This is a topic I've been interested in for a very long time, and I've been spending some time recently refreshing my understanding. While I was getting my master's degree, I researched the topic of slavery in Khazaria in which the topic of the conversion was largely unimportant so I didn't look into it too much.
The short version of this history goes like this: At some point in the 9th or 10th centuries, the Khazar leadership converted to Judaism. It isn't known exactly why they did so, but theories abound. Contemporary sources had a remarkably similar story with some notable differences, but the gist is that there was a Khazar leader (most likely the Bek, the supreme military and temporal ruler of Khazaria) named Bulan. Bulan was a monotheist with either Jewish sympathies, a Jewish wife, or a Jewish family, depending on the version of the story. Bulan was visited by an angel who directed him to convert to Judaism. Bulan is swayed but needs to get the supreme spiritual ruler of Khazaria, the Khagan, onto his side, so he tells the angel to speak to the Khagan as well. The Khagan was influenced by this enough to allow Bulan to invite representatives from the Christian Byzantine Empire and the Islamic Abbasid Caliphate to debate religion to determine which monotheist religion to choose and introduced a Jewish scholar when the two couldn't come to a consensus. Bulan either intentionally manipulated or otherwise convinced the Christian and Muslim representatives to admit the positive qualities of Judaism, at which point Bulan, the Khazar aristocracy, and the Khagan converted to Judaism. Bulan sent for Jewish scholars from Mesopotamia who instructed them in the faith. The conversion was ultimately completed by a later ruler named Obadiah.
This is a fanciful story in multiple ways, but, remarkably, so many independent sources from the period repeated something similar to it. Modern theories about the conversion tend to emphasize the geopolitics of Khazaria: Khazaria was the third most powerful of the region's powers, next to the Islamic Abbasids and the Christian Byzantines, and missionaries from those two frequented Khazaria. It may have been a political decision to convert as a demonstration of independence from these two powers, possibly related to the Khazar defeat and brief forced conversion to Islam after the end of the Second Arab-Khazar War in 737 CE.
So this brings us back to refreshing my understanding of the scholarship. While digging around on JSTOR today, I found an article from 2013 that I was not aware of: "Coup d'état, Coronation and Conversion: Some Reflections on the Adoption of Judaism by the Khazar Khaganate" by J. T. Olsson. Now, I am having a hard time finding information about the author online, but they are engaging with the most important scholarship on the Khazars that I am aware of and even mention correspondence with the likes of Peter Golden and Constantin Zuckerman, so I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
The point of Olsson's article is to try to ground this earlier conversion myth in a semblance of reality, based on three important facts: The one-time mint of Khazar coins with Jewish symbols in the early 830s, the unclear power structure of Khazaria in the 9th century based on outside accounts, and the evidence of unrest, famine, and invasion in Khazaria during this period. Olsson essentially argues that the conversion myth about Bulan is a true story, so far as any story started by angels speaking to a warlord is true. In Olsson's proposal, Bulan was a Jewish military leader in Khazaria (most likely from the large pre-existing Jewish population in Crimea or from the refugee communities that arrived in Khazaria from the Byzantine Empire east of the Sea of Azov in the early 9th century) who rose to prominence during their ultimately successful wars against the migratory Magyars (who are known to have been migrating west towards the Black Sea during this time, prompting the construction of a large array of fortresses along the northern border of Khazaria such as the one at Sarkel).
Bulan's successful military career fighting the Magyars resulted in his rise to the status of Bek. During this time, Khazaria was plagued by numerous problems: The Magyars disrupted trade and damaged border communities, the Byzantines were hostile and encouraged attacks on Khazaria by nearby groups, and there is at least one Armenian source that alleges a famine in Caucasian Albania that came from locusts surging out of Khazaria. The sum total of these problems would have meant that the spiritual leader of the Khazars, the Khagan, would have been discredited in the eyes of his people, an event that usually prompted the murder of the Khagan either at the hands of the people or the Bek according to Arab sources.
Olsson alleges that Bulan used this opportunity to essentially usurp the Khagan in a coup in the 830s, leaving the Khagan as a necessary figurehead to secure the loyalty of the large Turkic Tengriist population. Bulan attempted to vigorously assert Judaism among the Khazar aristocracy but was rebuffed, hence the single minting of the Moses Coins in the 830s.
In 861, Bulan used the arrival of a Byzantine missionary group led by the future Saint Cyril (then-Constantine) as a pretext to secure the conversion of the Khagan to Judaism to further his own power. Thus, Olsson proposes that the conversion story about the Khazars is tied to the Life of Constantine accounts. The Vita Constantii alleges that Constantine was successful in converting the Khazars to Christianity to the point that the Khazar leader promised to convert and exterminate the Jewish and Muslim populations of the Khaganate. Olsson argues that this is an unreliable account due to the story being one of hagiography and that the students of Cyril wouldn't have started his life of mission work with failure even with his clear hostility to the Khazar leader in the story (he compares the Khazar military leader to a slave).
During this meeting with the Christian delegation, Bulan brought forward the Jewish rabbis and used his power to orchestrate events towards one that ended in his success. Bulan and his preachers discredited the Christians and possibly the Muslims and established the supremacy of Jewish theology within the Khazar court. Bulan secured the conversion of the Khazar aristocracy and Khagan to Judaism and secured his place and dynasty as hereditary kings. The power of the Byzantine and Abbasid preachers in Khazaria was curtailed, incorporating that modern interpretation of events as one of geopolitics as much as it was about religion. The Khagan remained as a vestigial office to both secure the loyalty of Khazaria's people and also to protect the Jewish monarchy from blowback from military defeats or unrest - After all, the traditional recourse for these was to kill or depose the Khagan, not the Bek.
So to summarize, Bulan was a Jewish military leader who became Bek due to his victorious campaigns against the Magyars. He attempted to assert Judaism as the state religion of Khazaria in the 830s but failed. He built up his powerbase and later used a meeting with Christian missionaries in 861 to discredit Christianity (and most likely Islam) to establish the prestige and dominance of Jewish theology, securing the conversion of the Khagan and of the Khazar aristocracy. Bulan kept the Khagan around due to his political usefulness as both a figurehead with enormous spiritual authority and as a scapegoat for any problems facing the Khaganate.
For my part, I find its claims of a mid-9th century conversion to be convincing. It is hard to poke holes in the rest of the article because, by its admission, a lot of this conjecture is rather flimsy: It is an attempt to recontextualize a small corpus of evidence from the era ranging from hagiography and numismatics to conversion myths into one coherent narrative that 'make sense' politically (and thus, the article is built with holes in it by design). I think it is rather impressive for its attempt to make something out of the unclear status of the Bulanids - The question long plaguing the people who study Khazaria, the fact that King Joseph never mentioned a Khagan in his own account of Khazaria. Were they Khagans or Beks? This article says definitively that they were Beks. I also think its incorporation of the Magyars into the narrative to be rather important, since during the era of the Pax Khazarica genuine threats to the interior of Khazaria and its trade dominance along the Volga and Don Rivers was rather unprecedented but the construction of forts along the north suggest there was such a threat.
It's also a useful example of the way Khazar scholarship has shifted in the past few decades. Go back to the 50s and 70s and the Khazars were still being studied as just another example of a fully nomadic, tribal society, lacking completely in industry and agriculture and notable only for their conversion. After this point, there is an enormous reassessment of Khazaria as an imperial bureaucratic state, with sedentary agriculture, a powerful military bureaucracy, and courtly politics. The most recent work on Khazaria I read (I believe it was published last year, I got access to it in the late editing stage) used accounts of Khazar slave soldiers in the Abbasid bureaucracy to argue that Khazaria had a similar bureaucratic structure that allowed Khazars in the Caliphate to assimilate to their circumstances rather quickly. This article is similar in that it tries to reconcile the theological tale of the Khazar conversion with the realities of court politics and bureaucracy, the story of a military leader who usurps the role of his superior in a coup. It's interesting, if still problematic in its reaches. I think ascribing all of this to the work of a single man is a reach, but the argument presented is at least convincing. It certainly won't end any arguments on these events, in all likelihood they never will end due to the lack of evidence.
In any event, I hope someone out there thinks that this is interesting stuff. The article is available on JSTOR, if you don't have an institutional account this is available for a free account to read.
The short version of this history goes like this: At some point in the 9th or 10th centuries, the Khazar leadership converted to Judaism. It isn't known exactly why they did so, but theories abound. Contemporary sources had a remarkably similar story with some notable differences, but the gist is that there was a Khazar leader (most likely the Bek, the supreme military and temporal ruler of Khazaria) named Bulan. Bulan was a monotheist with either Jewish sympathies, a Jewish wife, or a Jewish family, depending on the version of the story. Bulan was visited by an angel who directed him to convert to Judaism. Bulan is swayed but needs to get the supreme spiritual ruler of Khazaria, the Khagan, onto his side, so he tells the angel to speak to the Khagan as well. The Khagan was influenced by this enough to allow Bulan to invite representatives from the Christian Byzantine Empire and the Islamic Abbasid Caliphate to debate religion to determine which monotheist religion to choose and introduced a Jewish scholar when the two couldn't come to a consensus. Bulan either intentionally manipulated or otherwise convinced the Christian and Muslim representatives to admit the positive qualities of Judaism, at which point Bulan, the Khazar aristocracy, and the Khagan converted to Judaism. Bulan sent for Jewish scholars from Mesopotamia who instructed them in the faith. The conversion was ultimately completed by a later ruler named Obadiah.
This is a fanciful story in multiple ways, but, remarkably, so many independent sources from the period repeated something similar to it. Modern theories about the conversion tend to emphasize the geopolitics of Khazaria: Khazaria was the third most powerful of the region's powers, next to the Islamic Abbasids and the Christian Byzantines, and missionaries from those two frequented Khazaria. It may have been a political decision to convert as a demonstration of independence from these two powers, possibly related to the Khazar defeat and brief forced conversion to Islam after the end of the Second Arab-Khazar War in 737 CE.
So this brings us back to refreshing my understanding of the scholarship. While digging around on JSTOR today, I found an article from 2013 that I was not aware of: "Coup d'état, Coronation and Conversion: Some Reflections on the Adoption of Judaism by the Khazar Khaganate" by J. T. Olsson. Now, I am having a hard time finding information about the author online, but they are engaging with the most important scholarship on the Khazars that I am aware of and even mention correspondence with the likes of Peter Golden and Constantin Zuckerman, so I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
The point of Olsson's article is to try to ground this earlier conversion myth in a semblance of reality, based on three important facts: The one-time mint of Khazar coins with Jewish symbols in the early 830s, the unclear power structure of Khazaria in the 9th century based on outside accounts, and the evidence of unrest, famine, and invasion in Khazaria during this period. Olsson essentially argues that the conversion myth about Bulan is a true story, so far as any story started by angels speaking to a warlord is true. In Olsson's proposal, Bulan was a Jewish military leader in Khazaria (most likely from the large pre-existing Jewish population in Crimea or from the refugee communities that arrived in Khazaria from the Byzantine Empire east of the Sea of Azov in the early 9th century) who rose to prominence during their ultimately successful wars against the migratory Magyars (who are known to have been migrating west towards the Black Sea during this time, prompting the construction of a large array of fortresses along the northern border of Khazaria such as the one at Sarkel).
Bulan's successful military career fighting the Magyars resulted in his rise to the status of Bek. During this time, Khazaria was plagued by numerous problems: The Magyars disrupted trade and damaged border communities, the Byzantines were hostile and encouraged attacks on Khazaria by nearby groups, and there is at least one Armenian source that alleges a famine in Caucasian Albania that came from locusts surging out of Khazaria. The sum total of these problems would have meant that the spiritual leader of the Khazars, the Khagan, would have been discredited in the eyes of his people, an event that usually prompted the murder of the Khagan either at the hands of the people or the Bek according to Arab sources.
Olsson alleges that Bulan used this opportunity to essentially usurp the Khagan in a coup in the 830s, leaving the Khagan as a necessary figurehead to secure the loyalty of the large Turkic Tengriist population. Bulan attempted to vigorously assert Judaism among the Khazar aristocracy but was rebuffed, hence the single minting of the Moses Coins in the 830s.
In 861, Bulan used the arrival of a Byzantine missionary group led by the future Saint Cyril (then-Constantine) as a pretext to secure the conversion of the Khagan to Judaism to further his own power. Thus, Olsson proposes that the conversion story about the Khazars is tied to the Life of Constantine accounts. The Vita Constantii alleges that Constantine was successful in converting the Khazars to Christianity to the point that the Khazar leader promised to convert and exterminate the Jewish and Muslim populations of the Khaganate. Olsson argues that this is an unreliable account due to the story being one of hagiography and that the students of Cyril wouldn't have started his life of mission work with failure even with his clear hostility to the Khazar leader in the story (he compares the Khazar military leader to a slave).
During this meeting with the Christian delegation, Bulan brought forward the Jewish rabbis and used his power to orchestrate events towards one that ended in his success. Bulan and his preachers discredited the Christians and possibly the Muslims and established the supremacy of Jewish theology within the Khazar court. Bulan secured the conversion of the Khazar aristocracy and Khagan to Judaism and secured his place and dynasty as hereditary kings. The power of the Byzantine and Abbasid preachers in Khazaria was curtailed, incorporating that modern interpretation of events as one of geopolitics as much as it was about religion. The Khagan remained as a vestigial office to both secure the loyalty of Khazaria's people and also to protect the Jewish monarchy from blowback from military defeats or unrest - After all, the traditional recourse for these was to kill or depose the Khagan, not the Bek.
So to summarize, Bulan was a Jewish military leader who became Bek due to his victorious campaigns against the Magyars. He attempted to assert Judaism as the state religion of Khazaria in the 830s but failed. He built up his powerbase and later used a meeting with Christian missionaries in 861 to discredit Christianity (and most likely Islam) to establish the prestige and dominance of Jewish theology, securing the conversion of the Khagan and of the Khazar aristocracy. Bulan kept the Khagan around due to his political usefulness as both a figurehead with enormous spiritual authority and as a scapegoat for any problems facing the Khaganate.
For my part, I find its claims of a mid-9th century conversion to be convincing. It is hard to poke holes in the rest of the article because, by its admission, a lot of this conjecture is rather flimsy: It is an attempt to recontextualize a small corpus of evidence from the era ranging from hagiography and numismatics to conversion myths into one coherent narrative that 'make sense' politically (and thus, the article is built with holes in it by design). I think it is rather impressive for its attempt to make something out of the unclear status of the Bulanids - The question long plaguing the people who study Khazaria, the fact that King Joseph never mentioned a Khagan in his own account of Khazaria. Were they Khagans or Beks? This article says definitively that they were Beks. I also think its incorporation of the Magyars into the narrative to be rather important, since during the era of the Pax Khazarica genuine threats to the interior of Khazaria and its trade dominance along the Volga and Don Rivers was rather unprecedented but the construction of forts along the north suggest there was such a threat.
It's also a useful example of the way Khazar scholarship has shifted in the past few decades. Go back to the 50s and 70s and the Khazars were still being studied as just another example of a fully nomadic, tribal society, lacking completely in industry and agriculture and notable only for their conversion. After this point, there is an enormous reassessment of Khazaria as an imperial bureaucratic state, with sedentary agriculture, a powerful military bureaucracy, and courtly politics. The most recent work on Khazaria I read (I believe it was published last year, I got access to it in the late editing stage) used accounts of Khazar slave soldiers in the Abbasid bureaucracy to argue that Khazaria had a similar bureaucratic structure that allowed Khazars in the Caliphate to assimilate to their circumstances rather quickly. This article is similar in that it tries to reconcile the theological tale of the Khazar conversion with the realities of court politics and bureaucracy, the story of a military leader who usurps the role of his superior in a coup. It's interesting, if still problematic in its reaches. I think ascribing all of this to the work of a single man is a reach, but the argument presented is at least convincing. It certainly won't end any arguments on these events, in all likelihood they never will end due to the lack of evidence.
In any event, I hope someone out there thinks that this is interesting stuff. The article is available on JSTOR, if you don't have an institutional account this is available for a free account to read.
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