The idea of the Khazars is often limited to the image of another enemy of the Old Russian state. But the history of a three-hundred-year-old civilization, which was placed on the border with the legendary tribes of Gog and Magog, was much more interesting.
Khazaria at the end of the world
Gog and Magog in biblical eschatology are peoples living under the "edge and limit of the north," whose hordes will fall on the world "in the last days," that is, shortly before the second coming. With them in the neighborhood, some Arab geographers, in particular Ibn Khordadbeh, placed Khazaria. Thus, in his "Book of Ways and Countries" an expedition to the legendary wall that locks the peoples of Gog and Magog is described. The expedition started from Baghdad, reached through the Caucasus to Khazaria, which occupied the territory from the Ciscaucasia to the Dnieper, including the present territory of the Crimea, Azov region, north-western Kazakhstan.
The short life of the kagan
In the Khazar Kaganate, dual power was practiced. At the head of the state was the kagan, who formally had full military and administrative power. But, de facto, all "worldly" affairs were run by the bek, the chief deputy of the tsar. As a result, representatives of this title in the X century completely expropriated the supreme power. The kagans, for a long time, before the adoption of Judaism, had only a sacred function. Their subjects believed that the power of the kagan was established by heaven. His divine power was supposed to ensure the prosperity of the state and success in military campaigns.
To a certain extent, such ideas were the mainstay of the power of the royal family, which allegedly came from the ancient Turkic dynasty of Ashin. But being the head of a pagan cult among the Khazars was mortally dangerous. Firstly, if during the years of the kagan's reign there were natural disasters, droughts or invasions of enemy tribes, he could be blamed for failures and killed. In general, troubles for the heir to the royal family began even during the inauguration. As the historian Zakhoder Boris Nikolayevich writes, when the kagan was enthroned, they strangled the kagan with a silk cord, and in an unconscious state he had to name the number of years of his reign. It was believed that divine power and good luck would accompany him only for this period. When it expired, they killed him. If he named too many, he would still be killed at the age of forty. But in the pre-Jewish period, the Khagan dynasty controlled the army and, for the most part, avoided sacrifice in the name of ritual.
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Russian kaganate
A number of medieval sources of the 9th century introduced considerable confusion into the early history of Russia. The letter of Louis II of 871, the Bertinian annals of 839, as well as the Arabic treatise "Anonymous geographical note" mention a certain Russian Kaganate - a state formation of the Slavs that existed on the territory of Kievan Rus from the Azov region throughout the territory of Kievan Rus. It was these lands that were controlled by the Khazar tribes in the 9th century. Unlike the unproven existence of some early formation on the territory of Russia, it is known for certain that some Slavic tribes, including the glade, paid tribute to the Khazars.
The name of the state, like the title "kagan" (as some ancient Russian texts of the 11th-12th centuries called the ancient Russian princes), the founders of the semi-legendary Russian kaganate had to borrow from the Turks. But it is most likely that the scientists who mentioned the Russian Khaganate could hear from travelers about the Khazar tributaries or some tribes in the neighborhood, which in their works turned into a powerful state. At least, there is no significant archaeological information about the existence of the "Russian Kaganate".
Multi-faith
The location at the junction of the Christian and Muslim worlds led to the creation of a completely unique confessional situation in Khazaria - in this state, even in the conditions of religious fanaticism characteristic of the Middle Ages, Christians, Muslims, Jews and pagans coexisted and peacefully coexisted. Sources were able to preserve the legend of a religious dispute between representatives of three monotheistic religions. Eventually, at the beginning of the 10th century, Judaism was officially recognized, as its provisions were recognized by both Christians and Muslims, and as a result of the desire to maintain independence from Byzantium and the Caliphate.
Ancestors of the Crimean Karaites
Today, Khazar origin is attributed to many peoples, in particular, Jews. There is a version about the migration of the Khazar-Jews to the countries of Central Europe, which joined the Ashkenazi Jews after the fall of the Khaganate. The Crimean Karaites who settled on the territory of the peninsula of the same name are called other direct descendants of the Khazars. One of the main arguments of the Khazar version of the origin of the Crimean Tatars is the similarity between the Chuvashes (a related group of the Khazars) and the Karaites and, accordingly, with the Khazars.