Khazars: History of the Jewish Turkic Nomads

[Music] in his book on ceremonial protocol at the Byzantine Court Emperor Constantine vii stated that letters to such exalted figures as the Pope and Frankish Emperor ought to bear a seal worth two gold coins in value however it seems that these recipients were not the greatest priority to the early middle age world of the empire holding sway from the black to the Caspian Sea from the Caucasus Mountains to the Volga River messages to the khazar khaganate were to bear seals worth three gold coins in this video we will explain why the Romans felt bound to honor these former nomads in this way shout-out to the ridge for sponsoring this video the ridge raises the standard of everyday things like backpacks charges and wallets into sleek tools for better living their flagship product the ridge wallet was launched on Kickstarter in 2013 and now sits in the front pockets of over half a million men and women we carry so much pointless stuff in our leather bifold that they often resemble suitcases while the ridge helps you carry less but always have what you need it comes in titanium carbon fiber and over a dozen styles ensuring that there's a good fit for everyone the ridge has 30,000 five-star reviews a lifetime warranty and free returns gets 10% of rich products today with free worldwide shipping and returns by going to rich calm slash KNG and use the code KNG link in the description while our last episode ended with the emergence of an independent kazar state from the ruins of a decaying Western Turkic cargo net we must first go back a few centuries in order to establish just who they were and how they came to be we know that the tribes which would eventually coalesce into the Khazar Empire were living in an area of the Pontic Caspian steppe straddling the northwest shore of the Caspian Sea and probably formed part of the eastern section of the Hunnic tribal hierarchy these horse born warriors did what such nomadic people's almost always did when rubbing up against the borders of settled civilization they raided and plundered relentlessly extracting vast amounts of wealth from the South Caucasus region halfway through the 6th century the kazars had subjugated almost all of the tribes north of the Caucasus Mountains such as the sabias Serra Gers salmon das Balon jars and others that didn't mean they were the region's overlords however because the middle 500s also saw Yap GU is Tommy and his lethal gurke Turk cavalry armies rampage west in pursuit of whatever remained of their former Ave our rulers whom the celestial Kagan considered rogues this conquest of the western regions of the stem seems to have brought the kazars under a sheena rule without much resistance and the newly incorporated nomads became members of the Turkic carbonate circle of elite inner tribes indicating their strength and importance as the kazars formed a significant part of the Western coggan its Marshall strength their power was confirmed when the Western Turks made an alliance with Byzantium against Persia in 627 as the Turkic yab GU with whom Emperor Heraclius formed his pact seems to have been a relatively autonomous cazza a group whom Byzantine chronicler Thea Fannie's called cause us as we know the Western carbonate dissolved into its tribal components at about this time which finally gave the Turkic Kaiser as their independence the six 30s were also the time of Islam's stunning initial conquests which took over Syria Palestine and Egypt and even put a final nail into the coffin of Sassanid Persia more relevant to our story is the northern advance of the rashidun armies which eventually stood before the mighty Caucasus Mountains chained by six forty while the Persians and Romans had been content to merely defended against the United forces the conquering Muslims were not and they now sought to assert superiority over the kazars who resided there the mountains were a formidable obstacle but they could be surmounted by traversing one of two passes at darriel order 'but if the Arabs succeeded in crushing the nomads to the north they could outflank the resilient Byzantines and attack Europe from the steppe in short if the kazars lost the whole history of Europe might have been very different the viciously expansionist armies of both caesarea and the arabs initially met in 642 when raiders serving the latter reached der 'but a strategic city positioned at the narrowest point between the Caucasus Mountains and Caspian Sea conflict continued back and forth for the next eight years with the Muslims slowly pushing beyond Derbent and towards the Kazakh capital at belanger meanwhile the armies of the Caliph managed to defeat a Byzantine army in armenia composed partly of Qasr and other steppe allies a climactic offensive was launched in 652 in the form of an arab army tasked with the conquest of Ballinger itself which would serve as a foothold for Islamic armies on the European side of the Caucasus Mountains in the great battle that followed has our defenders used vast amounts of ballista and catapult artillery to repel repeated Arab assaults 4000 Muslim troops were killed including their commander Abdel Rahman even revere the surviving Arabs were driven back across the mountains by the victorious kazars and did not attempt any more serious conquest to the north for decades instead their gaze returned to Byzantium the Caliphate besieged Constantinople on several occasions but as we covered in a previous video failed to breach the great city and lost their momentum at the Arabs managed to encircle the Byzantine Empire by piercing through the caucuses and assaulting it from around the Black Sea it is probable that these strain of such a two-front war would have sealed the Empire's fate there it's been while war between the ascendant Caliphate and beleaguered Empire was raging a still ferociously expansionist Khazar Empire restarted its own war against other step peoples north of the caucuses who had still not submitted to qasar rule in the 650s and 660 s hegemony was asserted over the Magyars and Bulgars the latter of which were scattered in many directions some remained and a kazar rule while two other columns of Boger refugees ended up on the danube where they would have extensive relations with the byzantine empire and on the volga where they would become known as the volga bogus these were wars of conquest after which the victories incorporated the vanquished into a Khazar Empire possessing a stable administration and ruled by a Kurgan like the old Turkic realm had been a coggan who appointed his own governance to administer seized lands since their defeat at Ballinger the South Caucasus had changed hands multiple times and suffered repeated kazar attacks but by 692 the Umayyad Lord of Armenia set about establishing a stronger defense against his enemies beyond the caucuses in 721 the kazars had grown strong enough to take the offensive themselves invading Armenia and instigating a 15 year war which became known as the second Arab kazar war while this conflict appears for the most part to have been a series of back-and-forth following the same pattern over nova it was incredibly intense the often exaggerated Arab sources tell of armies one hundred thousand or even three hundred thousand strong colliding on those Caucasian battlefields though bees numbers are obviously implausible even 1/4 or 1/5 of these staggering totals would drastically outnumber the defense at tor which was arguably deciding the fate of Western Europe in the same period we will describe one of these intermittent campaigns and use it as a microcosm rather than listing them all buoyed by recent successes in the war the kazars invaded Muslim lands in modern Azerbaijan in 730 led by barge ik probably a son of the coggan he seems to have been a traditionally merciless steppe warlord who callously ordered his heavily armored light-skinned red haired and blue-eyed kazar cavalry forces to slay any Muslim they came across after marching his main force towards Audibel Qasr armies met a 25,000 strong Arab force outside the city walls and totally crushed it killing its commander al-jarrah eben Abdallah in the process it is said that barge ik mounted the dead Arab leaders head on a throne from which he led the Khazar armies throughout the campaign however the victors quickly and unwisely began to scatter throughout the area in search of loot and plunder which allowed the Arabs to counter-attack and drive them back across the mountains barukh himself narrowly escaped capture Kesar victory gave way to muslim success and so on a state of affairs which would define this war it was also an incredibly bitter and brutal Clash of Civilizations characterized as author Arthur Koestler notes by a distinct fanaticism which we can see in the extreme actions many of the combatants took for example an entire surrounded castle village supposedly committed collective suicide by fire rather than surrender to the enemy the conflict ended when the Muslims managed to invade Caesarea and forced the carga to convert to Islam but it seems like a hollow insincere conversion because we never hear of it again on the operational scale matters were inconclusive but on the grand strategic scale Islam's titanic pincer movement had been halted in the east by the kazars and in the west by the franks at almost the same time this was the end of Omiya expansionary efforts against the kazars and even the end of an Ummah ad ruled Caliphate as the less expansionist Abbasids took power in 750 rather than going into more of the military and politics of the kazars will instead discuss two things that they are known for above all others their religion and their trade unlike the vast majority of empires in Eurasia at the time and perhaps uniquely among them the kazars were officially a Jewish state having converted in roughly the year 740 though the date is a matter of scholarly debate what was the reason for this and how did it come to pass at the beginning of the 8th century the Mediterranean world was polarized primarily between Christianity and Islam faiths which served almost as the religious arm of their respective realms and would inevitably be used to gain political domination over the newly converted the Khazar Empire was a powerful realm of its own which represented a third force and had proved itself a diplomatic and military equal to the Caliphate and the Empire even having placed their own candidate on the Roman thrown yet interacting with these sophisticated civilizations had made Qasar rulers realize that their 10 Griest Shaymin beliefs could not grant spiritual legal and dynastic legitimacy like the great monotheistic faiths could however the kazars could not accept Christianity or Islam accepting conversion to either superpowers religion would automatically subordinate kazars to either the Emperor or the Caliph so it seemed like the only logical choice was to as the major power choose the third major religion which did not have as many strings attached Judaism how this happened isn't entirely certain there was no momentous event like Rome's Battle of the Milvian bridge for example which eventually led to the Empire's conversion to Christianity however there are certain trends which can explain why it happened when it did even before the Khazar ruling caste perched angry ISM aside the Northern Kingdom as Byzantium called it had extensive connections with Jews and their religious practices there were old prominent Jewish communities on the Crimean and Taman peninsulas which had existed ever since Greek and Roman times living in cities such as panty cap IAM and phanagoria external events in the early 700 s were to increase the Jewish presence in Caesarea to an unprecedented degree persecution of Jews in the Byzantine Empire began in the reign of Justinian but particularly intensified under the reigns of Heracles and Leo the third the Assyrian the latter of whom sought to forcibly baptize and thus convert Jewish citizens to Christianity in 722 while Leo's decree was not effectively enforced the policy led many Jews to flee from Byzantium and into Qasr labs including from Roman possessions in Crimea simultaneously the Jews also migrated into Caesarea from the Muslim world but in far smaller numbers the refugees which flesh to Castile and represented themselves as bearers of an old sophisticated ancient culture and almost definitely a key factor in creating a cosmopolitan of Tolerance in a tub the Kazakh capital which Arab travellers admired it can also be speculated that Jewish missionary refugees who also brought Byzantine arts crafts and superior methods of Agriculture trade but probably used this influence to persuade the inner qasar tribes of the political and spiritual advantages of conversion to the neutral Judaism whatever the case by the mid 800 s at the latest Jewish themed Moses coins were being issued in Kazan territories a fact which allows us to Segway on to the second stereotypically Qasar activity trade Khazar lands were known especially in the 8th and 9th centuries as a land of plenty the Persian geographical sa coutelle Ilan States this is a very pleasant and prosperous country with great riches from its can cows sheep and innumerable slaves unsurprisingly such a place attracted significant amounts of commercial activity from all quarters straddling important trade routes along the Azov and Black and Caspian Seas the Don River and especially on the Volga River kesariya functioned as a nexus for trade moving east and west north and south and this allowed the car gun to make a killing from Silk Road profits customs duties were imposed on merchandise transported into the steppe realm by land or sea when traders of the roost brought valuables they intended to export past a toll for example the kazars taxed them in proportion to be value of their goods lesser Chiefs and tribal leaders also demanded payment for transport through their own local territories as shown when more reus merchants reached circle in the late 8th hundreds and the local governor took a tenth of their merchandise as tribute they weren't just extractors of wealth however and Kazaa merchants from the inner tribes were often directly involved in trading according to persian geographer gardez ii the kazars exported natively produced candle wax and honey in addition to exotic wine which was manufactured in salmon dar traders from the northern kingdom also found their way to volka bulgaria juarez 'm China India and even Sweden where there was a small cows our colony at burka in Lake mälar traders from other lands would also flock to and settle in the capital at a till in order to sell their goods Chinese merchants brought five silk dresses and sophisticated bearers from the tang empire while arabs came in search of particularly prized Qasar furs originating from the northern wildernesses and scandinavia weaving these two threads of religion and commerce together are the Jewish rata Knight merchants a commerce oriented people hypothesized to have originated either in Mesopotamia or the Rhone Valley in France they were prominent among the Khazar merchants who ventured to such far-flung Eastern destinations as China India and other parts of Asia they also traveled as far west as Spain according to matthew goodman for more than 100 years virtually every bit of spice that entered christian europe did so as a result of ratah night trade these merchants also exported items such as swords silk Ferb's and slaves from europe and north africa in his book of routes and kingdoms persian geographer and explorer eben cordetta tells us that the rata knights were an incredibly multilingual community capable of speaking languages such as Persian Slavic Spanish Frankish Greek and Arabic as a people of Commerce this expertise in language must have provided a distinct advantage since they would encounter trading partners from distant areas of the world and from many diverse cultures it's even possible that these ran tonight's played a crucial role in prompting the Coggan and his Nobles conversion to Judaism at the beginning of the 10th century despite controlling territories from the Aral Sea in the East to the Dnieper River in the West and from the upper Volga in the north to the Caucasus in the south kesariya was beginning to weaken new nomadic invaders from the east such as the Magyars and pechenegs began to rampage through their lands while the competitive warlike and equally mercantile Ferengi ins of kiev in ruse began to exert pressure on the kazars cutting off their dominion west of the Dnieper River for half a century beginning in around the Year 900 the kazars became tangled up in multiple disputes with the ruse many of which resulted in violence and defeats for both sides but it was becoming evidence that the northern kingdoms dominance had been lost the final blow came in the late 90s when the ambitious ruse print status lav of Kiev sailed down the Volga River and seized a toe sacking and raising it dismantling the Coggins realm in the process several decades later svetislav son Vladimir asserted Roose authority over former cazza territories including salmon da the revered vine yards and gardens of which were burned in the conquest it seems that land and riches weren't the only things the ruse seized from the kazars 20th century historian Julius Brett's curse proposed that the ancient Kevin state also inherited sophisticated customs legal procedures governmental frameworks and military organization refugees from the crumbling Khazar Empire are controversially hypothesized by some historians to have been the source of Eastern Europe's future Ashkenazi Jewish community but this is a matter of intense genetic analysis and historical debate which will likely go on for years to come we will continue talking about steppe civilizations so make sure you are 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Keywords: rome, roman empire, catalaunian plains, roman history, fall of rome, attila the hun, the huns, genghis khan, hunnic empire, ancient rome, history channel, kings and generals, tengri, mongols, genghis, ancient history, seljuks, ottoman, white huns, Hephthalites, king and general, documentary history, full documentary, history documentary, turkic history, animated historical documentary, gokturks, göktürks, gökturks, khazars, jewish history, byzantine, caliphate, umayyads, abbasids, ashkenazi

Id: Xr2CtmpKU6A

Length: 20min 30sec (1230 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 28 2019