The Discovery of Khazaria

The book by L.N. Gumilev is an original study of the history of the emergence, flourishing, and disappearance of the Khazar Khaganate, a neighbor and rival of Ancient Rus, located in the delta of the Volga River during the 8th to 10th centuries. Although sources on Khazar history have long been known and studied quite thoroughly, scholars have not been unanimous in their opinions about the culture, language, territory, and way of life of the Khazars. During archaeological expeditions organized by the State Hermitage from 1959 to 1961 (detailed excavations on land and underwater research), a new body of information about the Khazars was obtained. By comparing ancient Russian, Byzantine, Arab, and Jewish written sources with data from archaeological finds and hypotheses of his predecessors who studied Khazar history, L.N. Gumilev provided a new interpretation of the ethnic, religious, and state structure of the Khazar Khaganate in various eras and made unconventional conclusions about the complex of reasons for its disappearance: an ethno-religious knot of problems, social regularities, political contradictions, transgression of the Caspian Sea, etc. The book on archaeological discoveries in the Caspian region is supplemented by a historical-philosophical essay "Zigzag of History" about the history of the Jewish people and the chimerical state they created, which played an important role in the system of international trade in the early Middle Ages. The author of the preface and conclusion to L.N. Gumilev's book "The Discovery of Khazaria" is Professor M.I. Artamonov. The book is equipped with an index of historical figures, an index of names of researchers and cited authors, an index of geographical names, and an index of ethnonyms. The book is intended for historians, geographers, philosophers, ethnologists, and a wide range of interested readers.