Saka/History

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An offshoot of the Iranian peoples of Asia, the Scythians  (also known as Sakas, Scyths, and Sacae — and possibly "Sak' " or "Sai" in China) were feared and admired for their prowess in war and, in particular, for their horsemanship, and they were courted as allies by many other neighbouring sedentary nations in their heyday — including the Chinese, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians and Greeks. Going west, the Scythians would concentrate on the northern shores of the Black Sea and extended from southern Russia to the borders of Persia, with Scythian influence being strongest in Sarmatia (northeastern Europe), Bactria, Sogdiana and Margiana, although by the first century CE, the greatest and most significant centres of Scythian political influence would be located in what is today northwest India and Ukraine.

For most of their existence, until their subsequent dispersal and annihilation by the Sarmatians in Europe, the Scythians would often play different roles, now as the allies and mercenaries of this or that country; then as hostile forces that would either harass Persia's borders or Greek colonies in the Black Sea region. Although they would eventually fade from history through assimilation, expulsion and outright annihilation, the Scythians would nevertheless leave an indelible mark on history, especially in the West, where the Greeks and Romans would use the term "Scythia" to refer to various regions in Eastern Europe where Scythian presence once was strongest, as "Scythia" — these regions being around the eastern reaches of the Danube river in Europe, as well as almost the entirety of modern Ukraine and the North Caucasus region in Russia separated from the latter by the Sea of Azov — these latter areas eventually becoming the home of the Khazars, another equestrian culture of Central Asian provenance who would make their presence felt many centuries after the last Scythians had long since disappeared out of human memory.

While this article will attempt to shed some light on the history of the Scythians as a Eurasian phenomenon, due to the scope of Age of Empires, it will concentrate mainly on the history of the Pontic Scythians, viz, the western Scythian tribes who settled around the Black Sea. In addition, it also serves as adjunct to the history of the region of Pontic Scythia (ie Ukraine and Russia) and will also touch on the Khazars, who would prove to be no less significant and opulent.

The Horse Lords of the Steppes[edit | edit source]

Dominated in the main by five regions — Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan — Central Asia is a region in the Asian continent that extends from the mountains of western China to the shores of the Caspian Sea. This is a vast land with an extremely varied geography, including high mountain passes through vast mountain ranges, such as the Tian Shan, Hindu Kush, and the Pamirs. The region is also home to the vast Kara Kum and Kyzyl Kum deserts, which dominate the interior with extensive spans of sand and desolation. The expansive treeless, grassy steppes surrounding the desert regions are considered an extension of Eastern Europe’s steppes, and for many thousands of years ago have had been the home of various nomadic tribes based on the practice of animal herding and horses — an animal that would soon make the Aryan peoples highly influential across the Old World, while the mountains and hills of this land belie valleys that favoured a more sedentary lifestyle based on farming and/or trade, as evidenced by settlements excavated at Sarazm; Tajikistan (4th-3rd millennia BCE) and Kök Tepe; Uzbekistan (dated to the Bronze and Iron Ages).

Central Asia formerly served as a conduit for early humans to migrate overland from Africa and settle Asia in several waves as early as 50,000 years ago, yet in the space of 10,000 years or more thereafter that trend had begun to reverse with humans now migrated westward into Europe from Asia and the Caucasus. In the centuries before Genghis Khan's conquests, various Turkic and Mongol-Tungusic tribes inhabited the steppes of Mongolia. These various ethnic groups alternatively ruled each other during this time, one group would gain power and subdue the others until another group formed to topple the previously superior power. Others, for this reason or the other, would sometimes migrate out from Central Asia and west toward Europe and the Middle East. Yet human conflict and migrations weren't the only things enabled by the location of Central Asia and Iran in the wider Eurasian megacontinent: as early as the early Classical Western period, trade routes from Alexandria in Egypt and Aleppo in Syria all ran through Persia, before diverging in all directions: east across the Hindu Kush into India, or south into the Red Sea and the lands beyond the Indian Ocean .... or north into Central Asia, where the story of the Scythian peoples must begin.


The Scythians[edit | edit source]

“What sort of men are these?!” —Darius I of Persia on the Scythians (attr)

The term "Scythian" was first used by ancient Greek writers to describe the nomadic tribes of Iranian origin. They probably came to Asia Minor in the 8th century BCE. Anciently, most of what was known of the history of the Scythians came from the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, who provided modern man with the first clues regarding the provenance of the Scythian people: while the Scythians were mostly illiterate, Herodotus managed to record a words in Scythian. According to him, pata meant 'to kill'; spou meant 'eye', arima meant 'one', oior meant 'man'. Outside of Greece, both Chinese and Persian sources mention the presence of a people called the "Saka" in various parts of Central Asia: in China, they were numbered among the so-called "Rong" barbarians in the west, while the Audience Hall in the ruined Achaemenid Persian capital of Parsa or Persepolis (near present-day Marvdasht, Islamic Republic of Iran) mentions several different tribes of Saka peoples across the world as late as the late 6th century BCE, with some extant in Central Asia, alongside other nomadic peoples there such as the Dahae. Much later, Chinese sources mention groups of Saka settled around the western reaches of the Himalayas during the early Han dynasty. Interestingly, according to one of the last censuses in Russia, over 100,000 people attest to being Scythian, although there have been no efforts to confirm this spectacular and somewhat incredible claim.

Since the emergence of scientific archaeology, excavations throughout Asia and the Middle East, as well as access to non-Hellenistic sources have since supplemented Herodotus' writings, as well as these othe accounts to provide a fuller picture of their history. Philologists have been able to define Scythian as a prehistoric Indo-European language, with further excavation done throughout the 20th and 21st centuries placing its speakers' origins among the Iranian peoples of Central Asia.

Roots in the Mountains: The Arzhan and Pazryk cultures[edit | edit source]

The excavation of Classical era kurgans, or burial mounds in Ukraine and Russia, have revealed tantalising clues regarding Scythian culture and society. While as mentioned before, the Scythians had no writing and built nothing permanent except their tombs, they however buried everything from their world for the dead to use in the next. From these tombs, we know that although they were nomads, they also engaged in trade — Scythian barrows, especially those in northern Siberia and elsewhere, have yielded all manner of rich artefacts, ranging from golden jewellery and weapons all the way to Greek and Chinese imports or tributary objects, helping us to paint a much fuller picture of this vigorous nomad people with their unique animal art and love of the horse — an extraordinary race from whom the civilized world learned to wear trousers and riding horses. In fact, it is these animal-based motifs that have helped us to identify cultures across the world associated with the Scythians — most notably, the Arzhan and Pazryk cultures.

While many kurgans associated with the West Scythians (those Scythian tribes who settled Europe) lie in Ukraine and the European half of Russia, the most significant sites for scythology are not there (notwithstanding the spectacular golden hoard uncovered in the 1971 Tovsta Mohila excavation near Pokrov, Ukraine) rather, they are in the relatively isolated and remote Altai highlands of southern Siberia, just a few hundred kilometres or so away from the borders with the present-day People's Republic of China, being the sites of Pazyryk and the more recently surveyed site or Arzhan, near the modern city of Kyzhl, with the cemetery at Arzhan predating Pazyryk by a century or so. While just like their European counterparts the barrows of Pazyryk and Arzhan did also yield artefacts made of metal, most notably gold, what was not significant in the finds there was the bling factor from the amounts of gold found in the burial chambers, but the fact that many burial goods, especially those made of perishable items such as animal hide or textiles, had been well-preserved as were the occupants themselves, for they proved that the people who built the tombs were not simple herders or artless barbarians, but were in fact a highly sophisticated and very advanced culture. While, as in the case of the finds back in Ukraine, there was the presence of military equipment, finely worked jewellery and adornments, as well as the ubiquitous animal art motifs so cherished by the Scythian peoples (most notably the stag or deer) there too were goods of Chinese provenance, most notably bronze mirrors and silk, alongside locally produced felt textiles. More importantly, as mentioned before, the bodies of the occupants of the Pazyryk graves were found to be well preserved enough that archaeologists could find evidence of tattooing and body art, particularly on the body of one woman, called the "Ice Maiden".

The artefacts and bodies discovered at Arzhan and Pazyryk also provided the evidence of the Scythians being one of the world's first globalised human societies — in addition to the artefacts already mentioned, hundreds of beads made of amber imported from eastern Europe. Genetic sampling of individuals buried in the graves at both sites done over the past two decades thus far suggested that, as Chinese, Middle Eastern and Greek sources all claimed, that the Scythians travelled from east to west. Put together, all of this suggests that even in its earliest days Scythian culture was highly sophisticated, rich, and cosmopolitan, with links to east and west as the existence of foreign grave goods and the very location of the grave sites (themselves not far from what would one day become the Silk Road) would attest to a culture that was widely spread across the Eurasian megacontinent for most of the early Metal Ages.

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From the Far East to the Middle East: The Scythians and the Classical World[edit | edit source]

Although archaeologists have uncovered evidence that westward flow of migration from Central Asia into Europe is nothing unprecedented (as asserted by the Kurgan hypothesis, which argues for westbound migration from Central Asia as a cataylust for the emergence of Proto-Indo-European culture in the West) nor something that has ever ended (given how contemporary Europe continues to be a destination for migrants from Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan as well as other Central Asian cultures to the north), the Scythians continue to remain the most famous and prestigious of these migrants, for the reasons mentioned before: their mastery in horse archery and cavalry tactics, the apparent opulence of their culture and more importantly, the sheer luck to encounter the most erudite and literate peoples of their time, the Greeks. As a result, their name would be most celebrated in all Western history, despite not being the first migrants from Central Asia, nor would they be the last.

Nevertheless, the first historically recorded group of migrants to reach the west were not the Scythians; rather, they were the Cimmerians (or, the Gamiri, or Gimara as the Assyrians called them in Akkadian). The Cimmerians made their historic debut when they ravaged Asia Minor, and were sufficiently powerful so as to challenge Assyria, that the Assyrians — despite being the Middle East's dominant military power — had to seek help from several other Indo-European peoples — namely, the Scythians, the Medes and finally the Persians. For reasons that are still unknown, the Cimmerians began moving southward toward the Caucasus, threatening the kingdom of Urartu, who was then a powerful rival of Assyria. The Cimmerians would subsequently spread northward into the Pontic Steppe (which would also be named Cimmeria, by the later Greeks) and ravaged Asia Minor for decades. The devastation the Cimmerians wreaked upon Asia Minor and Assyria's subjugation of the Elamites in the 640s BCE soon created a power vacuum which was quickly and quietly filled in by two Indo-Aryan peoples: the Scythians and the Medes, another group of Indo-Aryan migrants peoples, who settled in eastern Asia Minor and Elam with Assyrian connivance.

But while the Medes were fated to assimilate the ways and culture of their more sedentary subjects (most notably the Elamites) and provide a developed cultural base for the future Achaemenid Persian empire, the Scythians however continued to live the same way as their Central Asian forbears — a life of pastoral nomadism, leavened by raiding and slave trading. It was said that the emergence of the Scythians was one of the reasons for the eventual assimilation or utter extinction of the Cimmerians as a distinct people (although there have been attempts to link the Cimmerians to the Thracians of what is today Bulgaria). What little has survived to be surveyed by historiographers suggest that the first contact between the Scythians and the Middle East took place in the 70s of the 7th century BCE when the Scythians, led by King Ispakaios, joined the Medes and the Maneans against Assyria. Their importance must have already been considered at this time, for they forced the Assyrian ruler, Esarhaddon, to peace. His guarantee was to be the wedding of the daughter of the Assyrian leader Baratatui with the king of the Scythians. In order to understand the significance of this fact, we must remember that Assyria was at that time one of the greatest and most powerful states of the Ancient East. Soon after peace, the Scythians reached Palestinian Syria, and from there they set off for Egypt. However, they were unable to break into it, because Pharaoh Psamtik I met them with gifts, asking them to stop their march.

As it can be seen from the above description, in the 7th century BCE they were one of the major powers of the ancient East, yet they Scythians would not remain confined to Asia for long. Moving steadily on, they conquered new lands more and more. And so, for example, in pursuit of the Cimmerians, they reached the Pontic Steppe to the north of the Black Sea region, where many Scythian tribes eventually settled. From their new home between the Pruth and the Don rivers in Ukraine, the Scythians controlled the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, and would also make their power felt in the lands of today’s Poland, where they have been hypothesised to have contributed to the decline of the Lusatian culture in the 6th century BCE. Understandably, their warlike and roving nature often made them a menace to whomsoever were neighbours with them, such as the Persians, whose shah Darius I made the ill-fated decision to send his armies against them. His army of 700,000 warriors was defeated in 514BCE — ironically because the Persians simply could not get within reach of the nomadic horseborne Scythians.

Over time, the Scythians through contacts with the Greeks would become sedentary and found themselves new colonies throughout the Black Sea coasts — Greek-produced gold jewellery recovered in excavations by Russian and Ukrainian archaeologists of Scythian burial mounds belie the power and influence of these Scythian kingdoms. But whereas these kingdoms would eventually fade from living memory, the one founded by the Medes would survive the test of time: in 553BCE, a petty king of Persian and Median ancestry, named Kurush, who ruled the city of Anshan in former Elamite territory, would stage a rebellion against his Maedian masters, and eventually seize control of Ecbatana in 550BCE, founding the Achaemenid dynasty.


The Sons of Papaios: Division of the Scythians[edit | edit source]

The division of the Scythians into Great Scyths otherwise known as royal and other groups probably stems from errors or generalizations of ancient writers. They were probably completely different peoples, perhaps related to the Scythians, conquered during the expulsion of the legendary Kimmer. There were supposed to exist three types of Scythians – Kallipids – Hellenic Scythians – most likely a group of Scythians, which was influenced by Greek culture, Scythians-plowmen, Scythians-nomads, and proper – Royal Scythians.

Social relations were typical of a centralized state. The royal power was hereditary and survived until the end of the state’s existence. The Scythian kings used all means of ideological influence to maintain their power. Primitive state power resembled family institutions in many respects.

Scythian graves bring a lot of interesting information. An example is the fact that in the graves of young Scythian women were found, among others, weapons. In some cases, women were found in full combat gear. This may prove that the fair sex served in the Scythian army. As a rule, rich equipment was found next to the skeletons, including gold items, bronze bracelets, harnesses etc. The tombs clearly show how stratified the Scythian society was. The rite of burying the death itself was not uniform. Both cremation and burial in the ground were practised.

The Scythian state fell in the 3rd century BCE as a result of the steadily growing role of the Sarmatians. Despite desperate attempts, it was not possible to save him. On top of all this, there were disasters with the Roman legions. As a result, the Scythian population assimilated with the Sarmatians.

While archaeology has identified several westward migrations of Indo-Aryan peoples into Europe and the Middle East,

“What sort of men are these?!” —Darius of Persia (attr)

It was these very tombs which the Scythians goaded Darius into violating during his notorious and ill-fated expedition north into Scythian lands around 510BCE. Thankfully enough of these have survived intact for archaeologists of our time to investigate, and it is from these tombs' artefacts that we have been able to reconstruct what would otherwise have been an inexorable, elusive and mysterious force in human history. (https://blog.britishmuseum.org/introducing-the-scythians/)

"Until the 1700s, a lot of what we knew about the Scythians was cobbled together from a range of ancient sources – none of them written by the Scythians themselves as they didn’t ‘do’ writing. So what we had was a collection of accounts written by Greeks, Assyrians and Persians – and they were usually terrified (although often also impressed).

The Greek historian Herodotus, in his Histories (Book 4, 5th century BC), wrote: ‘None who attacks them can escape, and none can catch them if they desire not to be found.’ Assyrian inscriptions from the 7th century BC also refer to fighting Scythians, with one mentioning a peace treaty secured by marrying off an Assyrian princess to a Scythian king."


"When the Scythians weren’t being hide and seek champions, or being fobbed off with foreign princesses, they even developed a powerful new type of bow which was made from different layers of wood and sinew. It was much more powerful than a regular wooden bow, as the different layers increased the forces and energy when the string was released.


Gold sew-on clothing appliqué in the form of two Scythian archers. In battles, the Scythians would use large numbers of highly mobile archers who could shower hundreds of deadly arrows within a few minutes. As late as the 6th century AD a Byzantine writer described the deadly effect of mounted archers like these: ‘they do not let up at all until they have achieved the complete destruction of their enemies.’ If this were not terrifying enough, several classical writers state that the Scythians dipped their arrows in poison!

Arrow heads Scythian arrow heads. © The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, 2017. Photo: V Terebenin. When the Scythians fought on foot, their weapon of choice was a battle-axe with a long narrow pointed blade (like a narrow pick-axe). This type of fighting was personal and face to face – the weapons’ tell-tale puncture marks have been found on the heads of excavated human remains.

So all in all, pretty fearsome." "The Scythians developed horse breeding and riding to a new level. They were accomplished riders and did not use spiked bits or muzzles. Scythian horse gear (saddles, bridles, bits etc) was also highly developed and functional, durable and light. We know this because the large burial mounds contain large numbers of sacrificed horses. These were accompanied by halters, bridles and saddles, and occasionally whips, pouches and shields.

The saddle horses were buried with very elaborate costumes including headgear with griffins or antlers, saddle covers decorated with combat scenes, and long dangling pendants."

The Black Sea[edit | edit source]

"From 1000BCE onward, southern Russia must have fallen under the sway of various Indo-European pastoralist tribes hailing from Central Asia. The earliest ones we know of are the Cimmerians, the Scythians and the Sarmatians. According to Assyrian sources, the Cimmerians suddenly emerged around 900BCE, and proceeded to raid Asia Minor, felling the native kingdom of Phrygia, and brought Urartu, the main rival of the Assyrians, to her knees. It was only with Scythian help that the Assyrians were able to maintain order, and eventually exterminate the Cimmerians in Asia Minor.

The Scythians as they migrated into the Cimmerian homeland found it useful to form an alliance with the Assyrians, and eventually drive out the Cimmerians. Those who did not flee were assimilated by the Scythians, or were eventually enslaved, and sold to the Greeks . The alliance attempted to conquer new lands but the Scythians were contained by the other powers of the time to their Steppe lands. In 514BCE the Persians under Darius the Great attempted to invade Scythia with 700,000 troops but the nomadic Scythians avoided meeting the massive Persian army head on, preferring to harry Darius' host with hit-and run tactics — one account of a "clash" between the two forces, narrated by the infamous Herodotus, has the Scythians preferring to hunt rabbit instead of engaging the Persians — in full view of the Achaemenid host. Without any cities to plunder or armies to defeat the Persians eventually gave up their invasion.


An Asian Horde in Europe[edit | edit source]

The first of these mounted nomads to attract the attention of historians were the Scythians. If the Scythians were not the first to domesticate the horse they were among the earliest, if not the first of the Central Asian people to learn to ride it. Mounted soldiers was the Scythians' success in war; so when they penetrated into Asia, the technique of riding was rapidly adopted and mastered throughout the entire Middle Eastern area.

Though the Scythian had elaborate bitted bridles, the stirrup was not known to them and they rode on saddleclothes, relying on grip and balance. Even so, they were formidable horsemen in battle.

Life Style in the Steppes The Scythians were famous for their bloody tribal custom. Warriors not only cut off the heads of slain enemies but also made leather-bound drinking cups from their enemies' skulls. They lined these grisly trophies with gold and proudly displayed them to impress their guests. The Scythians were traditionally polygamous and male-dominated society. Even though the ancient Greeks' impression that Scythia was a matriarchy ,it is not supported by the archaeological evidence. A wealthy Scythian could take several wives, and upon his death a son or a brother would assume them as his own. Scythian women had little power beyond the confines of their households, unlike their neighboring tribe the Sarmatians, whose women not only rode but fought with the men equally. Scythian women travlled in waggons with their children instead. Some scholars suggest that the women may have lived a more active and influential life at one time.

Since fish and game are abundant the tribesmen were never short of food. Their staple diet consisted of kumis, a form of fermented mare's milk which is still popular in Central Asia, a good deal of cheese, and vegetables such as onions, garlic and beans. They cooked their meat as a stew. As for cleaning, Herodotus noted that the Scythians did not use water for washing. Instead the women used a paste of pounded cypress, cedar and frankincense that, according to Herodotus, they applied to the face and body: A sweet odor is thereby imparted to them, and when they take off the plaster on the day following, their skin is clean and glossy." Scythians are said to be passionate people - bearded men with dark, deep set eyes with long, wind-snarled hair. They are one of the earlist races wore trousers, reflecting their horseback lifestyle. They wore pliable boots with heels. From the 2000-years-old frozen body recovered in 1947 in Siberia, we learned that Scythians liked to cover themselves with elaborate tattoos.

Land of Myth and Gold: The Pontic Scythians[edit | edit source]

Perhaps the most striking feature of Scythians was the enormous amount of gold they wore and used. The ancient legend tells the story about the one-eyed people, Arimaspians in Scythia who had on-going battle with the griffins who guarded the gold. This gold undoubtedly came from the rich fields in the Altai district. It is common that the Scythians wore golden ornaments and belts. Gold plates were sewn to their garments and gold gleamed from their weapons. The archaeologists are consistently amazed by the amount of gold offerings deposited in the great burial- mounds of the Scythian kings.

Where had they come from? The Scythians themselves had a legend that they sprang from the three sons of certain Targitaus, a person of supernatural birth who dwelled in the Black Sea domain. Together the three brothers ruled the land until four golden implements - a plow, a yoke, a battle-ax and a drinking cup - fell from the sky and suddenly began to blaze. Colaxais, the youngest, proved to be the only one of the brothers who could pick up the burning objects, and thus became sole ruler of the Scythian kingdom.

Another Scythian creation story was told by the ancient Diodorus Siculus at the 1st century B.C. According to Diodorus, Scythians "lived in very small numbers at the Araks River....that they gained for themselves a country in the mountains up to the Caucasus, in the lowland on the coast of the Ocean (Caspian Sea) and the Meot Lake (Azov Sea) and other territories up to the Tanais River (Don River). Born in that land from the conjugal union of Zeus and a snake-legged goddess was a son Scyth who gave the name Scythian to the people." His descendants were named Pal and Naps and were the ancestors of two congenetic people - pals and naps. "They won for themselves a country "behind the Tanais River up to the Egyptian Nile River" (Diodorus II, 43).


Dating the earliest Scythians has been a problem since they did not develop their distinctive art style until the 6th century B.C. A. I. Melyukova suggested that the early Scythians were descendants of tribes of the Srubnaya culture who, between the middle of the 2nd millenium B.C. and the end of the 7th century B.C., moved in several waves from the Volga-Ural steppes into the north Black Sea area and assimilated the local Cimmerians. In history, the Scythians was first recorded in the 7th century B.C. as Assyria's ally against the Cimmerians, who had lost their homeland to the Scythians and moved south. The Scythian king, Partatua married an Assyrian princess in 674 B.C. and two nations remained allies. Scythians and Assyrians together conquered the Medes of the Caspian Sea; however the Medes was able to drive the Scythians out of western Asia and back to the Pontic Steppes by the turn of the century.

In 514 BC. a very important event took place in the steppe. Herodotus described this account in full details. Darius, the third of the Persian great Kings, decided to invade Scythia. With Darius himself in command, the Persian army of 700,000 soldiers marched across the Danube to the Russian steppes. The Scythians steadily retreated while the Persians pursuit. Darius failed the attempt to force the Scythians to confront the Persians with head-on battle. The Scythians did not abandon their tactic of withdrawal and replied to Darius when he demanded an battle action:


There is nothing new or strange in what we do. We follow our mode of life in peaceful times. We have neither towns nor cultivated lands in these parts which might induce us, through fear of their being ravaged, to be in any hurry to fight you. But if you must needs come to blows with us speedily, look about you, and behold our fathers' tombs. Attempt to meddle with them and you shall see whether or not we will fight with you." It was indeed very strange war to Darius. There was nothing to be captured and held - no citied, no buildings, no plunder, nothing but the rimless steppe. He was fighting air. Darius had no alternative but to turn back. All the way to the Danube the Scythians harassed his retreat. He never campaigned northward through Europe again and the Scythians prevailed on the south Russian steppe and kept expanding westward for the next century.

From the end of the 7th century to the 3rd century BC, the Scythians occupied the steppe from the north Black Sea area, from the Don in the east to the Danube in the west. Among all those Scythians tribes, the most distinguishing tribe is called the Royal Scythians. With the Royal Scythians playing the dominant role, nomad Scythians, the Callipidae, the Alizones, agricultural Scythians and ploughing Scythians hold a submissive position. While the Royal and Nomad scythians led the nomadic lives, the Callipidae and Alizones lived in semi-nomadic style. Of course ploughing Scythians definitely were sedentary agriculturalists. According to Herodotus, the Callipidae or the Graeco-Scythians lived not far from Olbia, at the mouth of the Bug. To the north, there lived the Alizones; and further north the ploughing Scythians covered the area between the Dnieper and Bug. The Nomad Scythians occupied the steppes of the Azov Sea area and the left and right banks of the Dnieper. Most scholars believe that both banks of the lower Bug as far as the River Konka were the lands of the Nomad Scythians while the Royal Scythians roamed lands further east and south as far as the Don. Lastly the nomadic Scythians occupied at the Altai region of Siberia are called Kindred Scythians or Eastern Scythians.

It was during the 4th century BC. that the Scythian kingdom reached the hightest economic, political, social and cultural development. Many nomads bacme sedentary in the north Black Sea and Kamenskoe Gorodishche was the economic, political and trading capital of Scythia in the 4th till the first half of the 3rd century BC. The great king Atheas united all the Scythian tribes and expanded his territory to Tracian border on the rigth bank of the Danube. In 339 B.C., Atheas was killed at age of 90 in the battle with Philip of Macedon. However the Scythian kingdom remained strong and wealthy. The outside threat did not disturb their stability until the Celts and the Thracians swept in from the west and the Sarmatians from the east starting at the second half of the 3rd century BC.; the Scythian kingdom was absorbed by other nomdic powers and pretty much disappeared in the history.

Taming the Horse: Scythian Society and Culture[edit | edit source]

Religion The Scythians had no temples, or altars or religious images, and evidently no priests. It is known that the northern nomads including the Scythians practiced Shamanism in their religion: they used shamans to deal with the world of spirits and gave advice to the kings and chiefs. Being superstitious people, they believed in witchcraft, magic and the power of amulets. The most highly honoured of the Scythian shamans came from certain specific families. They are effeminate males called 'enarees' - meant 'men-women' or 'halfmen'. They spoke with high-pitched voices and wore women's clothes.

Rites of Death Prolonged and demonstrative grieving followed the death of every Scythian tribesman. At the death of a king all Scythian tribes joined a show of stupendous grief that last 40 days. Men of the dominant tribe, the Royal Scythians, cropped their hair, lacerated their ears, forehead, noses and arms. After the king was buried with the best of all his weapons and possessions, the funeral party strangled one of his concubines, his cupbearer, his cook, his lackey, his messenger and his best horses and place all the bodies by him. Then the grave was to be covered with 60-feet hight mound.

Even then, the funeral was not over. One year later as many as 50 Scythian youths might be selected from among those who had directly served the king. They would be strangled and buried in a circle around the royal tomb.

Animal Art Style One thing that Herodotus failed to report about these Scythian warriors is that they produced art of stunning force and vitality. Around the 6th century B.C., the Scythian created an art of pattern and ornament with naturalistic motifs based on animals. The favorite animals of the Scythian style are the stag, the horse, the ibex, the boar, the bear, the wolf, the felines, the eagle and the fish. The Scythian animal art style was adopted by all the mounted nomads as far as the borders of China by the end of the first millennium BC. During last two centuries, many rich and extraordinary finds were excavated from Scythian tombs and graves such as Pazyryk site in the Altai mountain of south-central Siberia, Kul Oba in the Kuban basin of the northern Black Sea.

Fall of the Scythians[edit | edit source]

So, by the beginning of the Hellenistic Era, the Scythians had power, wealth and control over a significant swath of the known world. Yet by 200BCE, the Scythians were already being supplanted as the dominant culture in their lands. From then until about 300CE, the Scythians continued to dwindle in power and influence until they occupied a relatively small region, having largely abandoned the nomadic lifestyle that had defined them for so long. Other groups arose and encroached on their lands — or became more adept at preventing the Scythians from encroaching on theirs. Whether by conquest or other means, the ancient Scythian tribes were eventually assimilated, merging over time into different tribes and ethnic groups.

The first spot of trouble for the Scythians may have begun as late as the 3rd century BCE in China, or possibly earlier. We do not know the exact specifics, but Chinese sources state that by the 200s BCE, what presence the Scythians (or Saka or Sai as they are called in modern Mandarin Chinese) had was as good as gone in the lands of modern day northwestern China: these were occupied first by the Yuezhi (also known as Kushans or Tokharoi) before they themselves were driven further west into Bactria by the implacable Xiongnü. How long this process of displacement is still not unknown but what is most certainly known is that the survivors of the Yuezhi incursions fled further west and south.

In the west and central Asia, however, it was another story. The Scythians were struck two blows. For example, Scythians under King Ateas tried to cross the Danube River and were met by the Macedonian forces of King Philip II. Philip utterly defeated his opponent, killing Ateas and enslaving tens of thousands of captives. Ten years later, the Saka, a Scythian tribe from the Asian steppes, lost a significant engagement to another Macedonian army at the Battle of Jaxartes. There, Philip’s son — you would know him as Alexander the Great — actually succeeded in cornering the famously elusive nomads, killing their leader and securing his borders. As a result, what hold the Scythians had over Central Asia was very much supplanted by the Greeks of India and the Seleucid Empire — but only as long as both kingdoms remained sufficiently strong: in the 200s BCE, one group of Scythians reached India where, upon overrunning in 95BCE the fracticious Greek presence in what is today eastern Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, they subsequently set themselves up as the local rulers there for at least three generations before the Yuezhzi — now themselves now displaced by the Xiongnü as mentioned before — overran northern India, forming the nucleus of the Kushan Empire, which would then dominate southern Central Asia and northwestern India for as many as three centuries.

Even so, the greatest threat the Scythians must have faced came not in the form of military threats, but rather the loss of their culture. Contact with the Greeks in the Black Sea, as well as Central Asia, made the Scythians more sedentary and by the time of the early days of the Roman empire, they had begun to settle into villages. And while they continued to play a part in slave trading, the Scythians of the Pontic Steppe were no longer raiders and mercenaries, but had become tenant farmers, turning the former lands of the Cimmerians into the breadbasket of the Greeks, and middlemen between the Mediterranean, Scandinavia and Asia.

In 339BCE, King Atheas was killed in battle against Phillip of Macedon. While the Scythian kingdom remained strong and wealthy the Scythian Kingdom became splintered into small independent principalities, to be then subjugated by the Sarmatians. From the moment of their arrival from Central Asia, the Sarmatians would make forays into present-day southern Russia, a great portion of the Ukraine, Halych, and Moldavia, and dominated these countries for nearly three centuries. The natives were not expelled, but were subjugated and/or assimilated."

After the fall of the last Scythian kingdom, the (by now) Greek-speaking survivors would hold out in a few of the old Greek cities and fortresses along the shores of the Black Sea, while over the next three centuries, a various number of different peoples would pass through the lands formerly held by their nomadic ancestors — the Germanic Goths, and the Turkic Huns and Avars would attempt to hold on to the territory of Pontic Scythia, only to fade out of existence, even as a new group of peoples — the Slavs — would, for various reasons, slowly encroach, little by little, from the north until they had settled what is today northern Ukraine. But by the mid-seventh century CE, the lands they were exploring and settling would fall into the hands of yet another group of equestrian nomadic peoples from Asia who would found a civilisation no less spectacular nor significant as that as the Scythians once ruled over in Asian and Europe. These Turkic newcomers would be known to the world as the Khazars.

Khazars

The Khazars[edit | edit source]

The Khazars were a semi-nomadic Turkic people who created what for its duration was the most powerful polity to emerge from the breakup of the western Turkish steppe empire, known as the Khazar Khanate or Khazaria. This imperial nation governed a crucial region on the Eurasian crossroads for over three hundred years, with social and state structures not readily found elsewhere. They became erstwhile allies of the Byzantine Romans against the Persians and the Arabs until they were effectively wiped out by the Russians of Kyiv in the mid-10th century CE, eventually fading out of existence by the 1300s.

While they certainly were not the first equestrian empire of Central Asian origin in what is today Ukraine and the Caucasus and certainly not the last (the Huns, Mongols and other nations like the Cumans and the Tatars are also just as famous), what perhaps distinguishes the Khazars from these other nomadic empires lies in one area alone: their rulers' conversion to Judaism, forming what was possibly otherwise the only Jewish polity of significance in the world (aside from the Arab kingdom of Himyar) after the Jewish Revolt of the 60s CE until the founding of the contemporary republic of Israel. Of great significance, too was their multiculturalism - in contrast with their more puritanical Byzantine and Saracen neighbours, the Khazars were known for their multireligious tolerance, which attracted many traders: among them Greeks, Arabs and Jews.

Refugees, Migrants and Conquerors: The Rise of Khazaria[edit | edit source]

As with the status of Judaism and Jewry within the Khazar Khaganate, the origins of the Khazar nation itself are somewhat shrouded in mystery. Our understanding is not helped by the near-absence of a common consensus amongst the different accounts left behind by mediaeval authors, but nevertheless Chinese, Muslim and Roman sources all state the same thing: that the Khazars were people of Turkic extraction.

Their ancestry aside, the exact details over how the khaganate, as mentioned before, are subject to much conjecture due to a lack of consensus and consistency in written sources, and in modern times, how the Khazars achieved nationhood is still subject to conjecture and speculation. One theory states that the Khazars were formerly subjects of the Western Turkic Khaganate who managed to reach and settle the lands at the easternmost reaches of Europe (centred around present day Dagestan, Chechnya and Kalmykia in southern Russia), who then may have assimilated or subjugated another group of Turkish nomads in that area called the Sabirs. Afterwards, the Khazar peoples in turn embraced nationhood after the Western Turkic Khanate when it was destroyed and scattered after many wars with Tang China. Another account instead asserts that the first Khazars were not subjects of the Khanate, but were descendents of refugees from those conflicts.

Whatever the true story was, one thing is nevertheless undisputed: by the seventh century CE, the Khazars achieved independence and for the next three centuries (c 650s–965CE) the Khazars dominated the vast area extending from the Volga-Don steppes to the eastern Crimea and the northern Caucasus: the very same regions once dominated by the Pontic Scythians, and then some. From their bases in southern Ukraine and the Caucasus, the Khazars could even hold sway over the erstwhile Slavic tribes in the regions south of the Baltic, such as the Khazars' nearest neighbours, the Siverianian and Polianian tribes. And so, until the ninth century, Khazaria would be a major partner and military ally of Byzantium. Apart from incidents in the Crimea during the time of Justinian II, the relationship between Byzantines and Khazars were friendly, with the Khazars sending soldiers to aid the Byzantines in their military campaigns against the Saracens. In the eighth century CE, a Khazar princess became Empress in Constantinople and her son, the emperor Leo IV (r 775–80CE) came to be called ‘the Khazar’. In the 10th century CE, the emperor (khagan) of Khazaria was held in higher esteem than the Pope in Rome, as evidenced in Byzantine correspondence with the Empire's foes and allies.

Relations with the Muslim Abbasids, however, were mostly hostile. The history of Khazaria is riddled by wars with the Muslim Arab empires to the south, and under the Umayyad predecessors of the Abbasids, Saracen forces made deep incursions into Khazar territory, conquering the Caucasus, destroying the former Khazar capitals of Balanjar and Samandar and threatening the capital Khazaran-Itil (Atil) on the lower stretches of the Volga. So devastating were these invasions, that the Umayyads could even force some members of the Khazar ruling elite to adopt Islam. Thus, it was probably for the purpose of countering and resisting these incursions that the grand limestone fortress of Sarkel, located near the Don River, was built in 835CE by a joint team of Byzantine and Khazar architects. In this manner, the Khazars, along with the Franks and the Byzantines, served as a dam against the tide of Islam, which posed military threats to pagan and Christian Europe from three sides for most of the Middle Ages, and played an important role in prolonging the lifespan of the East Roman Empire.

A Changing Landscape: The Khazars and Their Political Economy[edit | edit source]

The Arab traveller, Ibn Fadlan (879–960CE) on his way to his celebrated and famous meeting with the Varangians of the far north, made Khazaria one of the stops on his journey. His writings, corroborated by the many rich finds unearthed by Soviet archeologists at the site of Sarkel (near present-day Rostov na Donu) in the mid-20th century CE, provide us with a wealth of detailed information on Khazar society in Khazaria's heyday, and reveal that at the time of his visit, the Khazars had founded for themselves a rich and sophisticated community for themselves, prospering from agriculture, fishing and trade.

While the ancestors of the Khazars must have relied heavily on herding as well as slave raiding to sustain themselves (like other steppe empires before them) the vast reach and phenomenal natural wealth of their lands, however, resulted in the Khazars becoming more sedentary (a social development observed in the Scythians who preceded them in Ukraine many centuries before) and thus trade and agriculture became important contributors to Khazaria's economy in Ibn Fadlan's time. Rice, fish and wheat were the most important products, supplemented by the gold and silver mines of the Caucasus. However, as valuable as these were, the slave trade was also highly lucrative, and Khazaria became an important centre in the East European slave trade. Ibn Khurdadhbeh, an Abbasid civil servant of Persian extraction, noted that the "Radhanites", along with the Rus' or Russians, were most active in the procurement and transport of slaves to the Byzantine and Arab empires.

Astride a major artery of commerce between northern Europe and southwestern Asia, Khazaria became one of the foremost trading emporia of the medieval world, commanding the western marches of the Silk Road and played a key commercial role as a crossroad between China, the Middle East, and Christian Europe. Tributes paid by vassal tribes and the Caliph (in times of Arab weakness) added to the Khazar treasury, as did transiting merchants who paid ten percent of the value of their goods to tax collectors. But on the whole, the country’s internal economic base was weak and dependent on external sources. As the Khazars had strong neighbours, control of these external sources was problematic. Additionally, for all of her size and the immense military clout Khazaria had demonstrated by granting the Byzantines an edge over the Abbasids, Khazar politics was highly decentralised, even by the standards of most other great nomadic hordes before it, most notably the Xiongnu (Huns) and the two Turkic Empires that preceded it.

Like other Turkic peoples, the Khazars for most of their existence were a tribal confederacy, with two sources of authority that ran parallel with one another: tribal rule, and clan rule. Of the many tribes that made-up the empire, one or two were dominant; the tribes themselves were also dominated by one or more pre-eminent clans. So while Khazaria was more sedentary than other steppe empires, in the long run it could not match the institutionalised state formations that surrounded it. There, it was much more difficult to accumulate profit margins than in the cities of the Abbasid and Byzantine empires.

Of Prophets and Kings: Khazar Politics & Society[edit | edit source]

Of central power, however, the few sources on Khazar politcs that we have inherited often differ and contradict one another, but in general, most seem to agree that Khazar society was headed by a khagan, who like prehistoric Chinese rulers, was the high shaman of the Khazars. In some accounts, the khagan was assisted by a vice-regent or assistant-khagan, but this did not mean, however, that they together held de facto power in the country, either. Real power appeared to be wielded by the bek/beg/bey or tribal chiefs, or by the khagan bek — literally "khagan Chief; viz overlord" — being the head of all Khazar military forces. Even though his position would have been inferior to that of the khagan or his viceregent, the khagan bek was usually the one who made the real decisions: he was in charge of the treasury, and led the army with assitance from tribal chiefs and local rulers. Thus for most of Khazaria's existence as an independent polity, the real power struggles were over who should be the tribal bek and/or the khagan bek. The separation of power between the khagan and his bek wasn't, however, always clear-cut — over time, the roles of both leaders appeared to be very fluid — but toward the end of the existence of Khazaria, the role and responsibilities of the khagan bek appeared to be gradually absorbed by that of the khagan. It may have been around the time that this took place that the khagans allegedly chose conversion to Judaism.

The motives of the Khazar khagans for embracing Judaism, as are the true circumstances around the conversion process, are unfortunately very much the stuff of legend as they are too a source of hearsay and misinformation (and sadly, possibly obscured by the latter same). References to Khazar rulers converting to Judaism emanate from rivals and neighbours alike, but the most salient reference to a Jewish ruling elite thus far come from the so-called Khazar Correspondence, consisting of 10th century documents from Muslim Spain, recounting the correspondence between a Jewish diplomat working for the Muslim caliphate of Cordobá and a Khazar khagan named Joseph. In it, the khagan Joseph stated that the Khazars first converted to Judaism under the khagan Bulan (c 740s CE). Apart from this account, the too was a legend, circulated by the Spanish Jewish polymath Judas Halevy (c 1075-1141CE?) a century later after the emergence of the Correspondence, that Bulan called in representatives of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, in order to decide which religion to choose for himself and the royal family. After listening to each of their arguments, Bulan chose Judaism on the grounds that since Byzantium and Baghdad did not hate Jews as they did as much Muslims and Christians respectively, it was best that the Khazar ruling elite embrace Judaism.

As suggested by Halevy's anecdotes, the reason for the conversion to Judaism might well have been political and simply reflected changes in Khazar society that preceded Bulan's rule (and were thus attempts by the khagan to adapt to them) but personal choice and preference also cannot be ruled out. At the beginning of the 8th century, Jews from Iran and Byzantium settled among the Khazars in northern Dagestan. Although some native Khazars soon converted to Judaism, it was only at the beginning of the 9th century CE that khagan Obadiah proclaimed non-Talmudic Judaism the state religion. Byzantium also tried to convert the Khazars to Christianity: in 860–1CE Saint Cyril conducted a mission among them and a metropoly with seven eparchies was organized. The Khazars even played a role in spreading Christianity in Kyivan Rus’ before its official conversion under Volodymyr the Great. Yet, conversion to Christianity would have made the country too dependent on Constantinople, which, though Khazaria’s main ally, could never be fully trusted. In contrast, conversion to Islam would have brought Khazaria under its archenemy, the Caliph — which could then lead to war with the Byzantines.

Northern Storm: Decline and Fall of the Empire[edit | edit source]

Judaism was an elegant third way out. While religious tolerance strengthened Khazaria as the absence of religious repression created loyalty to the khagan, and attracted an influx of Jewish, Muslim and Christian traders, the adoption of Judaism thus had some value for a buffer state caught between two warring kingdoms, one Christian and the other Muslim. Regardless of the threat the Byzantines and the Saracens posed, neither civilisation would ever get to defeat the Khazars — rather, it was at the hands of a northern upstart — the Slavo-Nordic Russians — that the Khazar Khaganate would meet its end, beginning the long decline and eventual disappearance of the Khazars.

By the tenth century Khazar relations with the Byzantines had soured. The reasons for this are unclear. It might have had to do with the waning power of the Abbasids and thus a reduced need for Byzantium to have the Khazars as allies. It could also be that the conversion of the ruling elite of Khazaria to the Jewish faith annoyed Constantinople. This had portentous ramifications for the Khazars — not only had they lost a major geostrategic partner, they now also had to face two major threats on their own terms — the aforementioned Kyivan Rus, and a new Turkic rival, the Pechenegs. However, it was not the emergence of the Russians or the Pechenegs that marked the decline of the Khazar state overnight. The first sign of trouble actually appeared in the 9th century CE, with the so-called Kabar rebellion. In the 820s CE, the northern reaches of the Khazar Empire, long the home of the Kabars (or Qavars), a powerful member tribe of the Khazar confederacy, was ablaze with civil war.

The reasons for this internecine conflict in Khazaria remain murky at best, but one Roman source — namely, none other than the emperor Constantine VII — stated that it was a war over religion, namely the Khazar khagan, dissatisfied with how his deputy had tried to usurp power and attempted to impose Judaism on all of Khazaria, raised a revolt with the help of the Kabars, but he was unsuccessful. It is also thanks to Constantine's book, De Administratio Imperio, that we do know what happened next: the Kabars travelled to lands west of Khazaria, to search for the Magyars, who had already migrated far from Khazar borders and influence, with the intent to seek refuge with them. But not all of them went west: the ex-khagan, along with some other Kabar rebels, instead, fled north (possibly to the present-day city of Rostov na Don) where they may have sought asylum with the Russians, who by now had expanded enough to be sufficiently powerful as to warrant Byzantine interest. Constantine further added, however, that the flight of the Kabars to Magyar territory was not the end of the affair: rather, it led to the Magyars attacking their Bulgar, Roman and Russian neighbours during the emperor's own reign, perhaps to find new homes and pastures for the children of the western Kabars, who were now members of the Magyar confederacy. Only after the destruction of their hosts at Lechfeld, Germany in 955CE would the Magyars be pacified .... but for a short while.

While the loss of the Kabars and their Magyar patrons did not at first seem to pose any serious troubles for the Khazar state, the next thing to befall them certainly did: decades after the civil war in Ukraine, the Black Sea steppes (southern Ukraine) that were under Khazar control were invaded by a new host of Turkic horse raiders, the Pechenegs, whose incessant raids on the khaganate considerably weakened the Khazar state, rendering it susceptible to the Varangians, who now menaced Khazaria by raiding Khazar territories, chipping away at Khazar influence — and in doing so, laid the foundations of the modern nation of Ukraine. According to the Primary Chronicle, the Varangians, under the leadership of two warriors named Askold and Dyr, liberated the city of Kyiv (then a small rural settlement known as Sambat to the Khazars) in 862CE. Two decades later, the Varangians (now settled in Kyiv and known as the Kyivan Rus' and led by none other than Ihor, the son of the famous Rurik) freed the Polianians and Siverianians from Khazar rule after a two-year war.

From this point on, Khazaria's fate was sealed. With the rise of the Kievan Rus state in Ukraine, Khazar power dwindled under years and years of incessant Varangian campaigning. By 965CE, the great Khazar fortress of Sarkel was no more: Russian forces under Svyatoslav, Ihor's son had it razed; next was Itil, the capital, which would suffer the same fate as that of Sarkel. Even so, destroying Khazaria was a tragic miscalculation on the part of both the Russians and the Greeks. The weakening of Khazaria strengthened the Pecheneg and Oghuz tribes, who became formidable rivals of both Kyiv and Constantinople — and their progeny would eventually found the Ottoman sultanate, which would then put the Byzantine empire to death, and menace early modern Europe for centuries thereafter.

Nevertheless, the Khazars would cast long shadows, both east and west, throughout the Middle Ages: the Bulgars, Hungarians and Selcük Turks all had their origins in Khazaria and emerged either through migration or secession. However, of these, the greatest influence must have been on the development of the Russian and Ukrainian states, and their respective cultures. We have various sources of Byzantine, Arab and German provenance alike, speaking of the Varangians using the term chacanus as a title for their supreme leader (although this is heavily disputed by some Russian authorities to this day). But perhaps, what is more telling is the use of brand-seals or tamgha as personal and national emblems in Russia, particularly by the princes of what later became the Grand Principality of Kyiv — a tradition that still continues with the present day Ukrainian state, which has chosen to adopt the personal tamgha of Saint Volodymyr the Great as part of its coat of arms.

Khazars Khazars

References[edit | edit source]

Saka:

Khazars: