Khazar Khaganate

The Khazar Khaganate was a state established by the Khazars, a semi-nomadic Turkic people, in the late sixth century across territory spanning what is now southern European Russia, southern Ukraine and western Kazakhstan, emerging as the most powerful successor polity after the breakup of the Western Turkic Khaganate. Positioned astride a major artery of trade between Eastern Europe and West Asia, the khaganate became one of the leading commercial powers of the early medieval world, controlling the western reaches of the Silk Road and serving as a crossroads for trade among China, West Asia and the Rus. For roughly three centuries the Khazars dominated the steppe lands stretching from the Volga-Don region to the eastern Crimea and the northern Caucasus, and the khaganate is historically notable for the conversion of part of its ruling elite to Judaism. The khaganate's power waned through the tenth century under pressure from the rising state of Kievan Rus, and it fragmented and disappeared as an organized state soon after.