the ‘outside’ other 69
the common people in Khazaria.^204 In relation to this, we have to pay
attention to the following fact: traces of Islam are recorded by the
archaeological monuments of the so-called Bulgarian version of the
Saltovo-Mayatski archeological culture in the region of the Northern
(originally Severski) Donec River. ‘Zlivki’-type of graves were excavated
in this region; and the dead were buried according to Islamic burial
practices.^205 Th ey are dated to the mid-ninth-tenth century, a period
when these territories were part of the Khazar khaganate. A number of
graves from the Chervonaya Gusarovka necropolis dated to the second
half of the eighth-ninth century belong to the same ‘Zlivki’-type. Th ey
yielded a relatively high number of cross-shaped pendants, some of
which were not worn as necklaces but were attached to the clothes of
the buried person. According to V. Aksenov, such artifacts suggest a
certain dualist philosophy, but the other typical features of the graves
as well as some ethnographic data about the Ossetians (descendants
of the Alans) from the nineteenth century, convinced him that the
Christian attribution of the above-mentioned cross-shaped pendants
is more probable.^206
Returning to Christianity in Khazaria, we should also ask the ques-
tion, whose subordinates were the missionaries when performing this
activity among the “barbarians”, especially the ones coming from the
Byzantine Empire? S.A. Ivanov thinks it was most likely the hierarchs
of the bordering bishoprics, for example that in Chersonesus, that
were responsible for the missionaries. In one of his letters, written in
the second half of 920 A.D., the Byzantine patriarch Nicolas Mysticus
praised the bishop of Chersonesus for enlightening people. In another
letter written between 919 and the fi rst half of 920 A.D., he wrote:
As for the bishop of Chersonesus, your great wisdom remembers that
we, with our own mouth have spoken and now we state in a written
form: when [people] from Khazaria came to ask for a bishop, so that he
can ordain the local presbyters.. ., we ordered the bishop of Chersonesus
to go to Khazaria with Lord’s help and to do all that is necessary, and
aft er that to get back... to Chersonesus.^207(^204) Dunlop 1954, 83–85; Khazanov 1994, 17; Pritsak 1981, 266; Golden 1992, 242.
(^205) Kravchenko, Gusev and Davydenko 1998—quoted aft er Aksenov 2004, 136.
(^206) Aksenov 2004, 137–138, 140, 141.
(^207) Nicolai I 1973, 314. 10–22, 390, 553; Ivanov 2001, 29; Ivanov 2003, 182–183,
follows the opinion of Yu. Kulakovskii (from 1898) that in the letters of the patriarch
the people under scope were indeed the Alans.