The Kuzari or the Book of Refutation and Proof on Behalf of the Despised Religion [Alt-History Steppe AAR]

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Otemis 'the White Lion' of Azov'

Not much is known of the origins of King Otemis – some sources state he was a bodyguard of the Khazari Khan who was rewarded with the lands of Northern Azov for his service while others speculate he had escaped the Abbasids slave soldier army. The earliest date his name appears in the histories is 867AD when it first mentions a Chief Otemis of Azov and Khumbar conducting raids into Byzantine Kerch and the Georgian kingdoms of the Caucasus. Excelling at warfare and raiding, he brought back much treasure and slaves to Khazaria throughout the late 9th century and began encroaching on Abkhazia territory over the late 9th century, after capturing the Caucasian Gates of Darial in 879AD.

Otemis was had grown important in the esteem of the Khazar Khan and he was given the title of High Chief, and rights to the prosperous trade colony of Tmuratakan and the Radhanites merchants in control there. The Radhanites chaffed at this closer degree of control by someone they viewed as a barbarian because while the Khazars were nominally Jewish, they were not of the people and many steppe customs had been integrated into their religious practrces. Tensions built up between the urban orthodox Radhanites and the nomadic Khazars on trade taxes and in 883, full insurrection broke out while Duke Otemis was away on a raid deep in Byzantine Trebizond. The Radhanites moved too slow to complete the siege of the High Chief's stronghold in Abkhazia and the Otemis raiding force of nearly 1,000 horse swept over the lightly armed and trained Jews. After the battle, Otemis consolidated his rule in Azov, removing the Radhanites from Tmuratakan and sponsoring preachers to spread Kuzarite doctrine and practices in the orthodox Jewish community.

While Otemis fulfilled his duties as the protector of Khazaria’s southern borders, two great conquerors arose in the West, Arpad Arpad of the Magyars and Rurik Rurikid of Novgorod waged wars of conquest in Khazaria’s Russian territories until the Khan was left with only the lands East of the Volga and the Caucasus but a reprieve came in 907 when the Magyars abandoned their holdings in Zaporizhia in a great migration for the more prosperous and fertile lands of Pannonia after the Bulgarian state collapsed in the early 10th century. It was too late for Jewish Khazaria though and the Empire dissolved with the ascension of Khan Imil who returned to pagan Tengri practices after witnessing the failures of his father’s reign and the little protection the word of god provided him.

The next decade saw the newly independent Otemis consolidate his power in Azov and the surrounding regions, defeating the Alani, the remaining Abkhazians, and most famously ejecting the Byzantines from their long-held outpost in the Crimea, while the Greeks were undergoing another period of civil war and unable to muster its full might against Otemis’ army, now supported by conscripted Georgian Monaspa and Adyghean Horse Archers.

11th century depiction of Otemis as a warrior king. Later histories and portraits leave out his albinism but all older sources affirm his epithet of the White Lion.

The historical borders of the Khanate of Azov with its capital at Tmuratakan.

 

[Killcrazy13]

"You ask us also in your epistle: "Of what people, of what family, and of what tribe are you?" Know that we are descended from Japhet, through his son Togarmah. I have found in the genealogical books of my ancestors that Togarmah had ten sons."
Khan Otemis II

The Beni Kozar

The Kozar dynasty have detailed genealogies tracing their ancestry back to Togarmah, in turn a descendant of Japheth and Noah. Many historians consider these family trees a latter day fabrication to help reinforce the prestige of the family, and there are many other but these associations were no exclusive to the Kozars – with similar claims for the Khazars, Pechenegs, Avars and Bulgars.

Otemis’ first wife gave him four children, Sara, Tarmac, Cat and Physelar, before he had her imprisoned and tortured to death. He had her name struck from the records so we have been unable to ascertain the reasons for punishment but many historians state that this was likely the inciting incident that triggered Otemis’ lunacy and his more erratic decision-making in the latter part of his reign.

He remarried for the second time to a chieftain's daughter from the upper Volga, who gifted him another daughter and twin boy and girl.

Tarmac was his primary heir to the Khanate by steppe and Jewish law while his son Cat would become the Lord of the Crimea and Anoil, his son from his second wife would be the Chief of Abkhazia. More interestingly, the children of Sara would end up marrying into the Rurikid dynasty, with Otemis’ granddaughter marrying Fyodor, grandson of Rurik Rurikid, and a another grandson marrying the future Queen of Vladimir and establishing the Kozarite house of Vladimir. Thus began the intertwining fate of the Rus and Azov.

After his ascension to the Khanate, Otemis became obsessed with the idea of national purity, essentially declaring that his kingdom and his people were god’s chosen people, not the Khazars and their fallen Khanate nor the Radhanite Jews, establishing new rituals of kingship and a new body politic with the Kuzar dynasty and their allies ruling as Chieftains and High Chieftains from their nomad camps while the Radhanites were invited back in to manage the few cities that existed within the Khanate. These new vassals were tasked with spreading the new Otemic practices and eventually began to identify themselves as Adykhazars, different and superior to the Khazarite people of the Volga. The prosperity of the capital at Tmuratakan and Otemis’ multiple victories over Georgian invaders cemented this self-belief.

The Georgian wars did lead to many blood feuds with the houses of Anchabadze and Djaleti who desired their old lands in Abkhazia back and there were many vendettas in the waning years of Otemis’ rule and he sold dozens of Georgian nobility into slavery to defang these challengers.

In his final years, Khan Otemis grew even more convinced that he was chosen by his God to lead the faithful and had his Nasi and the Radhanite priesthood prepare an elaborate ceremony to mark the consecration of his bloodline. At this point, it was difficult to tell how much of reality the Khan perceived between his lunacy, hashish addition, and mystical communions but his in later centuries, his heirs insisted that the Beni Kozar was blessed by Yahweh through the divinely invested Otemis. He also began to practice what we know call “Solomonic Wisdom” which seems to have been a mix of kabbalistic practices and steppe shamanism that would give shape to modern day Kabbalism and Hasidic Judaism.

Otemis refused to hand leadership to his son, even as age and infirmity deprived him of much of his vigor, with the belief that Tarmac was weak and ill-prepared to lead a Khanate forged in war and blood. Otemis was finally cast into Sheol at 70 years old. He was out on campaign helping his granddaughter and her Varangian husband capture the settlement of Samar in Levedia. Surrounded by his son Cat and warrior daughters, Otemis begrudgingly bequeathed the Khanate to Tarmac and made all present swear an oath that the Kozar name would never be forgotten.

10th century Azovian woodcut of the aged Otemis as a penitent. High on Khan Tarmac's agenda was establishing the piety and righteousness of his father in order to solidify his own right to rule and engravings like these adorned the synagogue he founded in Tmuratakan.

 

[Killcrazy13]

The Heir Who Knelt

Royal portrait of Tar'mac, 10th century

The reign of Tar’mac is remembered more for the one surrender he made and not for the many victories he delivered. The Beni Kozars or the Sons of Otemis avoided any dispute on the succession with Tar’mac rulling as Khan and Cat as his Khagan or war leader. Anoil was destined to be Nasi but Khan Otemis died before the investiture could be completed and was accorded a third of the royal inheritance, the Duchy of Abkhazia.

Taking the throne, aged 44 after spending a lifetime being sidelined by his father and his more martial brother, he oversaw the growth of trade and culture within his domain. He proved to be a masterful diplomat, winning the allegiance of several Kuzarite chieftains seeking protection and a powerful banner to rally under after the collapse of Khazaria.

Among his victories, he captured the fortress of Serkel for the son of his sister, subjugated the Pecheneg tribes of Yedisan, and captured the holy Kuzarite city of Itil from the Khanate of the Caspian Steppes. In his two decades of rulership, Khan Tar’mac had doubled the size of Azov but his detractors point out that he merely bullied the weak chiefdoms of the North using the army his father had built. There were no grand raids into Georgian or Byzantine lands and his reign is remembered for the relative frugality of his court compared to his father.

There was also the concern of succession, Khan Tar’mac had only one daughter and no sons until he was well into his late 30s. The throne passing to a woman would create issues in the dynasty, not just within the Khanate of Azov but there were claimants from the Kozars of Vladimir to be concerned about. The issue was serious enough that Khan Otemis had taken over the tutelage of Tarmac’s daughter during Tar’mac’s long tenure as crown prince. However, there was a spectacular display of fecundity by Tar’mac as upon his ascension his queen sired three more daughters and a much-desired male heir, who he named Otemis. Royal supporters claimed it as proof of the divine blessing of the house of Kozar.

Tar’mac was also vexed by the Duke of Alania, his nephew who had consolidated a realm that through inheritance laws and deaths in his father’s blood feud encompassed half of the Khanate. Fearing such a powerful vassal, he plotted to retract the Duke’s vassals in Ciscacasia and Abkhazia. These acts of tyranny led to a revolt in 932 AD from the Duke and the newly vassalized Pechenegs that was viciously put down by the Khan’s brother, the Duke of Crimea.

Tar’mac was a great lover of the arts and he sponsored many artisans, the most favored being Yetilmak, his niece and a weaver of renown. You can find her tapestry of a hunt at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one of only a few to have survived the centuries.

Azovian hunting tapestry, 10th century

All of Tar’mac’s achievements are overshadowed by the great invasion of the Desht I’Qipchak from the steppes east of the urals. The house of Terteroba advanced westward, claiming kingdom after kingdom. Tar’mac abandoned the Kingdom of Bashkiria, allies through his wife, when they called for aid and captured Itil when the Caspian Khanate’s armies was engaged with the Kipchaks in the East. When the inexorable march of the Kipchaks reached the borders of Azov, Tar’mac bent the knee – the mightiest of the Khazarian successor states had accepted pagan overlordship.

 

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Khan Otemis II the Dreadful

Khan Otemis II is remembered today for both his cruel streak and the domestic strife within his family and court. While his father invested much into the education of his only heir, Otemis' mind was tuned to deviousness and cunning. He ruled through tyranny and an iron hand as he schemed to overthrow his Qipchak overlords.

The Qipchak Terteroba dynasty could only call on a few thousand of their own nation clan and in their great crusade west, had unified the different tribes of Cumans, Pechenegs and Oghuz in the central steppes to serve under them. This proved to be a fatal weakness of the Khanate as once expansion was curtailed by the great Kievan Rus armies of the Rurikids, the need for crusading unity diminished. The steppe nomads fell back into their old ways, raiding herds from neighboring settlements or clashing over claims on their newly acquired territories. Only Azov proved immune to these conflicts, too strong to be challenged by any of their new neighbors and united under a ruler with strong legitimacy, ambition and intelligence. Thus, we can look back at the reign of Tarmac and judge it to be a good and wise one.

Immediately upon his ascension, Khan Otemis II set out to prove his right to rule, launching raids against the Georgians and Byzantines, just like his grandfather did and turning back several Norse adventurers who saw opportunities to establish their fiefdoms in the Black Sea region. With this plunder and prestige, he greatly expanded Kozar horde, which now numbered 1,500 horse and over 6,000 levy foot soldiers.

In the Azovian heartlands, he began a slow campaign of pogroms against the Cumans, first forbidding them access to the best grazing land and barring them from the cities of the Black Sea coast before forcing them to serve as levies for his wars. These measures ensured a slow decline in the prosperity and numbers in the Cuman tribes while keeping the fires of his war machine fed.

Before throwing off the yoke of Qipchak tyranny, he saw an opportunity to aggrandize himself, submitting claims of lordship over the lands of Zapozhiria, Ciscaucasia and the Caspian Steppes. Khan Volan II Terteroba, son of the first great Qipchak Khan, believed his vassal was loyal like his Kozar father, recognized these claims and named him Guardian of the Waters, Khan of the Azov, Volga, Don and Dnieper. With his newly acquired vassals, Khan Otemis’s realm was nearly half the realm of the Desht-i-Qipchak.

Sometime in 950, Volan II died under mysterious circumstances and while no immediate suspicion fell on his spymaster, Otemis II, that soon changed with the Azovian Khan’s next moves. He declared independence, having a messenger read it out in the Terteroba court in far away Simek of the Qipchak heartlands:

“My father made peace with the father of the Qipchak, and I have maintained that covenant with the son but I will not obey a boy who has never seen the sea, who knows nothing of the lands in the West and who does not serve the one true god.”

Mosaic found in archaeological site of Simek Palace - showing court life during the short lived Desht-i-Qipchak Khanate.

With that, independence was declared and Khan Arkat Terteroba found himself outmanoeuvred and outnumbered as the Otemis’ armies marched on his holdings in Itil and smashing the few remaining tribes loyal to the Qipchaks.

Newly independent with claims to the Kingdoms of Novgorod, Vladimir and the overlordship of all Kievan Rus through his mother, Otemis II desired to live up to the legend of his grandfather.

The raids into Byzantium continued and he accomplished something not even the first Otemis was able to – reaching Constantinople and sacking the City of the World’s Desire and using its treasures to adorn his palace tent, transforming it into the envy of the steppes. Not since the raids of the 9th century Rus has the Romans had to fear such attacks. These raids increased the animosity between Roman Christians and their subject Jews, leading many to seek out asylum in Tmuratakan and the Crimea. Their urban experiences brought new innovations into the Khanate, with developments in city planning, crop rotation and construction leading to the transformation of the Khanate under the rule of his successor.

Otemis was cunning in all aspects except for one – his wife Khitan. She was headstrong, adventurous and clever, and rumours in court whispered that he never made a major decision before consulting her. While she converted to Kuzarite Judaism upon her marriage, she was never devout and she continued her free-spirited ways making her the talk of Tmuratakan. She never lost her love of riding leathers, drinking and flirtations with members of the court, acting as everything but the ideal Jewish wife. Otemis indulged her and if he ever reprimanded her, it must have been in private.

Thus, it was no surprise when rumors began that she had taken another lover, the Duke of Yedisan, Otemis’ cousin. He made no move to stop the cuckoldry though there were reported confrontations between husband and wife where she declared her innocence and he accepted the life. Repeatedly he had his spies trail his wife and to see if any of his children showed any affection to the Duke but he never took action.

Khitan bore him four sons and two daughters. His sons were named Tarmac, Otemis, and the twins Tukhan and Cathac. Tarmac was born white as snow while his three other sons all had the striking red hair of the Rurikids… and the Duke of Yedisan.

It is said that the cruelty of Otemis grew as long and fiery as the hair of his children. He often had prisoners captured in war tortured or sold into slavery and every city he captured, he sacked with appalling violence. All this was not able to salve his heartache and Otemis became gaunt, refusing to take meals even during feasts with his vassals. His only joys were martial displays in Chowgan tournaments and the crushing of enemy armies.

His campaigns in Mordvinia, Kiev and Hungary were legendary both for his ferocity in battle and his dispassion at the execution of captives but his neighbors desired his friendship and aid, knowing that the support of Otemis’ monaspa heavy cavalry and steppe archers could turn any battle.

Thus, the betrayal was felt most strongly when the Fyodor Rurikid, his brother-in-law through marriage to his sister, called for representatives of Kuzarite, Orthodoxy and Sunni Islam to present their case on the superiority of their faiths. It’s said Otemis went white as his father when he heard that Fyodor had chosen the false Christian trinity over the one true god. He resolved then to break the power of the Rus, starting a war for Kiev, the prosperous trading hub on the Dnieper and capital of Kievan Rus. His alliance with the Rurikids was broken and he pledged he would see their empire burn before Orthodoxy could take root. Unfortunately, domestic strife and a life of battle had taken a toll on him and he would not live to see this goal through to the end.

Khan Otemis finally found his faith in his old age, and as he read the ancient stories of the prophets in the Nevi’im, his piety found expression in zealotry, threatening heretics and heathens in his court with conversion or death and the establishment of the first Judaic holy order, the Zealots of Azov.

His primary successor, his second son Otemis the III, would bear the invisible scars of his father’s many traumas. His eldest son, Tarmac, was made Nasi at the urging of the court, who saw too much of Khan Tarmac in the young man and thus removed from the succession. Some say this was done at the advice of Khatun Khitan who favored her three red-headed sons over the albino Tarmac.

Otemis was on campaign in early 988 AD against another Varangian adventurer when he took ill from cold and rain and passed away days later. His proto-empire, built by his grandfather and father was split between Otemis III, Turkhan and Cathaq.

 

[Killcrazy13]

Interlude – the world in 988AD

Taking this chance to capture the state of the world after more than a century has passed.
We’ll start at the centre (Azov) and work our way outwards:

Russia & the Steppes
Otemis II’s realm was split into 3 upon his death, Otemis III inheriting Azov, Cathaq taking the Caucasus and Mordivinia, and Tukhan inhering the Caspian Steppe.
Russia is split into 3, Novgorod, the primary Rurikid Kingdom of Fyodor, Vladimir under a Rurikid/Kozar dynasty and the rump state of Kyivan Rus in the far North after the two Rus states declared independence.
Permia is a Turumic kingdom often looking for alliances with the Kuzarites of Azov.


Eastern Europe
Hungary and Moldavia are still tribal Taltoist nations formed by the Magyar migrations that are not likely to survive for long as feudal Christian nations around them grow stronger.
Bulgaria imploded after being conquered by Serbian pagans and then swallowed up by Byzantium. Byzantium has had its ups and downs, due to the constant internal conflicts on succession and tyranny – very much just like OT though they’ve managed to claim the rest of the Balkans.
For Epirus, see Southern Europe.


The Levant and Persia
As you can see, the Abbasids imploded, and in that vacuum, there came a Zoroastrian uprising led by the Ziyarids of Daylam who conquered Persia, Mesopotamia and Jazira before running out of steam against the Ghaznavids in the East and the Bardunid Sunni Caliphate of Syria in the West. The Bardunids also have been holding off the Byzantines from expanding eastwards too much, capable of mustering armies as larger or larger than the Romans.
Armenia reclaimed its freedom after the Abbasids and follow their own Armenian Apostolic faith though the land is split into Hayastan and the Armenian Principalities.
Further south in Arabia, Qarmatianism and other Islamic faiths have spread after an incredibly successful slave revolt in the Zanj.


Central Asia
The Ghaznavids came to power about 20 years ago and has seen spectacular success against the Safavids and the other Ash’ari kingdoms of Khorasan, Makran and Transoxiana. They’ve been spreading their own variant of Sunni Islam, Maturidism by sword and book through the region but they’re facing resistance in wars with the mighty Pratihara Empire for control of Punjab and Sindh. Massive wars there, 20k-30k on each side.


Northern Europe
Not much to say here, still very Asatru and pagan. Sweden is ruled by the Af Munso house of Bjorn Ironside alongside another strain of the dynasty in control of Uppland.


Central and Western Europe
Hoo-boy, where to begin…
Bavaria was conquered by Haesteinn initially and he held Lotharangia as well before being overthrown by his Catholic subjects.
A German King Otto of Ludolfinger is on a mission to unity Francia and resurrect the Carolingian ideal of the Holy Roman Empire
I have no idea what happened in France.
Britannia is unified under the Hvitserk dynastry that has just given up their pagan ways and converted to Catholicism.
Not shown here but central Europe is interesting from a religious point of view, a few counties have converted to the Jewish Kuzarite faith or more surprisingly, Islam. Not sure how that happened but the entire area of what would be Poland and Bohemia is a mishmash of faiths including Vidilist and Slovianskan. I guess when your farms are the battlefields of kings, you’ll pray to anyone that will answer.


Southern Europe
Epirus is interesting – it’s a muslim state founded by an Italian revert who claimed both Sicily and Epirus as his domain. Most of Sicily is under Muslim control including Salerno. The Catholic Duke of Spoleto and the Papacy is holding them off from rampaging up the peninsular.
Spain is going pretty much like the historical record but with the collapse of Francia, we might be seeing the Muslims crossing the Pyrenees soon.



North Africa
The Shi’ite Fatimids are in control of Egypt and in constant conflict with the Sunni Caliphate of Syria. The rest of North Africa is a mess of Islamic faiths in constant conflict after the Fatimids abandoned them for the riches of the Nile.

 

[Killcrazy13]

Khan Otemis III the Cannibal

The third Otemis to bear the name is a difficult Khan to judge. He was a cruel debaucherous man that practiced Solomonic rituals that the Kohen judged to be verging on blasphemy. Yet he was also the great zealot Khan that forged a khanate of nomads into a kingdom of feudal lords and growing cities, uniting the disparate Adykhazars, Pechenegs, Cumans, Rus and Georgians into a single Azovian nation, and issuing the first coinage of the steppes.

Before we explore his reign, it is important to visit his time as crown prince. He was engaged to the daughter of a Mazdayani lord when his father mistakenly thought that the teachings of Zoroaster bore much resemblance to the teachings of Yahweh. It was a fertile marriage with his wife Mariam bearing him two boys in quick succession though the second, named Otemis, was born with the outward mark of Yetzer Hara, the inclination to do evil, with scaly skin covering much of his forearms and legs.

The Nasi, Tarmac, oldest son of Khan Otemis II proclaimed that “The greater the man, the greater his evil inclination! Imagine the strength he will show on his bar mitzvah!” This may sound odd to our modern ears but traditional Kuzarite beliefs state that the inclination to do good is only ‘born’ when a child reaches 13 and able to control their behaviour. Thus the belief that the greater the evil, the greater the strength to resist.

Unfortunately, we do not have a record of the common people’s reaction or if this Otemis would prove his Nasi right. A few months after, both he and his older brother would meet tragic ends under suspicious circumstances. Most put it down to vendettas against Khan Otemis II but some alternative sources claim it was the Khan who ordered their deaths for desecrating the purity of his holy bloodline. It was said that no worshipers of Zoroaster were ever welcomed back to the court of Tmuratakan after this incident.

This double tragedy impacted Prince Otemis greatly and challenged his faith in the Lord. Why and when he began to consume human flesh is unknown but the secret was unveiled shortly after his crowning as Khan. His vassal and cousin, the Duke of Alania revealed it to the court after witnessing the Khan tasting the brain flesh of a beheaded prisoner. The shock and outrage among his vassal and the vast Beni Kozar clan was strong but the Khan was stronger. He still commanded a horde larger than all his vassals combined and he ensured his council was filled by the few loyalist vassals and courtiers remaining.

His father, Otemis II had left him a large treasury and he used it gratuitously for gifts to soothe the feathers of his ruffled vassals and showed them generosity at his frequent feasts. Of course, the Khan engaged his appetites voraciously at such events though some courtiers whispered that it was better not to know the providence of the sweetmeats at the banquet. A clever wit dubbed him the “the Khan who ate too much”. The annals do not tell the fate of that courtier.

Khan Otemis III knew that the Romans across the sea was the greatest threat to his kingdom and he ensured they were kept down with constant raids and sackings of the cities of Anatolia but he knew he needed to modernize his realm to ward off his threat. He saw the wealth of the Empire, the prosperous cities, well-armed soldiers and the beautifully adorned churches. He took what he could in his raids but there was always more and the Romans always recovered.

The Khan gathered the kohens, scholars and the Radhanite merchants and had them revise the Halakha, the ancient set of laws that regulate Judaic Kuzarite practices and daily life. At the same time, he began a program of cultural assimilation, curbing the Cuman pogroms of his father.


The revised Halakha would expand on traditional ideas and cover trade, taxation and farming, integrating the Roman ideas imported with the Jewish refugees of his father’s reign. Nasi Tarmac, his brother was in charge of this great social engineering project and after 7 years, the new Way was shared with the great lords of Azov and the people of Tmuratakan together with a proclamation that from that day forward, all the people of his realm would be known as Azovians.

It is one thing to proclaim a united people and quite another to make it reality and this is another area where a Khan trained for war showed that logistics and people skills are key to winning any battle. He issued the first Jewish coinage in centuries, encouraged his vassals to adopt the new ways and sponsored many building programs across his realm to show the unity of faith and state to the Azovian state. His warriors, he paid in coin but Khan understood that wealth was cultivated from the ground and he dedicated much of his manpower to farming and the richest part of his domains was soon to be shown to be in Kiev and fertile black soils surrounding it. It was a drastic transformation for a nation of horse nomads and raiders but the Khan had the steel, fortresses and infrastructure to make his war machine march on.

Azovian coin, the so-called Moses coin dated to the 10th century, from the Spillings Hoard. It bears the inscription in Arabic “There is no God but Allah, and Musa (Moses) is His messenger.” A hypothesis for the odd inscription is that Khan Otemis III wanted to ensure his coins would be traded outside his realm but would not consider Greeks so opted to the next best options.


Next: The Khan in love and war

 

[Killcrazy13]

Khan Araslan the Unready

Khan Araslan grew up without much fatherly supervision, born at the peak of Khan Otemis III’s crusading zeal for the Kuzarite faith. He did not take well to his royal education with many tutors commenting on his laziness and poor discipline. Lacking talent in diplomacy or horsemanship, his shortcomings fuelled the fire of the Azovian Grand Princes who raged at the horrific sins of Araslan’s father. His coronation feast was marked by the lateness of his arrival and the lack of respect shown to his vassals, and his betrothal to the daughter of the Grand Prince of Crimea offended many other Lords who said that no proper bride selection was made and that they were accorded the chance to present their candidates to the Khan.

The court had grown increasingly out of control during the later years of Otemis III. During his frequent absences away on campaign, his daughters, Quna, Guna and Hatratsa became known for their dalliances with handsome Knezs and visitors. Guna and Hatratsa bore many children out of wedlock but Quna was more careful, ensuring that no child of her could be claimed to illegimate after her marriage to Knutr the Dane. Khan Otemis never took steps to punish his daughters, possibly treasuring his remaining children even more after the deaths of his two elder sons and Khan Araslan was content to follow his example.

Khan Araslan drowned amidst the debaucheries of his court and sought a way to legitimise his reign by conquering the holy city of Samarkand in Transoxiana. His initial conquests on the Caspian coast went well but when he tried to remove the Muslim vassals in these newly conquered lands, the Grand Princes used it as the excuse they needed to rebel – proclaiming the Khan had contravened the feudal rights that each of them was merely upholding. The Khanate was ablaze and Araslan’s army was across the sea and far from the Khan sitting in Tmuratakan.

What was left of his army was commanded by Grand Prince Yilig of Yedisan – only Yedisan and Crimea staying loyal to the Khan – made the long march back to the Azovian heartlands. The situation was dire and Khan Araslan did not react well, in the palace in Tmuratakan scoured his ledgers for any unpaid debts to ensure his army was paid and loyal. It was said that one night, he was going through the accounts of Dagestan, there was heard much thrashing of furniture and cursing from the Khan, insulting the incoherency of the Caspi-tongue that the records were written in and general bemoaning of his fate. His servitors exclaimed they heard the Khan gibbering and muttering to himself by the time the sun rose but none dared to venture inside.

When the Khan finally came out for his morning repast, his hair had gone white and he refused to speak to anyone. His decision-making grew increasingly erratic and loyalist increasingly took charge of the war effort without involving him. Four weeks later, the Khan collapsed in the middle of a court session and was pronounced dead of a heart attack.

Thus ended the reign of Khan Araslan, aged 24. He had ruled unwisely for five years and his sister, Khanum Quna was elevated to her birthright after a wait of nearly 4 decades and immediately thrust into multiple wars - against the rebel steppe lords, raids across the Khanate and a Norse horde attempting to claim the Crimea for their own.

 

[Killcrazy13]

Khanum Quna the Wolf of the Steppes

Would Quna’s reign have been so glorious if she had been born a man? Would she fail in dealing with the troubles that destroyed her brother Araslan? It is difficult to say but the Khanum would create her own legend and forever destroy the Judaic stereotype of women being unfit to rule.

A note on titles, all previous wives of the Khans had been called Khatun, reflecting their lesser status in the marriage but Quna insisted she was a Khan, not a mere Khatun and the new title of Khanum was created to placate both her and the more conservative kohens and rabbis in their temples. In the modern Kazakh tongue of Central Asia, Khatun is a derogatory term for women while Khanum has a more respectful meaning – the legacy of Quna lives on to this day.

Khanum Quna took control of matters immediately in the royal capital of Tmuratakan, She dispatched her trusted general, Grand Prince Yilig of Yedisan to level the cities of Transcaspia before crossing the Caspian to march on the strongest of the rebels, the Grand Prince of Ciscaucasia, fortified in the mountain stronghold of Derbent. The siege took nearly a year and she had her remaining forces concentrate themselves in Tmuratakan, well aware that without the capital, the rebel lords would never be able to claim victory. Azov burned as the Grand Princes sought their independence from the Khanate. It was two years before the war ended – Yilig had captured one of the lords of Transcaspia and Quna ordered his public execution and his body displayed in a gibbet off the cliffsides of Tmuratakan. Such brutality and the fact that the rebels had not accomplished any significant victories made the rebels seek a way out of the quagmire, sending an emissary to Tmuratakan to declare the war invalid with the death of the Muslims they were fighting for. It stank of high hypocrisy but Quna was cornered into accepting it, else be claimed the tyrant her father had been.

Khanum Quna was cleverer than her vassals thought though. She was well versed in the Azovian Halakha – indeed she had drafted portions of it during the great work of Tarmac – and she knew just how to wield it. Highlighting the requirement of righteousness in the Lord in rulership, she declared the rebel Norse Prince of Voronezh, Knutr, as a non-believer and a breaker of the sabbath. With this thin veneer of justification, approved by the rabbis, she stripped him of his titles and lands. Knutr revolted but he stood alone as the other Grand Princes would not countenance going against their own rabbis or have their own sins scrutinized. The revolt was crushed in short order and Knutr reduced to a mere lord of a single country and placed under the rule of the Lord of the Don Valley. His former domain of Voronezh was gifted to a scion of the Kozar family.

The Khanum was eager to prove her greatness, having been in the shadows till her middle age, together with her Khagan (or warleader), Yilig, she consolidated the titles of her grandfather, after crushing the remnants of the Caspian Khanate after inheritance laws and border warfare with the Kimeks and Oghuz had severely weakened it. Only Mordvinia was out of her grasp as those lands were held by the rising power of an independent and Kuzarite Vladimir and her kohens would not countenance a war within their own faith.

She started work on her greatest achievement soon after the end of the rebellion. Realizing Tmuratakan was vulnerable to invasion by sea and rebellion by the lords around it, she chose the site of Kiev as her new capital, forcing the native Rus farmers of the surrounding lands to begin construction of a new palace while migrating thousands of coastal Azovians to the small settlement by the banks of the Dnipro to take over the empty farmsteads. Within a single generation, Kiev was transformed from a sleepy backwater of Azov to the heart of Azovian culture and power, mortared with Russian blood. Those who could escape fled northwards to the Orthodox Rus lands in Novgorod and Minsk. The baroque-era Kozarskayii palace is purported to have re-used the stone blocks from Quna’s ancient residence and it is claimed you can hear Rus ghosts still toiling away on quiet nights.

The later day Kozarskayii palace built on the original site of Quna's palace. Photo, circa 1911AD

While talented in warfare, Khanum Quna entrusted the dependable Khagan Yilig to lead her armies, North and West while she consolidated the structures of state that a tribal steppe kingdom had never known or needed. These wars saw her consolidate her rule over what we call Ruthenia. These wars became known as the Orthodox Jihad – a misnomer to our modern ears but the Christians of Europe drew a relation between the Turkic Jewish horsemen of the steppe and the Islamic invasions of the past 400 years and saw little difference. This Jihad or Herem Wars (In Azovian Tarmacic, wars of destruction) would continue for another two centuries, waxing and waning, depending on the temperament of the Azovian throne of the time.

The Khagan was also purported to be her lover but the scandal was limited as they were discrete and she bore no progeny during the period of the relationship, being past her childbearing years.

Against the Orthodox Romans of Byzantium, she earned her epithet of the Wolf, first capturing Constanta to control all entry into the Danube river and then in 1053AD, Yilig captured the Anatolian side of the Bosphurus, holding all of Bithynia and erecting the great fortress of Anadolukel on the narrowest portion of the strait. The Wolf of the Steppes understood the importance of trade and goods in ways no previous Khan had and her wars always had a strategic goal, not just conquests of glory. Without complete control of the Bosphorus and the Danube, the Romans were forced to negotiate trade agreements and access to the Mediterranean to the Azovians in return for guarantees of safety for their own merchant fleets and supply ships. In many ways, this was when Azov announced itself to the medieval Christian world. Azovian merchants would be frequent sights in ports from Alexandria to Barcelona for the next few decades.

Seated in Tmuratakan, Quna focused on the stewardship of her realm, revising the original Halakha of her father’s time, this new Pravda Azozkaya would focus on the temporal laws of the state establishing new inheritance laws, enforcing order in the growing cities of the realm and expanded in even greater details the rights and obligations of the vassal system. In just 60 years, Azovian culture had been ripped from its tribal moorings and firmly a sail on the powerful river of feudalism. She would not live to see the completion of the Pravda Azozkskaya - the equivalent of the Corpus Juris Civilis of the Romans would finally be published during by her granddaughter.

Within Azov, the prestige of Quna waxed and the formerly rebellious Princes of her brother’s reign gave way to a new generation that knew only the glories of her reign and acclaimed her the Khan of Khans. Her vassals controlled the lands of Ruthenia, Zapozhiria, Azov, Caucasia and the Caspian Steppes and she was lord of the grass sea and the black sea. In 1063AD, Quna commissioned a new crown and declared herself Tsaritsa of mighty Azov as she officially moved the now imperial capital formally to Kiev.

In the final years of her reign, she was to suffer one of her few defeats and the most humiliating one of her life. Her beloved Khagan had passed away recently and the new generation of Knezs had grown complacent in the power of Azovian cavalry. In what should have been a ‘routine’ Heremic campaign against Minsk, the new Knezi were unprepared for the ferocity of the Christians, with Minsk receiving aid from the new Kingdom of Estonia. The armies of King Wezrej Kabar encircled the horse archers of Azov in the forests of Kozestan, nullifying the advantage of the steppe warriors. In the darkness of the forest, Azovian morale broke and the men panicked, routing. It was not the last of the defeats as King Wezrej pressed his advantage, sacking the new Azovian settlements around Kiev. The war reached its lowest moment with the sacking of her new capital Kiev, with many of the Tsaritsa’s family taken hostage by the Christian king. The Tsaritsa was forced to take the field, well into her 70s and rebuild the shattered Azovian morale. She adopted a new strategy – guerrilla warfare and eliminating the weaker allies of Minsk from the war effort while she called for reinforcements from the steppes and Abkhazia to replace her shattered host. The war of attrition was in Azov’s favour who could call upon much larger reserves of manpower and coin, and finally, after 4 years, she captured Turov and received the Christian’s surrender. In the aftermath of the war, she was forced to pay a queen’s ransom for the return of her household. Some of her bloodline was left to stew in the dungeon of Estonia for a long time, the Tsaritsa refusing to pay for their release, stating that she recognized no kinship with such monstrosities. These were her grandchildren born of incest, as the wild ways of the Azovian court continued. We will visit the happenings of court during the reign of L’if her oldest son and sole heir but this was a blight on the moral character of the Tsaritsa.

The Tsaritsa was finally cast into Sheol in 1067AD. She had lived half her life awaiting her chance at greatness and the other half achieving that greatness. Aged 84, in her own bed, surrounded by her children, she said her final prayers and asked for forgiveness from Yahweh. Tsaritsa Quna was not a figure to inspire affection but in her achievements, she had achieved the eternal worship and gratitude of a fledging empire.

 

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Tsar L’if and the Azovian Court

The Kuzari, full title Book of Refutation and Proof on Behalf of the Despised Religion (Arabic: كتاب الحجة والدليل في نصرة الدين الذليل: Kitâb al-ḥujja wa'l-dalîl fi naṣr al-dîn al-dhalîl), also known as the Book of the Kuzarites, was completed in the year 1140 AD at the peak of the Kuzari crusades into central Europe.

The book was written by the medieval Sephardi Jewish philosopher, Judah Halevi, and is one of the most important apologias of Jewish philosophy. While most of the essays are dedicated to Jewish thinking and religious traditions, it uses a literary device of a conversation between an unnamed legendary Kuzarite King and a Jewish Rabbi on the tenets of Judaism and the rabbi’s attempts to correct the King on astray Kuzarite practices such as the toleration of pagan practices, mystical kaballah rituals and the acceptance of adultery by the Azovian people. Setting aside the theological contents, the setting of the book is useful in illuminating the nature of the Azovian court.

Scholars speculate that the King in question is the Tsar L’if. A talented duelist in his youth and the embodiment of knez-hood, tales of the tall and handsome prince greatly enhanced the prestige and glamour of Tsaritsa’s court but behind that chivalrous demeanour was a man who was not used to being refused.

Tsaritsa Quna’s children, her sons L’if and Ezra and three daughters, Devorah, Sarah and Yigid enjoyed the best education that the riches of Azov could afford, and excelled at horse riding, hunting and Azovian courtly practices. While Quna was vicious with her enemies, she was lenient with her family. As they grew into adulthood, Ezra prepared to take on the traditional role of Nasi that the Kozar family had been practicing for generations while the daughters were given court duties. However, marriage was refused for them by the Tsaritsa who had seen the dangers of rival claimants and the support they could gather among unhappy lords during the reign of her father and during her ascension. She wanted to ensure that no such troubles would bother her heir, L’if.

Rumours soon spread in the court that the five siblings had carnal knowledge of each other. Azovians were still new to sedentary life and sex outside marriage did not have the same stigma that it carried in the Christian West. Kuzarite customs dictated that no child could be born a bastard and fornication was not a sin but when the first child of Sarah was born a dwarf, everyone knew it was a child of incest. It was not the last grandchild of sin for Quna and Sarah would bear four more children, with two more accursed with dwarfism. These are the grandchildren that Quna refused to ransom back from King Wezrej, though the Princes L’if and Ezra never claimed any of them as their own.

Spoiler: NSFW painting of Azovian court scene

Beyond the debauchery in the royal household, the court of Kiev played host to wild feasts and an embarrassment of decadent food from across the empire of the steppes. Courtiers would be found fornicating in side chambers and horses stormed through the feast hall. Christian monks maliciously reported that the Azovian people were horse breeders in more ways than one. While the stories out of Quna’s palace turned away the chaste and pious, it attracted many revelers and free spirits who gladly served the Tsaritsa in return for her patronage. Much of the colour described within the Kuzari fit with what we know of Quna's and L'if's imperial court and fit with the description of other visitors.

And so, we come to the reign of Tsar L’if who was a learned man but not a pious one. Upon his ascension, he ordered the dungeons to be cleared of his mother’s many prisoners of war as he intended to start his own collection. Ignoring the accusations of murder, sodomy, inebriety and incest, Tsar L’if had grand plans to build upon his mother’s legacy. What he should not have ignored are the many enemies he had made during his long prince-hood.

It was three years into his reign and he was leading one of the now annual raids into Byzantine territory when his enemies struck. The raiding force was deep inside Thrace and the Basileus had mobilized a force to stop it. Tsar L’if was out scouting with a small force when he was set upon. A single arrow in his eye laid the Tsar low and the Romans came upon the disorganized encampment and routed the leaderless Azovians, with only half of his 7,000 men making it back home.

He had only one true-born child, Princess Ulita, all of 15 years, now Tsaritsa of a sprawling empire forged by her grandmother, a treasury depleted by her father’s ambitions and a host shattered by a vengeful Basileus.

 

[Killcrazy13]

Tsaritsa Ulita the Lawgiver

The Tsaritsa Ulita would take to heart the lessons of her father and grandmother. Where they were wild and unrepressed spirits, she resolved that her reign would be just and righteous. She surrounded herself with respected Kohens and finalized the Pravda Azovskaya with revisions that fit her vision of the Tsardom.

Her early reign was troubled by restive vassals and a resurgent Byzantine Empire, eager to claim back prestige after losing Mesopotamia, Epirus and the Optimatoi theme over the last century. The easiest and most important to Constantinople was the Optimatoi and war was declared one year into her reign. Tsaritsa Ulita put up token resistance but knew she could not defend her holdings in the Bosphorus with a shattered and demoralized army. She had her loyal Greek vassal and his family evacuated to Kiev after the fall of Anadolukel and northern Bythinia and ceded the field to the rampant Romans.

With an empty treasury, she instead bought off the nobility through grants of titles and vassals, elevating the Grand Princes of Kerch, Khazaria, Turov and Itil to Khans, and defusing the brewing resentment that all rights to rule resided in the lap of a young girl. Professing an affinity to the steppe, she also restored the ancient Kurul-Tai of Khazaria where the horselords had a say in who would lead them, giving these new Khans and other powerful Grand Princes a right to declare who would wear the crown of Azov. The new laws of succession were written into the Halakha and the Pravda, forever a part of Azovian custom. With these gifts and the decentralization of power, the Tsaritsa bought stability and four grateful Khans for the rest of her reign but would have a dire consequences for her successors.

Having already been Bat Mitzvah three years previously, Ulita had the right to choose her own spouse. Cautious of the dangers of marriage with her vassals or dynasty, she sought a partner who would be her strong right arm but not a rival, marrying Gabor Arpad, a scion of the Arpads of Hungary 14 year her senior but who lacked land or claims of his own. Tsar Gabor would prove to be both loyal and loving, protective of the young Tsarina and an able Khagan that tutored her in the stratagems of warfare.

While the rout of the great Azovian raid in 1070 and the loss of the Optimatoi hurt her prestige, Ulita did not immediately press for was despite the bayings of her Khan. Her priority was the Pravda and the rebuilding of Azov’s strength. She issued new coinage, bearing her Tamgha or royal emblem in Tarmacic, now the lingua franca of the steppes, on one side and the seal of Solomon on the other. These initially high purity dinars weighed the same as the more famous nomisma of the Byzantines and were intended to replace the historically trusted coin in the ports of Kerch, Tmuratakan and other important trading centres of Azovia. However, gold shortages would prove to be recurring problems for the Tsardom and Ulita found it difficult to avoid a gradual debasement of her coinage.

Debased dinar bearing the seal of Solomon and Tamagh now worn off, early 12th century

Her newly minted Khans continued their wars of conquest, slowly expanding the borders East-, West- and North-wards but the Tsaritsa’s armies had their hands full with Varangian adventurers seeking their fortunes in the Crimea and around the Black Sea coast. Eventually, she settled on buying them off in order to focus her armies on her goals in the South. She believed that contesting the Bosphorus was impossible but the wide plains of the Danube valley could act as a breadbasket for the hungry empire and ensure Constantinople was within striking distance if a lesson needed to be taught to the haughty Greeks.

In 1101, the Tsaritsa raised her banners and marched into Moesia. It would take nearly three years of campaigning but in 1103, she would crush the core of the Byzantine army in a carefully planned ambush in the mountains of Sozopol. The mountain-bred Monaspan horsemen of Alania would prove decisive as the traditional Roman cataphract armored fist was negated in the terrain. The Battle of Sozopol was Tsarita’s revenge for her father’s defeat and the decisive factor in the Basileus’ surrender. It would take many years for Azov to quell the Christian Bulgarians but a clever campaign of propaganda by her Nasi, Yavdi, reminded the Bulgarians of their ancient steppe origins and slowly Moesia was brought into the empire and became the productive and prosperous province that Ulita had hoped for.

Unlike many of her ancestors, Ulita was devout in her beliefs and did not view the faith as an extension of her will. On her pilgrimage to the ancient and holy silk road city of Samarkand, she discussed the encroachment of Christianity, the collapse of Arpad power in Hungary and the blasphemic idolatry still prevalent in the steppes with her fellow pilgrims. Upon her return, she declared a Herem War against the Muslims of Soghd. It was both piety and opportunity that drove the decision as Seljuk power had faded, riven by constant internal dissension. The armies of Azov marched from Kiev, crossing the Black Sea, the Caucasus mountains and the Caspian. It was a gruelling journey and it’s said she lost a tenth of her force just in the march to the borders of Soghd. The war was shorter then the march had been and she shattered the Sogdian Emir’s army at Firabr. The banner of Azov was raised in Samarkand and the grateful rabbis travelled back with her to Kiev to witness the miracle of the Lord’s Kingdom on Earth. She had also summoned respected rabbi from Itil and Kerch and asked them to nominate who among them would make up the restored high priesthood of Judaism.

Nasi Rotislav would be the first Kohen Gadol of the Kuzarite faith and the newly established clergy urged the Tsaritsa to take a more militant stance against the heathens. Against her better judgement, she accepted their revisions to the Halakha and a more fundamentalist stance on religious matters. The era of crusades had finally arrived in the steppes...

 

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Interlude – The World in the early 12th Century

It’s timely at this point for us to take a look at the geo-political situation outside of Azov and the steppes before we move forward in the historical record. By the end of Tsaritsa Ulita’s rule in 1124, a kind of status quo had been in place between Azov and its neighbours.

The most important of these are the Romans of Byzantium. The Empire had held together and still controlled most of the territories it had been limited to since the rise of Islam in the 7th century. Expansion into the Levant had been blocked by Seljuks who expelled them from Mesopotamia in the 1060s and constant border warfare continued between the empires in the Taurus and Cilician mountains. In the West, the Byzantines had annexed the old Roman province of Illyria though the native Slavs now resident there would prove to be source of constant dissent to the Basileus’ authority there. Relations between Constantinople and Kiev had grown progressively colder after the capture of Moesia and the Kuzarite crusade that expelled them from Hungary, and Basileus Kyros instructed his Ecumenical Patriarch to preach holy war against the accursed Jews. While these messages resonated with the citizens with increased incidents of forced conversions and lynchings against the Jews within the empire, the fervour for holy war in what they viewed as the wild and impoverished steppe lands remained low.

The Kuzarite faith had penetrated deep into Siberia and Tartaria and many of them looked to Azov and the Kohen Gadol for spiritual leadership, pledging nominal tribute to the Kiev but still engaging in raids across the border against the weaker marcher lords of Azov. Kiev was far away and the Tsaritsa found it increasingly difficult to protect all borders, accepting minor raids in the East and keeping her army in reserve for graver threats from Scandinavia and the Byzantines.

Norse adventurers still set sail on their longships down the great rivers of Russia, intent on claiming domains within the Tsardom. They were not an existential threat to Azov but Kuzarites always had to keep a reserve to deal, even when at war in the South and West.

With the Azovian presence in Soghd, the exchange of goods and ideas between Muslims and Jews had grown and some in Kiev talked of a grand alliance of the Star and Moon between Azov and Persia against the Christians. Nothing would come of it though and Seljuk might was already flagging in in the 1220s. What did happen was the introduction of Islamic thought and art into the court at Azov, giving rise to the unique architecture of the empire, marrying steppe, Greek and Islamic ideas into a syncretic whole. The Perches’ka Lavra would grow to become the greatest school of Judaic scholarship, rivalling Al’Azhar in Cairo and the House of Wisdom in Baghdad at attracting men of learning.

The Synagogue of Tmuratakan (left image, constructed in 1245AD) combines Christian iconography, Islamic architecture and Jewish Azovian sensibilities while the later Grand Temple of Itil (right image, constructed in 1380AD) displays the confidence of the Azovians in their own cultural arts.

In the east, the short-lived Holy Roman Empire (HRE) forged by Otto II had stretched from Brittany to Poland at its peak but electors refused to unify behind the Ludolfinger dynasty and it fell apart to warring factions in the 1170s. For much of the 10th and 11th century, Catholicism was on the defensive, and even the combined might of the HRE was unable to expel the Muslims from Italy and Hispania. Various popes in history attempted to organize crusades against the heathens but they almost all ended in defeat. In the 1180s, the sitting Pope Honorius III demanded the reclamation of Germany - a few small fiefdoms had fallen to the Kuzarite Kingdom of Polabia and the Pope viewed it as an easy and morale-bolstering war after the batterings by the Muslims in the previous four crusades.

Unfortunately, Honorius had miscalculated severely, The ruling Belenids of Polabia had allied themselves with Azovia and when the Tsaritsa marched to her ally’s defense, her knezs discovered new territories to conquer. Here in Europe, there were no great empires to fight, just a messy collection of warring counts and duchies. The Catholics were defeated and the Kuzarites accepted the open invitation for revenge and conquest in the 12th century.

The stage was set for the most momentous events in Azovian history since its founding by Otemis I in the 9th century.

 

[Killcrazy13]

Tsar Manar the Boundless

Prince Manar was the third child of Tsaritsa Ulita born near the end of her fertile years and only her second child to survive to adulthood. The Tsaritsa had little time to devote to growing the dynasty, prioritizing the demands of empire. None of her children displayed the vitality and energy of previous Khans and some in court wondered if the line would end with her, or even worse having to put the corrupt and incestuous progeny of Tsar L’if’s siblings on the throne.

Princess Mariam and Prince Simeon were sired by Tsar Gabor. When Simeon died from consumption at 7 years old, and no other male heir born to Ulita, the crown was expected to pass to Princess Mariam. Tsar Gabor died when Ulita was 40 and though unlikely, the Sanhedrin urged the Tsaritsa to marry again and to try for another heir. She took as her royal consort, her most loyal Knez, Vladimir of Chornobyl. It was a vain hope but the marriage proved fruitful and the future Tsar Manar was born when the Ulita was 43 years old. He was a sickly child, just like his siblings and much attention was doted on him, a regular diet of volga honey and strict care whenever he fell ill saw him reach adulthood and ready to receive the Tsardom when the Ulita passed on.

The Tsaritsa could not reconcile the old testament faith of the Kuzarite Sanhedrin with her own beliefs of what a good and just ruler had to be, and that shaped the character of Manar immensely. With his mother spending more time in Kiev, Manar engaged her in many conversations on matters of theology and rulership, shaping his later cynical manipulation of religion in service of the state. But Manar was generous and got on well with the various Khans and Grand Princes that made up the conglomerated Azovian Tsardom. At the first Kurultai of Azov, he was universally acclaimed as the only possible candidate to be the next Tsar, establishing the precedent that only members of the imperial family or strong claimants could lay claim to the Tsardom.

Upon his coronation, he rewarded his most powerful vassals with great gifts for their oaths of fealty and obedience and gave them leave to manage their own affairs as long as they fulfilled their vassal obligations. Throughout his reign, the Khans often negotiated for the reduction of these obligations and the Tsar obliged, believing the well of plenty would never run dry. Manar would spend and spend, content to let his vassals wage war against the non-believers while he enjoyed the comforts of Kiev. Feasts at the Qunaskayii ,as the imperial palace became to be called, were grand affairs and they were bounteous as they were frequent. Imperial largesse extended to the Chowgans where steppe martial traditions were practiced and the grand hunts where his retinue hunted tigers and bears in the Don Valley and Caspian Steppes. The Kievan court was embellished to become the rival of Constantinople and Baghdad with finery, entertainment and servants that increased the prestige of the Tsardom.

The Tsardom at its zenith

After the failed Catholic crusade against Polabia, his vassals began to return to the battlefields of Europe. Over his reign, new Khanates would be founded in Poland, Moldavia, Vladimir and Wallachia and near the end of his reign, even in distant Transoxiana , all swearing fealty to Kiev while Polabia and Moravia would be independent Kuzarite states. Hungary had been integrated into the Empire when Khanum Mariam, the Tsar’s sister passed away at the age of 47. He declared Hungary would be a protectorate till the Khanum’s grandchild (and heir) attained his majority and he duly returned the crown but retained overlordship when the boy, Igor, was 18.

The Byzantines were content to focus on their Eastern front, eager to make territorial gains amid collapsing Seljuk authority so the reign of Tsar Manar was one of peace within the imperial heartlands.

The major conflict of Manar’s reign would be religious in nature. A cynical man, Manar would attempt to curtail the power of the Kuzarite Kohen Gadol, revoking land granted to them by his mother. The Sanhedrin had become a vicious and covetous body, finally enjoying earthly pleasures denied them so long, not just the spiritual rewards of their forebears. They were enraged at the curtailing of their power and begin to whisper to any willing Khan about the unfitness of the Tsar to rule. Two inciting incidents would rupture the unity of Kuzarite Judaism.

The first one was Great Herem War to remove Muslims from Jerusalem. The Nasi Discheshu called for all Khans to answer the call and Tsar, the great defender of Judaism, knew he could not refuse the call but he was growing increasingly aware that his profligate ways were impacting his finances and he did not feel any zeal to claim back the Kingdom of Israel, a land he only knew from religious text and legends.

Still, he raised a force of his household soldiers and sailed for the holy land alongside thousands of other would-be warriors of the faith or Kanai. The war would be disastrous for the Kuzarite faithful, 30,000 sailed but only a third of that number would return home. The Tsar himself would see the destruction of his army almost down to the last man. He himself only escaped by ditching his armour and diving into a nearby river. Recriminations were vehement within Azovia and the Tsar demanded more clerical land from the Kohen Gadol to house the widows of the war. The sitting Nasi Dichescu, a scion of Beni Kozar chose to step down after the war and was replaced by Nasi Bulan, after the Sanhedrin blamed him for the war and for giving into to the head of his house.

The second incident arose out of the consequences of the first. Nasi Bulan was common-born, his selection a reaction to the supposed corrupting influence of the nobility within the Kohen Gadol. In 1151, 2 years after the Great Herem War, a plot came to light that the Nasi was planning to kill the Tsar and this made Manar resolve to break with the worldly high priesthood and take control of their holdings. Of course, the collections of the synagogue would also be used directly for the benefit of the people and no one would fault him if a little went to the maintenance of the Azovian court.

He had scholars dig up the records of the consecration of Otemis I more than two centuries ago and declared that through with the blessing of Yahweh on his bloodline, the piety of his mother, the Beni Kozar’s shepherding of the chosen Azovian people and a lineage that could be traced back to Togarmah of the Tanukh, the great Tsar would take on the earthly duty of Nasi and be the protector of Judaism forever more.

In June 1153, he was anointed in grand ceremony in Kiev. Many of his vassals, loyal to the coin he shared freely pledged allegiance to Manar as their head of faith but the newly landed Kanai Khans of East and West refused to recognize his legitimacy. The Khanates of Hungary, Galicia-Volhynia and Transoxiana broke with Kiev and the Tsar recognizing he did not have the coin to fight a multi-front rebellion, released them cursing their disloyalty.

The Divinely Chosen Tsar had truly let the genie out of the bottle. While his revisions were aimed at ameliorating the more zealous aspects of the Kuzarite faith, some, especially within the Perches’ka Lavra felt this revision of doctrine, Otemic in honour of the founding father of Grand Azovia, did not go far enough.

A Lavran monk by the name of Dmitri Vsevolodich began to preach against the intrigues of temple and state, preaching that the faithful had forgotten the roots of their faith. Reminding his audience of the tolerance of the steppe, and merging it with kabbalistic practices, he began to build a following that grew larger by the day. His message resonated with the urbanites of Kiev who felt spiritually adrift amidst the stresses of city life. Mystical practices and nostalgia for the supposed simpler life on the grass sea appealed to many young men and women. Among them was Prince Otemis, the oldest son of Manar. There was now another sect of Judaism fighting for the hearts and minds of Azovia – Hasidism.

Tsar Manar continued the policy of reducing imperial power to appease the nobility that his mother had begun. His domains would be split among his four sons. Otemis would take the crown of Ruthenia, Ezra would be given the southern Khanate of Wallachia, Aristarkh would be Khan in North from his seat in Vladimir and the Khanate of Azov and the Tsardom itself would pass to Simeon, trained to be effective spiritual and temporal leader. Much coin and many oaths were shared to ensure this succession would be peaceful. He made his sons swear loyalty and eternal friendship to each other.

It can be said that fate will curse the best laid plans of mice and men. Khan Simeon, safely ensconced in the traditional seat of Azovian power, Tmuratakan was decapitated one night by insane Otemic extremists who broke into the palace claiming they were looking for the head of the first Otemis. When the news reached Kiev, the Holy Tsar was both aghast and horrified. The death of his favourite seemed to break Manar and it’s said he aged ten years in a single night. In a month, he would be found dead in his bed, a grief-stricken expression frozen on his face. He was 75, having ruled for 49 years amidst frequent bouts of ill-health and seen the both the growth and contraction of Tsardom.

There had been no decision made on the succession of the Tsardom with the death of Simeon and the Khans were eager to weaken the dominance of the throne. Only three legitimate candidates were eligible at the Kurultai of 1173AD. The Khans opted for Aristarkh far in the North to be the new Tsar and Nasi of the Otemic faithful, hoping to keep imperial power far away and give free reign to their ambitions. Otemis was not an option with his heretical beliefs in Hasidism and Ezra’s paranoia of the Byzantine threat worried the Khans that he would restart the Greek wars again.

The next twenty years would be known as the time of troubles as brother fought brother and families tore themselves apart in the frenzy of religious fanaticism.

 

[Killcrazy13]

Nasi Aristarkh the Dung Named and the Brothers’ War

The death of Nasi Manar ignited the tinderbox that was Azovia. Hasidism had spread in the richer regions along the Dnipro and the Don and on the Crimean coast while the Khans and Knezs agitated for donatives from Aristarkh, just like they had received upon Manar’s ascension. The throne proved resistant to such demands; aware the treasury was empty after the profligate ways of Tsar Manar.

Nasi Aristarkh (centre) with his brothers Khan Otemis (left) and Khan Ezra (right)

The first initial test of the blood bonds between Nasi Aristarkh, Khan Otemis of Azov and Khan Ezra of Wallachia was when the Khan of Caspia rebelled against the high taxation exacted by the court in Vladimir. Aristarkh’s siblings supported their Tsar in the war, and a tentative peace was restored for the next two years.

Jewish fragmentation in Eastern Europe and Azovia circa 1180AD. Otemic is the dominant faith of Azovia with hostile Kuzarite faiths to the East and West.

However, the firebrand Hasidic preacher Dmitry Vsevolodich in Kiev agitated for greater proselytization of the faith among the peasants and farmlands of wider Azovia, demanding that the true word of God be propagated beyond the elites of the city. Khan Otemis IV of Azovia knew this would trigger the ire of his brother in Vladimir, as it would go against precepts of the imperial faith established by their father. Justifying his rebellion with claims of religious freedom, becoming the first heresiarch of Azovia and the first Khan to break an oath of eternal friendship within the Tsardom.

The war would rage for six long years as factions continuously shifted within the Tsardom. The Khans supported one brother or the other depending on the nature of the war. Khan Otemis could count on the wealth and taxes of Kiev and the coastal cities of Azovia while Tsar Aristarkh leveraged his role as the Otemic Nasi to call his fellow dynastic Khans in Hungary, Polabia and Khorasan to come to his aid. Much of the fighting was centralized in the steppes of the Levedia and Don Valley, and the forests of Mordvinia. Aristarkh’s forces were larger but more spread out while he found it difficult to pay the imperial army he inherited from his father. Khan Otemis was a gifted war leader, and he kept his army mobile, always looking to strike at any forces he could find before they could all rally around the Tsar. Unfortunately, Khan Otemis IV would never see himself crowned Tsar. He was slain in battle in 1178 and his son Yaroslav was forced to continue the war in his father's name, knowing that Aristarkh would be far more vengeful against a nephew than a brother in victory.

In 1180, Yaroslav shattered the last great host Aristarkh had assembled and Aristarkh was forced to abdicate in favor of his nephew. Azovia would not be a theocracy and power was returned to Kiev. Thus began the rule of Tsar Yaroslav, and his reign would be both magnificent and tragic.

Nasi Aristarkh would often become a target of vitriol of the ascendant Hasidics, cursed for tyranny and megalomania, though modern historians reject his epithet of the dung named as unfair and as attempts to assassinate the character of the Nasi. The Otemic faith would persist in Northern Rus for centuries from the Nasi's seat in Vladimir, continuing the herem wars against orthodoxy and the Norse Asatru while the Hasidic faithful were focused on matters in the south. He would rule wisely for another three decades before passing into Sheol. The office of the Otemic Nasi would be inherited by lineage for another century before being renounced by Nasi Aristarhk's great great grandchild, Hebizh 'the Young' in the year 1267AD.

 

[Killcrazy13]

Tsar Yaroslav the Sword of God

Tsar Yaroslav was the first Tsar to be named in the Slavic style and his reign is often considered to be the start of the high medieval era in Azovia and the evolution of the Tsardom into a Great Power, fully invested in the feuds of Islam and Christianity.

However, Yaroslav had to first pick up the pieces of a shattered Azovia, devastated by civil war and the harsh winters of 1183 and 1185. Famine spread across the land and the dead in Kiev was piled high as the Tsar struggled to feed a city of a 100,000 people. With food scarce, coin shortages affecting the treasury and a country to rebuild, Yaroslav was in no position to refuse when Nasi Aristarkh and several other northern lords in Mordvinia and Caspia demanded their independence. Already reduced from the heights of Tsaritsa Ulita and Manar’s reign, Yaroslav’s empire now only encompassed the core territories forged by Tsaritsa Quna’s and the restive Balkan holdings in Bulgaria and Wallachia.

In Wallachia, his uncle Khan Ezra still stewed about the throne Azov he believed was rightfully his and in an act of desperation, attempted to kill Yaroslav in front of his own court. The attempt was foiled and the Khan was blinded for his offense, starting a blood feud between the thrones of Wallachia and Azov before being ended by Sibel, the Tsar’s daughter.

In 1186, worse was to come as the Kuzarite Sanhedrin, still stung by the betrayal of Yaroslav’s grandfather, Manar, declared a crusade for Azov, intent on reclaiming the holy site of Kerch from the Hasidic heresy. Yaroslav and his religious advisor Dmitry rallied the soldiers of Kiev and Azov to defend their home, exhorting them to courage as the Kuzarite vengeance would be great if they ever claimed the cities and lands of Azov. In a series of magnificent victories, the armies of the Tsardom threw back the Kuzarites from Kerch and the Crimea. The death toll would be tremendous as neither side would give quarter and the fighting was savage. At the end of the crusade, Yaroslav’s army was reduced to just 6,000 battle hardened veterans, as more than half lost their lives in the Black Sea peninsular. These veterans would form the backbone of the Tsar’s army for the next three decades and would become as legendary as the Spartan of Thermopylae or the Silver Shields of Alexander. Most would die fighting in Yaroslav’s wars but the few who managed to retire were gifted land in Levedia and a stipend for the rest of their lives. They would be hailed as the Fellowship of the Tsars or the Tsar’s Druzhina and the tradition of an elite professional guard would be maintained on after Yaroslav’s death.

Dmitry Vsevolodich, the founder of Hasidism was now in his late fifties and spoke to Yaroslav about the need to give structure to the burgeoning Hasidic faith amid the religious schisms and ongoing herems within Azovian communities. He proposed a new Sanhedrin and Nasi for Hasidism but mollified Yaroslav’s misgivings by insisting that the leadership’s focus would be on spiritual matters. All temple holdings would still be under the control of the Tsar. In 1189, the Hasidic Sanhedrin convened for the first time in Kiev and chose Dmitry as their first Nasi. With a clear ecclesiastical structure in place, rabbis were dispatched to the four corners of Azovia to convert the faithful from the priest king practices of Otemic and the intolerant practices of the Kuzarites.

While Judaism struggled within itself, an existential threat was growing in the East. In Mongolia, a warlord named Temujin had unified the Tengri tribes and unified them into a massive horde. Reports of their brutality and slaughter worried the Azovians and they prayed that this Great Khan would die before ever reaching Azovia. This proved to be a vain hope and in 1190, the Great Khan declared Azovia his.

This Great Mongol Invasion would last for 12 years. Even with all of Azovia mobilized to the threat, they could not match the size of the Khan’s armies. It was in this war that the legend of Yaroslav was sealed. The Tsar would win 27 battles against the Khan’s armies, drawing the hordes into the steppes of Azovia before striking at them with his more heavily armoured cavalry. Itil, Derbent and much of Ciscaucia and Caspia would be left smoking ruins amidst the constantly shifting war front. The armies of the Khan were a mix of light calvary and horse archers while the Tsar’s Sipahi lancers and newly formed Druzhina was the mailed fist that would drive a devasting charge supported by archer calvary. Many of these battles would be referenced in military codexes for the next century on the art of horse-mounted warfare. In the end, neither side could claim victory as the Great Khan’s reserves of manpower proved inexhaustible while unable to penetrate beyond Caspia and Caucasia or defeat Yaroslav in battle. Eventually, the Great Khan ordered his armies home in search of softer targets but promised to return.

Tsar was feted upon his return to Kiev, the hero who stopped the Mongols when the Muslims and Kuzarites of the East had failed. Still handsome in his forties, the decade on campaign had added a grizzled ruggedness to the Tsar and the prestige he gained ensured no Khan or Grand Prince would challenge his rulership again.


The Final War

In 1212, the matter of Bulgaria came into focus for both Azov and Byzantium. Yaroslav had married his oldest daughter, Sibel to Dux German of Moesia and their child, Yaroslav, had succeeded his father after German had been died under mysterious circumstances. Sibel claimed Byzantine agents were behind it. Dux Yaroslav also had a claim to the Duchy of Bulgaria. Combined with persistent raids by the Basileus while the Tsar was engaged at war with the Mongols, the situation was fragile.

The Holy War for the Kingdom for Bulgaria would be the last war fought between the Greeks and Azov. The Empires of Azov and Rome would both meet their ends in the decades after, after suffering fatal wounds from the outcomes of this war. The struggle would last another 6 years before Tsar Yaroslav could claim victory. Both armies were exhausted by the war and much of Bulgaria was a wasteland. However, the Tsar had won the biggest victory of his or any of his ancestors’ lives against their great enemy. The lands of Bulgaria was divided among Princess Sibel’s children but the Tsar would not have a chance to deal with the Greek nobility still holding on to territory within his domain – the Mongols had returned.

The Great Khan Returns

Temujin had passed on but the Mongol lords recognized his son, Jochi, as their next Great Khan. In 1219, his armies marched into Azovia again to avenge his father and claim victory over the ‘invincible Tsar of the Jews’. By now, Tsar Yaroslav was old and wizened and he brought his son and heir Manar on campaign with him, intending to teach the young man the art of war and rulership on the steppe. It was an ill-fated decision.

Yaroslav knew that he might not live to see the end of the war if it was as long as the last one and he did not intend to hand a realm at war to his son. So, as the Khan was gathering his army, the Tsar made a daring strike at the rendezvous point of the Mongolian horde. It was a slaughter, 14,000 men stood for the Tsar that morning but only 8,000 would make it to Azov to recover. Among the dead was Manas, the Tsar’s only son and heir. With no more eligible male heirs left, the Khans of Azovia would have to choose Fedot, the Tsar’s brother, according to Azovian Kurultai traditions, but he was captured in the battle and held by Jochi. The war had become truly existential for the survival of both Azov and the line of Yaroslav. It took Yaroslav some time to rebuild his forces but again, he was forced to use the tactics of the first war, ceding the cities of Eastern Azov and hunting the Mongolian army once their supply lines grew strained. Throughout the campaign, the Tsar grew increasingly irritable and turned to the bottle to help him cope with the stress and loss he was feeling.

Twelve long years the war would last and the legend of the Tsar continued to grow. He never lost another battle again after the defeat at Manatau, no matter how drunk or isolated he made himself. Some say the Druzhina functioned like clockwork and the battles could run themselves but the Tsar’s bodyguard’s insisted the Tsar led from the front and it was he who exhorted them to the greatest feats. In 1231, the war ended with the death of Jochi. The Mongolian horselords could not agree on who would succeed them and broke up into the successor Khanates of Chagatai, Mongolia, the Ilkhanate and bordering Azov, the Golden Horde.


The Tsar returned to Kiev to great fanfare but he would not take part in any of the celebrations. His first act after the victory parade was to call a Kurultai to decide the succession. He demanded that his oldest daughter, Sibel, should succeed him but the Khans found their old insurbodinate spirit and claimed that a woman could not lead them, ignoring the examples of Quna and Ulita. Fedot, his brother, would be the new Tsar – of course, it was convenient that Fedot did not hold much land and was more concerned with scholarship and his writings. A weak Tsar who would let the Khans do as they please suited all in attendance except Yaroslav.

Broken by the long wars, the death of his heir and the stubborn insubordination of his Khans, the Tsar tried to take his own life but was foiled by his loyal Druzhina. Despite this failure, the Tsar’s health was poor and he was not long for the world. The alcoholism and trauma of a lifetime of war saw him meet his end in 1232AD. He had ruled for 53 years but spent only a handful of them at peace.

The Great Tsar Yaroslav, the Sword of God, the Protector of Azov had ensured the Azovian way of life would continue and he is venerated to this day. His battle stratagems would find their way into Islamic and Greek military manuals and his record of 67 victories and one defeat is only bettered by Alexander the Great. It's a sore point to the Azovian people that he is not considered part of the Nine Worthies identified by Jacques de Longuyon in his seminal work, Voeux du Paon (1312). His grace in battle was legendary and there would not be a war leader like him for some time to come.

 

[Killcrazy13]

Tsar Fedot

Tsar Fedot’s rule would be short but he would prove a steady hand for an empire still recovering from the Kuzarite crusades and the Mongol invasion. He was already 68 when he came to the throne and would rule for another 10 years.

His control on his vassals was limited as his inheritance included some lands within the Duchy of Kiev and Turov but not the imperial capital and the crownlands – all those passed to Khanum Sibel, Yaroslav’s oldest daughter. The Tsar was forced to lean on Sibel and other vassals’ support and donations to pay for the imperial army of Yaroslav. Despite this, there was continual reduction in the Tsar’s Druzhina. By end of his reign, the professional army was only a quarter of what it had been during Yaroslav’s reign.

It would be a relatively uneventful reign for the Tsar personally. He was more interested in matters of scholarship and a pastime in swordsmanship, a hobby he maintained till death took him. He would fend off the occasional Norse invasion but would try for no further expansion of the realm, aware of the limitations of his authority and his treasury.

The central concern of his reign would be the “Bulgarian Inheritance”. Yaroslav had claimed the Bulgar state on behalf of his daughter, Sibel and her children. Yaroslav’s grandson, also named Yaroslav sat in control of the region, defacto Khan of Bulgaria while his mother held the dejure title. Styling himself Yaroslav II, he agitated for the support in the Tsardom, claiming that Fedot had stolen his birthright and that the Tsar in his seat at Zyvahel ignored the incursions of the increasingly aggressive Christians of the South. Combined, his army and Khanum Sibel’s army more than matched Fedot’s.

Where we had last left the Byzantines, they were recovering from the horrific losses they had taken against Azov. The Basileus, Sabbatios Agelastos, sent a request for aid against the accursed steppe Jews to the Pope. This message would re-ignite the fervor of the Catholics. They had grown weary of their efforts against the Muslims, having lost the crusades for Italy, Hispania and Jerusalem. Now, they saw an opportunity to claim back Christendom from a weaker foe, lacking the supposed sophistication and quality of arms of the Jihadis. The promise of rich rewards from the haughty Greeks was a strong consideration too. The 8th Crusade, to reclaim the Christian Kingdom of Bulgaria set forth from Venice on 1220AD. The Byzantines expected it to be over quickly with the Tsar engaged with the Mongols in the East. However, the Venetians who had transported the crusader expected to be paid for their efforts, but the Basileus’s coffers were dry. He had expected the Pope to support him with gold and mercenaries, not hungry ambitious men with noble titles and little land. 30,000 crusaders found themselves surrounded by unfriendly Greeks, with their lords demanding payment and ironclad promises of land grants after victory. The Basileus vacillated as he sought a solution to get these men off Roman territory and put off the demands of the Venetians. We have no credible sources for igniting incident but on 5 April 1221, the crusaders attacked the Byzantines within Constantinople. The city was sacked and the Basileus was murdered. Most blame the Venetians for pushing the crusaders over the edge, in their eagerness to collect their ducats.

1221 is the date most historians use to mark the end of Byzantium and the Roman Empire. Near 900 years of rule from Constantinople was over. The Empire fractured into multiple successor states in Nicaea, Trebizond, Serbia and Croatia while the crusaders established their “Latin Empire” in Constantinople and Thessalonika.

Yaroslav II demanded Fedot stop the raids from the Latin Empire as he eyed an opportunity to capture the great city of the Greeks. Sibel’s children had increasingly begun to identify with their Bulgarian subjects, enjoying the imperial traditions in the lands they now ruled, adopting a haughty superiority over the supposed country manners of Azovia. They even started their own Royal House, Yaros, breaking from the Beni Kozar and placing Tsar Yaroslav the Sword of God, as the founder of their House.

Yaroslav II would be killed by the Mongols but his brother and successor, Hemat, urged their mother to claim the Tsardom she had been so cruelly denied by the Jewish patriarchy. Tsar Fedot bought her loyalty by granting her the Khanate of Azov while he retained the Tsardom for himself and many expected the matter of succession would fade away as the claimants grew older and and would eventually pass on to Olam Haba, and this seemed to be the case as Tsar Fedot would rule peacefully for 10 years.

Fate had other plans. Tsar Fedot’s son, Otemis, was acclaimed Tsar Otemis V, in September 1242 and his reign looked to be one of renewed vigour for the Empire of the Grass and Poisoned Sea. He would be found dead in his bedchamber three months later. The primary sources of that time claim the Cult of Otemis was behind this decapitation, and it bore all the same hallmarks of the death of Khan Simeon, Otemis V’s great grand uncle a century ago, which led to the Brother's War but suspicion fell on the Yaros family and the cunning and feared Sibel.

The Kurultai of 1243 chose Count Marko as the next Tsar. He was of a modest line within the Beni Kozar dynasty with only a single holding to his name. Everyone recognized the mockery the Khans had made of the imperial title. The Khans had no intent to bow to any future Tsars and wanted to rule without fear of any central power.

Tsar Marko would formally dissolve the Tsardom within a year, shattering the Azovian empire founded by Tsaritsa Quna of the Kozar dynasty 180 years ago.

A map showing the shattered successor states of the Azovian and Byzantine empires. In Azov, the single largest holding was held by Khanum Sibel who held the crowns of the Kingdoms of Azov, Ruthenia and Bulgaria while the Khans of Crimea, Caucasia, Caspia, Wallachia, Moldavia and Galicia Volhynia enjoyed their independence.

 

[Killcrazy13]

Interlude – The Collapse of Empires in the 13th Century

The 13th century would prove to be tumultuous. By 1244, the Empires of Byzantium, Azov, Seljuk and Fatimids that dominated their respective regions had all collapsed due to new invaders or internal dissension. The short-lived Mongol Empire had broken up into smaller khanates which would not last more than a couple of decades.

Judaism had become the dominant faith of the steppes and the north, with the faithful forming the majorities in cities and tribes stretching from Novgorod to far eastern Kipchakia.

The struggle for Italy would intensify as the Christians attempted the Reconquista of the peninsular. Unfortunately, it would be stymied by Venetian mercantile interest, who played both sides off for their own interests.

The lands of East Germany and Poland continued to be the battleground of Judaism and Christianity but the followers of Jesus were slowly gaining ground year by year pushing back against Kuzarite Bohemia and Polabia.

In the lands of distant India, the Maturidi conquerors of House Ghurid would capitalize on the lack of central power in Central Asia. In the next decades, it would expand north and westwards, and the Greek Christians, Azovian Jews and Egyptian Shi’ites worried that another global conqueror in the mould of Temujin had arisen.

The next hundred years would see new great powers arise. In the steppes, our narrative will centre on Sibel and House Yaros as they strive to build a new empire in the ashes of old Azovia.

 

[Killcrazy13]

Khanum Sibel the Crow

With the dissolution of the Tsardom, Khanum Sibel held the largest share of territory, more than half of Azovia was under her direct rule and she would not be content with that. The new House was strongest in the Balkans but was split off from the Azovian heartlands by Moldavia and Wallachia.

Khanum Sibel had not been ideal during the decade of Fedot’s rule. She removed the last of the Orthodox lords from Western Bulgaria and the few remaining swore fealty to her and converted to Hasidism. She drafted new laws banning the practice of Kurultai elections and focused on building up the armories, stables and training grounds of Kiev.

Her newly-recruited army, the Kievan Druzhina, was modernized with Bulgar-Greek innovations in siege weaponry and captured Bulgar destriers would form the breeding stock for the new heavy calvary forces she would bring to bear on her enemies. The Druzhina Royal Guard would number 6,000 men and horses and was supported by another 8,000 peasant levies, and cowed any Grand Prince or Steppe Lord from challenging her mandates. Taxation increased throughout the realm to feed the Khanum’s war machine.

In 1250, she marched her armies into Moldavia, citing territorial disputes as her casus belli. The Moldavian Khan Manas held territory that had been part of Azov’s historic borders. Sibel’s Druzhina proved their mettle in the field as they smashed every force they met in their march to the capital in Suceava. When the Khan surrendered, the Khanum had her men shatter his crown and placed her foot on his throat – another Bulgar-Byzantine tradition adopted by the House of Yaros. His lands were transferred to Sibel’s bastard, Prince Nedighe and integrated into Sibel’s domain.

Next, she eyed the Otemic holdout of Wallachia. Since the time of the first Nasi, Manar the Boundless, it had been held by Nasi’s third son, Ezra, and his descendants, the Ezraids. They had clung to Otemic practices throughout the reigns of Yaroslav and Fedot, as the Tsars rarely had the time or ability to deal with schismatics while foreign threats loomed. Raising the banner of a War of Herem, she marched into the lowlands of Muntenia. Her armies swept all before them before sieging the stronghold of Targoviste.

The coronation of Khagan Sibel

Now in control of White Rus, Ruthenia, Azov, Wallachia, Moldavia and Bulgaria, she had the Nasi Gulcicek crown her in the imperial palace of her ancestor, Tsaritsa Quna, in Kiev. Declaring this new empire the Khaganate of the Black Sea, she broke with old traditions, adopting Bulgar court practices and organizing the coronation that was as grand as any Byzantine crowning. The Azovians were day by day, forgetting their steppe roots, and becoming increasingly Hellenized.

Her greatest triumph was still to come. The Latins and Nicaeans had been at each other’s throats since the sacking of Constantinople, severely weakening themselves. The long-held dream of holding the gates of the Bosphorus was within reach. Gathering all the strength of the Khaganate, she marched into Thessalonika. The Latins quivered at the sight of the massive armies, knowing they did not have enough men to protect Constantinople, let alone the rest of the Empire. The war would last three years but most of it was spent sieging the Theodosian Walls, the rest of the kingdom was already under the control of the Jews. On February 1st, the walls were breached and the second great sacking of Constantinople occurred. The Khaganate of the Black Sea now controlled the domain it was named after.

Christian depiction of the Fall of Constantinople

The Khagan Sibel was content to consolidate her new realm. The Yaros were gifted the choicest of the new territories, continuing their domination of Azovian politics. She would rule for another twenty years, allowing herself more time to dedicate to her personal interests while her children ran the realm. These usually involved the experimentation of kabbalistic rituals and torturing the many Greek and Latin prisoners captured in the war. While the Hasidic Sanhedrin were aghast at the stories they heard coming Constantinople – the Khagan’s new capital – they wisely bit their tongue. The Khaganate was a vastly different empire than the comparatively tolerant Azov Tsardom of Yaroslav’s time.

The Khagan would brook no dissent in her land, and the Khans would never be allowed to cheat her lineage of their rightful crowns. The later years of her reign would see the rise of a new challenge. In Anatolia, a new force had emerged after the shattering of Byzantine power. The Osmanaglu Turks had captured the seaside cities of Ephesus from the Nicaeans and they would prove to be a threat in the twilight of Sibel’s rule and a persistent danger for most of her successors.

In 1273, the Khagan passed on and her son, Hemat, who had waited 59 years to succeed her mother, was crowned in Constantinople.

 

[Killcrazy13]

Khagan Hemat

Khagan Hemat was already an old man when he took control of the Khaganate. He had spent most of his adulthood ruling Bulgaria from his seat at Tarnograd and is ironically named the ‘the Young’ for his long wait to ascend the throne.

As mentioned previously, the Osmanii Turks or Ottomans had secured territory in Anatolia at the Nicaean’s expanse. There would be two major wars with them during Hemat’s reign. The first was a humiliating defeat for the Khaganate when they pressed their claims on the Aegean Isles. Hemat was hoping for a great victory to legitimize his rule but he ended up paying a large restitution. The Sultan Osman’s Greek and Turkish mercenaries outflanked the Azovian forces and smashed them at Pagaea.

The second war was the inevitable counter attack from Sultan Osman as he tried to claim all of Thessalonika. Still severely weakened, Khagan Hemat called upon his vassals to defend the realm. At the Battle of Nicomedia, 25,000 Azovians turned back 28,000 Ottomans to the conclude the war. While the victory had swung the war in the Khaganate’s favour, Hemat himself had picked up a grievous wound in the fighting, and his councillors put forth an offer of white peace to the Sultan, which was duly accepted.

The Khagan’s health continued to deteriorate and in November 1275, he passed on, acclaiming his son Ljubomir as the new Khagan. Hemat the Young had ruled the Khaganate for two years.

 

[Killcrazy13]

Khagan Ljubomir

Ljubomir came to the throne at 29. He would be the first Khagan with no memory of Kiev and the steppes, having spent his childhood in Moesia and Constantinople, split between his father’s and grandmother’s court.

A regular heartbreaker, Ljubomir’s had many affairs during his princedom and many worried that the scandals would continue with his elevation to the throne of the Khaganate. Luckily, he tamed his baser instincts and was mostly loyal to his wife, Princess Geira of Bohemia.

Some state that that this change in character was due to a religious revelation on his pilgrimage to Jerusalem and he told his war council to prepare plans for the conquest of the Holy Lands from the Fatimid Shi’ites, but first he had to deal with Ottomans on his doorstep.

Just like his father, he attempted the reconquest of the Aegean Isle but the Orhan, the son of Sultan Osman proved to be as skilled a general as his father. Once again, the Khaganate was humiliated and made to pay war reparations. It seemed the situation would continue in a détente as the Ottomans took the rest of Anatolia. Ljubomir mobilized what forces he could to seize what he could from the faltering Greeks, adding the Kingdom of Trebizonds to the territory of the empire but he could never rest easy, knowing that enemies lay just across the other side of the Bosphorus from Constantinople.

The other ambitions of his empire – recapturing the old steppe territories of Azov and reaching the Baltic coast were put on hold as he kept his armies close to him. This would all change in 1299AD. Orhan would pass on in 1294 but his son, Erdem, commanded enough power to discourage any attacks from the Khaganate but he was injured in a raid in 1299 and would soon die from his wounds. His young son, Kaikaus, a boy of three, was the new Sultan, and Ljubomir saw his chance. He launched an invasion of Anatolian, intent on claiming everything along the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles. While the Ottomans could still call upon large numbers of troops, they lacked the battle command that Osman and Orhan had offered and in a series of epic battles, the Khaganate would capture the Kingdom of Nicaea and break Ottoman power for good.

The other major story of Ljubomir’s reign was his development of the steppe. Ever since the founding of the imperial capital of Kiev, the Tsars and Khagans had been content to leave the Eastern steppe lands as is – a source of tough and resilient manpower and a hinterland to soak up Eastern invaders. After the devastation of the Mongol Wars, many of these territories were still recovering, nearly a century later. The wars with the Ottomans made the Khan aware that while his territories were vast, he was often outnumbered by the Ottomans, the Sunni Caliphate of the Bardunids, the Shi’ite Fatimids and the Mu’tazili of Sicily. Aware that his plan to capture the holy land would trigger hostilities with these great Muslim powers, he invested much of the treasury into funding new cities, synagogues and settlements in his Eastern steppe lands and encouraged immigration from Kuzarites and Hasidics in the North and East. This great immigration would prove a long-term boon to the strength of the empire but it also opened the door to a foe that the Khaganate could not fight.

The Black Death or Bubonic Plague first arrived in 1307AD in the holy city of Itil. From there, pilgrims would take it back to their home cities and the infection would spread. In 1310, it reached Constantinople and the Khagan’s court. The dead would end up littering the streets and the jewel of the Khaganate saw a city of nearly 400,000 people reduced by a quarter. The plague would revisit the empire continuously over the next century, decimating farmlands and emptying cities. It’s estimated that the Khaganate lost twenty years of progress thanks to the plague of 1307.

The war efforts were put on hold. The Khagan was intent on completing his vow to the Lord to capture Jerusalem, especially after smashing the Fatimids in 1310 and capturing the port city of Acre. He was so close but all further efforts were focused on fighting the plague and holding off invaders hoping to capitalize on the Khaganate’s moribund state. This would be the case for the rest of his reign and the Khagan would pass on in 1212 with his son Marko tasked with completing his father’s sacred vow.

 

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Khagan Marko

The new Khagan’s rule would prove to be a short one, sitting on the throne for two short years before the Black Death took him and much of his family. He intended to complete the capture of Jerusalem for his father but first intended to remove the remaining Ottoman resistance in Anatolia.

Thus, while marching for Kayseri, the plague would afflict the army and lay the Khagan low. Alongside an outbreak in Constantinople, the ruling line of House Yaros was nearly wiped out. The next in line was the young Prince Ognen, all of three years old, but he would have to wait to claim his birthright.

Marko’s lead general, Ioakim Kozar had control of the Khaganate’s armies and established a regency for the young heir until he came of age.