Fundamentos de las resoluciones desfavorables

been described as a kind of buffer-state between Islam and the B yzantine E m p i r e . ( I t s influence as a political power was to last until the middle of the tenth century.) The Khanate became the focal point of trade between the Arab Empire and the north; the trade of the Khazars came notably from Babylon, Baghdad and other parts of the Mesopotamian area.

In earlier times, the nomadic Khazar tribe had practised a form of Altaic shamanism, but by the middle of the eighth century they began to become settled and affluent enough to decide upon the choice of a civilizing religion. As recounted by Halevi, the Khagan (King) Bulan listened to a Mohammedan and a Christian arguing for their respective faiths. His interest was aroused when both referred to Judaism as the father of religion. Bulan thereupon sent for a Jewish scholar who expounded his philosophy and prevailed on the Khagan to adopt the Jewish religion for his people.

The im plications were political as well as religious. To embrace Christianity would have been to defer to the supreme authority of the Byzantine Emperor, while conversion to Islam would have shown preference for the Persian Caliph. Judaism was p o litica lly neutral, at a time when the state of ‘cold war' between Muslim and Christian meant that ‘there was as good as no direct commercial intercourse between Moslem and Christian w orlds. W hat trade there was lay in the hands of Jewish m e rch a n ts. They could trade fre e ly in both a re a s of c iv iliz a tio n .'^ ^

See The Legacy of Islam, edited by Sir Thomas Arnold and Alfred Guillaume (Oxford, 1931), pp. 100-2 (p. 100 quoted). Further information is from D.M.Dunlop, History o f the Jewish K hazars [1954], paperback ed. (1976), which includes an extensive bibliography. Of the wars between the Khazars and the Arabs, Dunlop writes: ‘on the line of the Caucasus the Arabs met the forces of an organized military power which effectively prevented them from extending their conquests in this direction. . . . but for the existence of the Khazars in the region north of the Caucasus, Byzantium, the bulwark of European civilization in the east, would have found itself outflanked by the Arabs, and the history of Christendom and Islam might well have been very different from what we know.' This is quoted in Arthur Koestler, The Thirteenth Tribe: The Khazar Empire and its Heritage (London, 1976), p. 72. As the epigraph to Part 1 of this book, Koestler quotes f\/luqadassi, Descriptio Im perii M osiem ici (tenth century): ‘In Khazaria, sheep, honey, and Jews exist in large quantities.’

Baron, Social and Religious History, vol. 3, p. 221. In the same place Baron refers to the political and economic pressures on Jews in the Byzantine Empire, leading to the migration of Jewish refugees who furthered the ‘conversion* of Khazaria. See also p. 197 for the role of Jewish immigrants from the region around Khiva and other parts of the

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It was through Khazar territory that all trade had to pass to the town of Kiev and to the northern part of present-day Russia. This commercial activity is of interest for its role in the spread of chess, a role indicated by the discovery of early eleventh- century chess pieces at Belaya Vezha, the site of the Khazar fortress of Sarkel.

Much importance has been attached to these archaeological findings by supporters of the hypothesis that chess spread from Persia to northern Russia via the Volga trade route during the period of dominance of the Khazar Khanate. The hypothesis draws further support from the Muslim-style chess pieces unearthed near N ovgorod, authenticated by the d isco ve rie s of large quantities of Mohammedan coins from the same p e r i o d . T h e evidence from archaeology has been taken to confirm the view advanced by the first Russian chess historians, M.K.Gonayev and I.T.Savenkov, who used an analysis of Old Russian chess terminology and general historical data to deduce the role of the Khazars in transmitting chess to Russia.^®

The story of the conversion of the Khazars m ight w ell be dismissed as a fabrication if it were not so well authenticated. The story of how these same events became known in Muslim Spain is no less remarkable - the occasion being the fam ous exchange of letters in Hebrew between Hasdai Ibn Shaprut, statesman of the Caliphate of Cordoba (who had learned of the e xiste n ce of a Jew ish kingdom and in q u ire d a b o u t its arrangements with sympathetic curiosity) and the Khazar Khagan Joseph, whose reply to Hasdai included the details of the conversion under Khagan Bulan.^^ (As a result of this exchange,

Muslim empire.

See I.Linder, Chess in Old Russia, translated by Martin P. Rice (Zürich, 1979), pp. 4 8 -9 ; M .I.A rtam onov, Istoriya K h azar (1962); and B.A.Rybakov in S o v ie t s k a y a A rkh eo lo g iya, 18 (1953), 128-50.

Legacy of Islam, p. 100.

However, a more sceptical view of this hypothesis is given by Eales, pp. 47-8.

The manuscript of Ibn Shaprut’s letter (dated in the period 953-61) can be seen in the library of Christ Church, Oxford (Ms 193 p. 12). For how the letter was transmitted to the Khagan, see e.g. Graetz, Popular History, vol. 3, pp. 106-9, and Encyclopedia Judaica, pp. 950-1 ; compare Artamonov, and Koestler, The Thirteenth Tribe, p. 72.

whlch occurred about 960 AD, some trade developed between the Khazar Empire and the Muslim south of Spain.)

Thus it was that the history of the Khazars became available to Judah Halevi for the purposes of his philosophical book which sets forth the tenets of the Jewish faith. Ha K u za ri contains a chapter entitled ‘The Realm of M an’ , which exam ines the characteristics and inclinations of mankind; and it is here that an analogy with the game of chess expresses man’s ability to control his emotions and desires:

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Christ Church library. The Long Version (supposed to date from the 13th century) was published by A.Harkavy in 1874, from a manuscript of the Second Firkovich Collection in the St Petersburg Public Library.

, The two letters were published by Buxtorf, in his edition of the book C o s ri [viz. Halevi’s Ha~Kuzari\ (1660).

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He is master over his intermediary causes. For a similar reason it is unlikely that the weak chess player should beat the strong one. One cannot . speak of good or bad fortune in a game of chess, as in a war between two princes. For the causes of the game are open completely to study, and the expert will always be the conquerer. He need fear nothing in the ordinary way which can cause him great difficulty, neither need he fear anything accidental, except perhaps anything unusual arising from inattention.^®

We note that the word used for chess is | , of which the implications were discussed in our previous chapter.

H a le v i’s re fe re n c e to the gam e p ro v id e s fu rth e r dem onstration that the Jews in Spain were fam iliar with chess by the eleventh to the twelfth century. We shall now turn to a text that offers a detailed description of the game itself.

The Hebrew text is quoted from the edition by Yehudah Even Samuel, Tel-Aviv 1972. The translation is quoted from The Kuzari, ed. Schoken Books (1962), p. 289.