Khazars

Kingdom of Khazaria
Eastern Tourkia

Khazar Khaganate
618?1048?
Khazar Khaganate, 650850
Capital Balanjar (650-720
ca.)
Semender
(720s-750)
Atil
(750-ca.967-969)
Languages Turkic Khazar
Religion Tengriism,
Judaism,
[1]
Religious
syncretism
[2]
Political
structure
Khazar
Khaganate
Khagan
- 618628 Tong Yabghu
- 9th century Obadiah
Khazars
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Khazar" and "Kazar" redirect here. For other uses, see Khazar
(disambiguation).
The Khazars (Greek: , Hebrew:
(Kuzarim),
[4]
Turkish: Hazarlar, Tatar:
Xzrlr, Arabic: (khazar), Russian:
, Persian: ,Latin: Gazari
[5]
[6]
/Cosri
[7]
/Gasani
[8][9]
) were a semi-nomadic
Turkic people who created what for its
duration was the most powerful polity to
emerge from the breakup of the western
Turkish steppe empire, known as the Khazar
Khanate or Khazaria.
[10]
Astride a major
artery of commerce between northern
Europe and southwestern Asia, Khazaria
became one of the foremost trading emporia
of the medieval world, commanding the
western marches of the Silk Road and
played a key commercial role as a crossroad
between China, the Middle East, and
European Russia.
[11][12]
For some three
centuries (c. 650965) the Khazars
dominated the vast area extending from the
Volga-Don steppes to the eastern Crimea
and the northern Caucasus
[13]
Khazaria long served as a buer state
between the Byzantine empire and both the
nomads of the northern steppes and the
Umayyad empire, after serving as
Byzantium's proxy against the Sassanid
Persian empire. The alliance was dropped
around 900 CE., as Byzantium began to
encourage the Alans to attack Khazaria and
weaken its hold on Crimea and the
Caucasus, while seeking to obtain an
entente with the rising Rus' power to
Khazaria's north, which it aspired to convert
to Christianity.
[14]
Between 965 and 969, the
Kievan Rus ruler Sviatoslav I of Kiev
Khazars - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Khaza...
1 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
- 9th century Zachariah
- 9th century Bulan
- 9th century Benjamin
- 9th century Aaron
- 9th century Khan Tuvan
- 10th century Joseph
- 10th century Manasseh
Historical era Middle Ages
- Established 618?
- Disestablished 1048?
Population
-
7th century
[3]
est.
1,400,000
Currency Yarmaq
History of the Turkic peoples
Pre-14th century
Turkic Khaganate 552744
Western Turkic
Eastern Turkic
Avar Khaganate 564804
Khazar Khaganate 6181048
Old Great Bulgaria 632668
Volga Bulgaria
Turgesh Khaganate 699766
Uyghur Khaganate 744840
Kara-Khanid Khanate 8401212
Western Kara-Khanid
Eastern Kara-Khanid
Pecheneg Khanates
8601091
Kimek Khanate
7431035
conquered the capital Atil and destroyed the
Khazar state.
Beginning in the 8th century, Khazar royalty
and notable segments of the aristocracy
converted to Judaism; the populace appears
to have been multi-confessionala mosaic of
pagan, Tengrist, Jewish, Christian and
Muslim worshippersand polyethnic.
[15]
A
modern theory, that the core of Ashkenazi
Jewry emerged from a hypothetical
Khazarian Jewish diaspora, is now viewed
with scepticism by most scholars, but
occasionally supported by others. This
Khazarian hypothesis is sometimes
associated with antisemitism and
anti-Zionism.
Contents
1 Etymology
2 Tribal origins and early history
3 Rise of the Khazar state
4 The Khazar state: culture and
institutions
4.1 Royal Diarchy and sacral
Qaanate
4.2 The ruling elite
4.3 The people
4.4 Economy
5 Linguistics
6 Religion
6.1 Tengriism
6.2 Judaism
7 Khazars and Byzantium
8 ArabKhazar wars
9 The rise of the Rus' and the
2 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
Kipchak Khanates
10671239
Oghuz Yabgu State
7501055
Shatuo Dynasties 923979
Later Tang Dynasty
Later Jin Dynasty
Later Han Dynasty (Northern Han)
Ghaznavid Empire 9631186
Seljuq Empire 10371194
Khwarazmian Empire 10771231
Seljuq Sultanate of Rum 10921307
Delhi Sultanate 12061526
Mamluk Dynasty
Khilji Dynasty
Tughlaq Dynasty
Cairo Sultanate 12501517
Bahri Dynasty
in Anatolia
Artuqid Dynasty
Saltuqid Dynasty
in Azerbaijan
Ahmadili Dynasty
Ildenizid Dynasty
in Egypt
Tulunid Dynasty
Ikhshidid Dynasty
in The Levant
Burid Dynasty
Zengid Dynasty
collapse of the Khazarian state
10 Aftermath: Impact, decline and
dispersion
11 Ashkenazi-Khazar theories
11.1 Use in anti-Semitic
polemics
11.2 Genetic studies
12 In literature
13 Cities associated with the Khazars
14 See also
15 Notes
16 References
17 External links
Etymology
Gyula Nmeth, following Zoltn Gombocz,
derived Xazar from a hypothetical *Qasar
reecting a Turkic root qaz- ("to ramble, to
roam") being an hypothetical velar variant
of Common Turkic kez-.
[16]
With the
publication of the fragmentary Tes and
Terkhin inscriptions of the Uyur empire
(744-840) where the form 'Qasar' is
attested, though uncertainty remains
whether this represents a personal or tribal
name, gradually other hypotheses emerged.
Louis Bazin derived it from Turkic qas- ("tyrannize, oppress, terrorize") on the
basis of its phonetic similarity to the Uyur tribal name, Qasar.
[17]
Andrs
Rna-Tas connects it with Kesar, the Pahlavi transcription of the Roman title
Caesar.
[18]
D.M.Dunlop tried to link the Chinese term for "Khazars" to one of the tribal names
of the Uyur Toquz Ouz, namely the Gs.
[19][20]
The objections are that Uyur
Gesa/Qasar was not a tribal name but rather the surname of the chief of the Sikari
tribe of the Toquz Ouz, and that in Middle Chinese the ethnonym "Khazars",
always prefaced with the word Tju signifying 'Trk' (Tju Ks b:;
Tju Hs:), is transcribed with dierent characters than that used to
Other Turkic Dynasties
3 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
render the Qa- in the Uyur word 'Qasar'.
[21][22][23]
After their conversion it is
reported that they adopted the Hebrew script,
[24]
and it is likely that, though
speaking a Trkic language, the Khazar chancellery under Judaism probably
corresponded in Hebrew.
[25]
Tribal origins and early history
The tribes
[26]
constituting the Khazar union were, according to the most widely
approved view, basically Turkic groups, such as the Ouric peoples, including
araurs, Ours, Onours, and Bulars, who formed part of the Til ()
confederation. These tribes, many driven out of their homelands by the Sabirs,
who in turn ed the Asian Avars, began to ow into the Volga-Caspian-Pontic zone
from as early as the 4th century CE and are recorded by Priscus to reside in the
Western Eurasian steppelands as early as 463.
[27][28]
They appear to stem from
Mongolia and South Siberia in the aftermath of the fall of the Hunnic/Xingn
nomadic polities. A variegated tribal federation led by these Trks, probably
comprising a complex assortment of Iranian,
[29]
proto-Mongolic, Uralic, and
Palaeo-Siberian clans, vanquished the Rouran Khaganate of the hegemonic
central Asian Avars in 552 and swept westwards, taking in their train other
steppe nomads and peoples from the Sogdian kingdom.
[30]
The ruling family of this confederation may have hailed from the shn ()
clan of the West Trkic tribes,
[31]
though Constantine Zuckerman regards shn
and their pivotal role in the formation of the Khazars with scepticism.
[32]
Golden
notes that Chinese and Arabic reports are almost identical, making the connection
a strong one, and conjectures that their leader may have been Ypshku
(Chinese:), who lost power or was killed around 651.
[33]
Moving west, the
confederation reached the land of the Akat(z)ir,
[34]
who had been important allies
of Byzantium in ghting o Attila's army.
Rise of the Khazar state
An embryonic state of Khazaria began to form sometime after 630,
[35]
when it
emerged from the breakdown of the larger Gktrk qaanate. Gktrk armies
had penetrated the Volga by 549, ejecting the Avars, who were then forced to ee
to the sanctuary of the Hungarian plain. The shn clan whose tribal name was
'Trk' (the strong one) appear on the scene by 552, when they overthrew the
Rourans and established the Gktrk qaanate.
[36]
By 568, these Gktrks were
probing for an alliance with Byzantium to attack Persia. An internecine war broke
out between the senior eastern Gktrks and the junior West Turkic Qaanate
some decades later, when on the death of Taspar Qaan, a succession dispute led
4 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
to a dynastic crisis between Taspar's chosen heir, the Apa Qaan, and the ruler
appointed by the tribal high council, shn Sht (), the Ishbara
Qaan. By the rst decades of the 7th century, the shn yabgu Tong managed to
stabilize the Western division, but on his death, after providing crucial military
assistance to Byzantium in routing the Sassanid army in the Persian heartland,
[37][38]
the Western Turkic Qaanate dissolved under pressure from the
encroaching Tang dynasty armies and split into two competing federations, each
consisting of ve tribes, collectively known as the "Ten Arrows" (On Oq). Both
briey challenged Tang hegemony in eastern Turkestan. To the West, two new
nomadic states arose in the meantime, the Bular conferation, under Qubrat, the
Dul clan leader, and the Nshb subconfederation, also consisting of ve
tribes.
[39]
The Dul challenged the Avars in the Kuban River-Sea of Azov area
while the Khazar Qaanate consolidated further westwards, led apparently by an
shn dynasty. With a resounding victory over the tribes in 657, engineered by
General S Dngfng (), Chinese overlordship was imposed to their East
after a nal mop-up operation in 659, but the two confederations of Bulars and
Khazars fought for supremacy on the western steppeland, and with the
ascendency of the latter, the former either succumbed to Khazar rule or, as under
Asperukh, Qubrat's son, shifted even further west across the Danube to lay the
foundations of the Bular state in the Balkans (c. 679).
[40][41]
The Qaanate of the Khazars thus took shape out of the ruins of this nomadic
empire as it broke up under pressure from the Tang dynasty armies to the east
sometime between 630-650.
[33]
After their conquest of the lower Volga region to
the East and an area westwards between the Danube and the Dniepr, and their
subjugation of the Onour -Bular union, sometime around 670, a properly
constituted Khazar Qaanate emerges,
[42]
becoming the westernmost successor
state of the formidable Gktrk Qaanate after its disintegration. According to
Omeljan Pritsak, the language of the Onour-Bular federation was to become the
lingua franca of Khazaria
[43]
as it developed into what Lev Gumilev called a
'steppe Atlantis' (stepnaja Atlantida/ ).
[44]
The high status
soon to be accorded this empire to the north is attested by Ibn al-Bal's
Frsnma (c. 1100), which relates that the Sassanid Shah, usraw 1, Ansrvn,
placed three thrones by his own, one for the King of China, a second for the King
of Byzantium, and a third for the king of the Khazars. Though anachronistic in
retrodating the Khazars to this period, the legend, in placing the Khazar qaan on
a throne with equal status to kings of the other two superpowers, bears witness to
the reputation won by the Khazars from early times.
[45][46]
The Khazar state: culture and institutions
Royal Diarchy and sacral Qaanate
5 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
Khazaria developed
[47]
two notable institutions: Dual kingship, a typical Turkic
nomadic structure, consisting of a shad/bk and a qaan,
[48]
and a sacral
Qaanate. The emergence of this system may be deeply entwined with the
conversion to Judaism.
[49]
In Arabic sources, the lesser king was called and
the greater king Xazar xqn, the former managing both state and civilian aairs
and the administration of the military, while the greater king's role was titular, not
commanding obedience. He was recruited from the Khazar house of notables (ahl
bait ma'rfn) in a throttling ritual where the candidate is almost strangled until
he declares the number of years he wishes to reign, on the expiration of which he
was killed.
[50][51][52][53]
The deputy ruler would enter the presence of the
reclusive greater king only with great ceremony, approaching him barefoot to
prostrate himself in the dust and then light a piece of wood as a purifying re,
while waiting humbly and calmly to be summoned.
[54]
Particularly elaborate
rituals accompanied a royal burial. At one period, travellers had to dismount, bow
before the ruler's tomb, and then walk away on foot.
[55]
Subsequently, the
charismatic sovereign's burial place was hidden from view, with a palatial
structure ('Paradise') constructed and then hidden under rerouted river water to
avoid disturbance by evil spirits and later generations. Such a royal burial ground
(qoruq) is typical of inner Asian peoples.
[56]
Both the and the xqn converted
to Judaism sometime in the 8th century, while the rest, according to the Persian
traveller Ahmad ibn Rustah, probably followed the old Trkic religion.
[57][58]
The ruling elite
The ruling strata, like that of the later inggisids within the Golden Horde, was a
relatively small group that diered ethnically and linguistically from its subject
peoples. This is thought to have been the Alano-As and Ouric Turkic tribes, who
were numerically superior within Khazaria.
[59]
The Khazar Qaans, while taking
wives and concubines from the subject populations, were protected by a
Khwrazmian guard corps or comitatus called the Ursiyya.
[60][61]
But unlike many
other local polities, they hired soldiers (mercenaries) (the jund murtazqa in
al-Mas'd).
[62]
At the peak of their empire, the Khazars ran a centralised scal
administration, with a standing army of some 7-12,000 men, which could, at need,
be multipied two or three times that number by inducting reserves from their
nobles' retinues.
[63][64]
Other gures for the permanent standing army indicate
that it numbered as many as one hundred thousand. They controlled and exacted
tribute from 25-30 dierent nations and tribes inhabiting the vast territories
between the Caucasus, the Aral Sea, the Ural Mountains, and the Ukrainian
steppes.
[65]
Khazar armies were led by the Qaan Bek and commanded by
subordinate ocers known as tarkhans. When the bek sent out a body of troops,
they would not retreat under any circumstances. If they were defeated, every one
6 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
Khazar warrior with his
captive from the
Treasure of
Nagyszentmikls.
Experts cannot agree if
this warrior represents
a Khazar, Avar, or
Bulgar.
who returned was killed.
[66]
Settlements were governed by administrative ocials
known as tuduns. In some cases, such as the Byzantine
settlements in southern Crimea, a tudun would be
appointed for a town nominally within another polity's
sphere of inuence. Other ocials in the Khazar
government included dignitaries referred to by ibn
Fadlan as Jawyshyghr and Kndr, but their
responsibilities are unknown.
The people
It has been estimated that from 25 to 28 distinct ethnic
groups made up the population of the Khazar Qaanate,
aside from the ethnic elite. The ruling elite seems to
have been constituted out of nine tribes/clans,
themselves ethnically heterogeneous, spread over
perhaps nine provinces or principalities, each of which
would have been allocated to a clan.
[51]
In terms of
caste or class, some evidence suggests that there was a distinction, whether
racial or social is unclear, between "White Khazars" (ak-Khazars) and "Black
Khazars" (qara-Khazars).
[51]
The 10th-century Muslim geographer al-Iakhr
claimed that the White Khazars were strikingly handsome with reddish hair, white
skin, and blue eyes, while the Black Khazars were swarthy, verging on deep black,
as if they were "some kind of Indian".
[67]
Many Turkic nations had a similar
(political, not racial) division between a "white" ruling warrior caste and a "black"
class of commoners; the consensus among mainstream scholars is that Istakhri
was confused by the names given to the two groups.
[68]
However, Khazars are
generally described by early Arab sources as having a white complexion, blue
eyes, and reddish hair.
[69][70]
The name of the presumed founding shn clan
itself may reect an etymology suggestive of a darkish colour.
[71][72]
The
distinction appears to have survived the collapse of the Khazarian empire. Later
Russian chronicles, commenting on the role of the Khazars in the magyarization
of Hungary, refer to them as "White Oghurs" and Magyars as "Black Ogurs".
[73]
Studies of the physical remains, such as skulls at Sarkel, have revealed a mixture
of Slavic, European, and a few Mongolian, types.
[74]
Economy
The import and export of foreign wares, and the revenues derived from taxing
their transit, was a key hallmark of the Khazar economy, though it is said also to
7 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
have produced isinglass.
[75]
Distinctively among the nomadic steppe polities, the
Khazar Qaanate developed a self-sucient domestic economy, a combination of
traditional pastoralism - allowing sheep and cattle to be exported - extensive
agriculture, abundant use of the Volga's rich shing stocks, together with craft
manufacture, with a diversication in lucrative returns from taxing international
trade given its pivotal control of major trade routes. The Khazars constituted one
of the two great furnishers of slaves to the Muslim market (the other being the
Iranian Smnid amrs), supplying it with captured Slavs and tribesmen from the
Eurasian northlands.
[76]
It was prots from the latter which enabled it to maintain
a standard army of Khwarezm Muslim troops. The capital Atil reected the
division: Kharazn on the western bank where the king and his Khazar elite, with
a retinue of some 4,000 attendants, dwelt, and Itil proper to the East, inhabited
by Jews, Christians, Muslims and slaves and by craftsmen and foreign
merchants.
[77]
The ruling elite wintered in the city and spent from spring to late
autumns in their elds. A large irrigated greenbelt, drawing on channels from the
Volga river, lay outside the capital, where meadows and vineyards extended for
some 20 farsakhs (ca. 60 miles?).
[78]
While customs duties were imposed on
traders, and tribute and tithes were exacted from 25-30 tribes, with a levy of one
sable skin, squirrel pelt, sword, dirham per hearth or ploughsare, or hides, wax,
honey and livestock, depending on the zone. Trade disputes were handled by a
commercial tribunal in Atil consisting of 7 judges, two for each of the
monotheistic inhabitants (Jews, Muslims, Christians) and one for the pagans.
[79]
Linguistics
Main article: Khazar language
Determining the origins and nature of the Khazars is closely bound with theories
of their languages, but it is a matter of intricate diculty since no indigenous
records in the Khazar language survive, and the state itself was polyglot and
polyethnic.
[80]
Whereas the royal or ruling elite probably spoke an eastern variety
of Shaz Turkic, the subject tribes appear to have spoken varieties of Lir Turkic,
such as Ouric, a language variously identied with Bularic, Chuvash, and
Hungarian (the latter based upon the assertion of the Persian historian al-Iakhr
that the Khazar language was dierent from any other known tongue).
[81][82]
One
method for tracing their origins consists in analysis of the possible etymologies
behind the ethnonym Khazar itself.
Religion
Tengriism
8 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
Main article: Tengriism
Direct sources for Khazar religion are not many, but in all likelihood they
originally practiced a traditional Turkic form of cultic practices known as
Tengriism, which focused on the sky god Tengri. Something of its nature may be
deduced from what we know of the rites and beliefs of contiguous tribes, such as
the North Caucasian Huns. Horse sacrices were made to this supreme deity.
Rites involved oerings to re, water, and the moon, to remarkable creatures, and
to "gods of the road" (cf.Old Trk yol tengri, perhaps a god of fortune). Sun
amulets were widespread as cultic ornaments. A tree cult was also maintained.
Whatever was struck by lightning, man or object, was considered a sacrice to
the high god of heaven. The afterlife, to judge from excavations of aristocratic
tumuli, was much a continuation of life on earth, warriors being interred with
their weapons, horses, and sometimes with human sacrices: the funeral of one
tudrun in 711-12 saw 300 soldiers killed to accompany him to the otherworld.
Ancestor worship was observed. The key religious gure appears to have been a
shamanizing qam,
[83]
and it was these (qozmm) that were, according to the
Khazar Hebrew conversion stories, driven out.
Many sources suggest, and a notable number of scholars have argued, that the
charismatic shn clan played a germinal role in the early Khazar state, though
Zuckerman dismisses the widespread notion of their pivotal role as a 'phantom'.
The shn were closely associated with the Tengri cult, whose practices involved
rites performed to assure a tribe of heaven's protective providence.
[84]
The qaan
was deemed to rule by virtue of qut, "the heavenly mandate/good fortune to
rule."
[85]
Judaism
The conversion of Khazars to Judaism is reported overwhelmingly by external
sources and in the Khazar Correspondence, Hebrew documents whose
authenticity was long doubted and challenged,
[86]
but specialists now widely
accept them either as authentic or as reecting internal Khazar traditions.
[87][88]
[89][90]
Archaeological evidence for conversion, on the other hand, remains
elusive,
[91]
and may reect either the incompleteness of excavations, or that the
stratum of actual adherents was thin.
[92]
Conversion of steppe or peripheral
tribes to a universal religion is fairly well attested phenomenon,
[93]
and the
Khazar conversion to Judaism, though unusual, was not unique.
[94][95]
On
Khazaria's southern ank, both Islam and Byzantine Christianity were
proselytising great powers. Byzantine success in the north was sporadic, though
Armenian and Albanian missions from Derbend built churches extensively in
maritime Daghestan, then a Khazar district,
[96]
Buddhism also had exercised an
9 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
attraction on leaders of both the Eastern (552-742) and Western Qaanates
(552-659), the latter being the progenitor of the Khazar state.
[97]
In 682,
according to the Armenian chronicle of Movss Dasxuranc'i, the king of Caucasian
Albania, Varaz Trdat, dispatched a bishop Israyl to convert Caucasian "Huns"
who were subject to the Khazars, and managed to bring Alp Ilut'ur, a son-in-law
of the Khazar qaan, and his army, to abandon their shamanizing cults and join
the Christian fold.
[98][99]
The Arab Georgian martyr St Abo who converted to
Christianity within the Khazar kingdom around 779-80, describes local Khazars as
irreligious.
[100]
Some reports register a Christian majority at Samandar,
[101]
or
Muslim majorities
[102]
in various areas of Khazaria. Also Jews from both the
Islamic world and Byzantium are known to have migrated to Khazaria during
periods of persecution under Heraclius, Justinian II, Leo III, and Romanus
Lakapnos.
[103][104]
The pattern is one of an elite conversion preceding
large-scale adoption of the new religion by the general population, which often
resisted the imposition.
[97]
One important condition for mass conversion was a
settled urban state, where churches, synagogues or mosques provided a focus for
religion, as opposed to the free nomadic lifestyle of life on the open steppes.
[105]
A tradition of the Iranian Judeo-Tats claims that their ancestors were responsible
for the Khazar conversion.
[106]
Both the date of the conversion, and the extent of its inuence beyond the
elite,
[107]
often minimized in scholarship,
[108]
are a matter of dispute,
[109]
but at
some point between 740 CE and 920 CE, the Khazar royalty and nobility appear
to have converted to Judaism, in part, it is argued, perhaps to deect competing
pressures from Arabs and Byzantines to accept either Islam or Orthodoxy.
[110][111]
Christian of Stavelot in his Expositio in Matthaeum Evangelistam
(ca.860-870s) refers to them as descendants of Gog and Magog, who were
circumcised and observed all the laws of Judaism.
[112]
New numismatic evidence
of coins dated 837/8 bearing the inscriptions ar al-azar (Land of the Khazars),
or Ms rasl Allh (Moses the messenger of God, in imitation of the Islamic coin
phrase: Muammad rasl Allh) suggest to many the conversion took place in that
decade.
[113]
Olsson argues that the 837/8 evidence marks only the beginning of a
long and dicult ocial Judaization that concluded some decades later.
[114]
Another view holds that by the 10th century, while the royal clan ocially claimed
Judaism, a non-normative variety of Islamisation took place among the majority of
Khazars.
[115]
By the 10th century, the letter of King Joseph asserts that, after the royal
conversion, "Israel returned (yashuvu yisra'el) with the people of Qazaria (to
Judaism) in complete repentance (bi-teshuvah shelemah).
[116]
Persian historian
Ibn al-Faqh wrote that 'all the Khazars are Jews, but they have been Judaized
10 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
recently'. Ibn Fadln, based on his Caliphal mission (921-922) to the Volga
Bulars, also reported that 'the core element of the state, the Khazars, were
Judaized',
[117]
something underwritten by the Qaraite scholar Ya'kub Qirqisn
around 937.
[118]
The conversion appears to have occurred against a background
of frictions arising from both an intensication of Byzantine missionary activity in
from the Crimea to the Caucasus, and Arab attempts to wrest control over the
latter in the 8th century CE,
[119]
and a revolt, put down, by the Khavars around
the mid-9th century is often invoked as in part inuenced by their refusal to
accept Judaism.
[120]
Modern scholars generally
[121]
see the conversion as a slow
process through three stages, which accords with Richard Eaton's model of
syncretic inclusion, gradual identication and, nally, displacement of the older
tradition.
[122][123]
Some time between 954 and 961, asdai ibn Shapr wrote a letter of inquiry
addressed to the ruler of Khazaria, and received a reply from Joseph of Khazaria.
The exchanges of this Khazar Correspondence, together with the Schechter
Letter discovered in the Cairo Geniza and the famous platonizing dialogue
[124]
by
Judah Halevi, Sefer ha-Kuzari ('The Khazar'), which plausibly drew on such
sources,
[125][126]
provide us with the only direct evidence of the indigenous
traditions
[127]
concerning the conversion. King Bulan
[128]
is said to have driven
out the sorcerers,
[129]
and to have received angelic visitations exhorting him to
nd the true religion, upon which, accompanied by his vizier, he travelled to
desert mountains of Warsn on a seashore, where he came across a cave in which
Jews used to celebrate the Sabbath. Here he was circumcised.
[130]
Bulan is then
said to have convened a royal debate between exponents of the three Abrahamic
religions. He decided to convert when he was convinced of Judaism's superiority.
Many scholars situate this c. 740CE, a date supported by Halevi's own account.
[131][132]
The details are both Judaic
[133]
and Trkic: a Trkic ethnogonic myth
speaks of an ancestral cave in which the shn were conceived from the mating
of their human ancestor and a wolf ancestress.
[134][135][136]
These accounts
suggest that there was a rationalizing syncretism of native pagan traditions with
Jewish law, by melding through the motif of the cave, a site of ancestral ritual and
repository of forgotten sacred texts, Trkic myths of origin and Jewish notions of
redemption of Israel's fallen people.
[137]
It is generally agreed they adopted
Rabbinical rather than Qaraite Judaism.
[138]
Ibn Fadlan reports that the settlement of disputes in Khazaria was adjudicated by
judges hailing each from his community, be it Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or
Pagan.
[139]
Some evidence suggests that the Khazar king saw himself as a
defender of Jews even beyond the kingdom's frontiers, retaliating against Muslim
or Christian interests in Khazaria in the wake of Islamic and Byzantine
11 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
persecutions of Jews abroad.
[140][141]
Ibn Fadlan recounts specically an incident
in which the king of Khazaria destroyed the minaret of a mosque in Atil as
revenge for the destruction of a synagogue in Dr al-Bbnaj, and allegedly said
he would have done worse were it not for a fear that the Muslims might retaliate
in turn against Jews.
[138][142]
asdai ibn Shapr sought information on Khazaria
in the hope he might discover 'a place on this earth where harassed Israel can
rule itself' and wrote that, were it to prove true that Khazaria had such a king, he
would not hesitate to forsake his high oce and his family in order to emigrate
there.
[143]
Abraham Harkavy
[144]
noted in 1877 that an Arabic commentary on Isaiah 48:14,
variously ascribed to Saadia Gaon or to the Karaite scholar Benjamin Nahwand,
interpreted "The Lord hath loved him" as a reference "to the Khazars, who will go
and destroy Babel" (i.e., Babylonia), a name used to designate the country of the
Arabs. This has been taken as an indication of hopes by Persian Jews that the
Khazars might overthrow the caliphate.
[145][citation needed]
In 965, as the Qaanate was struggling against the victorious campaign of the
Rus' prince Sviatislav, the Islamic historian Ibn al-Athr mentions that Khazaria,
attacked by the Ouz, sought help from Khwarezm, but their appeal was rejected
because they were regarded as 'indals' (al-kur:pagans). Save for the king, the
Khazarians are said to have converted to Islam in order to secure an alliance, and
the Turks were, with Khwarezm's military assistance repelled. It was this that,
according to Ibn al-Athr, led the Jewish king of Khazar to convert to Islam.
[146]
Khazars and Byzantium
See also: ByzantineSassanid War of 602628 and Third Perso-Turkic War
Byzantine diplomatic policy towards the steppe peoples generally consisted of
encouraging them to ght among themselves. The Pechenegs provided great
assistance to the Byzantines in the 9th century in exchange for regular
payments.
[147]
Byzantium also sought alliances with the Gktrks against
common enemies: in the early 7th century, one such alliance was brokered with
the Western Trks against the Persian Sassanids in the ByzantineSassanid War of
602628. The Byzantines called Khazaria Tourka', and by the 9th. century refers
to the Khazars as 'Turks'.
[148]
During the period leading up to and after the siege
of Constantinople in 626, Heraclius sought help via emissaries, and eventually
personally, from a Gktrk chieftain
[149]
of the Western Trkic Qaanate, Tong
Yabghu Qaan, in Tiis, plying him with gifts and the promise of marriage to his
daughter, Epiphania.
[150]
Tong Yabghu responded by sending a large force to
ravage the Persian empire, marking the start of the Third Perso-Turkic War.
[151]
A
12 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
Khazar Khaganate and surrounding states,
c. 820 (area of direct Khazar control in
dark blue, sphere of inuence in purple).
joint Byzantine-Trk operation breached the Caspian gates and sacked Derbent in
627. Together they then besieged Tiis, where the Byzantines used traction
trebuchets () to breach the walls, one of their rst known uses by the
Byzantines.
[citation needed]
After the campaign, Tong Yabghu is reported, perhaps
with some exaggeration, to have left some 40,000 troops behind with
Heraclius.
[152]
Though occasionally identied with Khazars, the Gktrk
identication is more probable since the Khazars only emerged from that group
after the fragmentation of the former sometime after 630.
[35]
Sassanid Persia
never recovered from the devastating defeat wrought by this invasion.
[153]
Once the Khazars emerged as a power,
the Byzantines also began to form
alliances, dynastic and military, with
them. In 695, the last Heraclian
emperor, Justinian II, nicknamed the
slit-nosed ( ) after he was
mutilated and deposed, was exiled to
Cherson in the Crimea, where a
Khazar governor (tudun) presided. He
escaped into Khazar territory in 704 or
705 and was given asylum by qaan
Busir Glavan ( ),
who gave him his sister in marriage,
perhaps in response to an oer by
Justinian who may have thought a
dynastic marriage would seal by
kinship a powerful tribal support for his attempts to regain the throne.
[154]
The
Khazarian spouse thereupon changed her name to Theodora.
[155]
Busir was
oered a bribe by the Byzantine usurper, Tiberius III, to kill Justinian. Warned by
Theodora, Justinian escaped, murdering two Khazar ocials in the process. He
ed to Bulgaria, whose Khan Tervel helped him regain the throne. Upon his
reinstallment, and despite Busir's treachery during his exile, he sent for
Theodora; Busir complied, and she was crowned as Augusta, suggesting that both
prized the alliance.
[156]
Decades later, Leo III (ruled 717-741) made a similar alliance to coordinate
strategy against a common enemy, the Muslim Arabs. He sent an embassy to the
Khazar qaan Bihar and married his son, the future Constantine V (ruled
741-775), to Bihar's daughter, a princess referred to as Tzitzak, in 732. On
converting to Christianity, she took the name Irene. Constantine and Irene had a
son, the future Leo IV (775-780), who thereafter bore the sobriquet, "the Khazar".
[157][158]
Leo died in mysterious circumstances after his Athenian wife bore him a
son, Constantine VI, who on his majority co-ruled with his mother, the dowager.
13 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
He proved unpopular, and his death ended the dynastic link of the Khazars to the
Byzantine throne.
[citation needed]
By the 8th century, Khazars dominated the
Crimea (650-c.950), and even extended their inuence into the Byzantine
peninsula of Cherson until it was wrested back in the 10th century.
[159]
Khazar
and Farghnian () mercenaries constituted part of the imperial
Byzantine Hetaireia bodyguard after its formation in 840, a position that could
openly be purchased by a payment of 7 pounds of gold.
[160][161]
ArabKhazar wars
Main article: ArabKhazar Wars
During the 7th and 8th centuries, the Khazars fought a series of wars against the
Umayyad Caliphate and its Abbasid successor. The First Arab-Khazar War began
during the rst phase of Muslim expansion. By 640, Muslim forces had reached
Armenia; in 642 they launched their rst raid across the Caucasus under Abd
ar-Rahman ibn Rabiah. In 652 Arab forces advanced on the Khazar capital,
Balanjar, but were defeated, suering heavy losses; according to Arab historians
such as al-Tabari, both sides in the battle used catapaults against the opposing
troops. A number of Russian sources give the name of a Khazar khagan from this
period as Irbis and describe him as a scion of the Gktrk royal house, the Ashina.
Whether Irbis ever existed is open to debate, as is whether he can be identied
with one of the many Gktrk rulers of the same name.
Due to the outbreak of the First Muslim Civil War and other priorities, the Arabs
refrained from repeating an attack on the Khazars until the early 8th century.
[162]
The Khazars launched a few raids into Transcaucasian principalities under
Muslim dominion, including a large-scale raid in 683685 during the Second
Muslim Civil War that rendered much booty and many prisoners.
[163]
There is
evidence from the account of al-Tabari that the Khazars formed a united front
with the remnants of the Gktrks in Transoxiana.
The Second Arab-Khazar War began with a series of raids across the Caucasus in
the early 8th century. The Umayyads tightened their grip on Armenia in 705 after
suppressing a large-scale rebellion. In 713 or 714, Umayyad general Maslamah
conquered Derbent and drove deeper into Khazar territory. The Khazars launched
raids in response into Albania and Iranian Azerbaijan but were driven back by the
Arabs under Hasan ibn al-Nu'man.
[164]
The conict escalated in 722 with an
invasion by 30,000 Khazars into Armenia inicting a crushing defeat. Caliph Yazid
II responded, sending 25,000 Arab troops north, swiftly driving the Khazars back
across the Caucasus, recovering Derbent, and advancing on Balanjar. The Arabs
broke through the Khazar defense and stormed the city; most of its inhabitants
were killed or enslaved, but a few managed to ee north.
[163]
Despite their
14 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
Caucasus region, c. 750
success, the Arabs had not yet defeated
the Khazar army, and they retreated
south of the Caucasus.
In 724, Arab general al-Jarrah ibn
Abdallah al-Hakami inicted a crushing
defeat on the Khazars in a long battle
between the rivers Cyrus and Araxes,
then moved on to capture Tiis, bringing
Caucasian Iberia under Muslim
suzerainty. The Khazars struck back in
726, led by a prince named Barjik,
launching a major invasion of Albania
and Azerbaijan; by 729, the Arabs had
lost control of northeastern
Transcaucasia and were thrust again into
the defensive. In 730, Barjik invaded Iranian Azerbaijan and defeated Arab forces
at Ardabil, killing the general al-Djarrah al-Hakami and briey occupying the
town. Barjik was defeated and killed the next year at Mosul, where he directed
Khazar forces from a throne mounted with al-Djarrah's severed head. Arab armies
led rst by the prince Maslamah ibn Abd al-Malik and then by Marwan ibn
Muhammad (later Caliph Marwan II) poured across the Caucasus and in 737
defeated a Khazar army led by Hazer Tarkhan, briey occupying Atil itself. The
Qaan was forced to accept terms involving conversion to Islam, and to subject
himself to the Caliphate, but the accommodation was short-lived as a combination
of internal instability among the Umayyads and Byzantine support undid the
agreement within three years, and the Khazars re-asserted their
independence.
[165]
The adoption of Judaism by the Khazars, which in this theory
would have taken place around 740, may have been part of this re-assertion of
independence.
Whatever the impact of Marwan's campaigns, warfare between the Khazars and
the Arabs ceased for more than two decades after 737. Arab raids continued until
741, but their control in the region was limited as maintaining a large garrison at
Derbent further depleted the already overstretched army. A third Muslim civil war
soon broke out, leading to the Abbasid Revolution and the fall of the Umayyad
dynasty in 750.
In 758, the Abbasid Caliph al-Mansur attempted to strengthen diplomatic ties
with the Khazars, ordering Yazid ibn Usayd al-Sulami, one of his nobles and the
military governor of Armenia, to take a royal Khazar bride. Yazid married a
daughter of Khazar Khagan Baghatur, but she died inexplicably, possibly in
childbirth. Her attendants returned home, convinced that some Arab faction had
poisoned her, and her father was enraged. Khazar general Ras Tarkhan invaded
south of the Caucasus in 762764, devastating Albania, Armenia, and Iberia, and
capturing Tiis. Thereafter relations became increasingly cordial between the
15 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
Trade routes of the Black Sea region,
8th-11th centuries
Khazars and the Abbasids, whose foreign policies were generally less expansionist
than the Umayyads, broken only by a series of raids in 799 over another failed
marriage alliance.
The rise of the Rus' and the collapse of the
Khazarian state
By the 9th century, groups of Varangian
Rus', developing a powerful warrior-
merchant system, began probing south
down the waterways controlled by the
Khazars and their protectorate, the Volga
Bulgarians, partially in pursuit of the
Arab silver which owed north for
hoarding through the Khazarian-Volga
Bulgarian trading zones,
[166]
partially to
trade in furs and ironwork.
[167]
Northern
mercantile eets passing Atil were
tithed, as they were at Byzantine
Cherson.
[168]
Their presence may have
prompted the formation of a Rus' state
by convincing the Slavs, Merja and the Chud' to unite to protect common
interests against Khazarian exactions of tribute. It is often argued that a Rus'
Khaganate modelled on the Khazarian state had formed to the east, and that the
Varangian chieftain of the coalition appropriated the title of qaan (khagan) as
early as the 830s: the title survived to denote the princes of Kievan Rus', whose
capital, Kiev, is often associated with a Khazarian foundation.
[169][170][171][172]
The construction of the Sarkel fortress, with technical assistance from Khazaria's
Byzantine ally at the time, together with the minting of an autonomous Khazar
coinage around the 830s may have been a defensive measure against emerging
threats from Varangians to the north and from the Magyars on the eastern steppe.
[173][174]
By 860, the Rus' had penetrated as far as Kiev and, via the Dnieper,
Constantinople.
[175]
Alliances often shifted. Byzantium, threatened by Varangian Rus raiders, would
assist Khazaria, and Khazaria at times allowed the northerners to pass through
their territory in exchange for a portion of the booty.
[176]
From the beginning of
the 10th century, the Khazars found themselves ghting on multiple fronts as
nomadic incursions were exacerbated by uprisings by former clients and
invasions from former allies. The pax Khazarica was caught in a pincer movement
between steppe Pechenegs and the strengthing of an emergent Rus' power to the
north, both undermining Khazaria's tributary empire.
[177]
According to the
16 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
Site of the Khazar fortress
at Sarkel (aerial photo
from excavations
conducted by Mikhail
Artamonov in the 1930s).
Schechter Text, the Khazar ruler King Benjamin,
ca.880-890 fought a battle against the allied forces of
ve lands whose moves were perhaps encouraged by
Byzantium
[178]
Though Benjamin was victorious, his
son Aaron II faced another invasion, this time led by
the Alans, whose leader had converted to Christianity
and entered into an alliance with Byzantium, which,
under Leo VI the Wise, encouraged them against the
Khazars.
By the 880s, Khazar control of the Middle Dnieper
from Kiev, where they collected tribute from Eastern
Slavic tribes, began to wane as Oleg of Novgorod
wrested control of the city from the Varangian
warlords Askold and Dir, and embarked on what was
to prove to be the foundation of a Rus' empire.
[179]
The Khazars had initially
allowed the Rus' to use the trade route along the Volga River, and raid
southwards. According to al-Masudi, the qaan is said to have given his assent on
the condition that the Rus' give him half of the booty.
[176]
In 913, however, two
years after Byzantium concluded a peace treaty with the Rus' (911), A Varangian
foray, with Khazar connivance, through Arab lands led to a request to the Khazar
throne by the Khwrazmian Islamic guard for permission to retaliate against the
large Rus' contingent on its return. The purpose was to revenge the violence the
Rus' razzia had inicted on their fellow Muslim believers.
[180]
The Rus' force was
thoroughly routed and massacred.
[176]
The Khazar rulers closed the passage
down the Volga to the Rus', sparking a war. In the early 960s, Khazar ruler Joseph
wrote to Hasdai ibn Shaprut about the deterioration of Khazar relations with the
Rus': 'I protect the mouth of the river (Itil-Volga) and prevent the Rus arriving in
their ships from setting o by sea against the Ishmaelites and (equally) all (their)
enemies from setting o by land to Bab. '
[181]
The Rus' warlords launched several wars against the Khazar Qaanate, and
raided down to the Caspian sea. The Schechter Letter relates the story of a
campaign against Khazaria by HLGW (recently identied as Oleg of Chernigov)
around 941 in which Oleg was defeated by the Khazar general Pesakh.
[183]
The
Khazar alliance with the Byzantine empire began to collapse in the early 10th
century. Byzantine and Khazar forces may have clashed in the Crimea, and by the
940s emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus was speculating in De
Administrando Imperio about ways in which the Khazars could be isolated and
attacked. The Byzantines during the same period began to attempt alliances with
the Pechenegs and the Rus', with varying degrees of success. Sviatoslav I nally
succeeded in destroying Khazar imperial power in the 960s, in a circular sweep
that overwhelmed the Khazar fortresses like Sarkel and Tamatarkha, reached as
17 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
Sviatoslav I of Kiev (in boat),
destroyer of the Khazar
Khaganate.
[182]
far as the Caucasian Kassogians/Circassians and
then back to Kiev.
[184]
Sarkel fell in 965, with the
capital city of Atil following, c. 968 or 969.
In the Russian chronicle the vanquishing of the
Khazar traditions is associated with Vladimir's
conversion in 986.
[185]
According to the Primary
Chronicle, in 986 Khazar Jews were present at
Vladimir's disputation to decide on the prospective
religion of the Kievian Rus'.
[citation needed]
Whether
these were Jews who had settled in Kiev or
emissaries from some Jewish Khazar remnant state
is unclear. Conversion to one of the faiths of the
people of Scripture was a precondition to any
peace treaty with the Arabs, whose Bulgar envoys
had arrived in Kiev after 985.
[146]
A visitor to Atil wrote soon after the sacking of the
city that its vineyards and garden had been razed, that not a grape or raisin
remained in the land, and not even alms for the poor were available.
[186]
An
attempt to rebuilt may have been undertaken, since Ibn Hawqal and al-Muqaddasi
refer to it after that date, but by Al-Biruni's time (1048) it was in ruins
[187]
Aftermath: Impact, decline and dispersion
Though Poliak argued that the Khazar kingdom did not wholly succumb to
Sviatislav's campaign, but lingered on until 1224, when the Mongols invaded
Rus',
[188][189]
by most accounts, the Rus'-Oghuz campaigns left Khazaria
devastated, with perhaps many Khazarian Jews in ight,
[190]
and leaving behind
at best a minor rump state. It left little trace, except for some placenames,
[191]
and much of its population was undoubtedly absorbed in successor hordes.
[192]
Al-
Muqaddasi, writing ca.985, mentions Khazar beyond the Caspian sea as a district
of 'woe and squalor', with honey, many sheep and Jews.
[193]
Kedrenos mentions a
joint Rus'-Byzantine attack on Khazaria in 1016, which defeated its ruler Georgius
Tzul. The name suggests Christian aliations. The account concludes by saying,
that after Tzul's defeat, the Khazar ruler of "upper Media", Senaccherib, had to
sue for peace and submission.
[194]
In 1024 Mstislav of Chernigov (one of
Vladimir's sons) marched against his brother Yaroslav with an army that included
"Khazars and Kassogians" in a repulsed attempt to restore a kind of
'Khazarian'-type dominion over Kiev.
[184]
Ibn al-Athir's mention of a 'raid of Faln
the Kurd against the Khazars' in 1030 CE, in which 10,000 of his men were
18 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
The Pontic steppes, c. 1015 (areas in blue
possibly still under Khazar control).
vanquished by the latter, has been taken (by ) as a reference such a Khazar
remnant, but Barthold identied this Faln as Fal ibn Muammad and the
'Khazars' as either Georgians or Abkhazians.
[195][196]
A Kievian prince named
Oleg, grandson of Jaroslav was reportedly kidnapped by "Khazars" in 1079 and
shipped o to Constantinople, although most scholars believe that this is a
reference to the Kipchaks or other steppe peoples then dominant in the Pontic
region. Upon his conquest of Tmutarakan in the 1080s Oleg Sviatoslavich, son of
a prince of Chernigov, gave himself the title "Archon of Khazaria".
[184]
1083 Oleg
is said to have revenged himself on the Khazars after his brother Roman was
killed by their allies, the Polovtsi/Cumans. After one more conict with these
Polovtsi in 1106, the Khazars fade from history.
[194]
By the end of the 12th century, Petachiah of Ratisbon reported traveling through
what he called "Khazaria", and had little to remark on other than describing its
minim (sectaries) living amidst desolation in perpetual mourning.
[197]
The
reference seems to be to Karaites.
[198]
The Franciscan missionary William of
Rubruck likewise found in the lower Volga area where Ital once lay only
impoverished pastures.
[78]
Giovanni di Plano Carpini, the papal legate to the court
of the Mongol Khan Guyuk at that time, mentioned an otherwise unattested
Jewish tribe, the Brutakhi, perhaps in the Volga region. Though connections are
made to the Khazars, the link is based merely on a common attribution of
Judaism.
[199]
The 10th century Zoroastrian
Dnkart registered the collapse of
Khazar power in attributing its
eclipse to the enfeebling eects of
'false' religion.
[200]
The decline
was contemporary to that suered
by the Transoxiana Smnid
empire to the east, both events
paving the way for the rise of the
Great Seljuq Empire, whose
founding traditions mention
Khazar connections.
[201][202]
Whatever successor entity
survived, it could not longer
function as a bulwark against the
pressure east and south of nomad
expansions. By 1043, Kimeks and Qipchaqs, thrusting westwards, pressured the
Ouz, who in turn pushed the Pechenegs west towards Byzantium's Balkan
provinces.
[203]
19 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
Seal discovered in
excavations at Khazar
sites, whose symbolic
signicance is
uncertain.
[211]
Khazaria nonetheless left its mark on the rising states and some of their traditions
and institutions. Much earlier, Tzitzak, the Khazar wife of Leo III introduced into
the Byzantine court the distinctive kaftan or riding habit of the nomadic Khazars,
the tzitzakion (), and this was adopted as a solemn element of imperial
dress.
[204]
The orderly hierarchical system of succession by 'scales' (lestvichnaia
sistema: ) to the Grand Principate of Kiev was arguably
modeled on Khazar institutions, via the example of the Rus' Khaganate.
[205]
The proto-Hungarian Pontic tribe, while perhaps threatening Khazaria as early as
839 (Sarkel), developed its institutional models, such as the dual rule of a
ceremonial kende-knd and a gyula administering practical and military
administration, under Khazar tutelage. A dissident group of Khazars, the Qabars,
joined the Hungarians in their ight from the Pechenegs as they moved into
Pannonia. Elements within the Hungarian population can be viewed as
perpetuating Khazar traditions as a successor state. Byzantine sources refer to
Hungary as Western Tourkia in contrast to Khazaria, Eastern Tourkia. The gyula
line produced the kings of medieval Hungary through descent from rpd, while
the Qabars retained their traditions longer, and were known as "black
Hungarians" (fekete magyarsg). Some archeological evidence from elarevo
suggests the Qabars practiced Judaism
[206][207][208]
since warrior graves with
Jewish symbols were found there, including menorahs, shofars, etrogs, lulavs,
candlesnuers, ash collectors, inscriptions in Hebrew, and a six-pointed star
identical to the Star of David.
[209][210]
The Khazar state was the only Jewish state to rise
between the Fall of the Second Temple (67-70 CE) and
the establishment of Israel (1948),
[212]
and its example
stimulated messianic aspirations for a return to Israel
as early as Judah Halevi.
[213]
In the time of the
Egyptian vizier Al-Afdal Shahanshah (d.1121), one
Solomon ben Duji, often identied as a Khazarian
Jew,
[214]
attempted to stir up a messianic crusade for
the liberation of, and return of all Jews to, Palestine. He
wrote to many Jewish communities to enlist support. He
eventually moved to Kurdistan where his son
Menachem some decades later assumed the title of
Messiah and, raising an army for this purpose, took the
fortress of Amadiya north of Mosul. His project was
opposed by the rabbinical authorities and he was
poisoned in his sleep. One theory maintains that the
Star of David, until then a decorative motif or magical emblem, began to assume
its national value in late Jewish tradition from its earlier symbolic use in
Menachem's crusade.
[215]
20 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
The word Khazar, as an ethnonym, was last used in the 13th century by a people
in the North Caucasus believed to practice Judaism.
[216]
The nature of a
hypothetical Khazar diaspora, Jewish or otherwise, is disputed. Avraham ibn Daud
mentions encountering rabbinical students descended from Khazars as far away
as Toledo, Spain in the 1160s.
[217]
Khazar communities persisted here and there.
Many Khazar mercenaries served in the armies of the Islamic Caliphates and
other states. Documents from medieval Constantinople attest to a Khazar
community mingled with the Jews of the suburb of Pera.
[218]
and Khazar
merchants were active in both Constantinople and Alexandria in the 12th.
century.
[219]
Khazar origins for, or suggestions Khazars were absorbed by many peoples, have
been made regarding the Slavic Judaising Subbotniks, the Bukharan Jews, the
Muslim Kumyks, Kazakhs, Nogais,
[citation needed]
the Cossacks of the Don region,
the Turkic-speaking Krymchak Jews and the and their Crimean neighbours the
Karaites to the Moldavian Csngs, the Mountain Jews and others.
[220][221][222]
Turkic-speaking Karaites (in the Crimean Tatar language, Qaraylar) from Crimea
to Poland and Lithuania have claimed Khazar origins. Specialists in Khazar history
question the connection,
[223][224]
Scholarship is likewise sceptical of claims that
the Tatar-speaking Krymchak Jews of the Crimea descend from Khazars.
[225]
A popular, if in academic terms minoritarian, thesis holds that the Khazar Jewish
population went into a northern diaspora and had a signicant impact on the rise
of Ashkenazi Jews. Connected to this thesis is the theory, expounded by Paul
Wexler, that the grammar of Yiddish contains a Khazar substrate.
[226]
Ashkenazi-Khazar theories
Main article: Khazar theory of Ashkenazi ancestry
Several scholars have suggested that the Khazars did not disappear after the
dissolution of their Empire, but migrated West to eventually form part of the core
of the later Ashkenazi Jewish population of Europe. This hypothesis is greeted
with scepticism or caution by most scholars.
[227][228]
In 1846 the Russian orientalist Vasilii Vasil'evich Grigor'ev (18161881) theorized
that the Crimean Karaites were of Khazar stock, an allegation quickly taken up
outsiders though unfamiliar to the Karaites themselves at the time.
[229]
Abraham
Eliyahu Harkavi then suggested as early as 1869 that there might be a link
between the Khazars and European Jews
[230]
but the theory that Khazar converts
formed a major proportion of Ashkenazi was rst proposed to a Western public in
a lecture by Ernest Renan in 1883.
[231][232]
Occasional suggestions emerged that
21 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
there was a small Khazar component in East European Jews in works by Joseph
Jacobs (1886), Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, a critic of anti-Semitism, (1893)
[233]
Maksymilian Ernest Gumplowicz,
[234]
and by the Russian-Jewish anthropologist
Samuel Weissenberg.
[235]
In 1909 Hugo von Kutschera developed the notion into
a book-length study,
[236]
arguing Khazars formed the foundational core of the
modern Ashkenazi.
[237]
Maurice Fishberg introduced the notion to an American
audience in 1911.
[238]
The idea was also taken up by the Polish-Jewish economic
historian and General Zionist Yitzhak Schipper in 1918
[239][240]
and by scholarly
anthropologists, such as Roland B. Dixon (1923), and by writers like H. G. Wells
(1921) who used it to argue that "The main part of Jewry never was in Judea",
[241][242]
a thesis that was to have a political echo in later opinion.
[243][244]
In
1932, Samuel Krauss ventured the theory that the biblical Ashkenaz referred to
northern Asia Minor, and identied it with the Khazars, a position immediately
disputed by Jacob Mann.
[245]
Ten years later, in 1942, Abraham N. Poliak, later
professor for the history of the Middle Ages at Tel Aviv University, published a
Hebrew monograph in which he concluded that the East European Jews came
from Khazaria.
[246][247]
D.M. Dunlop, writing in 1954, thought very little evidence
backed what he regarded as a mere assumption, and argued that the Ashkenazi-
Khazar descent theory went far beyond what our imperfect records permit.
[248]
Lon Poliakov, while assuming the Jews of Western Europe resulted from a
"panmixia" in the Ist millennium, asserted in 1955 that it was widely assumed that
Europe's Eastern Jews descended from a mixture of Khazarian and German
Jews.
[249]
Poliak's work found some support in Salo Wittmayer Baron and
Ben-Zion Dinur,
[250][251]
but was dismissed by Bernard Weinryb as a ction
(1962).
[252]
The Khazar-Ashkenazi hypothesis came to the attention of a much wider public
with the publication of Arthur Koestler's The Thirteenth Tribe in 1976.
[253]
which
was both positively reviewed and dismissed as a fantasy, and a somewhat
dangerous one. Israel's ambassador to Britain branded it 'an anti-Semitic action
nanced by the Palestinians,' while Bernard Lewis claimed that the idea was not
supported by any evidence whatsoever, and had been abandoned by all serious
scholars.
[253][254]
Raphael Patai, however, registered some support for the idea
that Khazar remnants had played a role in the growth of Eastern European Jewish
communities,
[255]
and several amateur researchers, such as Boris Altschler
(1994)
[223]
and Kevin Alan Brook,
[256]
kept the thesis in the public eye. The
theory has been occasionally manipulated to deny Jewish nationhood.
[253][257]
Recently, a variety of approaches, from linguistics (Paul Wexler)
[258]
to
historiography (Shlomo Sand)
[259]
and population genetics (Eran Elhaik [1]
22 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
(http://eelhaik.aravindachakravartilab.org/) a geneticist from the University of
Sheeld)
[260]
has revived support for and interest in the theory. In broad
academic perspective, both the idea that the Khazars converted en masse to
Judaism, and the suggestion they emigrated to form the core population of
Ashkenazi Jewry, remain highly polemical issues.
[261]
Use in anti-Semitic polemics
Maurice Fishberg and Roland B Dixon's works were later exploited in racist and
religious polemical literature in both Britain, in British Israelism, and the United
States.
[262]
Particularly after the publication of Burton J. Hendrick's The Jews in
America (1923)
[263]
it began to enjoy a vogue among advocates of immigration
restriction in the 1920s; racial theorists
[264]
like Lothrop Stoddard; anti-Semitic
conspiracy-theorists like the Ku Klux Klan's Hiram Wesley Evans; anti-communist
polemicists like John O. Beaty
[265]
and Wilmot Robertson, whose views inuenced
David Duke.
[266]
According to Yehoshafat Harkabi (1968) and others,
[267]
it
played a role in Arab anti-Zionist polemics, and took on an anti-semitic edge.
Bernard Lewis, noting in 1987 that Arab scholars had dropped it, remarked that it
only occasionally emerged in Arab political discourse.
[268]
It has also played some
role in Soviet anti-semitic chauvinism
[269]
and Slavic Eurasian historiography,
particularly in the works of scholars like Lev Gumilev.
[270]
Although the Khazar
hypothesis never played any major role in anti-semitism,
[271][272]
and though the
existence of a Jewish kingdom north of the Caucasus had formerly long been
denied by Christian religious commentators,
[273]
it came to be exploited by the
White supremicist Christian movement
[274]
and even by terrorist esoteric cults
like Aum Shinriky.
[275]
Genetic studies
See also: Ashkenazi Jews Genetic origins and Genetic studies on Jews
The hypothesis of Khazarian ancestry in Ashkenazi has also been a subject of
discussion in the new eld of population genetics, wherein claims have been made
concerning evidence both for and against it. The general conclusion is that, if
traces of descent from Khazars exist in the Ashkenazi gene pool, the contribution
would be quite minor,
[276][277][278][279][280]
or insignicant.
[281]
Eran Elhaik argued in 2012 for a signicant Khazar component in the paternal
line based on the study of Y-DNA of Ashkenazi Jews, using Caucasian populations,
Georgians, Armenians and Azerbaijani Jews as proxies.
[260]
23 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
According to Nadia Abu El-Haj, the issues of origins are generally complicated by
the diculties of writing history via genome studies and the biases of emotional
investments in dierent narratives, depending on whether the emphasis lies on
direct descent or on conversion within Jewish history. The lack of Khazar DNA
samples that might allow verication also present diculties.
[282]
In literature
Main article: Khazars in ction
The Kuzari is an inuential work written by the medieval Spanish Jewish
philosopher and poet Rabbi Yehuda Halevi (c. 10751141). Divided into ve
essays (ma'amarim), it takes the form of a ctional dialogue between the pagan
king of the Khazars and a Jew who was invited to instruct him in the tenets of the
Jewish religion. The intent of the work, although based on asdai ibn Shapr's
correspondence with the Khazar king, was not historical, but rather to defend
Judaism as a revealed religion, written in the context, rstly of Karaite challenges
to the Spanish rabbinical intelligentsia, and then against temptations to adapt
Aristotelianism and Islamic philosophy to the Jewish faith.
[283]
Originally written
in Arabic, it was translated into Hebrew by Judah ibn Tibbon).
[124]
Benjamin
Disraeli's early novel Alroy (1833) draws on Menachem ben Solomon's story.
[284]
The question of mass religious conversion and the indeterminability of the truth of
stories about identity and conversion are central themes of Milorad Pavi's
bestselling mystery story Dictionary of the Khazars.
[285]
H.N. Turteltaub's
Justinian, Marek Halter's Book of Abraham and Wind of the Khazars, and Michael
Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road allude to or feature elements of Khazar history
or create ctional Khazar characters.
[286]
Cities associated with the Khazars
Atil, Khazaran, Samandar; in the Caucasus, Balanjar, Kazarki, Sambalut, and
Samiran; in Crimea and the Taman region, Kerch, Theodosia, (modern Gzliev),
Samkarsh (also called Tmutarakan, Tamatarkha), and Sudak. In the Don valley
Sarkel. A number of Khazar settlements have been discovered in the Mayaki-
Saltovo region. Some scholars suppose that the Khazar settlement of Sambat on
the Dnieper refers to the later Kiev.
[287]
See also
Conversion to Judaism
24 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
Gazaria (Genoese colonies)
History of the Jews in Russia and the Soviet Union
History of Kiev
History of Turkish-Jewish Relations
Jewish Polish history origins to 1600s
List of Khazar rulers
Rus' Khaganate
Rus'Byzantine War (860)
Rus'Byzantine War (968-971)
Turkic peoples
Notes
^ Wexler 1996, p. 50 1.
^ Brook, pp. 107 2.
^ Herlihy 1972, pp. 136148;Russell1972, pp. 2571.This gure has been calculated
on the basis of the data in both Herlihy and Russell's work.
3.
^ Luttwak 2009, p. 152.'Khazars (Hebrew:Kuzarim).' 4.
^ Meserve 2009, p. 294, n.164. 5.
^ Golden 2007b, p. 139.'The Gazari are, presumably, the Khazars, though this term or
the Kozary of the perhaps near contemporary Vita Constantini . . could have reected
any of a number of peoples within Khazaria.'
6.
^ Judah Halevi's Sefer ha-Kuzari was translated into Latin as Liber Cosri: continens
colloquium seu disputationem de religione, habitam ante nongentos annos, inter
regem cosarreorum, & R. Isaacum Sangarum Judum.(1660)
7.
^ Golden 2001a, p. 33.'Somewhat later, however, in a letter to the Byzantine Emperor
Basil I, dated to 871, Louis the German, clearly taking exception to what had
apparently become Byzantine usage, declares that 'we have not found that the leader
of the Avars, or Khazars (Gasanorum),'
8.
^ Petrukhin 2007, p. 255 9.
^ Sneath 2007, p. 25. 10.
^ Noonan 1999, p. 493. 11.
^ Golden 2011, p. 65. 12.
25 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
^ .Noonan 1999, p. 498 13.
^ Noonan 1999, pp. 499,5023. 14.
^ Golden 2007a, p. 28 15.
^ Golden 2007a, p. 15 16.
^ Golden 2007a, p. 16 and n.38 citing L. Bazin, 'Pour une nouvelle hypothse sur
l'origine des Khazar,' in Materialia Turcica, 7/8 (19811982): 51-71.
17.
^ Golden 2007a, p. 16.Compare Tibetan dru-gu Gesar (the Turk Gesar). 18.
^ Dunlop 1954, pp. 3440 19.
^ Golden 2007a, p. 16 20.
^ Golden 2007a, p. 17.Ks () would have been pronounced something like
k
h
a'sat in both Early Middle Chinese/EMC and Late Middle Chinese/LMC while Hs
() would yield at-sat in (EMC) and xat sat (LMC) respectively, where nal 't'
often transcribes r- in foreign words. Thus, while these Chinese forms could
transcribe a foreign word of the type *Kasar/*Kazar, *Gatsar,*Gazr,*Gasar, there is a
problem phonetically with assimilating these to the Uyur word Qasar/ Gesa
(EMC/LMC Kat-sat= Kar sar=*Kasar).
21.
^ Shirota 2005, pp. 235,248. 22.
^ Brook 2010, p. 5 23.
^ Golden 2007b, p. 148: Ibn al-Nadm commenting on script systems in 987-8
recorded that the Khazars wrote in Hebrew.
24.
^ Erdal 2007, pp. 9899:'The chancellery of the Jewish state of the Khazars is
therefore also likely to have used Hebrew writing even if the ocial language was a
Turkic one.
25.
^ Golden 2001b, p. 78.'The word tribe is as troublesome as the term clan. It is
commonly held to denote a group, like the clan, claiming descent from a common (in
some ulture zones eponymous) ancestor, possessing a common territory, economy,
language, culture, religion, and sense of identity. In reality, tribes were often highly
uid sociopolitical structures, arising as "ad hoc responses to ephemeral situations of
competition," as Morton H. Fried has noted.'
26.
^ Golden 2007a, p. 14 27.
^ Szdeczky-Kardoss 1994, p. 206 28.
^ Golden 2007a, pp. 4041;Brook 2010, p. 4 note that Dieter Ludwig, in his doctoral
thesis Struktur und Gesellschaft des Chazaren-Reiches im Licht der schriftlichen
Quellen, (Mnster,1982) suggested that the Khazars were Turkic members of the
Hephthalite Empire, where the lingua franca was a variety of Iranian.
29.
^ Golden 2006, p. 86 30.
^ Golden 2007a, p. 53, 31.
^ Zuckerman 2007, p. 404.Cf.'The reader should be warned that the A-shih-na link of 32.
26 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
the Khazar dynasty, an old phantom of . . Khazarology, will . .lose its last claim to
reality'.
^
a b
Golden 2006, p. 89. 33.
^ Golden 2006, pp. 8990. In this view, the name Khazar would derive from a
hypothetical *Aq Qasar.
34.
^
a b
Kaegi 2003, p. 143 n.115, citing also Golden 1992, pp. 127136,234237. 35.
^ Whittow 1996, p. 221. The word Trk, Whittow adds, had no strict ethnic meaning
at the time: 'Throughout the early middle ages on the Eurasian steppes, the term
'Turk' may or may not imply membership of the ethnic group of Turkic peoples, but it
does always mean at least some awareness and acceptance of the traditions and
ideology of the Gk Trk empire, and a share, however distant, in the political and
cultural inheritance of that state.'
36.
^ Kaegi 2003, pp. 154186. 37.
^ Whittow 1996, p. 222. 38.
^ Golden 2010, pp. 5455 The Dul () were the left wing of the On Oq, the
Nshb (: *Nu ad(a)pit), and together they were registered in Chinese sources
as the 'ten names' (sh mng:).
39.
^ Golden 2001b, pp. 945. 40.
^ Somogyi 2008, p. 128. 41.
^ Zuckerman 2007, p. 417 42.
^ Golden 2006, p. 90. 43.
^ Golden 2007a, pp. 1113. 44.
^ Golden 2007a, pp. 78 45.
^ Golden 2001b, p. 73 46.
^ Golden 2007b, pp. 155156. Several scholars connect it to Judaization, with
Artamonov linking its introduction to Obadiyah's reforms and the imposition of full
Rabbinical Judaism and Pritsak to the same period (799-833), arguing that the Beg, a
major domo from the Iranian *Bar/War</Bolan clan, identied with Obadiyah,
compelled the Qaanal clan to convert, an event which putatively caused the Qabar
revolt. Golden comments: "There is nothing but conjecture to connect it with the
reforms of Obadiyah, the further evolution of Khazar Judaism or the Qabars ... The
fact is we do not know when, precisely, the Khazar system of dual kingship emerged.
It could not have come ex nihilo. It was not present in the early stages of Khazar
history. Given the Old Trk traditions of the Khazar state ... and the overall
institutional conservation of steppe society, one must exercise great caution here.
Clear evidence for it is relatively late (the latter part of the ninth century perhaps and
more probably the tenth/century- although it was probably present by the rst third
of the ninth century. Iranian inuences via the Ors guard of the Qaans may have also
47.
27 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
been a factor"
^ Noonan 1999, p. 500 48.
^ Olsson 2013, p. 2. 49.
^ Dunlop 1954, pp. 97,112. The nobles would kill him if his reign lasted even one day
beyond the specied number of years. Ibn Fadlan gave a precise gure for the
maximum number of years allotted to a king's reign. If a Qaan had ruled for at least
forty years, Fadlan wrote, his courtiers and subjects felt that his ability to reason had
become impaired on account of his old age. They would then kill the Qaan.
50.
^
a b c
Noonan 2001, p. 77. 51.
^ Golden 2006. 52.
^ Petrukhin 2007, pp. 256257 notes that Ibn Fadlun's description of a Rus' prince
(malik) and his lieutenant (khalifa) mirrored the Khazarian diarchy, but the report is
awed, there being no sacral kingship among the Rus'.
53.
^ Golden 2007b, pp. 1334. 54.
^ Shingiray 2012, pp. 212 55.
^ de Weese 1994, p. 181, 56.
^ Golden & 2006 pp. 7981. 57.
^ Golden 2007b, pp. 130131: "the rest of the Khazars profess a religion similar to
that of the Turks."
58.
^ Golden 2006, p. 88 59.
^ Golden 2007b, p. 138.This regiment was exempt from campaigning against fellow
Muslims, evidence that non-Judaic beliefs was no obstacle to access to the highest
levels of government.They had abandoned their homeland after the onset of Islam,
and sought service with the Khazars, according to al-Masudi.
60.
^ Olsson 2013, p. 13 writes that there is no evidence for this Islamic guard for the
9th century, but that its existence is attested for 913.
61.
^ Golden 2006, pp. 7980,88. 62.
^ Olsson 2013, p. 1. 63.
^ Noonan 2007, p. 211,217 gives the lower gure for the Muslim contingents, but
adds that the army could draw on other mercenaries stationed in the capital, Rs,
aqliba and pagans. Olsson's 10,000 refers to the spring-summar horsemen in the
nomadic king's retinue.
64.
^ Koestler 1977, p. 18 65.
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 113 66.
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 96 67.
^ Brook 2010, pp. 34 68.
^ Patai & Patai 1989, p. 70. 69.
^ Brook 2010, p. 3 70.
28 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
^ Golden 2006, pp. 86 n.39,89The ethnonym in the Tang Chinese annals, shn (
), often accorded a key role in the Khazar leadership, may reect an Eastern Iranian
or Tokharian word (Khotanese Saka eina-sena 'blue'): Middle Persian axana
('dark-coloured'): Tokharian A na ('blue', 'dark').
71.
^ Luttwak 2009, p. 152. 72.
^ Oppenheim 1994, p. 312. 73.
^ Brook 2010, pp. 3-4. 74.
^ Barthold 1993, p. 936. 75.
^ Golden 2011, p. 64. 76.
^ Noonan 2007, pp. 208209, 216219. A third division may have contained the
dwellings of the tsarina. The dimensions of the western part were 3x3, as opposed to
the eastern part's 8 x 8 farsakhs.
77.
^
a b
Noonan 2007, p. 214. 78.
^ Noonan 2007, pp. 211214. Outside Muslim traders were under the jurisdiction of
a special royal ocial (ghulm).
79.
^ Erdal 2007, p. 75, n.2.'there must have been many dierent ethnic groups within
the Khazar realm ... These groups spoke dierent languages, some of them no doubt
belonging to the Indo-European or dierent Caucasian language families.'. The high
chancery ocial of the Abbasid Caliphate under Al-Wathiq, Sallm the interpreter
(Sallam al-tardjuman), famous for his reputed mastery of thirty languages, might have
been both Jewish and a Khazar.Wasserstein 2007, p. 376, and n.2 referring to.Dunlop
1954, pp. 190193.
80.
^ Golden 2006, p. 91.'Ouric Turkic, spoken by many of the subject tribes,doubtless,
was one of the linguae francae of the state. Alano-As was also widely spoken. Eastern
Common Turkic, the language of the royal house and its core tribes, in all likelihood
remained the language of the ruling elite in the same way that Mongol continued to
be used by the rulers of the Golden Horde, alongside of the Qipaq Turkic speech
spoken by the bulk of the Turkic tribesmen that constituted the military force of this
part of the inggisid empire. Similarity, Ouric, like Qipaq Turkic in the Joid realm,
functioned as one of the languages of government.'
81.
^ Golden 2007a, pp. 1314, 14 n.28. al-Iakhr 's account however then contradicts
itself by likening the language to Bularic.
82.
^ Golden 2007, pp. 131133 83.
^ Whittow 1996, p. 220 84.
^ Golden 2007b, p. 133. Whittow 1996, p. 220 notes that this native institution, given
the constant, lengthy, military and acculturating pressures on the tribes from China
to the East, was inuenced also by the sinocentric doctrine of the Mandate of Heaven
(Tinmng:(), which signaled legitimacy of rule.
85.
29 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
^ Kohen 2007, p. 112. Johannes Buxtorf rst published the letters around 1660.
Controversy arose over their authenticity: it was even argued that the letters
represented: 'no more than Jewish self-consolation and fantasmagory over the lost
dreams of statehood' (Kohen ibid).
86.
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 130:'If anyone thinks that the Khazar correspondence was rst
composed in 1577 and published in Qol Mebasser, the onus of proof is certainly on
him. He must show that a number of ancient manuscripts, which appear to contain
references to the correspondence, have all been interpolated since the end of the
sixteenth century. This will prove a very dicult or rather an impossible task.'
87.
^ Golden 2007b, pp. 1456:'The issue of the authenticity of the Correspondence has a
long and mottled history which need not detain us here. Dunlop and most recently
Golb have demonstrated that Hasdai's letter, Joseph's response (dating perhaps from
the 950s) and the "Cambridge Document" are, indeed, authentic.'
88.
^ deWeese 2010, pp. 171,305:'(a court debate on conversion)appears in accounts of
Khazar Judaism in two Hebrew accounts, as well as in one eleventh-century Arabic
account. These widespread and evidently independent attestations would seem to
support the historicity of some kind of court debate, but, more important, clearly
suggest the currency of tales recounting the conversion and originating among the
Khazar Jewish community itself' . .'the "authenticity" of the Khazar correspondence is
hardly relevant'.(p.171): 'The wider issue of the "authenticity" of the "Khazar
correspondence", and of the signicance of this tale's parallels with the equally
controversial Cambridge document /Schechter text, has been discussed extensively in
the literature on Khazar Judaism; much of the debate loses signicance if, as Pritsak
has recently suggested, the accounts are approached as "epic" narratives rather than
evaluated from the standpoint of their "historicity".
89.
^ Szpiech 2012, p. 102. 90.
^ Toch 2012, pp. 1623:'Of the intensive archaeological study of Khazar sites (over a
thousand burial sites have been investigated!), not one has yet yielded nds that yet
t in some way the material legacy of antique European or Middle Eastern Jewry.'
Shingiray 2012, pp. 209211 noting the widespread lack of artifacts of wealth in
Khazar burials, arguing that nomads used few materials to express their personal
attributes:'The SMC assemblages-even if they wee not entirely missing from the
Khazar imperial center-presented an oustanding insance of archaeological material
minimalism in this region.'
91.
^ Golden 2007b, pp. 1501, and note137'But, one must ask, are we to expect much
religious paraphernalia in a recently converted steppe society? Do the Ouz, in the
century or so after their Islamization, present much physical evidence in the steppe
for their new faith? These conclusions muyst be considered preliminary.'
92.
30 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
^ Golden 2007b, pp. 1289 compares Ullas's conversions of the Goths to
Arianism;Al-Masudi records a conversion of the Alans to Christianity during the
Abbasid period;the Volga Bulars adopted Islam after their leader converted in the
10th century; the Uyur Qaan accepted Manichaeism in 762
93.
^ Golden 2007b, p. 123, taking exception to J. B. Bury's claim (1912) that it was
'unique in history'.(Koestler 1977, p. 52);Golden 2007b, p. 153 cites from Jewish
history the conversion of Idumeans under John Hyrcanus; of the Itureans under
Aristobulus I; of the kingdom of Adiabene under Queen Helena; the imyr kings in
Yemen, and Berber assimilations to North African Jewry.
94.
^ Gil 2011, pp. 429441 is a lone voice in arguing the conversion never took place.
Gil believes the conversion of Khazars is a myth, and argues that Arab sources do not
mention Khazars as Jews, and contemporary Jewish responsa show no trace of
Khazarian Jews. He concludes that the conversion 'never happened'.
95.
^ Golden 2007b, pp. 124, 135. 96.
^
a b
Golden 2007b, p. 125. 97.
^ de Weese 1994, pp. 292293. 98.
^ Golden 2007b, p. 124:Alp Ilut'ur is a Turkish subordinate title. 99.
^ Golden 2007b, pp. 1356:Shapira 2007b, pp. 347348 thinks the evidence from
such Georgian sources renders suspect a conversion prior to this date.
100.
^ Golden 2007b, pp. 135136, reporting on al-Muqaddasi. 101.
^ de Weese 1994, p. 73 during Islamic invasions, some groups of Khazars who
suered defeat, including a qaan, were converted to Islam.
102.
^ Golden 2007b, pp. 141145,161 103.
^ Noonan 2001, pp. 7778. 104.
^ Golden 2007b, p. 126:'The f wandering out into the steppe was far more
eective in bringing Islam to the Turkic nomads than the learned 'ulam of the cities.'
105.
^ Wexler 1987, p. 61. 106.
^ Cahen 1997, pp. 137139 argues the conversion was restricted to the elite.Wexler
2002, p. 514:'the Khazars (most of whom did not convert to Judaism, but remained
animists, or adopted Islam and Christianity), . .'.
107.
^ Golden 2007b, p. 127:'In much of the literature on conversions of Inner Asian
peoples, attempts are made, "to minimize the impact" . . This has certainly been true
of some of the scholarship regarding the Khazars.'
108.
^ Olsson 2013, p. 2:'scholars who have contributed to the subject of the Khazars'
conversion, have based their arguments on a limited corpus of textual, and more
recently, numismatic evidence . .Taken together these sources oer a cacophony of
distortions, contradictions, vested interests, and anomalies in some areas, and
nothing but silence in others.'
109.
31 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
^ Noonan 1999, p. 502:'Judaism was apparently chosen because it was a religion of
the book without being the faith of a neighbouring state which had designs on Khazar
lands.'
110.
^ Salo 1957, p. 198:'Their conversion to Judaism was the equivalent of a declaration
of neutrality between the two rival powers.'
111.
^ Golden 2007b, p. 139:We are not aware of any nation under the sky that would not
have Christians among them. For even in Gog and Magog, the Hunnic people who call
themselves Gazari, those whom Alexander conned, there was a tribe more brave
than the others. This tribe had already been circumcised and they profess all
dogmata of Judaism (omnem Judaismum observat).'
112.
^ Olsson 2013, p. 3. The idea of a forced general conversion imposed on the Qaanal
dynasty in the 830s was advanced by Omeljian Pritsak, and is now supported by
Roman Kovalev and Peter Golden.
113.
^ Olsson 2013, p. 13. He identies this with the onset of Magyar invasions of the
Pontic steppe in the 830s, the construction of Sarkel, and the Schechter letter's
reference to Bulan, converted to his Jewish wife's faith, wresting power, in a period of
famine, elements which undermined the qaan, and allowed the creation of the royal
diarchy.Olsson 2013, pp. 13,1923.
114.
^ Shingiray 2012, pp. 212214. 115.
^ Szpiech 2012, pp. 92117,104. 116.
^ Golden 2007b, pp. 143,159:wa al-azarwa malikuhum kulluhum yahd('The
Khazars and their king are all Jews')
117.
^ Golden 2007b, p. 143, citing his comment on Genesis 9:27:'some other
commentators are of the opinion that this verse alludes to the Khazars who accepted
Judaism', with Golden's comment:'Certainly, by this time, the association of Khazaria
and Judaism in the Jewish world was an established fact'.
118.
^ Golden 2007b, pp. 137138, 119.
^ Spinei 2009, p. 50. 120.
^ Shapira 2007b, p. 349, and n.178 and Zuckerman 1995, p. 250 disagree, consider
there was only one stage and place it later. Shapira takes stage 1 as a Jewish-Khazar
reinterpretation of the Tengri-cult in terms of a monotheism similar to Judaism's;
Zuckerman thinks Judaisation took place, just once, after 861.
121.
^ Golden 2007b, pp. 127128,151153.Dunlop 1954, p. 170 Dunlop thought the Ist
stage occurred with the king's conversion c. 740; the second with the installation of
Rabbinial Judaism c. 800.
122.
^ DeWeese 1994, pp. 300308. 123.
^
a b
Melamed 2003, pp. 2426. 124.
^ Schweid 2007, p. 279. Arabic original: Kitb al-uyya wa'l-dall nar al-din 125.
32 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
al-dhall (Book of the Argument and Demonstration in Aid of the Despised Faith).
^ Korobkin 1998 126.
^ Brook 2010, pp. 30; 41, n.75 mentions also a letter in Hebrew, the Mejelis
document, dated (985986), which refers to "our lord David, the Khazar prince" who
lived in Taman. As Brook noted, both D. M. Dunlop and Dan Shapira dismiss it as a
forgery.
127.
^ Shapira 2009, p. 1102. The name is commonly etymologized as meaning 'elk' in
Trkic. Shapira identies him with the Sabriel of the Schechter letter, and suggests,
since Sabriel is unattested as a Jewish name, though the root is 'hope, believe, nd
out, understand' that it is a calque on the Ouz Trkic bulan(one who nds out) or
bilen (one who knows)
128.
^ Szpiech 2012, pp. 93117,102, citing the letter of Letter of King Joseph:et
ha-qosmim ve-et'ovdei 'avodah zarah('expelled the wizards and idolators').
129.
^ DeWeese 1994, p. 302. This detail is in Halevi's Sefer Ha-Kusari. Golden has
identied Warsn as Transcaucasian Varac'an (Olsson 2013, p. 18) asdai ibn
Shapr's letter also mentions a legend that the Chaldaeans, under persecution, hid
the Scriptures in a cave, and taught their sons to pray there, which they did until
their descendants forgot the custom. Much later, a tradition has it, a man of Israel
entered the cave and, retrieving the books, taught the descendants how to learn the
Law.(De Weese 1994, pp. 3045).
130.
^ Korobkin 1998, p. 352, n.8. 131.
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 170. 132.
^ De Weese 1994, p. 303;Golb & Pritsak 1882, p. 111:The Schechter document has
ocers during the religious debate speak of a cave in a certain plain (TYZWL) where
books are to be retrieved. They turn out to be the books of the Torah.
133.
^ Golden 2007b, p. 157. 134.
^ DeWeese 1994, pp. 276,300304. The original ancestral cavern of the Trks,
according to Chinese sources, was called tken and the tribal leaders would travel
there annually to conduct sacricial rites.
135.
^ Dunlop 1954, pp. 117118. 136.
^ DeWeese 1994, pp. 304305. 137.
^
a b
Rna-Tas 1999, p. 232. 138.
^ Maroney 2010, p. 72 139.
^ Golden 2007a, p. 34. 140.
^ Kohen 2007, pp. 107108, refers to Khazar killings of Christians or the
uncircumcized in retaliation for persecutions of Jews in Byzantium, and Khazar
reprisals against Muslims for persecutions of Jews in Caucasian Albania, perhaps
under Emir Nasr.
141.
33 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
^ Golden 2007b, p. 161. 142.
^ Koestler 1977, p. 63;Leviant 2008, pp. 159162,162:'If indeed I could learn that
this was the case, then, despising all my glory, abadndoning my high estate, leaving
my family, I would go over mountains and hills, through seas and lands, till I should
arrive at the place where my Lord the King resides, that I might see not only his glory
and magnicence, and that of his servants and ministers, but also the tranquillity of
the Israelites. On beholding this my eyes would brighten, my reins would exult, my
lips would pour forth praises to God, who has not withdrawn his favour from his
aicted ones.'
143.
^ Abraham Harkavy,Ha-Maggid (1877) p.357.Secondary source required. 144.
^ Harkavy, in Kohut Memorial Volume, p. 244. 145.
^
a b
Petrukhin 2007, p. 263. 146.
^ Luttwak 2009, p. 52 147.
^ Rna-Tas 1999, p. 282: Theophanes the Confessor around 813 dened them as
Eastern Turks. The designation is complex and Rna-Tas writes:'The Georgian
Chronicle refers to the Khazars in 626-628 as the 'West Turks' who were then
opposed to the East Turks of Central Asia. Shortly after 679 the Armenian Geography
mentions the Turks together with the Khazars; this may be the rst record of the
Magyars. Around 813, Theophanes uses -alongside the generic name Turk -'East
Turk' for the designation of the Khazars, and in the context, the 'West Turks' may
actually have meant the Magyars. We know that Nicholas Misticus refers to the
Magyars as 'West Turks' in 924.925. In the 9th century the name Turk was mainly
used to designate the Khazars.'
148.
^ Many sources identify the Gktrks in this alliance as Khazars, for example,
Beckwith writes recently:'The alliance sealed by Heraclius with the Khazars in 627
was of seminal importance to the Byantine Empire through the Early Middle Ages,
and helped assure its long-term survival.'Beckwith 2011, pp. =120,122. Early sources
such as the almost contemporary Armenian history,Patmutiwn Auanic Axarhi
attributed to Movss Dasxuranc, and the Chronicle attributed to Theophanes identify
these Turks as Khazars (Theophanes has: 'Turks, who are called Khazars'). Both
Zuckerman and Golden reject the identication Zuckerman 2007, pp. 403404.
149.
^ Kaegi 2003, pp. 143145. 150.
^ Rna-Tas 1999, p. 230. 151.
^ Kaegi 2003, p. 145. 152.
^ Zuckerman 2007, p. 417. Scholars dismiss Chinese annals which, reporting the
events from Turkic sources, attribute the destruction of Persia and its leader Shah
Khusrau II personally to Tong Yabghu. Zuckerman argues instead that the account is
correct in its essentials.
153.
34 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
^ Bauer 2010, p. 341. 154.
^ Ostrogorsky 1969, pp. 124126. 155.
^ Cameron 1984, p. 212. By 711, however, Busir was supporting, possibly instigating,
[citation needed]
a revolt in Cherson among Byzantine troops led by another exile, rebel
general Bardanes, who seized the throne as Emperor Philippikos and killed Justinian.
156.
^ Luttwak 2009, pp. 1378 157.
^ Piltz 2004, p. 42. 158.
^ Noonan 2007, p. 220. 159.
^ Beckworth 2009, p. 392,n.22. 160.
^ McBride & Heath 2004, p. 14. 161.
^ Mako 2010, p. 45 162.
^
a b
Brook 2010, pp. 1267 163.
^ Brook 2010, pp. 127 164.
^ Wasserstein 2007, pp. 375376 165.
^ Moss 2002, p. 16. Over 520 separate hoards of such silver have been uncovered in
Sweden and Gotland.
166.
^ Abulaa 1987, pp. 419,480483.The Volga Bulgarian state was converted to Islam
in the 10th century, and wrested liberty from its Khazarian suzerains when Svyatislav
razed Atil.
167.
^ Shepard 2006, p. 19. 168.
^ Petrukhin 2007, p. 245 169.
^ Noonan 2001, p. 81. 170.
^ Whittow 1996, pp. 243252 argues however that:The title of qaghan, with its claims
to lordship over the steppe world, is likely to be no more than ideological booty from
the 965 victory.'
171.
^ Korobkin 1998, p. xxvii citing Golb & Pritsak 1982, p. 15 notes that Khazars have
often been connected with Kiev's foundations. Pritsak and Golb state that children in
Kiev were being given a mixture of Hebrew and Slavic names by c. 930. Toch 2012,
p. 166 on the other hand is sceptical, and argues that 'a signicant Jewish presence in
early medieval Kiev or indeed in Russia at large remains much in doubt'.
172.
^ Golden 2007b, p. 156.The yarmaq based on the Arab dirhem was perhaps issued in
reaction to fall-o in Muslim minting in 820s, and to a felt need in the turbulent
upheavals of the 830s to assert a new religious prole, with the Jewish legends
stamped on them.
173.
^ Petrukhin 2007, p. 247, and n.1: Scholars are divided as to whether the fortication
of Sarkel represents a defensive bulwark against a growing Magyar or Varangian
threat.
174.
^ Petrukhin 2007, p. 257. 175.
35 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
^
a b c
Kohen 2007, p. 107. 176.
^ Noonan 1999, pp. 5023. 177.
^ Kohen 2007, p. 106.MQDWN or the Macedon dynasty of Byzantium;SY,perhaps a
central Volga statelet, Burtas, Asya; PYYNYL denoting the Danube-Don Pechnegs;BM,
perhaps indicating the Volga Bulgars, and TWRQY or Oghuz Turks. The provisory
identications are those of Pritsak.
178.
^ Noonan 1999, p. 508. 179.
^ Olsson 2013, p. 13: Al-Masudi says the king secretly tipped o the Rus' of the
attack, but was unable to oppose the request of his guards.
180.
^ Petrukhin 2007, p. 257. The letter continues:'I wage war with them. If I left them
(in peace) for a single hour they would crush the whole land of the Ishmaelites up to
Baghdad.'
181.
^ From Klavdiy Lebedev (18521916), Svyatoslav's meeting with Emperor John, as
described by Leo the Deacon.
182.
^ Petrukhin 2007, p. 259. 183.
^
a b c
Petrukhin 2007, p. 262. 184.
^ Petrukhin 2007, pp. 262263. 185.
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 242. 186.
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 248.Dunlop thought the later city of Saqsin lay on or near Atil 187.
^ Gow, p. 31, n.28. 188.
^ Sand 2010, p. 229 189.
^ Golden 2007b, pp. 148. 190.
^ Brook 2010, p. 156. The Caspian Sea is still known to Arabs, and many peoples of
the region, as the 'Khazar Sea' (Arabic Bahr ul-Khazar)
191.
^ Noonan 1999, p. 503. 192.
^ Golden 2007b, pp. 1478. 193.
^
a b
Kohen 2007, p. 109. 194.
^ Shapira 2007a, p. 305. 195.
^ Dunlop 1954, p. 253. 196.
^ Sand 2010, p. 227. 197.
^ Dubnov 1980, p. 792. 198.
^ Golden 2007a, p. 45, and n.157 199.
^ Golden 2007b, p. 130:'thus it is clear that the false doctrine of Yi in Rome (Hrm)
and that of Ms among the Khazars and that of Mn in Turkistan took away their
might and the valor that they once possessed and made them feeble and decadent
among their rivals'.
200.
^ Golden 2007b, p. 159. 201.
^ Peacock 2010, pp. 27-35, 27-28,35 for details.Some sources claim that the father of 202.
36 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
Seljuk, the eponymous progenitor of the Seljuk Turks, namely Toqaq Temr Yal,
began his career as an Oghuz soldier in Khazar service in the early and mid-10th
century, and rose to high rank before he fell out with the Khazar rulers and departed
for Khwarazm. Seljuk's sons, signicantly, all bear names from the Jewish scriptures:
Mk'il, Isr'l, Ms, Ynus. Peacock argues that early traditions attesting a Seljuk
origin within the Khazar empire when it was powerful, were later rewritten, after
Khazaria fell from power in the 11th century, to blank out the connection.
^ Peacock 2010, p. 35. 203.
^ Erdal 2007, p. 80, n.22:Wexler 1987, p. 72 Tzitzak is often treated as her original
proper name, with a Turkic etymology iek ('ower') Erdal, however, citing the
Byzantine work on court ceremony De Ceremoniis, authored by Constantine
Porphyrogennetos, argues that the word referred only to the dress Irene wore at
court, perhaps denoting its colourfulness, and compares it to the Hebrew ciciot, the
knotted fringes of a ceremonial shawl tallit.
204.
^ Golden 2001a, pp. 2829,37. 205.
^ Golden 1994b, pp. 247248. 206.
^ Rna-Tas 1999, p. 56 207.
^ Golden 2007a, pp. 33. 208.
^ Golden 2007b, p. 150. 209.
^ Brook 2010, p. 167. 210.
^ Brook 2010, pp. 113, 1223 n.148. 'Engravings that resemble the six-pointed Star
of David were found on circular Khazar relics and bronze mirrors from Sarkel and
Khazarian grave elds in Upper Saltov. However, rather than having been made by
Jews, these appear to be shamanistic sun discs.'
211.
^ Oppenheim 1994, p. 310. 212.
^ Schweid 2007, p. 286. 213.
^ Brook 2010, pp. 191192, n.72 says this thesis was developed by Jacob Mann,
based on a reading of the word "Khazaria" in the Cairo Geniza fragment. Bernard
Lewis, he adds, challenged the assumption by noting that the original text reads
Hakkri and refers to the Kurds of the Hakkri mountains in south-east Turkey.
214.
^ Baron 1957, pp. 202204,p.204. 215.
^ Wexler 2002, p. 514. 216.
^ Golden 2007b, p. 149. 217.
^ Brook 2010, pp. 177178 218.
^ Noonan 2007, p. 229. 219.
^ Kizilov 2009, p. 335 220.
^ Patai & Patai 2987, p. 73. 221.
^ Wexler 1987, p. 70. 222.
37 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
^
a b
Golden 2007a, p. 9 223.
^ Rna-Tas 1999, p. 232:Rabbinic Judaism rather than Qaraism was the form
adopted. Small Karaim communities may have existed, but the linguistic and
historical evidence suggests that the Turkic-speaking Karaim Jews in Poland and
Lithuania, one branch also existed in Crimea, descend from the Khazars. 'At most, it
is conceivable that the smaller Karaite community which lived in Kharazia gained the
Kipchak type Turkic language, that they speak today, through an exchange of
language.' Khazars probably converted to Rabbinic Judaism, whereas in Karaism only
the Torah is accepted, the Talmud being ignored.
224.
^ Brook 2010, pp. 227228. 225.
^ Wexler 2002, pp. 513541. 226.
^ Wexler 2002, p. 536.'Most scholars are sceptical about the hypothesis'. Wexler, who
proposes a variation on the idea, argues that a combination of three reasons accounts
for scholarly aversion to the concept: a desire not to get mixed up in controversy,
ideological insecurities, and the incompetence of much earlier work in favour of that
hypothesis.
227.
^ Golden 2007a, p. 56:'Methodologically, Wexler has opened up some new areas,
taking elements of folk culture into account. I think that his conclusions have gone
well beyond the evidence. Nonetheless, these are themes that should be pursued
further.'
228.
^ Shapira 2006, p. 166. 229.
^ Rossman 2002, p. 98: Abraham Harkavy, O yazykye evreyev, zhivshikh v drevneye
vremya na Rusi i o slavianskikh slovakh, vstrechaiuschikhsia u evreiskikh pisatelei,
St. Petersburg.
230.
^ Barkun 1997, p. 137: Ernest Renan, "Judaism as a Race and as Religion." Delivered
on the January 27, 1883.
231.
^ Rossman 2002, p. 98. 232.
^ Singerman 2004, pp. 34, Isral chez les nations (1893) 233.
^ Polonsky, Basista & Link-Lenczowski 1993, p. 120. In the book Pocztki religii
ydowskiej w Polsce, Warsaw: E. Wende i S-ka, 1903.
234.
^ Goldstein 2006, p. 131. Goldstein writes: 'The theory that Eastern European Jews
descended from the Khazars was originally proposed by . .Samuel Weissenberg in an
attempt to show that Jews were deeply rooted on Russian soil and that the cradle of
Jewish civilization was the Caucasus'. Weissenberg's book Die Sdrussischen Juden,
was published in 1895.
235.
^ Koestler 1976, pp. 134,150. Die Chasaren; historische Studie, A. Holzhauen,Vienna
1909.2nd ed., 1910.
236.
^ Koestler 1976, pp. 134,150. 237.
38 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
^ Goldstein 2006, p. 131. Maurice Fishberg, The Jews: A Study of Race and
Environment.
238.
^ Litman 1984, pp. 85110,109. Schipper's rst monograph on this was published in
the Almanach ydowski (Vienna) in 1918, While in the Warsaw ghetto before falling
victim to the Holocaust at Majdanek, Schipper (18841943) was working on the
Khazar hypothesis.
239.
^ Brook 2010, p. 210. 240.
^ Wells 2004, p. 2:"There were Arab tribes who were Jews in the time of Muhammad,
and a Turkic people who were mainly Jews in South Russia in the ninth century.
Judaism is indeed the reconstructed political ideal of many shattered peoples-mainly
semitic. As a result of these coalescences and assimilations, almost everywhere in the
towns throughout the Roman Empire, and far beyond it in the east, Jewish
communities traded and ourished, and were kept in touch through the Bible, and
through a religious and educational organization. The main part of Jewry never was in
Judea and had never come out of Judea."
241.
^ Singerman 2004, p. 4. 242.
^ Morris 2003, p. 22: Pasha Glubb held that Russian Jews 'have considerably less
Middle Eastern blood, consisting largely of pagan Slav proselytes or of Khazar Turks.'
For Glubb, they were not 'descendants of the Judeans . .The Arabs of Palestine are
probably more closely related to the Judeans (genetically) than are modern Russian
or German Jews'. . 'Of course, an anti-Zionist (as well as an anti-Semitic) point is
being made here: The Palestinians have a greater political right to Palestine than the
Jews do, as they, not the modern-day Jews, are the true descendants of the land's
Jewish inhabitants/owners'.
243.
^ Roland Burrage Dixon The Racial History of Man, 1923; H. G. Wells, The Outline of
History (1921)
244.
^ Malkiel 2008, p. 263,n.1. 245.
^ Golden 2007a, p. 29. 'Poliak sought the origins of Eastern European Jewry in
Khazaria'. First written as an article, then as a monograph (1942), it was twice
revised in 1944, and 1951 as Kazariyah: Toldot mamlaxa yehudit (Khazaria:The
History of a Jewish Kingdom in Europe) Mosad Bialik, Tel Aviv, 1951.
246.
^ Sand 2010, p. 234. 247.
^ Dunlop 1954, pp. 261,263. 248.
^ Poliakov 2005, p. 285:'As for the Jews of Eastern Europe (Poles, Russians, etc.,) it
has always been assumed that they descended from an amalgamation of Jews of
Khazar stock from southern Russia and German Jews (the latter having imposed their
superior culture).'
249.
^ Sand 2010, pp. 2412. Sand cites Salo Wittmayer Baron,Baron 1957, pp. 196206, 250.
39 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
p.206:'before and after the Mongol upheaval the Khazars sent many oshoots into the
unsubdued Slavonic lands, helping ultimately to build up the great Jewish center of
Eastern Europe'; and Ben-Zion Dinur, Yisrael ba-gola 5 vols., 3rd
ed.(19611966)Tel-Aviv: Jerusalem:Dvir;Bialik Institute, 1961. (OCLC:492532282)
vol.1 p.2,5:'The Russian conquests did not destroy the Khazar kingdom entirely, but
they broke it up and diminished it And this kingdom, which had absorbed Jewish
immigration and refugees from many exiles, must itself have become a diaspora
mother, the mother of one of the greatest of the diasporas (Em-galuyot, em akhat
hagaluyot hagdolot)-of Israel in Russia, Lithuania and Poland.'
^ Golden 2007a, p. 55:'Salo Baron, who incorrectly viewed them as Finno-Ugrians,
believed that the Khazars "sent many oshoots into the unsubdued Slavonic lands,
helping ultimately to build up the great Jewish centers of eastern Europe'
251.
^ Golden 2007a, p. 55:'dismissed ... rather airily'. 252.
^
a b c
Sand 2010, p. 240. 253.
^ Lewis 1987, p. 48:'Some limit this denial to European Jews and make use of the
theory that the Jews of Europe are not of Israelite descent at all but are the ospring
of a tribe of Central Asian Turks converted to Judaism, called the Khazars. This
theory, rst put forward by an Austrian anthropologist in the early years of this
century, is supported by no evidence whatsoever. It has long since been abandoned by
all serious scholars in the eld, including those in Arab countries, where Khazar
theory is little used except in occasional political polemics.' Assertions of this kind has
been challenged by Paul WexlerWexler 2002, pp. 538 who also notes that the
arguments on this issue are riven by contrasting ideological investments:'Most
writers who have supported the Ashkenazi-Khazar hypothesis have not argued their
claims in a convincing manner . . The opponents of the Khazar-Ashkenazi nexus are
no less guilty of empty polemics and unconvincing arguments.'(p.537)).
254.
^ Patai & Patai 1989, p. 71: 'it is assumed by all historians that those Jewish Khazars
who survived the last fateful decades sought and found refuge in the bosom of Jewish
communities in the Christian countries to the west, and especially in Russia and
Poland, on the one hand, and in the Muslim countries to the east and the south, on
the other. Some historians and anthropologists go so far as to consider the modern
Jews of East Europe, and more particularly of Poland, the descendants of the
medieval Khazars.'
255.
^ Brook 2010 256.
^ Toch 2012, p. 155,n.4. 257.
^ Wexler 2007, pp. 387398. 258.
^ Sand 2010, pp. 190249. 259.
^
a b
Elhaik 2012, pp. 6174. 260.
40 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
^ Golden 2007, pp. 910. 261.
^ Goldstein 2006, p. 131. 262.
^ Singerman 2004, pp. 45. 263.
^ Goodrick-Clarke 2003, p. 237. 264.
^ .Boller 1992, pp. 2,67. Barkun 1997, pp. 1412. Beaty was an anti-Semitic,
McCarthyite professor of Old English at SMU, author of 'The Iron Curtain over
America, (Dallas 1952). According to him, 'the Khazar Jews . .were responsible for all
of America's and the world's ills, beginning with World War 1. The book 'had little
impact' until the former Wall Street broker and oil tycoon J. Russell Maguire
promoted it.
265.
^ Barkun 1997, pp. 140141. Cf. Wilmot Robertson Dispossessed Majority(1972) 266.
^ Wexler 2002, p. 514 has a more detailed bibliography. 267.
^ Harkabi 1987, p. 424:"Arab anti-Semitism might have been expected to be free
from the idea of racial odium, since Jews and Arabs are both regarded by race theory
as Semites, but the odium is directed, not against the Semitic race, but against the
Jews as a historical group. The main idea is that the Jews, racially, are a mongrel
community, most of them being not Semites, but of Khazar and European origin." This
essay was translated from Harkabi Hebrew text 'Arab Antisemitism' in Shmuel
Ettinger, Continuity and Discontinuity in Antisemitism, (Hebrew) 1968 (p.50).
268.
^ Shnirelman 2007, pp. 353372:'in the very late 1980s Russian nationalists were
xated on the "Khazar episode." For them the Khazar issue seemed to be a cruial one.
They treated it a the rst historically documented case of the imposition of a foreign
yoke on the Slavs, .. In this context the term "Khazars" became popular as a
euphemism for the so-called "Jewish occupation regime." (p.354)
269.
^ Rossman 2007, pp. 121188. 270.
^ Barkun 1997, pp. 1367:'The Khazar theory never gured as a major component of
anti-Semitism. Indeed, it receives only scant attention in Lon Poliakov's monumental
history of the subject.'
271.
^ Barkun 2012, p. 165:'Although the Khazar theory gets surprisingly little attention
in scholarly histories of anti-Semitism, it has been an inuential theme among
American anti-Semites since the immigration restrictionists of the 1920s,'.
272.
^ Gow 1995, pp. 3031, n.28. 273.
^ Barkun 1997, pp. 142144. 274.
^ Goodman & Miyazawi 2000, pp. 263264. 275.
^ Ostrer 2012, pp. 247,9395,124125. 276.
^ Nebel, Filon & Brinkmann 2001, pp. 10951112. 277.
^ Behar, Skorecky & Hammer 2003, pp. 769779. 278.
^ Nebel, Filon & Faerman 2005, pp. 388391. 279.
41 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
^ Atzmon & Ostrer 2010, pp. 850859 280.
^ Costa, Pereira & Richards 2013, pp. 110. 281.
^ El-Haj 2012, pp. 12,289,120123, 133:'if the genome does not prove Sand wrong,
neither can it prove him right. It is the wrong kind of evidence and the wrong style of
reasoning for the task at hand.'(p.28):'They (researchers) will never be able to prove
descent from Khazars: there are no "verication" samples.'(p.133).
282.
^ Lobel 2000, pp. 24. 283.
^ Baron 1957, p. 204. 284.
^ Wachtel 1998, pp. 210215. 285.
^ Cokal 2007. 286.
^ Rna-Tas 1999, p. 152:'Kiev in Khazar is Sambat, the same as the Hungarian word
szombat,'Saturday', which is likely to have been derived from the Khazar Jews living
in Kyiv.'
287.
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External links
Lecture on the Jews of Khazaria (http://jewishhistorylectures.org/2013/11
/11/the-jews-of-khazaria/) by Dr. Henry Ambramson
The Kievan Letter scan (http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/cgi-bin
/GOLD/thumbs?class_mark=T-S_12.122) in the Cambridge University Library
collection.
Khazaria.com (http://www.khazaria.com)
Resources - Medieval Jewish History - The Khazars (http://www.dinur.org
/resources/resourceCategoryDisplay.aspx?categoryid=457&rsid=478) The
Jewish History Resource Center, Project of the Dinur Center for Research in
Jewish History, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Khazar Historic Maps (https://web.archive.org/web/20091026233731/http:
55 of 56 2014-05-09 20:47
//geocities.com/ayatoles/) at the Wayback Machine (archived October 26,
2009)
The Kitab al-Khazari of Judah Hallevi, full English translation at sacred-
texts.com (http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/khz/index.htm)
Ancient lost capital of the Khazar kingdom found (http://www.haaretz.com
/hasen/spages/1023383.html)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Khazars&
oldid=607394852"
Categories: Former countries in Asia Historical Turkic states Turkic dynasties
History of the Turkic peoples Turkic peoples Turkic tribes Khazars
Former countries in Europe Khaganates Jewish history
Groups who converted to Judaism
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