KAGHAN

--title of the Khazar ruler; comes from the Jewish word cohen, which means "priest". The first kaghan after the Khazar Empire adopted Judaism was Sabreil, and his wife was Serah. The name of the kaghan who staged the Khazar polemic and summoned to his court Jews, Greeks, and Arabs to interpret his dream is not known. According to Hebrew sources cited by Daubmannus, prior to the Khazars' conversion to Judaism the kaghan had a dream that he recounted to his daughter, or sister, Princess Ateh, in these words:

"I dreamed I was wading through waist-high water, reading a book. The water was the Kura River, muddy. full of weeds, the kind you drink through your hair or a beard. Whenever a big wave comes along, I life up my book to keep it from getting wet, and then continue reading. The deep is nearby, and I have to finish reading before I reach it. Just then, an angel appears, a bird perched on its hand, and it says to me, 'The Lord is pleased by your intentions, but not your deeds.' Then I wake up and open my eyes. Even awake I am waist-high in water, in that same muddy Kura River with its weeds, I'm holding the same book, and before me stands the angel from my dream. That same angel, with the bird. I quickly shut my eyes, but the river, the angel, the bird and everything else are still there. I open my eyes--the same thing again. Horrible. I read from the book in my hand--'Let him who puts on shoes not boast'--and there I shut my eyes, but still see the end of the sentence: '. . . like him who has taken them off.' That very moment the angel's bird flew off and I opened my eyes. I could see the bird soaring away. And then I realized there was no more shutting of your eyes to the truth, no salvation in being blindfolded, no dream and no reality, no being awake or asleep. Everything is one and the same continuing eternal day and world, coiling around you like a snake. That is when I saw the vast, remote happiness as being small but close,; when I perceived the great cause as empty, and the small as my love. . . . And did what I did."