Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/72

 60 K H A Z A K S flank. But there was a Hunnic party amongst the Kbazar cliiefs. The design was betrayed to Attila ; and he extinguished the independence of the nation in a moment. Khazaria became the appanage of his eldest son, and the centre of government amongst the eastern subjects of the Hun (448). Evtn the iron rule of Attila was preferable to the time of anarchy that succeeded it. Upon his death (454) the wild immigration which he had arrested revived. The Khazars and the Sarogours (i.e., White Ogors, possibly the Barsileeus of the Volga delta) were swept along in a flood of mixed Tartar peoples which the conquests of the Jouan Jouan (the Avars) had set in motion. The Khazars and their com panions broke through the Persian defences of the Caucasus. They appropriated the territory up to the Cyrus and the Araxes, and roamed at large through Iberia, Georgia, and Armenia. The Persian king, deeming the floodgates of the steppes opened, implored the emperor Leo I. to help him defend Asia Minor at the Caucasus (457), but Roms was herself too hard pressed, nor was it for fifty years that the Khazars were driven back, and the pass of Derbend fortified against them (circ. 507). Throughout the 6th century Khazaria was the mere highway for the wild hordes to whom the Huns had opened the passage into Europe, and the Khazars took refuge (like the A r enetians from Attila) amongst the seventy mouths of the Volga. The rise of the first Turk empire in Asia (554) precipitated the Avars upon the West. The conquering Turks followed in their footsteps (560-580). They beat down all opposition, wrested even Bosphorus in the Crimea from the empire, and by the annihilation of the Ephthalites completed the ruin of the White Race of the plains from the Oxus to the Don. The empires of Turks and Avars, however, ran swiftly their barbaric course, and the Khazars arose out of the chaos to more than their ancient renown. They issued from the land of Barsilia, and extended their rule over the Bulgarian hordes left masterless by the Turks, compelling the more stubborn to migrate to the Danube (641). The agricultural Slavs of the Dnieper and the Oka were reduced to tribute, and before the end of the 7th century the Khazars had annexed also the Crimea, had won com plete command of the Sea of Azoif, and, seizing upon the narrow neck which separates the Volga from the Don, had organized the portage which has continued since an important link in the traffic between Asia and Europe. The alliance with Byzantium was revived. Simultaneously and, we cannot doubt, in concert with the Byzantine campaign against Persia (589), the Khazars had re appeared in Armenia, though it was not till 625 that this people, long known to Persians and Armenians as Khazirs and to the Romans as Akatzirs, take their place as Khazars in the Byzantine annals. They are then described as &quot;Turks from the East,&quot; a powerful nation which held the coasts of the Caspian and the Euxine, and took tribute of the Viatitsh, the Severians, and the Polyane. The khakan, enticed by the promise of an imperial princess, fur nished Heraclius with 40,000 men for his Persian war, who shared in the victory over Chosroes at Nineveh. Meanwhile a power had arisen which transformed the whole course of Eastern politics and committed the Khazars to a struggle for life which lasted two hundred years. Mohammed had proclaimed his faith, and the Saracens were advancing to enforce it. The Persian empire was struck down (637), and the Moslems poured into Armenia. The khakan had defied the summons sent him by the invaders, and he now aided the Byzantine patrician in the defence of Armenia. The allies were defeated ; and ere long the Moslems undertook the subjugation of Khazaria (651). It was the beginning of eighty years of ceaseless, obstinate, ineffectual warfare. Ten great invasions of Khazaria through the pass of Derbend are recorded, and many a retributive raid upon the Moslems ; but in the end their fanaticism and enormous superiority in numbers pre vailed. The khakan and his chieftains were captured and compelled to embrace Islam (737), and till the decay of the Mohammedan empire Khazaria with all the other countries of the Caucasus paid an annual tribute of children and of corn (737-861). Nevertheless, though overpowered in the end, the Khazars had protected the plains of Europe from the Mohammedans, and made the Caucasus the limit of their conquests. In the interval between the decline of the Mohammedan empire and the rise of Russia the Khazars reached the zenith of their power. The merchants of Byzantium, Armenia, and Baghdad met in the markets of Itil (whither since the raids of the Mohammedans the capital had been transferred from Semender), and traded for the wax, furs, leather, and honey that carne down the Volga. So important was this traffic held at Constantinople that, when the portage to the Don was endangered by the irruption of a fresh horde of Turks (the Petchenegs), the emperor Theophilus himself despatched the materials and the workmen to build for the Khazars a fortress impregnable to their forays (834). Famous as the one stone structure is in that stoneless region, the post became known far and wide amongst the hordes of the steppe as Sar-kel or the White Abode. Merchants from every nation found protection, justice, and perfect good faith in the Khazar cities. The Jews, expelled from Constantinople, sought a home amongst them, de veloped the Khazar trade, and contended with Mohammedans and Christians for the theological allegiance of the pagan people. The dynasty accepted Judaism (circ. 740), but there was equal tolerance for all, and each man was held amenable to the authorized code and to the official judges of the faith which he professed. At the Byzantine court the khakan was held in high honour. The emperor Justinian Rhinotmetus took refuge with him during his exile and married his daughter, 702. Justinian s rival Bardams in turn sought an asylum in Khazaria, and in Leo IV. (775) the grandson of a Khazar sovereign ascended the Byzantine throne. Khazar troops were amongst the bodyguard of the imperial court ; they fought for Leo VI. against Simon of Bulgaria (888); and the khakan was honoured in diplomatic intercourse with the seal of three solidi, which marked him as a potentate of the first rank, above even the pope and the Carlovingian monarchs. Indeed his dominion became an object of uneasiness to the jealous statecraft of Byzantium, and Constantine Porphyrogenitus, writing for his son s instruction in the government, carefully enumerates the Alans, the Petchenegs, the Uzes, and the Bulgarians as the forces he must rely on to restrain it. It was, however, from a power that Constantine did not consider that the overthrow of the Khazars came. Long before, when a band of Slav prisoners was brought into the Khazar carnp, a sage had prophesied &quot; These men s swords have two edges ; ours have but one. We conquer now ; but some day they will conquer us.&quot; The arrival of the Varangians amidst the scattered Slavs (862) had now united them into a nation aiid launched them upon that career of conquest which within a hundred years carried the Russian arms to the Balkans and the Caucasus. The advance of the Petchenegs from the East gave the Russians their opportunity. Before the onset of those fierce invaders the precarious suzerainty of the khakan broke up. By calling in the Uzes, the Khazars did indeed dislodge the Petchenegs from the position they had seized in the heart of the kingdom between the Volga and the Don, but only to drive them inwards to the Dnieper. The Hungarians, severed from their kindred and their rulers, migrated to the Car pathians, whilst Oleg, the Ru.ss prince of Kieff, passed through the Slav tribes of the Dnieper basin with the cry &quot; Pay nothing to the, Khazars &quot; (884). The kingdom dwindled rapidly to its ancient limits between the Caucasus, the Volga, and the Don, whilst the Russian traders of Novgorod and Kiclf supplanted the Khazars as the carriers between Constantinople and the north. When Ibn Fadlan visited Khazaria forty years later, Itil was even yet a great city, with baths and market-places and thirty mosques. But there was no domestic product nor manufacture ; the kingdom depended solely upon the now precarious transit dues ; and the king or great khakan was a roi faineant hidden from the sight of men, the actual administration being in the hands of a major domus also called khakan. At the assault of Swiatoslav of Kieff the rotten fabric crumbled into dust. His troops were equally at home on land and water. Sarkel, Itil, and Semender surrendered to him (965-969). He pushed his conquests to the Caucasus, and established Russian colonies upon the Sea of Azoff. The principality of Tmoutorakan, founded by his grandson Mstislav (988), replaced the kingdom of Khazaria, the last trace of which was extinguished by a joint expedi tion of Russians and Byzantines (1016). The last of the khakans, George Tzula, was taken prisoner. A remnant of the nation took refuge in an island of the Caspian (Siahcouve); others retired to the Caucasus ; part emigrated to the district of Kasakhi in Georgia, and appear for the last time joining with Georgia in her successful effort to throw off the yoke of the Seljuk Turks (1089). But the name is thought to survive in &quot; Kadzaria,&quot; the Georgian title for Mingrelia. and in &quot;Kadzaro,&quot; the Turkish word for the Lazes. Till the 13th century the Crimea was known to European travellers as &quot;Gazaria&quot; ; the &quot; ramparts of the Khazars&quot; are still distinguished in the Ukraine ; and the record of their dominion survives in the names of Kazarek, Kazaritshi, Kazarinovod, Kozar-owka, Kozari, and Kazan (Schafarik, ii. 65). Authorities. Khazar: The letter of King Joseph to H. Chasdai Ibn Shaft lit, first published by J. Akiish, Kol Mebasser, Constantinople, l/&amp;gt;77, and often ri printed in editions of Jehuda lial-Lcvy s Kuzari. German translations by Zedner (Berlin, 1840) and Cassel, Magyar. Altert/i., Beilin, 1848; French by Carmoly, Rev. Or. (1841). Comp. Harkavy, liutsifche Rente, iv. CO; Grai-tz, Geschichte,. 364; nnd Carmoly, Itineraires de la Tt-rre Sain/e, Brussels, 1847. Armenian: Moses of Chorene ; comp. Saint-Martin, Aietnoires Iliftorigues et Ge oijraphiques fur I Arnunie, Paris, 1818. Arabic: The account of Ibn Fadlfin (921) is preserved by Yakut, ii. 43f&amp;gt; sq. See also Istakhry (ed. de Goeje, p. 220 jr/.). M.is iidy, chap. xvii. 40(&amp;gt; sg. of Sprenger s translation ; Ibn Hattkal (ed. de Goeje, p. 279. 17.), and the histories of II n el Atliir and Tabary. Much of the Arabic material has been collected and translated by Fnie hn, &quot; Veteres Memoriae Cha- sarorum,&quot; in Mem. de St Pet., 1822 ; Dorn (fiom the Persian Tabary), Mem. de St Pet., 1844 ; Dufremery, Journ. Ax., 1849. See also D Oh^son s imaginary Voyage d Abul Cassim, based on these sources. lltizantine Historians: The relative passages are collected in Stritter s Memorix Populorum, St Petersburg, 1778. Russian : The Chronicle ascribed to Nestor. Modern. Klaproth, &quot; Me m. sur les Khazars,&quot; in Journ. As., ser. 1, vol. Hi.; Id., Tableaux Hift.de I A fie, Paris, 1823; Id., Tab/. Hist, de Caitcases, 1827 ; memoirs on the Khazars by Harkavy and by Howorth (Congres intern, des Orientalises, ii.); Latham, Russian and Turk, pp. 209-17; Vivien St Martin, jZtudes de fieog. Ancienne, Paris, 1850 ; Id., Rccherches tur les populations dit Caucase, 1847 ; Id.. &quot; Sur les Khazars.&quot; in Nouvelles Ann. des Voyages, 18ol ; D Ohsson, J ettp es da Caucase, Paris, 1S28. (P. L. G.)