Khazars

The Khazars were a semi-nomadic Turkic people. They formed an empire called Khazaria in Russia from the 6th to 10th century CE. They are said to have originated from the Western Turkic Khaganate of the Eurasian steppe, a vast plain encompassing Central Asia and southeastern Europe.

Overview

Khazaria was an international trading center. It was a hub on the Silk Road that linked ancient China, the Middle East and the Kievan Rus'. For three centuries (c. 650–965), the Khazars conquered the area from the Volga-Don steppes to Crimea and the Caucasus.

Khazaria was located between the Byzantine Empire, the steppe nomads and the Umayyad Caliphate. It helped the Byzantines defend itself from the Sasanian Persian empire. The alliance ended around 900. Between 965 and 969, the Kievan Rus replaced Khazaria.

Name

Khazar or Xazar may have come from *Qasar. The Turkic root qaz- means "to ramble, to roam" (used in Qazaqsa or Kazakh), similar to the Common Turkic kez-.

Some claimed that it came from qas- ("tyrannize, oppress, terrorize") because it is similar to the Uyghur name Qasar. citing L. Bazin, 'Pour une nouvelle hypothèse sur l'origine des Khazar,' in Materialia Turcica, 7/8 (1981–1982): 51–71. Others see it as a person or tribe's name. For instance, the Chinese name Kesa for Khazars may be one of the tribal names of the Uyğur Toquz Oğuz of the Göktürks, namely the Gésà. 

However, others say Kesa was not a tribal name but the name of the chief of the Sijie (思結) tribe of the Toquz Oğuz. In Middle Chinese, the name Khazars always comes before the word Tūjué (Tūjué Kěsà bù: 突厥可薩部; Tūjué Hésà: 突厥曷薩).. Kěsà (可薩) would have been pronounced as something like kha'sat in both Early Middle Chinese (EMC) and Late Middle Chinese (LMC), while Hésà (曷薩) would yield γat-sat in (EMC) and xɦat sat (LMC) respectively, where final t often transcribes –r- in foreign words. 

Thus, while these Chinese forms could transcribe a foreign word of the type *Kasar/*Kazar, *Gatsar, *Gazr, *Gasar, there is a problem phonetically with assimilating these to the Uyğur word Qasar/ Gesa (EMC/LMC Kat-sat= Kar sar= *Kasar). Khazar language is extinct, while modern Turkic languages still refer to the Caspian Sea as the Khazar Sea.

Religions

Tengrism might have been the main religion of the Khazars just as it was for the Huns and many other Turkic tribes, while Abrahamic religions were popular as well. The Khazar ruling class is said to have converted to Judaism in the 8th or 9th century.

Language

No known records of the Khazar language have survived. The state was polyglot and polyethnic..'there must have been many different ethnic groups within the Khazar realm ... These groups spoke different languages, some of them no doubt belonging to the Indo-European or different Caucasian language families.'. The high chancery official of the Abbasid Caliphate under Al-Wathiq, Sallām the interpreter (Sallam al-tardjuman), famous for his reputed mastery of thirty languages, might have been both Jewish and a Khazar. referring to. The ruling elite probably spoke an eastern dialect of Shaz Turkic. The ordinary people may have spoken Lir Turkic, such as Oğuric, Bulğaric, Chuvash, and Hunnish. The Persian historian al-Iṣṭakhrī said that the Khazar language was different from any other known language..'Oğuric Turkic, spoken by many of the subject tribes, doubtless, was one of the linguae francae of the state. 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 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.'. al-Iṣṭakhrī 's account however then contradicts itself by likening the language to Bulğaric. After some Khazars became Jewish, they may have written in the Hebrew alphabet, if Ibn al-Nadīm told the truth. Though they spoke a Türkic language, they might have also spoken Hebrew.

History

Origin

They appear to have come from Mongolia (蒙古) or northern China after the Xiōngnú (Huns) were defeated by Han dynasty (漢朝) of China (Han–Xiongnu war). The tribes probably had Iranian,; note that Dieter Ludwig, in his doctoral thesis Struktur und Gesellschaft des Chazaren-Reiches im Licht der schriftlichen Quellen, (Münster,1982) suggested that the Khazars were Turkic members of the Hephthalite Empire, where the lingua franca consisted of a variety of Iranian. proto-Mongolic, Uralic and Palaeo-Siberians. The Turkic tribes might have conquered the Western Eurasian steppe as early as 463. In 552, they conquered the Rouran Khaganate (柔然汗國) and moved westwards, taking more people from Sogdia.

The ruling family might have come from the Āshǐnà (阿史那) clan of the West Türkic (西突厥) tribes. The Chinese and Arabic records are almost identical, indicating strong support for this theory. The leader might have been associated with Yǐpíshèkuì (乙毗射匱). He died around 651. Moving west, the Khazars reached Akatziroi,. In this view, the name Khazar would derive from a hypothetical *Aq Qasar. one of the important friends of Byzantium fighting Attila's army.

Khazaria

Khazaria is said to have emerged after 630., citing also  It is said to have come from the Göktürk Qağanate following their defeat by the Tang Dynasty (唐朝) between 630 and 650. The Göktürk armies conquered Volga by 549. The Āshǐnà clan whose tribal name was 'Türk' (the strong one) arrived in 552. They overthrew the Rourans and created the Göktürk Qağanate.. The word Türk, Whittow adds, had no strict ethnic meaning at the time: 'Throughout the early middle ages on the Eurasian steppes, the term 'Turk' may or may not imply membership of the ethnic group of Turkic peoples, but it does always mean at least some awareness and acceptance of the traditions and ideology of the Gök Türk empire, and a share, however distant, in the political and cultural inheritance of that state.'

War with Tang Dynasty

The Chinese Tang Dynasty defeated the Turkic Qağanate and set up the Anxi protectorate (安西都護府) in Central Asia. The Khaganate split into several tribes. The Duōlù (咄陸) were the left wing of the On Oq, the Nǔshībì (弩失畢: *Nu Šad(a)pit), and together they were registered in ancient Chinese sources as ten names (shí míng: 十名). Some tribes went west to the Sea of Azov area. Ashina and the Khazars went further west. In 657, General Sū Dìngfāng (蘇定方) dominated the Turks and Central Asia. They imposed Chinese overlordship to the east of those Turkic tribes. In 659 the Chinese defeated the remaining tribes. The Khazars did not dare return.

War with Bulgars

Instead, the Khazars defeated the Bulgars further west. The Khazars Khaganate was then founded from the ruins of a nomadic empire destroyed by the Tang armies to the east, becoming the westernmost successor state of the Göktürks.

Later conquests

The Khazars conquered the lower Volga region and the area between the Danube and the Dniepr. In 670, they also conquered the Onoğur-Bulğar union and made the Onogur-Bulgar language the official language of the empire.

Khazar Empire

The empire is sometimes popularly called a steppe Atlantis. Historians often refer to this period as Pax Khazarica, which means "Khazarian peace" in Latin. The state became an international center of trade.

Modern period
Despite the disappearance of the Khazars from history, theories about the Cossacks, Muslim Kumyks, Kazakhs, Crimean Karaites, Krymchaks, and Ashkenazi Jews having descended from the Khazars are widely circulated. Most scholars of history and languages disagree with such theories. 

 : "Most scholars are sceptical about the hypothesis (that has its roots in the late 19th century) that Khazars became a major component in the ethnogenesis of the Ashkenazic Jews."
  Particularly, the theory that Ashkenazi Jews mostly or only descended from the Khazars is commonly known as the Khazar myth because it is by now disproven. Decades of peer-reviewed genetic studies have found little or no scientific evidence for the Khazar myth.

Related pages

 Bulgars
 Kipchaks
 Scythians
 Seljuk Empire
 Ottoman Empire

References

Category:Caucasus
Category:Turkic peoples
Category:Nomadic people
Category:History of Asia
Category:History of Europe
Category:Ethnic groups in Asia
Category:Ethnic groups in Russia
Category:Ethnic groups in Europe
Category:960s disestablishments
Category:Former countries in Asia
Category:Former monarchies of Asia
Category:Former countries in Europe
Category:Former monarchies of Europe
Category:650s establishments