page_title: Arab–Khazar wars
section_title: Later conflicts
hierarchical_section_title: Arab–Khazar wars / Later conflicts
caption_attribution_description: English: The Carolingian and Byzantine Empires and the Califate about 814
context_page_description: The Arab–Khazar wars were a series of conflicts fought between the armies of the Khazar Khaganate and the Rashidun, Umayyad, and Abbasid caliphates and their respective vassals. Historians usually distinguish two major periods of conflict, the First Arab–Khazar War and Second Arab–Khazar War, but the Arab–Khazar military confrontation also involved sporadic raids and isolated clashes from the middle of the 7th century to the end of the 8th century.
  The Arab–Khazar wars were a result of the attempts of the Umayyad Caliphate to secure control of Transcaucasia and the North Caucasus, where the Khazars were already established. The first Arab invasion, in the 640s and early 650s, ended with the defeat of an Arab force led by Abd ar-Rahman ibn Rabiah outside the Khazar town of Balanjar. Hostilities broke out again with the Caliphate in the 710s, with raids back and forth across the Caucasus Mountains.
context_section_description: The Khazars resumed their raids on Muslim territory after the Abbasid succession, reaching deep into Transcaucasia. Although by the 9th century the Khazars had re-consolidated their control over Dagestan almost to the gates of Derbent itself, they never seriously attempted to challenge Muslim control of the southern Caucasus. As Thomas S. Noonan writes, "the Khazar-Arab Wars ended in a stalemate".
  The first conflict between the Khazars and the Abbasids resulted from a diplomatic manoeuvre by the Caliph al-Mansur (r. 754–775). Attempting to strengthen the Caliphate's ties with the Khazars, in c. 760 he ordered his governor of Armenia, Yazid al-Sulami, to marry a daughter of the khagan Baghatur. The marriage indeed took place amidst much celebration, but she died in childbirth two years later, along with her infant child. The khagan suspected the Muslims of poisoning his daughter, and launched devastating raids south of the Caucasus in 762–764. Under the leadership of a Khwarezmian tarkhan named Ras, the Khazars devastated Albania, Armenia, and Iberia, where they captured Tiflis. Yazid himself managed to escape capture, but the Khazars returned north with thousands of captives and much booty. A few years later, however, in 780, when the deposed Iberian ruler Nerse tried to induce the Khazars to campaign against the Abbasids and restore him to his throne, the khagan refused. This was probably the result of a brief period of anti-Byzantine orientation in Khazar foreign policy, resulting from disputes between the two powers in the Crimea. During the same period, the Khazars helped Leon II of Abkhazia throw off Byzantine overlordship.
  Peace reigned in the Caucasus between Arabs and Khazars until 799, when the last major Khazar attack into Transcaucasia took place. Chroniclers again attribute this attack to a failed marriage alliance. According to Georgian sources, the khagan desired to marry the beautiful Shushan, daughter of Prince Archil of Kakheti (r. 736–786), and he sent his general Buljan to invade Iberia and capture her. Most of the central region of K'art'li was occupied, and Prince Juansher (r. 786–807) was taken off into captivity for a few years, but rather than be captured, Shushan committed suicide, and the furious khagan had Buljan executed. Arab chroniclers, on the other hand, attribute this to the plans of the Abbasid governor al-Fadl ibn Yahya (one of the famous Barmakids) to marry one of the khagan's daughters, who died on her journey south, while a different story is reported  by al-Tabari, whereby the Khazars were invited to attack by a local Arab magnate in retaliation against the execution of his father, the governor of Derbent, by the general Sa'id ibn Salm. According to the Arab sources, the Khazars then raided as far as the Araxes, necessitating the dispatch of troops under Yazid ibn Mazyad, as the new governor of Transcaucasia, with more forces under Khuzayma ibn Khazim in reserve.
  Arabs and Khazars continued to clash sporadically in the North Caucasus in the 9th and 10th centuries, but warfare was localized and of far lower intensity than the great wars of the 8th century. Thus the Ottoman historian Münejjim Bashi records a period of warfare lasting from c. 901 until 912, perhaps linked to the Caspian raids of the Rus' at about the same time, whom the Khazars allowed to pass through their lands unhindered. Indeed, for the Khazars, peace on the southern border became the more important as new threats emerged in the steppes to challenge their hegemony. The Khazar threat receded with the progressive collapse of Khazar power in the 10th century and defeats at the hands of the Rus' and other Turkic nomads like the Oghuz Turks. The Khazar realm contracted to its core around the lower Volga, and became removed from reach of the Arab Muslim principalities of the Caucasus. Thus Ibn al-Athir's reports of a war between the Shaddadids of Ganja with the "Khazars" in 1030 probably refers to the Georgians instead. In the end, the last Khazars found refuge among their former enemies. Münejjim Bashi records that in 1
caption: Map of Europe and the Mediterranean in the early 9th century, from William R. Shepherd's Historical Atlas.
    Abbasid Caliphate   Khazar Khaganate   Byzantine Empire   Carolingian Empire
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