Rouran epochGöktürk epochUyghur epochKirghiz epoch
RouranFirst GöktürkTang ruleSecond GöktürkUyghurKirghizHunsWestern GöktürkTürgeshKarlukKhazar
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  • 900

In the lands that once belonged to the Khazar Khaganate, archaeologists have found short texts and marks in signs like those of the Orkhon stones. They stand on flasks, on a bull’s skull, on wall blocks, on tiles and on rock. They come from the Don, the North Caucasus and the Crimea. The signs are called runiform, like those of the Old Turkic script itself.

Two facts hold for the whole group. No inscription is dated by its text, and no reading has been accepted. Runiform inscriptions found in the Khazar lands and further west have been ascribed to the Khazars, the Avars, the Pechenegs and the Bulgars, and no reading proposed for them has been satisfactory.[1] One surveyor writes that the Khazar alphabet has not been deciphered despite all attempts.[2] Another quotes a Russian specialist for the view that the Khazar and Bulgar runiform alphabets cannot be deciphered at present, because their palaeography is original.[3]

The finds of the Don and the Caucasus

The monuments called Khazar were found in the thirty years before 1993. They include inscriptions on two flasks from Novocherkassk, a wall inscription from Mayatskoye Gorodishche, the inscriptions of Humara and a bull’s skull found near Elista.[2] About thirteen of the signs are close to signs of the Orkhon stones. Seven or eight resemble only the Székely script of Hungary.[2] The language is probably Turkic. Bulgar Turkic and Common Turkic are both possible, and the surveyor holds the first more likely.[2]

The same surveyor holds that the script arose in the seventh or eighth century on the model of the Göktürk letters.[2] That date is his assumption. The finds do not give it.

A study of 1989 collected the runiform inscriptions of Europe, among them seventy-two from the North Caucasus. It names as find-places the mountains of Karachay and Balkaria, Bilar in the Volga basin, Sarkel, Mayaki and Mayatsk on the Don, Murfatlar and Nagyszentmiklós.[4] The author reports tombstones in early medieval rock graves at the pass of Hasaut. On them, he holds, the same text stands in two forms of the script, which he calls the Göktürk and the Old Uyghur type.[5] He counts more than a hundred different sign forms. Hard and soft consonants are still kept apart, as on the Orkhon and Yenisei stones.[6]

The Crimea

In the south-east of the Crimea, stone blocks of the walls of Sudak and Mangup, tiles, potsherds and grave slabs of the eighth to tenth century carry signs like tamgas. Whether they are marks of a tribe or letters is not settled.[7] The authors of the survey set them with the Turkic Bulgars of the Saltovo-Mayaki culture. They call that assignment secure for only part of the tile signs, and doubtful for the Saltovo-Mayaki monuments of the Crimea in general.[8] A first attempt at an interpretation for the whole Khazar realm had worked from material of the Alans in the same culture.[9]

Astragali, or knucklebones, of the eighth to tenth century from Tepsen carry scratched marks, among them a pair of two-toothed signs and a group of six signs that some read as a tamga text.[10]

One piece is a candidate for runiform letters in the proper sense. A fragment of schist from the burnt layer of the tenth century in the fortress of Gurzuf is covered with signs that some take for runiform letters. Two drawings of it disagree in many details.[11]

The letter from Kiev

The Hebrew letter called the Kiev letter, of the tenth century, was long thought to contain one runiform word of Khazar, hokurüm, “I have read”. Several scholars, among them Pritsak and Ligeti, took this view.[12] Harmatta argued instead that the word is not runiform at all but a Hebrew note added later. He also read the place name in the letter as Canopus in the Nile delta, not Kiev.[13]

Hebrew is the other writing named for the Khazars. The author al-Nadim says at the end of the tenth century that the Khazars wrote Hebrew.[14]

Finds on the Volga, the Kama and the Oka

North and east of the Khazar lands, a hoard and some single pieces carry runiform marks as well. A study of 1983 presents seven such find-places between the Volga, the Kama and Fergana.[15]

At Sungirevskoe near Vladimir, a slate spindle whorl excavated in 1954 carries nine signs. The settlement dates from the seventh century.[16] The signs may be a call to a woman named Umay.[17]

In a hoard found in 1927 at Turuseva on the Kama, two Byzantine silver vessels carry scratches of several owners. The reader takes them for notes of ownership, and says himself that the photograph is poor and the signs can be guessed more than seen.[18] A silver plate from Kerceva on the Kama has a short inscription on its underside whose reading is not certain.[19] On a rock near Bolshoe Mikushkino on the Sok, a tamga has its nearest parallel on an iron strap end from an Avar grave at Keszthely-Csákberény in Hungary.[20]

The same author draws a route from these finds. Karluk and Western Göktürk groups carried the script west to the Urals, the Volga and the Oka. From there it may have reached the Carpathian basin with a late migration of the Avars.[21] A survey of the Avars holds the runiform marks on Avar objects to be uncertain in reading, and perhaps property marks.[22] For the two larger late Avar monuments, see the treasure of Nagyszentmiklós and the Szarvas needle case.

For the inscriptions of the lower Danube, see Murfatlar and the sign corpus of Danube Bulgaria. For the question where the script itself arose, see the debate on the origin of the Old Turkic script.

References

  1. ^ Erdal 2004, p. 4
  2. ^ a b c d e Vásáry 1993, p. 57–58
  3. ^ Mits 2000 (Jahrgang after dem Dateinamen), p. 276
  4. ^ Bayçorov 1990, p. 13–14
  5. ^ Bayçorov 1990, p. 14
  6. ^ Bayçorov 1990, p. 15
  7. ^ Mits 2000 (Jahrgang after dem Dateinamen), p. 267–273
  8. ^ Mits 2000 (Jahrgang after dem Dateinamen), p. 267, 273
  9. ^ Mits 2000 (Jahrgang after dem Dateinamen), p. 267
  10. ^ Mits 2000 (Jahrgang after dem Dateinamen), p. 270
  11. ^ Mits 2000 (Jahrgang after dem Dateinamen), p. 275
  12. ^ Zieme 2000, p. 377; 57; Vásáry 1993, p. 377; 57
  13. ^ Zieme 2000, p. 377
  14. ^ Vásáry 1993, p. 57
  15. ^ Harmatta 1987 (Jahr after dem Dateinamen; ungarisches Original 1983), p. 57–58
  16. ^ Harmatta 1987 (Jahr after dem Dateinamen; ungarisches Original 1983), p. 58
  17. ^ Harmatta 1987 (Jahr after dem Dateinamen; ungarisches Original 1983), p. 58–59
  18. ^ Harmatta 1987 (Jahr after dem Dateinamen; ungarisches Original 1983), p. 60–66
  19. ^ Harmatta 1987 (Jahr after dem Dateinamen; ungarisches Original 1983), p. 66–67
  20. ^ Harmatta 1987 (Jahr after dem Dateinamen; ungarisches Original 1983), p. 67–71
  21. ^ Harmatta 1987 (Jahr after dem Dateinamen; ungarisches Original 1983), p. 73
  22. ^ Sinor 1990, p. 225

Sources

Literature

  • István Vásáry, Doğu Avrupa'nın Runik Alfabe Sistemleri Üzerine (1993)
  • Soslanbek Y. Bayçorov, Avrupa’nın Göktürk Harfli Eski Anıtları. Göktürk Harfli Eski Yazının Kuzey Kafkasya, Volga-Don ve Tuna Bölgeleriyle İlişkisi (1990)
  • Viktor Leonidoviç Mits; Vadim Vladislawoviç Mayko (Turkish translation: Risbek Alimov), VIII.–X. Yüzyıl Tavrika Türk-Bulgarlarının Runik ve Damgavari İşaretleri Meselesi Üzerine (2000 (Jahrgang after dem Dateinamen))
  • Peter Zieme, Runik Harfli Birkaç Pasaj Üzerine Kimi Yorum Önerileri (2000)
  • János Harmatta (Turkish translation: Hicran Akın), Doğu Avrupa’da Türk Oyma Yazılı Kitabeler (1987 (Jahr after dem Dateinamen; ungarisches Original 1983))
  • Marcel Erdal, A Grammar of Old Turkic (2004)
  • Denis Sinor (ed.), The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (1990)

Articles resting on this source 1

The Khazar language

Related

What links here7

Places
Sarkel
Peoples
Bulgars
Languages
The Khazar language
Sources
Murfatlar inscriptions · Protobulgarian sign corpus · Szarvas needle case inscription · Treasure of Nagyszentmiklós

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Runiform inscriptions of the Khazar lands.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/sources/khazar-runiform-inscriptions/

Last revised: 8 November 2026