Of the ferocity and warlike tendencies of the Khazars there is little doubt and much historical evidence, all of it pointing to a race of people so violent in their dealings with their fellow men that they were feared and abhorred above all peoples in that region of the world.
The Arab chronicler Ibn-Said al-Maghribi writes, "they are to the north of the inhabited earth towards the 7th clime, having over their heads the constellation of the Plough. Their land is cold and wet. Accordingly their complexions are white, their eyes blue, their hair flowing and predominantly reddish, their bodies large and their natures cold. Their general aspect is wild." 14
The ninth-century monk Druthmar of Aquitaine, in his commentary on Matthew 24:14 in Expositio in Matthaeum Evangelistam, stated that the Gazari, or Khazars, dwelt "in the lands of Gog and Magog." 15
Legends and stories abound, some of which are true according to the above quoted Aquitaine monk, that center around Alexander the Great and his attempt to enclose the Khazars and quarantine them, due to their violent and barbaric nature, from the rest of the civilized world. This endeavor apparently failed, Druthmar claimed, and they escaped. Some legends even claim they were cannibals. 16
After the kingdom's conversion to Judaism, the term "Red Jews" came into usage out of the superstition of medieval Germans, who equated their red hair and beards and their violent nature with deceit and dishonesty. It is also well documented that they heavily taxed those passing through their lands, for none dared refuse them. 17
According to Benjamin H. Freedman, himself a Jew and an apparent long-time associate and confidant of presidents and statesmen, in an address presented in 1961 at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., the Khazars were so belligerent and hostile that they were eventually run out of Asia and scattered amongst the nations of Eastern Europe. Heinrich von Neustadt, around 1300, wrote of them as the "terrifying people of Gog and Magog." 18
The territory of the Bulgars, themselves legendary for their fierceness in battle, was conquered by the Khazars in AD 642. A portion of them fled westward to the region of the Danube in the Balkans and formed what is now modern-day Bulgaria. 19 Even in modern times, Muslim history recalls the Khazar raids and the terror of those inhabiting that land. To this day they call the Caspian, Bahr-ul-Khazar -- "the Khazar Sea." 20
It is not difficult to determine some of the motivating factors behind the legendary Khazar ferocity in war. "When the bek [the Khazar head of the military and second in command only to the Kagan himself] sends out a body of troops, they do not in any circumstances retreat. If they are defeated, every one who returns to him is killed....Sometimes he cuts every one of them in two and crucifies them and sometimes he hangs them by the neck from trees." 21
Logically it seems that this would not likely happen more than once, since reason would reveal to even the dullest soldier that defeat was not an option. Such a practice would also have provided a strong impetus to the legend of Khazar fierceness since, when faced with the choice of winning in battle or facing a worse death at home, the options -- and the rational responses to them -- become painfully distinct.
All of these facts, mingled with the semi-factual legends of Alexander the Great and his attempts to wall up the Red Jews and isolate them, has led to the numerous mythologies of the coming escape, at the end of time, of Gog and Magog from the area enclosed by the Caucasus Mountains. This, as the legends say, in order to fulfill Bible prophecy in the final destruction of the world. Indeed, even Islam has such legends in its mythology.
In a writing by the Imam Ibn Kathir, he asserts that the prophet Mohammed has claimed, "Every day, Gog and Magog are trying to dig a way out through the barrier [the Caucasus mountains]. When they begin to see sunlight through it, the one who is in charge of them says, 'Go back; you can carry on digging tomorrow,' and when they come back, the barrier is stronger than it was before. This will continue until their time comes and Allah wishes to send them forth." 22
As shall be shown, the Muslims to the south of the Khazarian kingdom had good reason to attach such legends to their ferocious northern neighbors.
However, no nation can long survive,no matter how strong, by being exclusively belligerent, and the Khazars were not an exception to this. As a vital addition to their brutality they were possessed of a native, calculating wisdom in knowing, as the gambler's creed says, "when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em". This prescient political sense became evident in their diplomatic encounters with the Romans. The Roman Emperor Heraclius, in 627, formed a military alliance with the Khazars for the purpose of a final defeat of the Persians. Upon the first meeting of the Khazar king, Ziebel, with the Roman Emperor, the Khazars displayed, in full array, their skills at diplomatic flattery -- skills that would serve them well and would not disappear with their kingdom. He "with his nobles dismounted from their horses," says Gibbon, "...and fell prostrate on the ground, to adore the purple of the Caesar." So enamored was the Byzantine Emperor with this display of obeisance that it eventually led to the offer, along with many riches, of the Caesar's daughter Eudocia in marriage. 23 That union never took place due to the death of Ziebel while Eudocia was enroute to Khazaria. However, after the final defeat of Islam's designs on the Northern Kingdom in AD 730, a marriage between a Khazar princess and the heir to the Byzantine Roman Empire resulted in an offspring who was to rule Byzantium as Leo the Khazar. Thus the "King of the North" had skilfully managed to place himself on the throne of the Roman Empire. 24
After the defeat of the Persians a new triangle of power emerged, consisting of the "Islamic Caliphate, Christian Byzantium and the newly emerged Khazar Kingdom of the North. It fell to the latter to bear the brunt of the Arab attack in its initial stages, and to protect the plains of Eastern Europe from the invaders." 25 Because of their unique geographical location within the cusp created by the Caspian and Black Seas on either side, and the frightful stone barrier of the Caucasus Mountains along their southern border, defending their land was made considerably easier. This situation of geography was, according to historians, one of the major factors in shaping the history of Eastern Europe, the European continent, and ultimately the world.
The Khazars had, for years, been venturing forth southward, in their marauding raids on the Muslim countries south of the Caucasus. Now, in the early part of the seventh century, Islam came northward through the same Kasbek Pass the Khazars had used, and began a long war with the "Northern Kingdom." The major attempt of the Muslim armies to take control of the Transcaucasus came in 622 while Mohammed was still leading Islam. They conquered "Persia, Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and surrounded the Byzantine heartland (present-day Turkey) in a deadly semi-circle, which extended from the Mediterranean to the Caucasus and the southern shores of the Caspian." This began a long series of incursions by both sides (Khazaria and Islam) that lasted for another thirty years. These wars eventually saw the Arabs defeated at every advance, finally ending in 652 with the death of four thousand Arab soldiers, including their commander, Abdal-Rahman ibn-Rabiah, and the Arab armies in complete disarray.
This inability to traverse the Caucasus successfully, made it logistically impossible for the Muslim armies to create an effective siege against the Roman capital of Constantinople. "Had they been able to outflank the capital across the Caucasus and round the Black Sea," says Arthur Koestler, "the fate of the Roman Empire would probably have been sealed." 26 It was this fortuitous situation, coupled with the military barrier presented by the Khazars themselves, that prevented Europe from coming under the crescent moon of Islam and creating a very different history than that which has been.
Following this expulsion of the Arabs from the Khazar homeland, the kingdom began to war for territory rather than spoil, "incorporating the conquered people into an empire with a stable administration, ruled by the mighty Kagan [the title given the Khazar king, sometimes spelled Khagan], who appointed his provincial governors to administer and levy taxes in the conquered territories. At the beginning of the eighth century their state was sufficiently consolidated for the Khazars to take the offensive against the Arabs" rather than merely defending themselves against Muslim attacks. 27
There was a brief period of Muslim incursion into Khazaria where the Caliph Marwin II, in a surprise, two-pronged attack, drove the Khazars as far back in their own land as the Volga region. His only terms for peace were that the Kagan convert to the "True Faith" -- Islam -- with which the Khazar king complied, but apparently only long enough for the Muslim Caliph to withdraw back across the Caucasus. This incident preceded by only a few years the Khazar monarch's conversion to Judaism. Most historians agree as to the motivation behind the Caliph's withdrawal. The Muslim ruler apparently realised that, unlike the more civilised Persians, Armenians or Georgians, the barbaric Khazars could not be kept under military rule at such a distance.
As mentioned previously, most historical accounts credit Charles Martel and his Francs for saving Europe from Islam. This Anglicanized version of history does not, either by ignorance or design, consider the fact that the Franco defence of Western Europe would have been futile had not the Khazars stopped the Muslim onslaught from the east.
The astounding historical result of all this is that the Khazar kingdom was able, eventually, to set up and depose an emperor from the throne of the greatest ruling power on earth at that time, The Roman/Byzantine Empire. 28 This, apparently, was only the beginning, though the records of antiquity, until recently, have largely lost sight of this historically obscure but immensely influential people.
An interesting side note to the legendary Khazarian ferocity again reveals their budding nature as negotiators and consummate politicians, a talent that only intensified under Talmudic Judaism. In The Thirteenth Tribe, Koestler tells of the Byzantine Emperor, Theodosius II, who was intent on securing the friendship of the warrior race, "but the greedy Khazar chieftain, named Karidach, considered the bribe offered to him inadequate, and sided with the Huns. Attila defeated Karidach's rival chieftains, installed him as the sole ruler of the Akatzirs [a name given the "White Khazars"], and invited him to visit his court. Karidach thanked him profusely for the invitation, and went on to say that 'it would be too hard on a mortal man to look into the face of a god. For, as one cannot stare into the sun's disc, even less could one look into the face of the greatest god without suffering injury.' Attila must have been pleased, for he confirmed Karidach in his rule."
The death of Atilla the Hun, however, precipitated the collapse of the Hunnic empire and left an Eastern European power-vacuum which the Khazars eventually filled. They then proceeded to subjugate all other surrounding tribes to the extent that, shortly after their defeat, those tribes went virtually unmentioned in subsequent historical accounts. The Khazars had just swallowed them up, historically speaking. The most difficult time they encountered in their conquests was from the Bulgars, who were "crushingly defeated" around AD 641, with a great many migrating westward toward the Danube, and as previously mentioned, eventually establishing what is now modern Bulgaria. 29
