general appearance of all these table-lands is that of undulating downs, covered with grass, but destitute of large timber. At 3000 ft. elevation the indigenous pine predominates over all other vegetation, and forms almost pure pine forests. The highest ridges are clothed with magnificent clumps of timber trees, which superstition has preserved from the axe of the wood-cutter. The characteristic trees in these sacred groves chiefly consist of oaks, chestnuts, magnolias, &c. Beneath the shade grow rare orchids, rhododendrons and wild cinnamon. The streams are merely mountain torrents; many of them pass through narrow gorges of wild beauty. From time immemorial, Lower Bengal has drawn its supply of lime from the Khasi Hills, and the quarries along their southern slope are inexhaustible. Coal of fair quality crops out at several places, and there are a few small coal-mines.
The Khasi Hills were conquered by the British in 1833. They are inhabited by a tribe of the same name, who still live in primitive communities under elective chiefs in political subordination to the British government. There are 25 of these chiefs called Siems, who exercise independent jurisdiction and pay no tribute. According to the census of 1901 the Khasis numbered 107,500. They are a peculiar race, speaking a language that belongs to the Mon-Anam family, following the rule of matriarchal succession, and erecting monolithic monuments over their dead. The Jaintia Hills used to form a petty Hindu principality which was annexed in 1835. The inhabitants, called Syntengs, a cognate tribe to the Khasis, were subjected to a moderate income tax, an innovation against which they rebelled in 1860 and 1862. The revolt was stamped out by the Khasi and Jaintia Expedition of 1862–63. The headquarters of the district were transferred in 1864 from Cherrapunji to Shillong, which was afterwards made the capital of the province of Assam. A good cart-road runs north from Cherrapunji through Shillong to Gauhati on the Brahmaputra; total length, 97 m. The district was the focus of the great earthquake of the 12th of June 1897, which not only destroyed every permanent building, but broke up the roads and caused many landslips. The loss of life was put at only 916, but hundreds died subsequently of a malignant fever. In 1901 the district had 17,321 Christians, chiefly converts of the Welsh Calvinistic Mission.
See District Gazetteer (1906); Major P. R. T. Gurdon, The Khasis (1907).
KHASKOY (also Chaskoi, Haskoi, Khaskioi, Chaskovo, Haskovo,
and in Bulgarian Khaskovo), the capital of the department
of Khaskoy in the eastern Rumelia, Bulgaria; 45 m. E.S.E. of
Philippopolis. Pop. (1900), 14,928. The town has a station
7 m. N. on the Philippopolis-Adrianople section of the Belgrade-Constantinople
railway. Carpets and woollen goods are manufactured,
and in the surrounding country tobacco and silk are
produced.
KHATTAK, an important Pathan tribe in the North-West
Frontier Province of India, inhabiting the south-eastern portion
of the Peshawar district and the south-eastern and eastern
portions of Kohat. They number 24,000, and have always been
quiet and loyal subjects of the British government. They furnish
many recruits to the Indian army, and make most excellent
soldiers.
KHAZARS (known also as Chozars, as Ἀκάτζιροι or Χάζαροι in
Byzantine writers, as Khazirs in Armenian and Khwalisses in
Russian chronicles, and Ugri Bielii in Nestor), an ancient people
who occupied a prominent place amongst the secondary powers
of the Byzantine state-system. In the epic of Firdousi Khazar
is the representative name for all the northern foes of Persia,
and legendary invasions long before the Christian era are vaguely
attributed to them. But the Khazars are an historic figure
upon the borderland of Europe and Asia for at least 900 years
(A.D. 190–1100). The epoch of their greatness is from A.D. 600
to 950. Their home was in the spurs of the Caucasus and along
the shores of the Caspian—called by medieval Moslem geographers
Bahr-al-Khazar (“sea of the Khazars”); their cities, all populous
and civilized commercial centres, were Itil, the capital, upon the
delta of the Volga, the “river of the Khazars,” Semender
(Tarkhu), the older capital, Khamlidje or Khalendsch, Belendscher,
the outpost towards Armenia, and Sarkel on the Don.
They were the Venetians of the Caspian and the Euxine, the
organizers of the transit between the two basins, the universal
carriers between East and West; and Itil was the meeting-place
of the commerce of Persia, Byzantium, Armenia, Russia and the
Bulgarians of the middle Volga. The tide of their dominion ebbed
and flowed repeatedly, but the normal Khazari may be taken as
the territory between the Caucasus, the Volga and the Don,
with the outlying province of the Crimea, or Little Khazaria.
The southern boundary never greatly altered; it did at times
reach the Kur and the Aras, but on that side the Khazars were
confronted by Byzantium and Persia, and were for the most part
restrained within the passes of the Caucasus by the fortifications
of Dariel. Amongst the nomadic Ugrians and agricultural Slavs
of the north their frontier fluctuated widely, and in its zenith
Khazaria extended from the Dnieper to Bolgari upon the middle
Volga, and along the eastern shore of the Caspian to Astarabad.
Ethnology.—The origin of the Khazars has been much disputed, and they have been variously regarded as akin to the Georgians, Finno-Ugrians and Turks. This last view is perhaps the most probable. Their king Joseph, in answer to the inquiry of Ḥasdai Ibn Shaprūt of Cordova (c. 958), stated that his people sprang from Thogarmah, grandson of Japhet, and the supposed ancestor of the other peoples of the Caucasus. The Arab geographers who knew the Khazars best connect them either with the Georgians (Ibn Athīr) or with the Armenians (Dimishqi, ed. Mehren, p. 263); whilst Aḥmad ibn Faḍlān, who passed through Khazaria on a mission from the caliph Moqtaḍir (A.D. 921), positively asserts that the Khazar tongue differed not only from the Turkish, but from that of the bordering nations, which were Ugrian.
Nevertheless there are many points connected with the Khazars which indicate a close connexion with Ugrian or Turkish peoples. The official titles recorded by Ibn Faḍlān are those in use amongst the Tatar nations of that age, whether Huns, Bulgarians, Turks or Mongols. The names of their cities can be explained only by reference to Turkish or Ugrian dialects (Klaproth, Mém. sur les Khazars; Howorth, Khazars). Some too amongst the medieval authorities (Ibn Ḥauqal and Iṣṭakhri) note a resemblance between the speech in use amongst the Khazars and the Bulgarians; and the modern Magyar—a Ugrian language—can be traced back to a tribe which in the 9th century formed part of the Khazar kingdom. These characteristics, however, are accounted for by the fact that the Khazars were at one time subject to the Huns (A.D. 448 et seq.), at another to the Turks (c. 580), which would sufficiently explain the signs of Tatar influence in their polity, and also by the testimony of all observers, Greeks, Arabs and Russians, that there was a double strain within the Khazar nation. There were Khazars and Kara (black) Khazars. The Khazars were fair-skinned, black-haired and of a remarkable beauty and stature; their women indeed were sought as wives equally at Byzantium and Bagdad; while the Kara Khazars were ugly, short, and were reported by the Arabs almost as dark as Indians. The latter were indubitably the Ugrian nomads of the steppe, akin to the Tatar invaders of Europe, who filled the armies and convoyed the caravans of the ruling caste. But the Khazars proper were a civic commercial people, the founders of cities, remarkable for somewhat elaborate political institutions, for persistence and for good faith—all qualities foreign to the Hunnic character.
They have been identified with the Ἀκάτζιροι (perhaps Ak-Khazari, or White Khazars) who appear upon the lower Volga in the Byzantine annals, and thence they have been deduced, though with less convincing proof, either from the Ἀγάθυρσοι (Agathyrsi) or the Κατίαροι of Herodotus, iv. 104. There was throughout historic times a close connexion which eventually amounted to political identity between the Khazars and the Barsileens (the Passils of Moses of Chorene) who occupied the delta of the Volga; and the Barsileens can be traced through the pages of Ptolemy (Geog. v. 9), of Pliny (iv. 26), of Strabo (vii. 306), and of Pomponius Mela (ii. c. 1, p. 119) to the so-called Royal Scyths, Σκύθαι βασιλῆες, who were known to the Greek colonies upon the Euxine, and whose political superiority and commercial enterprise led to this rendering of their name. Such points, however, need not here be further pursued than to establish the presence of this white race around the Caspian and the Euxine throughout historic times. They appear in European history as White Huns (Ephthalites), White Ugrians (Sar-ogours), White Bulgarians. Owing to climatic causes the tract they occupied was slowly drying up. They were the outposts of civilization towards the encroaching desert, and the Tatar nomadism that advanced with it. They held in precarious subjection the hordes whom the conditions of the climate and the soil made it impossible to supplant. They bore the brunt of each of the great waves of Tatar conquests, and were eventually overwhelmed.
