Justinian Rhinotmetus took refuge with him during his banishment and married his daughter: his rival Bardanes also sought an asylum in the land of the Khazars; and in Leo IV. the grandson of a Khazar sovereign ascended the Byzantine throne.
The origin and affinities of this interesting people appear to be still disputed. Many have assigned them to the Turkish stock; others to the Ugrians or Eastern Finns; and some have even claimed them as Jews on account of their use of the Hebrew character and the profession of the Hebrew faith among them. “But their geographical position, their history, and the contemporary witness we have as to their physical character, their language, and their own national tradition, may be accepted as conclusive proof that the Khazars were an indigenous people of the Caucasus, and near akin to the Armenians and the Georgians.”[1]
It is very remarkable that a custom of legalized regicide should have been practised among a people so comparatively advanced and civilized as the Khazars appear to have been, and of whom it has been said that “their government was regular, settled, and well organized.
- ↑ As to the Khazars, see C. M. Fraehn, “Veteres memoriae Chasarorum ex Ibn-Foszlano, Ibn-Haukale et Schems-ed-Dino Damasceno, Arabice et Latine,” Mémoires de l’Academie Impériale des Sciences de St. Pétersbourg, viii, (1822), pp. 576-620; Klapioth, “Mémoire sur les Khazars,” Journal Asiatique, iii. (Paris, 1823), pp. 153-160; C. D’Ohsson, Des Peuples du Caucase (Paris, 1828), chapitres ii. et iii. pp. 30-71; K. F. Neumann, Die Völker des südlichen Russlands (Leipsic, 1847), pp. 99 sqq.; P. Lyttelton Gell, s.v. “Khazars,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, ninth edition, xiv. (1882), pp. 59 sq.; H. Hirschfeld, Das Buch Al-Chazarî, aus dem arabischen des Abu-l-Hasan Jehuda Hallewi übersetzt (Breslau, 1885), pp. xi. sqq. Mr. Lyttelton Gell’s article contains a good general account of the Khazars, with references to the original authorities. The quotations in the text are made from it. The work of D’Ohsson consists of a series of extracts from the original Arab authorities, translated into French and strung together on the thread of the imaginary travels of a certain Abu-el-Cassim, whom the writer supposes to have been sent on an embassy from the Caliph to the Bulgarians of the Volga in 948 A.D.
