Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/434

 400 The Killing of the Khazar Kings.

A similar, but briefer, report of the custom is given by the Arab cosmographer, Shems-ed-din Mohammed Dimeshky ; he seems to have derived his information about the Khazars from Ibn-el-Asir, who died in 1233 a.d. The passage relating to the appointment of the Khazar king runs as follows :

" They begin to strangle the man whom they wish to make their king. When he has thus been brought to the point of death, they ask him, how many years he wishes to reign, and he answers, ' Such and such a number of years.' His answer is written down and attested by wit- nesses. If he should live till the expiry of the set term, he is put to death." ^

It will be observed that, whereas in the Persian version of Ibn Haukal it is the new khakan who is said to have been thus forcibly interrogated as to the length of his future reign, in the Arabic original and in Dimeshky's account it is the new king who is subjected to this stringent interrogatory. The discrepancy betrays a certain con- fusion between the two personages who divided the Khazar sovereignty between them ; but the analogy of similar customs elsewhere renders it practically certain that it was the sacred and nominally supreme potentate, rather than his civil and nominally subordinate colleague, whose reign was limited in this peremptory fashion.

The last notice of the Khazars, or Khozars, and their kings which I shall cite is extracted from the Geography of the eminent Arab historian and geographer Abulfeda, who was born at Damascus in 1273 a.d. and died in 1 33 1 a.d. at the ancient Syrian city of Hamah (the Biblical Hamath), of which he had been for many years before his death the hereditary prince and ruler. A gallant soldier and a dis- tinguished writer, Abulfeda appears not to have travelled very widely ; hence for the materials embodied in his Geography he must have been in great measure dependent

iC. M. P^aehn, op. cit. pp. 582, 61 1.