KHAZAR POLEMIC
--The event that Christian sources attribute to the year 861 A.D., according to The Life of Constantine of Thessalonica, St. Cyril, written in the ninth century and preserved in what is refereed to as the manuscript of the Moscow Spiritual Academy and in the 1469 version of Vladislav the Grammarian. In that year of 861 A.D., Khazar envoys came before the Byzantine emperor and said: "We have always recognized only one God, who rules over us all, and we bow to Him facing east, and uphold our other pagan customs as well. The Jews are trying to persuade us to adopt their faith and rites, and the Saracens are offering peace and many gifts to draw us to their own faith, saying, 'Our faith is better than all other peoples' '; therefore, nurturing an old friendship and love, we now turn to you, for you, the Greeks, are a great people vested with imperial power by God; in seeking your advice, we ask you to send us one of your learned men, for if he emerges victorious from the debate with the Jews and the Saracens, we shall adopt your faith."
When the Greek emperor asked Cyril if he would go to the Khazars, the latter replied that he would embark on such a journey on foot and in his bare feet. Daubmannus believes that what Cyril meant was that he needed as much time to prepare for his journey as it would take him to walk from Constantinople to the Crimea, for at the time Cyril was still illiterate in his dreams and did not know how to unlock them from the inside; in other words, he did not know how to wake up when he wanted. Nevertheless, he accepted the mission, and in Kherson, where he stopped along the way, he learned Hebrew and translated the Hebrew grammar into Greek in preparation for the polemic at the court of the Khazar kaghan. He and his brother, Methodius, passed Lake Meot and the Caspian gates of the Caucasus Mountains, where they met the kaghan's envoy. The envoy asked Constantine the Philosopher why he always held a book before him when speaking, while the Khazars extracted all wisdom from their chests, as if they had swallowed it first. Constantine replied that he felt naked without a book, and who would believe that a naked man has many robes? To meet Constantine and Methodius, the Khazar deputy had traveled from the capital, Itil, to Sarkel on the Don, and to Kherson. He then lead the Byzantine envoys to Samandar, on the Caspian Sea, the kaghan's summer residence, where the polemic was to be held. At court, where the Jewish and Saracen representatives had already arrived, the question arose as to what rank Constantine should have at the dinner table. He responded: "I had a great and very famous grandfather who was close to the emperor, but, because he refused the honors bestowed upon him, he was exiled, and he arrived in a strange land where he became poor and I was born. I, seeking my grandfather's one-time honor, have not succeeded in achieving it; you see, I am only the grandson of Adam."
"You worship the Trinity," said the kaghan in his dinner toast, "and we worship but one God, as it is written in the books. Why is that?"
The Philosopher replied:
"Books preach the Word and the Spirit. If someone pays you honor but does not respect your word and spirit, while another respects al three, which of the two pays greater honor?"
The Jewish representative asked:
"Tell us, then, how a can woman place in her womb God, whom she cannot see, let alone give birth to?"
The Philosopher pointed to the kaghan and his first counselor, saying; "If someone were to say that the first counselor cannot receive the kaghan, but that the lowliest servant can both receive him and render him honor, tell me than, what should we call him: mad or sensible?'
Now the Saracens joined the polemic, and Constantine the Philosopher was asked about a custom he had first encountered in Samarra, at the Saracen caliph's. The Saracens used to place a picture of the devil on the outside of Christian houses; on each Christian door was a figure of some demon. And the Saracens, who had long been trying to poison Constantine, asked him:
"Do you, Philosopher, comprehend the significance of this?"
And he said:
"I se the demonic figures, and I think that Christians live inside, but since demons cannot coexist with them they run outside. And if there are no demon figures outside, it means they are inside with the household . . . ."
Another badly damaged Christian source on the Khazar polemic has reached us in the form of a legend concerning the Kievites' conversion to Christianity in the 10th century. From the legend, in which Constantine the Philosopher was among the participants in the Kiev polemic about the three religions (even though he lived one hundred years earlier), one can recognize a document that was originally about the Khazar polemic. If we abstract the additions and revisions of the 10th and later centuries, this source's report on the Khazar polemic would look roughly as follows.
A Khazar kaghan whose fortunes had flourished in the wars against the Pechenegs and the Greeks, from whom he had captured Kherson (Kerch on the Crimea), decided to adopt a leisurely life after all his military successes. He wanted to have as many women as the soldiers he had lost in the war. "He had many women," says a version of this legend published in Venice in 1772 in the Serbian language, "And, wanting to have women of all faiths, he not only worshiped various idols, but, out of affection for his women and mistresses, also wanted to profess different faiths." This prompted various foreigners (Greeks, Arabs, Jews) to rush to the kaghan with their envoys, in the hope of converting him immediately to their own faith. Constantine the philosopher, sent by the Greek emperors, was more successful that the Jews or Saracens in the polemic at the court of the Khazar kaghan, says this source. But, unable to reach a final decision, the kaghan kept hesitating, until finally on e of his kin, recognizable as Princess Ateh, who is familiar to us from a third source, stepped in. Her people convinced the kaghan to send them out among the Jews, Greeks, and Saracens to investigate their doctrines first hand. When this woman's mission returned, it recommenced Christianity as the most suitable faith, and the envoys revealed to the kaghan that his relative, whom they served, had adopted Christianity long before. The third source of Christian references to the Khazar polemic--Daubmannus--believed that the kaghan was frightened by the news. Consequently, fortune fell to the Jewish representative after the kaghan discovered that Christians, like Jews, observe the Old Testament. When Constantine confirmed that this was true, the kaghan turned to the Jew, who had fled to the Khazars from Greece and strongly advocated Judaism. "Of us three dream hunters," the Romaniot told the kaghan, "the only one you Khazars have no reason to fear is me, a rabbi; for neither a caliph, with the green sails of his fleet, nor a Greek emperor, with a cross over his armies, stands behind the Jews. Behind Constantine of Thessalonica come spears and cavalry, but behind me, a Jewish rabbi, trail prayer shawls. . . . "
So spoke the rabbi, and the kaghan now favored him and his arguments, when Princess Ateh intervened in the polemic and once again altered the outcome of the conversation. The decisive words in the Khazar polemic, spoken by Ateh to the Jewish participant were:
You say: Let him who wants wealth turn to the North, and let him who wants window to the South! But why do you speak such sweet words to me here in the North and not to Wisdom, who awaits you in the land of your fathers? Why did you not go there, where light lays its eggs, where centuries rub against centuries, to drink the sour rain of the Dead Sea, to kiss the sand that runs in oblique streams like a stretched rope of gold in place of water from Jerusalem's wells? Instead you tell me that I dream of an inky night and that only in your reality is there moonlight. Why do you say this to me?
Yet another week has grown poor and thin. It has spent its most solemn day, which you say begins in Palestine, the day it had so jealously guarded, but whose time has come. It gives it up reluctantly, piece by piece. Take your piece; take your Sabbath and then go. Go to Wisdom and say everything you wanted to say to me. You will be happier. But beware: to conquer a fortress, one must first conquer one's own soul.
But I tell you all this in vain, for you carry your eyes in your mouth and do not see until you speak. My conclusion is this: either your saying is wrong or it is not you expected in the South but someone else. How else am I to understand why you are here in the North and with me?
Princess Ateh's words startled the Khazar kaghan and he told the rabbi he had heard that the Jews themselves admitted that their God had abandoned and scattered them all over the world. "Do you with to draw us to your faith so that you may have comrades in your misery, and so that we Khazars may be punished by God as you are and scattered throughout the world?"
The kaghan then turned away from the Jew and again found the most acceptable arguments to be those of Constantine the Philosopher. He and his chief aides converted to Christianity and sent the Greek emperor a letter, cited in Cyril's hagiography that read:
"Your Serene Majesty, you sent us a man who has explained to us the glory of the Christian faith in both word and deed, and we are convinced that it is the true faith and are commanding people to baptize themselves voluntarily. . . ."
According to another source, the kaghan, having accepted Constantine's reasons, quite unexpectedly decided to go to war against the Greeks instead of adopting their faith. He said, "You do not beg for faith, you obtain it by the sword!" He attacked them from Kherson and when he had victoriously completed his campaign, he asked the Greek emperor for a Greek princess to take as his wife. The emperor set only one condition--that the Khazar kaghan convert to Christianity. To the great surprise of Constantinople, the kaghan accepted the term, and that is how the Khazars were converted.