The Khazars were an advanced Turkic-speaking people who founded a kingdom in about the year 652 near the Caspian Sea. Their closest relatives appear to have been the Bulgars and Sabirs. The Khazar kingdom was ruled by two kings: one was called the khagan and was a sacred religious man, and the other was called the bek and served as leader of the army.

The Khazars are remembered as mighty warriors in many historical documents and appear to have been led by skilled tacticians. The Khazar state employed many thousands of soldiers on a permanent basis at a time when no other professional armies existed in eastern Europe, and had plenty of horses and a wide array of equipment available. Khazarian warriors used single-edged swords and sabres, as well as spears, flails, bows and arrows, and other weapons. A statue from Sarkel ominously depicts one of these warriors with an upraised hand, holding a heavy weapon. Rich inventories of weapons were buried in Khazarian graves prior to the 10th century. The large Khazar military organization was well prepared to fight wars against Arab and Rus invaders as well as other intruders.

The early wars involved the Khazar struggle for ownership of the steppes. In the 7th century, the Khazars took land from the Bulgars by force, and joined the Byzantines in defeating the Persians. The Khazars also began numerous campaigns in the Caucasus in the same century. But the raids to the South Caucasus initiated by the power-hungry Khazars caused outbreaks of famine as well as the destruction of many buildings and villages. The Khazars stole dishes and drinking-horns and other items from Tbilisi, and killed commanders and citizens in that city. Thus, the Khazar warriors were much feared and hated by Armenians and Georgians alike.

A 10th century Armenian chronicler wrote that the Turkic Khazars were a "vile, ugly horde of attackers" which, during the 627 Khazarian attack upon the central-Caucasian border city of Derbent, caused Derbent's inhabitants to be "seized by terror. Especially terrifying were the archers, who were skillful and powerful, and rained arrows down like hail then, like savage wolves, shamelessly threw themselves on the people and mercilessly cut them down in the streets and squares of the town." A Georgian chronicler claimed that the Khazars were "wild men with hideous faces and the manners of wild beasts, eaters of blood."

Relations between Khazars and Arabs were always fragile. Around 722, Arab forces attacked the original Khazar capital city, Balanjar, and the inhabitants of Balanjar tried to defend their town with 3000 linked wagons. Every few decades an effort at peace between the two groups would be attempted, only to be undermined by another outbreak of violence.

But by the 9th century, the militaristic activities in the region gave way to a "pax khazarica" - a more peaceful period in which the main activities of the Khazars switched from war and conquest to trade, agriculture, horticulture, and crafts. Recent studies demonstrate that the Khazars were a civilized people who contributed much to the culture and economy of Eastern Europe.

A recent article by Thomas Noonan of the University of Minnesota shows that Khazars created many products for export, including jewelry, pottery, and other crafts. Omeljan Pritsak of Harvard University demonstrated that the Khazars minted silver coins which weighed the same as Frankish (Carolingian) coins. The major type of silver coin in Khazaria was called in Turkic "yarmaq" and in Arabic "dirham" and weighed about 2.73 grams. The introduction of large numbers of Jews into the kingdom appears to have brought about increased literacy. The Khazars were already familiar with the runic letters of their Turkic ancestors, and some of them used the Orkhon alphabet from Mongolia. Many Turkic inscriptions from the Khazars and Bulgars have been discovered in eastern Europe. But by the 10th century, Hebrew parchment documents began to also appear.

However, the civilized Khazars could not avoid conflict even in the 9th and 10th centuries. Towards the close of the Khazar era, Slavs, Pechenegs, and other groups vied for control of the transportation waterways and the strategically located and fertile land of Khazaria. Meanwhile, the rulers of the Volga Bulgars began to despise and fear their Khazar masters.

The capital city of the Khazars was called Atil. It was located at the edge of the River Volga near the Caspian ("Khazar") Sea and had many shops, baths, and mosques. The Khazars alsso had many towns and village in the North Caucasus and Don River valley. These included Sarkel, Samandar, Samkalako, Burgur, and Balanjar. The Khazar towns were connected to the northern Silk Road routes and were large centers for trading. The Russians, Jews, and Bulgars traded in the marketplaces of Atil. The important city of Sarkel was located beside the River Don. It was the site of a large fortress built with white limestone bricks. After the building of Sarkel in the 830s, Byzantine-Khazar relations began to deteriorate, despite the fact that Byzantines had helped (to a certain extent) to build Sarkel. But some Khazar warriors served as bodyguards at the palace of the Byzantine emperor. The Khazars and Magyars appear to have conquered the Kiev region around the year 840, establishing a garrison in Kiev itself as well as districts called "Kozare" and "Ugorskoye".

The inhabitants of the Khazar kingdom were Jews, Christians, pagans, and Muslims. The Jewish Khazar kings were very tolerant, and did not persecute members of other religions. In the 10th century the primary religion of Khazars was Judaism. The Khazars converted to Judaism under the influence of Jewish traders and immigrants from the Middle East (though some scholars suggest that the Khazar leaders converted to Judaism to preserve Khazaria's independence against its Muslim and Christian neighbors). Their kings adopted Jewish names like Yitzhak, Menakhem, Aharon, and Yosef and built synagogues and Jewish schools in the kingdom.

Most of the Khazar kingdom was destroyed in the late 10th century by the Rus Prince Svyatoslav and the Turkic Pechenegs and Oghuzes, though some small parts of it lasted until the 11th or 12th century. But this diminished Khazar state had lost control of the Don-Volga trade route. During Khazar times, the steppes were relatively calm, but after the end of the Khazar state the wild Turkic tribes of the North that had been neutralized began to wreak havoc on the Rus state.

The growing Rus state owed much to the fallen Khazar kingdom. Some Old Rus words have their origin in the Khazarian language, and the Rus princes adopted the Khazar title "khagan". The trident symbol of the Rus princes may have also been of Khazar origin, according to some present-day historians. In addition to their prince, the Russians of Novgorod also had another top leader: the army general. Some historians explain the existence of two top leaders among the early Rus as a borrowing from the two-king system of the Khazars.

During the writing process for my book "The Jews of Khazaria" I was inspired by the works of David Nicolle and other authors in the field of military history. I am very much interested in corresponding with members of the wargaming community. I also invite readers to visit Khazaria.com's Bibliography of Khazar Studies at http://www.khazaria.com/khazar-biblio/toc.html and to offer suggestions for the addition of listings for other books and articles that contain substantial information on the Khazars.

Readers may especially be interested in chapters 7 and 8 of "The Jews of Khazaria" in which I had the opportunity to present all available information concerning Khazar battles. I hope that more wargamers will join in the adventure of Khazar history - which Salo Baron characterized as a "noteworthy experiment in Jewish statecraft".

[Ed. I wish to thank Kevin for submitting the above article exclusively to SAGA.]