Download PDF | Boris Zhivkov, Daria Manova - Khazaria in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries-Brill Academic Publishers (2015).
353 Pages
Preface
The history of the steppe peoples or, more precisely, that of the state organization in the steppes is often presented as a string of political entities or ethnic communities that replace one another in rapid succession. The deeper and more thorough understanding of the processes there is hindered by one major obstacle—the lack of enough information and indigenous written records. In this respect, the Khazar Khaganate (from the seventh to tenth century) is no exception, quite the opposite. We have at our disposal only two letters, which can be defined as authentic Khazar documents: that of the Khazar ruler Joseph and that of a Khazar Jew (the so-called Schechter Letter or the Cambridge Document), addressed to Hasdai ibn Shaprut (the mid-tenth century).
These letters are not sufficient for creating a satisfactory picture of the Khazar state. Written during the last period of the khaganate’s existence, they have been subject to diverse and contradictory interpretations by modern scholars. At the same time, the Khazar state was of great significance for the development of Eastern Europe between the eighth and tenth centuries. This region was the meeting and interaction point for various traditions (state-forming and cultural). This can be seen most clearly in the religious life (pagans, Christians, Muslims and Jews often lived side by side in Khazaria). But apart from this (and because of it) Khazaria was a place of interaction for the cultural and civilizational influences, coming mainly from the South (from Byzantium and the Arab Caliphate) and from the East (from various steppe communities and states from Central and Middle Asia).
The Judaization of the Khazar elite was among the reasons behind this special interest in the Khazar state, but it was also a cause for the existence of politically charged studies. Such is the attempt to seek the origins of Eastern European Jews (and thus of a large part of the population of contemporary Israel) among the ethnic Khazars.!
The history of the Khazar state is also closely linked to the issues surrounding the emergence of Kievan Rus’. With regard to its importance and to the opposition that it spurred among scientific trends in Russian historiography, the Khazar question is comparable perhaps only to the Norman one. The legacy of the Russian Slavophiles is supplemented by Soviet anti-Semitism, which reflects directly on the studies of Khazaria.2 The popular concept of the Khazar Khaganate nowadays is built largely on this basis. It refers not only to the myth of the “thirteenth tribe” (in the words of A. Koestler), but also to the “vengeance on the foolish Khazars”.?
The “Khazar myth”, as it is known today, serves all kinds of political agendas that explain the Jewish presence in Europe and in contemporary Israel. If A. Koestler’s thesis (which has no scientific grounds) is to be followed, it could be argued that in its larger part Israel's population consists of descendants of the Khazars, and therefore has no grounds for claiming its current territory.
This topic is expanded by one of the scientific schools of thought in Russia, which sees the Khazars only as Jews and thus justifies the destruction of the khaganate by the Rus’ as liberation of the peoples oppressed by Khazar rule.* This is why most of the notions about Khazaria today constitute a layered over time political tradition. In Russian science it is linked to the theory of the eternal struggle between the steppe peoples and the Rus’.
The study of the genesis of the ideas, represented by the “Khazar myth’, along with its various nuances and trends, is a separate large topic that goes beyond the scope of this research. The “Khazar myth” has, of course, influenced (to a larger or smaller extent) the scientific theories of various authors (e.g. B. Rybakov) and has served as a basis for applying pressure on others (e.g. M. Artamonov).
This has been shown in the respective places of this book. L. Gumilev’s works also depict the “Khazar myth”. Since his theories are discussed in detail in the present work, let me just point out here that the Khazar Khaganate represents a stage in the development of the Russian scientist’s political theory, associated with the idea of the “zigzag of history” and the continuity between the so-called anti-systems, one of which he assumes the Jewish religion itself to be, along with the community that professed it.
The present study combines some extremely contradictory and purely scientific theories, created in the last few decades. The contradictions in the various authors’ conclusions are determined not only by the vague accounts in the sources, but also by their use of different theories regarding the Khazar statehood and economy. The applied theory often proves crucial to the conclusions reached, despite the fact that the available information on Khazaria allows for other interpretations as well.
The various scientific views therefore need to be handled carefully and subjected to additional analysis. The contradictions in the scientific views become especially acute regarding the last century of Khazaria’s history. Despite the existence of several significant and authoritative summarizing monographs on the Khazars,° there is no full clarity in science regarding the ideology, the power structure and the ethnic and economical processes in the khaganate during the tenth century. These issues are closely related to the clarification of the reasons for the Khazar Khaganate’s demise in the second half of the tenth century. The proposed solutions in science each have their own grounds and can lead to the impression, that there are several Khazarias, each one different from the rest.
Throughout all three centuries of its existence, the Khazar Khaganate consolidated many peoples and tribes of different origins and cultures. They occupied various areas of the East European Plain (the steppe, forest-steppe and forest zones), as well as parts of its periphery (the Crimean Peninsula and the Caucasus). The characteristics of the geographical environment determined the economic and cultural development of the various tribal communities, as well as the conditions, under which their relations were formed. In many places, different ethnic groups were intermixed, but there were also separate ethnic territories. It is not entirely clear how and to what extent the Khazar rule was imposed even in the lands, which were undoubtedly subject to the khaganate until the mid-tenth century. The same applies for the interaction and ties (cultural and economic) between the various ethnic groups and regions of Khazaria.
The last period in the history of the Khazar state (from the late ninth to the mid-tenth century) is regarded by a number of historians as a time of decline and weakening of the khaganate’s power, which led to its demise after the Kievan Prince Sviatoslav’s campaigns (in 965). In accordance with their preferences and attitudes, scientists highlight different reasons that determined the decline of the Khazar state.
These include invasions, and in particular the Pecheneg one from the late ninth century; also changes in the development of international trade; the Judaization of the Khazar elite, which separated it from the rest of the khaganate’s population; Khazaria’s economic system, often described as nomadic, which hindered economic development and the integration of the various ethnic communities. Wars and rivalry with neighboring large states (Kievan Rus, Byzantium and the Arab Caliphate) also influenced the development of the Khazar Khaganate. The result of this rivalry was the spread of Christianity and Islam among the khaganate’s population.
The Khazar elite, however, adopted Judaism as their official religion after the beginning of the ninth century. On the other hand, the majority of the khaganate’s population retained its pagan beliefs. The combination of Jewish and pagan beliefs is also manifested in Khazaria’s state ideology. But the degree of integration between the various religious systems as well as the ideological basis of Khazar power still remains unclear.
In recent years, the development of theories on the causes for the decline of Khazaria has been mainly determined by the results of archaeological research, since written sources do not provide enough information and thus give rise to multiple conflicting hypotheses in historiography. This study is therefore focused not on Khazar historiography in general, but on its development in recent decades. Nowadays, archeological data has become the basic and constantly renewable source material that gradually replaces the paramount importance of written records.
Many of the viewpoints accepted by historians are already obsolete, and the image of the khaganate in the tenth century can be shown from another perspective—one that does not indicate decline, but development and even growth. In addition, common traits can be found in areas, which are considerably distant from each other, regardless of their ethnic or religious characteristics.
The goal of this study is to give a new perspective on Khazaria during the second half of the ninth and the tenth centuries by re-examining all the different, often well established views on this topic. The lack of sufficient written sources requires the use of additional material on steppe statehood in that period, as well as some deviations that are not always directly related to the Khazar issues. The topics selected in the book are consistent with the basic scientific theories, explaining the reasons for the decline of Khazaria after the mid-ninth century.
The literature on Khazaria is immense and it is impossible to examine all the existing scientific viewpoints here.® Therefore, various scientific trends have been differentiated, along with their main representatives. Their theories have all been traced and analyzed in the five chapters of this book. Generally speaking, a kind of “division line” can be seen in modern historiography between the preference for information acquired from written records and that obtained from archaeological data. The knowledge about large areas of the Khazar Khaganate comes solely from archaeological excavations.
In fact, the material and written records (mainly from Arabic and Persian-language authors dating from the ninth and tenth centuries) complement one another. It is noteworthy that in Soviet historiography and in the Russian and Ukrainian historiographies that have succeeded it, the predominant place in the research on Khazaria is occupied by archaeologists. This is why the first Russian monograph on the Khazar Khaganate, although being based on written records, was written by an archaeologist, M. Artamonov.’ In the decades that followed, several more significant and influential archaeological monographs were published—that of S. Pletneva, M. Magomedoy, V. Mikheey, I. Baranov, V. Flerov, V. Flerova, G. Afanas'ey, A. Tortika, among others.® L. Gumilev’s monograph on Khazaria is also based on his own archaeological research.9 Notable exceptions in this list are the works of the orientalists B. Zakhoder and A. Novosel’tsev.!° A number of articles by V. Petrukhin should also be mentioned here, even though this historian does not have a specific monograph on Khazaria.!
Western historiography is dominated by studies, in which the analysis is conducted almost entirely on the basis of written records. This is especially true for the first monograph on the Khazar Khaganate written by D. Dunlop and the book by P. Golden, completed a few decades later.’ The same goes for the monograph of O. Pritsak and N. Golb, which is also a study of a written record./3 An exception are the works of T. Noonan, which are based mostly on data from numismatics and archaeological research,“ including his remarkable study of the Khazar economy, where the material data has been analyzed along with written records.
As was already mentioned, the same scientific facts are often used as the basis for diverse and mutually exclusive theories. The ever-growing archaeological evidence contributes to the increasingly diverse and multifaceted analysis of the Khazar history and culture. Many interesting ideas and conclusions have been expressed in a number of articles published in recent decades. It is quite impossible to name them all here. A few scientists should however be named, including V. Aksenov, N. Foniakova, J. Howard-Johnston, T. Kalinina, R. Kovalev, V. Koloda, K. Krasil’nikov, V. Maiko, D. Shapira, Ts. Stepanov, C. Zuckerman.
Special attention has also been paid to various theoretical models concerning the steppe statehood and nomadic economy,'¢ which often serve as a basis for explaining the processes in Khazaria. This has implied the need to seek examples for comparison in a much wider geographical range of the steppe zone and its surrounding areas, as well as to indicate, to the extent possible, the ideological proximity between them.
In order to resolve a number of issues regarding Khazar history, comparisons from Danube Bulgaria have been sought intentionally and purposefully. There are several reasons for this. One of them is, of course, the undeniable proximity between the two countries, conditioned by their common roots that are related to the steppe tradition. The Bulgarian material therefore often complements or clarifies the Khazar one. It should also be noted that ever since the establishment of the Khazar Khaganate the Bulgarian population constituted if not the largest, quite a considerable in size community/ties, whose settlements and monuments can be found throughout the whole territory of the khaganate, from Dagestan and the Volga to the Crimea, the Don and the Severski Donets. Despite P. Golden's opinion that many aspects of the Khazar problem are insolvable without the Bulgars,!” in most of the works on Khazaria the information from Danube Bulgaria is either very poorly represented or completely missing. The aim of the present work is to draw attention to both monuments and written records from the Bulgarian Middle Ages, as well as to information drawn from Bulgarian folklore. Although some data from the Bulgarian ethnographic material (collected mainly during the nineteenth century), presumably pertaining to Bulgarian paganism, still needs to be additionally researched, the proposed examples are directly related to the Khazar problems and thus cannot be ignored.
One of goals of the book is to shed light on the problematic issues in Khazaria’s history in the ninth and tenth centuries. This period is linked to previous centuries in the history of both the Khazars and the Eurasian Steppe tribes and states. Specific events and accounts from preceding time periods have therefore been analyzed, when necessary, as they help in clarifying the nature of the Khazar society in the ninth and tenth centuries, but also show its genetic continuity with steppe communities of the past. Wherever possible and to the extent possible, an attempt has been made to reject the already well-established theories and to support other (less popular) ones, so as to give a new perspective on the solution of some existing issues. The study would be a success and have real meaning, if it thus helps overcome various conflicting views and in doing so gives a new basis for future studies of the history of the Khazar Khaganate.
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