Secrets of the ancient Rus. One of the secrets of the history of Rus is the Khazar question. Was there Russian Khazaria or was the Khazar Kagan the ruler of the Rus? According to Russian sources ("The Word of Law and Grace" by Metropolitan Hilarion), the title of the ruler of the Rus is known: Vladimir and his son Yaroslav the Wise are called kagans in this source. Were the Khazars Turks, or the basis of their ethnos - the Slavs-Rus?
The mystery of the origin of the Khazars
The Khazars are considered to be a Turkic-speaking people who appeared after the invasion of the Huns. At the same time, the “Turkic-speaking” nature of the Khazars is being questioned. The logic of their "Türkic-speaking" is simple: since the Khazars lived in a vast area of settlement of the tribes of the Türkic language group, it means that they were Türks and spoke Türkic dialects. Although the same Finno-Ugrians have lived among the Slavs for thousands of years, they have their own language.
The history of the Khazar Kaganate is one of the most mysterious pages in world history. Khazaria was at one time one of the most powerful regional powers, and influenced world politics. It is interesting that if the foreign policy of the kaganate is covered by foreign sources, then the internal history is little known. Russian chronicles, including the "Tale of Bygone Years", report almost nothing about Khazaria. Although the wars with the Khazars were an important part of the policy of the first princes of the Rurik dynasty.
Initially, in the 6th century, the Khazars were part of the state of the Savirs (Savromats-Savri). The Khazar state itself was formed under the rule of the "Turkic empire", and gained independence after its collapse (630 AD). As a result, the ruling stratum was formed by a dynasty of Turkic origin. However, the ruling stratum is not the entire people. The succession of the Khazars from the Savirs is quite remarkable. Thus, the northern savirs occupied lands from the foothills of the North Caucasus in the south, to the Don basin in the north-west, as well as the basin of the right-bank tributaries of the Dnieper and Desna. And in the east, they apparently belonged to the Volga, South Ural and Caspian steppes. After the collapse of the Turkic Kaganate, Khazaria occupied the same region. By the end of the VII century. the Khazar borders expanded westward into the southern Russian steppes. The Volga Bulgaria (Bulgaria) was also under the control of Khazaria. Until the middle of the 9th century, the unions of the Vyatichi and northerners tribes paid tribute to the Khazars. That is, the borders of Khazaria in the north reached Moscow and Kazan.
It is interesting that Khazaria from the Black Sea, the Caucasus and the Caspian in the south to the Dnieper in the west, the Middle Volga in the North and the Urals in the east completely coincides with the ancient Sarmatia, known from historical sources. In fact, Khazaria was the heiress of Sarmatia, only its elite was of Turkic origin, and then also adopted Judaism.
The question is who were the ordinary Khazars, the overwhelming majority of the population of the Kaganate. L. N. Gumilev suggested that the Khazars were an autochthonous (indigenous) people of the northeastern Caucasus, who entered into symbiosis with the Turkic empire and inherited power after its collapse. But there are no "North Caucasian" features in the culture of Khazaria. Also in the Caucasus there are no memories of this state and the heirs of the Khazars. Some researchers associate the Khazars with Khorezm or Khorasan (in Eastern Iran). Migrations from Khorezm and the area of the Aral steppes to the East European Plain took place during the period of the so-called. "Great migration". It is possible that the Khazars were Central Asian Scythians-Sarmatians who left the Herzem region under pressure from the Turks.
The ethnonym "Khazars-Azars-Arazy" refers to Indo-European, is found in Indian and Western Asian mythology, as well as in Don folklore - it is correlated with the ancestors of the Don Cossacks (EP Savelyev. Ancient history of the Cossacks). The historian Yu. Petukhov suggested (Yu. Petukhov. Rus of Eurasia) that the Khazars arrived from the Near East, from the territory of the former Assyria-Assuria. They were significantly assimilated by the Semites, hence the Judaism of their elite. Those Assur clans who wanted to preserve themselves left to the north. So they ended up in Khazaria, which they gave their name to. After all, "Assur" and "Khazar" are one ethnonym in different pronunciations. On the territory of Khazaria, they absorbed a number of local Turkic tribes. The Assurs created the second Assyria-Assuria on the banks of the Volga. When Khazaria died, the Khazars became part of the ethnic groups of the Rus and Turks.
Khazars and Rus are part of one super-ethnos
In all Greek sources, the Khazars appear as Scythians. The Greeks (Byzantines, Romans) also call the Russians-Rus as Scythians and Tavro-Scythians. In the Tale of Bygone Years, not only the Khazars are called Scythians, but also the Russian tribes are called the Great Scythia. At the same time, in the Russian chronicles there is no information about the "foreign language" of the Khazars in relation to the Russians. In other sources, the Scythians are directly called the ancestors of the Russians and Slavs. Who are the mysterious Khazars?
The kinship of the Russians and the Khazars is reported by the Arab source "Collection of Histories" (1126). There is a legend that “Rus and Khazar were from the same mother and father. Then Rus grew up and, since he did not have a place that he liked, wrote a letter to Khazar and asked him for a part of his country to settle there. " That is, this legend shows the idea of a close relationship between the Russians (Rus) and the Khazars and the origin of the Russian state from the depths of the Khazar Kaganate.
The Arab historian Al-Masoudi reports that there were several judges in the Khazar capital: two for the Muslims, two for the Khazars, who were judged in accordance with the Torah (Pentateuch of Moses), two for Christians, and one for the Slavs, Rus and pagans. According to the same author, Muslims in the kaganate are mainly military mercenaries in the service of the kagan and merchants, the Jewish stratum was also small. True, Jews and Muslims constituted the social elite of Khazaria. The main population of Khazaria was made up of "pagans". It is obvious that ordinary Khazars were a Christian stratum.
Masudi also reports that among the pagans of Khazaria there are Slavs and Rus, "they burn their dead along with their horses, utensils and ornaments …" Masudi described not just the Slavic-Russian, but the Scythian funeral rite. Cremation was accepted among the northern and western Slavno-Rus, but they did not accept burial with a horse (the inhabitants of the forest zone had few horses); the Baltic Varangians-Rus usually burned the boat. From the Scythians, burial with a horse under a mound or cremation with a horse was accepted (Azov Scythians).
Thus, the Rus and Slavs formed the basis of the population of Khazaria, and were descendants of the Scythian-Sarmatian population of the Azov, Don, Kuban and Pre-Caucasian steppes. Archeology confirms this. Monuments belonging to the Slavs of the early Middle Ages were found in Sarkel (Belaya Vezha) on the Don, in Tmutarakan on Taman, in Korchev (Kerch), on the island of Berezan, in the lower reaches of the Volga (V. V. Mavrodin. The origin of the Russian people). Not “separate groups of Slavs,” as the supporters of the truncated version of Russian history want to show, but the basic mass of the population of Khazaria. Actually "Khazar" traces, no matter how hard they tried, were not found.
It is not surprising that the Russian prince Vladimir Svyatoslavovich and Yaroslav Vladimirovich are called kagans, rulers of the Rus. Grand Duke Svyatoslav Igorevich defeated and conquered Khazaria. The Turkic-speaking and Jewish ruling communities were destroyed or fled. And the bulk of the population of Khazaria - the Slavs and the Rus - became part of the Russian state. Khazaria became part of Russia. Therefore, Vladimir and Yaroslav, as the heirs of Svyatoslav, became kagans, since Khazaria became part of the Russian state. Suffice it to recall how later the title of the newly annexed land was added to the title of the Russian Grand Duke or Tsar-Emperor.
Khazars, like the Rus of Kiev or Chernigov, were descendants of the Scythians, heirs of the Great Scythia-Sarmatia. Only the Russians-Russians were the “trunk” of a huge super-ethnos, and the Khazars were a “daughter” ethnos that was assimilated by the Turks and Semites. The Rus created a new empire-power, continued the traditions of the ancient northern civilization, and Khazaria fell, the Khazars were doomed to degradation and disappearance. Of course, they did not disappear completely, the Khazars became part of the Russian ethnos and the Turks.
