SAMANDAR, *Khazar town N. of the Caucasus, four days from Bāb
al-Abwāb and seven or eight days from *Atil on the Volga. As in
the case of *Balanjar, Samandar originally seems to have been
the group name of the inhabitants. The Zabender (apparently =
Samandar) are mentioned by the Greek writer Theophylact
Simocatta as emigrating from Asia to Europe in about 598 C.E.,
while a town M-s-n-d-r (vowels uncertain) in the land of the
Huns, north of Darband (Bāb al-Abwāb), occurs in the Armenian
geography attributed to Moses of Chorene. According to Masʿūdī
(Murūj, 2 (1877), 7), in the earliest Arab period Samandar was
the Khazar capital; subsequently *Atil on the Volga was made the
capital, evidently to be out of reach of Arab attacks. Samandar
figures regularly in accounts of the fighting in the second
Arab-Khazar war. Al-Iṣṭakhrī, the tenth-century geographer,
describes the town as possessing many gardens and thousands of
vineyards. There was a considerable Muslim population, but the
king was a Jew and related to t