It may have been during the reign of the Khagan Benjamin, in the first years of the 10th century, that the Byzantine Empire took the offensive against Khazaria. For this enterprise the Byzantines found allies amongst other peoples who had quarrels with the Khazars, including the Burtas, Magyars, Central Asian Turks, Ghuzz, Black Bulgars, Pechenegs and perhaps Ossetians. Acting in concert, this loose alliance put the Khazars under huge military pressure, while the Khaganate’s only effective allies seem to have been the Alans. Nevertheless, this first major Khazar-Byzantine war ended in Khazar victory.
The Khagan Aaron II (920s–940) also faced conflict with the Byzantine Empire when, encouraged by the latter, the Alans turned against their erstwhile Khazar allies. By this time the Alans had largely been driven from the north Caucasus plains into the mountains, but they nevertheless remained a formidable force, capable (according to the near-contemporary Muslim chronicler al-Mas’udi) of fielding 30,000 horsemen. In response to their attacks Aaron allied with ‘Twrqy’ or Turks, perhaps meaning the Ghuzz. The Alans were defeated and their ruler captured; Aaron not only treated his prisoner with respect, but married his son Joseph, a future Khagan, to the captured ruler’s daughter◦– the traditional method for cementing an alliance. The Alans are also said to have abandoned their recently accepted Othodox Christian religion in 932, expelling the Byzantine bishop; some Alans now converted to Judaism, though most soon returned to the Orthodox fold.
The Varangian founders of the Kievan Rus state were Scandinavians, largely from Sweden, who had subdued many Slav tribes. The early Varangian aristocracy had followed the example of these peoples in paying tribute to the Khazars, and had even fought for them against the Khaganate’s enemies around the southern Caspian Sea. However, tension between the Rus and Khazars erupted into violence after 914, when Rus returning to the Volga from a Caspian campaign were attacked by the Khazar army’s elite Muslim mercenaries, the Arsiya, and also by Burtas and Volga Bulgar vassals of the Khaganate (see also below, ‘Russian-Khazarian Wars’).
There was significant persecution of Jewish minorities in the Byzantine Empire under Emperor Romanos I (920–944), along with a generally anti-Khazar policy. In response the Jewish Khagan Joseph turned against the many Christians living in Khazaria, and in 939 this resulted in a war during which the Rus sided with the Byzantines. The so-called ‘Helga, king of the Rus’ (either Oleg or Igor of Kiev) suddenly seized the Khazar fortress of Samkertz on the Taman pensinula, overlooking the Kerch straits between the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. One account claims that no Khazar chief (hapaqid or reb hashmonaya) or garrison was installed there at the time. Another version states that when Samkertz’s garrison commander or governor (bulshitsi), named Pesakh, heard the news he quickly retook this strongpoint. Yet a third version describes Pesakh as the Khazar archon (a Byzantine term for governor) of the Bosphorus, meaning the southern coastal region of the Sea of Azov. According to this account, Pesakh crossed from the Taman peninsula to Crimea, capturing three Byzantine towns and numerous villages before besieging Kherson, which he forced to pay tribute. Having defeated Byzantine forces in the Crimean peninsula Pesakh attacked the Rus in a four-month campaign, regained booty from Samkertz, and defeated ‘Helga’, who now agreed to join forces with the Khazars.
In 941 a large joint Rus and Khazar fleet attacked the imperial capital, Constantinople. This assault, well recorded in Byzantine sources, saw the Rus-Khazar fleet rampaging around the Sea of Marmara and the Black and Aegean Seas. Eventually the Byzantine navy managed to defeat their foes with the aid of their legendary ‘Greek fire’ weapon, after which the Khazars and Rus were also defeated on land.
Despite this failure, ‘Helga’ remained an ally of the Khazars, and in 943 the Khagan sent him to conquer what is now Azerbaijan. The primary target of this enterprise, which served mainly Khazar rather than Rus interests, was a frontier zone of the Islamic Caliphate beyond the vital fortress of Derbent, which the Arabs called ‘the Gate of Gates’. According to Gregory Bar Hebraeus, writing in the 13th century, other Khazar vassals also took part, including Lezgins and Alans from the Caucasus in addition to the usual vassal Slavs.
The subordination of Kievan Rus to the Khazars which had been achieved by Pesakh’s campaign proved relatively short-lived. By the 950s and 960s the Khagan Joseph was again at war with the Rus, to deny them access to the Caspian Sea. His efforts failed; the Rus formed an alliance with the Turkish Ghuzz, and in 964–965 Prince Svyatoslav Igorevich defeated the Khazar Khaganate. Whether the Byzantines also took part in this campaign is unknown, but in 1016 Byzantium and Rus jointly suppressed a rebellion in Crimea by George Tsulo◦– the strategikon of Kherson, who was of Khazar origin. However, this was not a war against Jewish Khazaria, which no longer existed; George Tsulo was himself a Christian.
RUSSIAN-KHAZARIAN WARS, 10th CENTURY
An ancient Russian chronicle called The Story of Previous Times states that, after the deaths of the legendary founders of Kiev◦– the Slav brothers Kyi, Shchek and Khoryv, and their sister Lybid◦– until 852 the local Slav tribe continued to pay tribute to the Khazars in the form of swords. The historian L.N. Gumilev points out that a tribute of swords was merely the disarming of a people defeated in war by the Khazars, whereas other tribute in furs and silver were valuable trading items. The Varangians who subsequently dominated these Slav tribes similarly demanded such tribute.
Gumilev maintains that it was this diversion of Slav tribute from the Khazars to the newly arrived Scandinavians that led to war between the Khazars and the Varangian Rus, in which the Varangians initially came off worse. However, most experts suggest that a mutually beneficial trade arrangement was concluded between the Rus and Khazars, with Varangian raiders either purchasing or capturing Slavs and Finns to be sold as slaves in Khazaria, most of them destined for ultimate resale in the Byzantine Empire or Islamic territories.
Meanwhile, longer-distance trade, especially in slaves, was virtually monopolized by the Radhonites (Hebrew Radhani, Arabic Radaniyya)◦– Jewish merchants who operated across much of Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa from the 6th to 10th centuries AD. What influence Radhonite merchants and their trade might have had on the decision of the Khazar ruling elite to convert to Judaism after about 730 is unknown.
An alliance with the Varangians proved more profitable for the Khazars than exacting tribute directly from the Slav tribes. Furthermore, the Khazar rulers persuaded the fearsome Varangians to take part in campaigns against the peoples of the southern Caspian, whence the main Islamic threat to the Khaganate originated. During the late 9th and early 10th centuries such raids could prove highly profitable for both participants when, as described by the Muslim chronicler al-Mas’udi, they shared the booty. This relationship often sounds like one between equal allies, or perhaps just between mercenaries and those who hired them.
The first significant war between the Varangian Rus and Khazaria took place around 913–914 when, again according to al-Mas’udi, a Rus fleet of some 500 ships, each containing 40–100 warriors, appeared in the Kerch Strait. There they asked the Khazar authorities for permission to sail up the Don, to travel across the famous portage near today’s Volgograd (ex-Stalingrad), then down the Volga to the Caspian, and permission was granted in return for an eventual share of their anticipated booty. The Rus entered the Caspian and raided various Muslim territories, including Gilan, Dailam, Tabaristan, Abaskun, Arran and Shirvan, before returning to the Volga Delta, where the Khazar ruler was given his share of the loot.