2013/07/29 by Jessica Olsson · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Eurasian Exchange Networks #Linguistics and Cultural Studies #Islamic Studies and History
paper · doi:10.1017/s1356186313000266
openalex publication_date 2013/07/29 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
“The Turks will take control of Kūfa in southern Iraq and the Khazars the province of al-Jazīra in northern Iraq” runs a popular ḥadīth of the early ‘Abbāsid Caliphate. The patently false attribution to the Prophet notwithstanding, this ḥadīth suggests that the Khazars, a militarised semi-nomadic Turkic people securely established in their Khaganate north of the Caucasus Mountains, loomed menacing and large in the imagination – and fears – of their settled neighbours. This is hardly a surprise. The Khazars, who had emerged as the hegemonic regional power after the fragmentation of the Gök Turk Empire, had grown rich as intermediaries in a north-south trading network, and from the tributes derived from their 25 subject peoples. They employed a centralised fiscal administration which allowed them to maintain a standing army of at least ten thousand, whose ranks could probably swell two-or-three-fold with the retinues of their notables and contributions from their subject tribes, and were ensconced within a network of fortifications that provided them with a degree of internal stability and potential for aggressive campaigning highly unusual within other steppe polities.