Empire650 CE – 969 CE · 319 years
Khazar Khaganate
A Turkic empire on the Volga whose ruling elite famously converted to Judaism.
What it was
From the 7th to the 10th centuries, the Khazars controlled the steppes between the Black and Caspian Seas, forming a key buffer against Arab expansion northward into Eastern Europe. Their elite's conversion to Judaism in the 8th century is one of the most unusual religious choices in medieval history.
Why it mattered
Khazar power blocked Arab armies from reaching the Volga and the Slavic north — without them, the religious geography of Eastern Europe might look very different.
From Wikipedia
The Khazars were a semi-nomadic Turkic people who established a major commercial empire in the late 6th century CE spanning the south of modern European Russia, southern Ukraine, and western Kazakhstan. It was the most powerful polity to emerge from the break-up of the Western Turkic Khaganate. 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'. For some three centuries, the Khazars dominated the vast area extending from the Volga-Don steppes to the eastern Crimea and the northern Caucasus.
Wikipedia: Khazars·CC BY-SA 4.0
Borders & accuracy
Solid borders are reconstructed from canonical historical-basemap data or hand-crafted from scholarly atlases.
- SOURCEaourednik / historical-basemaps
- DETAILhistorical-basemaps
- SNAPSHOT800 CE
- POLITY TYPEstate
Wars of this empire2
Conflicts whose belligerents name this polity, best-documented first.
- Rus-Khazar Conflicts700–970 CESignificant · 100K dead
- Khazar Wars650–950 CERegional · 100K dead
Open in the atlas →Seeks the timeline to 650 CE and fits the map to these borders.
Cite as: Khazar Khaganate (650 CE – 969 CE). War Atlas. https://waratlas.org/e/asia-khazar · Sources & methodology