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166-480: His name is transcribed with Chinese character 統, which means "main silk thread > guideline, to unite, to command, to govern". Karakhanid scholar Mahmud al-Kashgari , writing in the 11th century, glossed toŋa in Middle Turkic as basically meaning tiger . Gerard Clauson argues against Kashgari and states that toŋa means vaguely "hero, outstanding warrior". Tong Yabghu maintained close relations with

332-696: A Naiman who usurped the throne of the Qara Khitai dynasty, instituted anti-Islamic policies on the local populations under his rule. The decline of the Seljuks following their defeat by the Qara Khitais at the Battle of Qatwan (1141) allowed the Khwarazmian dynasty , then a vassal of the Qara Khitai, to expand into former Seljuk territory, where they became independent rulers circa 1190. In 1207,

498-765: A buffer state between the Byzantine Empire , the nomads of the northern steppes, and the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates, having previously served as the Byzantine Empire's proxy against the Sasanian Empire . The alliance was dissolved around the year 900 when Byzantium began encouraging the Alans to attack Khazaria. This move aimed to weaken Khazaria's control over Crimea and the Caucasus, for

664-527: A nomadic Turkic people that, in the late 6th century CE, established a major commercial empire covering the southeastern section of modern European Russia , southern Ukraine , Crimea , and Kazakhstan . They created what, for its duration, was the most powerful polity to emerge from the break-up of the Western Turkic Khaganate . Astride a major artery of commerce between Eastern Europe and Southwestern Asia , Khazaria became one of

830-431: A royal burial . At one period, travellers had to dismount, bow before the ruler's tomb, and then walk away on foot. Subsequently, the charismatic sovereign's burial place was hidden from view, with a palatial structure ("Paradise") constructed and then hidden under rerouted river water to avoid disturbance by evil spirits and later generations. Such a royal burial ground ( qoruq ) is typical of inner Asian peoples. Both

996-520: A shad/bäk and a qağan . The emergence of this system may be deeply entwined with the conversion to Judaism. According to Arabic sources, the lesser king was called îšâ and the greater king Khazar xâqân ; the former managed and commanded the military, while the greater king's role was primarily sacral, less concerned with daily affairs. The greater king was recruited from the Khazar house of notables ( ahl bait ma'rûfīn ) and, in an initiation ritual,

1162-662: A Seljuk campaign into Talas and Zhetysu, but the Eastern Khanate was a Seljuk vassal for only a short time. At the beginning of the 12th century the Eastern Khanate invaded Transoxiana and briefly occupied the Seljuk town of Termez. The Qara Khitai (Western Liao dynasty) host which invaded Central Asia was composed of remnants from the defunct Liao dynasty which was annihilated by the Jin dynasty in 1125. The Liao noble Yelü Dashi recruited warriors from various tribes and formed

1328-603: A clan. In terms of caste or class, some evidence suggests that there was a distinction, whether racial or social is unclear, between "White Khazars" (ak-Khazars) and "Black Khazars" (qara-Khazars). The 10th-century Muslim geographer al-Iṣṭakhrī claimed that the White Khazars were strikingly handsome with reddish hair, white skin, and blue eyes, while the Black Khazars were swarthy, verging on deep black as if they were "some kind of Indian ". Many Turkic nations had

1494-616: A congeries of steppe nomads and peoples who came to be subordinated, and subscribed to a core Turkic leadership. Many Turkic groups, such as the Oğuric peoples , including Šarağurs , Oğurs, Onoğurs , and Bulğars who earlier formed part of the Tiele (Tiělè) confederation , are attested quite early, having been driven West by the Sabirs , who in turn fled the Asian Avars , and began to flow into

1660-598: A few of them managed to flee north. Despite their success, the Arabs had not yet defeated the Khazar army, and they retreated south of the Caucasus. In 724, the Arab general al-Jarrah ibn Abdallah al-Hakami inflicted a crushing defeat on the Khazars in a long battle between the rivers Cyrus and Araxes , then moved on to capture Tiflis , bringing Caucasian Iberia under Muslim suzerainty. The Khazars struck back in 726, led by

1826-589: A final mop-up operation in 659, but the two confederations of Bulğars and Khazars fought for supremacy on the western steppeland, and with the ascendency of the latter, the former either succumbed to Khazar rule or, as under Asparukh , Kubrat's son, shifted even further west across the Danube to lay the foundations of the First Bulgarian Empire in the Balkans ( c.  679 ). The Qağanate of

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1992-486: A grape or raisin remained in the land, and not even alms for the poor were available. An attempt to rebuild may have been undertaken, since Ibn Hawqal and al-Muqaddasi refer to it after that date, but by Al-Biruni 's time (1048) it was in ruins. Although Poliak argued that the Khazar kingdom did not wholly succumb to Sviatoslav's campaign, but lingered on until 1224, when the Mongols invaded Rus' , by most accounts,

2158-793: A horde that moved westward to rebuild the Liao dynasty. Yelü occupied Balasagun on the Chu River , then defeated the Western Karakhanids in Khujand in 1137. In 1141 Qara Khitai became the dominant force in the region after they dealt a devastating blow to the Seljuk Sultan Ahmad Sanjar and the Kara-Khanids at the Battle of Qatwan near Samarkand . Several military commanders of Karakhanid lineages such as

2324-428: A joint Rus'-Byzantine attack on Khazaria in 1016, which defeated its ruler Georgius Tzul . The name suggests Christian affiliations. The account concludes by saying, that after Tzul's defeat, the Khazar ruler of "upper Media", Senaccherib, had to sue for peace and submission. In 1024 Mstislav of Chernigov (one of Vladimir's sons) marched against his brother Yaroslav with an army that included "Khazars and Kassogians" in

2490-532: A key role in the Khazar leadership, may reflect an Eastern Iranian or Tokharian word ( Khotanese Saka âşşeina-āššsena "blue"): Middle Persian axšaêna ("dark-coloured"): Tokharian A âśna ("blue", "dark"). The distinction appears to have survived the collapse of the Khazarian empire. Later Russian chronicles, commenting on the role of the Khazars in the magyarisation of Hungary, refer to them as "White Oghurs " and Magyars as " Black Oghurs ". Studies of

2656-547: A levy of one sable skin, squirrel pelt, sword, dirham per hearth or ploughshare, or hides, wax, honey and livestock, depending on the zone. Trade disputes were handled by a commercial tribunal in Atil consisting of seven judges, two for each of the monotheistic inhabitants (Jews, Muslims, Christians) and one for the pagans. Byzantine diplomatic policy towards the steppe peoples generally consisted of encouraging them to fight among themselves. The Pechenegs provided great assistance to

2822-437: A prince named Barjik , launching a major invasion of Albania and Azerbaijan; by 729, the Arabs had lost control of northeastern Transcaucasia and were thrust again into the defensive. In 730, Barjik invaded Iranian Azerbaijan and defeated Arab forces at Ardabil , killing the general al-Djarrah al-Hakami and briefly occupying the town. Barjik was defeated and killed the next year at Mosul , where he directed Khazar forces from

2988-506: A repulsed attempt to restore a kind of "Khazarian"-type dominion over Kiev. Ibn al-Athir 's mention of a "raid of Faḍlūn the Kurd against the Khazars" in 1030 CE, in which 10,000 of his men were vanquished by the latter, has been taken as a reference to such a Khazar remnant, but Barthold identified this Faḍlūn as Faḍl ibn Muḥammad and the "Khazars" as either Georgians or Abkhazians . A Kievian prince named Oleg, grandson of Jaroslav

3154-648: A retinue of some 4,000 attendants, dwelt, and Itil proper to the East, inhabited by Jews, Christians, Muslims and slaves and by craftsmen and foreign merchants. The Khazar Khaghanate played a key role in the trade between Europe and the Muslim world in the early middle ages. People taken captive during the viking raids in Europe, such as Ireland, could be transported to Hedeby or Brännö in Scandinavia and from there via

3320-458: A self-sufficient domestic Saltovo economy, a combination of traditional pastoralism – allowing sheep and cattle to be exported – extensive agriculture, abundant use of the Volga's rich fishing stocks, together with craft manufacture, with diversification in lucrative returns from taxing international trade given its pivotal control of major trade routes. The Khazar slave trade constituted one of

3486-473: A similar (political, not racial) division between a "white" ruling warrior caste and a "black" class of commoners; the consensus among mainstream scholars is that Istakhri was confused by the names given to the two groups. However, Khazars are generally described by early Arab sources as having a white complexion, blue eyes, and reddish hair. The ethnonym in the Tang Chinese annals, Ashina, often accorded

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3652-593: A six-pointed star identical to the Star of David . The Khazar state was not the only Jewish state to rise between the fall of the Second Temple (67–70 CE) and the establishment of Israel (1948). A state in Yemen also adopted Judaism in the 4th century, lasting until the rise of Islam. The Khazar kingdom is said to have stimulated messianic aspirations for a return to Israel as early as Judah Halevi . In

3818-814: A state before". Tong Yabghu's empire fought with the Sassanids of Iran . In the early 620's the khagan's nephew Böri Shad led a series of raids across the Caucasus Mountains into Persian territory. Many scholars have identified Tong Yabghu as the Ziebel mentioned in Byzantine sources as having (as khagan of the Khazars ) campaigned with the Emperor Heraclius in the Caucasus against

3984-414: A throne mounted with al-Djarrah's severed head . In 737, Marwan Ibn Muhammad entered Khazar territory under the guise of seeking a truce. He then launched a surprise attack in which The Qaghan fled north and the Khazars surrendered. The Arabs did not have enough resources to influence the affairs of Transcaucasia. The Qağan was forced to accept terms involving his conversion to Islam, and subject himself to

4150-534: Is a ghost word . In the fragmentary Tes and Terkhin inscriptions of the Uyğur empire (744–840) the form Qasar is attested, although uncertainty remains whether this represents a personal or tribal name, gradually other hypotheses emerged. Louis Bazin derived it from Turkic qas- ("tyrannize, oppress, terrorize") on the basis of its phonetic similarity to the Uyğur tribal name, Qasar. Róna-Tas connects qasar with Kesar ,

4316-594: Is a matter of intricate difficulty since no indigenous records in the Khazar language survived, and the state was polyglot and polyethnic . The native religion of the Khazars is thought to have been Tengrism like that of the North Caucasian Huns and other Turkic peoples . The polyethnic populace of the Khazar Khaganate appears to have been a multiconfessional mosaic of pagan , Tengrist, Jewish , Christian, and Muslim worshippers. Some of

4482-485: Is an exaggeration of the extant evidence. The latest research on this topic proves that they were right: if Tong indeed died in 628, Ziebel is to be identified with Sipi khagan, Tong Yabghu's uncle, who murdered him and rose briefly to the throne. Sipi was by then pronounced Zibil and he was a small khagan in charge of the western part of Tong Yabghu's empire, exactly as Ziebel was according to the Byzantine sources. Ziebel

4648-583: Is described as the brother of Tong in the Byzantine sources, and as his uncle in the Chinese sources, a discrepancy which long precluded the identification. However uncle and elder brother is the same word in ancient Turkish, äçi, and the Chinese sources could not render this double meaning with their very precise system of kinship names. Tong Yabghu appointed governors or tuduns to manage the various tribes and people under his overlordship. In all likelihood Tong Yabghu's nephew Böri Shad , and son of Zibil/Ziebel

4814-410: Is difficult, since no indigenous records in the Khazar language survive, and the state was polyglot and polyethnic . Whereas the royal or ruling elite probably spoke an eastern variety of Shaz Turkic , the subject tribes appear to have spoken varieties of Lir Turkic , such as Oğuric , a language variously identified with Bulğaric , Chuvash , and Hunnish . The latter based upon the assertion of

4980-664: Is evident in both of these pieces of work, but they also showed the influences of Persian and Islamic culture. However, the court culture of the Karakhanids remained almost entirely Persian. The two last western khaqans also wrote poetry in Persian. The Cambridge World History describes the Kara-Khanid state as the first of the Islamic Turco-Iranian states. Islam and its civilization flourished under

5146-587: Is often associated with a Khazarian foundation. The construction of the Sarkel fortress , with technical assistance from Khazaria's Byzantine ally at the time, together with the minting of an autonomous Khazar coinage around the 830s, may have been a defensive measure against emerging threats from Varangians to the north and from the Magyars on the eastern steppe. By 860, the Rus' had penetrated as far as Kiev and, via

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5312-524: Is sometimes associated with antisemitism and anti-Zionism . In Oghuz Turkic languages , the Caspian Sea is still named the " Khazar Sea ", an enduring legacy of the medieval Khazar state. Gyula Németh , following Zoltán Gombocz , derived Khazar from a hypothetical *Qasar reflecting a Turkic root qaz- ("to ramble, to roam") being an hypothetical retracted variant of Common Turkic kez- ; however, András Róna-Tas objected that * qaz-

5478-603: The Alans , whose leader had converted to Christianity and entered into an alliance with Byzantium, which, under Leo VI the Wise , encouraged them to fight against the Khazars. By the 880s, Khazar control of the Middle Dnieper from Kiev, where they collected tribute from Eastern Slavic tribes, began to wane as Oleg of Novgorod wrested control of the city from the Varangian warlords Askold and Dir , and embarked on what

5644-488: The Battle of Dandanaqan and entered Iran. Conflict with the Karakhanids broke out, but the Karakhanids were able to withstand attacks by the Seljuks initially, even briefly taking control of Seljuk towns in Greater Khorasan . The Karakhanids, however, developed serious conflicts with the religious classes (the ulama ), and the ulama of Transoxiana then requested the intervention of the Seljuks. In 1089, during

5810-541: The Chagatay and the Kypchak . The Kara-Khanid cultural model that combined nomadic Turkic culture with Islamic, sedentary institutions spread east into former Kara-Khoja and Tangut territories and west and south into the subcontinent, Khorasan (Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Northern Iran), Golden Horde territories ( Tataristan ), and Turkey . The Chagatay , Timurid, and Uzbek states and societies inherited most of

5976-525: The Dnieper , Constantinople . Alliances often shifted. Byzantium, threatened by Varangian Rus' raiders, would assist Khazaria, and Khazaria at times allowed the northerners to pass through their territory in exchange for a portion of the booty. From the beginning of the 10th century, the Khazars found themselves fighting on multiple fronts as nomadic incursions were exacerbated by uprisings by former clients and invasions from former allies. The pax Khazarica

6142-548: The Karakhanids , Qarakhanids , Ilek Khanids or the Afrasiabids ( Persian : آل افراسیاب , romanized :  Āl-i Afrāsiyāb , lit.   'House of Afrasiab '), was a Karluk Turkic khanate that ruled Central Asia from the 9th to the early 13th century. The dynastic names of Karakhanids and Ilek Khanids refer to royal titles with Kara Khagan being the most important Turkic title up until

6308-709: The Pahlavi transcription of the Roman title Caesar . D. M. Dunlop tried to link the Chinese term for "Khazars" to one of the tribal names of the Uyğur, or Toquz Oğuz , namely the Qasar ( Ch. 葛薩 Gésà ). The objections are that Uyğur 葛薩 Gésà / Qasar was not a tribal name but rather the surname of the chief of the 思结 Sijie tribe ( Sogdian : Sikari ) of the Toquz Oğuz (Ch. 九姓 jĭu xìng ), and that in Middle Chinese

6474-523: The Pax Khazarica since the state became an international trading hub permitting Western Eurasian merchants safe transit across it to pursue their business without interference. The high status soon to be accorded this empire to the north is attested by Ibn al-Balḫî 's Fârsnâma (c. 1100), which relates that the Sasanian Shah, Ḫusraw 1, Anûsîrvân , placed three thrones by his own, one for

6640-930: The Pechenegs , the Oghuz Turks , and the Karluks. The domain of the Karluks reached as far north as the Irtysh and the Kimek confederation, with encampments extending to the Chi and Ili rivers, where the Chigil and Tukshi tribes lived, and east to the Ferghana valley and beyond. The area to the south and east of the Karluks was inhabited by the Yagma. The Karluk center in the 9th and 10th centuries appears to have been at Balasagun on

6806-548: The Rouran Khaganate of the hegemonic central Asian Avars in 552 and swept westwards, taking in their train other steppe nomads and peoples from Sogdiana . The ruling family of this confederation may have hailed from the Āshǐnà ( 阿史那 ) clan of the Western Turkic Khaganate , although Constantine Zuckerman regards Ashina and their pivotal role in the formation of the Khazars with scepticism. Golden notes that Chinese and Arabic reports are almost identical, making

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6972-456: The Samanid slave trade . The ruling elite wintered in the city and spent from spring to late autumn in their fields. A large irrigated greenbelt, drawing on channels from the Volga river, lay outside the capital, where meadows and vineyards extended for some 20 farsakhs (c. 60 miles). While customs duties were imposed on traders, and tribute and tithes were exacted from 25 to 30 tribes, with

7138-494: The Sassanid Persian Empire in 627–628. It has long been maintained by some scholars, including Chavannes, Uchida, Gao and Xue Zhongzeng that Tong Yabghu cannot be positively identified with Ziebel (or any Khazar ruler) and may actually have died as early as 626. These scholars point to discrepancies in the dates between Byzantine and Chinese sources and argue that definitively conflating Ziebel with Tong Yabghu

7304-509: The Slavs , Merja and the Chud ' to unite to protect common interests against Khazarian exactions of tribute. It is often argued that a Rus' Khaganate modelled on the Khazarian state had formed to the east and that the Varangian chieftain of the coalition appropriated the title of qağan ( khagan ) as early as the 830s: the title survived to denote the princes of Kievan Rus' , whose capital, Kiev ,

7470-523: The Tang dynasty of China , and may have married into the Imperial family. The Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang visited the western Göktürk capital Suyab in modern Kyrgyzstan and left a description of the khagan. Scholars believe the khagan described by Xuanzang was Tong Yabghu. Gao and La Vaissière argue that the khagan Xuanzang met was his son Si Yabghu, rather than Tong Yabghu. Xuanzang described

7636-455: The Third Perso-Turkic War . A joint Byzantine-Tűrk operation breached the Caspian gates and sacked Derbent in 627. Together they then besieged Tiflis , where the Byzantines may have deployed an early variety of traction trebuchets ( ἑλέπόλεις ) to breach the walls. After the campaign, Tong Yabghu is reported, perhaps with some exaggeration, to have left some 40,000 troops behind with Heraclius. Although occasionally identified with Khazars,

7802-467: The Toġuzġuz kings", that Ashina tribe was not listed among the Toquz Oghuz (Ch. 九姓 Jĭu Xìng "Nine Surnames") in Chinese-language sources and that early Uyghur khagans belonged to the Yaglakar clan of Toquz Oghuz and later Uyghur khagans belonged to the Ädiz clan . Alternatively, Bilge Kul Qadir might belong to the Eðgiş or Chigils . The Karluks were a nomadic people from the western Altai Mountains who moved to Zhetysu (Semirechye). In 742,

7968-419: The Uyghur Khaganate by the Old Kirghiz . Control of sacred lands, together with their affiliation with the Ashina clan, allowed the Khaganate to be passed on to the Karluks along with domination of the steppes after the previous Khagan was killed in a revolt. During the 9th century southern Central Asia was under the rule of the Samanids , while the Central Asian steppe was dominated by Turkic nomads such as

8134-416: The Volga trade route to Russia, where slaves and furs were sold to Muslim merchants in exchange for Arab silver dirham and silk , which have been found in Birka , Wollin and Dublin ; during the 8th- and 9th-century this trade route between Europe and the Abbasid Caliphate passed via the Khazar Kaghanate, until it was supplanted in the 10th-century by the route of Volga Bulgaria , Khwarazm , and

8300-467: The Volga – Caspian – Pontic zone from as early as the 4th century CE and are recorded by Priscus to reside in the Western Eurasian steppe lands as early as 463. They appear to stem from Mongolia and South Siberia in the aftermath of the fall of the Hunnic / Xiōngnú nomadic polities. A variegated tribal federation led by these Turks, probably comprising a complex assortment of Iranian , proto-Mongolic , Uralic , and Palaeo-Siberian clans, vanquished

8466-441: The emergence of a theory that the core of today's Ashkenazi Jews are descended from a hypothetical Khazarian Jewish diaspora that migrated westward from modern-day Russia and Ukraine into modern-day France and Germany. Linguistic and genetic studies have not supported the theory of a Khazar connection to Ashkenazi Jewry . The theory still finds occasional support, but most scholars view it with considerable scepticism. The theory

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8632-418: The "heaven-mandated" right to rule resided. The Karluks and Uyghurs later allied themselves against the Basmyl, and within two years they toppled the Basmyl khagan. The Uyghur yabghu became khagan and the Karluk leader yabghu. This arrangement lasted less than a year. Hostilities between the Uyghur and Karluk forced the Karluk to migrate westward into the western Turgesh lands. By 766 the Karluks had forced

8798-435: The 1040s. In the late 11th century, they came under the suzerainty of the Seljuk Empire followed by the Qara Khitai (Western Liao dynasty) who defeated the Seljuks in the Battle of Qatwan in 1141. The Eastern Khanate ended in 1211, and the Western Khanate was extinguished by the Khwarazmian Empire in 1212. The capitals of the Kara-Khanid Khanate included Kashgar , Balasagun , Uzgen and Samarkand . The history of

8964-435: The 940s emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus was speculating in De Administrando Imperio about ways in which the Khazars could be isolated and attacked. The Byzantines during the same period began to attempt alliances with the Pechenegs and the Rus', with varying degrees of success. A further factor undermining the Khazar Qağanate was a shift in Islamic routes at this time, as Muslims in Khwarazmia forged trade links with

9130-520: The Abbasid Revolution and the fall of the Umayyad dynasty in 750. In 758, the Abbasid Caliph al-Mansur attempted to strengthen diplomatic ties with the Khazars, ordering Yazid ibn Usayd al-Sulami , one of his nobles and the military governor of Armenia , to take a royal Khazar bride. Yazid married a daughter of Khazar Khagan Baghatur , but she died inexplicably, possibly during childbirth. Her attendants returned home, convinced that some members of another Arab faction had poisoned her, and her father

9296-490: The Arab titles sultan and sultān al-salātīn ("Sultan of Sultans"). According to the Ottoman historian known as Munajjim-bashi, a Karakhanid prince named Sultan Satuq Bughra Khan was the first of the khans to convert. After conversion, he obtained a fatwa which permitted him in effect to kill his presumably-still-pagan father, after which he conquered Kashgar (of the old Shule Kingdom ). Later, in 960, according to Muslim historians Ibn Miskawaih and Ibn al-Athir , there

9462-411: The Arabs refrained from repeating an attack on the Khazars until the early 8th century. The Khazars launched a few raids into Transcaucasian principalities under Muslim dominion, including a large-scale raid in 683–685 during the Second Muslim Civil War that rendered much booty and many prisoners. There is evidence from the account of al-Tabari that the Khazars formed a united front with the remnants of

9628-431: The Arabs under Hasan ibn al-Nu'man . The conflict escalated in 722 with an invasion by 30,000 Khazars into Armenia inflicting a crushing defeat. Caliph Yazid II responded, sending 25,000 Arab troops north, swiftly driving the Khazars back across the Caucasus, recovering Derbent, and advancing on Balanjar. The Arabs broke through the Khazar defence and stormed the city; most of its inhabitants were killed or enslaved, but

9794-411: The Ashina. Even so, the tribal origin of Bilge Kul Qadir Khan, the first Kara-Khan, is still unknown: if Bilge Kul Qadir descended from the Karluk Yabghus , then he indeed belonged to the Ashina dynasty as they did; if Bilge Kul Qadir descended from the Yagma (as suggested by Vasily Bartold ), then he did not, considering that the Hudud al-'Alam stated that "Their [Yagmas'] king is from the family of

9960-409: The Byzantines in the 9th century in exchange for regular payments. Byzantium also sought alliances with the Göktürks against common enemies: in the early 7th century, one such alliance was brokered with the Western Tűrks against the Persian Sasanians in the Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628 . The Byzantines called Khazaria Tourkía , and by the 9th century referred to the Khazars as "Turks". During

10126-471: The Caliphate, while it also conformed to a general Eurasian trend to embrace a world religion . Whatever the impact of Marwan's campaigns was, warfare between the Khazars and the Arabs ceased for more than two decades after 737. Arab raids continued to occur until 741, but their control of the region was limited because maintaining a large garrison at Derbent further depleted their already overstretched army. A third Muslim civil war soon broke out, leading to

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10292-401: The Caucasian Kassogians/ Circassians and then back to Kiev. Sarkel fell in 965, with the capital city of Atil following, c. 968 or 969. In the Russian chronicle, the vanquishing of the Khazar traditions is associated with Vladimir's conversion in 986. According to the Primary Chronicle , in 986 Khazar Jews were present at Vladimir 's disputation to decide on the prospective religion of

10458-433: The Chigil and Yaghma tribes – the Eastern Khagan bore the title Arslan Qara Khaqan (Arslan "lion" was the totem of the Chigil) and the Western Khagan the title Bughra Qara Khaqan (Bughra "male camel" was the totem of the Yaghma). The names of animals were a regular element in the Turkic titles of the Karakhanids: thus Aslan (lion), Bughra (camel), Toghan (falcon), Böri (wolf), and Toghrul or Toghrïl (a bird of prey). Under

10624-504: The Chu River. In the late 9th century the Samanids marched into the steppes and captured Taraz , one of the headquarters of the Karluk khagan, and a large church was transformed into a mosque. During the 9th century, the Karluk confederation (including three chief tribes: the Bulaq ( Mouluo 謀落 / Moula 謀剌), Taşlïk ( Tashili 踏實力), and Sebek (Suofu 娑匐) , along with Chigils , Charuks , Barskhans , Khalajes , Azkishi and Tuhsis (the last three being possibly remnants of Türgesh ) and

10790-407: The Crimea (650–c. 950), and even extended their influence into the Byzantine peninsula of Cherson until it was wrested back in the 10th century. Khazar and Farghânian (Φάργανοι) mercenaries constituted part of the imperial Byzantine Hetaireia bodyguard after its formation in 840, a position that could openly be purchased by a payment of seven pounds of gold. During the 7th and 8th centuries,

10956-401: The Duōlù clan leader, and the Nǔshībì subconfederation, also consisting of five tribes. The Duōlù challenged the Avars in the Kuban River - Sea of Azov area while the Khazar Qağanate consolidated further westwards, led apparently by an Ashina dynasty. With a resounding victory over the tribes in 657, engineered by General Sū Dìngfāng (蘇定方) , Chinese overlordship was imposed to their East after

11122-409: The East and China"; 東方與秦之主 ) as their title, and minted coins bearing these titles. Another title they used was Sulṭān al-Sharq wa al-Ṣīn (Sultan of the East and China). Early period "proto-Qarakhanid" coinage featured Chinese-style square-holed coins, combined with Arabic writing. Much of the realm of the Kara-Khanid Khanate, including Transoxiana and the western Tarim Basin , had been under

11288-400: The Eastern Khanate. The Eastern Khanate had its capital at Balasaghun and later Kashgar. The Fergana-Zhetysu areas became the border between the two states and were frequently contested. When the two states were formed, Fergana fell into realm of the Eastern Khanate, but was later captured by Ibrahim and became part of the Western Khanate. In 1040, the Seljuk Empire defeated the Ghaznavids at

11454-422: The Empire sought an entente with the rising power of the Kievan Rus’ in the north—a region they hoped to convert to Eastern Christianity . Between 965 and 969, Sviatoslav I of Kiev, the ruler of Kievan Rus', along with his allies, conquered the capital, Atil , thus ending Khazaria's independence. Determining the origins and nature of the Khazars is closely bound with theories of their languages . Still, it

11620-485: The Göktürk identification is more probable since the Khazars only emerged from that group after the fragmentation of the former sometime after 630. Some scholars argued that Sasanian Persia never recovered from the devastating defeat wrought by this invasion. Once the Khazars emerged as a power, the Byzantines also began to form alliances with them, dynastic and military. In 695, the last Heraclian emperor , Justinian II , nicknamed "the slit-nosed" (ὁ ῥινότμητος) after he

11786-434: The Göktürks in Transoxiana. The Second Arab-Khazar War began with a series of raids across the Caucasus in the early 8th century. The Umayyads tightened their grip on Armenia in 705 after suppressing a large-scale rebellion. In 713 or 714, the Umayyad general Maslamah conquered Derbent and drove deeper into Khazar territory. The Khazars launched raids in response into Albania and Iranian Azerbaijan but were driven back by

11952-744: The Kabars, started a series of raids from the Etelköz into the Carpathian Basin, mostly against the Eastern Frankish Empire (Germany) and Great Moravia , but also against the Lower Pannonian principality and Bulgaria . Then they together ended up at the outer slopes of Carpathians, and settled there. By the 9th century, groups of Varangian Rus' , developing a powerful warrior-merchant system, began probing south down

12118-500: The Kara-Khanid Khanate is reconstructed from fragmentary and often contradictory written sources, as well as studies on their coinage . The term Karakhanid was derived from Qara Khan or Qara Khaqan ( Persian : قراخان , romanized :  Qarākhān ), the foremost title of the rulers of the dynasty. The word "Kara" means "black" and also "courageous" from Old Turkic (𐰴𐰺𐰀) and khan means ruler. The term

12284-650: The Kara-Khanids' local status. The Kara-Khanid rulers also formed marriage relations with the Liao dynasty and addressed the Song emperors as "maternal uncle", in possible imitation of Uyghur and Tibetan rulers who had marital relations with the previous Tang dynasty. In an account, the Kara-Khanid scholar Mahmud al-Kashgari referred to his homeland, around Kashgar , then part of the Kara-Khanid Khanate, as "Lower China". A genetic study published in Nature in May 2018 examined

12450-702: The Kara-Khitai throne. In 1218, Kuchlug was killed by the Mongol army . Some of the Kara-Khitai's eastern vassals including Eastern Kara-Khanids then joined the Mongol forces to conquer the Khwarezmian Empire. The takeover by the Karakhanids did not change the essentially Iranian character of Central Asia, though it set into motion a demographic and ethnolinguistic shift. During the Karakhanid era,

12616-589: The Karakhanid court. He wrote this first comprehensive dictionary of Turkic languages in Arabic for the Caliphs of Baghdad in 1072–76. Another famous Karakhanid writer was Yusuf Balasaghuni , who wrote Kutadgu Bilig (The Wisdom of Felicity), the only known literary work written in Turkic from the Karakhanid period. Kutadgu Bilig is a form of advice literature known as mirrors for princes . The Turkic identity

12782-603: The Karakhanid state. Nasr, the conqueror of Transoxiana, held the large central area of Transoxiana (Samarkand and Bukhara), Fergana (Uzgen) and other areas, although after his death his appanage was further divided. Ahmad held Zhetysu and Chach and became the head of the dynasty after the death of Ali. The brothers Ahmad and Nasr conducted different policies towards the Ghaznavids in the south – while Ahmad tried to form an alliance with Mahmud of Ghazna , Nasr attempted to expand unsuccessfully into Ghaznavid territory. Ahmad

12948-749: The Karakhanids repelled an attack by a large mass of nomadic Turkic tribes in what was described in Muslim sources as a great victory. Around the same time, the Kara-Khanid ruler Ilig Khan reached an agreement with Mahmud of Ghazni , in which they agreed to partition former Samanid territory along the Oxus river . The Islamic conquest of the Buddhist cities east of Kashgar began when the Karakhanid Sultan Satuq Bughra Khan converted to Islam in 934 and then captured Kashgar. He and his son directed endeavors to proselytize Islam among

13114-601: The Karakhanids still survive today, including the Kalyan minaret built by Mohammad Arslan Khan beside the main mosque in Bukhara, and three mausolea in Uzgend. The early Karakhanid rulers, as nomads, lived not in the city but in an army encampment outside the capital, and while by the time of Ibrahim the Karakhanids still maintained a nomadic tradition, their extensive religious and civil constructions showed that they had assimilated

13280-521: The Karakhanids. The earliest example of madrasas in Central Asia was founded in Samarkand by Ibrahim Tamghach Khan . Ibrahim also founded a hospital to care for the sick as well as providing shelter for the poor. His son Shams al-Mulk Nasr built ribats for the caravanserais on the route between Bukhara and Samarkand, as well as a palace near Bukhara. Some of the buildings constructed by

13446-520: The Karluk horde: Sanah, a possible rendition of Ashina (compare Śaya (also by al-Masudi), Aś(i)nas (al-Tabari), Ānsa (Hudud al-'Alam), and Śaba (Ibn Khordadbeh) ), and Afrasiab, whom 11th-century Karakhanid scholar Mahmud al-Kashgari identified with Turkic king Alp Er Tunga , the legendary progenitor of the Karakhanid ruling dynasty. Furthermore, Kara-khanid heads of state claimed the title khagan , which indicates that they may have been descended from

13612-645: The Karluks were part of an alliance led by the Basmyl and Uyghurs that rebelled against the Göktürks and led to the demise of the Second Turkic Khaganate (682–744). In the realignment of power that followed, the Karluks were elevated from a tribe led by an Elteber to one led by a yabghu , which was one of the highest Turkic dignitaries and also implies membership in the Ashina clan in whom

13778-479: The Khagans were four rulers with the titles Arslan Ilig, Bughra Ilig, Arslan Tegin and Bughra Tegin. The titles of the members of the dynasty changed with their position, normally upwards, in the dynastic hierarchy. In the mid-10th century the Kara-Khanids converted to Islam and adopted Muslim names and honorifics, but retained Turkic regnal titles such as Khan, Khagan , Ilek (Ilig) and Tegin . Later they adopted

13944-578: The Khazar Qağanate, and raided down to the Caspian sea . The Schechter Letter relates the story of a campaign against Khazaria by HLGW (recently identified as Oleg of Chernigov) around 941 in which Oleg was defeated by the Khazar general Pesakh . The Khazar alliance with the Byzantine empire began to collapse in the early 10th century. Byzantine and Khazar forces may have clashed in the Crimea, and by

14110-489: The Khazar government included dignitaries referred to by ibn Fadlan as Jawyshyghr and Kündür , but their responsibilities are unknown. It has been estimated that 25 to 28 distinct ethnic groups made up the population of the Khazar Qağanate, aside from the ethnic elite. The ruling elite seems to have been constituted out of nine tribes/clans, themselves ethnically heterogeneous, spread over perhaps nine provinces or principalities, each of which would have been allocated to

14276-616: The Khazars (namely, the Kabars ) joined the ancient Hungarians in the 9th century. The ruling elite of the Khazars was said by Judah Halevi and Abraham ibn Daud to have converted to Rabbinic Judaism in the 8th century, but the scope of the conversion to Judaism within the Khazar Khanate remains uncertain. Where the Khazars dispersed after the fall of the Khanate is subject to many conjectures. Proposals have been made regarding

14442-829: The Khazars after his brother Roman was killed by their allies, the Polovtsi /Cumans. After one more conflict with these Polovtsi in 1106, the Khazars fade from history. By the 13th century they survived in Russian folklore only as "Jewish heroes" in the "land of the Jews". ( zemlya Jidovskaya ). By the end of the 12th century, Petachiah of Ratisbon reported travelling through what he called "Khazaria", and had little to remark on other than describing its minim (sectaries) living amidst desolation in perpetual mourning. The reference seems to be to Karaites. The Franciscan missionary William of Rubruck likewise found only impoverished pastures in

14608-570: The Khazars and the Abbasids were ultimately broken by a series of raids which occurred in 799, the raids occurred after another marriage alliance failed. Around 830, a rebellion broke out in the Khazar khaganate. As a result, three Kabar tribes of the Khazars (probably the majority of ethnic Khazars) joined the Hungarians and moved through Levedia to what the Hungarians call the Etelköz ,

14774-551: The Khazars fought a series of wars against the Umayyad Caliphate and its Abbasid successor. The First Arab-Khazar War began during the first phase of Muslim expansion . By 640, Muslim forces had reached Armenia; in 642 they launched their first raid across the Caucasus under Abd ar-Rahman ibn Rabiah . In 652 Arab forces advanced on the Khazar capital, Balanjar , but were defeated , suffering heavy losses; according to Persian historians such as al-Tabari , both sides in

14940-625: The Khazars thus took shape out of the ruins of this nomadic empire as it broke up under pressure from the Tang dynasty armies to the east sometime between 630 and 650. After their conquest of the lower Volga region to the East and an area westwards between the Danube and the Dniepr , and their subjugation of the Onoğur - Bulğar union, sometime around 670, a properly constituted Khazar Qağanate emerges, becoming

15106-521: The Kievan Rus'. Whether these were Jews who had settled in Kiev or emissaries from some Jewish Khazar remnant state is unclear. Conversion to one of the faiths of the people of Scripture was a precondition to any peace treaty with the Arabs, whose Bulgar envoys had arrived in Kiev after 985. A visitor to Atil wrote soon after the sacking of the city that its vineyards and garden had been razed, that not

15272-497: The King of China, a second for the King of Byzantium, and a third for the king of the Khazars. Although anachronistic in retrodating the Khazars to this period, the legend, in placing the Khazar qağan on a throne with equal status to kings of the other two superpowers, bears witness to the reputation won by the Khazars from early times. Khazaria developed a dual kingship governance structure, typical among Turkic nomads, consisting of

15438-526: The Persian historian Istakhri the Khazar language was different from any other known tongue. Alano-As was also widely spoken. Eastern Common Turkic, the language of the royal house and its core tribes, in all likelihood remained the language of the ruling elite in the same way that Mongol continued to be used by the rulers of the Golden Horde, alongside of the Qipčaq Turkic speech spoken by the bulk of

15604-483: The Qara Khitai were Buddhists ruling over a largely Muslim population, they were considered fair-minded rulers whose reign was marked by religious tolerance. Islamic religious life continued uninterrupted and Islamic authority persevered under the Qara Khitai. Kashgar became a Nestorian metropolitan see and Christian gravestones in the Chu River Valley appeared beginning in this period. However, Kuchlug ,

15770-485: The Rus' in 911, a Varangian foray, with Khazar connivance, through Arab lands led to a request to the Khazar throne by the Khwârazmian Islamic guard for permission to retaliate against the large Rus' contingent on its return. The purpose was to revenge the violence the Rus' razzias had inflicted on their fellow Muslim believers. The Rus' force was thoroughly routed and massacred. The Khazar rulers closed

15936-430: The Rus'-Oghuz campaigns left Khazaria devastated, with perhaps many Khazarian Jews in flight, and leaving behind at best a minor rump state . It left little trace, except for some placenames, and much of its population was undoubtedly absorbed in successor hordes. Al-Muqaddasi , writing ca.985, mentions Khazar beyond the Caspian sea as a district of "woe and squalor", with honey, many sheep and Jews. Kedrenos mentions

16102-568: The Samanids returned to Bukhara. Hasan's cousin Ali b. Musa (title: Kara Khan or Arslan Khan) resumed the campaign against the Samanids, and by 999 Ali's son Nasr had taken Chach, Samarkand, and Bukhara. The Samanid domains were divided between the Ghaznavids , who gained Khorasan and Afghanistan , and the Karakhanids, who received Transoxiana. The Oxus River thus became the boundary between

16268-594: The Sasanian army in the Persian heartland, the Western Turkic Qağanate dissolved under pressure from the encroaching Tang dynasty armies and split into two competing federations, each consisting of five tribes, collectively known as the "Ten Arrows" ( On Oq ). Both briefly challenged Tang hegemony in eastern Turkestan. To the West, two new nomadic states arose in the meantime, Old Great Bulgaria under Kubrat ,

16434-514: The Turkic tribesmen that constituted the military force of this part of the Činggisid empire. Similarity, Oğuric, like Qipčaq Turkic in the Jočid realm, functioned as one of the languages of government. One method for tracing their origins consists in the analysis of the possible etymologies behind the ethnonym "Khazar". The tribes that were to comprise the Khazar empire were not an ethnic union, but

16600-506: The Turks and engage in military conquests. In the mid-10th century, Satuq's son Musa began to put pressure on Khotan, and a long period of war between Kashgar and the Kingdom of Khotan ensued. Satok Bughra Khan's nephew or grandson Ali Arslan was said to have been killed by Buddhists during the war; during the reign of Ahmad b. Ali, the Karakhanids also engaged in wars against non-Muslims to

16766-647: The Volga by 549, ejecting the Avars, who were then forced to flee to the sanctuary of the Hungarian plain . The Ashina clan appeared on the scene by 552, when they overthrew the Rourans and established the Göktürk Qağanate , whose self designation was Tür(ü)k . By 568, these Göktürks were probing for an alliance with Byzantium to attack Persia . An internecine war broke out between the senior eastern Göktürks and

16932-521: The Yaghma, possible descendants of the Toquz Oghuz , joined forces and formed the first Karluk-Karakhanid khaganate. The Chigils appear to have formed the nucleus of the Karakhanid army. The date of its foundation and the name of its first khan is uncertain, but according to one reconstruction, the first Karakhanid ruler was Bilge Kul Qadir Khan . The rulers of the Karakhanids were likely to be from

17098-474: The administration of the western branch of the family that eventually led to a formal separation of the Khara-Khanid Khanate. Ibrahim Tamghach Khan was considered by Muslim historians as a great ruler, and he brought some stability to the Western Karakhanids by limiting the appanage system that caused much of the internal strife in the Kara-Khanid Khanate. The Hasan family remained in control of

17264-606: The battle used catapults against the opposing troops. A number of Russian sources give the name of a Khazar khagan from this period as Irbis and describe him as a scion of the Göktürk royal house, the Ashina. Whether Irbis ever existed is open to debate, as is whether he can be identified with one of the many Göktürk rulers of the same name. Due to the outbreak of the First Muslim Civil War and other priorities,

17430-405: The bek sent out a body of troops, they would not retreat under any circumstances. If they were defeated, every one who returned was killed. Settlements were governed by administrative officials known as tuduns . In some cases, such as the Byzantine settlements in southern Crimea , a tudun would be appointed for a town nominally within another polity's sphere of influence . Other officials in

17596-663: The citizens of Bukhara revolted against the sadrs (leaders of the religious classes), which the Khwarazmshah 'Ala' ad-Din Muhammad used as a pretext to conquer Bukhara. Muhammad then formed an alliance with the Western Karakhanid ruler Uthman ibn Ibrahim (who later married Muhammad's daughter) against the Qara Khitai. In 1210, the Khwarezm-Shah took Samarkand after the Qara Khitai retreated to deal with

17762-542: The collapse of Khazar power in attributing its eclipse to the enfeebling effects of "false" religion. The decline was contemporary to that suffered by the Transoxiana Sāmānid empire to the east, both events paving the way for the rise of the Great Seljuq Empire , whose founding traditions mention Khazar connections. Whatever successor entity survived, it could no longer function as a bulwark against

17928-512: The connection a strong one, and conjectures that their leader may have been Yǐpíshèkuì ( 乙毗射匱 ), who lost power or was killed around 651. Moving west, the confederation reached the land of the Akatziroi , who had been important allies of Byzantium in fighting off Attila 's army. An embryonic state of Khazaria began to form sometime after 630, when it emerged from the breakdown of the larger Göktürk Khaganate . Göktürk armies had penetrated

18094-491: The culture and traditions of the settled population of Transoxiana. During the excavations of the citadel of Samarkand, the ruins of the palace of the Karakhanid ruler Ibrahim ibn Hussein (1178–1202) were found. The palace was decorated with wall paintings. Numerous works of art and decorative objects are also known from the realm of the Kara-Khanids during the time of their rule (840–1212). Samarkand, with its old citadel of Afrasiab where many works of art have been excavated,

18260-628: The cultures of the Kara-Khanids and the Khwarezmians without much interruption. The Kara-Khanids translated the Quran into Middle Turkic . There are four surviving copies of the Quran translations found in various collections and a Middle Turkic excerpt of Al-Fatiha , which supposedly belong to the Kara-Khanid period. Kara-Khanid monarchs adopted Tamghaj Khan (Turkic for "Khan of China"; 桃花石汗 ) or Malik al-Mashriq wa-l’Sin (Arabic for "King of

18426-632: The distinctive kaftan or riding habit of the nomadic Khazars, the tzitzakion (τζιτζάκιον), and this was adopted as a solemn element of imperial dress. The orderly hierarchical system of succession by "scales" ( lestvichnaia sistema :лествичная система) to the Grand Principate of Kiev was arguably modelled on Khazar institutions, via the example of the Rus' Khaganate . The proto-Hungarian Pontic tribe, while perhaps threatening Khazaria as early as 839 (Sarkel), practiced their institutional model, such as

18592-609: The dual rule of a ceremonial kende-kündü and a gyula administering practical and military administration, as tributaries of the Khazars. A dissident group of Khazars, the Qabars , joined the Hungarians in their migration westwards as they moved into Pannonia . Elements within the Hungarian population can be viewed as perpetuating Khazar traditions as a successor state. Byzantine sources refer to Hungary as Western Tourkia in contrast to Khazaria, Eastern Tourkia. The gyula line produced

18758-626: The east and northeast. Muslim accounts tell the tale of the four imams from Mada'in city (possibly now in Iraq) who travelled to help Yusuf Qadir Khan, the Qarakhanid leader, in his conquest of Khotan, Yarkend, and Kashgar. The "infidels" were said to have been driven towards Khotan, but the four Imams were killed. In 1006, Yusuf Qadir Khan of Kashgar conquered the Kingdom of Khotan, ending Khotan's existence as an independent state. The conquest of

18924-732: The end of the dynasty. The Khanate conquered Transoxiana in Central Asia and ruled it independently between 999 and 1089. Their arrival in Transoxiana signaled a definitive shift from Iranic to Turkic predominance in Central Asia, yet the Kara-khanids gradually assimilated the Perso-Arab Muslim culture , while retaining some of their native Turkic culture. The Khanate split into the Eastern and Western Khanates in

19090-570: The ethnonym "Khazars" was always prefaced with Tūjué , then still reserved for Göktürks and their splinter groups, ( Tūjué Kěsà bù :突厥可薩部; Tūjué Hésà :突厥曷薩) and "Khazar's" first syllable is transcribed with different characters (可 and 曷) than 葛, which is used to render the syllable Qa- in the Uyğur word Qasar . While it is far from given that the Khazars are not signifying a multi-ethnic and multi-lingual cluster of peoples and clans, some more nomadic, some less, it doesn't exclude that some clans, or splintergroups, or even rulers has identified with

19256-473: The father of Osman of Khwarazm fled from Karakhanid lands in the wake of the Qara Khitai invasion. Despite losing to the Qara Khitai, the Karakhanid dynasty remained in power as their vassals. The Qara Khitai themselves stayed at Zhetysu near Balasagun, and allowed some of the Karakhanids to continue to rule as their tax collectors in Samarkand and Kashgar. Under the Qara Khitai the Karakhanids functioned as administrators for sedentary Muslim populations. While

19422-593: The foremost trading empires of the early medieval world, commanding the western marches of the Silk Road and playing a key commercial role as a crossroad between China , the Middle East , and Kievan Rus' . For some three centuries ( c.  650 –965), the Khazars dominated the vast area extending from the Volga-Don steppes to the eastern Crimea and the northern Caucasus . Khazaria long served as

19588-440: The formation of two independent Karakhanid states. A son of Hasan Bughra Khan, Ali Tegin , seized control of Bukhara and other towns. He expanded his territory further after the death of Mansur. The son of Nasr, Böritigin , later waged war against the sons of Ali Tegin, and won control of a large part of Transoxiana, making Samarkand the capital. In 1041, another son of Nasr b. Ali, Muhammad 'Ayn ad-Dawlah (reigned 1041–52) took over

19754-479: The junior West Turkic Khaganate some decades later, when on the death of Taspar Qağan , a succession dispute led to a dynastic crisis between Taspar's chosen heir, the Apa Qağan , and the ruler appointed by the tribal high council, Āshǐnà Shètú (阿史那摄图), the Ishbara Qağan . By the first decades of the 7th century, the Ashina yabgu Tong managed to stabilise the Western division, but upon his death, after providing crucial military assistance to Byzantium in routing

19920-430: The khagan as follows: The khan wore a green satin robe; his hair, which was ten feet long, was free. A band of white silk wound round his forehead and hung down behind. The ministers of the presence, numbering two hundred in number, all wearing embroidered robes, stood on his right and left. The rest of his military retinue [was] clothed in fur, serge and fine wool, the spears and standards and bows in order, and

20086-450: The khaganate lingered for a few decades before falling to the Chinese Empire, many of the client tribes became independent and a number of successor states, including the Khazar Khaganate and Great Bulgaria , became independent. He had at least 2 sons: Karakhanid The Kara-Khanid Khanate ( Persian : قراخانیان , romanized :  Qarākhāniyān ; Chinese : 喀喇汗國 ; pinyin : Kālā Hánguó ), also known as

20252-427: The kings of medieval Hungary through descent from Árpád , while the Qabars retained their traditions longer, and were known as "black Hungarians" ( fekete magyarság ). Some archaeological evidence from Čelarevo suggests the Qabars practised Judaism since warrior graves with Jewish symbols were found there, including menorahs , shofars , etrogs , lulavs , candlesnuffers, ash collectors, inscriptions in Hebrew, and

20418-443: The local population began using Turkic in speech – initially the shift was linguistic with the local people adopting the Turkic language. While Central Asia became Turkicized over the centuries, culturally the Turks came close to being Persianized or, in certain respects, Arabicized. Nevertheless, the official or court language used in Kashgar and other Karakhanid centers, referred to as "Khaqani" (royal), remained Turkic. The language

20584-402: The lower Volga area where Ital once lay. Giovanni da Pian del Carpine , the papal legate to the court of the Mongol Khan Guyuk at that time, mentioned an otherwise unattested Jewish tribe, the Brutakhi , perhaps in the Volga region. Although connections are made to the Khazars, the link is based merely on a common attribution of Judaism. The 10th century Zoroastrian Dênkart registered

20750-424: The name Irene. Constantine and Irene had a son, the future Leo IV (775–780) , who thereafter bore the sobriquet, "the Khazar". Leo died in mysterious circumstances after his Athenian wife bore him a son, Constantine VI , who on his majority co-ruled with his mother, the dowager. He proved unpopular, and his death ended the dynastic link of the Khazars to the Byzantine throne. By the 8th century, Khazars dominated

20916-432: The name(s) of the Khazars, in the variety of ways it has been expressed. After their conversion it is reported that they adopted the Hebrew script, and it is likely that, although speaking a Turkic language, the Khazar chancellery under Judaism probably corresponded in Hebrew . Determining the origins and nature of the Khazars is closely bound with theories of their languages , but analysis of their languages' origins

21082-447: The passage down the Volga to the Rus', sparking a war. In the early 960s, Khazar ruler Joseph wrote to Hasdai ibn Shaprut about the deterioration of Khazar relations with the Rus': "I protect the mouth of the river (Itil-Volga) and prevent the Rus arriving in their ships from setting off by sea against the Ishmaelites and (equally) all (their) enemies from setting off by land to Bab ." The Rus' warlords launched several wars against

21248-411: The period leading up to and after the siege of Constantinople in 626, Heraclius sought help via emissaries, and eventually personally, from a Göktürk chieftain of the Western Turkic Khaganate, Tong Yabghu Qağan , in Tiflis , plying him with gifts and the promise of marriage to his daughter, Epiphania . Tong Yabghu responded by sending a large force to ravage the Persian empire, marking the start of

21414-413: The permanent standing army indicate that it numbered as many as one hundred thousand. They controlled and exacted tribute from 25 to 30 different nations and tribes inhabiting the vast territories between the Caucasus, the Aral Sea, the Ural Mountains, and the Ukrainian steppes. Khazar armies were led by the Qağan Bek (pronounced as Kagan Bek) and commanded by subordinate officers known as tarkhans . When

21580-411: The physical remains, such as skulls at Sarkel , have revealed individuals belonging to the Slavic, other European, and a few Mongolian types. The import and export of foreign wares, and the revenues derived from taxing their transit, was a hallmark of the Khazar economy, although it is said also to have produced isinglass . Distinctively among the nomadic steppe polities, the Khazar Qağanate developed

21746-435: The possibility of a Khazar factor in the ethnogenesis of numerous peoples, such as the Hazaras , Hungarians , the Kazakhs , the Cossacks of the Don region and Ukraine , the Muslim Kumyks , the Turkic-speaking Krymchaks and their Crimean neighbours the Crimean Karaites , the Moldavian Csángós , the Mountain Jews , and even some Subbotniks (based on their Ukrainian and Cossack origin). The late 19th century saw

21912-400: The pressure east and south of nomad expansions. By 1043, Kimeks and Qipchaqs , thrusting westwards, pressured the Oğuz , who in turn pushed the Pechenegs west towards Byzantium's Balkan provinces. Khazaria nonetheless left its mark on the rising states and some of their traditions and institutions. Much earlier, Tzitzak , the Khazar wife of Leo III , introduced into the Byzantine court

22078-450: The rebellion from the Naiman Kuchlug, who had seized the Qara Khitans' treasury at Uzgen. The Khwarezm-Shah then defeated the Qara Khitai near Talas. Muhammad and Kuchlug had, apparently, agreed to divide up the Qara Khitan's empire. In 1212, the population of Samarkand staged a revolt against the Khwarezmians, a revolt which Uthman supported, and massacred them. The Khwarezm-Shah returned, recaptured Samarkand and executed Uthman. He demanded

22244-404: The recently converted Volga Bulgarian Muslims, a move which may have caused a drastic drop, perhaps up to 80%, in the revenue base of Khazaria, and consequently, a crisis in its ability to pay for its defence. Sviatoslav I finally succeeded in destroying Khazar imperial power in the 960s, in a circular sweep that overwhelmed Khazar fortresses like Sarkel and Tamatarkha , and reached as far as

22410-528: The reign of Ibrahim's grandson Ahmad b. Khidr, the Seljuks entered and took control of Samarkand, together with the domains belonging to the Western Khanate. For half a century, the Western Karakhanid Khanate was a vassal of the Seljuks, who largely controlled the appointment of the Khanate's rulers in that time. Ahmad b. Khidr was returned to power by the Seljuks, but in 1095, the ulama accused Ahmad of heresy and managed to secure his execution. The Karakhanids of Kashgar also declared their submission following

22576-417: The remains of three Khara-Khanid individuals. They were found to be carrying the maternal haplogroups G2a2 , A and J1c . The Kara-Khanid were found to have more East Asian ancestry than the preceding Goktürks . ( Tokhara Yabghus , Turk Shahis ) Western Karakhanids Eastern Karakhanids Khazars ( Tokhara Yabghus , Turk Shahis ) The Khazars ( / ˈ x ɑː z ɑːr z / ) were

22742-400: The riders of camels and horses stretched far out of [sight]. According to the Old Book of Tang , Tong Yabghu's reign was once considered as the golden age of Western Göktürk Khaganate: Tong Yehu Kaghan is a man of bravery and astuteness. He is good at art of war. Thus he controlled Tiele tribes to the north, confronted Persia to the west, connected with Kasmira (nowadays Kashmir ) to

22908-406: The rule of the Tang dynasty prior to the Battle of Talas in 751, and the Kara-Khanid rulers continued to identify their dynasty with China several centuries later. Yusuf Qadir Khan sent the first Kara-Khanid envoy to the Song dynasty, Boyla Saghun, to request the Song to send an official envoy who would help 'pacify' Khotan, apparently seeking to use the prestige of the Chinese court to strengthen

23074-440: The rule of the Caliphate, but the accommodation was short-lived because a combination of internal instability among the Umayyads and Byzantine support undid the agreement within three years, and the Khazars re-asserted their independence. The suggestion that the Khazars adopted Judaism as early as 740 is based on the idea that, in part, it was, a re-assertion of their independence from the rule of both regional powers, Byzantium and

23240-423: The south. All countries are subjected to him. He controlled ten thousands of men with arrow and bow, establishing his power over the western region. He occupied the land of Wusun and moved his tent to Qianquan north of Tashkent. All of the princes of western region assumed the Turk office of Jielifa . Tong Yehu Kaghan also sent a Tutun to monitor them for imposition. The power of Western Turks had never reached such

23406-490: The subject populations, were protected by a Khwârazmian guard corps, or comitatus , called the Ursiyya . But unlike many other local polities, they hired soldiers (mercenaries) (the junûd murtazîqa in al-Mas'ûdî ). At the peak of their empire, the Khazars ran a centralised fiscal administration, with a standing army of some 7–12,000 men, which could, at need, be multiplied two or three times that number by inducting reserves from their nobles' retinues. Other figures for

23572-440: The submission of all leading Karakhanids, and finally extinguished the Western Karakhanid state. In 1204, a rebellion of the Eastern Kara-Khanid in Kashgar was suppressed by the Kara-Khitai who took the prince Yusuf hostage to Balasagun. The prince was later released but he was killed in Kashgar by rebels in 1211, effectively ending the Eastern Kara-Khanid. In 1214, the rebels in Kashgar surrendered to Kuchlug , who had usurped

23738-401: The submission of the Turgesh and they established their capital at Suyab on the Chu River . The Karluk confederation by now included the Chigil and Tukshi tribes who may have been Türgesh tribes incorporated into the Karluk union. The Karluks converted to Nestorian Christianity at the end of the 8th century CE, about 15 years after they established themselves in the Semerich'e region. This

23904-417: The territory between the Carpathians and the Dnieper River . The Hungarians faced their first attack by the Pechenegs around 854, though other sources state that an attack by Pechenegs was the reason for their departure to Etelköz. The new neighbours of the Hungarians were the Varangians and the eastern Slavs . From 862 onwards, the Hungarians (already referred to as the Ungri ) along with their allies,

24070-437: The throne. The Khazarian spouse thereupon changed her name to Theodora . Busir was offered a bribe by the Byzantine usurper, Tiberius III , to kill Justinian. Warned by Theodora, Justinian escaped, murdering two Khazar officials in the process. He fled to Bulgaria, whose Khan Tervel helped him regain the throne. Upon his reinstalment, and despite Busir's treachery during his exile, he sent for Theodora; Busir complied, and she

24236-439: The time of the Egyptian vizier Al-Afdal Shahanshah (d. 1121), one Solomon ben Duji, often identified as a Khazarian Jew, attempted to advocate for a messianic effort for the liberation of, and return of all Jews to, Palestine. He wrote to many Jewish communities to enlist support. He eventually moved to Kurdistan where his son Menachem some decades later assumed the title of Messiah and, raising an army for this purpose, took

24402-432: The two great furnishers of slaves to the Muslim market to slavery in the Abbasid Caliphate (the other being the Iranian Sâmânid amîrs ), supplying it with captured Slavs and tribesmen from the Eurasian northlands. It profited from the latter which enabled it to maintain a standing army of Khwarezm Muslim troops. The capital Atil reflected the division: Kharazān on the western bank where the king and his Khazar elite, with

24568-601: The two rival empires. The Karakhanid state was divided into appanages ( Ülüş system ), as was common of Turkic and Mongol nomads. The Karakhanid appanages were associated with four principal urban centers, Balasagun (then the capital of the Karakhanid state) in Zhetysu, Kashgar in Xinjiang, Uzgen in Fergana , and Samarkand in Transoxiana. The dynasty's original domains of Zhetysu and Kasgar and their khans retained an implicit seniority over those who ruled in Transoxiana and Fergana. The four sons of Ali (Ahmad, Nasr, Mansur, Muhammad) each held their own independent appanage within

24734-422: The waterways controlled by the Khazars and their protectorate, the Volga Bulgarians , partially in pursuit of the Arab silver that flowed north for hoarding through the Khazarian-Volga Bulgarian trading zones, partially to trade in furs and ironwork. Northern mercantile fleets passing Atil were tithed, as they were at Byzantine Cherson . Their presence may have prompted the formation of a Rus' state by convincing

24900-447: The western Tarim Basin which includes Khotan and Kashgar is significant in the eventual Turkification and Islamification of the Tarim Basin , and modern Uyghurs identify with the Karakhanids even though the name Uyghur was taken from the Manichaean Uyghur Khaganate and the Buddhist state of Qocho . Early in the 11th century the unity of the Karakhanid dynasty was fractured by frequent internal warfare that eventually resulted in

25066-399: The westernmost successor state of the formidable Göktürk Qağanate after its disintegration. According to Omeljan Pritsak , the language of the Onoğur-Bulğar federation was to become the lingua franca of Khazaria as it developed into what Lev Gumilev called a "steppe Atlantis" ( stepnaja Atlantida / Степная Атлантида). Historians have often referred to this period of Khazar domination as

25232-526: The îšâ and the xâqân converted to Judaism sometime in the 8th century, while the rest, according to the Persian traveller Ahmad ibn Rustah , probably followed the old Tūrkic religion. The ruling stratum, like that of the later Činggisids within the Golden Horde , was a relatively small group that differed ethnically and linguistically from its subject peoples, meaning the Alano-As and Oğuric Turkic tribes, who were numerically superior within Khazaria. The Khazar Qağans, while taking wives and concubines from

25398-457: Was a mass conversion of the Turks (reportedly "200,000 tents of the Turks"), and circumstantial evidence suggests these were the Karakhanids. The grandson of Satuk Bughra Khan, Hasan b. Sulayman (or Harun) (title: Bughra Khan) attacked the Samanids in the late 10th century. Between 990 and 992, Hasan took Isfijab , Ferghana , Ilaq , Samarkand , and the Samanid capital Bukhara . However, Hasan Bughra Khan died in 992 due to an illness, and

25564-447: Was caught in a pincer movement between steppe Pechenegs and the strengthening of an emergent Rus' power to the north, both undermining Khazaria's tributary empire. According to the Schechter Text , the Khazar ruler King Benjamin (ca.880–890) fought a battle against the allied forces of five lands whose moves were perhaps encouraged by Byzantium. Although Benjamin was victorious, his son Aaron II faced another invasion, this time led by

25730-408: Was conquered by the Kara-Khanids between 990 and 992, and held until 1212 (11th–12th centuries): Kara-Khanid is arguably the most enduring cultural heritage among coexisting cultures in Central Asia from the 9th to the 13th centuries. The Karluk-Uyghur dialect spoken by the nomadic tribes and Turkified sedentary populations under Kara-Khanid rule formed two major branches of the Turkic language family,

25896-420: Was crowned as Augusta, suggesting that both prized the alliance. Decades later, Leo III (ruled 717–741) made a similar alliance to co-ordinate strategy against a common enemy, the Muslim Arabs . He sent an embassy to the Khazar qağan Bihar and married his son, the future Constantine V (ruled 741–775), to Bihar's daughter, a princess referred to as Tzitzak , in 732. On converting to Christianity, she took

26062-453: Was devised by European Orientalists in the 19th century to describe both the dynasty and the Turks ruled by it. The Kara-Khanid Khanate originated from a confederation formed some time in the 9th century by Karluks , Yagmas , Chigils , Tuhsi , and other peoples living in Zhetysu , Western Tian Shan (modern Kyrgyzstan ), and Western Xinjiang around Kashgar . 10th-century Arab historian Al-Masudi listed two "Khagan of Khagans" of

26228-406: Was enraged. The Khazar general Ras Tarkhan invaded regions which were located south of the Caucasus in 762–764, devastating Albania, Armenia, and Iberia, and capturing Tiflis. Thereafter, relations between the Khazars and the Abbasids became increasingly cordial, because the foreign policies of the Abbasids were generally less expansionist than the foreign policies of the Umayyads, relations between

26394-425: Was mutilated and deposed, was exiled to Cherson in the Crimea , where a Khazar governor ( tudun ) presided. He escaped into Khazar territory in 704 or 705 and was given asylum by qağan Busir Glavan (Ἰβουζῆρος Γλιαβάνος), who gave him his sister in marriage, perhaps in response to an offer by Justinian, who may have thought a dynastic marriage would seal by kinship a powerful tribal support for his attempts to regain

26560-445: Was nearly strangled until he declared the number of years he wished to reign, on the expiration of which he would be killed by the nobles . The deputy ruler would enter the presence of the reclusive greater king only with great ceremony, approaching him barefoot to prostrate himself in the dust and then light a piece of wood as a purifying fire, while waiting humbly and calmly to be summoned. Particularly elaborate rituals accompanied

26726-476: Was partly based on dialects spoken by the Turkic tribes that made up the Karakhanids and possessed qualities of linear descent from Kök and Karluk Turkic. The Turkic script was also used for all documents and correspondence of the khaqans, according to Dīwānu l-Luġat al-Turk . The Dīwānu l-Luġat al-Turk (Dictionary of Languages of the Turks) was written by a prominent Karakhanid historian, Mahmud al-Kashgari , who may have lived for some time in Kashgar at

26892-418: Was reportedly kidnapped by "Khazars" in 1079 and shipped off to Constantinople , although most scholars believe that this is a reference to the Cumans - Kipchaks or other steppe peoples then dominant in the Pontic region. Upon his conquest of Tmutarakan in the 1080s Oleg Sviatoslavich, son of a prince of Chernigov, gave himself the title " Archon of Khazaria". In 1083 Oleg is said to have exacted revenge on

27058-405: Was succeeded by Mansur, and after the death of Mansur, the Hasan Bughra Khan branch of the Karakhanids became dominant. Hasan's sons Muhammad Toghan Khan II, and Yusuf Kadir Khan who held Kashgar , became in turn the head of the Karakhanid dynasty. The two families, i.e. , the descendants of Ali Arslan Khan and Hasan Bughra Khan, would eventually split the Karakhanid Khanate in two. In 1017–1018,

27224-410: Was the commander of the Khazars , the westernmost of the tribes owing allegiance to the Western Göktürks; this branch of the family may have provided the Khazars with their first khagans in the mid seventh century. In ca. 630 he was murdered by Külüg Sibir , his uncle and a partisan of the Dulu faction. Following the death of Tong Yabghu, the might of the Western Göktürks largely collapsed. Although

27390-410: Was the first time the Church of the East received such major sponsorship by an eastern power. Remains of a Nestorian church have been found in the Karluk capital of Suyab , as well as hundreds of tomstones with Nestorian Syriac inscriptions in the Semerich'e region. By the mid-9th century, the Karluk confederation had gained control of the sacred lands of the Western Türks after the destruction of

27556-406: Was to prove to be the foundation of a Rus' empire. The Khazars had initially allowed the Rus' to use the trade route along the Volga River, and raid southwards. See Caspian expeditions of the Rus' . According to Al-Mas'udi , the qağan is said to have given his assent on the condition that the Rus' give him half of the booty. In 913, however, two years after Byzantium concluded a peace treaty with

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