Joseph of Khazaria

Joseph is the Khazar ruler who answered the letter of Hasdai ibn Shaprut. Hasdai was a Jewish courtier of the Spanish Umayyads at Córdoba.^[1] Hasdai wrote after 954 and before 961.^[2] According to Hasdai, merchants from Khorasan told him of a Jewish kingdom called al-Khazar. He did not believe them until envoys from Constantinople confirmed it and told him that the king then reigning was Joseph.^[3]

The writer and his line

The heading of the reply names the writer as “Joseph the king, son of Aaron the king, the Turk”.^[3] In the text Joseph traces his people to Japheth through his son Togarmah. He counts himself a descendant of the seventh of Togarmah’s ten sons, Khazar.^[4] Modern accounts identify Joseph as the khagan and not as the Beg. They conclude that the khagans of Khazaria bore Hebrew throne-names.^[5]

The reply lists the royal line from Bulan to Joseph. Obadiah stands second in the list, and Joseph last.^[6] The throne passes from father to son, and no stranger may sit on it.^[7] In the conversion story a great general stands beside the king, and a modern account identifies him as the Beg.^[8] The Schechter Letter calls Joseph “my lord”.^[9]

Contents of the reply

Joseph writes that he lives at the delta of the river and guards its mouth. He does not let the Rus come into the Caspian Sea in their ships, because they would then get at the Muslims. He says that he has to fight them. If he gave them any chance at all, they would lay waste the whole land of the Muslims as far as Baghdad.^[7]

He describes the second city of his kingdom as a place where Jews, Christians and Muslims live, and also many slaves of all nations.^[10] The translation of the Christ Church manuscript has “Jews, Muslims, Christians and other nationals of diverse tongues”.^[11]

On the faith of his house, the reply gives the account of Bulan’s choice of the law of Israel and of Obadiah’s reform.^[6] A modern interpretation of the same account puts the conversion of the khagan and the elite in the time of Hārūn al-Rashīd, 786 to 809.^[12]

Transmission and authenticity

The reply exists in a short and a long version. The short version is in a manuscript at Christ Church, Oxford, and the long version in a manuscript of the Firkowitsch collection, edited by Kokovtsov in 1932.^[13] Isaac Akrisch printed the letters at Constantinople in 1577 or later, and Buxtorf published a Latin translation in 1660.^[14]

Judah ben Barzillai of Barcelona quoted parts of the reply between 1090 and 1105 and doubted that it was genuine.^[15] Abraham ibn Daud wrote in 1161 that King Joseph had written to Hasdai. He added that Joseph and all his people followed the Rabbanite faith and that he had seen some of their descendants in Toledo.^[16]

Doubt about the reply is old, and Buxtorf met it with great suspicion in 1660.^[17] Douglas M. Dunlop holds the reply in the main to be genuine.^[18] Others have seen in it a later compilation.^[19] The verdict decides what the reply is worth. If it is genuine, it is the one text that comes from the Khazar court itself.

References

^ Dunlop 1954, p. 143–144
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 143
^ a b The Khazar correspondence; Marcus 1938, p. 228
^ The Khazar correspondence; Marcus 1938, p. 229
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 145
^ a b The Khazar correspondence; Marcus 1938, p. 229–231
^ a b The Khazar correspondence; Marcus 1938, p. 231
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 149
^ The Schechter letter; Schechter 1912, p. 217
^ The Khazar correspondence; Marcus 1938, p. 232
^ The Khazar correspondence
^ Golden 1992, p. 241
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 130–131
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 126, 128
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 132–133
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 127
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 126
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 154
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 144

Sources

Literature

Douglas M. Dunlop, The History of the Jewish Khazars (1954)
Jacob R. Marcus (ed., trans.), The Jew in the Medieval World: A Source Book, 315–1791 (1938)
Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
Solomon Schechter, An Unknown Khazar Document (1912)