CONVERSION
1
"THE religion of the Hebrews," writes
Bury, "had exercised a profound influence on the creed of
Islam, and it had been a basis for Christianity; it had won
scattered proselytes; but the conversion of the Khazars to the
undiluted religion of Jehova is unique in history."1
.What
was the motivation of this unique event? It is not easy to get
under the skin of a Khazar prince - covered, as it was, by a
coat of mail. But if we reason in terms of power-politics,
which obeys essentially the same rules throughout the ages, a
fairly plausible analogy offers itself. .At
the beginning of the eighth century the world was polarized
between the two super-powers representing Christianity and
Islam. Their ideological doctrines were welded to
power-politics pursued by the classical methods of propaganda,
subversion and military conquest. The Khazar Empire represented
a Third Force, which had proved equal to either of them, both
as an adversary and an ally. But it could only maintain its
independence by accepting neither Christianity nor Islam - for
either choice would have automatically subordinated it to the
authority of the Roman Emperor or the Caliph of Baghdad.
.There
had been no lack of efforts by either court to convert the
Khazars to Christianity or Islam, but all they resulted in was
the exchange of diplomatic courtesies, dynastic inter-marriages
and shifting military alliances based on mutual self-interest.
Relying on its military strength, the Khazar kingdom, with its
hinterland of vassal tribes, was determined to preserve its
position as the Third Force, leader of the uncommitted nations
of the steppes. .At
the same time, their intimate contacts with Byzantium and the
Caliphate had taught the Khazars that their primitive shamanism
was not only barbaric and outdated compared to the great
monotheistic creeds, but also unable to confer on the leaders
the spiritual and legal authority which the rulers of the two
theocratic world powers, the Caliph and the Emperor, enjoyed.
Yet the conversion to either creed would have meant submission,
the end of independence, and thus would have defeated its
purpose. What could have been more logical than to embrace a
third creed, which was uncommitted towards either of the two,
yet represented the venerable foundation of both?
.The
apparent logic of the decision is of course due to the
deceptive clarity of hindsight. In reality, the conversion to
Judaism required an act of genius. Yet both the Arab and Hebrew
sources on the history of the conversion, however varied in
detail, point to a line of reasoning as indicated above. To
quote Bury once more:
- There can be no question that the
ruler was actuated by political motives in adopting Judaism.
To embrace Mohammadanism would have made him the spiritual
dependent of the Caliphs, who attempted to press their faith
on the Khazars, and in Christianity lay the danger of his
becoming an ecclesiastical vassal of the Roman Empire.
Judaism was a reputable religion with sacred books which
both Christian and Mohammadan respected; it elevated him
above the heathen barbarians, and secured him against the
interference of Caliph or Emperor. But he did not adopt,
along with circumcision, the intolerance of the Jewish cult.
He allowed the mass of his people to abide in their
heathendom and worship their idols.2
Though the Khazar court's conversion
was no doubt politically motivated, it would still be absurd to
imagine that they embraced overnight, blindly, a religion whose
tenets were unknown to them. In fact, however, they had been
well acquainted with Jews and their religious observances for
at least a century before the conversion, through the continued
influx of refugees from religious persecution in Byzantium, and
to a lesser extent from countries in Asia Minor conquered by
the Arabs. We know that Khazaria was a relatively civilized
country among the Barbarians of the North, yet not committed to
either of the militant creeds, and so it became a natural haven
for the periodic exodus of Jews under Byzantine rule,
threatened by forced conversion and other pressures.
Persecution in varied forms had started with Justinian I
(527-65), and assumed particularly vicious forms under
Heraclius in the seventh century, Leo III in the eighth, Basil
and Leo IV in the ninth, Romanus in the tenth. Thus Leo III,
who ruled during the two decades immediately preceding the
Khazar conversion to Judaism, "attempted to end the anomaly
[of the tolerated status of Jews] at one blow, by
ordering all his Jewish subjects to be baptized".3 Although the
implementation of the order seemed to have been rather
ineffective, it led to the flight of a considerable number of
Jews from Byzantium. Masudi relates:
- In this city
[Khazaran-Itil] are Muslims, Christians, Jews and
pagans. The Jews are the king, his attendants and the
Khazars of his kind.*[i.e., presumably the ruling tribe
of "White Khazars", see above, Chapter I, 3.] The king
of the Khazars had already become a Jew in the Caliphate of
Harun al-Rashid*[i.e., between AD 786 and 809; but it is
generally assumed that Masudi used a convenient historical
landmark and that the conversion took place around AD
740.] and he was joined by Jews from all lands of Islam
and from the country of the Greeks [Byzantium].
Indeed the king of the Greeks at the present time, the Year
of the Hegira 332 [AD 943-4] has converted the Jews
in his kingdom to Christianity by coercion.... Thus many
Jews took flight from the country of the Greeks to
Khazaria....3a
The last two sentences quoted refer to
events two hundred years after the Khazar conversion, and show
how persistently the waves of persecution followed each other
over the centuries. But the Jews were equally persistent. Many
endured torture, and those who did not have the strength to
resist returned later on to their faith - "like dogs to their
vomit", as one Christian chronicler gracefully put it.4 Equally
picturesque is the description of a Hebrew writer5 of one
method of forced conversion used under the Emperor Basil
against the Jewish community of Oria in southern
Italy:
- How did they force them? Anyone
refusing to accept their erroneous belief was placed in an
olive mill under a wooden press, and squeezed in the way
olives are squeezed in the mill.
Another Hebrew source6 remarks on the
persecution under the Emperor Romanus (the "Greek King" to whom
Masudi refers): "And afterwards there will arise a King who
will persecute them not by destruction, but mercifully by
driving them out of the country." .The
only mercy shown by history to those who took to flight, or
were driven to it, was the existence of Khazaria, both before
and after the conversion. Before, it was a refugee haven;
after, it became a kind of National Home. The refugees were
products of a superior culture, and were no doubt an important
factor in creating that cosmopolitan, tolerant outlook which so
impressed the Arab chroniclers quoted before. Their influence -
and no doubt their proselytizing zeal *[This was an age
when converting unbelievers by force or persuasion was a
foremost concern. That the Jews, too, indulged in it is shown
by the fact that, since the rule of Justinian, Byzantine law
threatened severe punishments for the attempt to convert
Christians to Judaism, while for Jews "molesting" converts to
Christianity the penalty was death by fire (Sharf, p.25).]
- would have made itself felt first and foremost at the court
and among leading notables. They may have combined in their
missionary efforts theological arguments and messianic
prophecies with a shrewd assessment of the political advantages
the Khazars would derive from adopting a "neutral" religion.
.The
exiles also brought with them Byzantine arts and crafts,
superior methods in agriculture and trade, and the square
Hebrew alphabet. We do not know what kind of script the Khazars
used before that, but the Fihrist of Ibn Nadim,7 a
kind of universal bibliography written circa AD 987,
informs us that in his time the Khazars used the Hebrew
alphabet. It served the dual purpose of scholarly discourse in
Hebrew (analogous to the use of mediaeval Latin in the West)
and as a written alphabet for the various languages spoken in
Khazaria (analogous to the use of the Latin alphabet for the
various vernaculars in Western Europe). From Khazaria the
Hebrew script seemed to have spread into neighbouring
countries. Thus Chwolson reports that "inscriptions in a
non-Semitic language (or possibly in two different non-Semitic
languages) using Hebrew characters were found on two
gravestones from Phanagoria and Parthenit in the Crimea; they
have not been deciphered yet."*[These inscriptions are a
category apart from the forgeries of Firkovitch, notorious
among historians (see Appendix III). - Poliak (4/3) quoting
Chwolson, D.A. (1865).] (The Crimea was, as we have seen,
intermittently under Khazar rule; but it also had an
old-established Jewish community, and the inscriptions may even
pre-date the conversion.) Some Hebrew letters (shin
and tsadei) also found their way into the Cyrillic
alphabet,9 and furthermore, many Polish silver coins have been
found, dating from the twelfth or thirteenth century, which
bear Polish inscriptions in Hebrew lettering (e.g., Leszek
krol Polski - Leszek King of Poland), side by side with
coins inscribed in the Latin alphabet. Poliak comments: "These
coins are the final evidence for the spreading of the Hebrew
script from Khazaria to the neighbouring Slavonic countries.
The use of these coins was not related to any question of
religion. They were minted because many of the Polish people
were more used to this type of script than to the Roman script,
not considering it as specifically Jewish."10
.Thus
while the conversion was no doubt inspired by opportunistic
motives - conceived as a cunning political manoeuvre - it
brought in its wake cultural developments which could hardly
have been foreseen by those who started it. The Hebrew alphabet
was the beginning; three centuries later the decline of the
Khazar state is marked by repeated outbreaks of a messianic
Zionism, with pseudo-Messiahs like David El-Roi (hero of a
novel by Disraeli) leading quixotic crusades for the
re-conquest of Jerusalem.*[See below, Chapter IV, II.]
.After
the defeat by the Arabs in 737, the Kagan's forced adoption of
Islam had been a formality almost instantly revoked, which
apparently left no impression on his people. In contrast to
this, the voluntary conversion to Judaism was to produce deep
and lasting effects.
2
The circumstances of the conversion
are obscured by legend, but the principal Arab and Hebrew
accounts of it have some basic features in common.
.Al-Masudi's
account of the Jewish rule in Khazaria, quoted earlier on, ends
with a reference to a previous work of his, in which he gave a
description of those circumstances. That previous work of
Masudi's is lost; but there exist two accounts which are based
on tile lost book. The first, by Dimaski (written in 1327),
reiterates that at the time of Harun al Rashid, the Byzantine
Emperor forced the Jews to emigrate; these emigrants came to
the Khazar country where they found "an intelligent but
uneducated race to whom they offered their religion. The
natives found it better than their own and accepted it."11
.The
second, much more detailed account is in al-Bakri's Book of
Kingdoms and Roads (eleventh century):
- The reason for the conversion to
Judaism of the King of the Khazars, who had previously been
a pagan, is as follows. He had adopted Christianity.*[No
other source, as far as I know, mentions this. It may be a
substitution more palatable to Muslim readers for the
Kagan's short-lived adoption of Islam prior to Judaism.]
Then he recognized its falsehood and discussed this matter,
which greatly worried him, with one of his high officials.
The latter said to him: O king, those in possession of
sacred scriptures fall into three groups. Summon them and
ask them to state their case, then follow the one who is in
possession of the truth. .So
he sent to the Christians for a bishop. Now there was with
the King a Jew, skilled in argument, who engaged him in
disputation. He asked the Bishop: "What do you say of Moses,
the son of Amran, and the Torah which was revealed to him?"
The Bishop replied: "Moses is a prophet and the Torah speaks
the truth." Then the Jew said to the King: "He has already
admitted the truth of my creed. Ask him now what he believes
in." .So
the King asked him and he replied: "I say that Jesus the
Messiah is the son of Mary, he is the Word, and he has
revealed the mysteries in the name of God." Then said the
Jew to the King of the Khazars: "He preaches a doctrine
which I know not, while he accepts my propositions." But the
Bishop was not strong in producing evidence. Then the King
asked for a Muslim, and they sent him a scholarly, clever
man who was good at arguments. But the Jew hired someone who
poisoned him on the journey, and he died. And the Jew
succeeded in winning the King for his faith, so that he
embraced Judaism.12
The Arab historians certainly had a
gift for sugaring the pill. Had the Muslim scholar been able to
participate in the debate he would have fallen into the same
trap as the Bishop, for both accepted the truth of the Old
Testament, whereas the upholders of the New Testament and of
the Koran were each outvoted two to one. The King's approval of
this reasoning is symbolic: he is only willing to accept
doctrines which are shared by all three - their common
denominator - and refuses to commit himself to any of the rival
claims which go beyond that. It is once more the principle of
the uncommitted world, applied to theology. .The
story also implies, as Bury13 has pointed out, that Jewish
influence at the Khazar court must already have been strong
before the formal conversion, for the Bishop and the Muslim
scholar have to be 'sent for", whereas the Jew is alreadv "with
him" (the King).
3
We now turn from the principal Arab
source on the conversion - Masudi and his compilers - to the
principal Jewish source. This is the so-called "Khazar
Correspondence": an exchange of letters, in Hebrew, between
Hasdai Ibn Shaprut, the Jewish chief minister of the Caliph of
Cordoba, and Joseph, King of the Khazars or, rather, between
their respective scribes. The authenticity of the
correspondence has been the subject of controversy but is now
generally accepted with due allowance made for the vagaries of
later copyists.*[A summary of the controversy will be found
in Appendix III.] .The
exchange of letters apparently took place after 954 and before
961, that is roughly at the time when Masudi wrote. To
appreciate its significance a word must be said about the
personality of Hasdai Ibn Shaprut - perhaps the most brilliant
figure in the "Golden Age" (900-1200) of the Jews in Spain.
.In
929, Abd-al-Rahman III, a member of the Omayad dynasty,
succeeded in unifying the Moorish possessions in the southern
and central parts of the Iberian peninsula under his rule, and
founded the Western Caliphate. His capital, Cordoba, became the
glory of Arab Spain, and a focal centre of European culture
with a library of 400000 catalogued volumes. Hasdai, born 910
in Cordoba into a distinguished Jewish family, first attracted
the Caliph's attention as a medical practitioner with some
remarkable cures to his credit. Abd-al-Rahman appointed him his
court physician, and trusted his judgment so completely that
Hasdai was called upon, first, to put the state finances in
order, then to act as Foreign Minister and diplomatic
trouble-shooter in the new Caliphate's complex dealings with
Byzantium, the German Emperor Otto, with Castile, Navarra,
Arragon and other Christian kingdoms in the north of Spain.
Hasdai was a true uomo universale centuries before the
Renaissance who, in between affairs of state, still found the
time to translate medical books into Arabic, to correspond with
the learned rabbis of Baghdad and to act as a Maecenas for
Hebrew grammarians and poets. .He
obviously was an enlightened, yet a devoted Jew, who used his
diplomatic contacts to gather information about the Jewish
communities dispersed in various parts of the world, and to
intervene on their behalf whenever possible. He was
particularly concerned about the persecution of Jews in the
Byzantine Empire under Romanus (see above, section I).
Fortunately, he wielded considerable influence at the Byzantine
court, which was vitally interested in procuring the benevolent
neutrality of Cordoba during the Byzantine campaigns against
the Muslims of the East. Hasdai, who was conducting the
negotiations, used this opportunity to intercede on behalf of
Byzantine Jewry, apparently with success.14 .According
to his own account, Hasdai first heard of the existence of an
independent Jewish kingdom from some merchant traders from
Khurasan in Persia; but he doubted the truth of their story.
Later he questioned the members of a Byzantine diplomatic
mission to Cordoba, and they confirmed the merchants' account,
contributing a considerable amount of factual detail about the
Khazar kingdom, including the name - Joseph - of its present
King. Thereupon Hasdai decided to send couriers with a letter
to King Joseph. .The
letter (which will be discussed in more detail later on)
contains a list of questions about the Khazar state, its
people, method of government, armed forces, and so on -
including an inquiry to which of the twelve tribes Joseph
belonged. This seems to indicate that Hasdai thought the Jewish
Khazars to hail from Palestine - as the Spanish Jews did - and
perhaps even to represent one of the Lost Tribes. Joseph, not
being of Jewish descent, belonged, of course, to none of the
tribes; in his Reply to Hasdai, he provides, as we shall see, a
genealogy of a different kind, but his main concern is to give
Hasdai a detailed - if legendary - account of the conversion -
which took place two centuries earlier - and the circumstances
that led to it. .Joseph's
narrative starts with a eulogy of his ancestor, King Bulan, a
great conqueror and a wise man who "drove out the sorcerers and
idolators from his land". Subsequently an angel appeared to
King Bulan in his dreams, exhorting him to worship the only
true God, and promising that in exchange He would "bless and
multiply Bulan's offspring, and deliver his enemies into his
hands, and make his kingdom last to the end of the world".
This, of course, is inspired by the story of the Covenant in
Genesis; and it implies that the Khazars too claimed the status
of a Chosen Race, who made their own Covenant with the Lord,
even though they were not descended from Abraham's seed. But at
this point Joseph's story takes an unexpected turn. King Bulan
is quite willing to serve the Almighty, but he raises a
difficulty:
- Thou knowest, my Lord, the secret
thoughts of my heart and thou hast searched my kidneys to
confirm that my trust is in thee; but the people over which
I rule have a pagan mind and I do not know whether they will
believe me. If I have found favour and mercy in thine eyes,
then I beseech thee to appear also to their Great Prince, to
make him support me. .The
Eternal One granted Bulan's request, he appeared to this
Prince in a dream, and when he arose in the morning he came
to the King and made it known to him....
There is nothing in Genesis, nor in
the Arab accounts of the conversion, about a great prince whose
consent has to be obtained. It is an unmistakable reference to
the Khazar double kingship. The "Great Prince", apparently, is
the Bek; but it is not impossible that the "King" was the Bek,
and the "Prince" the Kagan. Moreover according to Arab and
Armenian sources, the leader of the Khazar army which invaded
Transcaucasia in 731 (i.e., a few years before the presumed
date of the conversion) was called "Bulkhan".15
.Joseph's
letter continues by relating how the angel appeared once more
to the dreaming King and bade him to build a place of worship
in which the Lord may dwell, for: "the sky and the skies above
the sky are not large enough to hold me". King Bulan replies
bashfully that he does not possess the gold and silver required
for such an enterprise, "although it is my duty and desire to
carry it out". The angel reassures him: all Bulan has to do is
to lead his armies into Dariela and Ardabil in Armenia, where a
treasure of silver and a treasure of gold are awaiting him.
This fits in with Bulan's or Bulkhan's raid preceding the
conversion; and also with Arab sources according to which the
Khazars at one time controlled silver and gold mines in the
Caucasus.16 Bulan does as the angel told him, returns
victoriously with the loot, and builds "a Holy Tabernacle
equipped with a sacred coffer [the "Ark of the
Covenant"], a candelabrum, an altar and holy implements
which have been preserved to this day and are still in my
[King Joseph's] possession". .Joseph's
letter, written in the second half of the tenth century, more
than two hundred years after the events it purports to
describe, is obviously a mixture of fact and legend. His
description of the scant furnishings of the place of worship,
and the paucity of the preserved relics, is in marked contrast
to the account he gives in other parts of the letter of the
present prosperity of his country. The days of his ancestor
Bulan appear to him as remote antiquity, when the poor but
virtuous King did not even have the money to construct the Holy
Tabernacle - which was, after all, only a
tent.
.However,Joseph's letter up to
this point is merely the prelude to the real drama of the
conversion, which he now proceeds to relate. Apparently Bulan's
renunciation of idolatry in favour of the "only true God" was
only the first step, which still left the choice open between
the three monotheistic creeds. At least, this is what the
continuation of Joseph's letter seems to imply:
- After these feats of arms [the
invasion of Armenia], King Bulan's fame spread to all
countries. The King of Edom [Byzantium] and the King
of the Ishmaelim [the Muslims] heard the news and
sent to him envoys with precious gifts and money and learned
men to convert him to their beliefs; but the king was wise
and sent for a Jew with much knowledge and acumen and put
all three together to discuss their doctrines.
So we have another Brains Trust, or
round-table conference, just as in Masudi, with the difference
that the Muslim has not been poisoned beforehand. But the
pattern of the argument is much the same. After long and futile
discussions, the King adjourns the meeting for three days,
during which the discutants are left to cool their heels in
their respective tents; then he reverts to a stratagem. He
convokes the discutants separately. He asks the Christian which
of the other two religions is nearer the truth, and the
Christian answers, "the Jews". He confronts the Muslim with the
same question and gets the same reply. Neutralism has once more
carried the day.
4
So much for the conversion. What else
do we learn from the celebrated "Khazar Correspondence"?
.To
take Hasdai's letter first: it starts with a Hebrew poem, in
the then fashionable manner of the piyut, a rhapsodic
verse form which contains hidden allusions or riddles, and
frequently acrostics. The poem exalts the military victories of
the addressee, King Joseph; at the same time, the initial
letters of the lines form an acrostic which spells out the full
name of Hasdai bar Isaac bar Ezra bar Shaprut, followed by the
name of Menahem ben Sharuk. Now this Menahem was a celebrated
Hebrew poet, lexicographer and grammarian, a secretary and
protg of Hasdai's. He was obviously given the task of drafting
the epistle to King Joseph in his most ornate style, and he
took the opportunity to immortalize himself by inserting his
own name into the acrostic after that of his patron. Several
other works of Menahem ben-Sharuk are preserved, and there can
be no doubt that Hasdai's letter is his handiwork.*[See
Appendix III.] .After
the poem, the compliments and diplomatic flourishes, the letter
gives a glowing account of the prosperity of Moorish Spain, and
the happy condition of the Jews under its Caliph Abd al Rahman,
"the like of which has never been known.... And thus the
derelict sheep were taken into care, the arms of their
persecutors were paralysed, and the yoke was discarded. The
country we live in is called in Hebrew Sepharad, but the
Ishmaelites who inhabit it call it al-Andalus."
.Hasdai
then proceeds to explain how he first heard about the existence
of the Jewish kingdom from the merchants of Khurasan, then in
more detail from the Byzantine envoys, and he reports what
these envoys told him:
- I questioned them [the
Byzantines] about it and they replied that it was true,
and that the name of the kingdom is al-Khazar. Between
Constantinople and this country there is a journey of
fifteen days by sea,*[This probably refers to the
so-Called "Khazarian route": from Constantinople across the
Black Sea and up the Don, then across the Don-Volga portage
and down the Volga to Itil. (An alternative, shorter route
was from Constantinople to the east coast of the Black
Sea.)] but they said, by land there are many other
people between us and them. The name of the ruling king is
Joseph. Ships come to us from their land, bringing fish,
furs and all sorts of merchandise. They are in alliance with
us, and honoured by us. We exchange embassies and gifts.
They are powerful and have a fortress for their outposts and
troops which go out on forays from time to time.*[The
fortress is evidently Sarkel on the Don. "They are honoured
by us" fits in with the passage in Constantine
Born-in-the-Purple about the special gold seal used in
letters to the Kagan. Constantine was the Byzantine Emperor
at the time of the Embassy to Spain.]
This bit of information offered by
Hasdai to the Khazar King about the King's own country is
obviously intended to draw a detailed reply from Joseph. It was
good psychology: Hasdai must have known that criticism of
erroneous statements flows easier from the pen than an original
exposition. .Next,
Hasdai relates his earlier efforts to get in touch with Joseph.
First he had sent a messenger, a certain Isaac bar Nathan, with
instructions to proceed to the Khazar court. But Isaac got only
as far as Constantinople, where he was courteously treated, but
prevented from continuing the journey. (Understandably so:
given the Empire's ambivalent attitude towards the Jewish
kingdom, it was certainly not in Constantine's interest to
facilitate an alliance between Khazaria and the Cordoba
Caliphate with its Jewish Chief Minister.) So Hasdai's
messenger returned to Spain, mission unaccomplished. But soon
another opportunity offered itself: the arrival at Cordoba of
an embassy from Eastern Europe. Among its members were two
Jews, Mar Saul and Mar Joseph, who offered to deliver Hasdai's
letter to King Joseph. (According to Joseph's reply to Hasdai,
it was actually delivered by a third person, one Isaac
ben-Eliezer.) .Having
thus described in detail how his letter came to be written, and
his efforts to have it delivered, Hasdai proceeds to ask a
series of direct questions which reflect his avidity for more
information about every aspect of the Khazar land, from its
geography to its rites in observing the Sabbath. The concluding
passage in Hasdai's letter strikes a note quite different from
that of its opening paragraphs:
- I feel the urge to know the truth,
whether there is really a place on this earth where harassed
Israel can rule itself, where it is subject to nobody. If I
were to know that this is indeed the case, I would not
hesitate to forsake all honours, to resign my high office,
to abandon my family, and to travel over mountains and
plains, over land and water, until I arrived at the place
where my Lord, the [Jewish] King rules.... And I
also have one more request: to be informed whether you have
any knowledge of [the possible date] of the Final
Miracle [the coming of the Messiah] which, wandering
from country to country, we are awaiting. Dishonoured and
humiliated in our dispersion, we have to listen in silence
to those who say: "every nation has its own land and you
alone possess not even a shadow of a country on this
earth".
The beginning of the letter praises
the happy lot of the Jews in Spain; the end breathes the
bitterness of the exile, Zionist fervour and Messianic hope.
But these opposite attitudes have always co-existed in the
divided heart of Jews throughout their history. The
contradiction in Hasdai's letter gives it an added touch of
authenticity. How far his implied offer to enter into the
service of the Khazar King is to be taken seriously is another
question, which we cannot answer. Perhaps he could not
either.
5
King Joseph's reply is less
accomplished and moving than Hasdai's letter. No wonder - as
Cassel remarks: 'scholarship and culture reigned not among the
Jews of the Volga, but on the rivers of Spain". The highlight
of the Reply is the story of the conversion, already quoted. No
doubt Joseph too employed a scribe for penning it, probably a
scholarly refugee from Byzantium. Nevertheless, the Reply
sounds like a voice out of the Old Testament compared to the
polished cadences of the tenth-century modern statesman.
.It
starts with a fanfare of greetings, then reiterates the main
contents of Hasdai's letter, proudly emphasizing that the
Khazar kingdom gives the lie to those who say that "the Sceptre
of Judah has forever fallen from the Jews' hands" and "that
there is no place on earth for a kingdom of their own". This is
followed by a rather cryptic remark to the effect that "already
our fathers have exchanged friendly letters which are preserved
in our archives and are known to our elders".*[This may
refer to a ninth-century Jewish traveller, Eldad ha- Dani,
whose fantastic tales, much read in the Middle Ages, include
mentions of Khazaria which, he says, is inhabited by three of
the lost tribes of Israel, and collects tributes from
twenty-eight neighbouring kingdoms. Eldad visited Spain around
880 and may or may not have visited the Khazar country. Hasdai
briefly mentions him in his letter to Joseph - as if to ask
what to make of him.] .Joseph
then proceeds to provide a genealogy of his people. Though a
fierce Jewish nationalist, proud of wielding the 'sceptre of
Judah", he cannot, and does not, claim for them Semitic
descent; he traces their ancestry not to Shem, but to Noah's
third son, Japheth; or more precisely to Japheth's grandson,
Togarma, the ancestor of all Turkish tribes. "We have found in
the family registers of our fathers," Joseph asserts boldly,
"that Togarma had ten sons, and the names of their offspring
are as follows: Uigur, Dursu, Avars, Huns, Basilii, Tarniakh,
Khazars, Zagora, Bulgars, Sabir. We are the sons of Khazar, the
seventh..." .The
identity of some of these tribes, with names spelt in the
Hebrew script is rather dubious, but that hardly matters; the
characteristic feature in this genealogical exercise is the
amalgamation of Genesis with Turkish tribal tradition.*[It
also throws a sidelight on the frequent description of the
Khazars as the people of Magog. Magog, according to Genesis X,
2-3 was the much maligned uncle of Togarma.]
.After
the genealogy, Joseph mentions briefly some military conquests
by his ancestors which carried them as far as the Danube; then
follows at great length the story of Bulan's conversion. "From
this day onwards," Joseph continues, "the Lord gave him
strength and aided him; he had himself and his followers
circumcized and sent for Jewish sages who taught him the Law
and explained the Commandments." There follow more boasts about
military victories, conquered nations, etc., and then a
significant passage:
- After these events, one of his
[Bulan's] grandsons became King; his name was
Obadiab, he was a brave and venerated man who reformed the
Rule, fortified the Law according to tradition and usage,
built synagogues and schools, assembled a multitude of
Israel's sages, gave them lavish gifts of gold and silver,
and made them interpret the twenty-four [sacred]
books, the Mishna [Precepts] and the Talmud, and the
order in which the liturgies are to be said.
This indicates that, about a couple of
generations after Bulan, a religious revival or reformation
took place (possibly accompanied by a coup d'tat on
the lines envisaged by Artamonov). It seems indeed that the
Judaization of the Khazars proceeded in several steps. We
remember that King Bulan drove out "the sorcerers and
idolators" before the angel appeared to him; and that
he made his Covenant with the "true God" before
deciding whether He was the Jewish, Christian or Muslim God. It
seems highly probable that the conversion of King Bulan and his
followers was another intermediary step, that they embraced a
primitive or rudimentary form of Judaism, based on the Bible
alone, excluding the Talmud, all rabbinical literature, and the
observances derived from it. In this respect they resembled the
Karaites, a fundamentalist sect which originated in the eighth
century in Persia and spread among Jews all over the world
particularly in "Little Khazaria", i.e., the Crimea. Dunlop and
some other authorities surmised that between Bulan and Obadiah
(i.e., roughly between 740 and 800) some form of Karaism
prevailed in the country, and that orthodox "Rabbinic" Judaism
was only introduced in the course of Obadiah's religious
reform. The point is of some importance because Karaism
apparently survived in Khazaria to the end, and villages of
Turkish-speaking Karaite Jews, obviously of Khazar origin,
still existed in modern times (see below, Chapter V, 4).
.Thus
the Judaization of the Khazars was a gradual process which,
triggered off by political expediency, slowly penetrated into
the deeper strata of their minds and eventually produced the
Messianism of their period of decline. Their religious
commitment survived the collapse of their state, and persisted,
as we shall see, in the Khazar-Jewish settlements of Russia and
Poland.
6
After mentioning Obadiah's religious
reforms, Joseph gives a list of his successors:
- Hiskia his son, and his son
Manasseh, and Chanukah the brother of Obadiah, and Isaac his
son, Manasseh his son, Nissi his son, Menahem his son,
Benjamin his son, Aaron his son, and I am Joseph, son of
Aaron the Blessed, and we were all sons of Kings, and no
stranger was allowed to occupy the throne of our
fathers.
Next, Joseph attempts to answer
Hasdai's questions about the size and topography of his
country. But he does not seem to have a competent person at his
court who could match the skill of the Arab geographers, and
his obscure references to other countries and nations add
little to what we know from Ibn Hawkal, Masudi and the other
Persian and Arabic sources. He claims to collect tribute from
thirty-seven nations - which seems a rather tall proposition;
yet Dunlop points out that nine of these appear to be tribes
living in the Khazar heartland, and the remaining twenty-eight
agree quite well with Ibn Fadlan's mention of twenty-five
wives, each the daughter of a vassal king (and also with Eldad
ha-Dani's dubious tales). We must further bear in mind the
multitude of Slavonic tribes along the upper reaches of the
Dnieper and as far as Moscow, which, as we shall see, paid
tribute to the Khazars. .However
that may be, there is no reference in Joseph's letter to a
royal harem - only a mention of a single queen and her maids
and eunuchs'. These are said to live in one of the three
boroughs of Joseph's capital, Itil: "in the second live
Israelites, Ishmaelis, Christians and other nations who speak
other languages; the third, which is an island, I inhabit
myself, with the princes, bondsmen and all the servants that
belong to me.....* [This division of Itil into three parts
is also mentioned, as we have seen, in some of the Arab
sources.]We live in the town through the whole of winter,
but in the month of Nisan [March- April] we set out and
everyone goes to labour in his field and his garden; every clan
has his hereditary estate, for which they head with joy and
jubilation; no voice of an intruder can be heard there, no
enemy is to be seen. The country does not have much rain, but
there are many rivers with a multitude of big fish, and many
sources, and it is generally fertile and fat in its fields and
vineyards, gardens and orchards which are irrigated by the
rivers and bear rich fruit ... and with God's help I live in
peace." .The
next passage is devoted to the date of the coming of the
Messiah:
- We have our eyes on the sages of
Jerusalem and Babylon, and although we live far away from
Zion, we have nevertheless heard that the calculations are
erroneous owing to the great profusion of sins, and we know
nothing, only the Eternal knows how to keep the count. We
have nothing to hold on only the prophecies of Daniel, and
may the Eternal speed up our Deliverance....
The concluding paragraph of Joseph's
letter is a reply to Hasdai's apparent offer to enter into the
service of the Khazar king:
- Thou hast mentioned in thy letter
a desire to see my face. I too wish and long to behold thy
gracious face and the splendour of thy magnificence, wisdom
and greatness; I wish that thy words will come true, that I
should know the happiness to hold thee in my embrace and to
see thy dear, friendly and agreeable face; thou wouldst be
to me as a father, and I to thee as a son; all my people
would kiss thy lips; we would come and go according to thy
wishes and thy wise counsel.
There is a passage in Joseph's letter
which deals with topical politics, and is rather
obscure:
- With the help of the Almighty I
guard the mouth of the river [the Volga] and do not
permit the Rus who come in their ships to invade the land of
the Arabs.... I fight heavy wars with them [the Rus]
for if I allowed it they would devastate the lands of
Ishmael even to Baghdad.
Joseph here appears to pose as the
defender of the Baghdad Caliphate against the Norman-Rus
raiders (see Chapter III). This might seem a little tactless in
view of the bitter hostility between the Omayad Caliphate of
Cordoba (which Hasdai is serving) and the Abassid Caliphs of
Baghdad. On the other hand, the vagaries of Byzantine policy
towards the Khazars made it expedient for Joseph to appear in
the role of a defender of Islam, regardless of the schism
between the two Caliphates. At least he could hope that Hasdai,
the experienced diplomat, would take the hint.
.The
meeting between the two correspondents - if ever seriously
intended - never took place. No further letters - if any were
exchanged - have been preserved. The factual content of the
"Khazar Correspondence" is meagre, and adds little to what was
already known from other sources. Its fascination lies in the
bizarre, fragmentary vistas that it conveys, like an erratic
searchlight focussing on disjointed regions in the dense fog
that covers the period.
7
Among other Hebrew sources, there is
the "Cambridge Document" (so called after its present location
in the Cambridge University Library). It was discovered at the
end of the last century, together with other priceless
documents in the "Cairo Geniza", the store-room of an ancient
synagogue, by the Cambridge scholar, Solomon Schechter. The
document is in a bad state; it is a letter (or copy of a
letter) consisting of about a hundred lines in Hebrew; the
beginning and the end are missing, so that it is impossible to
know who wrote it and to whom it was addressed. King Joseph is
mentioned in it as a contemporary and referred to as "my Lord",
Khazaria is called "our land"; so the most plausible inference
is that the letter was written by a Khazar Jew of King Joseph's
court in Joseph's lifetime, i.e., that it is roughly
contemporaneous with the "Khazar Correspondence". Some
authorities have further suggested that it was addressed to
Hasdai ibn Shaprut, and handed in Constantinople to Hasdai's
unsuccessful envoy, Isaac bar Nathan, who brought it back to
Cordoba (whence it found its way to Cairo when the Jews were
expelled from Spain). At any rate, internal evidence indicates
that the document originated not later than in the eleventh
century, and more likely in Joseph's lifetime, in the tenth.
.It
contains another legendary account of the conversion, but its
main significance is political. The writer speaks of an attack
on Khazaria by the Alans, acting under Byzantine instigation,
under Joseph's father, Aaron the Blessed. No other Greek or
Arab source seems to mention this campaign. But there is a
significant passage in Constantine Porphyrogenitus's De
Adminisdrando Imperio, written in 947-50, which lends some
credibility to the unknown letter-writer's
statements:
Concerning Khazaria, how war is to
be made upon them and by whom. As the Ghuzz are able to make
war on the Khazars, being near them, so likewise the ruler of
Alania, because the Nine Climates of Khazaria [the fertile
region north of the Caucasus] are close to Alania, and the
Alan can, if he wishes, raid them and cause great damage and
distress to the Khazars from that quarter.
Now, according to Joseph's Letter, the
ruler of the Alans paid tribute to him, and whether in fact he
did or not, his feelings toward the Kagan were probably much
the same as the Bulgar King's. The passage in Constantine,
revealing his efforts to incite the Alans to war against the
Khazars, ironically reminds one of Ibn Fadlan's mission with a
parallel purpose. Evidently, the days of the Byzantine-Khazar
rapprochement were long past in Joseph's time. But I am
anticipating later developments, to be discussed in Chapter
III.
8
About a century after the Khazar
Correspondence and the presumed date of the Cambridge Document,
Jehuda Halevi wrote his once celebrated book, Kuzari, the
Khazars. Halevi (1085-1141) is generally considered the
greatest Hebrew poet of Spain; the book, however, was written
in Arabic and translated later into Hebrew; its sub-title is
"The Book of Proof and Argument in Defence of the Despised
Faith". .Halevi
was a Zionist who died on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem; the
Kuzari, written a year before his death, is a philosophical
tract propounding the view that the Jewish nation is the sole
mediator between God and the rest of mankind. At the end of
history, all other nations will be converted to Judaism; and
the conversion of the Khazars appears as a symbol or token of
that ultimate event. .In
spite of its title, the tract has little to say about the
Khazar country itself, which serves mainly as a backdrop for
yet another legendary account of the conversion - the King, the
angel, the Jewish scholar, etc. - and for the philosophical and
theological dialogues between the King and the protagonists of
the three religions. .However,
there are a few factual references, which indicate that Halevi
had either read the correspondence between Hasdai and Joseph or
had other sources of information about the Khazar country. Thus
we are informed that after the appearance of the angel the King
of the Khazars "revealed the secret of his dream to the General
of his army", and "the General" also looms large later on -
another obvious reference to the dual rule of Kagan and Bek.
Halevi also mentions the "histories" and "books of the Khazars"
- which reminds one of Joseph speaking of "our archives", where
documents of state are kept. Lastly, Halevi twice, in different
places of the book, gives the date of the conversion as having
taken place "400 years ago" and "in the year 4500" (according
to the Jewish calendar). This points to AD 740, which is the
most likely date. All in all, it is a poor harvest as far as
factual statements are concerned, from a book that enjoyed
immense popularity among the Jews of the Middle Ages. But the
mediaeval mind was less attracted by fact than by fable, and
the Jews were more interested in the date of the coming of the
Messiah than in geographical data. The Arab geographers and
chroniclers had a similarly cavalier attitude to distances,
dates and the frontiers between fact and fancy.
.This
also applies to the famed German-Jewish traveller, Rabbi
Petachia of Ratisbon, who visited Eastern Europe and western
Asia between 1170 and 1185. His travelogue, Sibub
Ha'olam, "Journey around the World", was apparently
written by a pupil, based on his notes or on dictation. It
relates how shocked the good Rabbi was by the primitive
observances of the Khazar Jews north of the Crimea, which he
attributed to their adherence to the Karaite heresy:
- And the Rabbi Petachia asked them:
"Why do you not believe in the words of the sages [i.e.,
the Talmudists]?" They replied: "Because our fathers did
not teach them to us." On the eve of the Sabbath they cut
all the bread which they eat on the Sabbath. They eat it in
the dark, and sit the whole day on one spot. Their prayers
consist only of the psalms.17*[Spending the Sabbath in
the dark was a well-known Karaite custom.]
So incensed was the Rabbi that, when
he subsequently crossed the Khazar heartland, all he had to say
was that it took him eight days, during which "he heard the
wailing of women and the barking of dogs".18
.He
does mention, however, that while he was in Baghdad, he had
seen envoys from the Khazar kingdom looking for needy Jewish
scholars from Mesopotamia and even from Egypt, "to teach their
children Torah and Talmud". .While
few Jewish travellers from the West undertook the hazardous
journey to the Volga, they recorded encounters with Khazar Jews
at all principal centres of the civilized world. Rabbi Petachia
met them in Baghdad; Benjamin of Tudela, another famous
traveller of the twelfth century, visited Khazar notables in
Constantinople and Alexandria; Ibraham ben Daud, a contemporary
of Judah Halevi's, reports that he had seen in Toledo "some of
their descendants, pupils of the wise".19 Tradition has it that
these were Khazar princes - one is tempted to think of Indian
princelings sent to Cambridge to study. .Yet
there is a curious ambivalence in the attitude toward the
Khazars of the leaders of orthodox Jewry in the East, centred
on the Talmudic Academy in Baghdad. The Gaon (Hebrew
for "excellency") who stood at the head of the Academy was the
spiritual leader of the Jewish settlements dispersed all over
the Near and Middle East, while the Exilarch, or
"Prince of Captivity", represented the secular power over these
more or less autonomous communities. Saadiah Gaon (882-942),
most famous among the spiritua1 excellencies, who left
voluminous writings, repeatedly refers in them to the Khazars.
He mentions a Mesopotamian Jew who went to Khazaria to settle
there, as if this were an every-day occurrence. He speaks
obscurely of the Khazar court; elsewhere he explains that in
the biblical expression "Hiram of Tyre", Hiram is not a proper
name but a royal title, "like Caliph for the Ruler of the
Arabs, and Kagan for the King of the Khazars."
.Thus
Khazaria was very much "on the map", in the literal and
metaphorical sense, for the leaders of the ecclesiastical
hierarchy of oriental Jewry; but at the same time the Khazars
were regarded with certain misgivings, both on racial grounds
and because of their suspected leanings toward the Karaite
heresy. One eleventh-century Hebrew author, Japheth ibn-Ali,
himself a Karaite, explains the word mamzer,
"bastard", by the example of the Khazars who became Jews
without belonging to the Race. His contemporary, Jacob
ben-Reuben, reflects the opposite side of this ambivalent
attitude by speaking of the Khazars as "a single nation who do
not bear the yoke of the exile, but are great warriors paying
no tribute to the Gentiles".
.In summing up the Hebrew sources
on the Khazars that have come down to us, one senses a mixed
reaction of enthusiasm, scepticism and, above all,
bewilderment. A warrior-nation of Turkish Jews must have seemed
to the rabbis as strange as a circumcized unicorn. During a
thousand years of Dispersion, the Jews had forgotten what it
was like to have a king and a country. The Messiah was more
real to them than the Kagan. .As
a postscript to the Arab and Hebrew sources relating to the
conversion, it should be mentioned that the apparently earliest
Christian source antedates them both. At some date earlier than
864, the Westphalian monk, Christian Druthmar of Aquitania,
wrote a Latin treatise Expositio in Evangelium Mattei,
in which he reports that "there exist people under the sky in
regions where no Christians can be found, whose name is Gog and
Magog, and who are Huns; among them is one, called the Gazari,
who are circumcized and observe Judaism in its entirety". This
remark occurs ýpropos of Matthew 24.14*["And this
Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a
witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come."]
which has no apparent bearing on it, and no more is heard of
the subject.
9
At about the same time when Druthmar
wrote down what he knew from hearsay about the Jewish Khazars,
a famed Christian missionary, sent by the Byzantine Emperor,
attempted to convert them to Christianity. He was no less a
figure than St Cyril, "Apostle of the Slavs", alleged designer
of the Cyrillic alphabet. He and his elder brother, St
Methodius, were entrusted with this and other proselytizing
missions by the Emperor Michael III, on the advice of the
Patriarch Photius (himself apparently of Khazar descent, for it
is reported that the Emperor once called him in anger "Khazar
face")..Cyril's
proselytizing efforts seem to have been successful among the
Slavonic people in Eastern Europe, but not among the Khazars.
He travelled to their country via Cherson in the Crimea; in
Cherson he is said to have spent six months learning Hebrew in
preparation for his mission; he then took the "Khazarian Way" -
the Don-Volga portage - to Itil, and from there travelled along
the Caspian to meet the Kagan (it is not said where). The usual
theological disputations followed, but they had little impact
on the Khazar Jews Even the adulatory Vita Constantine
(Cyril's original name) says only that Cyril made a good
impression on the Kagan, that a few people were baptized and
two hundred Christian prisoners were released by the Kagan as a
gesture of goodwill. It was the least he could do for the
Emperor's envoy who had gone to so much trouble.
.There
is a curious sidelight thrown on the story by students of
Slavonic philology. Cyril is credited by tradition not only
with having devised the Cyrillic but also the Glagolytic
alphabet. The latter, according to Baron, was "used in Croatia
to the seventeenth century. Its indebtedness to the Hebrew
alphabet in at least eleven characters, representing in part
the Slavonic sounds, has long been recognized". (The eleven
characters are A, B, V, G, E, K, P, R, S, Sch, T.) This seems
to confirm what has been said earlier on about the influence of
the Hebrew alphabet in spreading literacy among the neighbours
of the Khazars.