Хасдай ибн Шапрут и Абу-л-Касим ибн Хаукаль: хазарская дипломатия еврейского сановника в арабском географическом трактате

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Date
2011
Authors
Рашковский, Борис
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Abstract
The article is consecrated to the unique reference about Hasday ibn Shaprut - the famous Jewish courtier of Spanish Muslim caliph Abd al-Rahman III and the author of an epistle to Khazar Kaganate’s ruler Joseph. Ibn Hawqal’s evidence is a commentary to the map which illustrates this Muslim geographer’s account of the Western Mediterranean (or Bahr al-Rum in Arabic). According to ibn Hawqal, huge mountain chain exists, starting (as it can be seen on the map) from Spain and reaching “the Mountains of Arminiyya” and Khazaran (the western part of Khazar capital Itil in ibn HawqaTs book). “Hasday ibn Ishaq” who could be only Hasday ibn Shaprut, as it is written in Ibn HawqaTs book, was in this region, where he had met several kings and men of power. The main thesis of this article is that Hasday knew much more about Khazars than he reported in his letter to Joseph. Ibn Hawqal had visited Cordoba in 948, which makes him likely to have met Hasday, and had been several years before certain events (especially the arrival of Byzantine and East-Frankish embassies to Cordoba in 948 and 955-956) mentioned in “Hasday’s letter” had happened. The direction of this mountain chain stretching from Spain to Central-Eastern Europe described in Hasday and ibn HawqaTs account in agrees in general with Ibn Khordadbeh’s description of a route al-Radhaniyya Jewish traders to the north from Byzantium and Christian Europe. The facts that Hasday’s letter finally reached Khazaria through German lands and the very developed tradition of Spanish-Jewish slave-trade with Central Eastern Europe both confirm that ibn Shaprut’s relations with Khazars were not just a curiosity, but a part of a huge diplomatic project aimed to the increase his authority in the Spanish and Western Mediterranean diaspora.
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хазарская дипломатия, евреи, географический трактат, письма, дипломатия, статья
Citation
Рашковский Б. Хасдай ибн Шапрут и Абу-л-Касим ибн Хаукаль: хазарская дипломатия еврейского сановника в арабском географическом трактате / Борис Рашковский // Українська орієнталістика : спеціальний випуск з юдаїки. - 2011. - С. 154-169.