The Norse, Huns, Khazars, Kurgans, Bulghars, Ossettia, Scythians ans more.....
OGHURIC
The Khazar language appears to have been an Oghuric tongue, similar to that spoken by the early Bulgars. Therefore, a Hunnish origin has also been postulated.
The Hunnish empire stretched from the steppes of Central Asia into modern Germany, and from the Danube river to the Baltic Sea. Dionysius Periegetes talks of people who may be Huns living next to the Caspian Sea in second century AD.
Ptolemy lists the "Chuni" as among the "Sarmatian" tribes in the second century, although it is not known for certain if these people were the Huns. The fifth century Armenian historian Moses of Khorene, in his "History of Armenia," introduces the Hunni near the Sarmatians and goes on to describe how they captured the city of Balk ("Kush" in Armenian) sometime between 194 and 214, which explains why the Greeks call that city Hunuk.
Following the defeat of the Hsiung-nu by the Han, there was a century without significant Hsiung-nu references, followed by attempts by the Liu family of southern Hsiung-nu Tiefu to establish a state in western China (see Han Zhao). Chionites (OIONO/Xiyon) appear on the scene in Transoxiana as the Kidarites begin to press on the Kushans in 320 and the Jie ethnicity Hou/Later Zhao kingdom competes against the Liu family.
Back west, the Romans invite the Huns east of the Ukraine to settle Pannonia in 361, and in 372, under the leadership of Balimir their king, the Huns push toward the west and defeat the Alans. Back east again, in the early 5th century Tiefu Xia is the last southern Hsiung-nu dynasty in Western China and the Alchon and Huna appear in what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan. At this point deciphering Hunnish histories for the multi-linguist becomes easier with relatively well-documented events in Byzantine, Armenian, Iranian, Indian, and Chinese sources.
Huns made an appearance in Europe in the Fourth Century AD, appearing first north of the Black Sea area, forcing a large number of Goths to seek refuge in the Roman Empire; then later the Huns appear west of the Carpathians in Pannonia, probably sometime between 400 and 410, which was probably the trigger for the massive migration of Germanic tribes westward across the Rhine in December 406.
The establishment of the 5th century Hun Empire marks one of the first well-documented appearances of the culture of horseback migration in history. Under the leadership of Attila the Hun, these tribal people achieved military and diplomatic superiority over their rivals (most of them highly cultured) through weapons like the Hun bow and a system of pay-offs, financed by the plundering of wealthy Roman cities to the south, to retain the loyalties of a diverse number of tribes.
Attila's Huns incorporated groups of unrelated tributary peoples. In the European case Alans, Gepids, Sciri, Rugians, Sarmatians, Slavs and Gothic tribes all united under the Hun family military elite. Some of Attila's Huns eventually settled in Pannonia after his death, but the Hun Empire would not survive Attila's passing. After his sons were defeated by Ardaric's coalition at the unidentified river Nedao in 454, the Hunnish empire ceased to exist.
The memory of the Hunnish invasion was transmitted orally among the Germanic peoples and is an important component in the Old Norse Völsunga saga and Hervarar saga, and the Old German Nibelungenlied, all portraying events in the Migrations period, almost one millennium before their recordings. In the Hervarar saga, the Goths make first contact with the bow-wielding Huns and meet them in an epic battle on the plains of the Danube. In the Völsunga saga and the Nibelungenlied, King Attila (Atli in Norse and Etzel in German) defeats the Frankish king Sigebert I (Sigurðr or Siegfried) and the Burgundian King Guntram I (Gunnar or Gunther), but is subsequently assassinated by Queen Fredegund (Gudrun or Kriemhild), the sister of the latter and wife of the former.
Many nations have tried to assert themselves as ethnic or cultural successors to the Huns. The Bulgarian khans, for instance, believed to have been descended from Attila. Indeed, the language of Volga Bulghars, currently known as the Chuvash language, is the most divergent of all the Turkic languages, which testifies to its separate existence for centuries before the dissolution of the proto-Turkic unity happened.
The "Kurgan hypothesis" of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) origins assumes gradual expansion of the "Kurgan culture" until it encompasses the entire Pontic steppe, Kurgan IV being identified with the Yamna culture of around 3000 BC. Subsequent expansion beyond the steppes leads to hybrid cultures, such as the Globular Amphora culture to the west, the immigration of proto-Greeks to the Balkans and the nomadic Indo-Iranian cultures to the east around 2500 BC.
The domestication of the horse, and later the use of early chariots is assumed to have increased the mobility of the Kurgan culture, facilitating the expansion over the entire Yamna region. In the Kurgan hypothesis, the entire pontic steppes are considered the PIE Urheimat, and a variety of late PIE dialects is assumed to have been spoken across the region. The area near the Volga labelled ?Urheimat in the map above marks the location of the earliest known traces of horse-riding (the Samara culture, but see Sredny Stog culture), and would correspond to an early PIE or pre-PIE nucleus of the 5th millennium BC.
(Northern Ossetia) culture in northern and central Caucasus. In the steppes north of the Black Sea and Azov Sea and the Caucasus, the Iron Age begins with the Koban (1100 BCE-400BCE) and the pre-Scythian Chernogorovka and Novocerkassk cultures from ca. 900 BC. By 800 BC, it was spreading to Hallstatt C ( 800BCE-600 BCE Central Europe) via the alleged Thraco-Cimmerian migrations.
It is sometimes assumed that the migration of the Cimmerians was triggered by an Iranian expansion, from the area of the former Srubna culture of Late Bronze Age (16th-12th centuries BC), into the steppes of what is now the Ukraine. is a successor to the Yamna culture, the Catacomb culture and the Abashevo culture. The Srubna culture is succeeded by the Scythians and Sarmatians in the 1st millennium BC, and by Khazars and Kipchaks in the first millennium AD.
In the 4th and 5th centuries AD, the Proto-Magyars moved to the west of the Ural Mountains to the area between the southern Ural Mountains and the Volga River (Bashkiria, or Bashkortostan). In the early 8th century, a part of the proto-Magyars moved to the Don River (to a territory between the Volga, the Don and the Donets), a territory later called Levedia. The Red Croats, remained on the Don. After the Magyar tribes invaded the Pannonian basin in 896, they also started the conquest of Transylvania which remained an autonomous principality of the Hungarian Kingdom until the Ottoman victory over the Magyars following the Battle of Mohács (1526).
The Khazars were a semi-nomadic Turkic people from Central Asia, whose ruling class converted to Judaism. The name 'Khazar' seems to be tied to a Turkic verb meaning "wandering" ('gezer' in modern Turkish). In the 7th century AD they founded an independent Khaganate in the Northern Caucasus along the Caspian Sea, where over time Judaism became the state religion. At their height, they and their tributaries controlled much of what is today southern Russia, western Kazakhstan, eastern Ukraine, large portions of the Caucasus (including Dagestan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, etc.), and the Crimea.
Originally, the Khazars practiced traditional Turkic shamanism, focused on the sky god Tengri, but were heavily influenced by Confucian ideas imported from China, notably that of the Mandate of Heaven. The Ashina clan were considered to be the chosen of Tengri and the kaghan was the incarnation of the favor the sky-god bestowed on the Turks. A kaghan who failed had clearly lost the god's favor and was typically ritually executed. Historians have sometimes wondered, only half in jest, if the Khazar tendency to occasionally execute their rulers on religious grounds led those rulers to seek out other religions.
Following their conversion to Judaism, the Khazars themselves traced their origins to Kozar, a son of Togarmeh. Togarmeh is mentioned in the Hebrew scriptures as a grandson of Japheth. It is unlikely, however, that he was regarded as an ancestor before the introduction of Biblical traditions to Khazaria. In the Torah, Togarmah is listed in the genealogy of nations as the son of Gomer, and grandson of Japheth (Gen. 10:3). Traditionally he is regarded as the ancestor of the Turkic-speaking peoples. According to traditional Armenian and Georgian accounts, both these peoples as well as several other Caucasian peoples are the descendants of Togarmah (Armenian: Thorgom; Georgian: Thargamos). Furthermore, the local names for Armenia (Hayq) and Georgia (Kartli/Sakartvelo) come allegedly from sons of Thogarmas, Haik and Kartlos, respectively.
In the Book of Ezekiel (27:14, 38:6), the descendants of Togarmah are described as trading horses and mules in Tyre and elsewhere in the Levant. Here Togarmah may refer to Armenians or Cimmerians. Gomer, eldest son of Japheth, mentioned in the Old Testament Books of Genesis and Ezekiel; often equated with the Cimmerians (Gimirru), and identified by Flavius Josephus with the Galatians.
The Khazars were important allies of the Byzantine Empire against the Sassanid empire, and were a major regional power at their height. They fought a series of successful wars against the Arab Caliphates, probably preventing an Arab invasion of Eastern Europe. By the end of the tenth century, their power was broken by the Kievan Rus, and the Khazars largely disappeared from history. Armenian chronicles contain references to the Khazars as early as the late second century. These are generally regarded as anachronisms, and most scholars believe that they actually refer to Sarmatians or Scythians. Priscus relates that one of the nations in the Hunnish confederacy was called Akatziroi. Their king was named Karadach or Karidachus. Some, going on the similarity between Akatziroi and "Ak-Khazar", have speculated that the Akatziroi were early proto-Khazars.
The first significant appearance of the Khazars in history is their aid to the campaign of the Byzantine emperor Heraclius against the Sassanid Persians. The Khazar ruler Ziebel (sometimes identified as Tong Yabghu Khagan of the West Turks) aided the Byzantines in overrunning Georgia. Early Khazar history is intimately tied with that of the Gokturk empire, founded when the Ashina clan overthrew the Juan Juan in 552 CE. With the collapse of the Gokturk empire / tribal confederation due to internal conflict in the seventh century, the western half of the Turk empire itself split into two confederations, the Bulgars, led by the Dulo clan, and the Khazars, led by the Ashina clan, the traditional rulers of the Gok Turk empire. By 670, the Khazars had broken the Bulgar confederation, leaving the three Bulgar remnants on the Volga, the Black Sea and the Danube.
The Pontic steppe refers to the steppelands to the north of the Black Sea and on its eastern side as far as the Caspian Sea. Nations that have dominated the region: Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Huns, Eurasian Avars, Gokturks, Khazars, Pechenegs, Kipchaks, Cumans, Golden Horde, Russia (Ukraine.)
The Parthian empire was to last until AD 224, when it was succeeded by the Sassanid empire. Avars (ä'värz) , mounted nomad people who in the 4th and 5th cent. dominated the steppes of central Asia. Dislodged by stronger tribes, the Avars pushed west, increasing their formidable army by incorporating conquered peoples into it.
The Avars were not mentioned after the 9th cent. It is doubtful that the modern Avars, a pastoral, Muslim people of the Dagestan Republic, are descended from the original Avars. Reaching their greatest power in the late 6th cent., they plundered all of present South Russia and the Balkans. Their siege (626) of Constantinople was unsuccessful, but they continued to dominate the Hungarian plain until Charlemagne defeated them.
Khazar overlordship over most of the Crimea dates back to the late 600s. During the 7th and 8th centuries the Khazar fought a series of wars against the Umayyad Caliphate, which was attempting simultaneously to expand its influence into Transoxiana and the Caucasus. The first war was fought in the early 650 and ended with the defeat of an Arab force led by Abd ar-Rahman ibn Rabiah outside the Khazar town of Balanjar, after a battle in which both sides used siege engines on the others' troops.
In the mid 700s the rebellious Crimean Goths were put down and their city, Doros (modern Mangup-Kale) occupied. They are also known to have been allied with the Byzantine Empire during at least part of the 700s. In 704/705 Justinian II, exiled in Cherson, escaped into Khazar territory and married the sister of the Khagan, Busir. With the aid of his wife, he escaped from Busir, who was intriguing against him with the usurper Tiberius III, murdering two Khazar officials in the process. He fled to Bulgaria, whose Khan Tervel helped him regain the throne. The Khazars later provided aid to the rebel general Bardanes, who seized the throne in 711 as Emperor Philippicus. The Khazar Khaganate was, at its height, an immensely powerful state. The Khazar heartland was on the lower Volga and the Caspian coast as far south as Derbent. In addition, from the late 600s the Khazars controlled most of the Crimea and the northeast littoral of the Black Sea. By 800 Khazar holdings included most of the Pontic steppe as far west as the Dneiper and as far east as the Aral Sea. Some Turkic history atlases show the Khazar sphere of influence extending well east of the Aral).
During the Khazar-Arab war of the early 700s, some Khazars evacuated to the Ural foothills, and some settlements may have remained. A Khazar tudun was resident at Cherson in the 690s, despite the fact that this town was nominally subject to the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantine emperor Leo III married his son Constantine (later Constantine V Kopronymous) to the Khazar princess Tzitzak (daughter of the Khagan Bihar) as part of the alliance between the two empires. Tzitzak, who was baptized as Irene, became famous for her wedding gown, which started a fashion craze in Constantinople for a type of robe (for men) called tzitzakion. Their son Leo (Leo IV) would be better known as "Leo the Khazar".
Hostilities broke out again with the Caliphate in the 710s, with raids back and forth across the Caucasus but few decisive battles. The Khazars, led by a prince named Barjik, invaded northwestern Iran and defeated the Umayyad forces at Ardebil in 730, killing the Arab warlord al-Djarrah al-Hakami and briefly occupying the town.
They were defeated the next yeare at Mosul, where Barjik directed Khazar forces from a throne mounted with al-Djarrah's severed head, and Barjik was killed. Arab armies led first by the Arab prince Maslamah ibn Abd al-Malik and then by Marwan ibn Muhammad (later Caliph Marwan II) poured across the Caucasus and eventually (in 737) defeated a Khazar army led by Hazer Tarkhan, briefly occupying Atil itself and possibly forcing the Khagan to convert to Islam.
The instability of the Umayyad regime made a permanent occupation impossible; the Arab armies withdrew and Khazar independence was re-asserted. It has been speculated that the adoption of Judaism (which in this theory would have taken place around 740) was part of this re-assertion of independence.
In 758, the Abbasid Caliph Abdullah al-Mansur ordered Yazid ibn Usayd al-Sulami, one of his nobles and military governor of Armenia, to take a royal Khazar bride and make peace. Yazid took home a daughter of Khagan Baghatur, the Khazar leader. Unfortunately, the girl died inexplicably, possibly in childbirth. Her attendants returned home, convinced that some Arab faction had poisoned her, and her father was enraged. A Khazar general named Ras Tarkhan invaded what is now northwestern Iran, plundering and raiding for several months. Thereafter relations between the Khazars and the Abbasid Caliphate (whose foreign policies were generally less expansionist than its Umayyad predecessor) became increasingly cordial.
At some point in the ninth century (as reported by Constantine Porphyrogenitus) a group of three Khazar clans called the Kabars revolted against the Khazar government. Omeljan Pritsak and others have speculated that the revolt had something to do with a rejection of rabbinic Judaism; this is unlikely as it is believed that both the Kabars and mainstream Khazars had pagan, Jewish (both rabbinic and Karaite), Christian, and Muslim members. Pritsak maintained that the Kabars were led by the Khagan Khan-Tuvan Dyggvi in a war against the Bek.
In any event Pritsak cited no primary source for his propositions in this matter. The Kabars were defeated and joined a confederacy led by the Magyars. It has been speculated that "Hungarian" derives from the Turkic word "Onogur", or "Ten Arrows", referring to seven Finno-Ugric tribes and the three tribes of the Kabars.
In the closing years of the ninth century the Khazars and Oghuz allied to attack the Pechenegs, who had been attacking both nations. The Pechenegs were driven westward, where they forced out the Magyars (Hungarians) who had previously inhabited the Don-Dnieper basin in vassalage to Khazaria. Under the leadership of the chieftain Lebedias and later Arpad, the Hungarians moved west into modern-day Hungary. The departure of the Hungarians led to an unstable power vacuum and the loss of Khazar control over the steppes north of the Black Sea.
Originally the Khazars were probably allied with various Norse factions who controlled the region around Novgorod and regularly travelled through Khazar-held territory to attack territories around the Black and Caspian Seas. By 913, however, the Khazars were engaged in open hostilities with Norse marauders. The Khazar fortress of Sarkel, constructed with Byzantine aid around 830, may have been constructed as a defense against Rus incursions, as well as attacks by nomadic people such as the Pechenegs.
In the 10th century the empire began to decline due to the attacks of both Vikings from Kievan Rus and various Turkic tribes. It enjoyed a brief revival under the strong rulers Aaron and Joseph, who subdued rebellious client states such as the Alans and led victorious wars against Rus invaders. The alliance with the Byzantines began to collapse in the early 900s, possibly as a result of the conversion to Judaism. Byzantine and Khazar forces may have clashed in the Crimea, and by the 940s Constantine VII Porphyrogentius was speculating in De Administrando Imperio about ways in which the Khazars could be isolated and attacked.
The Byzantines during the same period began to attempt alliances with the Pechenegs and the Rus, with varying degrees of success. From the beginning of the tenth century, the Khazars found themselves fighting on multiple fronts as nomadic incursions were exacerbated by uprisings by former clients and invasions from former allies, often at Byzantine instigation.
According to the Schechter Text, the Khazar ruler Benjamin ben Menahem fought a war against a coalition of "'SY, TWRQY, 'BM, and PYYNYL," who were instigated and aided by "MQDWN". MQDWN or Macedon refers to the Byzantine Empire in many medieval Jewish writings; the other entities named have been tenuously identified by scholars including Omeljan Pritsak with the Burtas, Oghuz Turks, Volga Bulgars and Pechenegs, respectively. Though Benjamin was victorious, his son Aaron II had to face another Byzantine-inspired invasion from, this time led by the Alans. Aaron defeated the Alans with Oghuz help, yet within a few years the Oghuz and Khazars were enemies.
Ibn Fadlan reported Oghuz hostility to the Khazars during his journey c. 921. The Rus warlords Oleg and Sviatoslav I of Kiev launched several wars against the Khazar khaganate, often with Byzantine connivance. The Schechter Letter relates the story of a campaign against Khazaria by HLGW (Oleg) around 941 (in which Oleg was defeated by the Khazar general Pesakh; this calls into question the timeline of the Primary Chronicle and other related works. Sviatoslav finally succeeded in destroying Khazar imperial power in the 960s. The Khazar fortresses of Sarkel and Tamatarkha fell to the Rus in 965, with the capital city of Atil following circa 967 or 969.
Khazar communities existed outside of those areas under Khazar overlordship. Many Khazar mercenaries served in the armies of the Caliphate and other Islamic states. Documents from medieval Constantinople attest to a Khazar community mingled with the Jews of the suburb of Pera. Christian Khazars also lived in Constantinople, and some served in its armies. The Patriarch Photius I of Constantinople was once angrily referred to by the Emperor as "Khazar-face", though whether this refers to his actual lineage or is a generic insult is unclear.
Abraham ibn Daud reported Khazar rabbinical students, or rabbinical students who were the descendents of Khazars, in 12th century Spain. Jews from Kiev and elsewhere in Russia, who may or may not have been Khazars, were reported in France, Germany and England. The Kabars who settled in Hungary in the late ninth and early tenth centuries may have included Jews among their number. Many Khazar Jews probably fled foreign conquest into Hungary and elsewhere in Eastern Europe.
There they likely merged with local Jews and ensuing waves of Jewish immigration from Germany and Western Europe. They most likely did not constitute the dominant group within Eastern European Jewry, as Arthur Koestler maintained. Polish legends speak of Jews being present in Poland before the establishment of the Polish monarchy. Polish coins from the 12th and 13th centuries sometimes bore Slavic inscriptions written in the Hebrew alphabet though connecting these coins to Khazar influence is purely a matter of speculation.
Kedrenos documented a joint attack on the Khazar state in Kerch, ruled by Georgius Tzul, by the Byzantines and Russians in 1016. Following 1016, there are more ambiguous references in Eastern Christian sources to Khazars that may or may not be using "Khazars" in a general sense (the Byzantines and Arabs called all steppe people Turks; before them the Romans had called them all Scythians).
In 1023 the Primary Chronicle reports that Mstislav (one of Vladimir's sons) marched against his brother Yaroslav with an army that included "Khazars and Kasogs". Kasogs were an early Circassian people. "Khazars" in this reference is considered by most to be intended in the generic sense, but some have questioned why the reference reads "Khazars and Kasogs", when "Khazars" as a generic would have been sufficient.
Even if the reference is to Khazars, of course, it does not follow that there was a Khazar state in this period. They could have been Khazars under the rule of the Rus. A Kievian prince named Oleg (not to be confused with Oleg of Kiev) was reportedly kidnapped by "Khazars" in 1078 and shipped off to Constantinople, although most scholars believe that this is a reference to the Kipchaks. Jewish Khazars were also mentioned in a Georgian chronicle as a group that inhabited Derbent in the late 1100s.
http://www.protogermanic.com/2011/08/norse-huns-khazars-kurgans-bulghars.html?m=1
Scythians and Sarmatians of ancient Ukraine (7 BC - 4 AD)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkeWai9hzog
Scythians (скити, скіфи; skyty, skify). A group of Indo-European tribes that controlled the steppe of Southern Ukraine in the 7th to 3rd centuries BC. According to the most predominant theories, they first appeared there in the late 8th century BC after having been forced out of Central Asia. The Scythians were related to the Sauromatians and spoke an Iranian dialect. After quickly conquering the lands of the Cimmerians they pursued them into Asia Minor and established themselves as a power in the region. In the 670s BC they launched a successful campaign to expand into Media, Syria, and Palestine. They were forced out of Asia Minor early in the 6th century BC by the Medes, who had by then assumed control of Persia, and retreated to their lands between the lower Danube River and the Don River, known as Scythia.
http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CS%5CC%5CScythians.htm
A golden pectoral saved poet and archeologist Borys Mozolevsky from prison in Mordvia
The life of Borys Mozolevsky (1936-1993) took such whimsical turns that it can only be explained through the cast-iron logic of providence. Born in a village in Mykolaiv Region on the Black Sea coast, Mozolevsky decided to become a pilot when he was in his teens and entered the Special Naval School in Odesa. Then he studied in Yeysk Higher Military Aviation College, but things suddenly went awry: cuts in the Soviet Army forced him, aged 20 at the time and not in very good health, to make a fresh start in life. But how?
http://ukrainianweek.com/History/47326
Fascinating inventions that originated in the country we now know as Ukraine dating back from 20,000BC
Ancient Inventions of Ukraine by Andrew Gregorovich
http://www.infoukes.com/history/inventions/