248 CHAPTER 5
from each another and built from rough stone in irregular shapes, quite note-
worthy is the row of fortresses along the Tikhaia Sosna River, some of which
are made from hewn stone blocks (two of them, the Maiaki and the Verkhnii
Ol’shansk hillforts) or from bricks (four in number: the hillforts at Alekseevka,
Muhoderovka, Koltunovka and near the Krasnoe Village), all of them located
15 km apart. All of them are of the fourth type, according to G. Afanas’ev’s
classification, and are therefore built at the orders and with the funds of the
Khazar Khaganate.107
The research of a significant part of the architectural practices in the Khazar
Khaganate indicates that the issue of the cultural influence cannot be resolved
unilaterally. The influence of Byzantium was, undoubtedly, present in the kha-
ganate (and especially in the Crimea), but most of the building monuments in
Khazaria point towards the traditions of Middle Asia and the Caucasus. These
traditions can be traced not only in the architecture, but also in the ideology
and are reflected in the state and folk arts (regardless of the ethnicity of the
monuments).108 As for the arts, the ties between Middle Asia and Dagestan
during the Khazar period were exceptionally strong.109 They can be traced
among the various ethnic groups inhabiting the Khazar Khaganate. The art
of Khazaria has its own specifics, both on a folk and on an official level, but it
has its roots in the same centers, associated with the legacy of Sassanid Iran
and with the traditions of Middle Asia. This is a vast region, relatively homog-
enous in a cultural and ideological sense, whose western parts in the ninth
and tenth centuries bordered the Magyar state in Central Europe and Danube
Bulgaria. This is why the examples commonly given of the Byzantine influence
in Danube Bulgaria or in Khazaria stem from Asia Minor or the Middle East—
territories that are, to a higher or lower extent, also part of the culture of the
East (Iran, the Caucasus or Middle Asia).110
With regard to the legacy of the Sassanids, it should be noted that their
culture was developed in Middle Asia by at least several ruling dynasties: the
Samanids, whose center was in Bukhara (874/5–999), the Tahirids in Khorasan
(820/1–872/3) and the Saffarid dynasty in Sistan (867–903 or 873–900).111
107 Afanas’ev 1993, 134 and 143–148; Pletneva 1999, 52–54.
108 See also Vaklinova 2003.
109 Magomedov 1994, 155–156.
110 On the ties between the art of Khazaria and that of Middle Asia or Iran, see Pletneva 1999,
155–156; Zilivinskaia 2007, 29–31; Foniakova 1986, 2002, and 2007; Baranov 1989, 169–170;
on the Byzantine parallels of the Bulgarian monuments, see Rashev 2008, 79–81, 86–90,
125, 127–128, 216–217, and 337–338.
111 Minaeva 2003a, 160.