Batbayan ruled the
Khazaria
The Khazars ; 突厥可薩 ''Tūjué Kěsà'', () were a nomadic Turkic people who, in the late 6th century CE, established a major commercial empire covering the southeastern section of modern European Russia, southern Ukraine, Crimea, an ...
n
Bulgars
The Bulgars (also Bulghars, Bulgari, Bolgars, Bolghars, Bolgari, Proto-Bulgarians) were Turkic peoples, Turkic Nomad, semi-nomadic warrior tribes that flourished in the Pontic–Caspian steppe and the Volga region between the 5th and 7th centu ...
from 667 to 690 CE.
Theophanes and
Nicephorus record his rule after the
Khazars
The Khazars ; 突厥可薩 ''Tūjué Kěsà'', () were a nomadic Turkic people who, in the late 6th century CE, established a major commercial empire covering the southeastern section of modern European Russia, southern Ukraine, Crimea, a ...
defeated the Bulgars and
Old Great Bulgaria
Old Great Bulgaria (Medieval Greek: Παλαιά Μεγάλη Βουλγαρία, ''Palaiá Megálē Voulgaría''), also often known by the Latin names ''Magna Bulgaria'' and ''Patria Onoguria'' (" Onogur land"), was a 7th-century Turkic noma ...
disintegrated in 668 CE.
There is a scholarly theory that he may have been the same person as Bezmer of the
Nominalia of the Bulgarian khans who may have been also the first son of
Kubrat. He was a member of the
Dulo clan, who after Kubrat's death in the mid-7th century ruled
Old Great Bulgaria
Old Great Bulgaria (Medieval Greek: Παλαιά Μεγάλη Βουλγαρία, ''Palaiá Megálē Voulgaría''), also often known by the Latin names ''Magna Bulgaria'' and ''Patria Onoguria'' (" Onogur land"), was a 7th-century Turkic noma ...
, but his rule lasted only three years.
Kevin Alan Brook calls him Bayan.
[Kevin Alan Brook]
''The Jews of Khazaria''
Edition 3, Rowman & Littlefield, 2018, , p. 15. Batbayan would subsequently have ruled the Bulgars as a subject of the
Khazar Khagan.
Sources
Year of birth unknown
European royalty
Bulgars
{{Europe-royal-stub