KAGHAN

--title of the Khazar ruler. His capital was Itil, and his summer residence, located on the Caspian Sea, was called Samandar. It is thought that the decision to admit Greek missionaries to the Khazar court was politically motivated. As early as the year 740 A.D., one of the Khazar kaghans had turned to Constantinople for a missionary versed in Christian law. And in the 9th century, the Greek-Khazar alliance needed to be consolidated in the face of common danger, for by this time the Russians had already nailed their shield to the gates of Constantinople and had taken Kiev from the Khazars. There was another danger as well. The kaghan did not have an heir to the throne.

One day some Greek merchants arrived and he received and entertained them. Each and everyone of them was short, swarthy, and so hirsute that the hair on their chests had a part like the hair on their head. The kaghan sat amid them like a giant and feasted. A storm was approaching; birds were blindly crashing into the windows, and flies into the mirrors. After the travelers had been lead away, laden with gifts, the kaghan turned around in his chamber and caught sight of the leftover morsel of food from the meal. The Greeks' were enormous, like those of giants, while the kaghan's were tiny, like those of a child. He quickly called on his court to remember what the strangers had said to him, but no one could recall a word. On the whole they had remained silent--everyone agreed. Then a Jew from the palace retinue appeared before the kaghan and said he could resolve the kaghan's difficulties.

"Show me," said the kaghan, taking a lick of the holy salt. The Jew lead in a slave and ordered him to bare his arm. It was absolutely identical to the kaghan's right arm. "Yes," said the kaghan, "retain him. Retain him and proceed with your work. You're on the right road."

Heralds were then sent out across the entire kingdom, and three months later the Jew brought before him an young man whose feet looked exactly like the kaghan's. He too was retained at the palace. They subsequently found two knees, and ear, and a shoulder--all exactly like the kaghan's. Little by little, a group of young men gathered at the palace; there were solders, slaves, rope makers, Jews, Greeks, Khazars, and Arabs who--if one took a limb or part of the body from each--could be assembled into a young kaghan identical to the one who ruled in Itil. Only the head was missing, It was simply not to be found. And then one day the kaghan summoned the Jew and demanded either the Jew's own head or the kaghan's. The Jew showed no sign of fear, and the surprised kaghan asked him for the reason.

"The reason is that fear struck me a year ago, not today. A year ago I found the head. And all these months I have been keeping it in the palace, though I dared not show it."

When the kaghan ordered him to show the head, the Jew brought before him a girl. She was young and pretty, and her head bore such a resemblance to the kaghan's own that it could have doubled for it in a mirror: anyone seeing her image in a mirror would have thought he was seeing the kaghan, only younger. Then the kaghan ordered all those gathered at the palace to be brought to him and commanded the Jew to create another kaghan from their limbs. As the surviving cripples departed, their limbs assembled into a second kaghan, the Jew inscribed some words on the brow of the new creation, and the young kaghan, the kaghan's heir, sat up on the kaghan's bed. Next he had to be tested, and the Jew sent him to the bedchamber of the kaghan's mistress, Princess Ateh. In the morning the princess sent the real kaghan the following message:

"The man sent to my bed last night is circumcised and you are not. Therefore, either he is someone else and not the kaghan, or the kaghan has turned himself over to the Jews and was circumcised., becoming someone else. It is for you to decide what happened."

The kaghan asked the Jew what this difference ought to signify. The latter inquired:

"Will not the difference vanish as soon as you yourself are circumcised?"

The kaghan was in a quandary and this time asked the Princess Ateh for advice. She led him to the cellar of the palace and showed him the kaghan's double. She had placed him in chains and behind bars, but he had already broken all the chains and was shaking the bars with tremendous force. In one night, he had grown so large that the real uncircumcised kaghan looked like a child in comparison.

"Do you want me to let him loose?" asked the princess. The kaghan was so taken with fear that he ordered the circumcised kaghan to be put to death. Princess Ateh spat at the giant's brow, and he fell down dead.

The kaghan then favored the Greeks, concluded a new alliance with them, and adopted their religion as his own.