Khazar Dual Kingship

The Khazars had two rulers. One was a khagan who held the sacred rank and did not govern. The other was a king who commanded the army and ran the state.^[1] The Arabic geographers describe the arrangement in detail, and the Byzantine sources know both offices.^[2] It is the central institution of the Khazar Khaganate.

The khagan

The khagan was the supreme king of the Arabic sources. He was chosen from a royal clan. He reigned and did not govern. He was a living talisman whose presence assured kut, the good fortune of heaven, for the realm. His person was holy and no blood could be shed before him. If he appeared to have lost the mandate of heaven, he could be killed. He had the authority to order the death of any of his servants.^[1] The investiture included a ritual strangulation and shamanic ceremonies. The Chinese sources describe the same acts for the Ashina. They point to ties between these khagans and the Göktürks of Inner Asia.^[1]

Ibn Fadlan did not visit the Khazar court. His account of it comes from informants.^[3] He says the king of the Khazars, whose title is khagan, shows himself only once in four months, and then at a distance. He is called the Great Khagan.^[4] When the Great King dies, a house with twenty chambers is built for him, and a tomb is dug in each chamber. Stones are broken to powder, spread and covered with quicklime. A great river is led over the tomb. Those who buried him are beheaded, so that no one knows in which chamber he lies. The grave is called Paradise.^[5] The reign of these kings lasts forty years. If one of them goes past this term by a single day, his subjects and the people around him kill him and say that he has lost his reason.^[6]

Masʿūdī describes the khagan as a man with no power. He is kept in the inner rooms of the palace, which he does not leave. He does not ride, and he never shows himself to the courtiers or the people. He lives among his harem, does not govern and takes no part in the affairs of the state. Yet the authority of the king who governs would be nothing without the khagan beside him in his capital and his palace. If famine or another misfortune strikes the country, or a war turns against the Khazars, the people and the notables go to the king and ask him to put the khagan to death or hand him over. Sometimes the king gives him up, sometimes he kills him himself, and sometimes he defends him. The khagan is always chosen from one of the most illustrious families, and Masʿūdī does not know whether the custom is old or new.^[7] Al-Istakhri says that the khaganate is never given to anyone but a Jew.^[8] He also names members of the royal house who were barred from the throne because they were Muslims.^[9]

The king

The man who ran the state was called by many names in the Arabic sources: qagan-beg, beg, sad (shad) or yilig.^[1] Ibn Fadlan calls him the lieutenant of the Great Khagan, with the title Khaqan Beg. He commands and governs the troops and directs the affairs of the kingdom. He shows himself in public and leads the expeditions, and the neighbouring kings obey him. He appoints to the offices, inflicts the punishments and runs the government.^[10]

Each day the king goes in to the Great Khagan in a humble manner. He enters barefoot, holding firewood in his hand, and lights it before the khagan. Then he sits with the khagan on the throne, on his right.^[11] Ibn Fadlan names two officers below him. The first is the Kundur Khagan. The second, his lieutenant, is the Jawshighr.^[10] The first title has been compared with the Hungarian royal title kende.^[2] No explanation of the second is satisfactory.^[12]

Ibn Rusta names the king Ichā and says that the Great King is the Khazar khagan, whose authority over the Khazars is only nominal. All command belongs to the Ichā, who is accountable to no one above him. He has a parasol as his sign of rank.^[13] In the Greek sources the two offices are distinct as well. De administrando imperio speaks of the khagan and the pech of Khazaria.^[14]

A paid guard of Muslim Khwarazmians, the Ors, stood at the disposal of the king, beside the tribal levies.^[1]

Installation of the two rulers

The sources disagree on the relation between the two. Al-Istakhri has the king appoint the khagan, who is greater than he. When they want to appoint him, they bring him and throttle him with a piece of silk until he is nearly strangled. They then ask him how long he wishes to reign.^[15] Ibn Hawqal reverses the order. In his text the khagan is greater than the king because he confirms him. He lifts the king up and seats him on the throne.^[16] The khagan puts a silk cord around the neck of the man who is being installed and makes the gesture of strangling him. The man is asked how long he wishes to reign. When the term he named has passed, he is put to death.^[17]

Age and origin

No source says when the arrangement began. The Arabic accounts of it were written in the tenth century and later. Four theories of its origin are on record.

The first ties it to the conversion. The Schechter Letter has the Khazars living at first without a king, and appointing as general whoever won victories in battle. A Jew who proved mighty with his sword was made general in this way. After the conversion the men of the land appointed a wise man as judge and called him khagan, and they made the great prince of Khazaria king under the name Sabriel.^[18] The classical history of the Khazars rejects this account as demonstrably wrong, since khagans existed long before.^[19]

The second sees it as an inheritance of the steppe. Alföldi derived the double rule from the division of the army into a left and a right wing.^[20] Golden holds that the Khazar kingship developed in keeping with Turkic tradition, as an office that always had religious functions beside political ones, and not as the result of a coup.^[21] A study of the Khazar sacral kingship by Peter B. Golden is counted with this view.^[22]

The third makes the bek the actor. Omeljan Pritsak holds that the bek Obadiah brought the khagan to Judaism, in an official conversion between 799 and 809.^[23] Joshua Olsson holds that the conversion was a coup d’état by the bek Bulan.^[24] Mikhail Artamonov held that the clan of Obadiah displaced the old royal clan and forced it to accept Judaism. Golden finds no textual justification for this view.^[25]

The fourth is caution. Golden writes that nothing but conjecture connects the dual kingship with the reforms of Obadiah. He adds that we do not know when the Khazar system emerged. The clear evidence is late, perhaps the latter part of the ninth century and more probably the tenth.^[26] The classical history of the Khazars states that the dual kingship has nothing to do with the adoption of Judaism.^[27]

The Hungarians

The Hungarians in the Pontic steppe lay within the Khazar orbit. They are held probably to have taken over the Khazar form of sacral kingship there. It had a gyula, from a Turkic word, and a kende, from Khazar *kündü.^[28]

References

^ a b c d e Golden 1992, p. 240
^ a b Canard 1958, p. 136
^ Canard 1958, p. 135
^ Ibn Fadlan; Canard 1958, p. 135–136
^ Ibn Fadlan; Canard 1958, p. 137–138
^ Ibn Fadlan; Canard 1958, p. 138
^ al-Masʿūdī; al-Masʿūdī 1863 (MDCCCLXIII auf dem Titelblatt), p. 12–14
^ al-Iṣṭakhrī; Dunlop 1954, p. 98
^ Golden 1992, p. 242
^ a b Ibn Fadlan; Canard 1958, p. 136–137
^ Ibn Fadlan; Canard 1958, p. 136
^ Canard 1958, p. 137
^ Ibn Rusta; Canard 1958, p. 136
^ De administrando imperio; Porphyrogenitus 1967 (New Revised Edition; Greek text and English translation), p. 183
^ al-Iṣṭakhrī; Dunlop 1954, p. 97
^ Canard 1958, p. 136, 139
^ Canard 1958, p. 139
^ The Schechter letter; Schechter 1912, p. 213–216
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 159
^ Golden 1980, p. 39
^ Golden 1980, p. 101–102
^ Golden 1997
^ Pritsak 1978, p. 278
^ Olsson 2013, p. 495–526
^ Golden 1980, p. 101
^ Golden 2007, p. 155–156
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 114
^ Golden 1992, p. 262

Sources

Literature

Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
Peter B. Golden, Khazar Studies, Vols. I–II (1980)
M. Canard, La relation du voyage d'Ibn Fadlān chez les Bulgares de la Volga (1958)
Douglas M. Dunlop, The History of the Jewish Khazars (1954)
al-Masʿūdī; C. Barbier de Meynard and Pavet de Courteille (trans.), Les Prairies d’or, Bd. II (Texte et traduction) (1863 (MDCCCLXIII auf dem Titelblatt))
Constantine Porphyrogenitus; Gyula Moravcsik (ed.); R. J. H. Jenkins (trans.), De administrando imperio (1967 (New Revised Edition; Greek text and English translation))
Solomon Schechter, An Unknown Khazar Document (1912)
Peter B. Golden, Irano-Turcica: The Khazar Sacral Kingship Revisited (1997)
Peter B. Golden; Haggai Ben-Shammai; András Róna-Tas (ed.), The World of the Khazars (2007)
Alföldi, La royauté double des Turcs (1937)
Omeljan Pritsak, The Khazar Kingdom's Conversion to Judaism (1978)
J. T. Olsson, Coup d'État, Coronation and Conversion: Some Reflections on the Adoption of Judaism by the Khazar Khaganate (2013)