The Judaıc Codes of The Khazar Qaganate’s Sacred-Dıarchy

Abstract

As its institutional structure and powerful presence of more than three hundred years in Southern Russia – Caucasia zone, the Khazar Qaganate was one of the most prominent Turkic state in history. The issue of the adoption of new “universal” religions by the Eurasian steppe nomads was a common situation. But in a time period when the Islam spread of rapidly and the Muslim – Christian conflict had begun to be flourished intensely, the conversion of Khazar royal elites to Judaism made their history much more remarkable. Here, we would not to examine the questions on why-how-when did the Khazars embrace the Judaism; but to try to illuminate the issues about their ruling system, so-called “Dual Kingship/Royal Diarchy or Sacral Kingship” by researchers, which is one of the most striking feature of the political structure of the Khazar Judaism. Although this model does not match the functional structure of the Qaganal office observed in the old Turkic steppe tradition which scholars generally relate to the "äb/eb Qagan and/or Yabgu Qagan" models–in particular Gök Türk administrative structure – the dual kingship/royal diarchy (sacral kingship) of Khazar Qaganate has been interpreted as a traditional but also a unique system. In this article, by the way on the clues obtained from written sources it has been hypothesized that this “unique” model of the Khazar’s Royal Diarchy (Sacral Kingship) was probably a TaNaKh-based Judaic form, inheriting only some symbolic essences from old Altaic-Turkic origin steppe-state motifs.