76 cm long, Khazar Empire semi-nomadic iron sword, 650-965 AD

Description

76 cm long, Khazar Empire semi-nomadic iron sword, 650-965 AD
Length: 76 cm = 30 inches;
Length of the blade: 69 cm = 27.25 inches;
Weight: 448 g;
Condition: genuine stable rust, do not required additional preservation;
Provenance: Private collection in London, United Kingdom; before -
Private Oxfordshire collection; formerly acquired on the European art market from pre-2000 collections.
References: The
Khazars
[a]
(
/ˈxɑːzɑːrz/
) were a semi-
nomadic
Turkic people
that in the late 7th-century AD established a major commercial empire covering the southeastern section of modern
European Russia
,
southern Ukraine
,
Crimea
, and
Kazakhstan
.
[11]
They created what for its duration was the most powerful
polity
to emerge from the break-up of the
Western Turkic Khaganate
.
[12]
Astride a major artery of commerce between
Eastern Europe
and
Southwestern Asia
, Khazaria became one of the foremost trading empires of the
early medieval
world, commanding the western
marches
of the
Silk Road
and playing a key commercial role as a crossroad between
China
, the
Middle East
and
Kievan Rus'
.
[13]
[14]
For some three centuries (c. 650–965) the Khazars dominated the vast area extending from the Volga-Don steppes to the eastern
Crimea
and the northern
Caucasus
.
[15]
Khazaria long served as a
buffer state
between the
Byzantine Empire
and both the nomads of the northern steppes and the
Umayyad Caliphate
and
Abbasid Caliphate
, after serving as the Byzantine Empire's proxy against the
Sasanian Empire
.
The alliance was dropped around 900.
Byzantium began to encourage the
Alans
to attack Khazaria and to weaken its hold on Crimea and the Caucasus and sought to obtain an
entente
with the rising Rus' power to the north, which it aspired to convert to Christianity.
[16]
Between 965 and 969, the
Kievan Rus'
ruler,
Sviatoslav I of Kiev
, as well as his allies, conquered the capital,
Atil
, and ended Khazaria's independence. The brief rump state that ensued was again overrun, and the Khazars were dispersed or absorbed into surrounding populations.
Determining the origins and nature of the Khazars is closely bound with theories of
their languages
, but it is a matter of intricate difficulty since no indigenous records in the Khazar language survive, and the state was
polyglot
and
polyethnic
.
The native religion of the Khazars is thought to have been
Tengrism
, like that of the
North Caucasian Huns
and other Turkic peoples.
[17]
The poly-ethnic populace of the Khazar Khaganate appears to have been a multi-confessional mosaic of pagan, Tengrist, Jewish, Christian and Muslim worshippers.
[18]
Some of the Khazars (i.e.,
Kabars
) joined the ancient Hungarians in the 9th century.
The ruling elite of the Khazars was said by
Judah Halevi
and
Abraham ibn Daud
to have converted to
Rabbinic Judaism
in the 8th century,
[19]
but the scope of the
conversion to Judaism
within the Khazar Khanate remains uncertain.
[20]
Where the Khazars dispersed after the fall of the Empire is subject to many conjectures. Proposals have been made regarding the possibility of a Khazar factor in the ethnogenesis of numerous peoples, such as the
Hazaras
,
Hungarians
, the
Kazakhs
, the
Cossacks of the Don
region and of
Ukraine
,
Bukharan Jews
, the Muslim
Kumyks
, the Turkic-speaking
Krymchaks
and their Crimean neighbors the
Crimean Karaites
, the
Moldavian Csángós
, the
Mountain Jews
, even some
Subbotniks
(on the basis of their Ukrainian and Cossack origin and others).
[21]
[22]
[23]
The late 19th century saw the
emergence of the theory
that the core of today's
Ashkenazi Jews
are descended from a hypothetical Khazarian Jewish diaspora which migrated westward from modern-day Russia and Ukraine into modern-day France and Germany.
Linguistic and genetic studies have not supported the theory of a Khazar connection to
Ashkenazi Jewry
.
The theory still occasionally finds support, but most scholars view it with considerable skepticism.
[24]
[20]
[25]
The theory is sometimes associated with
antisemitism
[26]
and
anti-Zionism
.
[27]