Kabars

The Kabars were a group of Khazar origin. They left the Khazar Khaganate after a civil war, the Kabar revolt, and joined the Hungarian tribal union.^[1] The one source that treats them in their own right is the handbook De administrando imperio of the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII.^[2]

The account of Constantine VII

Constantine writes in chapter 39 of De administrando imperio: “The so-called Kabaroi were of the race of the Chazars. Now, it fell out that a secession was made by them to their government, and when a civil war broke out their first government prevailed, and some of them were slain, but others escaped and came and settled with the Turks in the land of the Pechenegs, and they made friends with one another, and were called Kabaroi.” The emperor calls the Hungarians Turks. The Greek words behind “secession” and “civil war” are apostasia and polemos emphylios.^[3]

He adds that the Kabars taught these Turks the language of the Khazars. They kept that language up to his own day, but they also have the other language of the Turks.^[3] The other language is taken to be the Finno-Ugric language of the Hungarians.^[4] Because they showed themselves the strongest and most valorous of the eight clans in war, the Kabars were promoted to be the first clans.^[3] Chapter 40 lists the eight clans, with the Kabaroi first and then the Nekis, Megeris, Kourtougermatos, Tarianos, Genach, Kari and Kasi.^[3]

Constantine names no cause for the revolt, no date and no leader.^[3]

Among the Hungarians

The Hungarians of the Pontic steppe lay within the orbit of Khazaria.^[4] Most of the seven other clans in his list have Bashkir equivalents.^[5] The union had a Finno-Ugric base and was strongly influenced by Bulgar Turkic and by the Turkic nomadic cultures of the steppe. The migration of the Kabars shows that Turkic elements were part of it.^[5] The Hungarians are held to have taken from the Khazars the double kingship of a gyula and a kende.^[4] The Pechenegs drove them west in several stages, the first from Levedia around the middle of the ninth century and the second from Etelköz in its last decade.^[4] The Kabars went with the Hungarians to Pannonia.^[1]

The date of the revolt

The date is not settled. One account puts the breakaway in the early ninth century.^[1] A second suggests the latter half of the ninth century.^[6] A survey of the question lists dates around 780, around 800, the 810s, around 830, about 850 to 855, and the years from 861 or 862 to 881.^[7] The range decides whether the revolt falls before or after the conversion of the Khazar court to Judaism. Without a fixed date it cannot be shown to have followed from the conversion.

Causes of the revolt

Constantine gives no reason. Scholars have proposed several explanations.

The first explanation connects the revolt with religious strife over the conversion to Judaism. Mikhail Artamonov, Douglas Dunlop, Novoselcev and András Róna-Tas have argued for such a link or have admitted it.^[8] Dunlop calls it attractive to think that the revolt had to do with the conversion of the ruling section of the Khazars to Judaism, which he dates to about 740.^[9] Artamonov saw the revolt as a rising of the Khazar nobles against the power that Obadiah had taken.^[10] The link is a hypothesis. It depends on a date for the conversion. Other accounts put the conversion later, in the time of Harun al-Rashid, between 786 and 809.^[11]

A second set of explanations gives the Kabars a different religion. They were Karaites or pagans rising against a rabbinic government. Or they were Jews in conflict with pagan Khazars. Or they were Muslims, or under a Muslim military aristocracy, in conflict with the Jewish court.^[12]

A third set looks for other causes. The Kabars rose for ethnic reasons. They were mercenaries rising against the court. They took part in a struggle inside the dual kingship, as supporters of the khagan against the bek.^[12]

A fourth explanation sees the ordinary course of a nomad state. Peter B. Golden writes that a falling out of tribes within a nomadic state is typical, and that the losing side removes itself from the union and joins another.^[13] He adds that, if a religious quarrel had caused the war, one of the sources would surely mention it.^[14] Constantine’s account of the Kabars does not mention religion.^[3] The survey itself holds the same view: a Judaisation of part of the ruling stratum could not have had consequences grave enough to cause a civil war. It sees a political revolt of three western tribes, beaten by the khagan and the bek.^[15]

A final argument is that attempts to ascribe the revolt to an anti-Judaising mood rest on imaginative interpretations of the Khazar-Hebrew Correspondence, a source that is not free of bias either.^[1]

The effect on Khazaria

The loss of the Kabars weakened Khazaria. Three tribes of the west had gone.^[15] The revolt is counted among the signs of weakening, beside the move of the vassal Volga Bulgars into the Islamic orbit, the annual wars against the Pechenegs and the Rus raids down the Volga.^[6] One account names the Kabar civil war, other unrecorded domestic troubles and the pressure of steppe peoples as the causes of the fall.^[16]

References

^ a b c d Sinor 1990, p. 268
^ Golden 1980, p. 136
^ a b c d e f De administrando imperio; Porphyrogenitus 1967 (New Revised Edition; Greek text and English translation), p. 175
^ a b c d Golden 1992, p. 262
^ a b Golden 1992, p. 261
^ a b Golden 1992, p. 243
^ Tóth 2012, p. 10–12
^ Tóth 2012, p. 8
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 203
^ Golden 1980, p. 133
^ Golden 1992, p. 241
^ a b Tóth 2012, p. 9–10
^ Golden 1980, p. 135–136
^ Golden 1980, p. 135
^ a b Tóth 2012, p. 10
^ Sinor 1990, p. 269

Sources

De administrando imperio

Literature

Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
Peter B. Golden, Khazar Studies, Vols. I–II (1980)
Denis Sinor (ed.), The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (1990)
S. L. Tóth, The Qavars (Qabars) and their Role in the Hungarian Tribal Federation (2012)
Douglas M. Dunlop, The History of the Jewish Khazars (1954)
Constantine Porphyrogenitus; Gyula Moravcsik (ed.); R. J. H. Jenkins (trans.), De administrando imperio (1967 (New Revised Edition; Greek text and English translation))