The Ideology Of The Ninth And Tenth Centuries 51
According to the information found in Eastern sources from the tenth century,
Khazaria should also be regarded as an example for this type of dual kingship.
As was mentioned earlier, scholars have varying opinions on the origin of this
type of government in Khazaria, as well as the time during which it existed.
Broadly speaking, there are two views. According to one, the dual kingship
arose in the Khazar Khaganate as a result of the Judaization of the nobility.
According to the other, it was a legacy from the Turkic or the steppe tradition.
D. Dunlop associates the Khazar dual kingship with an account from 860
that deals with the government model of one of the Uyghur states in the area
of Tian Shan after the khaganate’s collapse (in 840). It depicts a sacral ruler
without actual power who ventured outside his palace once a year (the Eastern
sources claim the same thing regarding the Khazar khagan). There seems to
be no vicegerent figure present, since the power was not concentrated in the
hands of the ruler, but was distributed among his viziers and dignitaries.142
According to P. Golden, who accepts the analogy made by D. Dunlop, the
Khazar dual kingship is associated with the Turkic tradition and has “roots
deep in Altaic antiquity”.143 Of special interest is the äb khagan, mentioned in
a Chinese source from 801, who belonged to a non-ruling khagan family that
stayed at home (äb means “hearth, home”).144 It’s worth mentioning that both
accounts (regarding the Uyghurs and the Turks) refer to the period after the
collapse of the respective khaganates.
The investiture ceremony is usually seen as an example of the similarity
between the Khazar government system from the tenth century and the Turkic
one from the time of the First Khaganate (the sixth to seventh centuries). This
is especially true for the moment of the ritual near-strangulation of the would-
be ruler, when he determined the duration of his reign; this practice is practi-
cally identical in Al-Istakhri’s account of the Khazars and the accounts of the
Turks in the Chinese sources.145 Given the powers of authority of the khagan in
the Turkic Khaganate, this analogy emphasizes the sacral status of the khagan
authority in the two states, but does not necessarily prove the existence of a
dual kingship.
142 Dunlop 1967, 39.
143 Golden 1980, 135. In his later works, P. Golden associates the Khazar dual kingship with
the Iranian tradition as well (Golden 2007b, 157 and 2006, 25–26; this idea (the influence
of Khwarezm and Iran on the Khazar dual kingship) is perhaps elaborated more on in his
work “The Khazar Sacral Kingship”. In Pre-Modern Russia and Its World, Wiesbaden, 2006,
79–102 (quoted from Kovalev 2005a, 236).
144 Golden 1980, 39, 100–101, and 135.
145 Golden 1980, 42.