WI: Kabar tribes successfully revolt against the Khazars? (+question on Pannonia)

I was reading the Wikipedia article about the Magyar tribes and saw this:

"Before 881 AD three Turkic tribes rebelled against the rule of the Khagan of the Khazars, but they were suppressed. After their defeat they left the Khazar Empire and voluntarily joined the Hétmagyar confederation. The three tribes were organised into one tribe, called Kabar, and later they played the roles of vanguard and rear guard during the joint military actions of the confederation. The joining of the three tribes to the previous seven created the On-ogur (Ten Arrows),[10] one of the possible origins for the name Hungarian.[clarification needed]"

Does anyone have further information on what happened? Was there a civil war in Khazaria?
If this turkic tribal confederation successfully rebelled and forced the khazar government to listen to them, how would this affect the neighboring regions? What could happen to the pechenegs and, consequently, to the magyars?
 
This is an interesting question but I'm not sure anyone knows enough about the Kabars and the Magyar rebellion to give a satisfactory answer. As far as I know the only contemporary written source for the revolt is De Administrando Imperio, a Byzantine text, and while I don't think Constantine VII was a liar I also don't think his knowledge of the tribal politics of the Caspian Steppe is likely to be highly accurate.

I've read claims that the revolt was triggered by the Judaization of the Khazar elite, or that the "revolt" was actually a civil war between "pro-Judaism" and "anti-Judaism" factions within the khaganate, but those scenarios are completely speculative. There is no actual evidence which supports the notions that the revolt was religiously motivated, that the revolt occurred during the reigns of the first Jewish kings (Bulan/Sabriel or Obadiah), or that there was any dissent, popular or otherwise, against the conversion.

As for your "What if" question, my opinion is based on the observation that there seems to have always been a new nomadic group moving west to take the terminus of the western Pontic Steppe away from the last people who held it. After the Avars came the Bulgars, and then the Magyars, and then the Pechenegs, and then the Cumans, and ultimately the Mongols. Like nature itself, the steppe seems to have abhorred a vacuum, and if the Magyars/Kabars had never been driven west (either because there was no rebellion or because they won), I can only assume that some other group of Turkic peoples would have swept west and driven into Wallachia/Pannonia, and probably sooner rather than later. I mean, maybe the Khazars "hold the line" and Great Bulgaria (that is, the Bulgar Khanate including its pre-Magyar transdanubian territory) or Great Moravia remain whole for a while longer, but the Magyars demonstrated that neither the Moravians nor the Bulgars held this region very strongly and sooner or later some new guys with horses and bows are going to show up.
 
Last edited:
But could Great Bulgaria or another power in the region incorporate the nomads (Magyars or whoever) rather than letting them take over and impose their culture? Lots of Cumans show up in early Hungarian history, but never really ruled the Kingdom of Hungary if I recall. And the Mongols were the last steppe group to take control there, and they didn't hold it for long.
 
Maybe? I mean, the Byzantines subjugated the Pechenegs and turned many of them into auxiliaries; it's not impossible for a settled state to gain control over a nomadic one. I don't think of the Bulgar Khanate as being a particularly strong entity in its transdanubian lands, which is why they lost them, but who knows. It's also not beyond the realm of possibility that if the Magyar arrival is somehow delayed or averted, another non-nomadic group (probably Slav - Moravia? Chrobatia? The Bulgars? Some kind of super-Balaton under Braslav?) consolidates control of Pannonia and keeps later nomads out just like the Hungarians kept later nomads out more or less successfully.

The usual line is that no power held Pannonia strongly, which is why the Magyars were able to conquer it with comparative ease, but that's a post hoc analysis - "the Magyars took it so everyone there must have been weak." Maybe the Magyars were just especially strong; maybe it was just that at that moment Pannonia was politically divided and unable to resist them in a united fashion (this was, after all, in the era of Carolingian collapse, and as we know the Bavarians under Arnulf sided with the Magyars against the Moravians). The bottom line is that we know so little about this region in this period that it's hard to say what is or isn't plausible.
 
I believe tha khazar-kabar war wasn't a result of religion, since the steppe nomadas weren't, after all, tied to a single religion. At least from what i know.
That brings me to a question. what is the best possible scenario for nomads to be held up on the road in the steppe and not settle in pannonia?
 
Well, Hungary held Pannonia and continued to do so long after they had ceased to be a nomadic people, so it's not impossible that someone else could do the same. The question is whether any local polity could have managed to unify Pannonia and build a strong enough state to do that. Unfortunately we know very little about the contenders, and what we do know makes them all seem fairly weak. The Bulgars, of course, had some strength, but Pannonia was peripheral to them. Great Moravia is sort of a mystery, and was also locked in a struggle with the Franks for decades. There's also Lower Pannonia, but we know even less about Lower Pannonia than we do about Great Moravia.

Your best bet is probably to avert or find some alternative outcome to the Frankish-Moravian wars of the 9th century, which made Lower Pannonia a site of constant conflict. Just spitballing here, but you could make the careers of Pribina and/or his son Kocel (client princes of Lower Pannonia) much better, to the point where Kocel (or whoever) defends his autonomy from the Moravians and then intervenes opportunistically in the Bulgarian-Byzantine-Kievan political situation to seize control of eastern Pannonia/Transylvania as a Byzantine or Kievan ally against the Bulgars. I don't really know how plausible that is, but I'm not sure anybody else does either.
 
Top