Campaign of Marwan (737)

In 737 the Umayyad general Marwan ibn Muhammad, later the caliph Marwan II, carried the Arab war against the Khazars to the lower Volga.^[1] He reached the Khazar heartland and pursued the fleeing khagan to the land of the Burtas, who were subjects of the Khazars.^[1] The khagan was forced to become a Muslim and a subject of the caliph.^[1] The campaign ended the first, warlike stage of the Arab–Khazar wars.^[2]

The march

Marwan entered Khazar land with two armies, and in Balādhurī’s account he himself went in by Bāb al-Lān, the gate of the Alans, while Asīd ibn Ẓāfir went in from the side of Bāb al-Abwāb, which is Derbent.^[3] One standard history identifies the first route with the Darial pass.^[4] Marwan deceived the Khazars first, for a truce was agreed on the pretext that he would march against the Alans.^[4] He used the truce to attack.^[4] He reached Samandar.^[5] The khagan withdrew to the north-east, towards the mountains, and left his capital under a picked force.^[5] Marwan came up to the neighbourhood of al-Bayda’, as the Arabs called the Khazar capital, but did not blockade it, and turned away to march north along the right bank of the Volga.^[6]

One standard history puts the Arab force at perhaps as many as 150,000 men, volunteers as well as regular levies.^[4]

The khagan’s Islam

Balādhurī tells that Marwan invited the khagan to “Islam or war”, and that the khagan answered that he had accepted Islam.^[7] The khagan professed Islam and made a treaty with Marwan, who confirmed him as ruler of his kingdom.^[7] Ibn Aʿtham al-Kūfī reports the conversion too.^[2] In the accounts of Ibn Aʿtham and Bal’amī, two jurists from Marwan’s entourage instructed the khagan, among them ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Khawlānī.^[8]

The conversion lasted little longer than the presence of Arab soldiers on Khazar land.^[2] The khagan renounced Islam and the overlordship of the caliph as soon as the Arab army had gone.^[1] The Arabic sources give no sign that the khagan was a Jew when he received this instruction.^[9]

Results

The Arabs kept their hold on much of Transcaucasia, which Khazar raiding had never seriously threatened. They did not move their rule beyond Bab al-Abwab, the fortress of Derbent.^[2] In the same year the Arabs beat the Türgesh in Central Asia.^[2]

For the Khazar elite, the forced conversion made the religious question urgent.^[10] Some scholars find it remarkable that a khagan would be a Muslim in 737 and a Jew about 740, the date of the later Hebrew tradition for the conversion to Judaism.^[11] On their view the change becomes more understandable if the religious and political situation had been violently disturbed a year or two before.^[11] The same scholars allow that the religious debate before the khagan, which the Hebrew sources report, may be connected with the Muslim jurists sent by Marwan.^[11]

References

^ a b c d Sinor 1990, p. 265
^ a b c d e Golden 1992, p. 238
^ al-Balādhurī; al-Balādhurī 1916, p. 325
^ a b c d Dunlop 1954, p. 81
^ a b Dunlop 1954, p. 82
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 82–83
^ a b al-Balādhurī; al-Balādhurī 1916, p. 326
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 84
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 178
^ Golden 1992, p. 242
^ a b c Dunlop 1954, p. 86

Sources

al-Balādhurī

Literature

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