6 Introduction
P. Golden expresses a similar view. The tribes and clans of a nomadic state,
which he considers Khazaria to be, would always be a centrifugal force. This led
to a “continuing struggle between the khagan and his clan, on the one hand,
and the subject clans which did not willingly submit to the authority of the
khagan, on the other”.26 This situation forced the Khazar rulers to hire an army
in order to maintain the military force which kept the state’s economy going.
Fully agreeing with D. Dunlop’s opinion on the interdependence between the
military force and the treasury’s income, P. Golden accepts that “Khazaria fell
not because of the judaicization of the Khazars (the extent of which is by no
means clear) but because of the inherent weakness of the structure of the
nomadic state with its centrifugal forces and the nature of the economy which
evolved on the shores of the Volga”.27
Going back to P. Golden, T. Noonan sees the Khazar Khaganate’s economy
as the main reason for its stability. It was diverse and well-balanced, which
allowed the Khazar state to survive for three centuries—a rarity for a “steppe
empire”. The economic division in Khazaria helped to avoid the disadvan-
tages of the nomadic economy. Along with this, the various tribal communi-
ties in the khaganate gradually began to integrate.28 According to T. Noonan,
“the end of Khazaria can be attributed to both military and economic
factors. The appearance of the Rus’ and Pechenegs in the ninth century slowly
eroded the Khazars’ vast tributary empire and thus weakened its economic
viability. Unable to defeat its enemies, Khazaria was destroyed by them”.29
Another significant reason for Khazaria’s decline in T. Noonan’s opinion is the
shift of the main trade routes that connected Eastern Europe with Middle Asia,
which bypassed the Khazar lands in the tenth century, thus contributing, for
example, to the rise of Volga Bulgaria as an alternative center to the Khazar
Khaganate.30
The presented views show an almost complete lack of consensus in their
representation of the Khazar Khaganate in the tenth century. Also, they very
rarely tend to be more than hypotheses. The opportunities for their review
are few and mostly depend on the results of archaeological excavations. Their
publication is, however, a slow process and their use as evidence for the over-
all development of Khazaria is a difficult task, associated with processing
26 Golden 1980, 111.
27 Golden 1980, 111; a more detailed critique of the opinions of M. Artamonov and S. Pletneva
on the Judaization as a cause for Khazaria’s demise can be found in Golden 2005, 43–45.
28 Noonan 1995–1997, 293–296.
29 Noonan 1999, 503.
30 Noonan 1992, 250–251.