Russia and Kaganate
On July 3, 968, Prince Svyatoslav put an end to the existence of the Khazar Kaganate
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The capital of Khazaria was the year Edel (יטל), in modern literature most often transcribed as Itil. This word is translated from the Hebrew language as myt - customs collection from passing ships and caravans. The former name of Itil was Hamlykh. Itil Khalmykh became only after the transfer of the Khazar capital to it, which took place after the seizure of the city of Semender by the Arabs. Itil was located in the Volga delta on the site of the modern village of Samosdelka in the Astrakhan region, where excavations of the former Khazar capital are now underway. The main, central part of the settlement was located on an island stretched along the old now dried up channel of the Volga.
Khazaria did not create wealth, but only appropriated someone else's. The Khazars fed and dressed at the expense of neighboring peoples, exhausting them with tributes, robbery raids, and trade duties. In the city of Itil, trade routes crossed, and the Khazars themselves had nothing to offer foreign merchants, except for slaves and beluga glue. From China to Europe, through which silk was imported to Europe in exchange for gold and European goods. A section of the Great Silk Road, which supplied silk, spices and luxury goods from China to Byzantium, ran along the Black Sea and the Don. In the markets of Itil, they traded in Bulgarian sables, Russian beavers and foxes, Mordovian honey, Khorezm fabrics, Persian dishes, Byzantine weapons. Silver coins with inscriptions incomprehensible to the Khazars passed from hand to hand.
From Biarmia (Great Perm) to the Baghdad Caliphate through the Volga and the Caspian Sea, through which furs were exchanged for silver.
From the Germans, the Khazars bought Slavic slaves captured in the Slavic lands they conquered, with subsequent resale to Muslim countries. The path "from the Germans to the Khazars" through Regensburg, Prague, Krakow and Kiev provided the Khazars with access to the markets of Western Europe.
Only three times a year did the Kagan break his solitude. On a white horse, he rode through the streets and squares of the capital, and behind the Nokhchi guards followed in even rows. It was forbidden to look at the kagan. Those who violated this ban were immediately pierced by the Chechens with mines.
Nevertheless, by the time the kaganate fell, a system of double rule had developed in Khazaria, under which military power was exercised by the beks, while the kagans retained their priestly functions and nominal supremacy. The executive power was exercised by the tsar infantry. The last king of the Khaganate was Joseph ben Aaron. Joseph allowed the Byzantine Jews to move to Khazaria when persecution began against them under the Emperor Roman.
However, few people are familiar with the fact that for some time Russia was under the yoke of Khazaria, and the activities of the Kiev prince were controlled by the Khazar tudong... No, the Khazars did not conquer Russia. Quite simply, the Kiev merchants owed money to the Khazar usurers, and forced the prince to pay for them with the independence of the state. Kiev paid tribute to the Khazars not only in money, but also tribute with swords, that is, warriors. The Slavs supplied the Khazars with fairly large military units, and if they were defeated, the soldiers were executed.
The Tuduns were the actual rulers of Kiev, just as in Khazaria itself, on behalf of the nominal Turkic-speaking kagan and the power was exercised by the Jewish kagal, in the face of a person called in Turkic beck , and in Hebrew ha-melech ... The first tudun was in 839 the Khazar governor Almus.
One of these tuduns was the famous Dir, who was killed by Prophetic Oleg together with Prince Askold during the capture of Kiev in 882. After that, Oleg fought with the Khazars for two more years and until 939 delivered Russia from their power.
However, in that very year 939, the Khazar voivode Passover ambushed the Russian army returning from the campaign, defeated it, after which he ravaged Kiev and restored Khazar domination in Russia. The princes again became tributaries of the Kaganate. It was in order to pay tribute to the Kaganate that Igor arranged a polyudye - he collected tribute from the Slavic tribes subject to Kiev.
And then came the autumn of 945. Prince Igor has just paid another tribute to the Khazars, but this time the Khazars considered the tribute to be insufficient. Igor had to walk around the people again and again get honey and skins for the Khazar tribute. So he again appeared in the land of the Drevlyans, where he was killed.
This event has another version. According to this version, the Drevlyans killed Igor at the instigation of the Khazars. The fact is that a year before that Igor, who fought with Byzantium at the request of the Kaganate from 941 to 944, unexpectedly made peace with the Empire and concluded a non-aggression pact with it. This pact was supplemented by a secret protocol on the division between Russia and the Empire of Crimea and the Northern Black Sea region.
At that time, Prince Mal ruled in the Drevlyan land. Most likely, this is a Slavic distortion of the Hebrew name Malchus, meaning "king." The word is one root with the already mentioned ha-melech. His mother was probably a Khazarian. This same Malchus lured Igor's squad into an ambush.
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Warrior of the Kaganate |
The ancient Slavs had such a custom: if someone kills a prince, he becomes a prince. Malchus also expected to do so. Having killed the prince, he intended to take possession of everything that he had, including Igor's wife Olga, but she was not going to become the wife of some Malchus, the man who killed her husband. Therefore, having played a comedy with the wedding, Olga interrupted all these Drevlyans along with their prince.
Subsequently, Olga tried to enlist the support of Byzantium in the fight against the Kaganate, but the Greeks made baptism a condition. Olga accepted him. She also advised Svyatoslav to convert to Orthodoxy, but he answered her: “How do I want to adopt a single law? And my squad will start laughing at this. " Translated into the current language, it sounds like this: "What are you, mother, my boys are kidding me."
Despite Olga's baptism, help from Byzantium never came, and the matured Svyatoslav had to rely only on his own strength.
In the end, on July 3, 968, Prince Svyatoslav Igorevich defeated the Khazar army and wiped out Itil, Semender and other Khazar cities from the face of the earth, and all the Khazar gold was thrown into the Volga, since Svyatoslav's warriors were, as they say, trapped in taking wealth for themselves, gained from human trafficking. The expression "money does not smell" was in those days, apparently, still unfamiliar to our ancestors.
After the defeat of Khazaria by our glorious ancestors, in one of its fragments, it was formed with the center in the first capital of Khazaria, Semender, next to the current village of Shelkovskaya located now in Chechnya. Another fragment of the Jewish Khazaria - the Khazar principality with the center in Kerch was conquered in 1016 in a joint campaign of the Byzantine and Russian troops.
A small political entity dependent on Khorezm in the Lower Volga region with its center in Saksin, located on the site of Itil, was subjected to Islamization.
For most of the Russian population, knowledge about the Khazars is limited to lines from A. Pushkin's poem "The Song of the Prophetic Oleg", which says: "How the Prophetic Oleg is now going to take revenge on the unreasonable Khazars ..." but the "Khazar Kaganate" was considered one from the first serious external enemies of Ancient Russia. The contemporaries of the Khazars were the nomadic tribes of the Polovtsians and Pechenegs, who also raided Russia.
The meaning of the word Khazars: the most ancient nomadic Turkic people, formed in the 7-10th centuries.
The formation of the "Khazar Kaganate" supposedly took place in 650. One of the heirs of the last kagan from the Nushibi group, belonging to the western Turkut kaganate, found shelter in Khazaria and founded his own kaganate - the Khazar. After the collapse of the Western Kaganate in 958, the "Khazar Kaganate" became the only heir to the lands in South-Eastern Europe. The Khazars, in addition to conquering lands, were actively engaged in cattle breeding and the resale of slaves.
The original religion of the "Khazar Kaganate" was paganism, traditional at that time. Later, supporters of the Christian, Muslim, Jewish and pagan religions lived there quite peacefully, but not for long. Khazars converted to Judaism. The adoption of Judaism by the Khazars as the main religion was most likely influenced by the establishment of trade relations.
The "Khazar Kaganate" conquered and subjugated foreign lands, collecting tribute. Among them were some East Slavic tribes: Vyatichi, Radimichi, northerners, glades, burdened with tribute until the liberation of Ancient Rus. Also, from the middle of the 8th century, the Volga Bulgaria was in the power of the "Khazar Kaganate".
Ancient Rus for a long time waged an active struggle against the Khazars. However, the decisive event in this long struggle was the campaign of Prince Svyatoslav in 964 against the "Khazar Kaganate". The Pechenegs and the Guzes became his allies. Having reached the capital of the "Khazar Kaganate" - Itil (Atil), Prince Svyatoslav and his allies crushed the Khazar army led by the Khagan, capturing the second most important Khazar city - Semender and the Sarkel fortress on the way.
After the collapse of the "Khazar Kaganate" until the 980s, the Russians ruled in the lower reaches of the Volga. Inhabitants of the capital of Khazaria and their head, at this time found shelter on the islands of the Caspian Sea. After the Rus left, the Khazar ruler was offered help from Khorezm (a region of Central Asia) and he returned to his native lands. In exchange for help, most of the Khazars had to convert to Islam, and then their king. In 985, Prince Vladimir made a new campaign against the Khazars and imposed a tribute on them.
In the middle of the 11th century, the Volga Khazaria finally disintegrated after the invasion of new nomads - the Polovtsians. In 1024, the Khazar people fought on the side of Mstislav, the son of Prince Vladimir, during their battle with his brother, Prince Yaroslav. The last news about the Khazars was in 1079 and 1083, during the hostilities of Prince Oleg the Prophet, who was subsequently captured by them and given to Byzantium.
Soon, power in the Volga region passed to the Volga Bulgaria, and Alania inherited power in the Caucasus. A single power on these lands was re-formed only in the composition
Archaeologists have discovered in the Astrakhan region the capital of the ancient Khazar Kaganate - the city of Itil, which existed from the eighth to the 14th century, one of the leaders of the expedition, candidate of historical sciences Dmitry Vasilyev, said in an interview with RIA Novosti by telephone.
Khazar Kaganate or Khazaria - in 650-969 a medieval state created by a nomadic people - the Khazars. The capital of the Khazar Kaganate was the city of Itil.
Khazaria separated from the Western Türkic Kaganate and controlled the territory of the Ciscaucasia, the Lower and Middle Volga regions, modern north-western Kazakhstan, the Azov region, the eastern part of the Crimea, as well as the steppes and forest-steppe of Eastern Europe up to the Dnieper.
Initially, Khazaria was a typical nomadic khanate. The head of the state was the kagan (ruler). Formally, he possessed full military and administrative power. The kagan was the head of a pagan cult and was endowed with supernatural powers in the eyes of his subjects. His authority was considered to be established by heaven.
The central part of the country was the Lower Volga region. The Khazars themselves lived here. The kagan and the Khazar nobility migrated through this territory. Most of the territory was administered without administrative interference. Subordinate peoples: Alans, Bulgarians, Burtases, Hungarians, Slavs, etc. retained their own socio-political structure. They had their own rulers who were obliged to collect and send tribute to Khazaria.
The population of the Kaganate was divided into "white" (free) and "black" (tax) Khazars. The top of the "whites" was formed by the tribal aristocracy (owners of large herds). A complex hierarchy existed within it, since the Khazars did not destroy the nobility of the conquered tribes, but included it through a system of vassal relations into the ruling elite.
The basis of the economic activity of the ordinary population was nomadic cattle breeding. For the ruling elite, the main source of enrichment was originally war booty obtained by plundering neighboring countries. Interestingly, according to a yard of testimony, the Khazars did not kill the artisans of the conquered countries.
Gradually, the Khazars underwent a reorientation to non-military sources of income. This became possible as a result of the rise of international trade in the 2nd half of the 8th - early 9th centuries. Control over important transit routes led to the fact that in the 9th-10th centuries, trade duties began to form the main source of income for Khazaria. The capital of Khazaria - Itil - has become the largest trade center. At the same time, the Khazars themselves retained their traditional nomadic way of life and did not engage in international trade.
The decisive role in the termination of the existence of Khazaria was played by the Old Russian state. In 964, Prince Svyatoslav freed the last Slavic tribe of the Vyatichi, dependent on the Khazars, and in 965 defeated the Khazar army led by the Khagan and captured the Sarkel fortress. Then, in 965 or, according to other sources, in 968-969 the Rus (the people who gave their name and made up the social elite of the first state of the Eastern Slavs - Rus), acting in alliance with the Oguzes (one of the three Turkic peoples of Central Asia, formed by IX century in the steppes of modern Kazakhstan), defeated Itil. This moment is considered the end of the independent Khazar state.
Archeology was taken up by the Khazars in 1920-1930. The Khazar finds themselves are extremely rare: archaeologists, as a rule, are guided by the shape and typology of ceramic vessels. Since both nomads and sedentary peoples were included in the kaganate, objects of these dissimilar cultures coexist in the Khazar settlements. The list of Khazar antiquities, which scientists unambiguously attribute to the Khazars, is limited to several dozen items. Among the Khazar finds, the most "famous" is a ritual ladle with scenes of a mythical battle depicted on it, several reliquaries with equally rich fabulous and mythological images, a brick from the Sarkel fortress with a plan of a sanctuary-labyrinth, a stone slab with a runic inscription on it and a few more similar , but only shorter and fragmentary inscriptions on the skull of a bull and shards of crockery.
Research in the Soviet and post-Soviet times revealed a large number of proto-city centers and fortifications. To date, only two Khazar cities have been reliably identified - Sarkel and Samkerts. The ruins of Sarkel are identified with the left-bank Tsimlyansk settlement (the territory of the Volgograd and Rostov regions). Today the Tsimlyansk settlement is inaccessible for research - it was flooded during the construction of the Tsimlyansk reservoir in the first half of the 1950s. The Taman settlement (Taman station, Krasnodar Territory) is considered the ruins of the city of Samkerts.
The identification of the Khazar cities of Belendzher and Semender is controversial. The Tarki settlement near Makhachkala claims the role of Semender, but, perhaps, according to archaeologists, this city was located in a different place. Another Khazar Caspian city, Belendzher, according to scientists, may have stood on the site known as the Verkhnechiryurt settlement. It was flooded during the construction of the Sulak hydroelectric power station (Dagestan).
The key scientific problem in the study of the history of the Khazar Kaganate is the spread of Judaism in Khazaria. Archaeologists strive to find material evidence of the existence of Judaism in Khazaria and to assess the extent to which it affected the Khazar society.
At the present time in the world historiography there is a disagreement of opinions. Russian and Ukrainian experts believe that only the royal family and some of the highest nobility converted to Judaism. In turn, Western and, including Israeli, historians insist on the widespread existence of this religion among all the Khazars, as well as on its penetration into the environment of the peoples subordinate to the Khazars.
On the territory of Taman, grave steles with the image of Jewish symbols were found, indicating that Jews were present in this region until the 5th century. Archaeologists do not exclude the possibility of discovering traces of Khazar Judaism as a result of large-scale excavations in the basin of the Lower Don and Lower Volga.
In September 2008, archaeologists from a joint expedition of the Astrakhan State University and the Institute of Ethnology of the Russian Academy of Sciences announced that they had found the capital of the Khazar Kaganate - the city of Itil. According to scientists, Itil is a Samosdelskoe settlement in the Astrakhan region (Samosdelka village, 40 km from Astrakhan).
Work on the site has been carried out since 2000. The cultural layer is about three and a half meters. Archaeologists managed to establish the outlines of a brick fortress-citadel, to reveal residential quarters, typical for the Khazar time "yurt-like" dwellings, specific ceramics. The lower layers of the settlement date back to the VIII-IX centuries, that is, the Khazar time. A layer of a large fire was also found, which, possibly, corresponds to the time of the destruction of Itil by the Kiev prince Svyatoslav Igorevich (960s). The total area of the alleged Khazar capital is large: about two square kilometers. In such a settlement, 50-60 thousand people could live at the same time. By medieval standards, this is a very large city.
According to scientists, Itil ceased to exist not after the fall of the Khaganate, but later - in about the XIV century, when it was flooded by the Volga: traces of the pre-Mongol and Golden Horde stages in the life of the city have been recorded archaeologically.
The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources
The wars with the Arabs led to the further resettlement of the tribes subject to Khazaria in the Black Sea steppes. They reached the forest-steppe and migrated along the Volga to the north to the Volga-Kama interfluve, the lands of the future Volga Bulgaria: in addition to the Bulgarians, they ended up there, according to A.V. Gadlo, part of the savirs (suvar) and barsilov. The Alans began to settle in the basin of the Don and Upper Donets, the Bulgarians - in the lower reaches of the Don, the Khazars themselves, Barsils and other tribes - in the Lower Volga region and the Kalmyk steppes. In the Lower Volga region, a new urban center of Khazaria arose - al-Bayda or Itil.
Formed in opposition to Byzantium and the Arab Caliphate, the Khazar Kaganate stretched from the foothills of the Caucasus and the Lower Volga region to the Middle Dnieper, where the Slavs had to pay tribute to the Khazars (see below). Its economy was characterized by a complex agricultural and cattle-breeding economy: along with distant pasture cattle breeding, when herds were driven from the steppes to mountain pastures in summer, agriculture and horticulture became more and more widespread. The process of mass settling of nomads to the land is reflected by the numerous settlements and burial grounds of the so-called. Saltovo-Mayatsk culture, including traces of nomads, permanent unfortified settlements, fortified settlements with earthen ramparts, castles with the remains of stone walls, fortress cities and, finally, the Black Sea cities that were revived under the rule of Khazaria, including Phanagoria and Tamatarhi-Tmutarakan [ Pletneva 2000].
Local variants of the Saltovo-Mayatsk culture, distinguished thanks to the research of M.I. Artamonova, I.I. Lyapushkina, S.A. Pletneva, M.G. Magomedov and other researchers, reflect the ethnic specificity of those groups of the population of Khazaria, which occupied certain regions of the Black Sea steppe and forest-steppe. In the upper reaches of the Don and Northern Donets, settlements with semi-dugouts and yurt-like dwellings are located in nests around fortifications with white-stone walls (including the white-stone Mayatsky settlement on the Don, which, along with the Saltovsky burial ground, gave the name to the culture itself). Fortified settlements are located on high mountainous banks of rivers, on opposite banks there are flat pastures, which resembles the geographical conditions of the North Caucasus. The burial grounds consist mainly of catacomb burials, which, together with anthropological data, makes it possible to classify the population who left these monuments as Alans ... In the basin of the Northern Donets and to the west, the Alans assimilated the local population - the carriers of the aforementioned Penkov culture, which is usually attributed to the Slavs-Antam, but was much wider than the territory assigned to the Antam in ancient sources. In addition, in the second half of the 9th century. in the Don region, a group of nomadic population appeared, practicing the rite of cremations with the burial of silver linings on belts and horse harness and other parts of burial equipment in special hiding places; the rite and female adornments found in these burials indicate the connection of their bearers with the Ugric population of the Trans-Urals.
In the Don steppes, the agricultural population lived in large settlements and settlements, fortified with earthen ramparts, with semi-dugouts and yurt-like dwellings, the nomads left their camps. A large number of amphorae and pithos - special containers for wine - testifies to the practice of viticulture, which has become traditional for this region of Russia. The dead were buried in simple graves; horses were buried next to the graves of warriors. This variant of the Saltovomayats culture, like the Azov culture close to it, is attributed to the Bulgarians: the Azov region is characterized by a specific construction technique - the dwellings and walls of the settlements were built of raw bricks on a stone plinth, the dwellings were two-chambered - with a passage, which in winter could be used as a barn for keeping young animals. In Crimea, such dwellings were built of stone, in accordance with the ancient tradition of stone construction.
Along with these local variants, single burial mounds with rich military equipment and horses are known in the Black Sea steppe, which are attributed to the Khazars proper, the tribal group dominating in the kaganate. Finally, the famous Voznesensky memorial complex of the 8th century. on the Dnieper - a rectangular rampart of earth and stone, surrounding the site with the remains of the burning of numerous things (weapons, horse harness, gold jewelry) and horse bones, according to the interpretation of A.K. Ambroz, close to the memorial monuments of Kul-Tegin and other rulers of the Turkic Khaganate in Central Asia; Similar monuments were found not only in the Middle Dnieper region (perhaps the mentioned "treasure" at Pereshchepin, usually attributed to Kubrat), but also in the Volga region and the North Caucasus. These monuments could belong to representatives of the ruling clan of Ashina, to which the kagan himself belonged [cf. Aybabin 1999, 180-185].
The most fertile lands in the central - Don - part of the kaganate were controlled by a system of white-stone fortress cities from the Mayatsky settlement in the upper Don to the Right-Bank Tsimlyansky in its lower reaches and Semikarakorsky on the river. Sal, who controlled the route from the North Caucasus to the Don. Yurts were located behind the walls, reaching a width of 4 m with towers. The technique of laying the walls of the Tsimlyansk settlement - from carefully hewn stone blocks with internal backing - resembles the construction technique in Danube Bulgaria, the settlement in Semikarakory resembles Dagestan fortresses. Finally, already in the 30s. IX century Byzantine engineers built a brick fortress Sarkel for the Khazars on the Don.
Local diversity does not overshadow a certain unity of the Saltov-Mayak culture, which is revealed by construction equipment, mass household implements, including characteristic ceramics, amulets, etc. Türkic runic writing has spread everywhere. S.A. Pletneva showed that this culture is supra-ethnic - it characterizes the state culture of the Khazar Kaganate. It is significant that the area of the Saltov-Mayak culture coincides with the territory of the Khazar state, which was described by the Khazar king Joseph in a letter to the dignitary of the Cordoba caliph Hasdai Ibn-Shaprut.
This correspondence between the Cordoba Jew and the Khazar king - the so-called. Jewish-Khazar correspondence - refers to the era of the decline of the Khazar Kaganate in the 60s. X century. [Kokovtsov 1932], but Tsar Joseph, in his letter, describes Khazaria in the heyday. In t. N. In a lengthy edition of his message, Joseph writes that he himself lives on the Itil River near the Gurgan Sea - there was the capital of the kaganate and the kagan's winter quarters, from which the kagan, observing the traditions of the nomadic nobility, set off for the summer across the lands of his domain between the Volga and Don rivers: Sarkel and Semikarakorskoe fortresses were located on the western borders of this domain. The Tsar lists the "numerous peoples" under his control near the Itil River, naming their names in Hebrew: in Russian transcription, these are Bur-t-s, Bul-g-r, S-var, Arisu, Ts-r-mis, V-n -n-tit, S-v-r, S-l-vyun. Further, in the description of Joseph, the border of his state turns to "Khuvarizm" - Khorezm, the state in the Aral Sea region, and in the south it includes S-mn-dr and turns to the "Gate" (Derbent - Bab-al-Abvab) and the mountains, where the peoples subject to the Khazars live, whose names are hardly identified (see. Kokovtsov 1932, 98 et seq., As well as Appendix 7 at the end of the manual), with the exception of the Alans and the neighboring countries of Afkan and Kas. Further, the border of Khazaria goes to the "Sea of Kustandina" - "Constantinople", that is, Black, where Khazaria includes the areas Sh-r-kil, S-m-k-r-c, K-r-c, etc. From there the border turns north to the nomadic tribe B-ts-ra and reaches the region of H-g-riim.
Many names of peoples who, according to Joseph, pay tribute to the Khazars, are quite reliably restored and have correspondences in other sources. The first one is burtases (Bur-t-s), whose name resembles the ethnikon already mentioned in connection with the description of the ethnic composition of the "state of Germanarich" mordens - mordva... However, in the ancient Russian "Word about the death of the Russian land" (XIII century), a strikingly close list of peoples already subject to Russia is given, where the Burtases are mentioned along with the Mordovians: the borders of Russia stretch "from the sea to the Bulgarians, from the Bulgarians to the Burtas, from the Burtas to the Chermis , from chermis to Mordvi ”[PLDR. XIII century., 130]. It is believed that the ethnikon burtases has an Iranian - Alanic - origin and reflects the Alanian ethnonym furdas- from furd / ford"big river" and ace, a widespread Alanian ethnicon. Like many ancient ethnikons, the name burtases could be transferred in sources to different ethnic communities: in particular, in the Middle Ages, they could call the Türkic-speaking neighbors of the Mordovians the Chuvashes - the descendants of the Volga Bulgarians, place names Burtas, Burtasy known in the territory of Mordovia and Chuvashia [ Vasmer, vol. 1, 247-248]. In the context of Joseph's letter, this ethnicon is obviously tied to the Volga region, where the Burtases are followed by the Bulgarians (in Joseph's list - Bul-r, which corresponds to the data of the 10th century Arab geographer al-Masudi), and then - S-var, the name, which is associated with the city of Suvar in Volga Bulgaria and with the already mentioned name Savirov, one of the Hunnic-Khazar tribes. Next ethnikon arisu is compared with the self-name of the ethnographic group Mordovians Erzya (accordingly, in the burtases, they sometimes see another group of Mordovians - moksha). The name Ts-r-m-s echoes with chermis Old Russian source: this is Cheremis, a medieval name Mari , Finnish people in the Middle Volga region. We will talk about the relations of Khazaria with the Volga Bulgaria on purpose, now we will note that in the 60s. X century, when the letter of Tsar Joseph was drawn up, it was hardly possible that any dependence of the peoples of the Middle Volga region on the dying kaganate was possible.
The same can be said about the next group of peoples, in which they see the Slavic tributaries of Khazaria. In the ethnikon V-n-n-tit they usually see a name vyatichi / venchev, who, according to the Russian chronicle, paid tribute to the Khazars before their liberation by Prince Svyatoslav during the campaign against Khazaria in 965. The already mentioned city of Vantit “near the borders of the Slavic country” apparently reflects a similar ethnonym: it is assumed that this “city” was located on the paths from Bolgar - the capital of Volga Bulgaria - to Kiev, described in the late (XII century) work of al-Idrisi, and even equate "Vantit" with the "nest" of Borshevsk - Vyatichi - settlements on the Don near Voronezh (cf. Pryakhin and others... 1997] and criticism of these constructions - [ Kalinin 2000]). But the next ethnicon - S-v-r - definitely means northerners, which were freed from the Khazar tribute by Prince Oleg, when the Russian princes settled in the Middle Dnieper region (882 according to the chronicle dating - see about these events below). The term S-l-viyun refers to the general name of the Slavs: apparently, here one can mean Radimichi and glade who paid tribute to the Khazars before the appearance rus in the Middle Dnieper region in the 860s, as well as the Slavs - carriers of the so-called. Borshevsk culture that reached the Don region. It is significant that according to Arab sources of the 10th century, back in 737, during a campaign in the Khazar steppes, the commander Mervan captured not only the Khazars, but also al-Sakaliba- so the Arabs called the Slavs; Tanais (Don) in the Arab geographical tradition was called the "River of the Slavs", but this river was controlled by Khazar fortresses. In general, the list of tributaries, thus, refers to the time no later than the second half of the 9th century, rather - to the second half of the 8th - first half of the 9th century, the time of the heyday of the Khazar Kaganate. Joseph's list is subordinated to a certain system: it begins with the peoples of the Volga region, includes Vyatichi on the Oka, northerners on the Desna, apparently, the Dnieper Slavs, and ends on the Don. Note in advance that the same route was repeated in 965 by Svyatoslav, who defeated Khazaria.
In the south, Joseph includes within the boundaries of his state the region of Semender (Samandar) - one of the main cities of Khazaria in the North Caucasus (along with the old capital Balanjar) and Derbent - the Caspian "Gate", in Arabic Bab al-Abwab. Derbent (Derbend) in Dagestan is a fortress that guarded the most important passage in Transcaucasia after the Arab-Khazar wars in the 7th-9th centuries. was part of the caliphate - there was an Arab garrison. The city remained the main center of Islam in the North Caucasus and after in the X century. an independent princely dynasty settled there; at the same time, the population of Derbent included representatives of the local "pagan" population and even the Rus, who were hired to serve by the rulers of the city [ Minorsky 1963; Alikberov 2003, 187 et seq.]. The lands between Semender and Derbent were part of the aforementioned principality of Serir, Sarir - the country Avars , independent of Khazaria and even at enmity with it. The names of the mountain peoples of Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia, living between Derbent and the country of Alans, are unclear, and even more so the relations of the Khazars with them: the Alans themselves could act either as allies (and tributaries), or as rivals of the Khazars and allies of Serir. But the countries of Afkan and Kas, mentioned after the Alans, in contrast to other tribes listed between this country and the "Sea of Kustandina", are reliably interpreted as lands Abkhazians and Kasogov Russian chronicle, Kashak, Kasak Arab sources - Circassians Western Caucasus (cf. [ Gadlo 1979, 170 et seq.]).
Khazar Kaganate. Map (after S.A. Pletneva 1986, p. 47)
The list of western regions in Joseph's letter begins with Sh-r-kil - Sarkel, the Khazar "White Fortress", built by the Byzantines by order of the kagan approx. 840 on the Don. Further, S-m-k-r-c is mentioned, in which they see a city on the Taman Peninsula - Tamatarkh in the Byzantine and Tmutarakan in Russian sources, and a group of Crimean cities, the list of which is headed by K-r-c - Kerch, the ancient Panticapaeum.
The country B-ts-r-a, located to the north of the Black Sea region, is the land Pechenegs, pachinakits Byzantine, bajnak in Arabic sources; in Turkic they were called bachanak, becheneg("Elder sister's husband" is an archaic tribal name characteristic of the Türks based on kinship relations). This nomadic Turkic horde appeared in the steppes of the Black Sea region in the 9th century. from beyond the Volga and by the end of this century began to dominate there. Constantine Porphyrogenitus writes [On the administration of the empire, ch. 37] that the Khazars tried to stop their advance and entered into an alliance with the Uzes (Oguzes, Guzes), but they only drove the Pechenegs to the west. The new horde, conquering pastures, devastated many Khazar lands and settlements, including the Mayatskoye settlement (apparently, the Pechenezh invasion was the beginning of the decline of the Saltov-Mayatsk culture), the ancient city of Phanagoria (no longer mentioned in Joseph's letter) and Kerch - Bospor, and to the beginning of the X century. fell upon Russia. The same Constantine in the very first chapters of his work "On the Administration of the Empire" specially writes "about the pachinakites: how useful they are" when they are at peace with the "Vasilevs of the Romans"; if you send an official with rich gifts to them and take hostages from them responsible for the preservation of peace, they will not allow either Rus, the Hungarian Turks or the Bulgarians to attack Byzantium. Later (chapter 37), the same author gives an ethnogeographic description of Eastern Europe: the land of the Pechenegs - Pacinakia - “is separated from Uzia (the land of the Uz-Guzes. - V.P., D.R.) and Khazaria for five days' journey, from Alania - for six days, from Mordia (the lands of the Mordovians) - for ten days, from Russia - for one day, from Turkey (Hungary) - for four days, from Bulgaria - for half a day, to It is very close to Kherson, and even closer to the Bosporus. " The Pechenegs ousted the Hungarians from the steppes of the Black Sea region, whom Joseph remembers after them under the name H-g-riim.
Hungarians - Ugric-speaking people who roamed along with the Turks in the Eastern European steppe in the 8th-9th centuries, probably came from the Proto-Ugric regions of the Trans-Urals. Hungarian medieval legends have preserved memories of the ancestral home - Great Hungary, localized somewhere in the Bashkir steppes, between the Volga and the South Urals. In Arabic sources, Hungarians are referred to as majar - Magyars (self-name of Hungarians) and bajkurt- this ethnikon is related to the ethnonym Bashkirs(although the Bashkir people themselves emerged later). In Russian chronicles, the Hungarians are called eels- ethnicon, ascending (like the Western European name Hungarians) to the Hunnic-Bulgarian name of the tribal union onogur (he- "ten", and ogur- "arrow"). Perhaps this name was already known to the Slavic association of the Antes and the Slavs began to designate them nomads of the Eastern European steppes: in the Russian chronicle blackheads- these are the Hungarians themselves, white eels- one of the names of the Khazars, which could reflect their dominant position in the kaganate. Ugric self-name of Hungarians - Magyars- akin to the self-names of their trans-Ural relatives mansi, some tribal names of the Bashkirs, as well as the name of the Volga-Finnish people that disappeared in the Middle Ages cave on the Oka; presumably it means "human, kinsman" [ Ageeva 1990, 65-66]. Constantine Porphyrogenitus, who calls the Hungarians Turks, but mentions their self-designation madyars, says that the Hungarians lived near Khazaria, and their leader "voivode" Levedia received a noble Khazar woman as his wife from the kagan. Their country was also called Levedia, but the Hungarians were forced to leave it under the onslaught of the Pechenegs, and some of them moved to the land called Atelkuzu (Etelkuzu), some migrated east to Persia. Atelkuzu locality is located by the majority of researchers between the Dnieper and Dniester; near Kiev, the Ugorskoe tract was preserved, where, according to the chronicle, the Hungarian Ugrians stood in their "vezhes"; already from Atelkuzu, the kagan summoned Levedia to himself and appointed, on his advice, a ruler named Arpad, who became the founder of the dynasty of Hungarian kings. An anonymous Arab author, on whose note the geographer of the beginning of the 10th century relied, in particular. Ibn Rust, reports that the Magyar country is located between the countries of the Pechenegs and the tribe iskil(Eskel, Esegel) - parts of the Volga Bulgarians, the Hungarians take tribute from the neighboring Slavs (Sakaliba), capture them and sell them to the Romans (Greeks - ar-Rum) in their pier K.R.Kh (Kerch). Magyars roam between two rivers in the country Sakaliba- Itil (flowing to the Khazars) and Duba (or Ruta): people live behind one of these rivers nandar related to ar-Rum, above their area is a high mountain, behind which the Christian people live m.Rvat... More than one generation of researchers strives to understand this text (more precisely, a collection of texts dating back to an anonymous note: compare from recent works [ Zakhoder 1967, 47 et seq .; Kalinin 2000; Mishin 2002, 54-60]). The main question is about the rivers between which the Hungarian nomads were located: one of them - Duba - has long been identified with the Danube; the people really lived behind it nandor- this is how the Hungarians called the Bulgarians (this name goes back to the ancient Türkic ethnonym onogundur); Danube Bulgarians settled within the Roman Empire, therefore, they were attributed to ar-Rum. The mountain behind which they live m.Rvat, it turns out, thus, the Carpathians, behind them really lived the Slavs - Moravians. The situation with the Itil River is more complicated, because in Turkic itil and means "river". Most researchers see in this Itil not the Volga, but the Dnieper, for which the Hungarians left for the country of Atelkuzu (Etelkuzu), which in Hungarian means “Mesopotamia”.
No less difficult is the question of when the events described took place. It is significant that in the area of the Slavs the anonymous author and Ibn Rust do not mention the Rus: the Ar-Rus people, in the description of the Arab geographer, still live on a mysterious island, from where they travel to the Slavs on ships for tribute and take them into slavery like the Hungarians, selling slaves to Khazaria and Bolgar (see about Russia below). From the Initial Chronicle it is known when Russia first found itself in the land of the Dnieper Slavs: the squad of Askold and Dir settled in Kiev after the call of the Varangian princes to Novgorod - this happened in the 860s. By this time, the Hungarians were wandering in Atelkuza.
But in Atelkuzu, the Hungarians were invaded by the Pechenegs and were forced to move at the end of the 10th century. to Great Moravia (Pannonia), where they found a new homeland (see [ Shusharin 1997]). Numerous analogies to the antiquities of the Hungarians are known in the wide expanses of Eastern Europe - from the Middle Volga region to the Middle Dnieper region, including in Slavic settlements (see summary: [ Sedov 1987]); linguistic data indicate close Slavic-Turkic-Hungarian contacts during this period, including the borrowing of Hungarians in Turkic (Khazar) through such important words for the Proto-Slavic ethnocultural history, such as King and vlah- "franc, Italian" [ Chelimsky 2000, 433-435].
In general, Tsar Joseph in his letter describes the "limiting" borders of Khazaria during the period of its power: other sources confirm one or another degree of dependence of the peoples listed by him on the Khazars, but this dependence was not constant, tributary-allied relations could turn into hostile and "hesitated" in accordance with the geopolitical situation, including the policy of the Caliphate and especially Byzantium, which used the Pechenegs and Russia against the Khazars, or, on the contrary, supported the weakening Khazaria with the construction of a fortress (Sarkel), etc.
As for the khazar then Joseph's letter contains a characteristic legend of their origin, based on biblical tradition. Joseph refers the Khazars to the sons of Japheth, the offspring of his son Homer, namely to Togarma (Fogarma): this identification has deep and even "historical" origins, not only because the peoples of Europe and the nomads of Eurasia traditionally belonged to the descendants of Japheth, but also because, that the biblical name Homer obviously goes back to the name of the Cimmerians, while Togarma was traditionally understood in the Jewish tradition as Armenia. The Cimmerian Bosporus and Transcaucasia were indeed the regions of the initial activity of the Khazars. Joseph counts eponyms as the sons of Togarma: Aviyor (Uyur, Agiyor in a short version of the letter), who is identified with the Georgian Ivers or Ogur Ugurs; Toudis (Tiras in a short version, traditional biblical ethnikon); Avaz - Avar in a short version, eponym of Avars; Uguz - eponym guzov (uzov), Biz-l - presumably barsils, a tribe related to the Khazars; T-r-n-a is compared with the name of the Hungarian clan Tarian by Constantin Porphyrogenitus (if this is not a reflection of the title tarhan); further follows the Khazar proper and a certain Yanar - Z-Nur in a short edition, which is identified with the mountain people tsanar who lived west of the Darial Gorge; Bulgarians and Savirs complete the list. It is interesting that a similar list of 10 sons of Togarma is found in another Jewish source of the 10th century. - “The Book of Josippon”, compiled in Italy: there they include the “clans” Kozar (Khazar), Petsinak (Pechenegs), Alan, Bulgar, Kanbina (?), Turk, which obviously mean the Hungarians or kawara a Turkic group that broke away from the Khazars and joined the Hungarians; then Buz is mentioned, or - Kuz, under which one should see Guz-Uzov, Zakhuk (?), Ugr - the Hungarians proper, whose name Iosippon gives in the Slavic transmission, finally, Tolmats - one of the Pechenezh tribes.
The lists of peoples belonging to the descendants of Togarma do not completely coincide in the two sources; At the same time, it is significant that in Josippon the Khazars lead the list, which, apparently, reflects the idea of their dominant position, while Joseph, on the contrary, emphasizes that his ancestors were few in number and the Khazar was only the seventh son of Togarma. Their power increased after they managed to defeat numerous enemies, called Vn-n-tr, whom the Khazars pursued to the river "Duna" - the Danube. It is believed that this name refers to the tribal union of the Onogurs, which included the Bulgarians Asparuh, who fled from the Khazars across the Danube. Then the Khazars took possession of the country V-n-n-t-r, which they possessed until the time of Joseph's reign.
Thus, the origin of the Khazars was linked by Tsar Joseph with a group of Turkic peoples. Arab geographers report, however, that the Khazars differed from the Türks: according to the author of the 10th century. al-Istakhri, they were divided into two groups - "Kara-Khazars", or black Khazars, dark-skinned like Indians, and white Khazars, distinguished by their beautiful appearance. Modern researchers tend to see in these groups the ruling stratum - the Khazars (White Khazars) proper - and dependent "black" people; Al-Istakhri, under the black Khazars, means primarily slaves from the Khazar country who find themselves in the eastern slave markets: slaves belong to the pagans, since only pagans, but not Jews and Christians among the Khazars, allow the sale of children and relatives into slavery. Perhaps this meaning of the term white Khazars preserved in the aforementioned Byzantine (and Old Russian) historiography, where the Khazars are called white eels, and the Hungarians subject to them - blackheads... At the same time, one should not forget that the color classifications characteristic of the ethnic and geographical representations of the Turks and other peoples cannot be directly transferred to social and even more so anthropological realities: cf. mentioned White Huns - Hephthalites, Black and White Bulgarians, White Croats, etc. up to Black and White Russia. However, the idea of "black" people as dependent, imposed with taxes, was preserved for a long time in the medieval tradition (including the Old Russian one).
Already from the VI century A.D. NS. the first information about a previously unknown people who settled on the territory of the Lower Volga region and the eastern part of the North Caucasus appears in the Syrian, Armenian, Byzantine, Latin and Chinese manuscripts. And in the following centuries there are many references to them in Arab and Persian sources. The Arabs in their chronicles called them "alkhazar", the Armenians called them "khazirk", in the "Primary Russian Chronicle" they are called "kozar", in Jewish medieval writing they appeared under the name "kuzar", "kuzarim". In modern Russian, this people is called "Khazars".
Byzantine writers of those times ranked the Khazars among the Turkic peoples. Many Arab writers believed in the same way, although there were some among them who attributed the Khazars to the Georgians or to the Armenians; and in one Armenian source they were associated with the Chinese; and in the Georgian chronicle - with the Scythians; there were also cases when they were considered a people similar to the Slavs. In fact, the name "Khazars" covered many tribes of various origins, numerous nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples, remnants of the Huns who passed through the southern Russian steppes, and the Turkic elements prevailed there.
The cradle of the Khazars was the Caspian steppes of the Northern Ciscaucasia, that is, the territory of modern Dagestan. The Khazars were a warlike people, back in the 6th century - as part of other Turkic tribes - they marched into the Transcaucasus and temporarily captured Georgia and Armenia, and the Persian Shah even built a giant wall with many defensive towers to defend against them.
The Khazar Kaganate was formed in the middle of the 7th century A.D., and its capital was first the city of Semender on the territory of present-day Dagestan, and then Itil on the Lower Volga. In the seventh century, the Khazars drove the Bulgarians to the west, to the Danube, and captured the Azov steppes. Northern Black Sea region and part of the steppe Crimea. So a federation of different tribes arose, which was headed by a Khazar (Turkic) clan, and all the tribes and peoples that were part of it enjoyed sufficient freedom, up to the point that they could independently go on campaigns, conclude their agreements and accept the religion that they were willing.
There were two supreme rulers in the Khazar Kaganate. One of them - the main king, the kagan, who always belonged to the same surname of noble origin - and the custom of his election was described by the Arab geographer Istakhri: “When they want to make someone a kagan, they bring him in and begin to strangle him with a silk cord. When he is already close to giving up the ghost, they say to him: “How long do you want to reign?” He replies: “So and so many years ...” This custom was associated with belief in the divine power of the kagan: he himself determined in half-oblivion the period of stay of this divine power in his body.If misfortune fell on the country - drought, devastation, defeat in war, then this kagan was killed, because the divine power in him had dried up - and instead of him a new kagan was chosen, whom they began to worship But the actual power in the country belonged to another king - kagan-bek.
The Khazars came into contact with the Slavic tribes: the glades, northerners, Vyatichi and Radimichi at different times saw the Khazars and paid them tribute. They fought long wars with the Arab Caliphate, and played an important role in the history of the Eastern European peoples, screening them from the Arabs and withstanding the attacks of the previously invincible Arab armies. Khazaria also helped Byzantium, because it pulled off the Arab forces that would otherwise have threatened the Byzantine Empire. By the 8th century, the Khazar state had become the most powerful political and military force in Eastern Europe, and behind this protective fence, Kievan Rus could subsequently arise and develop.
The Khazars were pagans at first, one of the many pagan peoples of Eastern Europe, made sacrifices to fire and water, worshiped the moon, trees, the most revered deity Tengri Khan. In the first half of the 8th century A.D. part of the Khazars of the Northern Ciscaucasia, headed by their ruler named Bulan (Savriil), converted to Judaism. Jews expelled from Sassanian Iran lived in those places at that time, and from them, most likely, the Jewish religion came to the Khazars.
Legend tells that an angel appeared to the Khazar ruler Bulan in a dream and said: "Oh, Bulan! The Lord sent me to you to say: I AM I have heard your prayer and your prayer. Here I AM I bless you and multiply you, I will continue your kingdom until the end of the centuries and will deliver all your enemies into your hand. "The angel promised Bulan power and glory if he accepts the Jewish religion, and after that Bulan set out on a campaign to the Caucasus and really won several impressive victories there It is known from many sources that in 730-731 AD the Khazars won major victories in Caucasian Albania (present-day Azerbaijan) - the adoption of Judaism by Bulan is timed to these years. sent him rich gifts and sent scholars to persuade him to their religions. Bulan arranged a dispute, in which a Christian, a Muslim and a Jew participated, but did not make any decision. And then he asked the Christian priest: "What do you think, which religion is better - Israelis or Ismailis? "To this the priest replied:" The faith of the Israelites is better than the faith of the Ismailis. "Then Bulan asked the Muslim qadi:" And what do you think Is ra better - Christian or Israeli? "Cadi replied," Israel is better. " And then Bulan said: "If so, then you yourself admitted that the religion of the Israelites is the best, and therefore I choose the faith of Israel, which was the faith of Abraham. May Almighty God help me!"
This whole story about Bulan became known to us from a letter from the Khazar Kagan Yosef to a Spanish Jew from Cordoba named Hasdai ibn Shaprut.
Two versions of his letter from Yosef to Hasdai ibn Shaprut have survived to this day: a short and lengthy edition of his 1st letter. It was written in Hebrew, and it is possible that it was not the kagan himself who wrote it, but one of his confidants - the Jews. Yosef reported that his people came from the Togarma clan. Togarma was the son of Japheth and the grandson of Noah. Togarma had ten sons, and one of them was called Khazar. It was from him that the Khazars went. At first, Yosef reported, the Khazars were few in number, “they waged war with peoples that were larger and stronger than them, but with the help of God they drove them out and occupied the whole country ... After that, generations passed until one king appeared to them, the name who was Bulan. He was a wise and God-fearing man, who trusted with all his heart in God. He removed fortune-tellers and idolaters from the country and sought protection and patronage from God. " After Bulan, who converted to Judaism, King Yosef listed all the Khazar kagans-Jews, and all of them have Jewish names: Obadiah, Khizkiyagu, Menashe, Hanukkah, Yitzhak, Zvulun, Menashe again, Nisim, Menachem, Binyamin, Aaron and finally the author of the letter - Yosef. He wrote about his country that in it “no one hears the voice of the oppressor, there is no enemy and there are no bad accidents ... The country is fertile and fat, consists of fields, vineyards and orchards. All of them are irrigated from rivers. fruit trees. With the help of the Almighty, I live in peace. "
Yosef was the last ruler of the powerful Khazar Kaganate, and when he sent his letter to distant Spain - no later than 961 AD, he did not yet know that the days of his kingdom were already numbered.
At the end of the 8th - beginning of the 9th century A.D. the Khazar kagan Ovadia made Judaism the state religion. This could not happen by chance, out of nowhere: surely even then there were a sufficient number of Jews in Khazaria, in today's language - a kind of "critical mass" close to the ruler's court, who influenced the adoption of such a decision.
Even under Bulan, who was the first to convert to Judaism, many Jews moved to the Eastern Ciscaucasia, fleeing the persecution of Muslims. Under Obadiah, as noted by the Arab historian Masudi, "many Jews moved to the Khazars from all Muslim cities and from Rum (Byzantium), because the king of Ruma persecuted Jews in his empire in order to seduce them to Christianity." Jews settled entire quarters of Khazar cities, especially in the Crimea. Many of them settled in the capital of Khazaria - Itil. Khagan Yosef wrote about those times: Obadiah "rebuilt the kingdom and strengthened the faith according to the law and rule. He built houses of assembly and houses of teaching and gathered many sages of Israel, gave them a lot of silver and gold, and they explained to him twenty-four books of Holy Scripture, the Mishnu , Talmud and the whole order of prayers. "
Obviously, this reform of Obadiah did not go smoothly. The Khazar aristocracy in distant provinces rebelled against the central government. On her side were Christians and Muslims; The rebels called for help from the Magyars from across the Volga, and Ovadia hired nomad Guzes.
Judaism continued to be the state religion, and the Jews lived in tranquility on the territory of the Khazar Kaganate. All historians of those times noted the religious tolerance of the Khazar rulers-Jews. Jews, Christians, Muslims and pagans lived peacefully under their rule.
There were attempts to make Christianity the state religion of Khazaria. To this end, he went there in 860 A.D. the famous Cyril - the creator of the Slavic writing. He took part in a dispute with a Muslim and a Jew, and although it is written in his "Life" that he won the dispute, the kagan still did not change religion, and Cyril returned with nothing. Having learned that the Muslims in their lands destroyed the synagogue, the Khazar kagan even ordered the destruction of the minaret of the main mosque in Itil and the execution of the muezzins. At the same time, he said: "If I, really, were not afraid that not a single undestroyed synagogue would remain in the countries of Islam, I would certainly have destroyed the mosque."
After the adoption of Judaism, Khazaria developed the most hostile relations with Byzantium. First, Byzantium set the Alans on the Khazars, then the Pechenegs, then the Kiev prince Svyatoslav, who defeated the Khazars.
Warrior of Khazaria
Today historians explain the reasons for the fall of the Khazar Kaganate in different ways. Some believe that this state has weakened as a result of constant wars with the surrounding enemies. Others claim that the adoption of Judaism by the Khazars - a peace-loving religion - contributed to a decrease in the morale of the nomadic warlike tribes. There are also such historians today who explain this by the fact that the Jews with their religion turned the Khazars from a "nation of warriors" into a "nation of traders." The Russian chronicle reports that the Kiev prince Svyatoslav took the capital of the Khazars Itil, took Semender on the Caspian Sea, took the Khazar city of Sarkel on the Don - he later became Belaya Vezha - and returned to Kiev. After that, for several years in a row, the Guz tribes freely plundered the defenseless land.
The Khazars soon returned to their ruined capital Itil, rebuilt it, but, as Arab historians note, there were no longer Jews living there, but Muslims. At the end of the tenth century, Svyatoslav's son Vladimir again went to the Khazars, took possession of the country and imposed a tribute on them. And again the cities of Khazaria were destroyed, the capital was turned into ruins; only the Khazar possessions in the Crimea and on the shores of the Sea of Azov survived. In 1016 A.D. the Greeks and Slavs destroyed the last Khazar fortifications in the Crimea and took prisoner their Khagan George Tsulu, who was already a Christian.
Karaites in Crimea - according to one version, the descendants of the Khazar tribes
Some researchers now believe that the Khazar Kaganate did not completely collapse at the end of the tenth century, but continued to exist as an independent, small state until the invasion of the Mongols. In any case, in the eleventh century, the Khazars are still mentioned in the Russian chronicle as participants in the conspiracy against Prince Oleg Tmutarakansky, but this is the last mention of them in European sources. And only in the descriptions of Jewish travelers of subsequent centuries, the Crimean peninsula was still called Khazaria for a long time.
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