Tamatarkha

Tamatarkha was a town on the Taman peninsula, by the Straits of Kerch. Byzantine church lists know it as a bishopric.^[1] The Rus chronicle knows the town too. It is the place where Mstislav was settled in 988 and where Oleg stayed in 1078.^[2]

A bishopric

A Byzantine list of bishoprics dates from the middle of the eighth century but looks back to an earlier time. It names a bishopric of the Onogurs beside the metropolis of Doros, which served the eparchy of Gothia in the Crimea. Tamatarcha appears in the same list.^[1]

Phanagoria and Justinian II

Phanagoria, the ancient Phanagoreia, also stood on the Taman peninsula.^[3] Theophanes tells how the exiled emperor Justinian II fled from Cherson to the khagan of the Chazars. The khagan gave him his sister Theodora in marriage. After a short time Justinian received permission to go down to Phanagouria, and there he lived with Theodora.^[4] The khagan had a representative in those parts named Papatzys, and a commander of the Bosporos named Balgitzis. When the usurper Apsimaros offered gifts for Justinian’s head, the khagan ordered the two to kill Justinian. A servant of the khagan told Theodora, and so Justinian learned of the order. He strangled both men and fled by boat.^[4]

The translators place the commander’s territory on the Cimmerian Bosporos. They report one argument that the place Tomis, where Justinian boarded the boat, is Taman, and that Tomi Tarcha is the Tmutarakan of the Rus.^[3]

The Schechter Letter

The Schechter Letter, a Hebrew document of the tenth century, tells that the Byzantine emperor Romanus sent great gifts to Helgu, the king of Russia, and enticed him to do evil. Helgu came in the night upon a province and took it by deception, because the commander was not there.^[5] Schechter’s translation reads the province as that of the Sewerians. Others take the Hebrew to name the people of Tamatarkha.^[6] This is why Turkic Atlas includes the letter in its account of Tamatarkha. When the commander Bulshazi, who is also called Pesach, heard of it, he marched against the cities of Romanus, took three cities and went on against Shorshu.^[7] Shorshu is identified with Cherson.^[8] Helgu fought Pesach for months and was beaten. He said that Romanus had beguiled him, and Pesach told him to march against Romanus. Helgu fought against Constantinople for four months at sea, was beaten there by fire, fled to Persia by sea and fell there with all his camp.^[9] The reliability of the document is doubted. Its account of the Khazar wars of the ninth and tenth centuries, for which it is almost the only witness, calls for caution, and it has been argued that it is a compilation and not an authentic letter.^[10]

Tmutarakan

Notices of the eleventh and twelfth centuries still speak of Khazars in the Taman region, long after the fall of the khaganate. Cedrenus, a good Byzantine authority of the eleventh century, says that in 1016 a Greek force with the Rus quickly subdued Khazaria and defeated its ruler Georgios Tzoulos in the first encounter. The place is unclear: it may lie in the Crimea, in the Caucasus or on the Sea of Azov.^[11] The Rus chronicle has Oleg, a grandson of Jaroslav, in Tamatarkha in 1078. The next year he is said to have been captured by the Khazars and taken by sea to Constantinople. In 1106 a man called Ivan the Khazar fought with Rus chiefs against the Polovtsi.^[12] What the word Khazar means in these notices is not settled.

The record

Tamatarkha enters the record as a Byzantine bishopric and later as a Rus town. The sources do not describe it as a Khazar capital or fortress.

References

^ a b Golden 1992, p. 102
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 252–253
^ a b Scott 1997, p. 521
^ a b Theophanes the Confessor; Scott 1997, p. 520–521
^ The Schechter letter; Schechter 1912, p. 217
^ Schechter 1912, p. 217, 166; Dunlop 1954, p. 217, 166
^ The Schechter letter; Schechter 1912, p. 217–218
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 166
^ The Schechter letter; Schechter 1912, p. 218–219
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 161–162
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 251–252
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 253

Sources

Theophanes the Confessor (after Theophylact Simocatta)
The Schechter letter

Literature

Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
Cyril Mango, Roger Scott (trans.), The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor: Byzantine and Near Eastern History AD 284–813 (1997)
Douglas M. Dunlop, The History of the Jewish Khazars (1954)
Solomon Schechter, An Unknown Khazar Document (1912)