The Khazar Empire c. 700 CE

In the late 6th century CE the Khazars, a warlike tribe from the region of present-day Kazakhstan, exploited the destruction of the preceding Gὂkturk Khaganate by the Chinese Tang Dynasty to carve out a foothold in what had had been the Gὄkturks’ western frontier on the lower Volga River. Fellow nomads, the Bulgars and Onogurs, were then vanquished, allowing the Khazars to fashion dominion over territories extending from the Aral Sea to the Northern Balkans. The Khazars became adept diplomats, playing off neighbouring superpowers the Byzantines and the Abbasid Caliphate to their advantage. They also leveraged their strategic location straddling major East-West and North-South trade routes to exact a fortune in tribute on goods in transit. Uniquely for a nomad imperium they became agriculturally self-sufficient, supplementing their pastoral economy with crops from the black soils of Ukraine and fish from the Volga and Caspian. Their rule fostered a “Pax Khazarica” enabling profitable trade to progress unhindered, and, in the 8th century, the ruling class emphasized their distinctness from their southern rivals, Christian Byzantium and the Islamic Abbasids by converting to Judaism. Ultimately, continuing prosperity undermined the Khazars’ military prowess and strategic acumen: they fatally underestimated a new threat to their west, the Kievan Rus. Sviatoslav I of Kiev swept through the empire in the 960s, razing their capital, Atil, so that “not a grape or raisin remained, nor a leaf on a branch” consigning the Khazars to oblivion.