74 chapter onethere attended the mosques, on Sundays—the synagogues, and on Sat-
urdays—the churches.^225
However, there were cases of intolerant threats towards persons
of diff erent faiths in the own country. Such information dates back
to the fi rst half of the ninth century, just before the disintegration of
the Uighur khaganate, when its supreme ruler threatened to kill all
Muslims living within his territory in response to the persecution and
murders of Manichaeans in Samarkand.^226 Th is situation (as well as a
similar one in Khazaria which will be examined later in this volume)
required the application of the reciprocity principle and not persecu-
tion for persecution’s sake, or persecution for emotional reasons. It
was the way that the khagan-beg Joseph acted in the Khazar khaganate
(the mid-tenth century) in response to the persecutions against the
Jews in the Byzantine Empire during the reign of Romanos I Leka-
penos (920–945). According to the correspondence between Joseph
and the Jew Hasdai ibn Shafrut of Cordoba, the khagan-beg “got rid
of many Christians”.^227
Perhaps the most numerous and typical cases of change and adapta-
tion of the people living in the ‘Steppe Empire’, in general, and in Cen-
tral Asia, in particular, with view to a new world religion, are related to
Islam. It was the religion with the lowest number of extreme require-
ments towards the nomads and it did not threaten their political order
which they believed was sanctifi ed by Heaven. Settling down as a con-
sequence of the conversion to Islam, as well as a development of a new
ethnical affi liation and identity, was not obligatory either. Moreover, at
least at the beginning (i.e. aft er the eighth century) the Muslim clergy
required only offi cial conversion to Islam from the nomads and a dec-
laration that they believe in Allah. Th is fl exible approach allowed the
preservation of a number of traditional features in the culture of the
local population as well as the preservation (even to this day) of a
number of pre-Muslim practices in the Central Asian region.^228 How-
(^225) Zakhoder 1962, 150. For religious tolerance among the Bulgars see, Giuzelev
1999, 107.
(^226) Mackerras 1972 (2nd ed.), 42–43; Christian 1998, 270; Gumilev 2004, 471.
(^227) See Golb and Pritsak 1982; also see the Russian translation of the same book:
Golb, N. and O. Pritsak 1997. “Khazarsko-evreiskie dokumenty X veka”. Moskva/
Ierusalim, 141, 163, and the commentary of Vladimir Petrukhin there, on p. 219, who
says that Pavel Kokovtsov (in his “Evreisko-khazarskaia perepiska v X v.”. Leningrad.
1932, 118) translated “uncircumcized” instead of “Christians”.
(^228) Khazanov 1994, 21–22; Drevnie obriady 1986.