al-Masʿūdī wrote a universal history and a geographical compendium in the middle of the tenth century. He is the fullest Arabic witness to the Khazars.
The Khazar and Göktürk notices
In his account, the Khazar state has two rulers. One is a khagan who reigns without governing and is held to be sacred. The second man governs.[1] The state holds Muslims, Jews, Christians and pagans side by side, each under its own law.[1] He also gives notices on the Bulgars, on the peoples of the Caucasus and on the trade that ran between them.[1]
Beside the Khazars, he is one of the witnesses to the defeat of the Göktürks by Bahram Chobin. There he stands with Theophylact and Ṭabarī.[1]
Value as a witness
He names his informants more often than most compilers do. This makes it possible to see where a report came from. That is worth a great deal in a literature where the same notice travels from book to book without attribution.
The limit is the one that binds all three of the Arabic and Persian witnesses here. He wrote in the 940s and 950s. The Khazar khaganate he describes is the state of his own century, a generation before its fall. The double kingship he reports may be an old institution or a late arrangement. His text alone cannot decide it.
Ibn Fadlan saw part of that world with his own eyes in 921, and the Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam listed it in 982. The three together give the tenth century in detail and the seventh only by inference.
References
- ^ a b c d al-Masʿūdī
Literature
- Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
- Theodor Nöldeke, Geschichte der Perser und Araber zur Zeit der Sasaniden. Aus der arabischen Chronik des Tabari übersetzt und mit ausführlichen Erläuterungen und Ergänzungen versehn (1879)
Articles resting on this source 7
al-Iṣṭakhrī · Conversion of the Khazars to Judaism · Itil · Khazar Dual Kingship · Khazar Mail and the Armourers of the Caucasus · Kimek · Samandar
What links here10
- Persons
- Kayen
- Conflicts
- Arab–Khazar Wars (642–737)
- Battles & Events
- Conversion of the Khazars to Judaism
- Peoples
- Kimek
- Institutions and Titles
- Khazar Dual Kingship
- Sources
- al-Iṣṭakhrī · Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam · Ibn Fadlan · Tabari · Theophylact Simocatta
Cite this article
Yavuz, Emre-E. “al-Masʿūdī.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/sources/al-masudi/
Last revised: 8 November 2026
