page_title: Arab–Khazar wars
section_title: Final phase of the war: Marwan's invasion of Khazaria
hierarchical_section_title: Arab–Khazar wars / Second Arab–Khazar War / Final phase of the war: Marwan's invasion of Khazaria
caption_attribution_description: Русский: Самосдельское городище 2002 раскоп №1
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: After Marwan's 732 expedition, a period of quiet set in. Marwan was replaced as governor of Armenia and Adharbayjan in spring 733 by Sa'id al-Harashi, but he undertook no campaigns during the two years of his governorship. Blankinship attributes this inactivity to the exhaustion of the Arab armies and draws a parallel with the contemporaneous quiet phase in Transoxiana in 732–734, where the Arabs had also suffered a series of costly defeats at the hands of a Turkic steppe power. In the meantime, Marwan is reported to have gone before Caliph Hisham and remonstrated against the policy followed in the Caucasus, recommending that he himself be sent to deal with the Khazars, with full authority and an army of 120,000 men. When Sa'id requested to be relieved in 735 due to his failing eyesight, Hisham appointed Marwan to replace him.
  Marwan returned to the Caucasus determined to launch a decisive blow against the Khazars, but it appears that he too was unable to launch anything but local expeditions for some time. He established a new base of operations at Kasak, some twenty parsangs from Tiflis and forty from Bardha'a, but his initial expeditions were against minor local potentates. In 735, Marwan captured three fortresses in Alania, near the Darial Pass, and the ruler of a North Caucasian principality, Tuman Shah, who was restored to his lands by the Caliph as a client ruler. In the next year, Marwan campaigned against another local prince, Wartanis, whose castle was seized and its defenders killed despite their surrender; Wartanis himself tried to flee, but was captured and executed by the inhabitants of Khamzin. Indeed, Agapius and Michael the Syrian record that the Arabs and the Khazars concluded peace during this period, information which Muslim sources ignore or downplay as a short-lived ruse by Marwan designed to gain time for his preparations and mislead the Khazars as to his intentions.
  Marwan prepared a massive strike for 737, intended to end the war for good. Marwan apparently went to Damascus in person to persuade Hisham to back this project and was successful: the 10th-century historian Bal'ami claims that his army numbered 150,000 men, comprising regular forces of Syria and the Jazira, as well as volunteers for the jihad, Armenian troops under Ashot Bagratuni, and even armed camp followers and servants. Whatever the real size of Marwan's army, it was a huge force and certainly the largest ever sent against the Khazars. Marwan first secured his rear by subduing the Armenian factions who were hostile to the Arabs and their client Ashot. He then pushed into Caucasian Iberia, driving its Chosroid ruler to seek refuge in the fortress of Anakopia on the Black Sea coast, in the Byzantine protectorate of Abkhazia. Marwan laid siege to Anakopia itself, but he was forced to retire due to the outbreak of dysentery among his troops.
  Marwan now launched a two-pronged offensive against the Khazars: 30,000 men (including most of the levies from the Caucasian principalities) under the governor of Derbent, Asid ibn Zafir al-Sulami, advanced north along the coast of the Caspian Sea, while Marwan himself with the bulk of his forces crossed the Darial Pass. The invasion met little resistance; the Arab sources report that Marwan had deliberately detained the Khazar envoy and only let him go with a declaration of war once he was deep in Khazar territory. The two Arab armies converged on Samandar, where a great review was held; according to Ibn A'tham, the troops were issued new clothing in white—the dynastic colour of the Umayyads—as well as new spears. From there Marwan pushed on, reaching, according to some Arab sources, the Khazar capital of al-Bayda on the Volga. The khagan withdrew towards the Ural Mountains, but left behind a considerable force to protect the capital. This was a "spectacularly deep penetration", according to Blankinship, but of little strategic value: the 10th-century travellers Ibn Fadlan and Istakhri describe the Khazar capital in their time as little more than a large encampment, and there is no evidence that
caption: Excavations at Samosdelka, identified by some archaeologists with the Khazar capital al-Bayda/Atil[90]
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