Arab–Khazar Wars (642–737)

Rouran epoch Göktürk epoch Uyghur epoch Kirghiz epoch

Rouran First Göktürk Tang rule Second Göktürk Uyghur Kirghiz Huns Western Göktürk Türgesh Karluk Khazar

Rouran 400–554
First Göktürk 552–630
Tang rule 630–682
Second Göktürk 682–744
Uyghur 744–840
Kirghiz 840–924
Huns 370–469
Western Göktürk 552–659
Türgesh 699–766
Karluk 766–800
Khazar 650–969

Between 642 and 737 Arab and Khazar armies fought for the Caucasus almost without pause, with occasional truces.^[1] The goal on both sides was the control of the passes. Through them nomads had once reached Transcaucasia and from there raided northern Mesopotamia and Anatolia.^[1] The wars ended without a decision. The Arabs held Transcaucasia but never moved their rule beyond Bab al-Abwab, the fortress of Derbent, and the Khazars had occupied no Arab land.^[2]

Stakes

The Khazar attacks followed the pattern of nomads who test the defences of their settled neighbours and try to take strategic regions. They were not wars of territorial conquest.^[3] Raids were also needed to hold the tribal union together, because the booty bound subject peoples such as the Huns of the North Caucasus to the ruling house.^[2]

The Khazars were not simply the aggressors. In the same decades the Umayyads were taking North Africa and Spain, pressing into Central Asia and raiding Byzantine Anatolia every year. They were every bit as rapacious.^[2] The Khazar lands in the North Caucasus also suffered heavy losses. Masʿūdī says that the Khazars moved their capital from Samandar to Atil on the lower Volga because of the pressure of the Arab attacks.^[2]

The Khazars had a partner in Byzantium. The two courts had cooperated since the Göktürk period, and both faced the same enemy, the caliphate. The marriage of 732 between the heir of Leo III and a daughter of the Khazar khagan showed the strength of this understanding.^[2]

The first war, 642 to 652

The first Arab raid on Balanjar, a Khazar possession in the North Caucasus, fell as early as 642.^[4] The Arabs came there after their conquests in Transcaucasia.^[4] The early notices tie the Khazars of the middle seventh century to Balanjar and Samandar, two towns of the North Caucasus. Where exactly they lay is not clear.^[1]

A first war is counted from 642 to 652.^[5] Its end falls at Balanjar, where the Arab leader ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Rabīʿa died.^[6] Balādhurī names his brother Salmān ibn Rabīʿa as the man killed there.^[7]

The Armenian historian Sebeos records an Arab defeat at the Gate of the Huns. An Arab army had crossed the Pass of Chor and ravaged the country at the foot of the mountain. The guards of the place defeated it, and an army from the land of the Tʿetalkʿ put the Arabs to the sword.^[8] The defeat belongs to the late spring or early summer of 655.^[9] The likeliest candidates for the Tʿetalkʿ are the Khazars.^[9]

The second war, 722 to 737

A second war is counted from 722 to 737.^[10] Among its episodes is the battle of Ardabil in 730.^[11] The Khazars under Barjik, a son of the khagan, beat the Arab governor al-Jarrah ibn Abdallah on the plain of Ardabil.^[12] Jarrah fell after three days of fighting.^[13] Ardabil was stormed.^[14] One standard history calls it perhaps the greatest defeat that the Arabs ever suffered from the Khazars.^[15] The battle is told by Ṭabarī, by Ibn al-Athīr and, in Persian, by Bal’amī.^[16] Al-Balādhurī tells it too.^[13]

The Arabic accounts then tell of a counterstroke under Said ibn Amr, who is said to have seen the head of Jarrah fixed above the car of the Khazar commander, in the middle of the Khazar ranks.^[17] One standard history judges that this story has the character of romance more than of history.^[18]

The campaign of Marwan in 737 ended the war.^[2] The Umayyad general Marwan ibn Muhammad, later caliph, reached the Khazar heartland on the lower Volga. He pursued the fleeing khagan to the land of the Burtas, who were subjects of the Khazars.^[4] The khagan was forced to become a Muslim and a subject of the caliph. He gave up both as soon as the Arab threat had passed.^[4]

After 737

The fighting went on during the eighth century at a lower level. Neither side could truly defeat the other.^[4] In 760 the Arab governor of Armenia married a Khazar princess, Khatun.^[2] Her death some years later served as the pretext for Khazar raids in 762 to 764.^[19] In 780 the Khazars were reluctant to help the Kartlian prince Nerse against the Arabs.^[20] The last major Khazar raid into Muslim Transcaucasia took place in 798 or 799.^[20] After that the period was one of peace and growing trade. Khazaria linked the expanding Abbasid trade with Europe along the Volga and Caspian routes.^[20]

Sporadic warfare with the Arabs in the Caucasus continued into the ninth century.^[21] The danger to the Khazars now came from the east and from the north-west.^[21]

Result

The Khazars had stopped the Arab advance at Bab al-Abwab.^[4] The Arabs were reaching the limits of their imperial drive at the same time. They had been halted in France in 732, and their effective power in Central Asia did not extend much beyond the southern border of Transoxiana.^[2] After the forced conversion of the khagan to Islam in 737, the question of religion came to the fore among the Khazar elite.^[22] The conversion to Judaism followed.^[22]

References

^ a b c Golden 1992, p. 237
^ a b c d e f g h Golden 1992, p. 238
^ Golden 1992, p. 237–238
^ a b c d e f Sinor 1990, p. 265
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 41
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 55–57
^ al-Balādhurī; al-Balādhurī 1916, p. 319
^ Sebeos, ch. 51
^ a b Howard-Johnston 1999, p. 278
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 58
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 69–71
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 63, 69–70
^ a b al-Balādhurī; al-Balādhurī 1916, p. 323
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 70
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 69
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 69–70
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 71–73
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 74
^ Golden 1992, p. 238–239
^ a b c Golden 1992, p. 239
^ a b Sinor 1990, p. 267
^ a b Golden 1992, p. 242

Sources

Literature

Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
Denis Sinor (ed.), The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (1990)
Douglas M. Dunlop, The History of the Jewish Khazars (1954)
R. W. Thomson (trans.), James Howard-Johnston (commentary), The Armenian History attributed to Sebeos (1999)
al-Balādhurī; Philip K. Hitti (trans.), The Origins of the Islamic State, Bd. I (Kitāb Futūḥ al-buldān) (1916)