The Kabars were a group of Khazar origin who broke away from Khazaria in a revolt and a civil war and joined the Hungarians.[1] The one source is the De administrando imperio of the emperor Constantine VII.[2] The text gives no cause, no date and no names of leaders.[1] Everything beyond this is interpretation.

The account of Constantine VII

The emperor writes that the so-called Kabaroi were of the race of the Khazars. A secession was made by them to their government, a civil war broke out, and the first government prevailed. Some of the rebels were slain. Others escaped and settled with the Turks, as the text calls the Hungarians, in the land of the Pechenegs. They made friends with one another and were called Kabaroi.[1] The Greek text uses apostasia for the secession and polemos emphylios for the civil war.[3]

The Kabars taught the Hungarians the language of the Khazars. Because of their courage they became the first clans among them.[1] The next chapter of the De administrando imperio lists the eight tribes.[1] The emperor adds that the Kabars kept the language of the Khazars up to his own day. They had also acquired the other language of the Hungarians.[1] Beside the Kabars of Khazar origin he lists seven Hungarian clans.[1]

The Kabars went with the Hungarians to Pannonia.[4] The Kabars formed three clans, and the emperor names them among the strongest and most valorous in war.[1] According to some scholars, their loss weakened the khaganate.[5]

Date

The date is open. Proposals include about 780, about 800, the 810s and about 830, the time of the Khazar request to Byzantium that led to the building of Sarkel.[6] Others place it around 850 or in 854 to 855, or after 861 and 862 and before 881.[6] The revolt has been put in the early ninth century.[4] Another proposal puts it perhaps in the latter half of the ninth century.[7] The range decides whether the revolt came before or after the court took up Judaism. Without a firm date it cannot be shown to follow from it.[6]

Causes

Constantine names no cause. The circumstances remain a mystery.[4] Several explanations have been proposed.

The most common explanation connects the revolt with religious strife over the conversion to Judaism.[8] Mikhail Artamonov holds this view, and so does Douglas M. Dunlop, who wrote that it is attractive to think the secession had something to do with the conversion of the ruling section of the Khazars to Judaism about 740.[9] András Róna-Tas calls the antagonism within the empire largely connected with the forcible conversion of the leading strata.[10] This version rests on a date of about 740 for the conversion, which is itself uncertain.[9]

Several other explanations have been put forward. The first holds that the Kabars were Karaites or pagans who rose against a rabbinic government. The second makes them Jews in conflict with pagan Khazars. The third makes them Muslims, or subjects of a Muslim military aristocracy. The fourth gives ethnic reasons, with Bulgars or Khwarazmians involved. The fifth sees a rising of the court’s mercenary soldiers. The sixth sees a struggle for power in the dual kingship, with the Kabars on the side of the khagan against the beg.[11] Some circumstantial evidence suggests that the Kabars were Muslims or had a strong Muslim element.[4]

A further explanation sees the revolt as an ordinary event of nomad states. Peter B. Golden calls it a typical falling out of tribes within a nomadic state, in which the losing side withdraws from the tribal union and joins another.[12] He adds that if the civil war had come from a religious conflict, one of the sources would surely have mentioned it.[13] Byzantine sources curiously say nothing about the religious question in Khazaria.[14] S. L. Tóth agrees. In his view a Judaising of one part of the leading stratum would not have had such weighty consequences in a nomadic empire. He sees a political revolt of three tribes in the west of the realm, beaten by the khagan and the beg.[5]

The attempt to ascribe the revolt to feeling against the Judaised Khazars rests on a strained interpretation of the Khazar–Hebrew correspondence, itself a source with a bias.[4]

Consequences

The Kabar civil war is one of the three causes named for the fall of the khaganate, beside unrecorded domestic troubles and the pressure of steppe peoples.[15] The revolt is the only firm evidence of the internal difficulties that the Khazar tribal union had by the time the Rus pressed it from the north-west.[4] The fall of the khaganate came a century or more later.

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h De administrando imperio; Porphyrogenitus 1967 (New Revised Edition; Greek text and English translation), p. 175
  2. ^ Golden 1980, p. 134–135
  3. ^ De administrando imperio; Porphyrogenitus 1967 (New Revised Edition; Greek text and English translation), p. 174
  4. ^ a b c d e f Sinor 1990, p. 268
  5. ^ a b Tóth 2012, p. 10
  6. ^ a b c Tóth 2012, p. 10–12
  7. ^ Golden 1992, p. 243
  8. ^ Tóth 2012, p. 8
  9. ^ a b Dunlop 1954, p. 203
  10. ^ Róna-Tas 1999, p. 329
  11. ^ Tóth 2012, p. 8–10
  12. ^ Golden 1980, p. 135–136
  13. ^ Golden 1980, p. 135
  14. ^ Golden 1992, p. 242
  15. ^ Sinor 1990, p. 269

Sources

Literature

  • Konstantin VII. Porphyrogennetos, De administrando imperio (ca. 948–952)
  • Constantine Porphyrogenitus; Gyula Moravcsik (ed.); R. J. H. Jenkins (trans.), De administrando imperio (1967 (New Revised Edition; Greek text and English translation))
  • 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)
  • S. L. Tóth, The Qavars (Qabars) and their Role in the Hungarian Tribal Federation (2012)
  • Peter B. Golden, Khazar Studies, Vols. I–II (1980)
  • András Róna-Tas, Hungarians and Europe in the Early Middle Ages (1999)
  • M. I. Artamonov, История хазар (1962)

Related

What links here4

States
Khazar Khaganate
Battles & Events
Fall of the Khazar Khaganate (about 965–969)
Peoples
Kabars
Sources
De administrando imperio

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Kabar Revolt.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/events/kabar-revolt/

Last revised: 8 November 2026