Tzitzak
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This individual is sometimes confused with Byzantine Empress Irene, who was her daughter-in-law.
Tzitzak (Chichak), was a Khazar princess, and later, the wife of Byzantine Emperor Constantine V. She was the daughter of the Khazar Khagan Bihar.
In the mid-730s, the Byzantine emperor Leo III married his son Constantine to the Tzitzak as part of the alliance between the two empires. Tzitzak became a Christian under the baptismal name Irene. Tzitzak's wedding gown became famous for having started a new fashion craze in Constantinople for male robes called tzitzakion. Constantine and Tzitzak had a son, Leo, who succeeded his father as Emperor Leo IV. He was better known as "Leo the Khazar".
The word "Tzitzak" is most likely the hellenized version of the Turkic word "çiçek", meaning "flower."
[edit] References
- Kevin Alan Brook. The Jews of Khazaria. 2nd ed. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2006.
- Douglas M. Dunlop. The History of the Jewish Khazars, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1954.
- The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, Oxford University Press, 1991.
This biography of a member of a European royal house is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. This biography of a member of an Asian royal house is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
