International trade through Khazaria paid for the khagan’s armies, which made it a powerful ally to Byzantium. Together they fought the Arabs and the Bulgars, and fended off steppe nomad incursions. The stable trading routes attracted merchants from further afield, leading to the growth of a booming trade between Northeastern Europe and the Baltic on the one hand, and Byzantium and the Islamic world on the other.
Hoards of Arab and Central Asian silver dirhams like this have been found across Northeastern Europe.
The alliance between the khagans and the emperors was sealed with dynastic marriages - the first that Byzantium would enter into, resulting in a half-Khazar emperor on the throne of Constantinople.
Coin showing the Emperor Constantine and his son by the Khazar khagan’s daughter Çiçek, Leo IV, known as “the Khazar”.
The emperor valued the Khazars as a buffer between Byzantium and the barbarian world. He sent workers to Khazaria to help the khagans build the great fortress of Sarkel, a key element in their control over tributary tribes in the west of the Khaganate.
The Byzantines built the fortress of Sarkel on the Don for the Khazars, who used it to enforce their control over the Slavs and Magyars.
But this friendship was abruptly reversed due to a fatal decision by the khagans that took them out of alignment with imperial values.
A late Khazar coin reading “Musa rasul Allah” - “Moses is the messenger of God”.
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