According to ibn Fadlan, the Kündür was an official in the Khazar government under the command of the Khagan Bek

Khagan Bek

-History:Khazar kingship was divided between the khagan and the Bek or Khagan Bek. Contemporary Arab historians related that the Khagan was purely a spiritual ruler or figurehead with limited powers, while the Bek was responsible for administration and military affairs.In the Khazar Correspondence,...

. Ibn Fadlan did not describe the duties of this officer, nor does any extant source. The Magyars had a dual-kingship system in which power was divided between a gyula and a kende

Kende

The kende was one of the kings of the dual-monarchy of the early Magyars, along with the gyula or war-chief. The function of the kende is believed to have been a religious one. At the time of the Magyar migration to Pannonia, the Kende was named Kurszán...

; therefore it has been hypothesized that the kündür was a client-ruler of Hungarian remnants who remained in the Pontic

Black Sea

The Black Sea is bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas and various straits. The Bosphorus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects that sea to the Aegean...

 steppe during the 10th century. Alternatively, it has been suggested that the title may derive from an Old Turkic word for law, and that the kündür may have been a judicial officer, possibly the head of the Khazar judiciary.

Sources

• 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.