Khazars Sentence Examples

Russia was 'the seat of the empire' of the Khazars, who drove the Bulgarians, descendants of the Huns, from the Don, one Section of them migia.tiug up thu Volga to found there the Bulgarian empire, and the remainder travelling towards the Danube.

Trade with Persia and India, as also with the Khazars and the Russians, and undoubtedly with Biarmia (Urals), was, however, their chief occupation, their main riches being furs, leather, wool, nuts, wax and so on.

The southern boundary never greatly altered; it did at times reach the Kur and the Aras, but on that side the Khazars were confronted by Byzantium and Persia, and were for the most part restrained within the passes of the Caucasus by the fortifications of Dariel.

The origin of the Khazars has been much disputed, and they have been variously regarded as akin to the Georgians, Finno-Ugrians and Turks.

Nevertheless there are many points connected with the Khazars which indicate a close connexion with Ugrian or Turkish peoples.

Some too amongst the medieval authorities (Ibn Haugal and Istakhri) note a resemblance between the speech in use amongst the Khazars and the Bulgarians; and the modern Magyar - a Ugrian language - can be traced back to a tribe which in the 9th century formed part of the Khazar kingdom.

There were Khazars and Kara (black) Khazars.

They have been identified with the AKarcpoc (perhaps AkKhazari, or White Khazars) who appear upon the lower Volga in the Byzantine annals, and thence they have been deduced, though with less convincing proof, either from the AyetOvpvoc (Agathyrsi) or the Kariapoc of Herodotus, iv.

Amidst this white race of the steppe the Khazars can be first historically distinguished at the end of the 2nd century A.D.

The pressure of the nomads of the steppe, the quest of plunder or revenge, these seem the only motives of these early expeditions; but in the long struggle between the Roman and Persian empires, of which Armenia was often the battlefield, and eventually the prize, the attitude of the Khazars assumed political importance.

It became therefore the policy of the Persian kings to call in the Khazars in every collision with the empire (200-350).

The Khazars, endangered by so powerful a neighbour, passed from under Persian influence into that remote alliance with Byzantium which thenceforth characterized their policy, and they aided Julian in his invasion of Persia (363).

The Khazars, straitened on every side, remained passive till the danger culminated in the accession of Attila (434).

The Khazars and their companions broke through the Persian defences of the Caucasus.

Throughout the 6th century Khazaria was the mere highway for the wild hordes to whom the Huns had opened the passage into Europe, and the Khazars took refuge (like the Venetians from Attila) amongst the seventy mouths of the Volga.

The empires of Turks and Avars, however, ran swiftly their barbaric course, and the Khazars arose out of the chaos to more than their ancient renown.

The agricultural Sla y s of the Dnieper and the Oka were reduced to tribute, and before the end of the 7th century the Khazars had annexed the Crimea, had won complete command of the Sea of Azov, and, seizing upon the narrow neck which separates the Volga from the Don, had organized the portage which has continued since an important link in the traffic between Asia and Europe.

Simultaneously, and no doubt in concert, with the Byzantine campaign against Persia (589), the Khazars had reappeared in Armenia, though it was not till 625 that they appear as Khazars in the Byzantine annals.

Nevertheless, though overpowered in the end, the Khazars had protected the plains of Europe from the Mahommedans, and made the Caucasus the limit of their conquests.

In the interval between the decline of the Mahommedan empire and the rise of Russia the Khazars reached the zenith of their power.

So important was this traffic held at Constantinople that, when the portage to the Don was endangered by the irruption of a fresh horde of Turks (the Petchenegs), the emperor Theophilus himself despatched the materials and the workmen to build for the Khazars a fortress impregnable to their forays (834).

It was, however, from a power that Constantine did not consider that the overthrow of the Khazars came.

Before the onset of those fierce invaders the precarious suzerainty of the khakan broke up. By calling in the Uzes, the Khazars did indeed dislodge the Petchenegs from the position they had seized in the heart of the kingdom between the Volga and the Don, but only to drive them inwards to the Dnieper.

The kingdom dwindled rapidly to its ancient limits between the Caucasus, the Volga and the Don, whilst the Russian traders of Novgorod and Kiev supplanted the Khazars as the carriers between Constantinople and the North.

Till the 13th century the Crimea was known to European travellers as Gazaria; the "ramparts of the Khazars" are still distinguished in the Ukraine; and the record of their dominion survives in the names of Kazarek, Kazaritshi, Kazarinovod, Kozar-owka, Kozari, and perhaps in Kazan.

He then proceeded to build a fortress there and gradually compelled the surrounding tribes to pay him tribute, extending his conquests in all directions (883-903) at the expense of the Khazars, who hitherto had held all southern Russia to tribute.

Though deserted by the Khazars, with whom he had made an alliance upon entering into Pontus, he gained a decisive advantage by a brilliant march across the Armenian highlands into the Tigris plain, and a hard-fought victory over Chosroes' general, Shahrbaraz, in which Heraclius distinguished himself by his personal bravery.

They were driven finally into Armenia by the Khazars, and ceased to exist as a separate people.

Possibly the Bulgarians and Khazars were offshoots of the same horde.

In the north and north-west of the empire there were no internal disorders, but the Moslems had hard work to maintain themselves against the Alans and the Khazars.

Mahommed (afterwards caliph), governor of Armenia and Azerbaijan (Adherbaijan), succeeded in repelling the Khazars, imposing peace on the petty princes of the eastern Caucasus, and consolidating the Arab power in that quarter.

An attack by the Khazars called the caliph's attention from his successes in Asia Minor.

Mazyad, marched against the Khazars and drove them out of Armenia.

But we know that in the 9th century the Volga basin was occupied by Finnish tribes in the north and by Khazars and various Turkish races in the south.

But, while the Russians were driven from the Black Sea by the Khazars, and later on by a tide of Ugrian migration from the north-east, a stream of Sla y s moved slowly towards the north-east, down the upper Oka, into the borderland between the Finnish and Turkish regions.

The older and scantier underlying ruins are supposed to be those of the once large and prosperous city of Itil or Atel (Etel, Idl) of the Arab geographers, a residence of the khan of the Khazars, destroyed by the Russians in 969.

After that the town - which had already begun to be known as Bospora - passed successively into the hands of the Eastern empire, of the Khazars, and of various barbarian tribes.

Georgia and Armenia were invaded and in great part occupied by the Khazars, and then for more than a thousand years the mountain fastnesses of this borderland between Europe and Asia were the refuge, or the restingplace, of successive waves of migration, as people after people and tribe after tribe was compelled to give way to the pressure of stronger races harassing them in the rear.

Their home was in the spurs of the Caucasus and along the shores of the Caspian - called by medieval Moslem geographers Bahr-al-Khazar ("sea of the Khazars"); their cities, all populous and civilized commercial centres, were Itil, the capital, upon the delta of the Volga, the "river of the Khazars," Semender (Tarkhu), the older capital, Khamlidje or Khalendsch, Belendscher, the outpost towards Armenia, and Sarkel on the Don.

The Khazars were fair-skinned, black-haired and of a remarkable beauty and stature; their women indeed were sought as wives equally at Byzantium and Bagdad; while the Kara Khazars were ugly, short, and were reported by the Arabs almost as dark as Indians.

But the Khazars proper were a civic commercial people, the founders of cities, remarkable for somewhat elaborate political institutions, for persistence and for good faith - all qualities foreign to the Hunnic character.

The Hungarians, severed from their kindred and their rulers, migrated to the Carpathians, whilst Oleg, the Russ prince of Kiev, passed through the Slav tribes of the Dnieper basin with the cry "Pay nothing to the Khazars" (884).