Yet another Eastern idea adopted by the Khazars was a pair of greaves forged from two substantial strips of metal connected by loops, almost certainly of rawhide or leather, and secured to the wearer’s shins by buckled straps. Further strips of metal with curved edges could also be riveted to the fronts of such greaves. Comparable greaves appear in Chinese sculptures and wall paintings from the 7th to 9th centuries, as well as in some Central Asian wall paintings of a similar period, and, famously, in some Scandinavian ‘splint’ armour of the immediate pre-Viking era.
The typical Khazar helmet was made of four segments riveted directly together, plus a conical top element or finial, and often a straight nasal bar. Helmets often also had a mail aventail attached to their rim, reaching the shoulders, to protect the back and sides of the head and neck. Images of warriors in such equipment appear in a number of places, including inscribed bone plates from the Shilovsky mound near the Oka River. A scene of battle on another engraved bone object from the Khazar stronghold of Sarkel portrays a lightly armoured, spear-armed horseman striking a heavily armoured soldier in his only unprotected place◦– his face. In contrast, many Alan helmets appear to have been Spangenhelme made of hardened leather elements attached to an iron frame consisting of a lower rim, eight vertical strips and a plate at the top.
There is no reliable archaeological data concerning Khazar shields, because their wood and leather are not preserved. However, the nomadic Khazars clearly used the standard Turkic shield of this period, which was round, and usually approximately 78cm (30in) in diameter. It was made of five wooden boards, each 15–18cm (6–7in) wide and not more than 1cm (0.4in) thick. On the inside, these boards were connected to a wooden crossbar. Such a shield could not long withstand the full impact of a cutting weapon; this indicates that the Turks did not rely on their shields in close combat, but primarily used them for defence against arrows.
On a further engraved bone object from Sarkel we see warriors without shields in their hands, though there are round objects which might represent shields lying on the ground. This seems likely, because a warrior who has been struck by a spear has thrown his bow on the ground while his sword also flies from his hand. In one Khazar grave, a slightly domed iron disk with a diameter of about 25cm (9.8in) and a thickness of 0.5cm was found, in the centre of which is a large rivet which had been driven in from the inside. The exact purpose of this object remains unclear, but it may have been used as a small ‘elbow shield’ attached to the arm by a leather strap. Such a defence could only be useful in close combat to deflect a slashing blow.
In a nomadic environment the horse was an essential feature of life, so items of harness were objects of everyday rather than specifically military use. By the end of the 7th century the Khazars were far from alone in using a rigid wooden saddle with stirrups. On the steppes the wood-framed saddle itself dated back to around the 4th century AD, so it is possible, even without the confirmation of archaeological finds, that the Khazars used it from an even earlier date◦– perhaps with leather-loop stirrups, which similarly left no archaeological trace. Metal stirrups first appeared in Central Europe with the Avars in the 7th century, but they only spread more widely across Eastern Europe during the Khazar period.
The combination of a rigid wooden saddle and metal stirrups gave greater security to a horseman’s ‘seat’◦– in other words, it was more difficult to knock him off his horse◦– and they also enabled the rider to strike more varied and powerful blows with a range of weapons, especially spear and sword. The stirrup itself had not originally been developed for this purpose, however; in its earliest manifestation it simply allowed a warrior to ride for longer without tiring, by improving circulation in his legs and thus making him less vulnerable to prolonged exposure to cold while in the saddle. In the context of combat, however, rigid saddles and metallic stirrups certainly contributed to the development of the curved sabre and other close-combat weapons, and thus, by extension, to the further development of cavalry armour and helmets.
FORTIFICATIONS
Various written sources mention the 7th–8th century Khazars’ habit of assembling their wagons into a defensive circle, strengthened by the addition of shields, even during pauses on the march. By the 7th century, however, they also began using more permanent fortifications in particularly threatened regions, the earliest known examples being found in Chir-Yurt, Andrewaul and elsewhere in Daghestan. Nevertheless, the question of whether nomadic Khazars themselves actually built these fortifications remains controversial, as the structures might more plausibly be credited to the local settled populations.
The north-western border of the Khaganate was a dangerously exposed region, where about 40 fortified locations dating from Khazar times have been found in the Don and Seversky Donets river basins. These can be divided into the following types:
(1) Fortifications of the immediate pre-Khazar period (pre-7th century), whose defensive works were almost never rebuilt.
(2) Fortifications located on narrow coastal promontories, and protected only on the landward side. In the construction of such sites natural features of terrain were maximized; slopes were steepened, and two or three lines of defences added. They vary in the presence or absence of additional defences along the water perimeters of the promontory.
(3) Fortifications constructed of stone or brick with clearly defined geometric plans, usually roughly rectangular, and sometimes with towers. These show a considerable advance over the earlier examples in both architectural and defensive capabilities. They could also sustain a permanent or replaceable garrison◦– for example at Sarkel, where 300 individuals were reportedly rotated each year. The building of such a fortress is estimated to have required over 20,000 man-working days, so their construction can only have been a planned state action. Furthermore, the concentration of this type of fortress along the north-western border of Khazar territory highlights the fact that they were intended to face a powerful north-western enemy, which can only have been Kievan Russia.
