the ‘inside’ other 123
Obviously opposing this rule—by accepting a follower of other religion
in the most sacred place—was unthinkable and for the Khazar elite, at
least after the ninth century, was valid the rule of exclusiveness of the
religion of the ruling clan.
A. N. Poliak even claims that the Khazar khagans “have attempted to
organize and head a holy center of the keepers of different religions”.^150
According to him, these ideas were realized after the mid-ninth cen-
tury and they concerned monotheism in its different variations (Juda-
ism, Christianity) while there was also Manichaean influence over
“the origin of the religious reforms in the Khazar center”. According to
A. N. Poliak, this happened “with the mediation of Khazar-Armenians
(sic—Ts. S.), and the strengthened Armenian Paulician heresy, and maybe
also by Khorasan”. The Ethiopian notion about the Khazars as rebels
“in Armenia” against the Byzantines and their Christianity resembles
that in Dimashky who considers Khazars being Armenians and adds
they were Christians. He also wrote contradicting himself that Khazars
were Muslims and Judaists; obviously such a statement showed the
retreat of the Khazar–Armenians from Christianity. According to A. N.
Poliak, Khazaria became an instrument of the Manichaeism in the
West, and especially in Italy, where such heretics were called “Gazari”;
in German the term used was “Ketzer”. Such a hypothesis needs to
be more seriously supported by the sources, but as a whole, it can be
stated that changes, like this one, were a normal practice for the ‘Steppe
Empire’ in the Early Middle Ages. And for Khazaria they can be more
seriously presumed as it was situated between Islam and Christianity.
Nothing certain is known about the Manichaeism (or Paulicians) in
the khaganate and especially among the aristocracy there but it can
not be a priori excluded having in mind numerous heretical aristocrats
in Southern France in twelfth–thirteenth centuries. At the moment,
however, the situation with the sources available, e.g. Arab and the
Khazar correspondence in Hebrew mentioned above, do not allow any
conclusions regarding the Manichaeans in Khazaria.
In principle, we could say, however, that the above-mentioned tol-
erance towards the Other had a forced character (especially from the
point of view of the supreme power and its representatives), and was
is hardly believable that all the aristocrats in Khazaria were Judaised for such a state-
ment will challenge the written sources’ data.
(^150) Poliak 2001, 99–100.