Khazar Customs and Tribute

The Khazar khagan had two sources of revenue. One was the customs and tithes on goods that passed through the country by land and water. The other was the tribute in kind that he levied inside his realm.^[1]

Al-Istakhri describes the first of these. He says that the king of the Khazars had no right to the property of his subjects. His treasury depended on customs dues and tithes on merchandise from every land route, sea and river. He also received regular payments assessed on the people of the districts, in food, drink and whatever else he required.^[2]

Customs and tithes

Russian merchants who traded in furs and swords paid the khagan or his representative a tenth of the value of their cargoes.^[3] The geographer Ibn Khurdadhbih, writing about 840, says that Russian ships passing through the country were liable to a tax of a tenth on their cargoes.^[4] All Russian trade seems to have been taxed in the same way, and the tithe may have been general and have fallen on Muslim visitors as well.^[1]

Ibn Fadlan met a similar practice on the Volga. When a boat arrived from the land of the Khazars in the land of the Bulgars, the Bulgar king came, counted the cargo and took a tenth. When Rus or others came with slaves, the king had the right to pick one slave in ten.^[5] The French edition notes that Ibn Rusta says the same of the tithe on the cargoes of Muslim boats that come to the Bulgars.^[6]

Two officials may have dealt with the dues. Ibn Fadlan names a Khazz, and al-Masudi an Ahmad ibn Kuya. Both held an important office, and neither was the Beg. They were Muslims.^[7] The office may be linked to the collection of customs and to the legal cases that arose from it.^[1]

Tribute of subject peoples

The Khazars drew tribute from the peoples they ruled. The Rus Primary Chronicle tells that the Polians on the middle Dnieper were attacked by the Khazars and had to pay a sword from each hearth.^[8] It adds that the swords were double-edged. When the Khazar ruler and his elders heard of it, they were alarmed, because the Khazar sword had a single edge.^[8] Before 859, according to the chronicle, the Polians, Severians and Vyatichi paid the Khazars a skin of ermine or sable for each household.^[8] The inhabitants of Kiev are said to have paid tribute to the Khazars before 862.^[8]

A rule has been drawn from this. The Khazars took the individual hearth or plough as the unit of taxation for subject peoples. They assessed the payment at a sword or a sable skin, or in other cases at a piece of money for each plough or head.^[9] It holds that the incidence was irregular. Tribute was collected when a commodity was wanted or when it was convenient.^[9]

The Volga Bulgars paid in the same way. Ibn Fadlan says that the king of the Bulgars, whom he calls the king of the Saqaliba, owed the Khazar king a marten skin for every house in his kingdom.^[5] The king took the same tax from his own people. Every year each house gave him one marten skin.^[10] The king’s son lived as a hostage at the Khazar court.^[5] The French edition renders the pelt as marten. Modern accounts call it sable.^[11]^[9]

Coins and pelts

The question of Khazar coinage is open. One account written in the middle of the twentieth century says that no native Khazar coinage is known. It reports a view that the many imitations of Arab coins found in Sweden and Russia were struck in Khazar mints, and it finds no evidence for that view.^[12] The same account finds it almost impossible to think that the trade of the capital ran by barter.^[1] A later survey says that the debate continues.^[13]

Pelts also served as money. A note to the French edition of Ibn Fadlan records that Ibn Rusta mentions the use of skins as money among the Volga Bulgars. It adds that another Arabic author notes the same use among the Slavs.^[14]

The system as a whole

On one account the Khazar state lived on its position across the trade routes. It had few natural resources to export and little industry. Its public revenue was customs and the tribute of subject peoples. The account sees a heavy dependence on political prestige and armed force, since neither traders nor tributaries welcomed the levies.^[7] The Slav tribes were ready, it adds, to cast off the dependence when they could. Ibn Fadlan suggests that the central authority was not popular in the east, among the Bulgars and the Oghuz.^[15] The account concludes that payments in kind and customs dues stopped when the military power of the Khazars was broken.^[15]

The sources name a tenth, a pelt or a sword for each house or hearth, and a piece of money. They give no total for the revenue of the khagan.

References

^ a b c d Dunlop 1954, p. 232
^ al-Iṣṭakhrī; Dunlop 1954, p. 93
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 226
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 238
^ a b c Ibn Fadlan; Canard 1958, p. 115
^ Ibn Rusta; Canard 1958, p. 115
^ a b Dunlop 1954, p. 232–233
^ a b c d Russian Primary Chronicle; Dunlop 1954, p. 198
^ a b c Dunlop 1954, p. 233
^ Ibn Fadlan; Canard 1958, p. 101
^ Canard 1958, p. 115
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 231–232
^ Sinor 1990, p. 270
^ Ibn Rusta; Canard 1958, p. 119
^ a b Dunlop 1954, p. 234

Sources

Literature

Douglas M. Dunlop, The History of the Jewish Khazars (1954)
M. Canard, La relation du voyage d'Ibn Fadlān chez les Bulgares de la Volga (1958)
Denis Sinor (ed.), The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (1990)