Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/417

Rh appeared and even their name is now hardly known but to students of the bypaths of history.

Yet for some nine hundred years or more (190-1100 A.D.) this almost forgotten people played a great part in history on the borderland of Europe and Asia. Their home was in the spurs of the Caucasus and along the western shore of the Caspian, which took its name (Sea of the Khazars) from them; but at the height of their power they ruled over the whole of south-eastern Russia from the Dneiper to the middle Volga, together with the adjoining part of Asia along the eastern coast of the Caspian as far south as Astrabad. On the south their boundary never altered greatly; at times, indeed, it extended southward as far as the Cyrus and even the Araxes, but on that side the Khazars had to face the Byzantine and Persian empires and were for the most part restrained within the passes of the Caucasus. Their capital was Itil in the delta of the Volga, but they possessed other populous and civilized cities, such as Semender (Tarkhu), which was the older capital, and Sarkel, or the White Abode, on the Don. All the Khazar cities were centres of commerce. Indeed the Khazars have been described as “the Venetians of the Caspian and the Euxine, the organizers of the transit between the two basins; the universal carriers between East and West.” Merchants from every nation found protection, justice, and good faith in the Khazar cities. Exiled from Constantinople, the Jews sought a home among them, developed their trade, and contended with their Mohammedan and Christian rivals for the religious allegiance of the pagan people. The reigning house accepted Judaism, apparently about the middle of the eighth century; but all faiths were equally tolerated, and every man was held amenable to the authorized code and to the official judges of the religion which he professed. At the Byzantine court the khakan, or sovereign of the Khazars, was held in high honour. The Emperor