Dictionary of the Khazars [antikvár]

PRELIMINARY NOTES TO THE SECOND, RECONSTRUCTED AND REVISED EDITION The author assures the reader that he will not have to die if he reads this book, as did the user of the 1691 edition, when The Khazar Dictionaiy still had its first scribe. Some explanation regarding that edition is in order here, but for the sake of brevity the lexicographer proposes to strike a deal with his readers. He will sit down to write these notes before supper, and the reader will take them to read after supper. Thereby, hunger will force the author to be brief, and gratification will allow the reader to peruse the introduction at leisure. I. A History of The Khazar Dictionary The event discussed in this lexicon occurred sometime in the 8th or 9th century a.d. (or there were several similar events), and this subject is commonly referred to by scholars as "the Khazar polemic.'"^ The Khazars^ were an autonomous and powerful tribe, a warlike and nomadic people who appeared from the East at an unknown date, driven by a scorching silence, and who, from the 7th to the loth century, setded in the land between two seas, the Caspian and the Black.* It is * A review of the literature on the Khazars was published in New York {The Khazars, A Bibliography, 1939); a Russian, M. I. Artamonov, wrote a monograph on the history of the Khazars in two editions (Leningrad,