5 – The Kingdom of Khazaria (650 – 969)
The Khazars were a semi-nomadic Turkic people. The Kingdom of Kharazia was established at a time when the Muslims were on the rise and in the process of almost destroying the Byzantine Empire. For centuries, the kingdom operated as a buffer state between the Byzantines and the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates and some historians believe the Khazars did as much to slow the Arab advance into Europe as Charles Martel.
The origins of the Kingdom of Khazaria go back to the West Turkish Empire which was a confederation of Turkish tribes including the Khazars. At some point in the seventh century, this empire dissolved and the Khazars became the most powerful tribe in the region north of the Caucasus. Interestingly, the tribe supplied the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius with 40,000 troops in 627 to help defeat the Sassanids.
The Khazars fought a series of wars against the Arabs in the seventh and eighth centuries and won an important victory over the Arabs in a battle near the Khazar capital at the time, Balanjar. A second war began in the early eighth century and lasted until around 741. There was peace for a couple of decades as the Third Muslim War ultimately saw the Umayyads replaced by the Abbasids. Caliph al-Mansur tried to strengthen ties with the Khazars in 758 with a royal marriage, but when the Khazar woman died, hostilities broke out again.
While the Khazars were on better terms with the Arabs in the ninth century, a new threat arrived in the form of the Varangian Rus’ who reached Kiev and Constantinople by 860. The Khazars often shifted alliances between the Byzantines and the Rus’. By 880, they began losing control of the region of the Middle Dnieper from Kiev because the city was taken by Oleg of Novgorod who formed a new empire.
Khazar relations with the new Kievan Rus’ deteriorated throughout the tenth century, and at the same time, its alliance with the Byzantines also began to collapse. Finally, Sviatoslav I of the Rus’ destroyed the imperial power of the Khazars; first by taking Serkel in 965 and finally, by capturing the Khazar capital of Atil in 969.