According to ibn Fadlan, the JÃÂwashëghar was an official in the Khazar government under the command of the Kündür Khagan, in turn under Khagan Bek's command. Ibn Fadlan did not describe the duties of this officer.
This title had been transcribed in different ways: JÃÂwshïghr or Jawshïghïr (Togan, 1939), JÃÂwshëghr (Canard, McKeithen 1979), Jawshighir (Frye, 2005), Jawshëghër (Lunde & Stone, 2011) and JÃÂwash(y)ëghar (Golden, 1980).
Scholarly theories to etymologize the title include:
- Douglas M. Dunlop (1954) hypothesized that the name derives from the phrase Chavush Uyghur or "Marshal of the Uyghurs";
- Golden (2005:214) proposed that JÃÂwshëghr might've been garbled from JawaÃ
¡ÃÂñr from javaÃ
¡ (Common Turkic yavaÃ
¡) "gentle, mild" plus agentive suffix -ÃÂñr/ÃÂur, thus "the one who makes peace" (cf. Uygh. Buddh. yavaÃ
¡ qñl "to make peace" (Clauson, 1972:880));
- Erdal (2007:80-81) reconstructed ÃÂavïÃ
¡-yïgar, meaning "the 'marshal' bringing together all the ÃÂavïÃ
¡ [who marshalled the ranks in battle and were in charge of order at court]";
- Klyashtorny (1997:22-23) reconstructed ÃÂavÃ
¡unqar (beg) "head of the royal falcon-hunting" (ÃÂav means falcon and Ã
¡unqar gyrfalcon) and pointed to the Karakhanid title ÃÂavlï-beg.
Sources
- Kevin Alan Brook. The Jews of Khazaria. 3rd ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2018.
- Douglas M. Dunlop, The History of the Jewish Khazars, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1954.
- Peter B. Golden, Khazar Studies, Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1980.
- Peter B. Golden, "Khazarica: Notes on Some Khazar Terms", in Turkic Languages, ed. Lars Johanson, Harrassowitz Verlag, 2005
- Ahmad ibn Fadlan, Mission to the Volga, translated by James Montgomery, foreword by Tom Severin, 2017, NYU Press, 2017.
- Marcel Erdal, "The Khazar Language" in The World of the Khazars. Leiden: Brill, 2007. pp. 75-108
- Sergey Klyashtorny, "About One Khazar Title in ibn Faá¸ÂlÃÂn" in Manuscripta Orientalia 3.3, Thesa, 1997.