The story of how the Khazars and the Khazar Khaganate appeared, flourished, and then disappeared from the map of Eurasia—of the mighty neighbor and rival of Ancient Rus’—is one of the darkest and most mysterious chapters in national history. Who were the Khazars? Where did they come from? What kind of life did they live? Where did they vanish so mysteriously?
“Discovering Khazaria” is the story of L. N. Gumilyov’s expeditions into the Volga delta and to the Terek in order to study the Khazar problem. The scholar himself called his historical and geographical study a “biography of the discovery.” But Gumilyov’s book can quite reasonably be considered a genre of scientific and historical detective story. Remaining strictly scientific, it is written extremely engagingly and is addressed to the widest circle of readers who care about questions of history.