The Decline and Fall of Khazaria – Might or Money?

Abstract

This paper explores the underlying reasons for the 10–11th-century decline and disappearance of Khazaria. According to the Russian Primary Chronicle, Khazaria was conquered by the Kievan Rus’ian prince Svjatoslav in the 960s after a prolonged period of mutual estrangement between Byzantine Christendom and Khazaria following the khağans’ late-9th-century adoption of Judaism. This is undoubtedly an important part of the story of Khazaria’s decline and disappearance, but it ignores larger economic factors at play – which were more related to Islamic-Judaic economics than Christian-Judaic politics. In the early 920s, the Islamic scholar and traveler ibn Fadlān ventured around the eastern Caspian to Bolgar, the town of Almuš, the ruler of the Volga Bulgars, who was concurrently subjugated to the Judaic Khazarian khağan. Utilizing ibn Fadlān’s Islamic learning, Almuš converted to Islam and effectively declared independence from the Judaic Khazarian khağan. Within a generation, the silver trade routes which flowed from the south through the Caucasus to Khazaria in exchange for pagan slaves from the far north, on which the Khazarian khağans had relied for centuries, shifted around to ibn Fadlān’s route to the east of the Caspian Sea, from Islamic Khwārazmia to Islamic Volga Bulgaria, and bypassing the tolls levied by the Judaic khağans. Very quickly, the khağans could not pay their soldiers to defend their realm from the increasingly emboldened Rus’ assaults. Ultimately, there is evidence that the decline and fall of Khazaria reflected an Islamic preference to do direct business between Khwārazmia and the Volga Bulgaria and to bypass Khazaria altogether.