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I don’t follow Osprey Publishing very closely, but it seems evident that they went out of their way to get some experts in regions you don’t hear much about in English, and team them up with their regular authors to produce readable Men-at-Arms books on what can be esoteric subjects.

From what I’ve seen, it has worked very well for them. From what I know, Mikhail Zhirohov has written one other book (in Russian), but I would imagine there’s been papers and other scholarly contributions. Him and Osprey regular David Nicolle have produced a fine introduction to a Jewish Turkic people that you hardly ever get more than distant references to.

While a 2019 Osprey book, we’re back in “classic” mode with everything outside of the eight color plates being in black and white. There’s a good map showing the extent of the Khazar Khaganate, archaeological diagrams of a few Khazar period fortified locations, and a drawing (by David Nicolle) showing a reconstruction of the fortress at Sarkel. There’s over a dozen photographs of various artifacts, and drawings of about as many (and two photographs of archeological digs); most of these come from Zhirohov’s collection. All fairly typical for Osprey. Also typical is is five page history of the people, a chronology to accompany it, and then a history of the known wars and campaigns involving them. This then goes to chapters on military arms, armor, and equipment, and finally a short one on fortifications.

Nomadic/semi-nomadic peoples aren’t something I have a lot of knowledge of, but much of what’s here is not atypical. Sarkel is the main known Khazar-period fortification, and a discussion of it takes the majority of that short chapter. In fact, most of the second half of the text revolves around archaeological discussions, with the first half more dealing with what other peoples (mostly Muslims, who fought against the Khaganate over the centuries) had to say. The Bibliography takes about a page, and ranges from The History of the Jewish Khazars (D.M. Dunlop, 1954) to Mission to the Volga (Ibn Fadlan, 2017; this was written in 2019), and is probably a little more book-heavy (instead of journals) than I would have expected.

I am a bit disappointed with the Christa Hook illustrations, which are light on anything beyond the figures themselves, but they do serve their illustrative purpose nicely, and all the text is well written. It’s a great introduction to a subject that rarely gets touched in English.