According
to Makin, the Arabs passed
the Caspian gate and killed many Chazars; those who survived were
compelled to embrace Islām.
the Caspian gate and killed many Chazars; those who survived were
compelled to embrace Islām.
Cambridge Medieval History - v4 - Eastern Roman Empire
When Leo came to power, however, he undid Oshin's work.
He married a Spanish wife connected with the Lusignans (Constance of
Aragon, widow of Henry II of Lusignan), recalled his cousins, and finally
put Oshin to death. During his reign Cilicia was confined to its ancient
boundaries, but though the country's defences were in ruins and the
i Probably the brother of Leo IV, and not, as some writers say, of Hethum.
12-2
CH. v.
## p. 180 (#222) ############################################
180 The Mamlūks conquer Armenia. The Lusignans
princes were occupied with political and ecclesiastical disputes, Leo im-
mersed himself in religious discussions.
Meanwhile Nāşir, Sultan of the Mamlūks, on hearing that Europe
was preparing for a new crusade, made an alliance with the Tartars and
Turkomans for the conquest of Armenia. Devastated and plundered by
successive armies of Tartars, Turkomans, and Mamlūks, Cilicia was once
more saved from complete destruction by a few heroic Armenians. They
hid in passes through which the enemy had to march, and massacred
several thousand Mamlūks. The sultan agreed to a fifteen years' truce
on condition that the Armenians paid to the Egyptians an annual tribute
of 50,000 florins, half the customs and revenue from the maritime trade
of Ayas, and half the sea-salt. In return, the sultan undertook to
rebuild Ayas and the other fortresses at his own expense, and not to
occupy any stronghold or castle in Cilicia with his troops.
At last, about 1335, Philip VI of France decided to go to the help of
the Armenians, and Nāşir resolved to conquer them. The net result of
the two decisions might have been foreseen. On the one hand, Leo received
10,000 forins from Philip with a few sacks of corn from the Pope; on the
other, Armenia was invaded and conquered by the Mamlūks. Leo fled
to the mountains (1337); but after forcing him to swear on Bible and
Cross never again to enter into relations with Europe, Nāşir left him to
rule what was left of his country until his death in 1342. He was the
last of the Rubenian-Hethumian rulers, who thus left Armenia as they
had found it, a prey to the foreigner.
For a generation after Leo's death (1342–1373), Armenia was ruled
by Latin kings. Two of them were Lusignan princes connected by mar-
riage with the Hethumian dynasty, and the other two were usurpers not
of royal blood.
The Lusignans derived their claim to the Armenian crown from the
marriage of Zabel, sister of Hethum II, to Amaury of Tyre, brother of
Henry II of Cyprus (1295). John and Guy, two sons of this marriage, were
in the service of the Emperor at Constantinople when Leo V died. Some
months after Leo's death, John, the younger, was called upon to admini-
ster the Cilician kingdom, not as king, but as baïle or regent. At his
suggestion, the elder brother Guy left Constantinople and accepted the
crown of Armeno-Cilicia in 1342.
Crowned by the Katholikos according to Armenian rites, Guy acted
at first as an Armenian patriot, refusing to pay tribute to the Sultans of
Egypt and Turkey. But when Egyptian invasions followed, Guy not only
adopted the time-honoured custom of appealing for help to the Pope
(Clement VI) and of promising to effect if possible the union of the Ar-
menian Church with Rome, but surrounded himself with Latin princes
to whom he entrusted the defence of towns and fortresses. The Pope
actually sent a thousand horsemen and a thousand pieces of Byzantine
## p. 181 (#223) ############################################
Failure and exile of Leo VI
181
was at
silver, but the Armenians, resenting Guy's Latinising policy, assassinated
him with his brother Bohemond and the Western knights who had come
to his aid (1344). His other brother John had died a natural death a
few months earlier.
The next king, the usurper Constantine IV, son of Baldwin, marshal
of Armenia, was more successful (1344-1363). With the help of. Theo-
dates of Rhodes and Hugh of Cyprus he repulsed an Egyptian invasion
with great slaughter, leaving Ayas alone in the enemy's hands. He hoped
that the news of his success would move Europe to help him, but when
his embassy returned empty-handed from Venice, Paris, London, and
Rome, he marched without allies against the Mamlūks, drove them from
the country, and captured Alexandretta from them (1357). As a result
of his victory and of his efforts to subdue the religious discord, Armenia
peace
for the rest of his life.
Constantine IV was succeeded by a second usurper, Constantine V,
son of a Cypriot serf who had become an Armenian baron. Elected king
because of his wealth, he offered the crown to Peter I, King of Cyprus,
but when Peter was assassinated in 1369 Constantine kept the throne
himself. Four years later, the Armenians put him to death, and during
the anarchy which followed they entrusted the government to the widow
of Constantine IV, Mary of Gorigos, who had already played an active
part in Armenian politics before the king's assassination.
The last King of Armenia was Leo VI of Lusignan (1373, d. 1393).
His father was John, brother of King Guy, and his grandmother was
Zabel, sister of Hethum II. He himself had been imprisoned with his
mother Soldane of Georgia by Constantine IV, who had wished to destroy
the royal Armenian line. His reign was not a success. All his efforts to
avert the long-impending doom of Cilicia were powerless. He fought
energetically against the Mamlūks, but was led captive to Cairo (1375).
There he appointed as almoner and confessor John Dardel, whose recently-
published chronicle has thrown unexpected light upon the last years of
the Cilician kingdom. In 1382 the king was released and spent the rest
of his life in various countries of Europe. He died in 1393 at Paris,
making Richard II of England his testamentary executor, and his epitaph
is still preserved in the basilica of Saint-Denis. After his death, the Kings
of Cyprus were the nominal Kings of Armenia until 1489, when the title
passed to Venice. Almost at the same time (1485), by reason of the mar-
riage (1433) of Anne of Lusignan with Duke Louis I of Savoy, the rulers
of Piedmont assumed the empty claim to a kingdom of the past.
During the exile of Leo VI, Greater Armenia was enduring a prolonged
Tartar invasion. After conquering Baghdad (1386), Tamerlane entered
Vaspurakan. At Van he caused the people to be hurled from the rock
which towers above the city; at Ernjak he massacred all the inhabitants;
at Sīwās he had the Armenian garrison buried alive. In 1389 he devas-
tated Turuberan and Taron; in 1394 he finished his campaign at Kars,
-
-
CH. VI.
## p. 182 (#224) ############################################
182
Armenia under Muslim rule
where he took captive all the people whom he did not massacre, and
passed on into Asia Minor. By the beginning of the fifteenth century the
old Armenian territory had been divided among its Muslim conquerors-
Mamlūks, Turks, and Tartars. Yūsuf, Sultan of Egypt, ruled Sassun;
the Emir Erghin governed Vaspurakan from Ostan; and Tainerlane's
son, Mīrān Shāh, reigned at Tabriz. These Musulman emirs made war
upon one another at the expense of the Armenian families who had not
migrated to Asia Minor on the fall of the Bagratid kingdom. By the
close of the fifteenth century Cilicia, too, was finally absorbed into the
Ottoman Empire.
Kings and kingdom had passed, but the Armenians still possessed
their Church. In the midst of desolation, schools and convents maintained
Armenian art and culture, and handed on the torch of nationality. Some
of the Armenian manuscripts which exist to-day were written in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The long religious controversy, of
which the Uniates were the centre, survived the horrors of the period,
and continued to agitate the country. Among the protagonists were
John of Khrna, John of Orotn, Thomas of Medzoph, Gregory of Tathew,
and Gregory of Klath. In 1438 Armenian delegates attended the Council
of Florence with the Greeks and Latins in order to unify the rites and
ceremonies of the Churches.
The most important work of the Church was administrative. During
Tamerlane's invasion the Katholikos had established the pontifical seat
among the ruins of Sis. But towards the middle of the next century Sis
rapidly declined, and it was decided to move the seat to Echmiadzin
in the old Bagratid territory. As Grigor IX refused to leave Sis, a new
Katholikos, Kirakos Virapensis, was elected for Echmiadzin, and from 1441
the Armenian Church was divided for years between those who accepted
the primacy of Echmiadzin and those who were faithful to Sis. Finally,
the Katholikos of Echmiadzin became, in default of a king, the head of the
Armenian people. With his council and synod he made himself respon-
sible for the national interests of the Armenians, and administered such
possessions as remained to them. After the Turkish victory of 1453,
Mahomet II founded an Armenian colony in Constantinople and placed it
under the supervision of Joakim, the Armenian Bishop of Brūsa, to whom
he afterwards gave the title of “Patriarch” with jurisdiction over all the
Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. From that time to this, the Arme-
nian Patriarch of Constantinople has carried on the work of the Katholikos
and has been the national representative of the Armenian people.
לל
## p. 183 (#225) ############################################
183
CHAPTER VII.
(A)
THE EMPIRE AND ITS NORTHERN NEIGHBOURS.
While the Germans impressed their characteristic stamp on both the
medieval and modern history of Western Europe, it was reserved for the
Eastern Slavs, the Russians, to build a great empire on the borderlands
of Europe and Asia. But the work of civilisation was far more difficult
for the Russians than for the German race. The barbaric Germans settled
in regions of an old civilisation among the conquered Romans and
Romanised peoples, whereas the geographical and ethnical surroundings
entered by the Eastern Slavs were unfavourable, in so far as no old in-
heritance existed there to further any endeavours in civilisation; this
had to be built up from the very foundations. Boundless forests, vast
lakes and swamps, were great obstacles to the colonisation of the immense
plain of eastern Europe, and the long stretch of steppes in southern
Russia was for many centuries the home of Asiatic nomads, who not only
made any intercourse with Greek civilisation impossible but even en-
dangered incessantly the results of the native progress of the Russian
Slavs.
The growth of the Russian empire implies not only the extension of
the area of its civilisation but also the absorption of many elements
belonging to foreign races and speaking foreign tongues, and their
coalescence with the dominant Russian nation.
It was only the southernmost parts of the later Russian empire that
had from time immemorial active connexions with the several centres of
ancient Greek civilisation. In the course of the seventh century B. c.
numerous Greek colonies were founded on the northern shore of the
Black Sea, such as Tyras, Olbia, Chersonesus, Theodosia, Panticapaeum
(now Kerch), and Tanais. These towns were the intermediaries of the
commerce between the barbaric peoples of what is now Russia and the
civilised towns of Greece. They were at the same time centres of Greek
civilisation, which they spread among their nearest neighbours who in-
habited the southern steppes of Russia and were known in history first
under the name of Scythians and then of Şarmatians. Of what race these
peoples were, is not clearly established.
CH. VII.
## p. 184 (#226) ############################################
184
Alans, Goths, and Huns
The ancient historians mention several tribes who lived to the north
and north-west of the Scythians and Sarmatians, and were in all proba-
bility Slavs or Finns.
The Scythian and Sarmatian nomads were a continuous danger
to the security of the Greek colonies; they extorted from them regular
yearly tributes. Still the chief towns to the north of the Black Sea
did succeed though with difficulty in maintaining their existence during
the whole period of the Scythian and Sarmatian dominion. These
towns in course of time exchanged Greek independence for a Roman
protectorate.
After the Sarmatians there appeared new enemies of the Greek colonies
along the northern littoral of the Black Sea. Already in the first cen-
tury of our era the name of the Sarmatians is superseded by that of
Alans, which new generic name, according to the explanation of ancient
historians, comprehends several nomadic races, mainly Iranian.
In the second and third centuries A. D. new immigrants poured in to the
northern shores of the Black Sea. The western part of the steppes was
occupied by German races, especially by the Goths, the eastern part by
Asiatic Huns. The Goths remained more than two centuries in the
steppes of southern Russia and the lands bordering the Black Sea,
whence they made incursions into the Roman Empire. By the inroad of
overwhelming masses of the Huns the Gothic state was subverted in
A. D. 375, and the Goths disappeared slowly from the borders of the Black
Sea. Only a small part of them remained, some in the Caucasus and
others till much later in the Crimea. The other Goths acquired new
homes in other lands of Europe. Of the Greek colonies on the north
of the Black Sea only those in the Crimea outlived the Gothic period.
With the expansion of the power of the Huns a new period begins
in the history of Eastern and Central Europe. Hitherto Asia sent its
nomads only as far as the steppes of southern Russia. The Huns are the
first nomads who by their conquests extend Asia to the lands on the
central Danube. Like a violent tempest their hordes not only swept
over the south Russian steppes but also penetrated to Roman Pannonia,
where Attila, their king, in the first half of the fifth century founded
the centre of his gigantic but short-lived empire. After Attila's death
his empire fell to pieces, and the Huns disappeared almost entirely
among the neighbouring nations. Only a small part fled to the Black
Sea, where they encountered the hordes of the nomadic Bulgars, a people
in all probability of Finnish (Ugrian) origin, but mixed with Turkish
elements. The Bulgars were originally settled in the lands between
the rivers Kama and Volga, where even later the so-called Kama and
Volga Bulgars are found, but part of them moved at an unknown time
to the south-west, and when the Huns had migrated to Pannonia came
to the Black Sea, where they appear already in the second half of the fifth
## p. 185 (#227) ############################################
Bulgars, Avars, and Turks
185
century. Before they arrived there they had lived under so strong a
Turkish influence that they could easily blend with the remnants of the
Huns. The Greek authors of the sixth century especially mention in
these regions two Bulgarian tribes, the Kutrigurs or Kuturgurs and the
Utigurs or Utrigurs. The Kutrigurs roamed as nomads on the right
bank of the Don to the west, the Utigurs from the Don to the south,
eastwards of the Sea of Azov. After the departure of the other Bul-
garian hordes in the second half of the seventh century only the Utigurs
remained in the lands near the Black Sea; they are later known as the
Black Bulgars.
Like other barbarians the hordes of the Bulgars were an unceasing
source of trouble to the Eastern Roman Empire. Justinian was forced
to pay a yearly tribute to the Kutrigurs. But, as even this subsidy did
not restrain them from frequent invasions, he made use of the common
Byzantine policy, bribing the Utigurs to be their enemies.
The Utigurs violently attacked the Greek colonies situated on both
shores of the Cimmerian Bosphorus. Panticapaeum, better known to the
Byzantine authors as Bosphorus, resisted only a short time, and finally had
to acknowledge the Utigurs' supremacy in order to save some sort of
autonomy. In 522, during Justinian I's reign, Bosphorus had a Greek
garrison.
Immediately after the Huns other nomads from Asia thronged to
Europe. They were part of a people named by the Chinese Yuan-Yuan
but calling themselves Yü-kue-lü, who in Europe became known by the
name of Avars. This nation appeared in the territory of the empire of
the T'o-pa, founded by a secession from the Chinese Empire.
The empire of the T'o-pa was short-lived. The Yuan-Yuan revolted
against their masters and founded on a part of their territory a separate
state, for a time under the supremacy of the T'o-pa, but in the second
half of the fourth century they rose to such power that they tried to
gain their independence. They succeeded in this endeavour under their
chief Shelun (402–410), who assumed the title of Khagan. From that
time down to the sixth century the Yuan-Yuan became the foremost
people in Central Asia. They ruled over Eastern Turkestan, and over
the present territories of Mongolia and Manchuria as far as Korea. But
from the end of the fifth century the empire of the Yuan-Yuan was
already in decline.
The subdued races took advantage of this weakness and endeavoured
to shake off their yoke. The Chinese call these hordes T'u-küe, the
nearest they could get to Turks. The Chinese knew of a long series
of Turkish hordes and counted them among their tributary tribes.
Some of these hordes were also under the dominion of the Huns. In the
middle of the sixth century the half mythical chieftain Tu-mên united
the numerous Turkish tribes and rose to the leadership of the whole
CH. VII.
## p. 186 (#228) ############################################
186
The Avars in Europe
Turkish nation in northern and central Asia, whereupon the Turks
allied themselves with the T'o-pa against the Yuan-Yuan. These suc-
cumbed, their Khagan A-na-kuei (Anagay) in 552 committed suicide,
and their empire came to an end.
That part of the Turks which formerly was under the dominion of
the Yuan-Yuan remained in their homes and acknowledged the supremacy
of T'u-mên, but the other part migrated to the west into the steppes of
southern Russia and further into Pannonia. These new nomadic hordes
appear in Europe under the name of Avars. But according to Theo-
phylact Simocatta the European Avars were not the genuine Avars but
Pseudo-avars. In any case they, like the other Asiatic nomads, were not
an ethnically pure race but a mixed people.
During the migration the number of the Avars increased considerably,
since other tribes, kindred as well as foreign, joined them, and among
these was also a part of the Bulgars. Soon after their arrival in Europe
in 558 the Avars encountered the Eastern Slavs, called Antae in the
ancient histories, the ancestors of the later South Russian Slavonic races.
The Avars repeatedly invaded the lands of the Antae, devastating the
country, dragging away the inhabitants as prisoners, and carrying with
them great spoils.
A few years later, in 568, they appear in Pannonia, which they selected
as the centre of their extensive dominion, and where they roamed for two
centuries and a half. From there they made their predatory incursions
into the neighbouring lands, especially into the Balkan peninsula, often in
company with the Slavs. The worst period of these devastations by the
Avars lasted no longer than about sixty years, for they soon experienced
several disasters. From the western Slavonic lands they had been driven
by Samo, the founder of the first great Slavonic empire (623–658), and
in the East the Bulgarian ruler Kovrat, who was in friendly relations
with the Greeks, shook off their yoke. After 626, when the Avars
beleaguered Constantinople in vain, the Balkan peninsula remained un-
molested by their inroads, their last hostile incursion being the aid they
gave to the Slavs in their attack on Thessalonica. Moreover there began
in their dominion internal disorders which were in all probability the
principal cause of the downfall of their power. In 631 there arose a
severe conflict between the genuine Avars and their allied Bulgarian
horde, because the chieftain of the Bulgarians had the courage to com-
pete with an Avar for the throne. A fight arose between the two
contending parties, which resulted in the victory of the Avars. The
vanquished Bulgarian and 9000 of his followers with their families were
driven from Pannonia.
During the period in which the dominion of the Avars reached from
the middle course of the Danube almost to the Dnieper, there flourished
between the Sea of Azov and the Caspian the dominion of the Chazars,
## p. 187 (#229) ############################################
Chazars and Turks
187
nomads of another Turkish race, which in course of time became a half-
settled nation. The Chazars formed one of the best-organised Turkish
states and their dominion lasted several centuries. Their origin is entirely
unknown.
The history of the Chazars becomes clearer with the beginning of the
sixth century, when they made repeated inroads into Armenia, crossed
the Caucasus, and extended their dominion to the river Araxes. The
Chazar warriors not only devastated Armenia, but pushed their inroads
even into Asia Minor. Kawad (Kobad), King of Persia, sent an army of
12,000 men to expel them, and conquered the land between the rivers
Cyrus and Araxes. Having moreover occupied Albania (Shirvan), Kawad
secured the northern frontier of the land by a long wall stretching from
the sea to the Gate of the Alans (the fortress of Dariel) and con-
taining three hundred fortified posts. The Persians ceased to keep
this wall in good repair, but Kawad's son Chosroes I Nūshirwān
(531-578), with the consent of the ruler of the Chazars, had erected the
Iron Caspian Gate, from which the neighbouring town near the Caspian
Sea was called in Arabic Bāb-al-abwāb, Gate of Gates, and in Persian
Darband (gate). The ramparts, however, erected by Chosroes near Dar-
band and running along the Caucasian mountains for a distance of 40
parasangs (about 180 miles) were of no great use, as the Chazars forced
their way by the Darband gate into Persia and devastated the land.
In the last quarter of the sixth century the Chazars were a part of
the great Turkish empire, founded by T'u-mên. His son, whose name is
given in the Chinese annals as Sse-kin and by the Greek authors as Askin
or Askil (553-569), ruled over an immense territory stretching from the
desert of Shamo as far as the western sea, and from the basin of the river
Tarim to the tundras near the river Kien (Kem or Yenisey). The
Turkish empire was further extended by his successor Khagan Dizabul,
named also Silzibul, in Turkish Sinjibu. During his reign also the
Chazars belonged to the Turkish empire.
The Persian empire was a great obstacle to the tendency of the
Turks to expand, and as the Byzantines were also the enemies of the
Persians, the Turks sought to conclude alliances with them against the
common foe. Khagan Sse-kin in 563 was the first to send an embassy
to the Byzantines to negotiate a treaty of alliance, and under Justin II
in 568 another mission was sent by the Turks to Constantinople. In
return the Greeks also sent their ambassadors to the Turks; and in
569 Zemarchus journeyed from Cilicia to Central Asia as Justin II's
envoy.
Among other embassies of the Greeks to the Turks should be men-
tioned that of Valentinus in 579, which was to notify the accession of the
new Emperor Tiberius II to the throne. On Valentinus' second journey
he had 106 Turks among his retinue. At that time there lived a
CH. VII.
## p. 188 (#230) ############################################
188
Growing power of the Chazars
considerable number of Turks in Constantinople, principally those who
had come there as attendants of Byzantine envoys on their return journey.
After a long and arduous journey, Valentinus arrived at the seat of
Khagan Turxanth in the steppes between the Volga and the Caucasus,
evidently one of the khagans subordinate to the supreme khagan who
ruled over the Chazars, and from here the Byzantine embassy continued
its way into the interior of the Turkish empire to reach the supreme
khagan. During their stay there Turxanth acted in open enmity against
the Byzantines, assaulting their towns in the Crimea, assisted by Anagay,
prince of the Utigurs and vassal of the Turks.
The power of the Turks declined during the reign of Sinjibu's suc-
cessors. At the end of the sixth century there began contests for the
khagan's throne. Although the supreme khagan was able in 597 to sub-
due the revolt with the aid of the three other khagans, the disturbances
were soon renewed, and the horde of Turks dwelling between the Volga
and the Caspian Sea, the Chazars, freed themselves from the power of
the supreme Turkish khagan in the early years of the seventh century.
During the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries the empire of the
Chazars was very powerful. As soon as the Chazars became independent
of the supremacy of the Turkestan Turks, they expanded their dominion
in all directions to the injury of the Black Sea Bulgars (Utigurs), the
Crimean Greeks, and other peoples. The Bulgarians were for a long
period in the seventh century the allies of the Byzantines. In 619
Organas, lord of the “Huns” (obviously the Utigurs), came with his
magnates and their wives to Constantinople and embraced with them
the Christian faith. In like manner Kovrat, Khan of the Bulgars, having
freed himself from the power of the Avars (635), became an ally of the
Byzantines. But when Kovrat died and his sons had divided his realm
between them, Batbayan, the youngest of them, who remained near the
Sea of Azov, was compelled to acknowledge the supremacy of the Chazars
and to pay them a tribute.
When in the second half of the seventh century the Arabian Caliphate
succeeded the Persian empire, the Chazars waged wars with the Arabs.
Their relations with the Byzantines did not change. ) They had been the
steady allies of the Greeks against the Persians, 'and remained their
allies also against the Arabs, in spite of frequent conflicts due to their
opposing interests in the Crimean peninsula.
During the reign of the third Caliph, Othman, the Arabs consolidated
their power in Armenia and even took a part of their lands from the
Chazars. After 683 Armenia was again menaced by the Chazars, but
in 690 they were severely defeated and many were burned in churches
where they had sought shelter.
According to Makin, the Arabs passed
the Caspian gate and killed many Chazars; those who survived were
compelled to embrace Islām.
## p. 189 (#231) ############################################
Relations with the Empire
189
At the beginning of the eighth century the Chazars already ruled
over a part of the Crimea, and conquered almost the whole of the peninsula
before the end of the century; only the town of Cherson kept its in-
dependence, although for a short time it fell under their rule. Towards
the end of the seventh century Justinian II, the dethroned Emperor
(685-695), was sent there into exile. Some time later he tried to regain
his throne, but when the inhabitants of the city attempted to hinder his
design, he fled to the Gothic town of Doras in the Crimea, whence he
sent to the Khagan of the Chazars, Vusir (Wazir) Gliavar, asking for a
hospitable reception. This the khagan accorded him with much kindness,
and gave him his sister Theodora in marriage. Justinian then lived some
time in Phanagoria or Tamatarcha (on the peninsula now called Taman),
which at that time belonged to the Chazars. But the Emperor Tiberius
Apsimar induced the khagan by incessant bribes to turn traitor and to
send him Justinian either dead or alive. The khagan ordered his tuduns
(lieutenants) in Phanagoria and Bosphorus to slay Justinian. The plans
for the execution of the treachery were ready, but Theodora warned her
husband in time, and he fled to the Bulgarian prince Tervel, who even
aided him to regain his throne in 705.
Justinian now turned all his thoughts to wreaking his revenge on
the inhabitants of Cherson. Three times he sent fleets and troops to
the Crimea, but no sooner did the third army begin to beleaguer Cherson
with some success than the forces of the Chazars arrived and relieved the
town. Cherson retained thereafter its autonomy under an elected ad-
ministrator (proteuon) until the time of the Emperor Theophilus, that is
for more than a century.
From Byzantine sources we learn that the Emperor Leo the Isaurian
sent an ambassador to the Khagan of the Chazars to ask the khagan's
daughter as a bride for his son Constantine, who was then in his fifteenth
year. The Chazar princess was christened and named Irene (732). In
750 she became the mother of Leo, surnamed the Chazar. She introduced
into Constantinople the Chazar garment called toitzakia, which the
Emperors donned for festivities.
In the eighth century the Chazars had wars with the Arabs with
alternating success. Georgia and Armenia were devastated by these wars
during a period of eighty years. In 764 the Chazars again invaded these
territories, but after that they are not mentioned by the Arabian authors
before the end of the eighth century. The Khagan of the Chazars then
made an inroad into Armenia in 799 with a great army and ravaged it
cruelly, but finally he was expelled by the Caliph Hārūn ar-Rashid.
This was, as far as we know, the last predatory expedition of the Chazars
into a land south of the Caucasus.
The organisation of the imperial power of the Chazars is very inter-
esting. At the head of the State was the supreme khagan (ilek), but his
power was only nominal. The real government was in the hands of his
-
CA. VIL
## p. 190 (#232) ############################################
190
Chazar institutions
deputy, called khugan bey or even simply khagan and isha. He was the
chief commander of the forces and chief administrator. The supreme
khagan was never in touch with his people; he lived in his harem and
appeared in public only once every four months, when he took a ride
accompanied by a bodyguard which followed him at a distance of a mile.
His court numbered four thousand courtiers and his bodyguard twelve
thousand men, a number which was always kept undiminished.
The supreme Khagan of the Chazars practised polygamy, having
twenty-five legal wives, who were every one of them daughters of neigh-
bouring princes. Moreover he kept sixty concubines. The main force of
the Chazar army was formed by the bodyguard of 12,000. These troops
are called by the Arabian writers al-arsīya or al-lārisīya, which Westberg
says should be karisiya, because the overwhelming majority of them were
Muslim mercenaries from Khwārazm, the Khiva of our days. In addition
to these, men belonging to other nations (Mas“ūdi mentions “Russians”
and Slavs) were also taken into the bodyguard or other service of the
khagan. This Musulman bodyguard stipulated that it should not be
obliged to take part in a war against co-religionists, and that the vizier
must be chosen from its ranks.
בל
An ideal tolerance in religion was exercised in the dominions of the
Chazars. The Chazars proper (Turks) were originally all heathen and
Shamanists. But in course of time Judaism began to spread among the
higher classes. Further, some of the nations subdued by the Chazars
were heathen, while others professed Christianity. The bodyguard, as
we have seen, was almost entirely composed of Muslims, and part of the
inhabitants of the capital, Itil, as well as some foreign merchants, were
also adherents of Islām. The ruler and his courtiers professed Judaism
about the middle of the eighth century (according to other authorities
not earlier than the end of the eighth or the beginning of the ninth
century).
Judaism and Christianity could spread among the Chazars from two
quarters, from the Caucasus and from the Crimea. The existence of
Jewish communities is attested by inscriptions dating from the first to the
third century of our era in the towns of Panticapaeum, Gorgippia (now
Anápa) at the north-western end of the Caucasus, and Tanais. In the
eighth century Phanagoria or Tamatarcha was the principal seat of the
Jews of the Cimmerian Bosphorus; and in the ninth century it is even
called a Jewish town, the Samkarsh of the Jews.
Islām did not predominate among the Chazars before the second half
of the tenth century. It seems that Christianity did not find many
followers. It was the religion only of some Caucasian tribes subdued by
the Chazars, and probably of some foreign merchants who visited the
Chazar towns for their business. St Cyril endeavoured to convert the
Chazars to Christianity but with no considerable result, for we learn
## p. 191 (#233) ############################################
Religious tolerance
191
from a legend of the saint that only two hundred Chazars were
christened.
All religions were ideally tolerant towards each other in the Chazar
lands, so that this half-barbarian state could serve as an example to
many a Christian state of medieval and even modern Europe. The courts
of justice were organised in the capital town of the ruler according to
religions. Seven or, according to Ibn Fadlan, nine judges held courts to
administer justice; two of them were appointed for the Muslims, two
for the Jews, two for Christians, and one for the heathen. If the judges
of their own religion were unable to decide a complicated controversy, the
litigants appealed to the cadis of the Muslims, whose administration of
justice at that time was considered as the most perfect.
But in spite of religious tolerance, it was a great drawback to the
Chazar state that there existed within it so many different religions,
and, in all probability, it suffered much harm from the adoption of the
Mosaic faith by the rulers and their courtiers. The inhabitants of the
Chazar empire could not coalesce into one nation, and the Chazar realm
continued until its downfall to be a conglomerate of different ethnic and
religious elements. The state was upheld by artificial means, especially
by the foreign Musulman mercenaries. Although the downfall of the
empire did not begin in the ninth century, yet in the tenth it certainly
was in rapid decline.
That the Chazar civilisation attained a high development is apparent
from the flourishing commerce of a part of the inhabitants and from the
existence of several great towns in the empire. The authorities mention
principally the towns Iti), Balanjar, Samandar, and Sarkel. Balanjar
was a more ancient capital of the Chazars; some ancient authors wrongly
assert that it is identical with Itil or Atel.
The oriental historians give us a better knowledge of the later resi-
dence of the Chazar kbagans, the town Itil or Atel, than we have of
Balanjar. It was the greatest town of the Chazars, situated some miles
from the estuary of the river Volga (by the Turks named also Itil or
Atel), to the north of the present town of Astrakhan. The ancient Arab
authors call this town Al-Baidā (The White City), which corresponds
with the later name Sarygshar (Yellow City), as the western part of the
town of Itil was called. The Arabian geographers relate that the town
of Itil was composed of two (according to Masóūdī of three) parts
separated by the river Itil. The western part situated on the river was
the greater, where the supreme khagan resided. The ruler's palace was
the only building constructed of brick; the other houses were either
of timber or clay. The eastern part of the town was probably the business
centre of the Chazars. But according to Ibn Rusta the Chazar inhabi-
tants lived in this twin-town only in winter, moving in spring to the
steppes. This led Marquart to the opinion that Itil was the winter
Cf. infra, Chapter vii (B), pp. 219-20.
CE. VO.
## p. 192 (#234) ############################################
192
The Burdas
resort (kishlak) of the Chazars and Balanjar their summer dwelling
(yaylak). Later writers, beginning with the twelfth century, give the
name Saksin to the town of Itil.
On the river Don was an important town of the Chazars, Sarkel
(White Town, a name which the Greeks translated correctly "Aom povoot-
tlov, and the Russians Bélavêzha). According to Constantine Porphyro-
genitus, this town was built in the reign of the Greek Emperor Theophilus
(829-842) at the request of the Khagan of the Chazars. The Emperor
is said to have sent there Petronas, who built the city for the Chazars
about 835 and was at the same time made an imperial governor,
strategus of the city of Cherson, which had hitherto enjoyed full
autonomy, being governed by a proteuon elected by the citizens.
The Emperor Constantine does not say against whom Sarkel was
built, but according to Cedrenus (eleventh century) it was against the
Patzinaks. Uspenski tries to prove that the town of Sarkel was founded
at the initiative of the Greeks, to secure the Greek territory on the north
shores of the Black Sea and at the same time to protect the Chazars,
their allies.
To the Chazar empire belonged, according to Ibn Rusta, a people
called Burdas or Burtas by the orientals. Their territory extended
along the Volga at a distance of a fortnight's journey from the territory
of the Chazars proper. The Burdas disposed of an army of 10,000 horse.
Their limited political capacity prevented them from founding an inde-
pendent state. In fact Ibn Rusta narrates that they had no other chief-
tains than the elders of their communes. Their territory was rich in
forests. They reared cattle, were hunters, and practised a little agri-
culture and commerce. They raided the neighbouring Bulgars and
Patzinaks. They practised the vendetta in sanguinary feuds. The
ethnical affinity of the Burdas is still a matter of dispute; according to
Mas'udi they were a people of a Turkish race, settled along the banks
of a river called also Burdas (according to Marquart, the Samara). They
exported great quantities of black and brown fox-hides, generally called
burtasians.
To the north of the Burdas the Bulgars were settled. Their land
extended over the regions of the central Volga to the river Kama, and
was full of swamps and dense forests. They are the so-called Volga and
Kama Bulgars, White or Silver Bulgars, who remained in their original
homes when part of the nation emigrated to the Black Sea. They were
divided into three tribes, the Barsuls, the Esegels, and the Bulgars
proper. They also belonged to the most advanced Ural-Altaic peoples.
They very early began to till their lands, and were good hunters and
shrewd tradesmen as intermediaries of the commerce between the Swedes
(" Russians "), Slavs, and Chazars. The southern boundaries of their lands
were only a three days' journey distant from the territory of the Burdas. )
## p. 193 (#235) ############################################
The White Bulgars
193
The Volga Bulgars often made predatory invasions on their swift horses
into the lands of the Burdas and carried the inhabitants into captivity.
Among themselves they used fox-hides instead of money, although they
obtained silver coins (dirhem, i. e. drachma) from the Muslim countries.
These silver coins were used by the Bulgars as money when trading with
foreigners, the Swedes and Slavs, who did not exchange wares except for
money. The great number of foreign coins found in the present
government of Perm near the river Kama is the best proof of the brisk
trade the Bulgars already drove in the fifth century with foreign lands,
especially with the far Orient, the coins being Sasanian and Indo-Bactrian
of the fifth century.
To supply the increasing need for specie, the Bulgars began to coin
their own money in the tenth century. Three Bulgarian coins of native
origin, struck in Bulgary in the towns of Bulgar and Suvar under the
rulers Talib and Mumin, have been preserved from the years 950 and 976.
Trade drew members of very different nations to the Bulgarian
cities—Chazars, Swedes, Finns, Slavs, Greeks, Armenians, and Khwāraz-
mians. The principal commercial route of the Bulgars was the Volga;
by this river merchandise was carried to the west, and southwards to the
Caspian Sea, for several centuries called the Chazar Sea. Two waterways
led to the west, one to the Western Dvina and the Dnieper, the other
by the Oka upstream to its sources and thence by land to the river Desna
to reach Kiev downstream. Merchandise was also shipped southwards to
the Sea of Azov. The ships went down the Volga to the point opposite
to where the Don bends farthest eastward. From here the wares were
transported by land to the Don and then shipped to the Sea of Azov.
There was moreover another trade route by land to the south.
The centre of the Volga-Bulgarian realm was situated in the
country where the river Kama joins the Volga. North and south of the
confluence of the Kama and along its upper course were the principal
Bulgarian towns. The capital, called Bulgar by the Arabian writers,
was situated at a distance of about 20 miles to the south of the junc-
tion of the Kama, and about four miles from the Volga, between the present
towns of Spassk and Tetyushi. In the Russian annals of 1164 it appears
under the name of “the great town,” and not earlier than 1361 it is for
the first time called Bulgary. The advantageous situation near the Volga
was the cause of its rapid growth, and its extensive trade made it famous
all over the Orient. The best proof of the great size of the city is perhaps
the narrative of Ibn Haukal, an author of the second half of the tenth
century, who tells us that even after the devastation of the town by the
Russians it contained 10,000 inhabitants. It was only after the invasion
of the Mongols that the town of Bulgar declined; it decayed con-
siderably during the second half of the fourteenth century owing to the
ravages of Tamerlane, and was completely destroyed by the Golden
Horde.
C. MED. H. VOL. IV, CH. VII.
13
## p. 194 (#236) ############################################
194
The White Bulgars
The first beginnings of the political life of the Bulgars are unknown
to us. The history of the Volga-Bulgars becomes somewhat clearer when
the Russian annals and the Arabian writers give some notices of them in
the tenth century. The advantageous situation of the land was favour-
able to the formation of a state. The north and east were inhabited by
the inert Ugrian tribes of the Eastern Finns, who were no menace to their
neighbours. To the south lived the Chazars, powerful indeed but
remote, and separated by the territory of the Burdas from the Bulgars.
It was not until the ninth century that a dangerous neighbour arose on
their western borders in the Russian state. The expeditions of the
Russians against the Bulgars will be mentioned later. The Ugrian tribes,
settled to the north and east of the Bulgars, were partly under the
dominion of the Bulgars and partly retained their independence, such as
the Permyaks, Yugers, Votyaks, and Cheremises. All these peoples had
their own tribal princes, and their submission to the Bulgars consisted
only in the payment of a tribute chiefly of furs.
We get some information of the political organisation of the Bulgars
from Ibn Fadlan, who in June 921 was dispatched by the Caliph Muq-
tadir of Baghdad to the ruler of the Bulgars to instruct them at his
request in Islām; he built a mosque, and for the Bulgarian ruler a
castle where he could resist the attacks of hostile princes. Ibn Fadlan
arrived at Bulgar in the early summer of 922, and accomplished his task.
We learn from his description of the journey, preserved by the geographer
Yāqūt, that the throne of the Bulgarian rulers was hereditary and their
power limited by that of the princes and magnates. As a proof of this,
four princes, subject to the Bulgarian king, are mentioned, who went
with their brothers and children to meet the embassy led by Ibn Fadlan.
They were probably tribal chieftains, although we are informed by other
authors that there were only three Bulgarian tribes.
With the ninth century we get a clearer insight into the history of
the Magyars, another Ural-Altaic nation, which began to play its
part in history within the territory of the later Russian empire, on the
northern coasts of the Black Sea. There are but few nations of whose
origin and original settlements we know so little as we do of the Mag-
yars. The majority of writers contend that they are a nation of Finnish
origin, which only at a later period was under the influence of the Turks
and Slavs. The principal champion of this theory is Hunfalvy. Vámbéry
on the contrary thinks that the Magyars are a Turkish race, which
inhabited the northern and north-eastern border-lands of the Turco-
Tartar tribes and was in touch with the Ugrian tribes. To Vámbéry the
language is not of such decisive weight as the social life and civilisation.
The whole mode of living, the first appearance in history; the political
organisation of the Magyars, shew clearly that they belong in origin to
Turco-Tartar races. According to Vámbéry, even the names by which
## p. 195 (#237) ############################################
The Magyars
195
the Magyars are called by foreigners are of considerable moment. Not
only the Byzantines but also the Arabo-Persian writers called them
“ Turks. ” Vámbéry therefore is of the opinion that the Magyars
originally belonged to the Turco-Tartar peoples, and that they in course
of time adopted in their vocabulary Finno-Ugrian words. The ethnical
blending of the two races began in times so remote that it escapes
historical observation.
Winkler found in the Magyar language a yet greater mixture. The
Finnish foundation was influenced, as he thinks, by the Turkish, Mongol,
Dravidian, Iranian, and Caucasian languages.
By far the majority of scholars accept Hunfalvy's theory. But, although
Vámbéry's fundamental opinion may not be quite correct, it must be con-
ceded that the cultural influence of the Turks on the Finno-Ugrian
Magyars was so strong that they thoroughly changed their former mode
of life, and that from hunters they became a nomadic people, one of the
most warlike of nations.
The oriental authors give us the first mention of the Magyars.
Although they wrote in the tenth century and later, the first original
source from which they derived their information comes from the
second quarter of the ninth century. Ibn Rusta locates the territory of
the Magyars between the Patzinaks, who lived as nomads in the Ural-
Caspian steppes, and the Esegelian Bulgars, i. e. in the territory of the
Bashkirs, called by the Arabian authors Bashgurt and the like. It
seems that Ibn Rusta confounds the Bashkirs with the Magyars, which
can be easily explained by the kinship of the two nations. According
to Pauler they were one nation, of which the lesser part, the Bashkirs,
remained in their original territory, later on called Great Hungaria,
whereas the greater part, the Magyars, migrated about the beginning
of the ninth century in a south-westerly direction to the Black Sea.
But this was not the first Magyar wave flowing from north to south.
Constantine Porphyrogenitus, who also gives us important information
regarding the Magyars, says that only a part of the new immigrants
remained near the Black Sea, whereas another branch called Eaßáptou
ão parou moved farther to the east into Persia, where these Eastern
Magyars lived even in his time in the tenth century.
At first the Magyars occupied the lands near the Black Sea between
the rivers Don and Dnieper. Ibn Rusta and Gurdizi very clearly mention
two great rivers to which they give different names. Constantine Porphy-
rogenitus calls this first territory of the Magyars near the Black Sea
Lebedia. Many writers have tried to explain this word, but without
success. Constantine speaks of a river Chidmas or Chingylus, which
watered the territory of the Magyars.
The lands between the rivers Don and Dnieper belonged to the Chazars
at the beginning of the ninth century. The Magyars therefore must
CH. VII.
13–2
## p. 196 (#238) ############################################
196
Admixture of races
have fought them to get possession of their new home. Constantine
Porphyrogenitus says indeed that the Magyars were the allies of the
Chazars, and that they were their neighbours during three years (which
some authors correct to 200 or 300 years or at least to 30 years), but
an alliance seems to have been impossible, at least at the beginning of
the settlement of the Magyars near the Black Sea. The existence of an
alliance between the two nations is further made improbable by another
report of Constantine that the Kabars (which means, according to
Vámbéry, insurgents), a part of the Chazars who were in revolt, joined
seven Magyar tribes, becoming thus the eighth tribe. Even if we do not
take into account that the Magyars occupied lands belonging to the
Chazar empire, they could not at the beginning have been the friends of
the Chazars, because they received among them the insurgent Kabars.
Besides a part of the Chazars a certain number also of Black Bulgars,
living near the Don, joined the Magyars, for all the nomadic hordes
absorbed the different foreign elements barring their way. And so the
Magyars, too, were a motley ethnical conglomerate when they settled
on the banks of the Black Sea.
Constantine Porphyrogenitus has preserved for us the names of the
seven tribes composing the Magyar people. The principal tribe, Meryepn,
in all probability gave its name at that time to the whole nation; the
Musulman writers at least know this name (Majghariyah, Majghariyan),
whereas the Byzantines called the Magyars for a longer period
“Turks,"
evidently considering them, just as the Musulman writers did, to be
a nation of Turkish origin.
At the head of the several Magyar tribes were chieftains, called after
the Slav fashion voivodes (army-leaders). According to the reports of
the Musulman authors, the Magyars like the Chazars had two rulers.
One of them was called kende (knda) and is said to have held the higher
rank, but the real government was in the hands of the jila (jele). Čon-
stantine Porphyrogenitus gives a different description of the political
organisation of the Magyars, saying that beside the ruling prince there
were two judges, one of whom was called gyla and the other karchas.
The dignity of the gyla (Magyar, gyula) may be identical with that of
the jila of the Musulman writers. The jila was both a judge and a
military commander according to Ibn Rusta; but as he was sometimes
unable on account of old age to perform the duties of a military chief-
tain, the Magyars elected besides him a deputy called kende. This
prominent dignity, combined with its outer splendour, could easily be
mistaken by foreigners for that of the chief ruler. Pauler thinks that
Constantine Porphyrogenitus, who certainly used some Chazar writings,
meant by the word karchas the dignity of the kende. It seems, at any
rate, that the dignities of karchas and kende were copied by the Magyars
from the institutions of the Chazars. These words are Turkish, whereas
gyula is Magyar. The offices disappeared in the Christian period, but
## p. 197 (#239) ############################################
Magyar customs
197
during a heathen reaction the Magyars reinstated that of the karchas,
as appears from the decree (m. 2) of King Ladislas the Saint, dating
from the year 1092.
According to Ibn Rusta, the Magyars in their new homes lived during
the summer on the steppes, moving with their tents wherever they found
a better pasture for their horses and cattle. They even tilled some land.
He married a Spanish wife connected with the Lusignans (Constance of
Aragon, widow of Henry II of Lusignan), recalled his cousins, and finally
put Oshin to death. During his reign Cilicia was confined to its ancient
boundaries, but though the country's defences were in ruins and the
i Probably the brother of Leo IV, and not, as some writers say, of Hethum.
12-2
CH. v.
## p. 180 (#222) ############################################
180 The Mamlūks conquer Armenia. The Lusignans
princes were occupied with political and ecclesiastical disputes, Leo im-
mersed himself in religious discussions.
Meanwhile Nāşir, Sultan of the Mamlūks, on hearing that Europe
was preparing for a new crusade, made an alliance with the Tartars and
Turkomans for the conquest of Armenia. Devastated and plundered by
successive armies of Tartars, Turkomans, and Mamlūks, Cilicia was once
more saved from complete destruction by a few heroic Armenians. They
hid in passes through which the enemy had to march, and massacred
several thousand Mamlūks. The sultan agreed to a fifteen years' truce
on condition that the Armenians paid to the Egyptians an annual tribute
of 50,000 florins, half the customs and revenue from the maritime trade
of Ayas, and half the sea-salt. In return, the sultan undertook to
rebuild Ayas and the other fortresses at his own expense, and not to
occupy any stronghold or castle in Cilicia with his troops.
At last, about 1335, Philip VI of France decided to go to the help of
the Armenians, and Nāşir resolved to conquer them. The net result of
the two decisions might have been foreseen. On the one hand, Leo received
10,000 forins from Philip with a few sacks of corn from the Pope; on the
other, Armenia was invaded and conquered by the Mamlūks. Leo fled
to the mountains (1337); but after forcing him to swear on Bible and
Cross never again to enter into relations with Europe, Nāşir left him to
rule what was left of his country until his death in 1342. He was the
last of the Rubenian-Hethumian rulers, who thus left Armenia as they
had found it, a prey to the foreigner.
For a generation after Leo's death (1342–1373), Armenia was ruled
by Latin kings. Two of them were Lusignan princes connected by mar-
riage with the Hethumian dynasty, and the other two were usurpers not
of royal blood.
The Lusignans derived their claim to the Armenian crown from the
marriage of Zabel, sister of Hethum II, to Amaury of Tyre, brother of
Henry II of Cyprus (1295). John and Guy, two sons of this marriage, were
in the service of the Emperor at Constantinople when Leo V died. Some
months after Leo's death, John, the younger, was called upon to admini-
ster the Cilician kingdom, not as king, but as baïle or regent. At his
suggestion, the elder brother Guy left Constantinople and accepted the
crown of Armeno-Cilicia in 1342.
Crowned by the Katholikos according to Armenian rites, Guy acted
at first as an Armenian patriot, refusing to pay tribute to the Sultans of
Egypt and Turkey. But when Egyptian invasions followed, Guy not only
adopted the time-honoured custom of appealing for help to the Pope
(Clement VI) and of promising to effect if possible the union of the Ar-
menian Church with Rome, but surrounded himself with Latin princes
to whom he entrusted the defence of towns and fortresses. The Pope
actually sent a thousand horsemen and a thousand pieces of Byzantine
## p. 181 (#223) ############################################
Failure and exile of Leo VI
181
was at
silver, but the Armenians, resenting Guy's Latinising policy, assassinated
him with his brother Bohemond and the Western knights who had come
to his aid (1344). His other brother John had died a natural death a
few months earlier.
The next king, the usurper Constantine IV, son of Baldwin, marshal
of Armenia, was more successful (1344-1363). With the help of. Theo-
dates of Rhodes and Hugh of Cyprus he repulsed an Egyptian invasion
with great slaughter, leaving Ayas alone in the enemy's hands. He hoped
that the news of his success would move Europe to help him, but when
his embassy returned empty-handed from Venice, Paris, London, and
Rome, he marched without allies against the Mamlūks, drove them from
the country, and captured Alexandretta from them (1357). As a result
of his victory and of his efforts to subdue the religious discord, Armenia
peace
for the rest of his life.
Constantine IV was succeeded by a second usurper, Constantine V,
son of a Cypriot serf who had become an Armenian baron. Elected king
because of his wealth, he offered the crown to Peter I, King of Cyprus,
but when Peter was assassinated in 1369 Constantine kept the throne
himself. Four years later, the Armenians put him to death, and during
the anarchy which followed they entrusted the government to the widow
of Constantine IV, Mary of Gorigos, who had already played an active
part in Armenian politics before the king's assassination.
The last King of Armenia was Leo VI of Lusignan (1373, d. 1393).
His father was John, brother of King Guy, and his grandmother was
Zabel, sister of Hethum II. He himself had been imprisoned with his
mother Soldane of Georgia by Constantine IV, who had wished to destroy
the royal Armenian line. His reign was not a success. All his efforts to
avert the long-impending doom of Cilicia were powerless. He fought
energetically against the Mamlūks, but was led captive to Cairo (1375).
There he appointed as almoner and confessor John Dardel, whose recently-
published chronicle has thrown unexpected light upon the last years of
the Cilician kingdom. In 1382 the king was released and spent the rest
of his life in various countries of Europe. He died in 1393 at Paris,
making Richard II of England his testamentary executor, and his epitaph
is still preserved in the basilica of Saint-Denis. After his death, the Kings
of Cyprus were the nominal Kings of Armenia until 1489, when the title
passed to Venice. Almost at the same time (1485), by reason of the mar-
riage (1433) of Anne of Lusignan with Duke Louis I of Savoy, the rulers
of Piedmont assumed the empty claim to a kingdom of the past.
During the exile of Leo VI, Greater Armenia was enduring a prolonged
Tartar invasion. After conquering Baghdad (1386), Tamerlane entered
Vaspurakan. At Van he caused the people to be hurled from the rock
which towers above the city; at Ernjak he massacred all the inhabitants;
at Sīwās he had the Armenian garrison buried alive. In 1389 he devas-
tated Turuberan and Taron; in 1394 he finished his campaign at Kars,
-
-
CH. VI.
## p. 182 (#224) ############################################
182
Armenia under Muslim rule
where he took captive all the people whom he did not massacre, and
passed on into Asia Minor. By the beginning of the fifteenth century the
old Armenian territory had been divided among its Muslim conquerors-
Mamlūks, Turks, and Tartars. Yūsuf, Sultan of Egypt, ruled Sassun;
the Emir Erghin governed Vaspurakan from Ostan; and Tainerlane's
son, Mīrān Shāh, reigned at Tabriz. These Musulman emirs made war
upon one another at the expense of the Armenian families who had not
migrated to Asia Minor on the fall of the Bagratid kingdom. By the
close of the fifteenth century Cilicia, too, was finally absorbed into the
Ottoman Empire.
Kings and kingdom had passed, but the Armenians still possessed
their Church. In the midst of desolation, schools and convents maintained
Armenian art and culture, and handed on the torch of nationality. Some
of the Armenian manuscripts which exist to-day were written in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The long religious controversy, of
which the Uniates were the centre, survived the horrors of the period,
and continued to agitate the country. Among the protagonists were
John of Khrna, John of Orotn, Thomas of Medzoph, Gregory of Tathew,
and Gregory of Klath. In 1438 Armenian delegates attended the Council
of Florence with the Greeks and Latins in order to unify the rites and
ceremonies of the Churches.
The most important work of the Church was administrative. During
Tamerlane's invasion the Katholikos had established the pontifical seat
among the ruins of Sis. But towards the middle of the next century Sis
rapidly declined, and it was decided to move the seat to Echmiadzin
in the old Bagratid territory. As Grigor IX refused to leave Sis, a new
Katholikos, Kirakos Virapensis, was elected for Echmiadzin, and from 1441
the Armenian Church was divided for years between those who accepted
the primacy of Echmiadzin and those who were faithful to Sis. Finally,
the Katholikos of Echmiadzin became, in default of a king, the head of the
Armenian people. With his council and synod he made himself respon-
sible for the national interests of the Armenians, and administered such
possessions as remained to them. After the Turkish victory of 1453,
Mahomet II founded an Armenian colony in Constantinople and placed it
under the supervision of Joakim, the Armenian Bishop of Brūsa, to whom
he afterwards gave the title of “Patriarch” with jurisdiction over all the
Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. From that time to this, the Arme-
nian Patriarch of Constantinople has carried on the work of the Katholikos
and has been the national representative of the Armenian people.
לל
## p. 183 (#225) ############################################
183
CHAPTER VII.
(A)
THE EMPIRE AND ITS NORTHERN NEIGHBOURS.
While the Germans impressed their characteristic stamp on both the
medieval and modern history of Western Europe, it was reserved for the
Eastern Slavs, the Russians, to build a great empire on the borderlands
of Europe and Asia. But the work of civilisation was far more difficult
for the Russians than for the German race. The barbaric Germans settled
in regions of an old civilisation among the conquered Romans and
Romanised peoples, whereas the geographical and ethnical surroundings
entered by the Eastern Slavs were unfavourable, in so far as no old in-
heritance existed there to further any endeavours in civilisation; this
had to be built up from the very foundations. Boundless forests, vast
lakes and swamps, were great obstacles to the colonisation of the immense
plain of eastern Europe, and the long stretch of steppes in southern
Russia was for many centuries the home of Asiatic nomads, who not only
made any intercourse with Greek civilisation impossible but even en-
dangered incessantly the results of the native progress of the Russian
Slavs.
The growth of the Russian empire implies not only the extension of
the area of its civilisation but also the absorption of many elements
belonging to foreign races and speaking foreign tongues, and their
coalescence with the dominant Russian nation.
It was only the southernmost parts of the later Russian empire that
had from time immemorial active connexions with the several centres of
ancient Greek civilisation. In the course of the seventh century B. c.
numerous Greek colonies were founded on the northern shore of the
Black Sea, such as Tyras, Olbia, Chersonesus, Theodosia, Panticapaeum
(now Kerch), and Tanais. These towns were the intermediaries of the
commerce between the barbaric peoples of what is now Russia and the
civilised towns of Greece. They were at the same time centres of Greek
civilisation, which they spread among their nearest neighbours who in-
habited the southern steppes of Russia and were known in history first
under the name of Scythians and then of Şarmatians. Of what race these
peoples were, is not clearly established.
CH. VII.
## p. 184 (#226) ############################################
184
Alans, Goths, and Huns
The ancient historians mention several tribes who lived to the north
and north-west of the Scythians and Sarmatians, and were in all proba-
bility Slavs or Finns.
The Scythian and Sarmatian nomads were a continuous danger
to the security of the Greek colonies; they extorted from them regular
yearly tributes. Still the chief towns to the north of the Black Sea
did succeed though with difficulty in maintaining their existence during
the whole period of the Scythian and Sarmatian dominion. These
towns in course of time exchanged Greek independence for a Roman
protectorate.
After the Sarmatians there appeared new enemies of the Greek colonies
along the northern littoral of the Black Sea. Already in the first cen-
tury of our era the name of the Sarmatians is superseded by that of
Alans, which new generic name, according to the explanation of ancient
historians, comprehends several nomadic races, mainly Iranian.
In the second and third centuries A. D. new immigrants poured in to the
northern shores of the Black Sea. The western part of the steppes was
occupied by German races, especially by the Goths, the eastern part by
Asiatic Huns. The Goths remained more than two centuries in the
steppes of southern Russia and the lands bordering the Black Sea,
whence they made incursions into the Roman Empire. By the inroad of
overwhelming masses of the Huns the Gothic state was subverted in
A. D. 375, and the Goths disappeared slowly from the borders of the Black
Sea. Only a small part of them remained, some in the Caucasus and
others till much later in the Crimea. The other Goths acquired new
homes in other lands of Europe. Of the Greek colonies on the north
of the Black Sea only those in the Crimea outlived the Gothic period.
With the expansion of the power of the Huns a new period begins
in the history of Eastern and Central Europe. Hitherto Asia sent its
nomads only as far as the steppes of southern Russia. The Huns are the
first nomads who by their conquests extend Asia to the lands on the
central Danube. Like a violent tempest their hordes not only swept
over the south Russian steppes but also penetrated to Roman Pannonia,
where Attila, their king, in the first half of the fifth century founded
the centre of his gigantic but short-lived empire. After Attila's death
his empire fell to pieces, and the Huns disappeared almost entirely
among the neighbouring nations. Only a small part fled to the Black
Sea, where they encountered the hordes of the nomadic Bulgars, a people
in all probability of Finnish (Ugrian) origin, but mixed with Turkish
elements. The Bulgars were originally settled in the lands between
the rivers Kama and Volga, where even later the so-called Kama and
Volga Bulgars are found, but part of them moved at an unknown time
to the south-west, and when the Huns had migrated to Pannonia came
to the Black Sea, where they appear already in the second half of the fifth
## p. 185 (#227) ############################################
Bulgars, Avars, and Turks
185
century. Before they arrived there they had lived under so strong a
Turkish influence that they could easily blend with the remnants of the
Huns. The Greek authors of the sixth century especially mention in
these regions two Bulgarian tribes, the Kutrigurs or Kuturgurs and the
Utigurs or Utrigurs. The Kutrigurs roamed as nomads on the right
bank of the Don to the west, the Utigurs from the Don to the south,
eastwards of the Sea of Azov. After the departure of the other Bul-
garian hordes in the second half of the seventh century only the Utigurs
remained in the lands near the Black Sea; they are later known as the
Black Bulgars.
Like other barbarians the hordes of the Bulgars were an unceasing
source of trouble to the Eastern Roman Empire. Justinian was forced
to pay a yearly tribute to the Kutrigurs. But, as even this subsidy did
not restrain them from frequent invasions, he made use of the common
Byzantine policy, bribing the Utigurs to be their enemies.
The Utigurs violently attacked the Greek colonies situated on both
shores of the Cimmerian Bosphorus. Panticapaeum, better known to the
Byzantine authors as Bosphorus, resisted only a short time, and finally had
to acknowledge the Utigurs' supremacy in order to save some sort of
autonomy. In 522, during Justinian I's reign, Bosphorus had a Greek
garrison.
Immediately after the Huns other nomads from Asia thronged to
Europe. They were part of a people named by the Chinese Yuan-Yuan
but calling themselves Yü-kue-lü, who in Europe became known by the
name of Avars. This nation appeared in the territory of the empire of
the T'o-pa, founded by a secession from the Chinese Empire.
The empire of the T'o-pa was short-lived. The Yuan-Yuan revolted
against their masters and founded on a part of their territory a separate
state, for a time under the supremacy of the T'o-pa, but in the second
half of the fourth century they rose to such power that they tried to
gain their independence. They succeeded in this endeavour under their
chief Shelun (402–410), who assumed the title of Khagan. From that
time down to the sixth century the Yuan-Yuan became the foremost
people in Central Asia. They ruled over Eastern Turkestan, and over
the present territories of Mongolia and Manchuria as far as Korea. But
from the end of the fifth century the empire of the Yuan-Yuan was
already in decline.
The subdued races took advantage of this weakness and endeavoured
to shake off their yoke. The Chinese call these hordes T'u-küe, the
nearest they could get to Turks. The Chinese knew of a long series
of Turkish hordes and counted them among their tributary tribes.
Some of these hordes were also under the dominion of the Huns. In the
middle of the sixth century the half mythical chieftain Tu-mên united
the numerous Turkish tribes and rose to the leadership of the whole
CH. VII.
## p. 186 (#228) ############################################
186
The Avars in Europe
Turkish nation in northern and central Asia, whereupon the Turks
allied themselves with the T'o-pa against the Yuan-Yuan. These suc-
cumbed, their Khagan A-na-kuei (Anagay) in 552 committed suicide,
and their empire came to an end.
That part of the Turks which formerly was under the dominion of
the Yuan-Yuan remained in their homes and acknowledged the supremacy
of T'u-mên, but the other part migrated to the west into the steppes of
southern Russia and further into Pannonia. These new nomadic hordes
appear in Europe under the name of Avars. But according to Theo-
phylact Simocatta the European Avars were not the genuine Avars but
Pseudo-avars. In any case they, like the other Asiatic nomads, were not
an ethnically pure race but a mixed people.
During the migration the number of the Avars increased considerably,
since other tribes, kindred as well as foreign, joined them, and among
these was also a part of the Bulgars. Soon after their arrival in Europe
in 558 the Avars encountered the Eastern Slavs, called Antae in the
ancient histories, the ancestors of the later South Russian Slavonic races.
The Avars repeatedly invaded the lands of the Antae, devastating the
country, dragging away the inhabitants as prisoners, and carrying with
them great spoils.
A few years later, in 568, they appear in Pannonia, which they selected
as the centre of their extensive dominion, and where they roamed for two
centuries and a half. From there they made their predatory incursions
into the neighbouring lands, especially into the Balkan peninsula, often in
company with the Slavs. The worst period of these devastations by the
Avars lasted no longer than about sixty years, for they soon experienced
several disasters. From the western Slavonic lands they had been driven
by Samo, the founder of the first great Slavonic empire (623–658), and
in the East the Bulgarian ruler Kovrat, who was in friendly relations
with the Greeks, shook off their yoke. After 626, when the Avars
beleaguered Constantinople in vain, the Balkan peninsula remained un-
molested by their inroads, their last hostile incursion being the aid they
gave to the Slavs in their attack on Thessalonica. Moreover there began
in their dominion internal disorders which were in all probability the
principal cause of the downfall of their power. In 631 there arose a
severe conflict between the genuine Avars and their allied Bulgarian
horde, because the chieftain of the Bulgarians had the courage to com-
pete with an Avar for the throne. A fight arose between the two
contending parties, which resulted in the victory of the Avars. The
vanquished Bulgarian and 9000 of his followers with their families were
driven from Pannonia.
During the period in which the dominion of the Avars reached from
the middle course of the Danube almost to the Dnieper, there flourished
between the Sea of Azov and the Caspian the dominion of the Chazars,
## p. 187 (#229) ############################################
Chazars and Turks
187
nomads of another Turkish race, which in course of time became a half-
settled nation. The Chazars formed one of the best-organised Turkish
states and their dominion lasted several centuries. Their origin is entirely
unknown.
The history of the Chazars becomes clearer with the beginning of the
sixth century, when they made repeated inroads into Armenia, crossed
the Caucasus, and extended their dominion to the river Araxes. The
Chazar warriors not only devastated Armenia, but pushed their inroads
even into Asia Minor. Kawad (Kobad), King of Persia, sent an army of
12,000 men to expel them, and conquered the land between the rivers
Cyrus and Araxes. Having moreover occupied Albania (Shirvan), Kawad
secured the northern frontier of the land by a long wall stretching from
the sea to the Gate of the Alans (the fortress of Dariel) and con-
taining three hundred fortified posts. The Persians ceased to keep
this wall in good repair, but Kawad's son Chosroes I Nūshirwān
(531-578), with the consent of the ruler of the Chazars, had erected the
Iron Caspian Gate, from which the neighbouring town near the Caspian
Sea was called in Arabic Bāb-al-abwāb, Gate of Gates, and in Persian
Darband (gate). The ramparts, however, erected by Chosroes near Dar-
band and running along the Caucasian mountains for a distance of 40
parasangs (about 180 miles) were of no great use, as the Chazars forced
their way by the Darband gate into Persia and devastated the land.
In the last quarter of the sixth century the Chazars were a part of
the great Turkish empire, founded by T'u-mên. His son, whose name is
given in the Chinese annals as Sse-kin and by the Greek authors as Askin
or Askil (553-569), ruled over an immense territory stretching from the
desert of Shamo as far as the western sea, and from the basin of the river
Tarim to the tundras near the river Kien (Kem or Yenisey). The
Turkish empire was further extended by his successor Khagan Dizabul,
named also Silzibul, in Turkish Sinjibu. During his reign also the
Chazars belonged to the Turkish empire.
The Persian empire was a great obstacle to the tendency of the
Turks to expand, and as the Byzantines were also the enemies of the
Persians, the Turks sought to conclude alliances with them against the
common foe. Khagan Sse-kin in 563 was the first to send an embassy
to the Byzantines to negotiate a treaty of alliance, and under Justin II
in 568 another mission was sent by the Turks to Constantinople. In
return the Greeks also sent their ambassadors to the Turks; and in
569 Zemarchus journeyed from Cilicia to Central Asia as Justin II's
envoy.
Among other embassies of the Greeks to the Turks should be men-
tioned that of Valentinus in 579, which was to notify the accession of the
new Emperor Tiberius II to the throne. On Valentinus' second journey
he had 106 Turks among his retinue. At that time there lived a
CH. VII.
## p. 188 (#230) ############################################
188
Growing power of the Chazars
considerable number of Turks in Constantinople, principally those who
had come there as attendants of Byzantine envoys on their return journey.
After a long and arduous journey, Valentinus arrived at the seat of
Khagan Turxanth in the steppes between the Volga and the Caucasus,
evidently one of the khagans subordinate to the supreme khagan who
ruled over the Chazars, and from here the Byzantine embassy continued
its way into the interior of the Turkish empire to reach the supreme
khagan. During their stay there Turxanth acted in open enmity against
the Byzantines, assaulting their towns in the Crimea, assisted by Anagay,
prince of the Utigurs and vassal of the Turks.
The power of the Turks declined during the reign of Sinjibu's suc-
cessors. At the end of the sixth century there began contests for the
khagan's throne. Although the supreme khagan was able in 597 to sub-
due the revolt with the aid of the three other khagans, the disturbances
were soon renewed, and the horde of Turks dwelling between the Volga
and the Caspian Sea, the Chazars, freed themselves from the power of
the supreme Turkish khagan in the early years of the seventh century.
During the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries the empire of the
Chazars was very powerful. As soon as the Chazars became independent
of the supremacy of the Turkestan Turks, they expanded their dominion
in all directions to the injury of the Black Sea Bulgars (Utigurs), the
Crimean Greeks, and other peoples. The Bulgarians were for a long
period in the seventh century the allies of the Byzantines. In 619
Organas, lord of the “Huns” (obviously the Utigurs), came with his
magnates and their wives to Constantinople and embraced with them
the Christian faith. In like manner Kovrat, Khan of the Bulgars, having
freed himself from the power of the Avars (635), became an ally of the
Byzantines. But when Kovrat died and his sons had divided his realm
between them, Batbayan, the youngest of them, who remained near the
Sea of Azov, was compelled to acknowledge the supremacy of the Chazars
and to pay them a tribute.
When in the second half of the seventh century the Arabian Caliphate
succeeded the Persian empire, the Chazars waged wars with the Arabs.
Their relations with the Byzantines did not change. ) They had been the
steady allies of the Greeks against the Persians, 'and remained their
allies also against the Arabs, in spite of frequent conflicts due to their
opposing interests in the Crimean peninsula.
During the reign of the third Caliph, Othman, the Arabs consolidated
their power in Armenia and even took a part of their lands from the
Chazars. After 683 Armenia was again menaced by the Chazars, but
in 690 they were severely defeated and many were burned in churches
where they had sought shelter.
According to Makin, the Arabs passed
the Caspian gate and killed many Chazars; those who survived were
compelled to embrace Islām.
## p. 189 (#231) ############################################
Relations with the Empire
189
At the beginning of the eighth century the Chazars already ruled
over a part of the Crimea, and conquered almost the whole of the peninsula
before the end of the century; only the town of Cherson kept its in-
dependence, although for a short time it fell under their rule. Towards
the end of the seventh century Justinian II, the dethroned Emperor
(685-695), was sent there into exile. Some time later he tried to regain
his throne, but when the inhabitants of the city attempted to hinder his
design, he fled to the Gothic town of Doras in the Crimea, whence he
sent to the Khagan of the Chazars, Vusir (Wazir) Gliavar, asking for a
hospitable reception. This the khagan accorded him with much kindness,
and gave him his sister Theodora in marriage. Justinian then lived some
time in Phanagoria or Tamatarcha (on the peninsula now called Taman),
which at that time belonged to the Chazars. But the Emperor Tiberius
Apsimar induced the khagan by incessant bribes to turn traitor and to
send him Justinian either dead or alive. The khagan ordered his tuduns
(lieutenants) in Phanagoria and Bosphorus to slay Justinian. The plans
for the execution of the treachery were ready, but Theodora warned her
husband in time, and he fled to the Bulgarian prince Tervel, who even
aided him to regain his throne in 705.
Justinian now turned all his thoughts to wreaking his revenge on
the inhabitants of Cherson. Three times he sent fleets and troops to
the Crimea, but no sooner did the third army begin to beleaguer Cherson
with some success than the forces of the Chazars arrived and relieved the
town. Cherson retained thereafter its autonomy under an elected ad-
ministrator (proteuon) until the time of the Emperor Theophilus, that is
for more than a century.
From Byzantine sources we learn that the Emperor Leo the Isaurian
sent an ambassador to the Khagan of the Chazars to ask the khagan's
daughter as a bride for his son Constantine, who was then in his fifteenth
year. The Chazar princess was christened and named Irene (732). In
750 she became the mother of Leo, surnamed the Chazar. She introduced
into Constantinople the Chazar garment called toitzakia, which the
Emperors donned for festivities.
In the eighth century the Chazars had wars with the Arabs with
alternating success. Georgia and Armenia were devastated by these wars
during a period of eighty years. In 764 the Chazars again invaded these
territories, but after that they are not mentioned by the Arabian authors
before the end of the eighth century. The Khagan of the Chazars then
made an inroad into Armenia in 799 with a great army and ravaged it
cruelly, but finally he was expelled by the Caliph Hārūn ar-Rashid.
This was, as far as we know, the last predatory expedition of the Chazars
into a land south of the Caucasus.
The organisation of the imperial power of the Chazars is very inter-
esting. At the head of the State was the supreme khagan (ilek), but his
power was only nominal. The real government was in the hands of his
-
CA. VIL
## p. 190 (#232) ############################################
190
Chazar institutions
deputy, called khugan bey or even simply khagan and isha. He was the
chief commander of the forces and chief administrator. The supreme
khagan was never in touch with his people; he lived in his harem and
appeared in public only once every four months, when he took a ride
accompanied by a bodyguard which followed him at a distance of a mile.
His court numbered four thousand courtiers and his bodyguard twelve
thousand men, a number which was always kept undiminished.
The supreme Khagan of the Chazars practised polygamy, having
twenty-five legal wives, who were every one of them daughters of neigh-
bouring princes. Moreover he kept sixty concubines. The main force of
the Chazar army was formed by the bodyguard of 12,000. These troops
are called by the Arabian writers al-arsīya or al-lārisīya, which Westberg
says should be karisiya, because the overwhelming majority of them were
Muslim mercenaries from Khwārazm, the Khiva of our days. In addition
to these, men belonging to other nations (Mas“ūdi mentions “Russians”
and Slavs) were also taken into the bodyguard or other service of the
khagan. This Musulman bodyguard stipulated that it should not be
obliged to take part in a war against co-religionists, and that the vizier
must be chosen from its ranks.
בל
An ideal tolerance in religion was exercised in the dominions of the
Chazars. The Chazars proper (Turks) were originally all heathen and
Shamanists. But in course of time Judaism began to spread among the
higher classes. Further, some of the nations subdued by the Chazars
were heathen, while others professed Christianity. The bodyguard, as
we have seen, was almost entirely composed of Muslims, and part of the
inhabitants of the capital, Itil, as well as some foreign merchants, were
also adherents of Islām. The ruler and his courtiers professed Judaism
about the middle of the eighth century (according to other authorities
not earlier than the end of the eighth or the beginning of the ninth
century).
Judaism and Christianity could spread among the Chazars from two
quarters, from the Caucasus and from the Crimea. The existence of
Jewish communities is attested by inscriptions dating from the first to the
third century of our era in the towns of Panticapaeum, Gorgippia (now
Anápa) at the north-western end of the Caucasus, and Tanais. In the
eighth century Phanagoria or Tamatarcha was the principal seat of the
Jews of the Cimmerian Bosphorus; and in the ninth century it is even
called a Jewish town, the Samkarsh of the Jews.
Islām did not predominate among the Chazars before the second half
of the tenth century. It seems that Christianity did not find many
followers. It was the religion only of some Caucasian tribes subdued by
the Chazars, and probably of some foreign merchants who visited the
Chazar towns for their business. St Cyril endeavoured to convert the
Chazars to Christianity but with no considerable result, for we learn
## p. 191 (#233) ############################################
Religious tolerance
191
from a legend of the saint that only two hundred Chazars were
christened.
All religions were ideally tolerant towards each other in the Chazar
lands, so that this half-barbarian state could serve as an example to
many a Christian state of medieval and even modern Europe. The courts
of justice were organised in the capital town of the ruler according to
religions. Seven or, according to Ibn Fadlan, nine judges held courts to
administer justice; two of them were appointed for the Muslims, two
for the Jews, two for Christians, and one for the heathen. If the judges
of their own religion were unable to decide a complicated controversy, the
litigants appealed to the cadis of the Muslims, whose administration of
justice at that time was considered as the most perfect.
But in spite of religious tolerance, it was a great drawback to the
Chazar state that there existed within it so many different religions,
and, in all probability, it suffered much harm from the adoption of the
Mosaic faith by the rulers and their courtiers. The inhabitants of the
Chazar empire could not coalesce into one nation, and the Chazar realm
continued until its downfall to be a conglomerate of different ethnic and
religious elements. The state was upheld by artificial means, especially
by the foreign Musulman mercenaries. Although the downfall of the
empire did not begin in the ninth century, yet in the tenth it certainly
was in rapid decline.
That the Chazar civilisation attained a high development is apparent
from the flourishing commerce of a part of the inhabitants and from the
existence of several great towns in the empire. The authorities mention
principally the towns Iti), Balanjar, Samandar, and Sarkel. Balanjar
was a more ancient capital of the Chazars; some ancient authors wrongly
assert that it is identical with Itil or Atel.
The oriental historians give us a better knowledge of the later resi-
dence of the Chazar kbagans, the town Itil or Atel, than we have of
Balanjar. It was the greatest town of the Chazars, situated some miles
from the estuary of the river Volga (by the Turks named also Itil or
Atel), to the north of the present town of Astrakhan. The ancient Arab
authors call this town Al-Baidā (The White City), which corresponds
with the later name Sarygshar (Yellow City), as the western part of the
town of Itil was called. The Arabian geographers relate that the town
of Itil was composed of two (according to Masóūdī of three) parts
separated by the river Itil. The western part situated on the river was
the greater, where the supreme khagan resided. The ruler's palace was
the only building constructed of brick; the other houses were either
of timber or clay. The eastern part of the town was probably the business
centre of the Chazars. But according to Ibn Rusta the Chazar inhabi-
tants lived in this twin-town only in winter, moving in spring to the
steppes. This led Marquart to the opinion that Itil was the winter
Cf. infra, Chapter vii (B), pp. 219-20.
CE. VO.
## p. 192 (#234) ############################################
192
The Burdas
resort (kishlak) of the Chazars and Balanjar their summer dwelling
(yaylak). Later writers, beginning with the twelfth century, give the
name Saksin to the town of Itil.
On the river Don was an important town of the Chazars, Sarkel
(White Town, a name which the Greeks translated correctly "Aom povoot-
tlov, and the Russians Bélavêzha). According to Constantine Porphyro-
genitus, this town was built in the reign of the Greek Emperor Theophilus
(829-842) at the request of the Khagan of the Chazars. The Emperor
is said to have sent there Petronas, who built the city for the Chazars
about 835 and was at the same time made an imperial governor,
strategus of the city of Cherson, which had hitherto enjoyed full
autonomy, being governed by a proteuon elected by the citizens.
The Emperor Constantine does not say against whom Sarkel was
built, but according to Cedrenus (eleventh century) it was against the
Patzinaks. Uspenski tries to prove that the town of Sarkel was founded
at the initiative of the Greeks, to secure the Greek territory on the north
shores of the Black Sea and at the same time to protect the Chazars,
their allies.
To the Chazar empire belonged, according to Ibn Rusta, a people
called Burdas or Burtas by the orientals. Their territory extended
along the Volga at a distance of a fortnight's journey from the territory
of the Chazars proper. The Burdas disposed of an army of 10,000 horse.
Their limited political capacity prevented them from founding an inde-
pendent state. In fact Ibn Rusta narrates that they had no other chief-
tains than the elders of their communes. Their territory was rich in
forests. They reared cattle, were hunters, and practised a little agri-
culture and commerce. They raided the neighbouring Bulgars and
Patzinaks. They practised the vendetta in sanguinary feuds. The
ethnical affinity of the Burdas is still a matter of dispute; according to
Mas'udi they were a people of a Turkish race, settled along the banks
of a river called also Burdas (according to Marquart, the Samara). They
exported great quantities of black and brown fox-hides, generally called
burtasians.
To the north of the Burdas the Bulgars were settled. Their land
extended over the regions of the central Volga to the river Kama, and
was full of swamps and dense forests. They are the so-called Volga and
Kama Bulgars, White or Silver Bulgars, who remained in their original
homes when part of the nation emigrated to the Black Sea. They were
divided into three tribes, the Barsuls, the Esegels, and the Bulgars
proper. They also belonged to the most advanced Ural-Altaic peoples.
They very early began to till their lands, and were good hunters and
shrewd tradesmen as intermediaries of the commerce between the Swedes
(" Russians "), Slavs, and Chazars. The southern boundaries of their lands
were only a three days' journey distant from the territory of the Burdas. )
## p. 193 (#235) ############################################
The White Bulgars
193
The Volga Bulgars often made predatory invasions on their swift horses
into the lands of the Burdas and carried the inhabitants into captivity.
Among themselves they used fox-hides instead of money, although they
obtained silver coins (dirhem, i. e. drachma) from the Muslim countries.
These silver coins were used by the Bulgars as money when trading with
foreigners, the Swedes and Slavs, who did not exchange wares except for
money. The great number of foreign coins found in the present
government of Perm near the river Kama is the best proof of the brisk
trade the Bulgars already drove in the fifth century with foreign lands,
especially with the far Orient, the coins being Sasanian and Indo-Bactrian
of the fifth century.
To supply the increasing need for specie, the Bulgars began to coin
their own money in the tenth century. Three Bulgarian coins of native
origin, struck in Bulgary in the towns of Bulgar and Suvar under the
rulers Talib and Mumin, have been preserved from the years 950 and 976.
Trade drew members of very different nations to the Bulgarian
cities—Chazars, Swedes, Finns, Slavs, Greeks, Armenians, and Khwāraz-
mians. The principal commercial route of the Bulgars was the Volga;
by this river merchandise was carried to the west, and southwards to the
Caspian Sea, for several centuries called the Chazar Sea. Two waterways
led to the west, one to the Western Dvina and the Dnieper, the other
by the Oka upstream to its sources and thence by land to the river Desna
to reach Kiev downstream. Merchandise was also shipped southwards to
the Sea of Azov. The ships went down the Volga to the point opposite
to where the Don bends farthest eastward. From here the wares were
transported by land to the Don and then shipped to the Sea of Azov.
There was moreover another trade route by land to the south.
The centre of the Volga-Bulgarian realm was situated in the
country where the river Kama joins the Volga. North and south of the
confluence of the Kama and along its upper course were the principal
Bulgarian towns. The capital, called Bulgar by the Arabian writers,
was situated at a distance of about 20 miles to the south of the junc-
tion of the Kama, and about four miles from the Volga, between the present
towns of Spassk and Tetyushi. In the Russian annals of 1164 it appears
under the name of “the great town,” and not earlier than 1361 it is for
the first time called Bulgary. The advantageous situation near the Volga
was the cause of its rapid growth, and its extensive trade made it famous
all over the Orient. The best proof of the great size of the city is perhaps
the narrative of Ibn Haukal, an author of the second half of the tenth
century, who tells us that even after the devastation of the town by the
Russians it contained 10,000 inhabitants. It was only after the invasion
of the Mongols that the town of Bulgar declined; it decayed con-
siderably during the second half of the fourteenth century owing to the
ravages of Tamerlane, and was completely destroyed by the Golden
Horde.
C. MED. H. VOL. IV, CH. VII.
13
## p. 194 (#236) ############################################
194
The White Bulgars
The first beginnings of the political life of the Bulgars are unknown
to us. The history of the Volga-Bulgars becomes somewhat clearer when
the Russian annals and the Arabian writers give some notices of them in
the tenth century. The advantageous situation of the land was favour-
able to the formation of a state. The north and east were inhabited by
the inert Ugrian tribes of the Eastern Finns, who were no menace to their
neighbours. To the south lived the Chazars, powerful indeed but
remote, and separated by the territory of the Burdas from the Bulgars.
It was not until the ninth century that a dangerous neighbour arose on
their western borders in the Russian state. The expeditions of the
Russians against the Bulgars will be mentioned later. The Ugrian tribes,
settled to the north and east of the Bulgars, were partly under the
dominion of the Bulgars and partly retained their independence, such as
the Permyaks, Yugers, Votyaks, and Cheremises. All these peoples had
their own tribal princes, and their submission to the Bulgars consisted
only in the payment of a tribute chiefly of furs.
We get some information of the political organisation of the Bulgars
from Ibn Fadlan, who in June 921 was dispatched by the Caliph Muq-
tadir of Baghdad to the ruler of the Bulgars to instruct them at his
request in Islām; he built a mosque, and for the Bulgarian ruler a
castle where he could resist the attacks of hostile princes. Ibn Fadlan
arrived at Bulgar in the early summer of 922, and accomplished his task.
We learn from his description of the journey, preserved by the geographer
Yāqūt, that the throne of the Bulgarian rulers was hereditary and their
power limited by that of the princes and magnates. As a proof of this,
four princes, subject to the Bulgarian king, are mentioned, who went
with their brothers and children to meet the embassy led by Ibn Fadlan.
They were probably tribal chieftains, although we are informed by other
authors that there were only three Bulgarian tribes.
With the ninth century we get a clearer insight into the history of
the Magyars, another Ural-Altaic nation, which began to play its
part in history within the territory of the later Russian empire, on the
northern coasts of the Black Sea. There are but few nations of whose
origin and original settlements we know so little as we do of the Mag-
yars. The majority of writers contend that they are a nation of Finnish
origin, which only at a later period was under the influence of the Turks
and Slavs. The principal champion of this theory is Hunfalvy. Vámbéry
on the contrary thinks that the Magyars are a Turkish race, which
inhabited the northern and north-eastern border-lands of the Turco-
Tartar tribes and was in touch with the Ugrian tribes. To Vámbéry the
language is not of such decisive weight as the social life and civilisation.
The whole mode of living, the first appearance in history; the political
organisation of the Magyars, shew clearly that they belong in origin to
Turco-Tartar races. According to Vámbéry, even the names by which
## p. 195 (#237) ############################################
The Magyars
195
the Magyars are called by foreigners are of considerable moment. Not
only the Byzantines but also the Arabo-Persian writers called them
“ Turks. ” Vámbéry therefore is of the opinion that the Magyars
originally belonged to the Turco-Tartar peoples, and that they in course
of time adopted in their vocabulary Finno-Ugrian words. The ethnical
blending of the two races began in times so remote that it escapes
historical observation.
Winkler found in the Magyar language a yet greater mixture. The
Finnish foundation was influenced, as he thinks, by the Turkish, Mongol,
Dravidian, Iranian, and Caucasian languages.
By far the majority of scholars accept Hunfalvy's theory. But, although
Vámbéry's fundamental opinion may not be quite correct, it must be con-
ceded that the cultural influence of the Turks on the Finno-Ugrian
Magyars was so strong that they thoroughly changed their former mode
of life, and that from hunters they became a nomadic people, one of the
most warlike of nations.
The oriental authors give us the first mention of the Magyars.
Although they wrote in the tenth century and later, the first original
source from which they derived their information comes from the
second quarter of the ninth century. Ibn Rusta locates the territory of
the Magyars between the Patzinaks, who lived as nomads in the Ural-
Caspian steppes, and the Esegelian Bulgars, i. e. in the territory of the
Bashkirs, called by the Arabian authors Bashgurt and the like. It
seems that Ibn Rusta confounds the Bashkirs with the Magyars, which
can be easily explained by the kinship of the two nations. According
to Pauler they were one nation, of which the lesser part, the Bashkirs,
remained in their original territory, later on called Great Hungaria,
whereas the greater part, the Magyars, migrated about the beginning
of the ninth century in a south-westerly direction to the Black Sea.
But this was not the first Magyar wave flowing from north to south.
Constantine Porphyrogenitus, who also gives us important information
regarding the Magyars, says that only a part of the new immigrants
remained near the Black Sea, whereas another branch called Eaßáptou
ão parou moved farther to the east into Persia, where these Eastern
Magyars lived even in his time in the tenth century.
At first the Magyars occupied the lands near the Black Sea between
the rivers Don and Dnieper. Ibn Rusta and Gurdizi very clearly mention
two great rivers to which they give different names. Constantine Porphy-
rogenitus calls this first territory of the Magyars near the Black Sea
Lebedia. Many writers have tried to explain this word, but without
success. Constantine speaks of a river Chidmas or Chingylus, which
watered the territory of the Magyars.
The lands between the rivers Don and Dnieper belonged to the Chazars
at the beginning of the ninth century. The Magyars therefore must
CH. VII.
13–2
## p. 196 (#238) ############################################
196
Admixture of races
have fought them to get possession of their new home. Constantine
Porphyrogenitus says indeed that the Magyars were the allies of the
Chazars, and that they were their neighbours during three years (which
some authors correct to 200 or 300 years or at least to 30 years), but
an alliance seems to have been impossible, at least at the beginning of
the settlement of the Magyars near the Black Sea. The existence of an
alliance between the two nations is further made improbable by another
report of Constantine that the Kabars (which means, according to
Vámbéry, insurgents), a part of the Chazars who were in revolt, joined
seven Magyar tribes, becoming thus the eighth tribe. Even if we do not
take into account that the Magyars occupied lands belonging to the
Chazar empire, they could not at the beginning have been the friends of
the Chazars, because they received among them the insurgent Kabars.
Besides a part of the Chazars a certain number also of Black Bulgars,
living near the Don, joined the Magyars, for all the nomadic hordes
absorbed the different foreign elements barring their way. And so the
Magyars, too, were a motley ethnical conglomerate when they settled
on the banks of the Black Sea.
Constantine Porphyrogenitus has preserved for us the names of the
seven tribes composing the Magyar people. The principal tribe, Meryepn,
in all probability gave its name at that time to the whole nation; the
Musulman writers at least know this name (Majghariyah, Majghariyan),
whereas the Byzantines called the Magyars for a longer period
“Turks,"
evidently considering them, just as the Musulman writers did, to be
a nation of Turkish origin.
At the head of the several Magyar tribes were chieftains, called after
the Slav fashion voivodes (army-leaders). According to the reports of
the Musulman authors, the Magyars like the Chazars had two rulers.
One of them was called kende (knda) and is said to have held the higher
rank, but the real government was in the hands of the jila (jele). Čon-
stantine Porphyrogenitus gives a different description of the political
organisation of the Magyars, saying that beside the ruling prince there
were two judges, one of whom was called gyla and the other karchas.
The dignity of the gyla (Magyar, gyula) may be identical with that of
the jila of the Musulman writers. The jila was both a judge and a
military commander according to Ibn Rusta; but as he was sometimes
unable on account of old age to perform the duties of a military chief-
tain, the Magyars elected besides him a deputy called kende. This
prominent dignity, combined with its outer splendour, could easily be
mistaken by foreigners for that of the chief ruler. Pauler thinks that
Constantine Porphyrogenitus, who certainly used some Chazar writings,
meant by the word karchas the dignity of the kende. It seems, at any
rate, that the dignities of karchas and kende were copied by the Magyars
from the institutions of the Chazars. These words are Turkish, whereas
gyula is Magyar. The offices disappeared in the Christian period, but
## p. 197 (#239) ############################################
Magyar customs
197
during a heathen reaction the Magyars reinstated that of the karchas,
as appears from the decree (m. 2) of King Ladislas the Saint, dating
from the year 1092.
According to Ibn Rusta, the Magyars in their new homes lived during
the summer on the steppes, moving with their tents wherever they found
a better pasture for their horses and cattle. They even tilled some land.
