshoots into Hungary. Thus large numbers of
the self-same Pechenegs who had chased the Magyars from the Don across the Carpathians,
were forced to ask for permission to settle in Hungarian territor y when they in turn were
chased by the Kumans; and the Kumans shared the same fate when, a century later, they fled
from the Mongols, and some 40000 of them "with their slaves" were granted asylum by the
Hungarian King Bela.5
At relatively quiescent times this general westward movement of the Eurasian populations
was no more than a drift; at other times it became a stampede; but the consequences of the
Mongol invasion must rank on this metaphoric scale as an ear thquake followed by a land-
slide. The warriors of Chief Tejumin, called "Jinghiz Khan", Lord of the Earth, massacred the
population of whole cities as a warning to others not to resist; used prisoners as living
screens in front of their advancing lines; destroyed the irrigation network of the Volga delta
which had provided the Khazar lands with rice and other staple foods; and transformed the
fer tile steppes into the "wild fields" - dikoyeh pole - as the Russians were later to call them:
an unlimited space without farmers or shepherds, through which only mercenary horsemen
pass in the service of this or that rival ruler - or people escaping from such rule".6
The Black Death of 1347-8 accelerated the progressive depopulation of the former Khazar
hear tland between Caucasus, Don and Volga, where the steppe-culture had reached its high-
est level - and the relapse into barbarism was, by contrast, more drastic than in adjoining
regions. As Baron wrote: "The destruction or departure of industrious Jewish farmers, arti-
sans and merchants left behind a void which in those regions has only recently begun to be
filled."7 Not only Khazariaofwas destroyed, but also and
the the
Volga BulgarRussian
country, together with
last Caucasian strongholds the Alans and Kumans, southern principali-
the
ties, including Kiev. During the period of disintegration of the Golden Horde, from the four-
teenth century onward, the anarchy became, if possible, even worse. "In most of the
European steppes emigration was the only way left open for populations who wanted to
secure their lives and livelihood".8 The migration toward safer pastures was a protracted,
intermittent process which went on for several centuries. The Khazar exodus was part of the
general picture.
It had been preceded, as already mentioned, by the founding of Khazar colonies and settle-
ments in various places in the Ukraine and southern Russia. There was a flourishing Jewish
community in Kiev long before and after the Rus took the town from the Khazars. Similar
colonies existed in Perislavel and Chernigov. A Rabbi Mosheh of Kiev studied in France around
1160, and a Rabbi Abraham of Chernigov studied in 1181 in the Talmud School of London.
The "Lay of Igor's Host" mentions a famous contemporar y Russian poet called Kogan - possi-
bly a combination of Cohen (priest) and Kagan.9 Some time after Sarkel, which the Russians
called Biela Veza, was destroyed the Khazars built a town of the same name near
Chernigov.1 0
There is an abundance of ancient place names in the Ukraine and Poland, which derive
from "Khazar" or "Zhid" (Jew): Zydowo, Kozarzewek, Kozara, Kozarzow, Zhydowska Vola,
Zydaticze, and so on. They may have once been villages, or just temporar y encampments of
Khazar-Jewish communities on their long trek to the west.11 Similar place-names can also be
found in the Carpathian and Tatra mountains, and in the eastern provinces of Austria. Even
the ancient Jewish cemeteries of Cracow and Sandomierz, both called "Kavior y", are
assumed to be of Khazar-Kabar origin.
While the main route of the Khazar exodus led to the west, some groups of people were left
behind, mainly in the Crimea and the Caucasus, where they formed Jewish enclaves sur viving
into modern times. In the ancient Khazar stronghold of Tamatarkha (Taman), facing the
Crimea across the straits of Kerch, we hear of a dynasty of Jewish princes who ruled in the fif-
teenth centur y under the tutelage of the Genovese Republic, and later of the Crimean Tartars.
The last of them, Prince Zakharia, conducted negotiations with the Prince of Muscovi, who
59
59
invited Zakharia to come to Russia and let himself be baptized in exchange for receiving the
privileges of a Russian nobleman. Zakharia refused, but Poliak has suggested that in other
cases "the introduction of Khazar-Jewish elements into exalted positions in the Muscovite
state may have been one of the factors which led to the appearance of the 'Jewish heresy'
(Zhidovst- buyushtchik) among Russian priests and noblemen in the sixteenth century, and of
the sect of Sabbath-observers (Subbotniki) which is still widespread among Cossacks and
peasants".12
Another vestige of the Khazar nation are the "Mountain Jews" in the north- eastern
Caucasus, who apparently stayed behind in their original habitat when the others left. They
are supposed to number around eight thousand and live in the vicinity of other tribal rem-
nants of the olden days: Kipchaks and Oghuz. They call themselves Dagh Chufuty (Highland
Jews) in the Tat language which they have adopted from another Caucasian tribe; but little
else is known about them.*[The above data appear in A. H. Kniper's article Caucasus, People
of in the 1973 printing of the Enc. Brit., based on recent Soviet sources. A book by George
Sava, Valley of the Forgotten People (London, 1946) contains a description of a purported visit
to the mountain Jews, rich in melodrama but sadly devoid of factual infor mation.]
Other Khazar enclaves have survived in the Crimea, and no doubt elsewhere too in locali-
ties which once belonged to their empire. But these are now no more than historic curios
compared to the mainstream of the Khazar migration into the Polish-Lithuanian regions - and
the formidable problems it poses to historians and anthropologists.
4
The regions in eastern Central Europe, in which the Jewish emigrants from Khazaria found
a new home and apparent safety, had only begun to assume political importance toward
the end of the first millennium.
Around 962, several Slavonic tribes formed an alliance under the leadership of the
strongest among them, the Polans, which became the nucleus of the Polish state. Thus the
Polish rise to eminence started about the same time as the Khazar decline (Sarkel was
destroyed in 965). It is significant that Jews play an impor tant role in one of the earliest
Polish legends relating to the foundation of the Polish kingdom. We are told that when the
allied tribes decided to elect a king to rule them all, they chose a Jew, named Abraham
the Slav backwoodsmen
Prokownik.1 hoped
3 He may have to benefit
been - oreducated
a rich and just a legendary
Khazar figure; but,from
merchant, if so,whose
the legend
experience
indicates that Jews of his type were held in high esteem. At any rate, so the story goes on,
Abraham, with unwonted modesty, resigned the crown in favour of a native peasant named
Piast, who thus became the founder of the historic Piast dynasty which ruled Poland from
circa 962 to 1370.
Whether Abraham Prochownik existed or not, there are plenty of indications that the Jewish
immigrants from Khazaria were welcomed as a valuable asset to the country's economy and
government administration. The Poles under the Piast dynasty, and their Baltic neighbour s,
the Lithuanians,* [The two nations became united in a series of treaties, starting in 1386,
into the Kingdom of Poland. For the sake of brevity, I shall use the term "Polish Jews" to refer
to both countries - regardless of the fact that at the end of the eighteenth century Poland was
partitioned between Russia, Pr ussia and Austria, and its inhabitants became officially citizens
of these three countries.
Actually the so-called Pale of Settlement within Imperial Russia, to which Jews were con-
fined from 1792 onward, coincided with the areas annexed from Poland plus parts of the
Ukraine. Only certain privileged categories of Jews were permitted to live outside the Pale;
these, at the time of the 1897 census, numbered only 200000, as compared to nearly five
million inside the Pale - i.e., within for mer Polish territory.] had rapidly expanded their fron-
tiers, and were in dire need of immigrants to colonize their territories, and to create an urban
civilization. They encouraged, first, the immigration of German peasants, burghers and crafts-
men, and later of migrants from the territories occupied by the Golden Horde,*[Poland and
Hungar y were also briefly invaded by the Mongols in 1241-42, but they were not occupied -
which made all the difference to their future histor y.] including Armenians, southern Slavs and
Khazars.
Not all these migrations were voluntary. They included large numbers of prisoners of war,
such as Crimean Tartars, who were put to cultivate the estates of Lithuanian and Polish land-
lords in the conquered southern provinces (at the close of the four teenth century the
Lithuanian principality stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea). But in the fifteenth century
the Ottoman Turks, conquerors of Byzantium, advanced northward, and the landlords trans-
ferred the people from their estates in the border areas fur ther inland.1 4
Among the populations thus forcibly transferred was a strong contingent of Karaites - the
fundamentalist Jewish sect which rejected rabbinical learning. According to a tradition which
the great Lithuanian warrior- prince Vytautas (Vitold) at the end of the fourteenth century as
has survived among Karaites into modern times, their ancestors were brought to Poland by
prisoners of war from Sulkhat in the Crimea.1 5 In favour of this tradition speaks the fact that
Vitold in 1388 granted a charter of rights to the Jews of Troki, and the French traveller, de
Lanoi, found there "a great number of Jews" speaking a different language from the Germans
and natives.1 6 That language was - and still is - a Turkish dialect, in fact the nearest among liv-
ing languages to the lingua cumanica, which was spoken in the former Khazar territories at
the time of the Golden Horde. According to Zajaczkowski,1 7 this language is still used in
60
60
speech and prayer in the sur viving Karaite communities in Troki, Vilna, Ponyeviez, Lutzk and
Halitch. The Karaites also claim that before the Great Plague of 1710 they had some thir ty-
two or thir ty-seven communities in Poland and Lithuania.
They call their ancient dialect "the language of Kedar" - just as Rabbi Petachia in the twelfth
centur y called their habitat north of the Black Sea "the land of Kedar"; and what he has to
say about them - sitting in the dark through the Sabbath, ignorance of rabbinical learning - fits
their sectarian attitude.
Accordingly, Zajaczkowski, the eminent contemporary Turcologist, considers the Karaites
from the linguistic point of view as the purest present-day representatives of the ancient
Khazars.18 About the reasons why this sect preserved its language for about half a millen-
nium, while the main body of Khazar Jews shed it in favour of the Yiddish lingua franca, more
will have to be said later.
5
The Polish kingdom adopted from its very beginnings under the Piast dynasty a resolutely
Western orientation, together with Roman Catholicism. But compared with its western
neighbours it was culturally and economically an underdeveloped country. Hence the pol-
icy of attracting immigrants - Germans from the west, Armenians and Khazar Jews from the
east - and giving them every possible encouragement for their enterprise, including Royal
Charters detailing their duties and special privileges.
In the Charter issued by Boleslav the Pious in 1264, and confirmed by Casimir the Great in
1334, Jews were granted the right to maintain their own synagogues, schools and courts; to
hold landed proper ty, and engage in any trade or occupation they chose. Under the rule of
King Stephen Bthor y (1575-86) Jews were granted a Parliament of their own which met twice
a year and had the power to levy taxes on their co-religionists. After the destruction of their
countr y, Khazar Jewry had entered on a new chapter in its histor y.
A striking illustration for their privileged condition is given in a papal breve, issued in the
second half of the thirteenth centur y, probably by Pope Clement IV, and addressed to an
unnamed Polish prince. In this document the Pope lets it be known that the Roman authori-
ties are well aware of the existence of a considerable number of synagogues in several Polish
cities - indeed no less than five synagogues in one city alone.*[Probably Wroclaw or Cracow.]
He deplores the fact that these synagogues are reported to be taller than the churches, more
stately and ornamental, and roofed with colourfully painted leaden plates, making the adja-
cent Catholic churches look poor in comparison. (One is reminded of Masudi's gleeful remark
that the minaret of the main mosque was the tallest building in Itil.) The complaints in the
breve are further authenticated by a decision of the Papal legate, Cardinal Guido, dated 1267,
stipulating that Jews should not be allowed more than one synagogue to a town.
We gather from these documents, which are roughly contemporaneous with the Mongol con-
quest of Khazaria, that already at that time there must have been considerable numbers of
Khazars present in Poland if they had in several towns more than one synagogue; and that
they must have been fair ly prosperous to build them so "stately and ornamental". This leads
us to the question of the approximate size and composition of the Khazar immigration into
Poland.
Regarding the numbers involved, we have no reliable information to guide us. We remember
that the Arab sources speak of Khazar armies numbering three hundred thousand men
involved in the Muslim-Khazar wars (Chapter I, 7); and even if allowance is made for quite wild
exaggerations, this would indicate a total Khazar population of at least half a million souls.
Ibn Fadlan gave the number of tents of the Volga Bulgars as 50000, which would mean a pop-
ulation of 300000-400000, i.e., roughly the same order of magnitude as the Khazars'. On the
other hand, the number of Jews in the Polish-Lithuanian kingdorn in the seventeenth century
is also estimated by modern historians at 500000 (5 per cent of the total population).1 9
These figures do not fit in too badly with the known facts about a protracted Khazar migration
via the Ukraine to Poland-Lithuania, starting with the destr uction of Sarkel and the rise of the
Piast dynasty toward the end of the first millennium, accelerating during the Mongol conquest,
and being more or less completed in the fifteenth-sixteenth centuries - by which time the
steppe had been emptied and the Khazars had apparently been wiped off the face of the
ear th.*[The last of the ancient Khazar villages on the Dnieper were destroyed in the Cossack
revolt under Chmelnicky in the seventeenth century, and the sur vivors gave a further powerful
boost to the number of Jews in the already existing settlement areas of Poland-Lithuania.]
Altogether this population transfer was spread out over five or six centuries of trickle and flow.
If we take into account the considerable influx of Jewish refugees from Byzantium and the
Muslim world into Khazaria, and a small population increase among the Khazars themselves,
it appears plausible that the tentative figures for the Khazar population at its peak in the
eighth century should be comparable to that of the Jews in Poland in the seventeenth century,
at least by order of magnitude - give or take a few hundred thousand as a token of our igno-
rance. There is irony hidden in these numbers.
According to the article "statistics" in the Jewish Encyclopaedia, in the sixteenth century
the total Jewish population of the world amounted to about one million. This seems to indi-
cate, as Poliak, Kutschera2 0 and others have pointed out, that during the Middle Ages the
majority of those who professed the Judaic faith were Khazars. A substantial part of this
majority went to Poland, Lithuania, Hungary and the Balkans, where they founded that Eastern
Jewish community which in its turn became the dominant majority of world Jewry. Even if the
61
61
original core of that community was diluted and augmented by immigrants from other regions
(see below), its predominantly Khazar-Turkish derivation appears to be supported by strong
evidence, and should at least be regarded as a theory wor th serious discussion.
Additional reasons for attributing the leading role in the growth and development of the
Jewish community in Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe mainly to the Khazar element,
and not to immigrants from the West, will be discussed in the chapters that follow. But it may
be appropriate at this point to quote the Polish historian, Adam Vetulani (my italics):
Polish scholars agree that these oldest settlements were founded by Jewish
emigres from the Khazar state and Russia, while the Jews from Southern and
Western Europe began to arrive and settle only later . . . and that a cer tain pro-
por tion at least of the Jewish population (in earlier times, the main bulk) origi-
nated from the east, from the Khazar country, and later from Kievian
Russia.21
6
So much for size. But what do we know of the social structure and composition of the
Khazar immigrant community? The first impression one gains is a striking similarity
between cer tain privileged positions held by Khazar Jews in Hungary and in Poland in
those early days. Both the Hungarian and Polish sources refer to Jews employed as mintmas-
ters, administrators of the royal revenue, controllers of the salt monopoly, taxcollectors and
"money-lenders" - i.e., bankers. This parallel suggests a common origin of those two immi-
grant communities; and as we can trace the origins of the bulk of Hungarian Jewry to the
Magyar-Khazar nexus, the conclusion seems self-evident.
The early records reflect the part played by immigrant Jews in the two countries' budding
economic life. That it was an impor tant par t is not surprising, since foreign trade and the levy-
ing of customs duties had been the Khazars' principal source of income in the past. They had
the experience which their new hosts were lacking, and it was only logical that they were
called in to advise and participate in the management of the finances of court and nobility.
The coins minted in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries with Polish inscriptions in Hebrew let-
tering (see Chapter II, 1) are somewhat bizarre relics of these activities. The exact purpose
they served is still something of a mystery. Some bear the name of a king (e.g., Leszek,
Mieszko), others are inscribed "From the House of Abraham ben Joseph the Prince" (possibly
the minter-banker himself), or show just a word of benediction: "Luck" or "Blessing".
Significantly, contemporar y Hungarian sources also speak of the practice of minting coins
from silver provided by Jewish owners.22
However - in constrast to Western Europe - finance and commerce were far from being the
only fields of Jewish activity. Some rich emigrants became landowners in Poland as Count
Teka was in Hungar y; Jewish land-holdings comprising a whole village of Jewish farmers are
recorded, for instance, in the vicinity of Breslau before 1203;23 and in the early days there
must have been Khazar peasants in considerable numbers, as the ancient Khazar place-
names seem to indicate.
A tantalizing glimpse of how some of these villages may have come into being is provided
by the Karaite records mentioned before; they relate how Prince Vitold settled a group of
Karaite prisoners-of-war in "Krasna", providing them with houses, orchards and land to a dis-
tance of one and a half miles. ("Krasna" has been tentatively identified with the Jewish small
town Krasnoia in Podolia.)24
But farming did not hold out a future for the Jewish community. There were several reasons
for this. The rise of feudalism in the fourteenth century gradually transformed the peasants of
Poland into serfs, forbidden to leave their villages, deprived of freedom of movement. At the
same time, under the joint pressure of the ecclesiastic hierarchy and the feudal landlords, the
Polish Par liament in 1496 forbade the acquisition of agricultural land by Jews. But the
process of alienation from the soil must have started long before that.
Apart from the specific causes just mentioned - religious discrimination, combined with the
degradation of the free peasants into serfs - the transformation of the predominantly agricul-
tural nation of Khazars into a predominantly urban community reflected a common phenome-
non in the history of migrations. Faced with different climatic conditions and farming methods
on the one hand, and on the other with unexpected opportunities for an easier living offered
by urban civilization, immigrant populations are apt to change their occupational structure
within a few generations. The offspring of Abruzzi peasants in the New World became waiters
and restaurateurs, the grandsons of Polish farmers may become engineers or psychoana-
lysts.*[The opposite process of colonists settling on virgin soil applies to migrants from more
highly developed to under-developed regions.]
However, the transformation of Khazar Jewry into Polish Jewr y did not entail any brutal
break with the past, or loss of identity. It was a gradual, organic process of change, which - as
Poliak has convincingly shown - preserved some vital traditions of Khazar communal life in
their new country. This was mainly achieved through the emergence of a social structure, or
way of life, found nowhere else in the world Diaspora: the Jewish small town, in Hebrew
ayarah, in Yiddish shtetl, in Polish miastecko. All three designations are diminutives, which,
however, do not necessarily refer to smallness in size (some were quite big small-towns) but
to the limited rights of municipal selfgovernment they enjoyed.
The shtetl should not be confused with the ghetto. The latter consisted of a street or quar-
ter in which Jews were compelled to live within the confines of a Gentile town. It was, from the
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62
second half of the sixteenth century onward, the universal habitat of Jews everywhere in the
Christian, and most of the Muslim, world. The ghetto was surrounded by walls, with gates that
were locked at night. It gave rise to claustrophobia and mental inbreeding, but also to a sense
of relative security in times of trouble. As it could not expand in size, the houses were tall and
narrow-chested, and permanent overcrowding created deplorable sanitary conditions. It took
great spiritual strength for people living in such circumstances to keep their self-respect. Not
all of them did.
The shtetl, on the other hand, was a quite different proposition - a type of settlement which,
as already said, existed only in Poland-Lithuania and nowhere else in the world. It was a self-
contained countr y town with an exclusively or predominantly Jewish population. The shtetl's
origins probably date back to the thir teenth centur y, and may represent the missing link, as it
were, between the market towns of Khazaria and the Jewish settlements in Poland.
The economic and social function of these semi-rural, semiurban agglomerations seems to
have been similar in both countries. In Khazaria, as later in Poland, they provided a network of
trading posts or market towns which mediated between the needs of the big towns and the
countr yside. They had regular fairs at which sheep and cattle, alongside the goods manufac-
tured in the towns and the products of the rural cottage industries were sold or bartered; at
the same time they were the centres where artisans plied their crafts, from wheelwrights to
blacksmiths, silversmiths, tailors, Kosher butchers, millers, bakers and candlestick-makers.
There were also letter-writers for the illiterate, synagogues for the faithful, inns for travellers,
and a heder - Hebrew for "room", which served as a school. There were itinerant stor y-tellers
and folk bards (some of their names, such as Velvel Zbarzher, have been preserved)25 travel-
ling from shtetl to shtetl in Poland - and no doubt earlier on in Khazaria, if one is to judge by
the sur vival of stor y-tellers among Oriental people to our day.
Some particular trades became virtually a Jewish monopoly in Poland. One was dealing in
timber - which reminds one that timber was the chief building material and an impor tant
expor t in Khazaria; another was transport. "The dense net of shtetls," writes Poliak,2 6 "made
it possible to distribute manufactured goods over the whole country by means of the superbly
built Jewish type of horse cart. The preponderance of this kind of transport, especially in the
east of the countr y, was so marked amounting to a vir tual monopoly - that the Hebrew word
for carter, ba'al agalah *[Literally "master of the cart".] was incorporated into the Russian lan-
guage as balagula. Only the development of the railway in the second half of the nineteenth
centur y led to a decline in this trade."
Now this specialization in coach-building and cartering could cer tainly not have developed in
the closed ghettoes of Western Jewry; it unmistakably points to a Khazar origin. The people of
the ghettoes were sedentary; while the Khazars, like other semi-nomadic people, used horse-
or ox-drawn carts to transpor t their tents, goods and chattel - including royal tents the size of
a circus, fit to accommodate several hundred people. They cer tainly had the know-how to
negotiate the roughest tracks in their new countr y.
Other specifically Jewish occupations were inn-keeping, the running of flour mills and trad-
ing in furs - none of them found in the ghettoes of Western Europe.
Such, in broad outlines, was the structure of the Jewish shtetl in Poland. Some of its fea-
tures could be found in old market towns in any country; others show a more specific affinity
with what we know - little though it is - about the townships of Khazaria, which were probably
the prototypes of the Polish shtetl.
To these specific features should be added the "pagoda-style" of the oldest sur viving
wooden shtetl synagogues dating from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which is totally
different from both the native style of architecture and from the building style adopted by
Western Jews and replicated later on in the ghettoes of Poland. The interior decoration of the
oldest shtetl synagogues is also quite different from the style of the Western ghetto; the walls
of the shtetl synagogue were covered with Moorish arabesques, and with animal figures char-
acteristic of the Persian influence found in Magyar-Khazar artefactsI ,1 3 and in the decorative
style brought to Poland by Armenian immigrants.27
The traditional garb of Polish Jewr y is also of unmistakably Eastern origin. The typical long
silk kaftan may have been an imitation of the coat worn by the Polish nobility, which itself was
copied from the outfit of the Mongols in the Golden Horde - fashions travel across political
divisions; but we know that kaftans were worn long before that by the nomads of the steppes.
The skull-cap (yarmolka) is worn to this day by orthodox Jews - and by the Uzbeks and other
Turkish people in the Soviet Union. On top of the skull-cap men wore the streimel, an elabo-
rate round hat rimmed with fox-fur, which the Khazars copied from the Khasaks - or vice versa.
As already mentioned, the trade in fox and sable furs, which had been flourishing in Khazaria,
became another vir tual Jewish monopoly in Poland. As for the women, they wore, until the
middle of the nineteenth century, a tall white turban, which was an exact copy of the Jauluk
worn by Khasak and Turkmen women.28 (Nowadays orthodox Jewesses have to wear instead
of a turban a wig made of their own hair, which is shaved off when they get married.)
One might also mention in this context - though somewhat dubiously - the Polish Jews' odd
passion for gefillte (stuffed) fisch, a national dish which the Polish Gentiles adopted. "Without
fish", the saying went, "there is no Sabbath." Was it derived from distant memories of life on
the Caspian, where fish was the staple diet?
Life in the shtetl is celebrated with much romantic nostalgia in Jewish literature and folk-
lore. Thus we read in a moder n survey of its customs29 about the joyous way its inhabitants
celebrated the Sabbath:
63
63
Wherever one is, he will try to reach home in time to greet the Sabbath with his
own family. The pedlar travelling from village to village, the itinerant tailor, shoe-
maker, cobbler, the merchant off on a trip, all will plan, push, hurr y, tr ying to
reach home before sunset on Friday evening.
As they press homeward the shammes calls through the streets of the shtetl,
"Jews to the bathhouse!" A functionary of the synagogue, the shammes is a
combination of sexton and beadle. He speaks with an authority more than his
own, for when he calls "Jews to the bathhouse" he is summoning them to a
commandment.
The most vivid evocation of life in the shtetl is the surrealistic amalgam of fact and fantasy
in the paintings and lithographs of Marc Chagall, where biblical symbols appear side by side
with the bearded carter wielding his whip and wistful rabbis in kaftan and yarmolka.
It was a weird community, reflecting its weird origins. Some of the earliest small-towns were
probably founded by prisoners of war - such as the Karaites of Troki - whom Polish and
Lithuanian nobles were anxious to settle on their empty lands. But the majority of these set-
tlements were products of the general migration away from the "wild fields" which were turn-
ing into deserts. "After the Mongol conquest", wrote Poliak, "when the Slav villages wandered
westward, the Khazar shtetls went with them."30 The pioneers of the new settlements were
probably rich Khazar traders who constantly travelled across Poland on the much frequented
trade routes into Hungar y. "The Magyar and Kabar migration into Hungary blazed the trail for
the growing Khazar settlements in Poland: it turned Poland into a transit area between the
two countries with Jewish communities."31 Thus the travelling merchants were familiar with
conditions in the prospective areas of resettlement, and had occasion to make contact with
the landowners in search of tenants. "The landlord would enter into an agreement with such
rich and respected Jews" (we are reminded of Abraham Prokownik) "as would settle on his
estate and bring in other settler s. They would, as a rule, choose people from the place where
they had lived."32 These colonists would be an assorted lot of farmers, artisans and crafts-
men, forming a more or less self-supporting community. Thus the Khazar shtetl would be
transplanted and become a Polish shtetl. Farming would gradually drop out, but by that time
the adaptation to changed conditions would have been completed.
The nucleus of modern Jewry thus followed the old recipe: strike out for new horizons but
stick together.
64
64
References
1 Baron, Vol. III, p. 206.
2 Ibid., p. 212.
3 Anonimi Gesta Hungarorum, quoted by Macartney, p. 188f.
4 The Universal Jewish Encyclopaedia, ar ticle "Teka".
5 Dunlop (1954), p. 262,
6 Poliak, ch. IX.
7 Baron, Vol. Ill, p. 206.
8 Poliak, ch. IX.
9 Poliak, ch. VII; Baron, Vol. Ill, p. 218 and note.
10 Brutzkus, Jewish Enc. article "Chasaren".
11 Schiper. quoted by Poliak.
12 Poliak, ch. IX.
13 Baron, Vol. Ill, p. 217 and note.
14 Poliak, ch. IX.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
17 Quoted by Poliak, ch. IX.
18 Zajaczkowski, quoted by Dunlop, p. 222.
19 Veltulani. A. (1962)., p. 278.
20 Poliak. op. cit,; Kutschera, H. (1910).
21 Vetulani, p. 274.
22 Vetulani, pp. 276-7; Baron, Vol. Ill, p. 218 and notes; Poliak, op. cit.
23 Baron, Vol. Ill, p. 219.
24 Poliak, ch. VII.
25 Enc. Brit., 1973 printing, 'Yiddish Literature'.
26 Op. cit., ch. 111.
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid.
29 Zborowski, M., and Herzog, E. (1952), p. 41.
30 Poliak, ch. Ill.
31 Ibid., ch. VII.
32 Ibid., ch. Ill.
65
65
The Thirteenth Tribe
Arthur Koestler
VI
WHERE FROM?
1
Two basic facts emerge from our sur vey: the disappearance of the Khazar nation from its
historic habitat, and the simultaneous appearance in adjacent regions to the north-west
of the greatest concentration of Jews since the beginnings of the Diaspora. Since the
two are obviously connected, historians agree that immigration from Khazaria must have con-
tributed to the growth of Polish Jewry - a conclusion suppor ted by the evidence cited in the
previous chapters. But they feel less cer tain about the extent of this contribution - the size of
the Khazar immigration compared with the influx of Western Jews, and their respective share
in the genetic make-up of the modern Jewish community.
In other words, the fact that Khazars emigrated in substantial numbers into Poland is
established beyond dispute; the question is whether they provided the bulk of the new settle-
ment, or only its hard core, as it were. To find an answer to this question, we must get some
idea of the size of the immigration of "real Jews" from the West.
2
Towards the end of the first millennium, the most important settlements of Western
European Jews were in France and the Rhineland.*[Not counting the Jews of Spain, who
formed a category apart and did not par ticipate in the migratory movements with which
we are concerned.] Some of these communities had probably been founded in Roman days,
for, between the destruction of Jerusalem and the decline of the Roman Empire, Jews had set-
tled in many of the greater cities under its rule, and were later on reinforced by immigrants
from Italy and Nor th Africa. Thus we have records from the ninth century onwards of Jewish
communities in places all over France, from Normandy down to Provence and the
Mediterranean.
One group even crossed the Channel to England in the wake of the Norman invasion, appar-
ently invited by William the Conqueror,1 because he needed their capital and enterprise. Their
history has been summed up by Baron:
They were subsequently converted into a class of "royal usurers" whose main
function was to provide credits for both political and economic ventures. After
accumulating great wealth through the high rate of interest, these moneylen-
ders were forced to disgorge it in one form or another for the benefit of the
royal treasury. The prolonged well-being of many Jewish families, the splendour
of their residence and attire, and their influence on public affairs blinded even
experienced obser vers to the deep dangers lurking from the growing resent-
ment of debtors of all classes, and the exclusive dependence of Jews on the
protection of their royal masters . . . Rumblings of discontent, culminating in
violent outbreaks in 1189-90, presaged the final tragedy: the expulsion of
1290. The meteoric rise, and even more rapid decline of English Jewr y in the
brief span of two and a quarter centuries (1066-1290) brought into shar p relief
the fundamental factors shaping the destinies of all western Jewries in the cru-
cial first half of the second millennium.2
The English example is instructive, because it is exceptionally well documented compared
to the early histor y of the Jewish communities on the Continent. The main lesson we derive
from it is that the social-economic influence of the Jews was quite out of proportion with their
small numbers. There were, apparently, no more than 2500 Jews in England at any time
before their expulsion in 1290.*[According to the classic sur vey of Joseph Jacobs, The Jews
of Angevin England, based on recorded Jewish family names and other documents. [Quoted
by Baron, Vol. IV, p. 77.]] This tiny Jewish community in mediaeval England played a leading
part in the countr y's economic Establishment - much more so than its opposite number in
Poland; yet in contrast to Poland it could not rely on a network of Jewish small-towns to pro-
vide it with a mass-basis of humble craftsmen, of lower-middle-class ar tisans and workmen,
carters and innkeepers; it had no roots in the people. On this vital issue, Angevin England
epitomized developments on the Western Continent. The Jews of France and Germany faced
66
66
the same predicament: their occupational stratification was lopsided and top-heavy. This led
ever ywhere to the same, tragic sequence of events. The dreary tale always starts with a hon-
eymoon, and ends in divorce and bloodshed. In the beginning the Jews are pampered with
special charters, privileges, favours. They are personae gratae like the court alchemists,
because they alone have the secret of how to keep the wheels of the economy turning. "In the
'dark ages'," wrote Cecil Roth, "the commerce of Western Europe was largely in Jewish
hands, not excluding the slave trade, and in the Carolingian car tularies Jew and Merchant are
used as almost interchangeable terms."3 But with the growth of a native mercantile class,
they became gradually excluded not only from most productive occupations, but also from the
traditional forms of commerce, and vir tually the only field left open to them was lending capi-
tal on interest. ". . . The floating wealth of the countr y was soaked up by the Jews, who were
periodically made to disgorge into the exchequer . . ."4 The archetype of Shylock was estab-
lished long before Shakespeare's time.
In the honeymoon days, Charlemagne had sent a historic embassy in 797 to Harun al-
Rashid in Baghdad to negotiate a treaty of friendship; the embassy was composed of the Jew
Isaac and two Christian nobles. The bitter end came when, in 1306, Philip le Bel expelled the
Jews from the kingdom of France. Though later some were allowed to return, they suffered fur-
ther persecution, and by the end of the century the French community of Jews was virtually
extinct.*[ The modern community of Jews in France and England was founded by refugees
from the Spanish Inquisition in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.]
3
If we turn to the history of German Jewry, the first fact to note is that "remarkably, we do not
possess a comprehensive scholarly history of German Jewry . . . The Germanica Judaica is
merely a good reference work to historic sources shedding light on individual communities
up to 1238."5 It is a dim light, but at least it illuminates the territorial distribution of the
Western-Jewish communities in Germany during the critical period when Khazar-Jewish immi-
gration into Poland was approaching its peak. lOne of the earliest records of such a commu-
nity in Germany mentions a certain Kalonymous, who, in 906, emigrated with his kinsfolk from
Lucca in Italy to Mavence. About the same time we hear of Jews in Spires and Worms, and
somewhat later in other places - Trves, Metz, Strasbourg, Cologne - all of them situated in a
narrow strip in Alsace and along the Rhine valley. The Jewish traveller Benjamin of Tudela (see
above, II, 8) visited the region in the middle of the twelfth centur y and wrote: "In these cities
there are many Israelites, wise men and rich."6 But how many are "many"? In fact ver y few, as
will be seen.
Earlier on, there lived in Mayence a certain Rabbi Gershom ben Yehuda (circa 960-1030)
whose great learning earned him the title "Light of the Diaspora" and the position of spiritual
head of the French and Rhenish-German community. At some date around 1020 Gershom
convened a Rabbinical Council in Worms, which issued various edicts, including one that put a
legal stop to polygamy (which had anyway been in abeyance for a long time). To these edicts a
codicil was added, which provided that in case of urgency any regulation could be revoked "by
an assembly of a hundred delegates from the countries Burgundy, Normandy, France, and the
towns of Mayence, Spires and Worms". In other rabbinical documents too, dating from the
same period, only these three towns are named, and we can only conclude that the other
Jewish communities in the Rhineland were at the beginning of the eleventh century still too
insignificant to be mentioned.7 By the end of the same century, the Jewish communities of
Germany narrowly escaped complete extermination in the outbursts of mob-hysteria accom-
panying the First Crusade, AD 1096. F. Barker has conveyed the crusader's mentality with a
dramatic force rarely encountered in the columns of the Encyclopaedia Britannica:8
He might butcher all, till he waded ankle-deep in blood, and then at nightfall
kneel, sobbing for ver y joy, at the altar of the Sepulchre - for was he not red
from the winepress of the Lord?
The Jews of the Rhineland were caught in that winepress, which nearly squeezed them to
death. Moreover, they themselves became affected by a different type of mass hysteria: a
morbid yearning for martyrdom. According to the Hebrew chronicler Solomon bar Simon, con-
sidered as generally
tism or death reliable,9
at the hands themob,
of the Jewsgave
of Mayence, faced
the example with the
to other alternativeby
communities between bap-
deciding on
collective suicide:1 0
Imitating on a grand scale Abraham's readiness to sacrifice Isaac, fathers
slaughtered their children and husbands their wives. These acts of unspeak-
able horror and heroism were performed in the ritualistic form of slaughter with
sacrificial knives sharpened in accordance with Jewish law. At times the lead-
ing sages of the community, supervising the mass immolation, were the last to
part with life at their own hands . . . In the mass hysteria, sanctified by the glow
of religious martyrdom and compensated by the confident expectation of heav-
enly rewards, nothing seemed to matter but to end life before one fell into
the hands of the implacable foes and had to face the inescapable alternative
of death at the enemy's hand or conversion to Christianity.
67
67
Turning from gore to sober statistics, we get a rough idea of the size of the Jewish commu-
nities in Germany. The Hebrew sources agree on 800 victims (by slaughter or suicide) in
Worms, and var y between 900 and 1300 for Mayence. Of course there must have been many
who preferred baptism to death, and the sources do not indicate the number of survivors; nor
can we be sure that they do not exaggerate the number of martyrs. At any rate, Baron con-
cludes from his calculations that "the total Jewish population of either community had hardly
exceeded the figures
Mayence could here given
only have for the
numbered dead
a few alone".1
hundred in 1each
So the surYet
case. vivors
theseintwo
Worms
townsor(with
in
Spires as a third) were the only ones important enough to be included in Rabbi Gershom's
edict earlier on.
Thus we are made to realize that the Jewish community in the German Rhineland was
numerically small, even before the First Crusade, and had shrunk to even smaller proportions
after having gone through the winepress of the Lord. Yet cast of the Rhine, in central and
northern Germany, there were as yet no Jewish communities at all, and none for a long time to
come. The traditional conception of Jewish historians that the Crusade of 1096 swept like a
broom a mass-migration of German Jews into Poland is simply a legend - or rather an ad hoc
hypothesis invented because, as they knew little of Khazar histor y, they could see no other
way to account for the emergence, out of nowhere, of this unprecedented concentration of
Jews in Eastern Europe. Yet there is not a single mention in the contemporary sources of any
migration, large or small, from the Rhineland further east into Germany, not to mention distant
Poland..Thus Simon Dubnov, one of the historians of the older school: "The first crusade
which set the Christian masses in motion towards the Asiatic east, drove at the same time
the Jewish"About
massesthe
towards the cast of
of Europe."1 2 However, a few lineswas
fur ther downtant
he has
to admit: circumstances this emigration movement which so impor to
Jewish history we possess no close information."13 Yet we do possess abundant information
of what these battered Jewish communities did during the first and subsequent crusades.
Some died by their own hands; others tried to offer resistance and were lynched; while those
who sur vived owed their good for tune to the fact that they were given shelter for the duration
of the emergency in the fortified castle of the Bishop or Burgrave who, at least theoretically,
was responsible for their legal protection. Frequently this measure was not enough to prevent
a massacre; but the survivors, once the crusading hordes had passed, invariably returned to
their ransacked homes and synagogues to make a fresh start.
We find this pattern repeatedly in chronicles: in Treves, in Metz, and many other places. By
the time of the second and later crusades, it had become almost a routine: "At the beginning
of the agitation for a new crusade many Jews of Mayence, Worms, Spires, Strasbourg,
Wrzburg and other cities, escaped to neighbouring castles, leaving their books and precious
possessions in the custody of
barfriendly burghers."1
himself,4atOne
theof theofmain sources
had is the among
Book of
Remembrance by Ephraim Jacob, who age thirteen, been the
refugees from Cologne in the castle of Wolkenburg.15 Solomon bar Simon reports that during
the second crusade the survivors of the Mayence Jews found protection in Spires, then
returned to their native city and built a new synagogue.1 6 This is the leitmotif of the
Chronicles; to repeat it once more, there is not a word about Jewish communities emigrating
toward eastern Germany, which, in the words of Mieses,17 was still Judenrein - clean of Jews -
and was to remain so for several centuries.
4
The thirteenth century was a period of partial recovery. We hear for the first time of Jews
in regions adjacent to the Rhineland: the Palatinate (AD 1225); Freiburg (1230), Ulm
(1243), Heidelberg (1255), etc.1 8 But it was to be only a short respite, for the four teenth
century brought new disasters to Franco-German Jewry.
The first catastrophe was the expulsion of all Jews from the royal domains of Philip le Bel.
France had been suffering from an economic crisis, to the usual accompaniments of debased
currency and social unrest. Philip tried to remedy it by the habitual method of soaking the
Jews. He exacted from them payments of 100000 livres in 1292, 215000 livres in 1295,
1299, 1302 and 1305, then decided on a radical remedy for his ailing finances. On June 21,
1306, he signed a secret order to arrest all Jews in his kingdom on a given day, confiscate
their proper ty and expel them from the country. The arrests were carried out on July 22, and
the expulsion a few weeks later. The refugees emigrated into regions of France outside the
King's domain: Provence, Burgundy, Aquitaine, and a few other frudal fiefs. But, according to
Mieses, "there are no historical records whatsoever to indicate that German Jewry increased
its numbers through the sufferings of the Jewish community in France in the decisive period
of its destruction".19 And no historian has ever suggested that French Jews trekked across
Germany into Poland, either on that occasion or at any other time. lUnder Philip's successors
there were some partial recalls of Jews (in 1315 and 1350), but they could not undo the dam-
age, nor prevent renewed outbursts of mob persecution. By the end of the fourteenth century,
France, like England, was virtually Judenrein.
5
The second catastrophe of that disastrous century was the Black Death, which, between
1348 and 1350, killed off a third of Europe's population, and in some regions even two-
thirds. It came from east Asia via Turkestan, and the way it was let loose on Europe, and
68
68
what it did there, is symbolic of the lunacy of man. A Tartar leader named Janibeg in 1347
was besieging the town of Kaffa (now Feodosia) in the Crimea, then a Genoese trading por t.
The plague was rampant in Janibeg's army, so he catapulted the corpses of infected victims
into the town, whose population became infected in its turn. Genoese ships carried the rats
and their deadly fleas westward into the Mediterranean ports, from where they spread inland.
The bacilli of Pasteurella pestis were not supposed to make a distinction between the vari-
ous denominations, yet Jews were never theless singled out for special treatment. After being
accused earlier on of the ritual slaughter of Christian children, they were now accused of poi-
soning the wells to spread the Black Death. The legend travelled faster even than the rats,
and the consequence was the burning of Jews en masse all over Europe. Once more suicide
by mutual self-immolation became a common expedient, to avoid being burned alive.
The decimated population of Western Europe did not reach again its pre-plague level until
the sixteenth century. As for its Jews, who had been exposed to the twofold attack of rats and
men. only a fraction survived. As Kutschera wrote:
The populace avenged on them the cruel blows of destiny and set upon those
whom the plague had spared with fire and sword. When the epidemics
receded, Germany, according to contemporar y historians, was left vir tually
out Jews. We are led to conclude that in Germany itself the Jews could not
with-
prosper, and were never able to establish large and populous communities.
How, then, in these circumstances, should they have been able to lay the foun-
dations in Poland of a mass population so dense that at present [AD 1909] it
outnumbers the Jews of Germany at the rate of ten to one? It is indeed difficult
to understand how the idea ever gained ground that the eastern Jews repre-
sent immigrants from the West, and especially from Germany.2 0
Yet, next to the first crusade, the Black Death is most frequently invoked by historians as
the deus ex machina which created Eastern Jewr y. And, just as in the case of the crusades,
there is not a shred of evidence for this imaginary exodus. On the contrar y, the indications are
that the Jews' only hope of sur vival on this, as on that earlier occasions, was to stick together
and seek shelter in some for tified place or less hostile surroundings in the vicinity. There is
only one case of an emigration in the Black Death period mentioned by Mieses: Jews from
Spires took refuge from persecution in Heidelberg - about ten miles away.
After the virtual extermination of the old Jewish communities in France and Germany in the
wake of the Black Death, Western Europe remained Judenrein for a couple of centuries, with
only a few enclaves vegetating on - except in Spain. It was an entirely different stock of Jews
who founded the modern communities of England, France and Holland in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries - the Sephardim (Spanish Jews), forced to flee from Spain where they
had been resident for more than a millennium. Their history - and the histor y of modern
European Jewry - lies outside the scope of this book.
We may safely conclude that the traditional idea of a mass-exodus of Western Jewry from
the Rhineland to Poland all across Germany - a hostile, Jewless glacis - is historically unten-
able. It is incompatible with the small size of the Rhenish Communities, their reluctance to
branch out from the Rhine valley towards the east, their stereotyped behaviour in adversity,
and the absence of references to migratory movements in contemporary chronicles. Fur ther
evidence for this view is provided by linguistics, to be discussed in Chapter VII.
69
69
References
1 According to William of Malmesbur y's De gestis regum Anglorum, quoted by Baron, Vol,
IV, p. 277.
2 Baron, Vol. IV, pp. 75-6.
3 Quoted by Baron, Vol. IV, p. 77.
4 Roth, C. (1973).
5 Roth, loc. cit.
6 Baron, Vol. IV, p. 271.
7 Ibid., p. 73.
8 Kutschera, p. 233.
9 14th ed., VI, p. 772, article 'Crusades'.
10 Baron. Vol. IV, p. 97.
11 Ibid., p. 104.
12 Ibid., pp. 105, 292n.
13 Dubnov, S. (1926), p. 427.
14 Ibid., p. 428.
15 Baron, Vol. IV, p. 129.
16 Ibid., p. 119.
17 Ibid., p. 116.
18 Mieses, M. (1924), p. 275.
19 Ibid., pp. 274-5.
20 Ibid., p. 273.
21 Kutschera, pp. 235-6, 241.
70
70
The Thirteenth Tribe
Arthur Koestler
VII
CROSS-CURRENTS
1
ON the evidence quoted in previous chapters, one can easily understand why Polish his-
torians - who are, after all, closest to the sources - are in agreement that "in earlier
times, the main bulk of the Jewish population originated from the Khazar country".1 One
might even be tempted to overstate the case by claiming - as Kutschera does - that Eastern
Jewry was a hundred per cent of Khazar origin. Such a claim might be tenable if the ill-fated
Franco-Rhenish community were the only rival in the search for paternity. But in the later
Middle Ages things become more complicated by the rise and fall of Jewish settlements all
over the territories of the former Austro-Hungarian monarchy, and the Balkans. Thus not only
Vienna and Prague had a considerable Jewish population, but there are no less than five
places called Judendorf, "Jew-village", in the Carinthian Alps, and more Judenburgs and
Judenstadts in the mountains of Styria. By the end of the fifteenth century, the Jews were
expelled from both provinces, and went to Italy, Poland and Hungary; but where did they origi-
nally come from? Certainly not from the West. As Mieses put it in his survey of these scat-
tered communities:
During the high Middle Ages we thus find in the east a chain of settlements
stretching from Bavaria to Persia, the Causcasus, Asia Minor and Byzantium.
[But] westward from Bavaria there is a gap through the whole length of
Germany . . . Just how this immigration of Jews into the Alpine regions came
about we do not know, but without doubt the three great reser voirs of Jews
from late antiquity played their part: Italy, Byzantium and Persia.2
The missing link in this enumeration is, once again, Khazaria, which, as we have seen ear-
lier on, ser ved as a receptacle and transit-station for Jews emigrating from Byzantium and the
Caliphate. Mieses has acquired great merit in refuting the legend of the Rhenish origin of
Eastern Jewry, but he, too, knew little of Khazar history, and was unaware of its demographic
importance. However, he may have been right in suggesting an Italian component among the
immigrants to Austria. Italy was not only quasi-saturated with Jews since Roman times, but,
like Khazaria, also received its share of immigrants from Byzantium. So here we might have a
trickle of "genuine" Jews of Semitic origin into Eastern Europe; yet it could not have been
more than a trickle, for there is no trace in the records of any substantial immigration of
Italian Jews into Austria, whereas there is plenty of evidence of a reverse migration of Jews
into Italy after their expulsion from the Alpine provinces at the end of the fifteenth century.
Details like this tend to blur the picture, and make one wish that the Jews had gone to Poland
on board the Mayflower, with all the records neatly kept.
Yet the broad outlines of the migrator y process are nevertheless discernible. The Alpine
settlements were in all likelihood westerly offshoots of the general Khazar migration toward
Poland, which was spread over several centuries and followed several different routes -
through the Ukraine, the Slavonic regions nor th of Hungary, perhaps also through the
Balkans. A Rumanian legend tells of an invasion - the date unknown - of armed Jews into that
countr y.3
2
There is another, very curious legend relating to the histor y of Austrian Jewry. It was
launched by Christian chroniclers in the Middle Ages, but was repeated in all seriousness
by historians as late as the beginning of the eighteenth century. In pre-Christian days, so
the legend goes, the Austrian provinces were ruled by a succession of Jewish princes. The
Austrian Chronicle, compiled by a Viennese scribe in the reign of Albert III(1350-95) contains
a list of no less than twenty-two such Jewish princes, who are said to have succeeded each
other. The list gives not only their alleged names, some of which have a distinctly Ural-Altaian
ring, but also the length of their rule and the place where they are buried; thus: "Sennan,
ruled 45 years, buried at the Stubentor in Vienna; Zippan, 43 years, buried in Tulln"; and so
on, including names like Lapton, Ma'alon, Raptan, Rabon, Effra, Sameck, etc. After these
Jews came five pagan princes, followed by Christian rulers. The legend is repeated, with some
variations, in the Latin histories of Austria by Henricus Gundelfingus, 1474, and by several oth-
ers, the last one being Anselmus Schram's Flores Chronicorum Austriae, 1702 (who still
seems to have believed in its authenticity).4 .How could this fantastic tale have originated?
71
Let us listen to Mieses again: "The very fact that such a legend could develop and stubbornly
maintain itself through several centuries, indicates that deep in the national consciousness
of ancient Austria dim memories persisted of a Jewish presence in the lands on the upper
Danube in bygone days. Who knows whether the tidal waves emanating from the Khazar
dominions in Eastern Europe once swept into the foothills of the Alps - which would explain
the Turanian flavour of the names of those princes. The confabulations of mediaeval chroni-
clers could evoke a popular echo only if they were suppor ted by collective
recollections, however vague."5
As already mentioned, Mieses is rather inclined to underestimate the Khazar contribution to
Jewish histor y, but even so he hit on the only plausible hypothesis which could explain the ori-
gin of the persistent legend. One may even venture to be a little more specific. For more than
half a centur y - up to AD 955 - Austria, as far west as the river Enns, was under Hungarian
domination. The Magyars had arrived in their new countr y in 896, together with the Kabar-
Khazar tribes who were influential in the nation. The Hungarians at the time were not yet con-
ver ted to Christianity (that happened only a century later, AD 1000) and the only monotheistic
religion familiar to them was Khazar Judaism. There may have been one or more tribal chief-
tains among them who practised a Judaism of sorts - we remember the Byzantine chronicler,
John Cinnamus, mentioning Jewish troops fighting in the Hungarian army.*[See above, V, 2.]
Thus there may have been some substance to the legend - par ticularly if we remember that
the Hungarians were still in their savage raiding period, the scourge of Europe. To be under
their dominion was certainly a traumatic experience which the Austrians were unlikely to for-
get. It all fits rather nicely.
3
Further evidence against the supposedly Franco-Rhenish origin of Eastern Jewr y is pro-
vided by the structure of Yiddish, the popular language of the Jewish masses, spoken by
millions before the holocaust, and still surviving among traditionalist minorities in the
Soviet Union and the United States.
Yiddish is a curious amalgam of Hebrew, mediaeval German, Slavonic and other elements,
written in Hebrew characters. Now that it is dying out, it has become a subject of much acad-
emic research in the United States and Israel, but until well into the twentieth century it was
considered by Western linguists as merely an odd jargon, hardly worth serious study. As H.
Smith remarked:
"Little attention has been paid to Yiddish by scholars. Apart from a few articles
in periodicals, the first really scientific study of the language was Mieses's
Historical Grammar published in 1924. It is significant that the latest edition of
the standard historical grammar of German, which treats German from the
point of view of its dialects, dismisses Yiddish in twelve lines."6
At first glance the prevalence of German loanwords in Yiddish seems to contradict our main
thesis on the origins of Eastern Jewry; we shall see presently that the opposite is true, but
the argument involves several steps. The first is to inquire what par ticular kind of regional
German dialect went into the Yiddish vocabulary. Nobody before Mieses seems to have paid
serious attention to this question; it is to his lasting merit to have done so, and to have come
up with a conclusive answer. Based on the study of the vocabulary, phonetics and syntax of
Yiddish as compared with the main German dialects in the Middle Ages, he concludes:
No linguistic components derived from the parts of Germany bordering on
France are found in the Yiddish language. Not a single word from the entire list
of specifically Moselle-Franconian origin compiled by J. A. Ballas (Beitrge zur
Kunntnis der Trierischen Volkssprache, 1903, 28ff.) has found its way into the
Yiddish vocabulary. Even the more central regions of Western Germany, around
Frankfur t, have not contributed to the Yiddish language....7 Insofar as the ori-
gins of Yiddish are concerned, Western Germany can be written off....8 Could it
be that the generally accepted view, according to which the German Jews once
upon a time immigrated from France across the Rhine, is misconceived? The
history of the German Jews, of Ashkenazi*[For "Ashkenazi" see below, VIII, I]
Jewry, must be revised. The errors of history are often rectified by linguistic
research. The conventional view of the erstwhile immigration of Ashkenazi Jews
from France belongs to the category of historic errors which are awaiting cor-
rection.9
He then quotes, among other examples of historic fallacies, the case of the Gypsies, who
were regarded as an offshoot from Egypt, "until linguistics showed that they come from
India".1 0
Having disposed of the alleged Western origin of the Germanic element in Yiddish, Mieses
went on to show that the dominant influence in it are the so-called "East-Middle German"
dialects which were spoken in the Alpine regions of Austria and Bavaria roughly up to the fif-
teenth century. In other words, the German component which went into the hybrid Jewish lan-
guage originated in the eastern regions of Germany, adjacent to the Slavonic belt of Eastern
Europe.
72
Thus the evidence from linguistics suppor ts the historical record in refuting the misconcep-
tion of the Franco-Rhenish origins of Eastern Jewr y. But this negative evidence does not
answer the question how an East-Middle German dialect combined with Hebrew and Slavonic
elements became the common language of that Eastern Jewry, the majority of which we
assume to have been of Khazar origin.
In attempting to answer this question, several factors have to be taken into consideration.
First, the evolution of Yiddish was a long and complex process, which presumably started in
the fifteenth century or even earlier; yet it remained for a long time a spoken language, a kind
of lingua franca, and appears in print only in the nineteenth century. Before that, it had no
established grammar, and "it was left to the individual to introduce foreign words as he
desires. There is no established form of pronunciation or spelling . . . The chaos in spelling
may be illustrated by the rules laid down by the Judische Volks- Bibliothek:
Thus Yiddish grew, through the centuries, by a kind of untrammelled proliferation, avidly
absorbing from its social environments such words, phrases, idiomatic expressions as best
ser ved its purpose as a lingua franca. But the culturally and socially dominant element in the
environment of mediaeval Poland were the Germans. They alone, among the immigrant popu-
lations, were economically and intellectually more influential than the Jews. We have seen
that from the early days of the Piast dynasty, and particular ly under Casimir the Great, every-
thing was done to attract immigrants to colonize the land and build "modern" cities. Casimir
was said to have "found a countr y of wood and left a countr y of stone". But these new cities
of stone, such as Krakau (Cracow) or Lemberg (Lwow) were built and ruled by German immi-
grants, living under the so-called Magdeburg law, i.e., enjoying a high degree of municipal self-
government. Altogether not less than four million Germans are said to have immigrated into
Poland,12 providing itthe
with an urban middleclass that it had not
intopossessed before. AsofPoliak
has put it, comparing German to the Khazar immigration Poland: "the rulers the
countr y imported these masses of much-needed enterprising foreigners, and facilitated their
settling down according to the way of life they had been used to in their countries of origin:
the German town and the Jewish shtetl". (However, this tidy separation became blurred when
later Jewish arrivals from the West also settled in the towns and formed urban ghettoes.) .Not
only the educated bourgeoisie, but the clergy too, was predominantly German - a natural con-
sequence of Poland opting for Roman Catholicism and turning toward Western civilization, just
as the Russian clergy after Vladimir's conversion to Greek orthodoxy was predominantly
Byzantine. Secular culture followed along the same lines, in the footsteps of the older
Western neighbour. The first Polish university was founded in 1364 in Cracow, then a predom-
inantly German city.*[One of its students in the next century was Nicolaus Copernicus or
Mikolaj Koppernigk whom both Polish and German patriots later claimed as their national.] As
Kutschera, the Austrian, has put it, rather smugly:
The German colonists were at first regarded by the people with suspicion and
distrust; yet they succeeded in gaining an increasingly firm foothold, and even
in introducing the German educational system. The Poles learnt to appreciate
the advantages of the higher culture introduced by the Germans and to imitate
their foreign ways. The Polish aristocracy, too, grew fond of German customs
and found beauty and pleasure in whatever came from Germany.1 3
Not exactly modest, but essentially true. One remembers the high esteem for German
Kultur among nineteenth-centur y Russian intellectuals.
It is easy to see why Khazar immigrants pouring into mediaeval Poland had to learn German
if they wanted to get on. Those who had close dealings with the native populace no doubt
also had to learn some pidgin Polish (or Lithuanian, or Ukrainian or Slovene); German, how-
ever, was a prime necessity in any contact with the towns. But there was also the synagogue
and the study of the Hebrew thorah. One can visualize a shtetl craftsman, a cobbler perhaps,
or a timber merchant, speaking broken German to his clients, broken Polish to the serfs on
the estate next door; and at home mixing the most expressive bits of both with Hebrew into a
kind of intimate private language. How this hotchpotch became communalized and standard-
ized to the extent to which it did, is any linguist's guess; but at least one can discern some
fur ther factors which facilitated the process.
Among the later immigrants to Poland there were also, as we have seen, a cer tain number
of "real" Jews from the Alpine countries, Bohemia and eastern Germany. Even if their number
was relatively small, these German-speaking Jews were superior in culture and learning to the
Khazars, just as the German Gentiles were culturally superior to the Poles. And just as the
Catholic clergy was German, so the Jewish rabbis from the West were a powerful factor in the
Germanization of the Khazars, whose Judaism was fer vent but primitive. To quote Poliak
again:
Those German Jews who reached the kingdom of Poland-Lithuania had an
73
enormous influence on their brethren from the east. The reason why the
[Khazar] Jews were so strongly attracted to them was that they admired their
religious learning and their efficiency in doing business with the predominantly
German cities.... The language spoken at the Heder, the school for religious
teaching, and at the house of the Ghevir [notable, rich man] would influence
the language of the whole community.1 4
A rabbinical tract from seventeenth-centur y Poland contains the pious wish:
"May God will that the country be filled with wisdom and that all Jews speak
German."1 5.
Characteristically, the only sector among the Khazarian Jews in Poland which resisted both
the spiritual and worldly temptations offered by the German language were the Karaites, who
rejected both rabbinical learning and material enrichment. Thus they never took to Yiddish.
According to the first all-Russian census in 1897, there were 12894 Karaite Jews living in the
Tsarist Empire (which, of course, included Poland). Of these 9666 gave Turkish as their
mother tongue (i.e., presumably their original Khazar dialect), 2632 spoke Russian, and only
383 spoke Yiddish.
The Karaite sect, however, represents the exception rather than the rule. In general, immi-
grant populations settling in a new countr y tend to shed their original language within two or
three generations and adopt the language of their new country.*[This does not, of course,
apply to conquerors and colonizers, who impose their own language on the natives.] The
American grandchildren of immigrants from Eastern Europe never learn to speak Polish or
Ukrainian, and find the jabber-wocky of their grandparents rather comic. It is difficult to see
how historians could ignore the evidence for the Khazar migration into Poland on the grounds
that more than half a millennium later they speak a different language.
Incidentally, the descendants of the biblical Tribes are the classic example of linguistic
adaptability. First they spoke Hebrew; in the Babylonian exile, Chaldean; at the time of Jesus,
Aramaic; in Alexandria, Greek; in Spain, Arabic, but later Ladino - a Spanish-Hebrew mixture,
written in Hebrew characters, the Sephardi equivalent of Yiddish; and so it goes on. They pre-
served their religious identity, but changed languages at their convenience. The Khazars were
not descended from the Tribes, but, as we have seen, they shared a certain cosmopolitanism
and other social characteristics with their co-religionists.
4
Poliak has proposed an additional hypothesis concerning the early origins of Yiddish,
which deserves to be mentioned, though it is rather problematical. He thinks that the
"shape of ear ly Yiddish emerged in the Gothic regions of the Khazar Crimea. In those
regions the conditions of life were bound to bring about a combination of Germanic and
Hebrew elements hundreds of years before the foundation of the settlements in the
Kingdoms of Poland and Lithuania."1 6
Poliak quotes as indirect evidence a cer tain Joseph Barbaro of Venice, who lived in Tana (an
Italian merchant colony on the Don estuary) from 1436 to 1452, and who wrote that his
German ser vant could converse with a Goth from the Crimea just as a Florentine could under-
stand the language of an Italian from Genoa. As a matter of fact, the Gothic language sur-
vived in the Crimea (and apparently nowhere else) at least to the middle of the sixteenth
century. At that time the Habsburg ambassador in Constantinople, Ghiselin de Busbeck, met
people from the Crimea, and made a list of words from the Gothic that they spoke. (This
Busbeck must have been a remarkable man, for it was he who first introduced the lilac and
tulip from the Levant to Europe.) Poliak considers this vocabulary to be close to the Middle
High German elements found in Yiddish. He thinks the Crimean Goths kept contact with other
Germanic tribes and that their language was influenced by them. Whatever one may think of
it, it is a hypothesis worth the linguist's attention.
5
"In a sense," wrote Cecil Roth, "the Jewish dark ages may be said to begin with the
Renaissance."17 .Earlier on, there had been massacres and other forms of persecution during
the crusades, the Black Death, and under other pretexts; but these had been lawless out-
breaks of massviolence, actively opposed or passively tolerated by the authorities. From the
beginnings of the Counter-Reformation, however, the Jews were legally degraded to not-quite-
human status, in many respects comparable to the Untouchables in the Hindu caste system.
"The few communities suffered to remain in Western Europe - i.e., in Italy, Germany, and the
papal possessions in southern France - were subjected at last to all the restrictions which
earlier ages had usually allowed to remain an ideal"1 8 - i.e., which had existed on ecclesiasti-
cal and other decrees, but had remained on paper (as, for instance, in Hungary, see above, V,
2). Now, however, these "ideal" ordinances were ruthlessly enforced: residential segregation,
sexual apar theid, exclusion from all respected positions and occupations; wearing of distinc-
tive clothes: yellow badge and conical headgear. In 1555 Pope Paul IV in his bull cum nimis
absurdum insisted on the strict and consistent enforcement of earlier edicts, confining Jews
to closed ghettoes. A year later the Jews of Rome were forcibly transferred. All Catholic coun-
tries, where Jews still enjoyed relative freedom of movement, had to follow the example.
74
In Poland, the honeymoon period inaugurated by Casimir the Great had lasted longer than
elsewhere, but by the end of the sixteenth century it had run its course. The Jewish communi-
ties, now confined to shtetl and ghetto, became overcrowded, and the refugees from the
Cossack massacres in the Ukrainian villages under Chmelnicky (see above, V, 5) led to a rapid
deterioration of the housing situation and economic conditions. The result was a new wave of
massive emigration into Hungary, Bohemia, `Rumania and Germany, where the Jews who had
all but vanished with the Black Death were still thinly spread. .Thus the great trek to the West
was resumed. It was to continue through nearly three centuries until the Second World War,
and became the principal source of the existing Jewish communities in Europe, the United
States and Israel. When its rate of flow slackened, the pogroms of the nineteenth century pro-
vided a new impetus. "The second Western movement," writes Roth (dating the first from the
destruction of Jerusalem), "which continued into the twentieth centur y, may be said to begin
with the deadly Chmelnicky massacres of 1648-49 in Poland."19
6
The evidence quoted in previous chapters adds up to a strong case in favour of those
modern historians - whether Austrian, Israeli or Polish who, independently from each
other, have argued that the bulk of modern Jewry is not of Palestinian, but of Caucasian
origin. The mainstream of Jewish migrations did not flow from the Mediterranean across
France and Germany to the east and then back again. The stream moved in a consistently
westerly direction, from the Caucasus through the Ukraine into Poland and thence into Central
Europe. When that unprecedented mass-settlement in Poland came into beng, there were
simply not enough Jews around in the west to account for it; while in the east a whole nation
was on the move to new frontiers. .It would of course be foolish to deny that Jews of different
origin also contributed to the existing Jewish world-community. The numerical ratio of the
Khazar to the Semitic and other contributions is impossible to establish. But the cumulative
evidence makes one inclined to agree with the concensus of Polish historians that "in earlier
times the main bulk originated from the Khazar country"; and that, accordingly, the Khazar
contribution to the genetic make-up of the Jews must be substantial, and in all likelihood dom-
inant.
75
References
1 Vetulani, loc. Cit.
2 Mieses, pp. 291-2.
3 Jewish Enc., Vol. X, p. 512.
4 Fuhrmann (1737), quoted by Mieses, p. 2,79.
5 Mieses, loc. cit,
6 Smith, H., Proc. V, pp. 65f.
7 Mieses, p. 211.
8 Ibid., p. 269.
9 Ibid., p. 272.
10 Ibid., p. 272.
11 Smith, op. cit., p. 66,
12 Kutschera, p. 244.
13 Kutschera, p. 2.43.
14 Poliak, ch. IX.
15 Quoted by Poliak, loc. cit.
16 Poliak, loc. cit.
17 Roth, loc. cit.
18 Roth, loc. cit.
19 Ibid.
76
The Thirteenth Tribe
Arthur koestler
VIII
RACE AND MYTH
1
THE Jews of our times fall into two main divisions: Sephardim and Ashkenazim. The
Sephardim are descendants of the Jews who since antiquity had lived in Spain (in
Hebrew Sepharad) until they were expelled at the end of the fifteenth centur y and settled
in the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, the Balkans, and to a lesser extent in
Western Europe. They spoke a Spanish-Hebrew dialect, Ladino (see VII, 3), and preserved
their own traditions and religious rites. In the 1960s, the number of Sephardim was esti-
mated at 500000.
The Ashkenazim, at the same period, numbered about eleven million. Thus, in common par-
lance, Jew is practically synonymous with Ashkenazi Jew. But the term is misleading, for the
Hebrew word Ashkenaz was, in mediaeval rabbinical literature, applied to Germany - thus con-
tributing to the legend that modern Jewry originated on the Rhine. There is, however, no other
term to refer to the non-Sephardic majority of contemporar y Jewr y.
For the sake of piquantr y it should be mentioned that the Ashkenaz of the Bible refers to a
people living somewhere in the vicinity of Mount Ararat and Armenia. The name occurs in
Genesis 10, 3 and I Chronciles 1, 6, as one of the sons of Gomer, who was a son of Japheth.
Ashkenaz is also a brother of Togarmah (and a nephew of Magog) whom the Khazars, accord-
ing to King Joseph, claimed as their ancestor (see above II, 5) But worse was to come. For
Ashkenaz is also named in Jeremiah 51, 27, where the prophet calls his people and their
allies to rise and destroy Babylon:
"Call thee upon the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni and Ashkenaz."
This passage was interpreted by the famous Saadiah Gaon, spiritual leader of Oriental
Jewry in the tenth century, as a prophecy relating to his own times: Babylon symbolized the
Caliphate of Baghdad,
selves or some and the
allied tribe. Ashkenaz who
Accordingly, says were to attack
Poliak,1 some itlearned
were either
KhazartheJews,
Khazars
whothem-
heard
of the Gaon's ingenious arguments, called themselves Ashkenazim when they emigrated to
Poland. It does not prove anything, but it adds to the confusion.
2
Summing up a very old and bitter controversy in a laconic paragraph, Raphael Patai wrote:2
The findings of physical anthropology show that, contrary to popular view, there
is no Jewish race. Anthropometric measurements of Jewish groups in many
parts of the world indicate that they differ greatly from one another with respect
to all the impor tant physical characteristics - stature, weight, skin colour,
cephalic index, facial index, blood groups, etc.
This indeed is the accepted view today among anthropologists and historians. Moreover,
there is general agreement that comparisons of cranial indices, blood types, etc., show a
greater similarity between Jews and their Gentile host-nation than between Jews living in dif-
ferent countries.
Yet, paradoxically, the popular belief that Jews, or at least certain types of Jews, can be
instantly recognized as such, must not be dismissed out of hand - for the simple reason that
it has a factual basis in every-day existence. The anthropologists' evidence seems to be at
loggerheads with common obser vation.
However, before attempting to tackle the apparent contradiction, it will be useful to look at a
few samples of the data on which the anthropologists' denial of a Jewish race is based. To
start with, here is a quotation from the excellent series of booklets on The Race Question in
Modern Science published by UNESCO. The author, Professor Juan Comas, draws the follow-
ing conclusion from the statistical material (his italics):
77
Thus despite the view usually held, the Jewish people is racially heteroge-
neous; its constant migrations and its relations - voluntary or otherwise - with
the widest variety of nations and peoples have brought about such a degree of
crossbreeding that the so-called people of Israel can produce examples of
traits typical of every people. For proof it will suffice to compare the rubicund,
sturdy, heavily-built Rotterdam Jew with his co- religionist, say, in Salonika with
gleaming eyes in a sickly face and skinny, high-strung physique. Hence, so far
as our knowledge goes, we can assert that Jews as a whole display as great a
degree of morphological disparity among themselves as could be found
between members of two or more different races.3
Next, we must glance at some of the physical characteristics which anthropologists use as
criteria, and on which Comas's conclusions are based.
One of the simplest - and as it turned out, most naive - of these criteria was bodily stature.
In The Races of Europe, a monumental work published in 1900, William Ripley wrote:
"The European Jews are all undersized; not only this, they are more often
absolutely stunted."4
He was up to a point right at the time, and he produced ample statistics to prove it. But he
was shrewd enough to surmise that this deficiency in height might somehow be influenced by
environmental factors.5 the
Eleven years later, Maurice Fishberg published The Jews - A Study
Race and Environment, first anthropological sur vey of its kind in English. It revealed theof
surprising fact that the children of East European Jewish immigrants to the USA grew to an
average height of 167.9 cm. compared to the 164.2 cm. averaged by their parents - a gain of
nearly
that theandescendants
inch and a half in a singlepopulations
of immigrant generation.6 Since then
- whether it has
Jews, become
Italians a commonplace
or Japanese - are con-
siderably taller than their parents, no doubt owing to their improved diet and other environ-
mental factors.
Fishberg then collected statistics comparing the average height of Jews and Gentiles in
Poland, Austria, Rumania, Hungary, and so on. The result again was a surprise. In general it
was found that the stature of the Jews varied with the stature of the non Jewish population
among which they lived. They were relatively tall where the indigenous population is tall, and
vice versa. Moreover, within the same nation, and even within the same town (Warsaw) the
bodily height of Jews and Gentiles was found to vary according to the degree of prosperity of
the district.7
layed All thisby
and modified does not mean that
environmental heredity has
influences, and no influence
is unfit on height;
as a criterion of but
race.it is over-
We may now turn to cranial measurements - which were once the great fashion among
anthropologists, but are now considered rather outdated. Here we meet again with the same
type of conclusion derived from the data:
"A comparison of the cephalic indices of Jewish and non-Jewish populations in
various countries reveals a marked similarity between the Jewish and non-
Jewish indices in many countries, while showing ver y wide variations when the
cephalic indices of Jewish populations inhabiting different countries are com-
pared. Thus one is driven to the conclusion that this feature, its plasticity not
withstanding, points to a racial diversity of the Jews."8
This diversity, it should be noted, is most pronounced between Sephardi and Ashkenazi
Jews. By and large, the Sephardim are dolichocephalic (long-headed), the Ashkenazim brachy-
cephalic (broad-headed). Kutschera saw in this difference a further proof of the separate
racial origin of Khazar-Ashkenazi and Semitic-Sephardi Jews. But we have just seen that the
indices of short-or long-headedness are co-variant with the host-nations' - which to some
extent invalidates the argument.
The statistics relating to other physical features also speak against racial unity. Generally,
Jews are dark-haired and darkeyed. But how general is "generally", when, according to
Comas, 49 per cent of Polish Jews were light-haired,9 and 54 per cent of Jewish schoolchild-
ren in Austria had blueineyes ?1 0 It is true that
theVirchov1 1 found "only" 32 per cent of blond
Jewish schoolchildren Germany, whereas proportion of blond Gentiles was larger; but
that merely shows that the co-variance is not absolute - as one would expect.
The hardest evidence to date comes from classification by blood groups. A great amount of
work has recently been done in this field, but it will be sufficient to quote a single example
with a par ticularly sensitive indicator. In Patai's words:
With regard to blood type, Jewish groups show considerable differences among
themselves and mar ked similarities to the Gentile environment. The Hirszfeld
"biochemical index"
(A+AB)
(B+AB)
can be used most conveniently to express this. A few typical examples are:
German Jews 2.74, German Gentiles 2.63; Rumanian Jews 1.54, Rumanian
Gentiles 1.55; Polish Jews 1.94, Polish Gentiles 1.55; Moroccan Jews 1.63,
78
Moroccan Gentiles 1.63; Iraqi Jews 1.22, Iraqi Gentiles 1.37; Turkistan Jews
0.97, Turkistan Gentiles 0.99.12
One might sum up this situation in two mathematical formulae:
Ga-Ja <Ja -
Jb
and:
Ga-Gb = Ja~ - Jb
That is to say that, broadly speaking, the difference in respect of anthropological criteria
between Gentiles (Ga ) and Jews (Ja ) in a given country (a) is smaller than the difference
between Jews in different countries (a and b); and the difference between Gentiles in coun-
tries a and b is similar to the difference between Jews in a and b.
It seems appropriate to wind up this section with another quotation from Harr y Shapiro's
contribution to the UNESCO series - The Jewish People: A Biological
History:13
The wide range of variation between Jewish populations in their physical char-
acteristics and the diversity of the gene frequencies of their blood groups ren-
der any unified racial classification for them a contradiction in terms. For
although modern racial theory admits some degree of polymorphism or varia-
tion within a racial group, it does not permit distinctly different groups, mea-
sured by its own criteria of race, to be identified as one. To do so would make
the biological purposes of racial classification futile and the whole procedure
arbitrary and meaningless. Unfortunately, this subject is rarely wholly divorced
from non-biological considerations, and despite the evidence efforts continue
to be made to somehow segregate the Jews as a distinct racial entity.
3
How did this twin-phenomenon - diversity in somatic features and conformity to the host-
nation - come about? The geneticists' obvious answer is: through miscegenation com-
bined with selective pressures.
"This", writes Fishberg, "is indeed the crucial point in the anthropology of the Jews: are
they of pure race, modified more or less by environmental influences, or are they a religious
sect composed of racial elements acquired by proselytism and intermarriage during their
migration in various parts of the wor ld?" And he leaves his readers in no doubt about the
answer :1 4
Beginning with Biblical evidence and traditions, it appears that even in the
beginning of the formation of the tribe of Israel they were already composed of
various racial elements.... We find in Asia Minor, Syria and Palestine at that
time many races - the Amorites, who were blondes, dolichocephalic, and tall;
the Hittites, a dark-complexioned race, probably of Mongoloid type; the
Cushites, a negroid race; and many others. With all these the ancient Hebrews
intermarried, as can be seen in many passages in the Bible.
The prophets may thunder against "marrying daughters of a strange god", yet the promis-
cuous Israelites were not deterred, and their leaders were foremost in giving a bad example.
Even the first patriarch, Abraham, cohabited with Hagar, an Egyptian; Joseph married
Asenath, who was not only Egyptian but the daughter of a priest; Moses married a Midianite,
Zipporah; Samson, the Jewish hero, was a Philistine; King David's mother was a Moabite, and
he married a princess of Geshur ; as for King Solomon (whose mother was a Hittite), "He
loved many strange women, including the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites,
Animonites, Edomites, Zidonians, and Hittites . . . "1 5 And so the chronique scandaleuse goes
on. The Bible also makes it clear that the royal example was imitated by many, high and low.
Besides, the biblical prohibition of marrying Gentiles exempted female captives in times of
war - and there was no shortage of them. The Babylonian exile did not improve racial purity;
even members of priestly families married Gentile women. In short, at the beginning of the
Diaspora, the Israelites were already a thoroughly hybridized race. So, of course, were most
historic nations, and the point would not need stressing if it were not for the persistent myth
of the Biblical Tribe having preserved its racial purity throughout the ages.
Another important source of interbreeding were the vast numbers of people of the most
varied races converted to Judaism. Witness to the proselytizing zeal of the Jews of earlier
times are the black-skinned Falasha of Abyssinia, the Chinese Jews of Kai-Feng who look like
Chinese, the Yemenite Jews with their dark olive complexion, the Jewish Berber tribes of the
Sahara who look like Tuaregs, and so on, down to our prime example, the Khazars.
Nearer home, Jewish proselytizing reached its peak in the Roman Empire between the fall
of the Jewish state and the rise of Christianity. Many patrician families in Italy were converted,
but also the royal family which ruled the province of Adiabene. Philo speaks of numerous con-
verts in Greece; Flavius Josephus relates that a large proportion of the population of Antioch
79
was Judaized; St Paul met with proselytes on his travels more or less ever ywhere from Athens
to Asia Minor. "The fer vour of proselytism", the Jewish historian Th. Reinach
wrote:16
Was indeed one of the most distinctive traits of Judaism during the Greco-
Roman epoch - a trait which it never possessed in the same degree either
before or since . . . It cannot be doubted that Judaism in this way made numer-
ous converts during two or three centuries . . . The enormous growth of the
Jewish nation in Egypt, Cyprus, and Cyrene cannot be accounted for without
supposing an abundant infusion of Gentile blood. Proselytism swayed alike the
upper and the lower classes of society.
The rise of Christianity slowed down the rate of miscegenation, and the ghetto put a tempo-
rary end to it; but before the ghetto-rules were strictly enforced in the sixteenth centur y, the
process still went on. This is shown by the ever- repeated ecclesiastic interdictions of mixed
marriages - e.g., by the Council of Toledo, 589; the Council of Rome, 743; the first and sec-
ond Lateran Councils 1123 and 1139; or the edict of King Ladislav II of Hungar y in 1092.
That all these prohibitions were only partly effective is shown, for instance, by the report of
the Hungarian Archbishop Rober t von Grain to the Pope AD 1229, complaining that many
Christian women are married to Jews, and that within a few years "many thousands of
Christians" were lost in this way to the Church.17
The only effective bar were the ghetto walls. When these crumbled, intermarriages started
again. Their rate accelerated to such an extent that in Germany, between 1921 and 1925, out
of every 100 marriages involving Jews, 42 were mixed.18 .As for the Sephardi, or "true" Jews,
their sojourn in Spain for more than a millennium left its indelible mar k both on themselves
and on their hosts. As Arnold Toynbee wrote:
There is every reason to believe that in Spain and Por tugal today there is a strong tincture
of the blood of these Jewish conver ts in Iberian veins, especially in the upper and middle
classes. Yet the most acut psychoanalyst would find it difficult, if samples of living upper-and
middle-class Spanish and Por tuguese were presented to him, to detect who had Jewish
ancestors.1 9
The process worked both ways. After the massacres of 1391 and 1411 which swept the
Peninsula, over 100000 Jews at a moderate estimate - accepted baptism. But a considerable
proportion of them continued to practice Judaism in secret. These crypto-Jews, the Marranos,
prospered, rose to high positions at court and in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and intermarried
with the aristocracy. After the expulsion of all unrepentant Jews from Spain (1492) and
Portugal (1497) the Marranos were regarded with increasing suspicion; many were burned by
the Inquisition, the majority emigrated in the sixteenth century to the countries around the
Mediterranean, to Holland, England and France. Once in safety, they openly rever ted to their
faith and, together with the 1492-7 expellees, founded the new Sephardic communities in
these countries.
Thus Toynbee's remark about the hybrid ancestry of the upper strata of society in Spain
also applies, mutatis mutandis, to the Sephardic communities of Western Europe. Spinoza's
parents were Portuguese Marranos, who emigrated to Amsterdam. The old Jewish families of
England (who arrived here long before the nineteenth-twentieth century influx from the east),
the Montefiores, Lousadas, Montagues, Avigdors, Sutros, Sassoons, etc., all came out of the
Iberian mixing bowl, and can claim no purer racial origin than the Ashkenazis - or the Jews
named Davis, Harris, Phillips or Hart.
One distressingly recurrent type of event was miscegenation by rape. That too has a long
history star ting in Palestine. We are told, for example, that a certain Juda ben Ezekial
opposed his son marr ying a woman who was not of "the seed of Abraham", whereupon his
friend Ulla remarked: "How do we know for certain that we ourselves are not descended from
the
(theheathens whotheviolated the maidens of Zion atwas
theconsidered
siege of Jerusalem?"2 0 Rape and loot
amount of latter often fixed in advance) a natural right of a conquer-
ing army.
There is an ancient tradition, recorded by Graetz, which attributes the origin of the earliest
Jewish settlements in Germany to
an episode reminiscent of the rape of the Sabine women. According to this tradition, a
German unit, the Vangioni who fought with the Roman legions in Palestine, "had chosen from
the vast horde of Jewish prisoners the most beautiful women, had brought them back to their
stations on the shores of the Rhine and the Main, and had compelled them to minister to the
satisfaction of their desires. The children thus begotten of Jewish and German parents were
brought up by their mothers in the Jewish faith, their fathers not troubling themselves about
them. It is these children who are said to have been the founders of the first Jewish commu-
nities between Worms and Mayence."21
In Eastern Europe rape was even more common. To quote Fishberg again:
Such violent infusion of Gentile blood into the veins of the flock of Israel has
been especially frequent in Slavonic countries. One of the favourite methods of
the Cossacks to wring out money from the Jews was to take a large number of
prisoners, knowing well that the Jews would ransom them. That the women
thus ransomed were violated by these semi-savage tribes goes without saying.
In fact, the "Council of the Four Lands", at its session in the winter of 1650,
had to take cognizance of the poor women and children born to them from
80
Cossack husbands during captivity, and thus restore order in the family and
social life of the Jews. Similar outrages were ... again perpetrated on Jewish
women in Russia during the massacres in 1903-5.2 2
4
And yet - to return to the paradox - many people, who are neither racialists nor anti-
Semites, are convinced that they are able to recognize a Jew at a single glance. How is
this possible if Jews are such a hybrid lot as history and anthropology show them to be?
Par t of the answer, I think, was given by Ernest Renan in 1883: "Il n'y a pas un type juif il y a
des types juifs."23 The type of aJew who can beofrecognized "at a glance" is onetoparticular type
among many others. But only small fraction fourteen million Jews belong that particu-
lar type, and those who appear to belong to it are by no means always Jews. One of the most
prominent features - literally and metaphorically - which is said to characterize that particular
type is the nose, variously described as Semitic, aquiline, hooked, or resembling the beak of
an eagle (bec d'aigle). But, surprisingly, among 2836 Jews in New York City, Fishberg found
that only 14 per cent - i.e., one person in seven - had a hooked nose; while 57 per cent were
straight-nosed, 20 per cent were snub-nosed and 6.5 per cent had "flat and broad noses".2 4
Other anthropologists came up with smiilar results regarding Semitic noses in Poland and
the Ukraine.25 Moreover, among true Semites, such as pure-bred Bedoums, this form of nose
does not seem to occur at all.26 On the other hand, it is "very frequently met among the vari-
ous Caucasian tribes, and also in Asia Minor. Among the indigenous races in this region, such
as the Armenians, Georgians, Ossets, Lesghians, Aissors, and also the Syrians, aquiline
noses are the r ule. Among the people living in Mediterranean countries of Europe, as the
Greeks, Italians, French, Spanish and Por tuguese, the aquiline nose is also more frequently
encountered than among the Jews of Eastern Europe. The North American Indians also very
often have 'Jewish' noses."2 7 .Thus the nose alone is not a very safe guide to identification.
Only a minority - a particular type of Jew - seems to have a convex nose, and lots of other eth-
nic groups also have it. Yet intuition tells one that the anthropologists' statistics must be
somehow wrong. An ingenious way out of this conundrum was suggested by Beddoc and
Jacobs, who maintained that the "Jewish nose" need not be really convex in profile, and may
yet give the impression of being "hooked", due to a peculiar "tucking up of the wings", an
infolding of the nostrils.
To prove his point that it is this "nostrility" which provides the illusion of beakedness,
Jacobs invites his readers "to write a figure 6 with a long tail (Fig 1); now remove the turn of
the twist, as in Fig 2, and much of the Jewishness disappears; and it vanishes entirely when
we draw the lower continuation horizontally, as in Fig 3". Ripley, quoting Jacobs, comments:
"Behold the transformation! The Jew has turned Roman beyond a doubt. What have we
proved then? That there is in reality such a phenomenon as a Jewish nose, even though it be
differently constituted from our first assumption [the criterion of convexity].2
8 ButIndian
Red
is there? Figure 1 could still represent an Italian, or Greek, or Spanish or Armenian, or
nose, "nostrility" included. That it is a Jewish, and not a Red Indian, Armenian,
etc., nose we deduce - at a glance - from the context of other features, including expression,
comportment, dress. It is not a process of logical analysis, but rather in the nature of the
psychologist's Gestalt perception, the grasping of a configuration as a whole.
Similar considerations apply to each of the facial features considered to be typically Jewish
- "sensuous lips"; dark, wavy or crinkly hair; melancholy, or cunning, or bulging or slit Mongol
eyes, and so for th. Taken separately, they are common proper ty of the most varied nations;
put together, like an identikit, they combine into a prototype of - to say it once more - one par-
ticular type of Jew, of Eastern European origin, the type with which we are familiar. But our
identi-kit would not fit the various other types of Jews, such as the Sephardim (including their
ver y anglicized descendants in Britain); nor the Slavonic type of Central Europe, nor the blond
Teutonic, the slit-eyed Mongoloid, or the crinkly-haired Negroid types of Jews.
Nor can we be sure to recognize with certainty even this limited prototype. The collection of
por traits published by Fishberg, or Ripley, can be used for a "believe it or not" game, if you
cover the caption indicating whether the portrayed person is Jew or Gentile. The same game
can be played on a caf terrace anywhere near the shores of the Mediterranean. It will, of
course, remain inconclusive because you cannot walk up to the experimental subject and
inquire after his or her religion; but if you play the game in company, the amount of disagree-
ment between the obser vers' verdicts will be a surprise. Suggestibility also plays a par t. "Did
81
you know that Harold is Jewish?" "No, but now that you mention it of course I can see it.,"
"Did you know that (this or that) royal family has Jewish blood?" "No, but now that you men-
tion it . . . " Hutchinson's Races of Mankind has a picture of three Geishas with the caption:
Japanese with Jewish physiognomy. Once you have read the caption you feel: "But of course.
How could I have missed it?" And when you have played this game for some time, you begin
to see Jewish features - or Khazar features - everywhere.
5
82
" . . . The cast of countenance changes very easily under a change of social
environment. I have noted such a rapid change among immigrants to the
United States . . . The new physiognomy is best noted when some of these
immigrants return to their native homes . . . This fact offers excellent proof that
the social elements in which a man moves exercise a profound influence on his
physical features."30
The proverbial melting-pot seems to be producing an American physiognomy - a more or
less standardized phenotype emerging from a wide variety of genotypes. Even the pure-bred
Chinese and Japanese of the States seem to be affected by the process to some extent. At
any rate, one can often recognize an American face "at a glance", regardless of dress and
speech, and regardless of its owner's Italian, Polish or German ancestry.
6
In any discussion of the biological and social inheritance of the Jews, the shadow of the
ghetto must loom large. The Jews of Europe and America, and even of North Africa, are chil-
dren of the ghetto, at no more than four or five generations removed. Whatever their geo-
graphical origin, within the ghetto-walls they lived everywhere in more or less the same milieu,
subjected for several centuries to the same formative, or deformative, influences.
From the geneticist's point of view, we can distinguish three such major influences: inbreed-
ing, genetic drift, selection.
Inbreeding may have played, at a different period, as large a part in Jewish racial history as
its opposite, hybridization. From biblical times to the era of enforced segregation, and again in
modern times, miscegenation was the dominant trend. In between, there stretched three to
five In Part One
centuries of this book
(according I have attempted to trace the histor y- of theinKhazar Empire based
of on
the scant existing
consanguinous sources.to
marriages
country)
.In Part of isolation
theTwo, Chapters and inbreeding
V-VII, both
I have compiled the
the strict senseevi-
historical
dence which indicates thatand
theinbulk broader
of sense
Eastern Jewryof -endogamy
and hencewithin a small,
of world Jewr segregated
y - is of
group. Inbreeding carries the danger of bringing deleterious recessive genes together and
allowing them to take effect. The high incidence of congenital idiocy among Jews has been
known
as somefor a long time,31asser
anthropologists and ted,
was ainSemitic
all probability a result of Mental
racial peculiarity. protracted
and inbreeding - and not,
physical malforma-
tions are conspicuously frequent in remote Alpine villages, where most of the tombstones in
the churchyard show one of half a dozen family names. There are no Cohens or Levys
amongst them..But inbreeding may also produce champion race-horses through favourable
gene combinations. Perhaps it contributed to the production of both cretins and geniuses
among the children of the ghetto. It reminds one of Chaim Weizmann's dictum: "The Jews are
like other people, only more so." But genetics has little information to offer in this field.
Another process which may have profoundly affected the people in the ghetto is "genetic
drift" (also known as the Sewall Wright effect). It refers to the loss of hereditary traits in
small, isolated populations, either because none of its founding members happened to pos-
sess the corresponding genes, or because only a few possessed them but failed to transmit
them to the next generation. Genetic drift can thus produce considerable transformations in
the hereditary characteristics of small communities.
The selective pressures active within the ghetto walls must have been of an intensity rarely
encountered in history. For one thing, since the Jews were debarred from agriculture, they
became completely urbanized, concentrated in towns or shtetls, which became increasingly
overcrowded. As a result, to quote Shapiro:
"the devastating epidemics that swept mediaeval cities and towns, would in
the long run have been more selective on Jewish populations than on any oth-
ers, leaving them with progressively greater immunity as time went on . . . and
their modern descendants would, therefore, represent the survivors of a rigor-
ous and specific selective process."32
This, he thinks, may account for the rarity of tuberculosis among Jews, and their relative
longevity (amply illustrated by statistics collected by Fishberg).
The hostile pressures surrounding the ghetto ranged from cold contempt to sporadic acts
of violence to organized pogroms. Several centuries of living in such conditions must have
favoured the survival of the glibbest, the most pliant and mentally resilient; in a word, the
ghetto type. Whether such psychological traits are based on hereditary dispositions on which
the selective process operates, or are transmitted by social inheritance through childhood
conditioning, is a question still hotly disputed among anthropologists. We do not even know
to what extent a high IQ is attributable to heredity, and to what extent to milieu. Take, for
instance, the Jews' once proverbial abstemiousness which some authorities on alcoholism
regarded
the ghetto,asthe
a racial trait.3 3residue
unconscious But oneofcan justfor
living as centuries
well interpret
underitprecarious
as another conditions
inheritancewhich
from
made it dangerous to lower one's guard; the Jew with the yellow star on his back had to
remain cautious and sober, while watching with amused contempt the antics of the "drunken
goy". Revulsion against alcohol and other forms of debauch was instilled from parent to child
in successive generations - until the memories of the ghetto faded, and with progressive
assimilation, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon countries, the alcohol intake progressively
increased. Thus abstemiousness, like so many other Jewish characteristics, turned out to be,
after all, a matter of social and not biological, inheritance.
83
Lastly, there is yet another evolutionary process - sexual selection - which may have con-
tributed in producing the traits which we have come to regard as typically Jewish. Ripley
seems to have been the first to suggest this (his italics):
"The Jew is radically mixed in the line of racial descent; he is, on the other
hand, the legitimate heir to all Judaism as a matter of choice.... It affected
ever y detail of their life. Why should it not also react upon their ideal of physical
beauty? and why not influence their sexual preferences, as well as determine
their choice in marriage? Its results thus became accentuated through hered-
ity."34
Ripley did not inquire into the ghetto's "ideal of physical beauty". But Fishberg did, and
came up with an appealing suggestion: "To the strictly orthodox Jew in Eastern Europe, a
strong muscular person is an Esau. The ideal of a son of Jacob was during the centuries
before thewillowy
middle of the nineteenth century, 'a silken
allyoung
brainsman'."35 This was
.But,a he
delicate,
anaemic, youth with a wistful expression, and no brawn. continues,
"in Western Europe and America there is at present a strong tendency in the opposite direc-
tion. Many Jews are proud of the fact that they do not look like Jews. Considering this, it must
be acknowledged that there is hardly a glowing future for the so-called 'Jewish' cast of coun-
tenance."36
Least of all, we may add, among young Israelis.
Summary
84
References
1 Poliak, op. cit., Appendix. Ill.
2 Enc. Brit. (1973), Vol XII, p. 1054.
3 Comas, J. (1958), pp, 31-2.
4 Ripley, W, (1900), p, 377,
5 Ibid., pp. 378ff.
6 Fishberg, M. (1911), p, 37.
7 Fishberg, ch. II.
8 Patai, op. cit.
9 Comas, p. 30.
10 Fishberg, p. 63.
11 Quoted by Fishberg, p. 63.
12 Patat, op. cit., p. 1054.
13 Shapiro, H. (1953), pp. 74-5.
14 Fishberg, p. 181.
15 I Kings, XI, I.
16 Quoted by Fishberg, pp. 186-7.
17 Fishberg, p. 189, n. 2.
18 Comas, p. 31.
19 Toynbee, 1947, p. 138.
20 Graetz, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 213,
21 Ibid., Vol. Ill, pp, 40-1,
22 Fishberg, p. 191.
23 Renan (1883), p. 24.
24 Fishberg, p. 79.
25 Ripley, p. 394f.
26 Fishberg, p. 83, quoting Luschan.
27 Fishberg, p. 83.
28 Ripley, p. 395.
29 Leiris, M. (1958), pp. 11 and 12.
30 Fishberg, p. 513,
31 Fishberg, pp. 332ff
32 Shapiro H. (1953), p. 80.
33 e.g., Kerr and Reid, quoted by Fishberg, pp. 274-5.
34 Ripley, p. 398.
35 Fishberg, p. 178.
36 Loc. cit.
85
The Thirteenth Tribe
Arthur Koestler
Appendices
Appendix I: A Note on spelling
THE spelling in this book is consistently inconsistent. It is consistent in so far as, where I
have quoted other authors, I have preserved their own spelling of proper names (what
else can you do?); this led to the apparent inconsistency that the same person, town or
tribe is often spelt differently in different passages. Hence Kazar, Khazar, Chazar, Chozar,
Chozr, etc.; but also Ibn Fadlan and ibn-Fadlan; Al Masudi and al-Masudi. As for my own text, I
have adopted that par ticular spelling which seemed to me the least bewildering to English-
speaking readers who do not happen to be professional orientalists. T. E. Lawrence was a bril-
liant orientalist, but he was as ruthless in his spelling as he was in raiding Turkish garrisons.
His brother, A. W. Lawrence, explained in his preface to Seven Pillars of Wisdom:
The spelling of Arabic names varies greatly in all editions, and I have made no
alterations. It should be explained that only three vowels are recognized in
Arabic, and that some of the consonants have no equivalents in English. The
general practice of orientalists in recent years has been to adopt one of the
various sets of conventional signs for the letter s and vowel marks of the Arabic
alphabet, transliterating Mohamed as Muhammad, muezzin as mu'edhdhin,
and Koran as Qur'an or Kur'an. This method is useful to those who know what
it means but this book follows the old fashion of writing the best phonetic
approximations according to ordinary English spelling.
He then prints a list of publisher's queries re spelling, and T. F. Lawrence's answers; for
instance: Query: Slip [galley sheet] 20. Nuri, Emir of the Ruwalla, belongs to the 'chief family
of the Rualla'. On Slip 23 'Rualla horse', and Slip 38, 'killed one Rueli'. In all later slips
'Rualla'. Answer: should have also used Ruwala and Ruala. Query: Slip 47. Jedha, the
she-camel, was Jedhah on Slip 40. .Answer : she was a splendid beast. Query: Slip 78.
Sherif Abd el Mayin of Slip 68 becomes el Main, el Mayein, el Muein, el Mayin, and el
Muyein. Answerr: Good egg. I call this really ingenious. If such are the difficulties of tran-
scribing modern Arabic, confusion becomes worse confounded when orientalists turn to medi-
aeval texts, which pose additional problems owing to mutilations by careless copyists. The
first English translation of Ebn Haukal (or ibn-Hawkal) was published AD 1800 by Sir William
Ouseley, Knt. LL.D. *[Ibn Hawkal wrote his book in Arabic, but Ouseley translated it from a
Persian translation.] In his preface, Sir William, an eminent orientalist, uttered this touching
cri de cour:
Of the difficulties arising from an irregular combination of letters, the confusion
of one word with another, and the total omission, in some lines, of the diacriti-
cal points, I should not complain, because habit and persevering attention have
enabled me to surmount them in passages of general description, or sen-
tences of common construction; but in the names of persons or of places
never before seen or heard of, and which the context could not assist in deci-
phering, when the diacritical points were omitted, conjecture alone could supply
them, or collation with a more perfect manuscript . . . Notwithstanding what I
have just said, and although the most learned writers on Hebrew, Arabick, and
Persian Literature, have made observations on the same subject, it may per-
haps, be necessary to demonstrate, by a particular example, the extraordinar y
influence of those diacritical points [frequently omitted by copyists]. One exam-
ple will suffice - Let us suppose the three letters forming the name Tibbet to be
divested of their diacritical points. The first character may be rendered, by the
application of one point above, an N; of two points a T, of three points a TH or
S; if one point is placed under, it becomes a B - if two points, a Y and if three
points, a P. In like manner the second character may be affected, and the third
character may be, according to the addition of points, rendered a B, P, T, and TH,
or S.*[The original of this quote is enlivened by letters in Persian script, which I
have omitted in kindness to the publishers.]
86
86
APPENDIX II
A NOTE ON SOURCES
(A) ANCIENT SOURCES
OUR knowledge of Khazar history is mainly derived from Arab, Byzantine, Russian and
Hebrew sources, with corroborative evidence of Persian, Syriac, Armenian, Georgian and
Turkish origin. I shall comment only on some of the major sources.
1. Arabic
The early Arabic historians differ from all others in the unique form of their
compositions. Each event is related in the words of eye-witnesses or contem-
poraries, transmitted to the final narrator through a chain of intermediate
repor ters, each of whom passed on the original report to his successor. Often
the same account is given in two or more slightly divergent forms, which have
come down through different chains of repor ters. Often, too, one event or one
impor tant detail is told in several ways on the basis of several contemporary
statements transmitted to the final narrator through distinct lines of tradition .
. . The principle still is that what has been well said once need not be told
again in other words. The writer, therefore, keeps as close as he can to the let-
ter of his sources, so that quite a late writer often reproduces the very words of
the first narrator . . .
Thus the two classic authorities in the field, H. A. R. Gibb and M.J. de Goeje, in their joint
article on Arab historiography in earlier editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.1 It explains
the excruciating difficulties in tracing an original source which as often as not is lost - through
the successive versions of later historians, compilers and plagiarists. It makes it frequently
impossible to put a date on an episode or a description of the state of affairs in a given coun-
try; and the uncer tainty of dating may range over a whole century in passages where the
author gives an account in the present tense without a clear indication that he is quoting
some source in the distant past. Add to this the difficulties of identifying persons, tribes and
places, owing to the confusion over spelling, plus the vagaries of copyists, and the result is a
jigsaw puzzle with half the pieces missing, others of extraneous origin thrown in, and only the
bare outlines of the picture discernible.
The principal Arabic accounts of Khazaria, most frequently quoted in these pages, are by
Ibn Fadlan, al-Istakhri, Ibn Hawkal and al-Masudi. But only a few of them can be called pri-
mary sources, such as Ibn Fadlan who speaks from first-hand experience. Ibn Hawkal's
account, for instance, written circa 977, is based almost entirely on Istakhri's, written around
932; which in turn is supposed to be based on a lost work by the geographer el-Balkhi, who
wrote around 921.
About the lives of these scholars, and the quality of their scholarship we know very little.
Ibn Fadlan, the diplomat and astute obser ver, is the one who stands out most vividly.
Never theless, as we move along the chain through the tenth century, we can observe succes-
sive stages in the evolution of the young science of historiography. El-Balkhi, the first in the
chain, mar ks the beginning of the classical school of Arab Geography, in which the main
emphasis is on maps, while the descriptive text is of secondar y impor tance. Istakhri shows a
marked improvement with a shift of emphasis from maps to text. (About his life nothing is
known; and what survives of his writings is apparently only a synopsis of a larger work.) With
Ibn Hawkal (about whom we only know that he was a travelling merchant and missionary) a
decisive advance is reached: the text is no longer a commentar y on the maps (as in Balkhi,
and still par tly in Istakhri), but becomes a narrative in its own right.
Lastly with Yakut (1179-1229) we reach, two centuries later, the age of the compilers and
encyclopaedists. About him we know at least that he was born in Greece, and sold as a boy
on the slave market in Baghdad to a merchant who treated him kindly and used him as a kind
of commercial traveller. After his manumission he became an itinerant bookseller and eventu-
ally settled in Mossul, where he wrote his great encyclopaedia of geography and history. This
important work includes both Istakhri's and Ibn Fadlan's account of the Khazars. But, alas,
Yakut mistakenly attributes Istakhri's narrative also to Ibn Fadlan. As the two narratives differ
on important points, their attribution to the same author produced various absurdities, with
the result that Ibn Fadlan became somewhat discredited in the eyes of modern historians.
But events took a different turn with the discovery of the full text of Ibn Fadlan's repor t on
an ancient manuscript in Meshhed, Persia. The discover y, which created a sensation among
orientalists, was made in 1923 by Dr Zeki Validi Togan (about whom more below). It not only
confirmed the authenticity of the sections of Ibn Fadlan's repor t on the Khazars quoted by
Yakut, but also contained passages omitted by Yakut which were thus previously unknown.
Moreover, after the confusion created by Yakut, Ibn Fadlan and Istakhri/Ibn Hawkal were now
recognized as independent sources which mutually corroborated each other. .The same cor-
roborative value attaches to the reports of Ibn Rusta, al-Bekri or Gardezi, which I had little
occasion to quote precisely because their contents are essentially similar to the main
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sources. .Another, apparently independent source was al-Masudi (died circa 956), known as
the Arab Herodotus . He was a restless traveller, of insatiable curiosity, but modern Arab his-
torians seem to take a rather jaundiced view of him. Thus the Encyclopaedia of Islam says
that his travels were motivated by a strong desire for knowledge. But this was superficial and
not deep. He never went into original sources but contented himself with superficial enquiries
and accepted tales and legends without criticism.
But this could just as well be said of other mediaeval historiographers, Christian or Arab.
2. Byzantine
Among Byzantine sources, by far the most valuable is Constantine VII Por phyrogenitus's De
Adnimistrando Imperio, written about 950. It is important not only because of the information
it contains about the Khazar s themselves (and particularly about their relationship with the
Magyars), but because of the data it provides on the Rus and the people of the northern
steppes. Constantine (904-59) the scholar-emperor was a fascinating character - no wonder
Arnold Toynbee confessed to have lost his hear t to him2 - a love-affair with the past that
started in his undergraduate days. The eventual result was Toynbee's monumental
Constantine Porphyrogenitus and his World, published in 1973, when the author was eighty-
four. As the title indicates, the emphasis is as much on Constantine's personality and work
as on the conditions of the world in which he - and the Khazars - lived.
Yet Toynbee's admiration for Constantine did not make him overlook the Emperor's limita-
tions as a scholar: The information assembled in the De Administrando Imperio has been
gathered at different dates from different sources, and the product is not a book in which the
materials have been digested and co-ordinated by an author; it is a collection of files which
have been edited only perfunctorily. 3 And later on: De Administrando Imperio and De
Caeromoniis, in the state in which Constantine bequeathed them to posterity, will strike most
readers as being in lamentable confusion. 4 (Constantine himself was touchingly convinced
that De Caeromoniis was a technical masterpiece besides being a monument of exact
scholarship andtra ying
labour
to of
sorlove
t out5.) Similar criticisms had been voiced earlier
aboutby
theBury,6 and
by Macar tney, Constantine's contradictory statements Magyar
migrations: . . .We shall do well to remember the composition of the De Administrando
Imperio - a series of notes from the most various sources, often duplicating one another,
often contradicting one another, and tacked together with the roughest of editing. 7
But we must beware of bathwaterism - throwing the baby away with the water, as scholarly
critics are sometimes apt to do. Constantine was privileged as no other historian to explore
the Imperial archives and to receive first-hand reports from his officials and envoys returning
from missions abroad. When handled with caution, and in conjunction with other sources, De
Administrando throws much valuable light on that dark period.
3. Russian
Apart from orally transmitted folklore, legends and songs (such as the Lay of Igor's Host ),
the earliest written source in Russian is the Povezt Vremennikh Let, literally Tale of Bygone
Years , variously referred to by different authors as The Russian Primar y Chronicle, The Old
Russian Chronicle, The Russian Chronicle, Pseudo-Nestor, or The Book of Annals. It is a compi-
lation, made in the first half of the twelfth century, of the edited versions of earlier chronicles
dating back to the beginning of the eleventh, but incorporating even earlier traditions and
records. It may therefore, as Vernadsky8 says, contain fragments of authentic information
even with regard to the period from the seventh to the tenth century - a period vital to Khazar
history. The principal compiler and editor of the work was probably the learned monk Nestor
(b. 1056) in the Monastery of the Cr ypt in Kiev, though this is a matter of controversy among
experts (hence Pesudo-Nestor ). Questions of authorship apar t, the Povezt is an invaluable
(though not infallible) guide for the period that it covers. Unfortunately, it stops with the year
1112, just at the beginning of the Khazars' mysterious vanishing act. The mediaeval Hebrew
sources on Khazaria will be discussed in Appendix III.
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Appendix II:
(B) MODERN LITERATURE
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APPENDIX III
THE KHAZAR CORRESPONDENCE
1
THE exchange of letters between the Spanish statesman Hasdai ibn Shaprut and King
Joseph of Khazaria has for a long time fascinated historians. It is true that, as Dunlop
wrote, the importance of the Khazar Correspondence can be exaggerated. By this time
it is possible to reconstruct Khazar history in some detail without recourse to the letters of
Hasdai and Joseph. 1 Nevertheless, the reader may be interested in a brief outline of what is
known of the history of these documents. .Hasdai's Letter was apparently written between
954 and 961, for the embassy from Eastern Europe that he mentions (Chapter III,3-4) is
believed to have visited Cordoba in 954, and Caliph Abd-al-Rahman, whom he mentions as his
sovereign, ruled till 961. That the Letter was actually penned by Hasdai's secretary, Menahem
ben-Sharuk - whose name appears in the acrostic after Hasdai's - has been established by
Landau,2 through comparison with Menahem's other surviving work. Thus the authenticity of
Hasdai's Letter is no longer in dispute, while the evidence concerning Joseph's Reply is nec-
essarily more indirect and complex.
The earliest known mentions of the Correspondence date from the eleventh and twelfth
centuries. Around the year 1100 Rabbi Jehudah ben Barzillai of Barcelona wrote in Hebrew
his Book of the Festivals - Sefer ha-Ittim - which contains a long reference, including direct
quotations, to Joseph's Reply to Hasdai. The passage in question in Barzillai's work starts as
follows:
We have seen among some other manuscripts the copy of a letter which King
Joseph, son of Aaron, the Khazar priest wrote to R. Hasdai bar
Isaac.*[Hasdai's name in Hebrew was bar Isaac bar Shaprut. The R (for Rabbi)
is a courtesy title.] We do not know if the letter is genuine or not, and ifit is a
fact that the Khazars, who are Turks, became proselytes. It is not definite
whether all that is written in the letter is fact and truth or not. There may be
falsehoods written in it, or people may have added to it, or there may be error
on the par t of the scribe.... The reason why we need to write in this our book
things which seem to be exaggerated is that we have found in the letter of this
king Joseph to R. Hasdai that R. Hasdai had asked him of what family he was,
the condition of the king, how his fathers had been gathered under the wings of
the Presence [i.e., become converted to Judaism] and how great were his king-
dom and dominion. He replied to him on every head, writing all the particulars
in the letter.3
Barzillai goes on to quote or paraphrase fur ther passages from Joseph's Reply, thus leaving
no doubt that the Reply was already in existence as early as AD 1100. A particularly convinc-
ing touch is added by the Rabbi's scholarly scepticism. Living in provincial Barcelona, he evi-
dently knew little or nothing about the Khazars.
About the time when Rabbi Barzillai wrote, the Arab chronicler, Ibn Hawkal, also heard some
rumours about Hasdai's involvement with the Khazars. There survives an enigmatic note,
which Ibn Hawkal jotted down on a manuscript map, dated AH 479 - AD 1086. It says:
Hasdai ibn-Ishaq*[Arab version of Hasdai's name.] thinks that this great long
mountain [the Caucasus] is connected with the mountains of Armenia and tra-
verses the country of the Greeks, extending to Khazaran and the mountains of
Armenia. He was well informed about these parts because he visited them and
met their principal kings and leading men.4
It seems most unlikely that Hasdai actually visited Khazaria; but we remember that he
offered to do so in his Letter, and that Joseph enthusiastically welcomed the prospect in the
Reply; perhaps the industrious Hawkal heard some gossip about the Correspondence and
extrapolated from there, a practice not unfamiliar among the chroniclers of the time. .Some
fifty years later (AD 1140) Jehudah Halevi wrote his philosophical tract The Khazars (Kuzri).
As already said, it contains little factual information, but his account of the Khazar conversion
to Judaism agrees in broad outlines with that given by Joseph in the Reply. Halevi does not
explicitly refer to the Correspondence, but his book is mainly concerned with theology, disre-
garding any historical or factual references. He had probably read a transcript of the
Correspondence as the less erudite Barzillai had before him, but the evidence is inconclusive.
It is entirely conclusive, however, in the case of Abraham ben Daud (cf. above, II, 8) whose
popular Sefer ha-Kabbalah, written in 1161, contains the following passage:
You will find congregations of Israel spread abroad from the town of Sala at the
extremity of the Maghrib, as far as Tahart at its commencement, the extremity
of Africa [Ifriqiyah, Tunis], in all Africa, Egypt, the countr y of the Sabaeans,
Arabia, Babylonia, Elam, Persia, Dedan, the country of the Girgashites which is
called Jurjan, Tabaristan, as far as Daylam and the river Itil where live the
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91
Khazar peoples who became proselytes. Their king Joseph sent a letter to R.
Hasdai, the Prince bar Isaac ben-Shaprut and informed him that he and all his
people followed the Rabbanite faith. We have seen in Toledo some of their
descendants, pupils of the wise, and they told us that the remnant of them fol-
lowed the Rabbanite faith.5
2
The first printed version of the Khazar Correspondence is contained in a Hebrew pam-
phlet, Kol Mebasser, Voice of the Messenger of Good News .*[Two copies of the pam-
phlet belonging to two different editions are preser ved in the Bodleian Librar y.] It was
published in Constantinople in or around 1577 by Isaac Abraham Akrish. In his preface Akrish
relates that during his travels in Egypt fifteen years earlier he had heard rumours of an inde-
pendent Jewish kingdom (these rumours probably referred to the Falashas of Abyssinia); and
that subsequently he obtained a letter which was sent to the king of the Khazars, and the
king's reply . He then decided to publish this correspondence in order to raise the spirits of
his fellow Jews. Whether or not he thought that Khazaria still existed is not clear. At any rate
the preface is followed by the text of the two letters, without further comment.
But the Correspondence did not remain buried in Akrish's obscure little pamphlet. Some
sixty years after its publication, a copy of it was sent by a friend to Johannes Buxtorf the
Younger, a Calvinist scholar of great er udition. Buxtorf was an exper t Hebraist, who published
a great amount of studies in biblical exegesis and rabbinical literature. When he read Akrish's
pamphlet, he was at first as sceptical regarding the authenticity of the Correspondence as
Rabbi Barzillai had been five hundred years before him. But in 1660 Buxtorf finally printed the
text of both letters in Hebrew and in a Latin translation as an addendum to Jehudah Halevi's
book on the Khazars. It was perhaps an obvious, but not a happy idea, for the inclusion, within
the same covers, of Halevi's legendar y tale hardly predisposed historians to take the
Correspondence seriously. It was only in the nineteenth centur y that their attitude changed,
when more became known, from independent sources, about the Khazars.
3
The only manuscript version which contains both Hasdai's Letter and Joseph's Reply, is in
the library of Christ Church in Oxford. According to Dunlop and the Russian expert,
Kokovtsov,6 the manuscript presents a remarkably close similarity to the printed text
and served directly or indirectly as a source of the printed text .7 It probably dates from the
sixteenth century and is believed to have been in the possession of the Dean of Christ
Church, John Fell (whom Thomas Brown immor talized with his I do not love thee, Dr Fell . .
. ).
Another manuscript containing Joseph's Reply but not Hasdai's Letter is preserved in the
Leningrad Public Librar y. It is considerably longer than the printed text of Akrish and the Christ
Church manuscript; accordingly it is generally known as the Long Version, as distinct from the
Akrish-Christ Church Shor t Version , which appears to be an abbreviation of it. The Long
Version is also considerably older; it probably dates from the thirteenth century, the Short
Long Version
Version - orsixteenth.
from the an even older text - had
The Soviet been edited
historian and compressed
Ribakov8 has plausiblybysuggested
mediaeval Spanish
that the
copyists to produce the Short Version of Joseph's Reply. At this point we encounter a red her-
ring across the ancient track. The Long Version is par t of the so-called Firkowich Collection
of Hebrew manuscripts and epitaphs in the Leningrad Public Librar y. It probably came from
the Cairo Geniza, where a major par t of the manuscripts in the Collection originated. Abraham
Firkowich was a colourful nineteenth-centur y scholar who would deser ve an Appendix all to
himself. He was a great authority in his field, but he was also a Karaite zealot who wished to
prove to the Tsarist government that the Karaites were different from or thodox Jews and
should not be discriminated against by Christians. With this laudable purpose in mind, he
doctored some of his authentic old manuscripts and epitaphs, by interpolating or adding a few
words to give them a Karaite slant. Thus the Long Version, having passed through the hands
of Firkowich, was greeted with a certain mistrust when it was found, after his death, in a bun-
dle of other manuscripts in his collection by the Russian historian Harkavy. Harkavy had no
illusions about Firkowich's reliability, for he himself had previously denounced some of
Firkowich's spurious interpolations.9 Yet Harkavy had no doubts regarding the antiquity of the
manuscript; he published it in the original Hebrew in 1879 and also in Russian and German
translation,1 0 accepting it as an early version of Joseph's letter, from which the Short Version
was derived. Harkavy's colleague (and rival) Chwolson concurred that the whole document
was written by the Academy
same handpublished
and that Paul
it contained no additions of anybook,
kind.1 1 Lastly, in
1932, the Russian Kokovtsov's authoritative The Hebrew-
Khazar Correspondence in the Tenth Century12 including facsimiles of the Long Version of the
Reply in the Leningrad Library, the Shor t Version in Christ Church and in Akrish's pamphlet.
After a critical analysis of the three texts, he came to the conclusion that both the Long and
the Short Versions are based on the same original text, which is in general, though not
always, more faithfully preserved in the Long Version.
4
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92
Kokovtsov's critical survey, and particularly his publication of the manuscript facsimiles,
virtually settled the controversy - which, anyway, affected only the Long Version, but not
Hasdai's letter and the Shor t Version of the Reply. Yet a voice of dissent was raised
from an unexpected quar ter. In 1941 Poliak advanced the theory that the Khazar
Correspondence was, not exactly a forger y, but a fictional work written in the tenth century
with the purpose of spreading information about, or making propaganda for, the Jewish king-
dom.1 3 (It could not have been written later than the eleventh century, for, as we have seen,
Rabbi Barzillai read the Correspondence about 1100, and Ibn Daud quoted from it in 1161).
But this theory, plausible at first glance, was effectively demolished by Landau and Dunlop.
Landau was able to prove that Hasdai's Letter was indeed written by his secretary Menahem
ben-Sharuk. And Dunlop pointed out that in the Letter Hasdai asks a number of questions
about Khazaria which Joseph fails to answer - which is certainly not the way to write an infor-
mation pamphlet:
There is no answer forthcoming on the part of Joseph to enquiries as to his
method of procession to his place of worship, and as to whether war abrogates
the Sabbath . . . There is a marked absence of correspondence between ques-
tions of the Letter and answers given in the Reply. This should probably be
regarded as an indication that the documents are what they purport to be and
not a literary invention.1 4
Dunlop goes on to ask a pertinent question:
Why the Letter of Hasdai at all, which, though considerably longer than the
Reply of Joseph, has very little indeed about the Khazars, if the purpose of writ-
ing it and the Reply was, as Poliak supposes, simply to give a popular account
of Khazaria? If the Letter is an introduction to the information about the
Khazars in the Reply, it is certainly a ver y curious one - full of facts about Spain
and the Umayyads which have nothing to do with Khazaria.1 5
Dunlop then clinches the argument by a linguistic test which proves conclusively that the
Letter and the Reply were written by different people. The proof concerns one of the marked
characteristics of Hebrew grammar, the use of the so-called waw- conversive , to define
tense. I shall not attempt to explain this intricate grammatical quirk,*[The interested reader
may consult Weingreen, J., A Practical Grammar for Classical Hebrew, 2nd ed, (Oxford, 1959)]
and shall instead simply quote Dunlop's tabulation of the different methods used in the
Letter and in the Long Version to designate past action:16
Waw Conversive Simple Waw
with Imperfect with Perfet
Hasdai's Letter 48 14
Reply (Long Version) 1 95
In the Shor t Version of the Reply, the first method (Hasdai's) is used thirty-seven times, the
second fifty times. But the Shor t Version uses the first method mostly in passages where the
wording differs from the Long Version. Dunlop suggests that this is due to later Spanish edi-
tors paraphrasing the Long Version. He also points out that Hasdai's Letter, written in
Moorish Spain, contains many Arabisms (for instance, al-Khazar for the Khazars), whereas the
Reply has none. Lastly, concerning the general tenor of the Correspondence, he says:
. . . Nothing decisive appears to have been alleged anainst the factual con-
tents of the Reply of Joseph in its more original form, the Long Version. The
stylistic difference supports its authenticity. It is what might be expected in
documents emanating from widely separated parts of the Jewish world, where
also the level of culture was by no means the same. It is perhaps allowable
here to record the impression, for what it is worth, that in general the language
of the Reply is less artificial, more naive, than that of the Letter.1
7
To sum up, it is difficult to understand why past historians were so reluctant to believe that
the Khazar Kagan was capable of dictating a letter, though it was known that he corresponded
with the Byzantine Emperor (we remember the seals of three solidi); or that pious Jews in
Spain and Egypt should have diligently copied and preserved a message from the only Jewish
king since biblical times.
93
93
References
1 Dunlop (1954), p. 125.
2 Landau (1942).
3 Following Kokovtsov's test, quoted by Dunlop (1954), p. 132.
4 Quoted by Dunlop (1954), p. 154.
5 Quoted by Dunlop, p. 127.
6 Kokovtsov, P. (1932).
7 Dunlop (1954), p. 230.
8 Quoted in. Enc. Judaica, article on 'The Khazar Correspondence'.
9 Harkavy, A. E. (1877).
10 Harkavy (1875).
11 Chwolson, D. A. (1882),
12 Kokovtsov, op. cit.
13 Poliak (1941).
14 Dunlop (1954), p. 143.
15 Ibid., pp. 137-8.
16 Ibid., p, 152.
17 Ibid., p. 153
94
94
APPENDIX IV
SOME IMPLICATIONS - ISRAEL AND THE DIASPORA
WHILE this book deals with past histor y, it unavoidably carries certain implications for
the present and future. In the first place, I am aware of the danger that it may be mali-
ciously misinterpreted as a denial of the State of Israel's right to exist. But that right
is not based on the hypothetical origins of the Jewish people, nor on the mythological
covenant of Abraham with God; it is based on international law - i.e., on the United Nations'
decision in 1947 to partition Palestine, once a Turkish province, then a British Mandated
Territory, into an Arab and a Jewish State. Whatever the Israeli citizens' racial origins, and
whatever illusions they entertain about them, their State exists de jure and de facto, and can-
not be undone, except by genocide. Without entering into controversial issues, one may add,
as a matter of historical fact, that the par tition of Palestine was the result of a century of
peaceful Jewish immigration and pioneering effort, which provide the ethical justification for
the State's legal existence. Whether the chromosomes of its people contain genes of Khazar
or Semitic, Roman or Spanish origin, is irrelevant, and cannot affect Israel's right to exist - nor
the moral obligation of any civilized person, Gentile or Jew, to defend that right. Even the geo-
graphical origin of the native Israeli's parents or grandparents tends to be forgotten in the
bubbling racial melting pot. The problem of the Khazar infusion a thousand years ago, how-
ever fascinating, is irrelevant to modern Israel.
The Jews who inhabit it, regardless of their chequered origins, possess the essential
requirements of a nation: a countr y of their own, a common language, government and army.
The Jews of the Diaspora have none of these requirements of nationhood. What sets them
apar t as a special categor y from the Gentiles amidst whom they live is their declared religion,
whether they practise it or not. Here lies the basic difference between Israelis and Jews of the
Diaspora. The former have acquired a national identity; the latter are labelled as Jews only by
their religion - not by their nationality, not by their race.
This, however, creates a tragic paradox, because the Jewish religion - unlike Christianity,
Buddhism or Islam - implies membership of a historical nation, a chosen race. All Jewish fes-
tivals commemorate events in national history: the exodus from Egypt, the Maccabean revolt,
the death of the oppressor Haman, the destruction of the Temple. The Old Testament is first
and foremost the narrative of a nation's history; it gave monotheism to the world, yet its
credo is tribal rather than universal. Every prayer and ritual observance proclaims member-
ship of an ancient race, which automatically separates the Jew from the racial and historic
past of the people in whose midst he lives. The Jewish faith, as shown by 2000 years of
tragic history, is nationally and socially self-segregating. It sets the Jew apar t and invites his
being set apar t. It automatically creates physical and cultural ghettoes. It transformed the
Jews of the Diaspora into a pseudo-nation without any of the attributes and privileges of
nationhood, held together loosely by a system of traditional beliefs based on racial and his-
torical premisses which turn out to be illusor y.
Orthodox Jewr y is a vanishing minority. Its stronghold was Eastern Europe where the Nazi
fur y reached its peak and wiped them almost completely off the face of the earth. Its scat-
tered sur vivors in the Western world no longer carr y much influence, while the bulk of the
orthodox communities of North Africa, the Yemen, Syria and Iraq emigrated to Israel. Thus
orthodox Judaism in the Diaspora is dying out, and it is the vast majority of enlightened or
agnostic Jews who perpetuate the paradox by loyally clinging to their pseudo-national status
in the belief that it is their duty to preser ve the Jewish tradition.
It is, however, not easy to define what the term Jewish tradition signifies in the eyes of
this enlightened majority, who reject the Chosen-Race doctrine of orthodoxy. That doctrine
apar t, the universal messages of the Old Testament - the enthronement of the one and invisi-
ble God, the Ten Commandments, the ethos of the Hebrew prophets, the Proverbs and
Psalms - have entered into the mainstream of the Judeo-Helenic-Christian tradition and
become the common proper ty of Jew and Gentile alike.
After the destruction of Jerusalem, the Jews ceased to have a language and secular culture
of their own. Hebrew as a vernacular yielded to Aramaic before the beginning of the Christian
era; the Jewish scholars and poets in Spain wrote in Arabic, others later in German, Polish,
Russian, English and French. Certain Jewish communities developed dialects of their own,
such as Yiddish and Ladino, but none of these produced works comparable to the impressive
Jewish contribution to German, Austro-Hungarian or American literature.
The main, specifically Jewish literary activity of the Diaspora was theological. Yet Talmud,
Kabbala, and the bulky tomes of biblical exegesis are practically unknown to the contempo-
rar y Jewish public, although they are, to repeat it once more, the only relics of a specifically
Jewish tradition - if that term is to have a concrete meaning - during the last two millennia. In
other words, whatever came out of the Diaspora is either not specifically Jewish, or not part of
a living tradition. The philosophical, scientific and artistic achievements of individual Jews
consist in contributions to the culture of their host nations; they do not represent a common
cultural inheritance or autonomous body of traditions.
To sum up, the Jews of our day have no cultural tradition in common, merely certain habits
and behaviour-patterns, derived by social inheritance from the traumatic experience of the
ghetto, and from a religion which the majority does not practise or believe in, but which never-
95
95
theless confers on them a pseudo-national status. Obviously - as I have argued elsewhere1 -
the long-term solution of the paradox can only be emigration to Israel or gradual assimilation
to their host nations. Before the holocaust, this process was in full swing; and in 1975 Time
Magazine reported2 that American Jews tend to marry outside their faith at a high rate;
almost one-third of all marriages are mixed .
Never theless the lingering influence of Judaism's racial and historical message, though
based on illusion, acts as a powerful emotional break by appealing to tribal loyalty. It is in this
context that the part played by the thirteenth tribe in ancestral history becomes relevant to
the Jews of the Diaspora. Yet, as already said, it is irrelevant to modern Israel, which has
acquired a genuine national identity. It is perhaps symbolic that Abraham Poliak, a professor
of history at Tel Aviv University and no doubt an Israeli patriot, made a major contribution to
our knowledge of Jewry's Khazar ancestry, undermining the legend of the Chosen Race. It may
also be significant that the native Israeli Sabra represents, physically and mentally, the
complete opposite of the typical Jew , bred in the ghetto.
References
1 Koestler (1955).
2 March 10, 1975.
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96
The Thirteenth Tribe
Arthur Koestler
Selected Bibliography
Alfldi, La Royaut Double des Turcs, 2me Congres Turc d'Histoire (Istanbul, 1937).
Allen, W. E. D., A History of the Georgian People (London, 1932).
Annals of Admont, Klebel, E., d'Eme neu aufgefundene Salzburger Geschichtsquelle,
Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft fur Salzburger Landeskunde, 1921.
Arne, T. J., La Su de et l'Orient, Archives d'Etudes Orientales, 8 . v.8, Upsala, 1914.
Artamonov, M. I., Studies in Ancient Khazar History (in Russian) (Leningrad, 1936).
Artamonov, M. I., Khazar Histor y (in Russian) (Leningrad, 1962).
Bader, O. H., Studies of the Kama Archaeological Expedition (in Russian, Khar khov, 1953)
Al-Bakri, Book of Kingdoms and Roads, French tr. by Dfremry, J. Asiatique, 1849.
Ballas, J. A., Beitrge zur Kenntnis der Trierischen Volkssprache (1903).
Bar Hebracus, Chronography (Oxford, 1932).
Barker, F., Crusades in Enc. Britannica, 1973 printing.
Baron, S. W., A Social and Relgious History of the Jews, Vols. III and IV (New York 1957)
Bartha, A., A IX-X Szazadi Magyar Tarsadalom (Hungarian Society in the 9th-10th Centuries)
(Budapest, 1968).
Barthold, V., see Gardezi and Hudud al Alam.
Beddoe, J., On the Physical Characters of the Jews, Trans. Ethn. Soc., Vol.1 pp. 222-37,
London, 1861.
Ben Barzillay, Jehudah, Sefer ha-Ittim (Book of the Festivals) (circa 1100).
Ben-Daud, Ibrahim, Sefer ha-Kabbalah, in Mediaeval Jewish Chronicles, ed. Neubauer, I, 79
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