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Firstly, I do not know the period well. I kindly appreciate any help: corrections, improvements, suggestions, books, articles, maps and images, and so on.
Secondly, I don’t know English well and I greatly appreciate any correction of my grammar, style, phrases and so on.

Thank you for your time.

POD is the another end of the campaign of Marwan against Khazars in 737.

In 713/14 year, the second Arab-Khazar war begun. Arabs and Khazars made raids into lands of one another, more or less successful. In 730, Khazars defeated the Arabian army, captured Ardabil, the capital of Azerbajan, and attacked a number of settlements, reached as far as Mosul in the northern Syria (you can see this campaign on the map).

Marwan in 732 was able to return the Southern Caucasus under the control of Arabs.

In the same time, Arabs were fighting against Byzantium. They besieged Constantinople in 717-718, and then they made raids into Anatolia almost every year since 724 (I marked some of raids on the map).



It was not a surprise that Byzantium and Khazaria became allies. Probably, they became allies as early as 704/705 year, but in 732 year the emperor Leo III married his son to the khagan’s daughter.

In 737, Marwan gathered a numerous army (sources say about 120 thousands of warriors) and invaded Khazaria. He defeated the small troop of khazars, and then captured Samandar “the old capital of Khazaria”. Then he reached Atil on Volga, the contemporary capital. The khagan with his army fled and Marwan pursued khazars about 15-20 days.

We can think that Arabs tried to cross Volga, but only when the commander of khazars was killed during hunting, Marwan crossed the river and annihilated the army of khazars. Sources say that after this disaster, the khagan concluded the peace with Arabs. Marwan returned home with the great number of slaves and the good loot.
We can think that Marwan devastated lands of khazars on his way back to Caucasus. He annihilated the army of the khagan and crashed the economy of Khazaria.
Khazaria regained its power in twenty years.

We can also think that khazars did not fled, but it was the maneuver like scythians did during their war against Darius. Maybe, only the death of the commander saved the Arabian army.

In TTL, the commander was not killed. The huge Arabian army had very poor supplies, and Marwan had to return without victory. The many worries died from disease and hunger. Marwan returned to Derbent with about one third of the army.

The khagan saved his army and his country and he was able to continue the war against Arabs.
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