
The Khazars were a semi-nomad Turkic people from Central Asia, many of whom converted to Judaism. The name 'Khazar' seems to be tied to a Turkic languages verb meaning "wandering". In the 7th century AD they founded an independent Khanate in the Northern Caucasus along the Caspian Sea, where over time Judaism became the state religion. At their height, they and their tributaries controlled much of what is today southern Russia, western Kazakhstan, eastern Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and the Crimea. The Khazars were important allies of the Byzantine Empire, and were a major regional power at their height. They fought a series of successful wars against the Arab Caliphates, probably preventing an Arab invasion of Eastern Europe. By the end of the tenth century, their power was broken by the Kievan Rus, and the Khazars largely disappeared from history. The possible Khazar contribution to the bloodline of modern Ashkenazi Jews is politically sensitive and has been the subject of much discussion, but most geneticists now believe that it is not substantial. ==Origins and prehistory== The origins of the Khazars are unclear. Following their conversion to Judaism, the Khazars themselves traced their origins to Kozar, a son of Togarmeh. Togarmeh is mentioned in the Hebrew scriptures as a grandson of Japheth. It is unlikely, however, that he was regarded as an ancestor before the introduction of Biblical traditions to Khazaria. Some historians have looked for possible connections between the Khazars and the lost tribes of Israel, but modern scholars generally consider them to be Turks who migrated from the East. Scholars in the USSR considered the Khazars to be an indigenous people of the North Caucasus. Some scholars, such as D.M. Dunlop, considered the Khazars to be connected with a Uyghur tribe called K'o-sa in Chinese sources. However, the Khazar language appears to have been an Hun tongue, similar to that spoken by the early Bulgars. Therefore, a Hunnish origin has also been postulated. Since the Turkic peoples were never ethnically homogenous, these ideas need not be deemed mutually exclusive. It is likely that the Khazar nation was made up of tribes from various ethnic backgrounds, as steppe nations traditionally absorbed those they conquered. Armenian chronicles contain references to the Khazars as early as the late second century. These are generally regarded as anachronisms, and most scholars believe that they actually refer to Sarmatians or Scythians. Priscus relates that one of the nations in the Hunnish confederacy was called Akatziroi. Their king was named Karadach or Karidachus. Some, going on the similarity between Akatziroi and "Ak-Khazar" (see below), have speculated that the Akatziroi were early proto-Khazars. Dmitri Vasil'ev of Astrakhan State University recently hypothesized that the Khazars moved in to the Pontic steppe region only in the late 500s, and originally lived in Transoxiana. According to Vasil'ev, Khazar populations remained behind in Transoxiana under Pecheneg and Oghuz suzerainty, possibly remaining in contact with the main body of their people. ==Tribes== The Khazars' tribal structure is not well understood. They appear, like many Turkic nations, to have been divided between Ak-Khazars ("White Khazars") and Kara-Khazars ("Black Khazars"). Writers such as Graetz mistakenly believed that these were racial designations; in fact, such distinctions have nothing to do with physical appearance or racial identification. The White-Black distinction is a common social division in Eurasian nomadic tribes, with the "White" group representing the nobility, warrior elite and ruling classes, and the "Black" group making up the commoners, tradesmen, etc. Peter Golden speculated that the Khazar ethnos was a conglomerate of Hun and common Turkic nations, including the Sabirs and North Caucasian Huns as well as elements of the Gokturks. ==Rise== ===Formation of the Khazar state=== [[Image:Gokturkut.jpg|right|thumb|200px|Map of the Western (purple) and Eastern (blue) Gokturk khaganates at their height, c. 600 CE. Lighter areas show direct rule; darker areas show spheres of influence.]] Early Khazar history is intimately tied with that of the Gokturks empire, founded when the Ashina clan overthrew the Juan Juan in AD 552. With the collapse of the Gokturk empire / tribal confederation due to internal conflict in the seventh century, the western half of the Turk empire itself split into two confederations, the Bulgars, led by the Dulo clan, and the Khazars, led by the Ashina clan, the traditional rulers of the Gok Turk empire. By 670, the Khazars had broken the Bulgar confederation, leaving the three Bulgar remnants on the Volga Bulgaria, the Black Sea and the Danube. The first significant appearance of the Khazars in history is their aid to the campaign of the Byzantine Empire emperor Heraclius against the Sassanid Iranns. The Khazar ruler Ziebel (sometimes identified as Tong Yabghu Khagan of the West Turks) aided the Byzantines in overrunning Georgia (Caucasus). A marriage was even contemplated between Ziebel's son and Heraclius' daughter, but never took place. During the 7th century and 8th century the Khazar fought a series of wars against the Umayyad Caliphate, which was attempting simultaneously to expand its influence into Transoxiana and the Caucasus. The first war was fought in the early 650 and ended with the defeat of an Arab force led by Abd ar-Rahman ibn Rabiah outside the Khazar town of Balanjar, after a battle in which both sides used siege engines on the others' troops. A number of Russian sources give the name of a Khazar khagan, Irbis, from this period, and describe him as a scion of the Gokturk royal house, the Ashina. Whether Irbis ever existed is open to debate, as is the issue of whether he can be identified with one of the many Gokturk rulers of the same name. Several further conflicts erupted in the decades that followed, with Arab attacks and Khazar raids into Kurdistan and Iran. There is evidence from the account of al-Tabari that the Khazars formed a united front with the remnants of the Gok Turks in Transoxiana. ===Khazars and Byzantium=== Khazar overlordship over most of the Crimea dates back to the late 600s. In the mid 700s the rebellious Crimean Goths were put down and their city, Doros (modern Mangup-Kale) occupied. A Khazar tudun was resident at Cherson in the 690s, despite the fact that this town was nominally subject to the Byzantine Empire. They are also known to have been allied with the Byzantine Empire during at least part of the 700s. In 704/705 Justinian II, exiled in Cherson, escaped into Khazar territory and married the sister of the Khagan, Busir. With the aid of his wife, he escaped from Busir, who was intriguing against him with the usurper Tiberius III, murdering two Khazar officials in the process. He fled to Bulgaria, whose Khan Tervel helped him regain the throne. The Khazars later provided aid to the rebel general Bardanes, who seized the throne in 711 as Emperor Bardanes. The Byzantine emperor Leo III married his son Constantine (later Constantine V Kopronymous) to the Khazar princess Tzitzak (daughter of the Khagan Bihar (Khazar)) as part of the alliance between the two empires. Tzitzak, who was baptized as Irene, became famous for her wedding gown, which started a fashion craze in Constantinople for a type of robe (for men) called ''tzitzakion''. Their son Leo (Leo IV) would be better known as "Leo the Khazar". ===Second Khazar-Arab war=== [[Image:Califate 750.jpg|thumb|320px|left|Expansion of the Caliphate to 750 CE.
From The Historical Atlas by William R. Shepherd, 1923
Courtesy of The General Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin]] Hostilities broke out again with the Caliphate in the 710s, with raids back and forth across the Caucasus but few decisive battles. The Khazars, led by a prince named Barjik, invaded northwestern Iran and defeated the Umayyad forces at Ardebil in 730, killing the Arab warlord al-Djarrah al-Hakami and briefly occupying the town. They were defeated the next year at Mosul, where Barjik directed Khazar forces from a throne mounted with al-Djarrah's severed head, and Barjik was killed. Arab armies led first by the Arab prince Maslamah ibn Abd al-Malik and then by Marwan ibn Muhammad (later Caliph Marwan II) poured across the Caucasus and eventually (in 737) defeated a Khazar army led by Hazer Tarkhan, briefly occupying Atil itself and possibly forcing the Khagan to convert to Islam. The instability of the Umayyad regime made a permanent occupation impossible; the Arab armies withdrew and Khazar independence was re-asserted. It has been speculated that the adoption of Judaism (which in this theory would have taken place around 740) was part of this re-assertion of independence. It is worth noting that around 739, Arab sources give the name of the ruler of the Khazars as Parsbit or Barsbek, a woman who appears to have directed military operations against them. This suggests that women could have very high positions within the Khazar state, possibly even as a stand-in for the khagan. Although they stopped the Arab expansion into Eastern Europe for some time after these wars, the Khazars were forced to withdraw behind the Caucasus. In the ensuing decades they extended their territories from the Caspian Sea in the east (Many cultures still call the Caspian Sea "Khazar Sea"; e.g. "Hazar Denizi" in Turkish, "Bahr ul-Khazar" in Arabic) to the steppe region north of Black Sea in the west, as far west at least as the Dnieper River. In 758, the Abbasid Caliph Abdullah al-Mansur ordered Yazid ibn Usayd al-Sulami, one of his nobles and military governor of Armenia, to take a royal Khazar bride and make peace. Yazid took home a daughter of Khagan Baghatur, the Khazar leader. Unfortunately, the girl died inexplicably, possibly in childbirth. Her attendants returned home, convinced that some Arab faction had poisoned her (not unreasonable, all things considered), and her father was enraged. A Khazar general named Ras Tarkhan invaded what is now northwestern Iran, plundering and raiding for several months. Thereafter relations between the Khazars and the Abbasid Caliphate (less expansionist than its Umayyad predecessors) became increasingly cordial. ==Khazar religion== ===Turkic shamanism=== Originally, the Khazars practiced traditional Turkic shamanism, focused on the sky god Tengri, but were heavily influenced by Confucian ideas imported from China, notably that of the Mandate of Heaven. The Ashina clan were considered to be the chosen of Tengri and the kaghan was the incarnation of the favor the sky-god bestowed on the Turks. A kaghan who failed had clearly lost the god's favor and was typically Human sacrifice. Historians have sometimes wondered, only half in jest, if the Khazar tendency to occasionally execute their rulers on religious grounds led those rulers to seek out other religions. The Khazars worshipped a number of deities subordinate to Tengri, including the fertility goddess Umay, Kuara, a thunder god, and Erlik, the god of death. ===Conversion to Judaism=== Jewish communities had existed in the Greek cities of the Black Sea coast since late classical times. Cherson, Sudak, Kerch and other Crimean cities possessed Jewish communities, as did Anapa, and Samkarsh / Tmutarakan was said to have had a Jewish majority as early as the 670s. The original Jewish settlers were joined by waves of immigration fleeing antisemitism in the Byzantine Empire, Sassanid Iran (particularly during the Mazdak revolts, and later within the Islamic world. Jewish merchants such as the Radhanites regularly traded in Khazar territory, and may have wielded significant economic and political influence. Though their origins and history are somewhat unclear, the Mountain Jews also lived in or near Khazar territory and may have been allied with or subject to Khazar overlordship; it is conceivable that they too played a role in the conversion. At some point in the last decades of the 8th century or the early 9th century, the Khazar royalty and nobility converted to Judaism, and part of the general population followed. The extent of the conversion is debated. Historically, most scholars believed that only the upper classes converted to Judaism; there is some support for this in contemporary Muslim texts. However, recent archeological excavations have uncovered widespread shifts in burial practices. Around the mid 800s burials in Khazaria began to take on a decidedly Jewish flavor. Grave goods disappeared almost altogether. Judging by interment evidence, by 950 Judaism had become widespread among all classes of Khazar society. Essays in the Kuzari, written by Yehuda Halevi, details a moral liturgical reason for the conversion which some consider a moral tale. Some researchers have suggested part of the reason for this mass conversion was political expediency to maintain a degree of neutrality: The Khazar empire was between growing populations; Muslims to the east and Christianitys to the west. Both religions recognized Judaism as a forebear and worthy of some respect. The exact date of the conversion is hotly contested. It may have occurred as early as 740 or as late as the mid 800s. Recently-discovered numismatic evidence suggests that Judaism was the established state religion by c. 830, and though St. Cyril (who visited Khazaria in 861) did not identify the Khazars as Jews, the khagan of that period, Zachariah, had a biblical Hebrew name. Some medieval sources give the name of the rabbi who oversaw the conversion of the Khazars as Isaac Sangari or Yitzhak ha-Sangari. The first Jewish Khazar king was named Bulan (Khazar) which means "elk", though some sources give him the Hebrew name Sabriel. A later king, Obadiah (Khazar), strengthened Judaism, inviting rabbis into the kingdom and building synagogues. Jewish figures such as Saadia Gaon made positive references to the Khazars, and they are excoriated in contemporary Karaite writings as "bastards"; it is therefore unlikely that they adopted Karaism as some (such as Abraham Firkovitch) have proposed. The Khazars enjoyed close relations with the Jews of the Levant and Iran. The Persian Jews, for example, hoped that the Khazars might succeed in conquering the Caliphate (Harkavy, in Kohut Memorial Volume, p. 244). The high esteem in which the Khazars were held among the Jews of the Orient may be seen in the application to them, in an Arabic commentary on Isaiah ascribed by some to Saadia Gaon, and by others to Benjamin Nahawandi, of Isaiah 48:14: "The Lord hath loved him." "This," says the commentary, "refers to the Khazars, who will go and destroy Babel" (i.e., Babylonia), a name used to designate the country of the Arabs (Harkavy in "Ha-Maggid." 1877, p. 357). Likewise, the Khazar rulers viewed themselves as the protectors of international Jewry. They were known to retaliate against Muslim or Christian interests in Khazaria for persecution of Jews abroad. Ibn Fadlan relates that around 920 the Khazar ruler received information that Muslims had destroyed a synagogue in the land of Babung, in Iran; he gave orders that the minaret of the mosque in his capital should be broken off, and the muezzin executed. He further declared that he would have destroyed all the mosques in the country had he not been afraid that the Muslims would in turn destroy all the synagogues in their lands. ===Other religions=== Besides Judaism, other religions probably practiced in areas ruled by the Khazars include Greek Orthodox, Nestorian, and Monophysite Christianity, Zoroastrianism as well as Norse, Finnic, and Slavic cults. Religious toleration was maintained for the kingdom's three hundred plus years. Many Khazars reportedly were converts to Christianity and Islam. (See "Judiciary", below.) ==Government== ===Khazar Kingship=== Khazar kingship was divided between the khagan and the Bek or Khagan Bek. Contemporary Arab historians related that the Khagan was purely a spiritual ruler or figurehead with limited powers, while the Bek was responsible for administration and military affairs. In the Khazar Correspondence, King Joseph identifies himself as the ruler of the Khazars and makes no reference to a colleague. It has been disputed whether Joseph was a Khagan or a Bek; his description of his military campaigns make the latter probable. A third option is that by the time of the Correspondence (c. 950-960) the Khazars had merged the two positions into a single ruler, or that the Beks had somehow supplanted the Khagans or vice versa. for all Khazar rulers see List of Khazar rulers. ===Army=== [[Image:Khazar_1.gif|right|thumb|300px|Khazar warrior with captive, based on reconstruction by Norman Finkelshteyn of image from an 8th-century ewer found in Romania (original at [http://www.geocities.com/normlaw/page2.html])]] Khazar armies were led by the Bek and commanded by subordinate officers known as tarkhans. A famous tarkhan referred to in Arab sources as Ras Tarkhan led an invasion of Armenia in 758. The army included regiments of Muslim auxiliaries known as Arsiyah, of Khwarezmian or Alan extraction, were quite influential and exempt from campaigning against their fellow Muslims. Early Russian sources called them Khazaran, their city, Khvalisy and the Khazar (Caspian) sea Khvaliskoye, possibly referring to these Khwarezmians. In addition to the Bek's standing army, the Khazars could call upon tribal levies in times of danger and were often joined by auxiliaries from subject nations. ===Other officials=== Settlements were governed by administrative officials 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 influence. Other officials in the Khazar government included dignitaries referred to by ibn Fadlan as ''Jawyshyghr'' and ''Kundur'', but their responsibilities are unknown. ===Judiciary=== Muslim sources report that the Khazar supreme court consisted of two Jews, two Christianity, two Muslims, and a "heathen" (whether this is a Turkic shaman or a priest of Slavic or Norse religion is unclear), and a citizen had the right to be judged according to the laws of his religion. Some have argued that this configuration is unlikely, as a Beit Din, or rabbinical court, requires three members. It is therefore possible that as practitioners of the state religion, the Jews had three judges on the Supreme Court rather than two, and that the Muslim sources were attempting to downplay their influence. A Muslim or Christian court can function with only one or two judges. ==Economic position== [[Image:Khazar coin.jpg|left|thumb|380px|Khazar coin minted in imitation of Caliphate dirhem and bearing the legend "Moses is the prophet of God", early 9th c. CE. Image from the website of the [http://www.myntkabinettet.se/notiser/spillings2.htm Swedish Economic Museum].]] ===Trade=== The Khazars occupied a prime trade nexus. Goods from western Europe travelled east to Central Asia and China and vice versa, and the Muslim world could only interact with northern Europe via Khazar intermediaries. The Radanites, a guild of medieval Jewish merchants, had a trade route that ran through Khazaria, and may have been instrumental in the Khazars' conversion to Judaism. No Khazar paid taxes to the central government. Revenue came from a 10% levy on goods transiting through the region, and from tribute paid by subject nations. The Khazars exported honey, furs, wool, millet and other grains, fish, and slaves. D.M. Dunlop and Artamanov asserted that the Khazars produced no material goods themselves, living solely off of trade. This theory has been refuted by discoveries over the last half-century, which include pottery and glass factories. ===Khazar coinage=== The Khazars are known to have minted silver coins, called Yarmaqs. Many of these were copies of Arab dinars, which were in widespread use due to their reliable silver content. Some surviving examples bear the legend "Ard al-Khazar" (Arabic for "land of the Khazars"); others the phrase "Moses is the Prophet of God" (a modification of the Muslim coin inscription "Muhammad is the Prophet of God"). ==Extent of influence== The Khazar Khaganate was, at its height, an immensely powerful state. The Khazar heartland was on the lower Volga and the Caspian coast as far south as Derbent. In addition, from the late 600s the Khazars controlled most of the Crimea and the northeast littoral of the Black Sea. By 800 Khazar holdings included most of the Pontic steppe as far west as the Dneiper and as far east as the Aral Sea (some Turkic history atlases show the Khazar sphere of influence extending well east of the Aral). During the Khazar-Arab war of the early 700s, some Khazars evacuated to the Ural foothills, and some settlements may have remained. ===Khazar towns=== Khazar towns included: *Along the Caspian coast and Volga delta: :Atil; Khazaran; Samandar *In the Caucasus: :Balanjar; Kazarki; Sambalut; Samiran *In the Crimea and Taman region: :Kerch (also called Bospor); Feodosia; Gusliyev (modern Yevpatoria); Samkarsh (also called Tmutarakan, Tamatarkha); Sudak (also called Sugdaia) *In the Don River, Russia valley: :Sarkel *Numerous Khazar settlements have been discovered in the Mayaki-Saltovo region. On the Dneiper, the Khazars founded a settlement called Sambat, which was part of what would become the city of Kiev. Chernigov is also thought to have started as a Khazar settlement. ===Tributary and subject nations=== Numerous nations were tributaries of the Khazars. A client-king subject to Khazar overlordship was called an "Elteber". At various times, Khazar vassals included: In the Pontic steppes, Crimea and Turkestan :The Pechenegs ; the Oghuz; the Crimean Goths; the Crimean Huns (Onogurs?); the early Magyars In the Caucasus :Georgia (country); Abkhazia; various Armenian principalities; Arran; the North Caucasian Huns; Adjaria; the Caucasian Avars; the Circassians; and the Lezgins. On the Upper Don and Dneiper :Various East Slavic tribes such as the Derevlians and the Vyatichs; various early Rus polities On the Volga :Volga Bulgaria; the Burtas; various Finno-Ugrian forest tribes such as the Mordvins and Ob-Ugrians; the Bashkir; the Barsils ==Decline and fall== ===Rise of Rus=== Originally the Khazars were probably allied with various Norse factions who controlled the region around Novgorod and regularly travelled through Khazar-held territory to attack territories around the Black and Caspian Seas. By 913, however, the Khazars were engaged in open hostilities with Norse marauders. The Khazar fortress of Sarkel, constructed with Byzantine aid around 830, may have been constructed as a defense against Rus incursions, as well as attacks by nomadic people such as the Pechenegs. In the 10th century the empire began to decline due to the attacks of both Vikings from Kievan Rus and various Turkic peoples. It enjoyed a brief revival under the strong rulers Aaron and Joseph, who subdued rebellious client states such as the Alans and led victorious wars against Rus invaders. ===Kabar rebellion and the departure of the Magyars=== At some point in the ninth century (as reported by Constantine Porphyrogenitus) a group of three Khazar clans called the Kabars revolted against the Khazar government. Omeljan Pritsak and others have speculated that the revolt had something to do with a rejection of rabbinic Judaism; this is unlikely as it is believed that both the Kabars and mainstream Khazars had pagan, Jewish (both rabbinic and Karaite), Christian, and Muslim members. Pritsak maintained that the Kabars were led by the Khagan Khan-Tuvan Dyggvi in a war against the Bek. In any event Pritsak cited no primary source for his propositions in this matter. The Kabars were defeated and joined a confederacy led by the Magyars. It has been speculated that "Hungarian" derives from the Turkic word "Onogur", or "Ten Arrows", referring to seven Finno-Ugric tribes and the three tribes of the Kabars. In the closing years of the ninth century the Khazars and Oghuz allied to attack the Pechenegs, who had been attacking both nations. The Pechenegs were driven westward, where they forced out the Magyars (Hungarians) who had previously inhabited the Don-Dnieper basin in vassalage to Khazaria. Under the leadership of the chieftain Lebedias and later Arpad, the Hungarians moved west into modern-day Hungary. The departure of the Hungarians led to an unstable power vacuum and the loss of Khazar control over the steppes north of the Black Sea. ===Rus and Byzantine hostility=== John_I_Tzimisces,_as_described_by_Leo_the_Deacon.''">Image:Lebedev meeting.jpg|thumb|Svyatoslav (seated in the boat), the destroyer of the Khazar Khaganate.
From Klavdiy Lebedev (1852-1916), ''Svyatoslav's meeting with John I Tzimisces, as described by Leo the Deacon.'' The alliance with the Byzantines began to collapse in the early 900s, possibly as a result of the conversion to Judaism. Byzantine and Khazar forces may have clashed in the Crimea, and by the 940s Constantine VII Porphyrogentius 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. The Rus warlords Oleg and Sviatoslav I of Kiev launched several wars against the Khazar khaganate, often with Byzantine connivance. The Schechter Letter relates the story of a campaign against Khazaria by HLGW (Oleg) around 941; this calls into question the timeline of the Primary Russian Chronicle and other related works. Sviatoslav finally succeeded in destroying Khazar imperial power in the 960s. The Khazar fortresses of Sarkel and Tmutarakan fell to the Rus in 965, with the capital city of Atil following circa 967 or 969. ==Khazars outside of Khazaria== Khazar communities existed outside of those areas under Khazar overlordship. Many Khazar mercenaries served in the armies of the Caliphate and other Islamic states. Documents from medieval Constantinople attest to a Khazar community mingled with the Jews of the suburb of Pera. Christian Khazars also lived in Constantinople, and some served in its armies. The Patriarch Photius I of Constantinople was once angrily referred to by the Emperor as "Khazar-face", though whether this refers to his actual lineage or is a generic insult is unclear. Abraham ibn Daud reported Khazar rabbinical students, or rabbinical students who were the descendents of Khazars, in 12th century Spain. Jews from Kiev and elsewhere in Russia, who may or may not have been Khazars, were reported in France, Germany and England. The Kabars who settled in Hungary in the late ninth and early tenth centuries may have included Jews among their number. Many Khazar Jews probably fled foreign conquest into Hungary and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. There they likely merged with local Jews and ensuing waves of Jewish immigration from Germany and Western Europe. They most likely did not constitute the dominant group within Eastern European Jewry, as Arthur Koestler maintained (see below). Polish legends speak of Jews being present in Poland before the establishment of the Polish monarchy. Polish coins from the 12th and 13th centuries sometimes bore Slavic inscriptions written in the Hebrew alphabet [http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/images.jsp?artid=479&letter=R&imgid=1665] [http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/images.jsp?artid=479&letter=R&imgid=1666] though connecting these coins to Khazar influence is purely a matter of speculation. ==Late references to the Khazars== There is debate as to the temporal and geographic extent of Khazar polities following Sviatoslav I of Kiev's sack of Atil in 967/9, or even whether any such states existed. The Khazars may have retained control over some areas in the Caucasus for another two centuries, but sparse historical records make this difficult to confirm. The evidence of later Khazar polities includes: *Sviatoslav did not occupy the Volga basin after he destroyed Atil, and departed relatively quickly to embark on his campaign in Bulgaria. The permanent conquest of the Volga basin seems to have been left to later waves of steppe peoples like the Kipchaks. ===Jewish sources=== *A letter in Hebrew dated Jewish calendar (985/986) refers to "our lord David, the Khazar prince" who lived in Taman. The letter said that this David was visited by Russians to ask about religious matters- this could be connected to the Vladimir conversion which took place during the same time period. Taman was a Russian principality around 988, so this successor state (if that is what it was) may have been conquered altogether. However, it should be noted that the authenticity of this letter, the Mandgelis Document, was questioned by such scholars as D. M. Dunlop. *Abraham ibn Daud, a twelfth-century Spanish rabbi, reported meeting Khazar rabbinical students in Toledo, and that they informed him that the "remnant of them is of the rabbinic faith." This reference indicates that some Khazars maintained ethnic, if not political, autonomy at least two centuries after the sack of Atil. *Petachiah of Ratisbon, a thirteenth-century rabbi and traveler, reported traveling through "Khazaria", though he gave few details of its inhabitants except to say that they lived amidst desolation in perpetual mourning. :He further related: ::''Whilst at Baghdad [I] saw ambassadors from the kings of Meshech, for Magog'' (n.b.- medieval Christian writers said that the Khazars lived in the land of Gog and Magog) ''is about ten days' journey from thence. The land extends as far as the Mountains of Darkness'' (a term often used to describe the Caucasus). ''Beyond the Mountains of Darkness are the sons of Jonadab, son of Rechab'' (an official in the court of the Judahite king Josiah). ''To the seven kings of Meshech an angel appeared in a dream, bidding them to give up the laws and statutes, and to embrace the laws of Moses, son of Amram. If not, he threatened to lay waste their country. However, they delayed until the angel commenced to lay waste their country, when the kings of Meshech and all the inhabitants of their countries became proselytes, and they sent to the head of the academy'' (i.e., the Gaon of Sura or Pumbedita) ''a request to send them some disciples of the wise. Every disciple that is poor goes there to teach them the law and Babylonian Talmud. From the land of Egypt the disciples go there to study. He saw the ambassadors visit the grave of [the prophet] Ezekiel..."'' :The account of the conversion of the "seven kings of Meshech" is extremely similar to the accounts of the Khazar conversion given in the Kuzari, and in Khazar Correspondence. It is possible that Meshech refers to the Khazars, or to some Judaized polity influenced by them. Arguments against this possibility include the reference to "seven kings" (though this, in turn, could refer to seven successor tribes or state micropolities). ===Muslim sources=== *Ibn Hawqal and al-Muqaddasi refer to Atil after 969, indicating that it may have been rebuilt. Al-Biruni (mid-1000s) reported that Atil was in ruins, and did not mention the later city of Saqsin which was built nearby, so it is possible that this new Atil was only destroyed in the middle of the eleventh century. Even assuming al-Biruni's report was not an anachronism, there is no evidence that this "new" Atil was populated by Khazars rather than by Pechenegs or a different tribe. *Ibn al-Athir, who wrote around 13th century, described "the raid of Fadhlun the Kurd against the Khazars". Fadhlun the Kurd has been identified as al-Fadhl ibn Muhammad al-Shaddadi, who ruled Arran and other parts of Azerbaijan in the 1030's. According to the account he attacked the Khazars but had to flee when they ambushed his army and killed 10,000 of his men. Two of the great early 20th century scholars on Eurasian nomads, Marquart and Barthold, disagreed about this account. Marquart believed that this incident refers to some Khazar remnant that had reverted to paganism and nomadic life. Barthold, (and more recently, Kevin Brook), took a much more skeptical approach and said that ibn al-Athir must have been referring to Georgians or Abkhazians. There is no evidence to decide the issue one way or the other. ===Russian sources=== *In 986 Khazar Jews were present at Vladimir I of Kiev's disputation to decide on the prospective religion of the Kievian Rus. Whether these were Jews who had settled in Kiev or emissaries from some Jewish Khazar remnant state is unclear. The whole incident is regarded by some scholars as a fabrication, but the reference to Khazar Jews (after the destruction of the Khaganate) is still relevant. Heinrich Graetz alleged that these were Jewish missionaries from the Crimea, but provided no reference to primary sources for his allegation. *In 1023 the Russian Chronicle reports that Mstislav (one of Vladimir's sons) marched against his brother Yaroslav with an army that included "Khazars and Kasogs". Kasogs were an early Circassian people. "Khazars" in this reference is considered by most to be intended in the generic sense, but some have questioned why the reference reads "Khazars and Kasogs", when "Khazars" as a generic would have been sufficient. Even if the reference is to Khazars, of course, it does not follow that there was a Khazar state in this period. They could have been Khazars under the rule of the Rus. *A Kievian prince named Oleg (not to be confused with Oleg of Kiev) was reportedly kidnapped by "Khazars" in 1078 and shipped off to Constantinople, although most scholars believe that this is a reference to the Kipchaks. ===Byzantine, Georgian and Armenian sources=== *There is the joint attack on the Khazar state in Kerch, ruled by Georgius Tzul, by the Byzantines and Russians in 1016, documented by Kedrenos. Following 1016, there are more ambiguous references to Khazars that may or may not be using "Khazars" in a general sense (the Byzantines and Arabs, for example, called all steppe people "Turks"; before them the Ancient Rome had called them all "Scythians"). *The Jewish Khazars were also mentioned in a Georgian chronicle as a group that inhabited Derbent in the late 1100s. *At least one 12th-century Byzantine source refers to tribes practicing Moses law and living in the Balkans; see Khalyzians. ===Western sources=== *Giovanni di Plano Carpini, a thirteenth century Papal legate to the court of the Mongol Khan Guyuk, gave a list of the nations the Mongols had conquered in his account. One of them, listed among tribes of the Caucasus, Pontic steppe and the Caspian region, was the "Brutakhi, who are Jews." The identity of the Brutakhi is unclear. Giovanni later refers to the Brutakhi as shaving their heads. Though Giovanni refers to them as Kipchaks, they may have been a remnant of the Khazar people. Alternatively, they may have been Kipchak converts to Judaism (possibly connected to the Krymchaks or the Crimean Karaites). ==Debate== ===Date and extent of the conversion=== The date of the conversion, and whether it occurred as one event or as a sequence of events over time, is widely disputed. The issues surrounding this controversy are discussed above. The number of Khazars who converted to Judaism is also hotly contested. D.M. Dunlop was of the opinion that only the upper class converted; this was the majority view until relatively recently. The relatively sudden shift in burial customs during the mid 800s suggests a more widespread conversion, which hypothesis has been recently championed by Kevin A. Brook. ===Koestler's theory=== Some historians, and most famously the non-historian novelist Arthur Koestler (in a work, ''The Thirteenth Tribe'', containing unsubstantiated speculation and appropriated historical accounts), have proposed that Jewish Khazars are the ancestors of most or all Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jews, but the idea is the subject of much debate. Recent genetic studies have demonstrated that Middle Eastern elements dominate the Ashkenazi male line (see Y-chromosomal Aaron), but the female line appears to have a substantially different history. Some have argued this suggests Middle Eastern men marrying into local European communities [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F50C15F83F5D0C778DDDAC0894DA404482][http://www.khazaria.com/genetics/abstracts.html] meaning that Ashkenazim are either not related to Jewish Khazars or that Jewish Khazars represent only a small element of Ashkenazi ancestry rather than the dominant element suggested by Koestler. Others critics of the Khazar-Ashkenazi theory have suggested these ideas have become political and anti-Zionism in nature. The Khazar theory has been adopted by some anti-Zionists, especially in the Arab world; such proponents of the theory argue that if Ashkenazi Jews are primarily Khazar in origin, then they would be exempt from God the Father promise of Canaan to Jews as recorded in the Bible, were one to ignore that the promise also applies to converts, and the fact that over half of Israeli Jews are not Ashkenazi. Some have countered that such charges of a political motive are not relevant to the core of the argument; in any event, Koestler himself was emphatically pro-Zionist. At other times, the Khazar myth has served as a catalyst for state antisemitism in the Soviet Union and a justification for conquest by Russian nationalists. [http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/5425.html#10] Others have claimed Khazar origins for such groups as the Crimean Karaites, Krymchaks, Mountain Jews, and Gruzim. There is little evidence to support any of these theories, although it is likely that some Khazar descendants found their way into these communities. == See also == *Avraham Firkovitch *Bulan (Khazar) *Dictionary of the Khazars *Georgius Tzul *Hisdai ibn Shaprut *Khazar Correspondence *Khazar language *Khazars in fiction *Kiev *Kipchak *Kievian Letter *List of Khazar rulers *Saqsin *Schechter Letter *Soviet Union ==Resources== *Kevin Alan Brook, ''The Jews of Khazaria,'' 1st ed., Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 1999 *[http://www.khazaria.com/khazar-diaspora.html Essay: Are Russian Jews Descended from the Khazars?] *[http://www.sefarad.org/publication/lm/054/page27.html Kevin Alan Brook, "Tales about Jewish Khazars in the Byzantine Empire Resolve an Old Debate". ''Los Muestros'', No. 54, p. 27.] *Douglas M. Dunlop, ''The History of the Jewish Khazars,'' Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1954. *Norman Golb and Omeljan Pritsak, ''Khazarian Hebrew Documents of the Tenth Century.'' Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1982. ==External links== *[http://www.khazaria.com Khazaria.com] *[http://www.khazaria.com/khazar-biblio/toc.html Bibliography of Khazar Studies] *[http://www.khazaria.com/khazar-quotes.html Primary sources on the Conversion] *[http://www.hostkingdom.net/siberia.html Eurasian Nomads] *[http://www.geocities.com/ayatoles/ Khazar Historic Maps] *[http://www.geocities.com/jewishwarriors/khazar.html Norman Finkelshteyn's Jewish Warriors - The Khazar Khaganate] *[http://www.geocities.com/jewishwarriors/caution.html Caveats in Researching the Khazars] *[http://www.geocities.com/jewishwarriors/critkhaz.html Criticisms of Khazar Studies by Norman Finkelshteyn] Jewish history Russian history Eastern European history Euroasian history Turkic peoples Khazars Crimea Caucasus
__TOC__ == Dictionary of the Khazars == Mention should be made of Pavic's book ''Dictionary of the Khazars.'' User:128.196.226.101 17:34, 2 May 2005 (UTC) :It is, in Khazars in fiction. --User:Briangotts 19:32, 2 May 2005 (UTC) == ... == How many of today's Jews are actually descended from the Khazars? -- :SJK : I am not sure if anyone knows. I do know that there were some interesting biological tests done which showed that there has been much less intermarriage and conversion than anyone had previously imagined. Some scientists compared some biological traits that were markers for certain genes, specifically the fingerprint whorls, and found that most of today's modern day Jews matched the patterns for biological descendents of middle-eastern semites. There is an article on this (explaining the test, and logic of the arguement) entitled "Who are the Jews" by Jared Diamon, in "Natural History", volume 102, No. 11, Nov. 1993. :RK If Khazars really converted to Judaism and took the apellation, "Son of Abraham," then they really were Jews -- and their descendents really are Jews. I am sure that in the long history of the Children of Israel, many many people have been adopted into the family -- and it would be wrong, both morally and legally, to consider them any less members of the family. There may be some scientific merit to asking hat percentage of Jewish ancesors today came from where. But as far as "Jewish" concerns, it doesn't matter whether a small or high percentage come from the land of the Khazars or elsewhere. As long as the mothers were Jewish, or they converted, they are all Jews. The notion of some pure bloodline smacks of racialist thinking, and may even be racist. But even were it benign, I just do not think it makes sense in the context of Jewish beliefs about being Jewish. An admitedly very hypothetical example will illustrate my point. My family could have a practice of marrying only non-Jewish men. My father, three of my grandparents, seven of my greatgrandparents, and so on could all be non-Jews. I would have a very low percentage of "Jewish blood." But by the law of my people I would be 100% Jewish. SR : Genetically, it is now known that between 70 and 80 percent of paternal Ashkenazi lineages are from the Middle East, and that these lineages are related to Palestinian Arabs, Kurds, Anatolian Turks, Armenians, Syrians, and Lebanese. This leaves only about 25 percent of lineages which come from other sources (like Slavic and Khazar). The Eu 19 chromosomes are among the markers for a East-European as opposed to Israelite paternal lineage, and it is found among about 13 percent of Ashkenazi Jewish men. See the study by the Israeli scientist Ariella Oppenheim and her colleagues, "The Y Chromosome Pool of Jews as Part of the Genetic Landscape of the Middle East", The American Journal of Human Genetics 69:5 (November 2001): 1095-1112. In maternal lineages the Slavic and/or Khazar components may be more significant than in the paternal lineages. Alexander Beider's book "A Dictionary of Ashkenazic Given Names" (2001) goes into a lot of detail about the Slavic-speaking Jews who lived in the Lithuanian Grand Duchy before the Yiddish-speaking Jews merged with them. They had East Slavic names like Kasper, Bogdan, Bogdana, Golosh, Ryzhko, Samodelka, Il'ya, and Domanya. Beider concluded that while we can't tell for sure, some of these East Slavic Jews could have been part-Khazar. But he also presents evidence that the Slavic Jews were numerically inferior to the Yiddish Jews. So historical and genetic evidence coincide. -- KAB The above interesting quote does not make it clear that the same genetic fact may be said for almost anyone with European ancestry since it has been proven Europeans have a near-eastern genetic origin. This is besides the only really interesting relevant results ironically being for male lines which are not recognised by predominant "Jewish" law as valid lines of descent. Maybe Khazars are in part perhaps a bit of red-herring but the Avar case seems -much to the disappointment of a few Hungarian nationalists- to hold some answers User:Zestauferov ---- in 10th century there were no Russians. Rusins. Not Russians. :Were Ruthenes subject to the Varangian Russ? == Khazars'descent == You quote two books: 1) The thirteenth tribe by Arthur Koestler 2) The Jews of Khazaria by Kevin Alan Brook Both are quite interesting but to make it short: A. Koestler tries to demonstrate that in the present day askhenaz communities, the Khazar influence is predominant with no interferences from western european Jewish communities who were nearly extinct at the time and just could not initiate any mass migration to eastern europe. K.A. Brook, on the other hand, does not try any demonstration but only states in just a few lines that the present days Askhenaz Jews may, to some extent, have some Khazars ancestors but that this ascendancy was greatly influenced by migrants coming from western europ. Why not? I know that the subject is so sensitive that it is nearly a taboo, but, nevertheless when you try to find out hard facts about populations history (with no interests in the present days political implications)this is far from satisfactory. After all you being an encyclopedia should you not try to sort the problem out and help your visitors? I am reverting Mikkalai's last deletion. It is always better to rephrase something which doesn't seem right rather than to completely censor the opinon just because it doesn't fit with our own. No hard feelings Mikkalai, but how can NPOV be achieved if people keep ommitting the POVs they don't like? Skillful editing involves taking two conflicting POVs and making them fit well together in the same article. Simply deleting them is the quick & easy way out.User:Zestauferov 05:25, 14 May 2004 (UTC) : Encyclopedia is about facts, not POVs. One cannot put into 'pedia every opinion on every subject. Go ahead, write an article in a magazine, with proofs and references, not just wild guesses. You may go ahead with obscure habiru, eberites, ets., but leave cossacks out of your wordplays, about which you seem to know much less. User:Mikkalai 05:51, 14 May 2004 (UTC) Nice to meet you too Mikkalai. Check the history, I had nothing to do with the cossack thing. In fact I consider it personally to be erroneous, however, just because I have never come accross that argument and it seems totally wrong according to what I know, it does not make me a master of the Khazar question and I am not in a position to correct it. I suspect neither are you. The best thing to do is make a request next to the suspect info for references. If you do not replace it in such a way I am sure someone else will. All the best User:Zestauferov 05:48, 16 May 2004 (UTC) You are right. My fault. The following section is removed from the body. :--Linguistics-- :''The word 'Khazar' is theorised to be the root of several other words, including cossack, hussar and 'ketzer' (an derogatory German term for a heretic), although the latter is more probably derived from the medieval Cathari gnostics. Some theories also consider Khazars to be ancestors of Terek cossack.'' First, it doesn't correspond to its title, second, it is not good to put each and every marginal theory in 'pedia, especially without refernces. It could be of encyclopedic value to know that such and such luminary thought this and that, but, I can think of quite a few "some theories" myself, basing on supereficial similarity of words only, without any historical traces of usage. User:Mikkalai 15:28, 16 May 2004 (UTC) : By the way, right here on by bookshelf sits a pretty serious article that endeavors to prove that Ilya Muromets was in fact a Jew (i.e., of Khazar descent). Very interesting, isn't it? But I have no desire to put it into wikipedia.User:Mikkalai 15:31, 16 May 2004 (UTC) == online version of Arthur Koestler - The Thirteenth Tribe == Dear friends, maybe you know already that there is an online version of [http://www.christusrex.org/www2/koestler/index.html Arthur Koestler - The Thirteenth Tribe] available. Regards User:Gangleri 11:38, 2004 Oct 9 (UTC) :It appears that that site may contravene copyright laws; perhaps it's best to avoid it. User:Jayjg 05:03, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC) However, we don't want to remove the book from the references section, as someone has just done. Whether or not one agrees with its conclusions, Koestler's book is one of only a handful of books on the Khazars available in English. Hence it should be listed here. User:Isomorphic 20:33, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC) :The issue I raised was aiding and abetting copyright violation, not the books contents or conclusions. User:JayjgUser_talk:Jayjg 20:51, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC) ::Right. I wasn't really responding to you, but to an edit made to the article by someone else. He made a bunch of edits at once, including removing Koestler's book from the References section. Sorry I wasn't clear. User:Isomorphic 21:03, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC) ::: Koestler's book was totally unscientific, and is not a valid source to cite. Its "theories", such as they are, have long since been disproven by genetic testing. His historical sections were plaigarized wholesale from Dunlop, whose work is cited here. --User:Briangotts 03:51, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC) ==Merge/redistribute== Incidentally, while some people are paying attention to this article I'd like to point out the Khazaria article. I'm not sure how material should be distributed between Khazars and Khazaria, but the two should be a bit better integrated, or maybe even merged. User:Isomorphic 21:05, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC) :Good point. User:JayjgUser_talk:Jayjg 21:06, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC) ::I was thinking that maybe the information on rulers should go into the Khazaria article. There's a lot there, and it's a ibt overwhelming where it is, but Khazaria is a shorter article and it might help flesh it out. User:Isomorphic 21:12, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC) :::Not a bad idea at all. User:JayjgUser_talk:Jayjg 21:22, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC) :::Actually, on second thought, now I'm thinking we should wait until Briangott finishes completely re-writing this article, and then re-visit the question. User:JayjgUser_talk:Jayjg 19:57, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC) :::: I have merged the articles in question. Thanks for bringing the Khazaria article to my attention. --User:Briangotts 03:52, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC) == Whither the Khazarische Jüden? == I'm going to be so bold as to propose something that is not only "New Research" but also not even mildly NPOV. I think the vast majority of Ashkenazim are of western European extraction, and that a very small minority of their number, especially prominent among the Litvaks, are descendants of the Khazarim. I also happen to believe that the fullest legitimate modern expression of Khazar Judaism is found, not among the Mizrachim of the Kurdish villages, but among the Tats and Gruzim of Azerbaijan and Kartveli Georgia. Another group (and this will perhaps draw criticism and create controversy) that I feel are closely connected with the Khazarim, are the Qara'im. Not only is their rise to prominence co-chronological with the conversion of the Khazarim, but their greatest descendancy is found among the Karaim of the Krimea and Lithuania. I think the historical rôle of the Khazars in Judaism, by Jews has been greatly underestimated, while its rôle by antisemites has been greatly overestimated, in completely different realms... User:TShilo12 10:52, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC) : I agree with you on some points, but as long as this new research is not backed by an authoritative source, we should keep it to the Talk page. User:Humus sapiens←User:Humus sapiens←User talk:Humus sapiens 11:09, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC) :: We are concerned here with facts, not beliefs. The claims that Mountain Jews, Georgian Jews, and/or Karaites are descended from Khazars have to be subjected to the same level of scrutiny as when this claim is applied to Ashkenazi Jews. So far the DNA evidence does not support the claim with regard to Mountain Jews, while to my knowledge no data has yet been released on the DNA of Crimean Karaites and Lithuanian Karaites, and Georgian Jews have DNA that apparently matches non-Jewish peoples of Georgia and environs. There is no reason to believe that Mountain Jews have any more, or any less, Khazar ancestry than Ashkenazi Jews. The Karaites' settlement in eastern Europe is not co-chronological with the era of the Khazar empire; Karaites first appear in historical sources geographically within eastern Europe only after Khazaria fell; the Karaite movement developed in the Middle East during Khazar times. -KAB == interwikiconflict == * Please see :en:Wikipedia:Template:Interwikiconflict#ru:.26.231061.3B.26.231072.3B.26.231079.3B.26.231072.3B.26.231088.3B.26.231099.3B_and_ru:.26.231061.3B.26.231072.3B.26.231079.3B.26.231072.3B.26.231088.3B.26.231089.3B.26.231082.3B.26.231080.3B.26.231081.3B_.26.231082.3B.26.231072.3B.26.231075.3B.26.231072.3B.26.231085.3B.26.231072.3B.26.231090.3B about :ru:Хазары and :ru:Хазарский каганат. Thanks in advance! Best regards User:Gangleri | [ Th] | :Gangleri 09:12, 2005 Mar 16 (UTC) == Foreign-language article links == How come they don't appear at the end of the article? Is there a way to make them appear? :They aren't supposed to appear at the bottom. Interlanguage links have their own behavior. I use a non-default Wikipedia skin where they appear at the top of the screen. I think the default skin has them appear on the left sidebar. User:Isomorphic 21:03, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC) ::Incidentally, where they are placed in the article's source code doesn't affect where they display. It's just Wikipedia convention to put them at the bottom to make them easy to find. User:Isomorphic 21:05, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC) ==Proper adjective== is "khazaric" the correct adjective to use in association with the khazars?User:Gringo300 22:04, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC) :From what I've read (which is actually pretty extensive), the four adjectival forms I've encountered are, in order of frequency, "Khazar", "Khazarian", "Khazari" and "Khazaric". The selection of which of these four as the "correct adjective" seems to be the preference of the individual author. Without actually polling the popularity of each of these adjectival forms, I'd say "Khazar" comprises about 60%, "Khazarian" about 25%, "Khazari" about 12% and "Khazaric" about 3%. As a cursory study of Google hits will demonstrate, "Khazaric" is a relatively rare form, and I'm guessing that it's likely that a study of the literature using that form will demonstrate a consistent viewpoint among its authors. User:TShilo12 User talk:TShilo12 08:52, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC) ::Most scholarly sources use "Khazar" as both a nown and an adjective. There is nothing grammatically incorrect about the other options. --User:Briangotts 13:41, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC) ==See also links== I removed a couple links from the "See also" section. That section is mostly intended to link related articles that aren't already linked elsewhere in the article. Some of the links there had originally been unique, but were now duplicated elsewhere due to the major expansion of this article (thanks Brian!) User:Isomorphic 19:06, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC) Thanks! That totally slipped my mind. --User:Briangotts 19:17, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC) ==Intro== I just rewrote the intro in an attempt to answer the "so what" question quickly and succinctly. If in doing so I've introduced any inaccuracy, please correct it. User:Isomorphic 03:21, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC) ==Khazar origin== Um, yes, there is controversy. Certainly some anti-Jewish groups use Khazar descent as a propaganda tool, but that doesn't mean it's ''false''. While the Khazars do not make up a majority of the Ashkhenazi bloodline as was once claimed, it is near certain that at least a few Khazars went to Europe. There's no historical record of genocide, and they didn't just vanish into thin air, so lots of Khazars went somewhere. The question is to what ''extent'' the Khazars mixed with the rest of the Jewish community. User:Isomorphic 05:17, 16 May 2005 (UTC) It doesnt matter how many. They do not make a substantial part of Ashkenazic Jewry and they are now a part of the Jewish people. If they do not make a majority, there should be no "controversy". It deserves a mention that they are a part of the Jewish nation and Ashkanazic Jewry, but it doesnt deserve the controversy title. User:Guy Montag 06:49, 16 May 2005 (UTC) :I didn't mean to imply that there is major controversy among scholars; rather, that there is a lot of politics and strong feelings around the issue. After all, you just finished calling the whole thing a myth propagated by neo-nazis. I wouldn't really call Arthur Koestler a neo-nazi, considering that he was Jewish and actually thought (for some reason) that if he could show that Ashkhenazi Jews were not actually Hebrews, it would reduce antisemitism. User:Isomorphic 14:40, 16 May 2005 (UTC) I understand. I hope you didnt take my edits as an attack on you. What I should have wrote is that neo nazis have hijacked this claim for themselves as an argument to cast doubt on Jewish claims to Israel by saying that the Jews who are there are not the descendants of the "real Jews" who vanished or as they like to claim, are White Anglo Saxons, or some other rubbish. Along with that there is an entire theological basis for who is Jewish which has little to do with genetics and more to do with the Jewish way of life. I hope you accept the modification to the claim. User:Guy Montag 19:45, 16 May 2005 (UTC) :Don't worry, I didn't take it as an attack. I'm still not completely satisfied; I want it to mention the politicized nature of the issue. I'll try another edit. Feel free to edit what I write. User:Isomorphic 19:55, 16 May 2005 (UTC) ::By the way, I'm not trying to endorse anything. I just think that the intro should mention the political aspects of the issue, since that's the context in which most people might see it. People rarely care about the finer points of the history of dead civilizations unless they're trying to use them for politics of one sort or another. User:Isomorphic 20:03, 16 May 2005 (UTC) I think that your additions are satisfactory. Do you happen to know among whom there is a heated discussion? The reason I ask is, that if it is only among fringe types it should be mentioned, if not, it is fine as it is. User:Guy Montag 20:42, 16 May 2005 (UTC) :Arthur Koestler's book was widely read, and is still one of only three books on the Khazars in my college library. So the Khazar-origin theory quite is well-known. Is that what you meant? User:Isomorphic 20:49, 16 May 2005 (UTC) Do mainstream professors hold his theories as legitimate or do only fringe types? i think this is a better way to phrase the question. User:Guy Montag 21:29, 16 May 2005 (UTC) ::I think Guy is pointing out that the only people who push Koestler's theory are non-scientists with an agenda. Which, now that I think of it, applies perfectly to Koestler himself. User:JayjgUser_talk:Jayjg 21:29, 16 May 2005 (UTC) Exactly what I was going for. Thanks Jayjg. User:Guy Montag 21:30, 16 May 2005 (UTC) :I don't think anybody mainstream thinks that the Khazars make up a majority of the Ashkhenazi bloodline. However, there is serious support for the Khazars being a non-trivial minority. Kevin Alan Brook believes this, for example. User:Isomorphic 21:40, 16 May 2005 (UTC) ::True enough, at least on the male side. The problem is it's really hard to figure out what percentage that "non-trivial minority" actually is, as we don't have any examples of Khazar DNA. User:JayjgUser_talk:Jayjg 22:06, 16 May 2005 (UTC) :::Yup. I was just clarifying that the issue isn't completely closed, that it's not ''just'' a fringe theory, and that it's appropriate to mention it. Even Koestler's theory wasn't ridiculous when he proposed it, it just doesn't appear to be true given modern research. User:Isomorphic 22:20, 16 May 2005 (UTC) ::::Koestler's book wasn't serious work. He had an agenda, and he mostly plagiarized actual historians. User:JayjgUser_talk:Jayjg 22:37, 16 May 2005 (UTC) :::::Never said his book was good. Just that the theory, at the time, wasn't ridiculous. Anyway, this is veering into side discussion. I think nobody objects to the current wording. User:Isomorphic 22:46, 16 May 2005 (UTC) Like I said, I dont object. I was further inquiring to see if any more additions are necessary. It seems that we came to the conclusion that they are not. User:Guy Montag 05:45, 17 May 2005 (UTC) == Formatting question == Is there a way to put an image next to the TOC, under the History of Russia box, to fill in that blank space? I think it would look better. I have a couple images I'd like to add. --User:Briangotts 21:36, 17 May 2005 (UTC) :Possibly. I usually just play with this stuff. Sometimes it even works. :-) User:JayjgUser_talk:Jayjg 22:31, 17 May 2005 (UTC) :Yes. I took a minute or so and played around with it. Check out this diff [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Khazars&diff=prev&oldid=13858942]. You'll notice the image appears ''under'' the template, which still leaves a bit of space, but at least it's not that huge gaping wound. Don't use that image, obviously, as it fits in much better down further in the text, from whence I ripped the wikiformatting for it. :-p User:TShilo12 User talk:TShilo12 00:28, May 18, 2005 (UTC) ::Cool, thanks! I will find something appropriate when I have a chance. --User:Briangotts 14:17, 18 May 2005 (UTC) :::How's that? --User:Briangotts 13:50, 20 May 2005 (UTC) ::::It looks a bit smallish, but it's probably good--I have my monitor set on pretty high resolution. Good work. User:TShilo12 User talk:TShilo12 15:04, May 20, 2005 (UTC) ::::Looks good to me. User:JayjgUser_talk:Jayjg 16:09, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
Articles relating to Khazar history, literature, and culture. Turkic peoples Jewish history
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The Khazars were a semi-nomad Turkic people from Central Asia, many of whom converted to Judaism. The name 'Khazar' seems to be tied to a Turkic languages verb meaning "wandering". In the 7th century AD they founded an independent Khanate in the Northern Caucasus along the Caspian Sea, where over time Judaism became the state religion. At their height, they and their tributaries controlled much of what is today southern Russia, western Kazakhstan, eastern Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and the Crimea. The Khazars were important allies of the Byzantine Empire, and were a major regional power at their height. They fought a series of successful wars against the Arab Caliphates, probably preventing an Arab invasion of Eastern Europe. By the end of the tenth century, their power was broken by the Kievan Rus, and the Khazars largely disappeared from history. The possible Khazar contribution to the bloodline of modern Ashkenazi Jews is politically sensitive and has been the subject of much discussion, but most geneticists now believe that it is not substantial. ==Origins and prehistory== The origins of the Khazars are unclear. Following their conversion to Judaism, the Khazars themselves traced their origins to Kozar, a son of Togarmeh. Togarmeh is mentioned in the Hebrew scriptures as a grandson of Japheth. It is unlikely, however, that he was regarded as an ancestor before the introduction of Biblical traditions to Khazaria. Some historians have looked for possible connections between the Khazars and the lost tribes of Israel, but modern scholars generally consider them to be Turks who migrated from the East. Scholars in the USSR considered the Khazars to be an indigenous people of the North Caucasus. Some scholars, such as D.M. Dunlop, considered the Khazars to be connected with a Uyghur tribe called K'o-sa in Chinese sources. However, the Khazar language appears to have been an Hun tongue, similar to that spoken by the early Bulgars. Therefore, a Hunnish origin has also been postulated. Since the Turkic peoples were never ethnically homogenous, these ideas need not be deemed mutually exclusive. It is likely that the Khazar nation was made up of tribes from various ethnic backgrounds, as steppe nations traditionally absorbed those they conquered. Armenian chronicles contain references to the Khazars as early as the late second century. These are generally regarded as anachronisms, and most scholars believe that they actually refer to Sarmatians or Scythians. Priscus relates that one of the nations in the Hunnish confederacy was called Akatziroi. Their king was named Karadach or Karidachus. Some, going on the similarity between Akatziroi and "Ak-Khazar" (see below), have speculated that the Akatziroi were early proto-Khazars. Dmitri Vasil'ev of Astrakhan State University recently hypothesized that the Khazars moved in to the Pontic steppe region only in the late 500s, and originally lived in Transoxiana. According to Vasil'ev, Khazar populations remained behind in Transoxiana under Pecheneg and Oghuz suzerainty, possibly remaining in contact with the main body of their people. ==Tribes== The Khazars' tribal structure is not well understood. They appear, like many Turkic nations, to have been divided between Ak-Khazars ("White Khazars") and Kara-Khazars ("Black Khazars"). Writers such as Graetz mistakenly believed that these were racial designations; in fact, such distinctions have nothing to do with physical appearance or racial identification. The White-Black distinction is a common social division in Eurasian nomadic tribes, with the "White" group representing the nobility, warrior elite and ruling classes, and the "Black" group making up the commoners, tradesmen, etc. Peter Golden speculated that the Khazar ethnos was a conglomerate of Hun and common Turkic nations, including the Sabirs and North Caucasian Huns as well as elements of the Gokturks. ==Rise== ===Formation of the Khazar state=== [[Image:Gokturkut.jpg|right|thumb|200px|Map of the Western (purple) and Eastern (blue) Gokturk khaganates at their height, c. 600 CE. Lighter areas show direct rule; darker areas show spheres of influence.]] Early Khazar history is intimately tied with that of the Gokturks empire, founded when the Ashina clan overthrew the Juan Juan in AD 552. With the collapse of the Gokturk empire / tribal confederation due to internal conflict in the seventh century, the western half of the Turk empire itself split into two confederations, the Bulgars, led by the Dulo clan, and the Khazars, led by the Ashina clan, the traditional rulers of the Gok Turk empire. By 670, the Khazars had broken the Bulgar confederation, leaving the three Bulgar remnants on the Volga Bulgaria, the Black Sea and the Danube. The first significant appearance of the Khazars in history is their aid to the campaign of the Byzantine Empire emperor Heraclius against the Sassanid Iranns. The Khazar ruler Ziebel (sometimes identified as Tong Yabghu Khagan of the West Turks) aided the Byzantines in overrunning Georgia (Caucasus). A marriage was even contemplated between Ziebel's son and Heraclius' daughter, but never took place. During the 7th century and 8th century the Khazar fought a series of wars against the Umayyad Caliphate, which was attempting simultaneously to expand its influence into Transoxiana and the Caucasus. The first war was fought in the early 650 and ended with the defeat of an Arab force led by Abd ar-Rahman ibn Rabiah outside the Khazar town of Balanjar, after a battle in which both sides used siege engines on the others' troops. A number of Russian sources give the name of a Khazar khagan, Irbis, from this period, and describe him as a scion of the Gokturk royal house, the Ashina. Whether Irbis ever existed is open to debate, as is the issue of whether he can be identified with one of the many Gokturk rulers of the same name. Several further conflicts erupted in the decades that followed, with Arab attacks and Khazar raids into Kurdistan and Iran. There is evidence from the account of al-Tabari that the Khazars formed a united front with the remnants of the Gok Turks in Transoxiana. ===Khazars and Byzantium=== Khazar overlordship over most of the Crimea dates back to the late 600s. In the mid 700s the rebellious Crimean Goths were put down and their city, Doros (modern Mangup-Kale) occupied. A Khazar tudun was resident at Cherson in the 690s, despite the fact that this town was nominally subject to the Byzantine Empire. They are also known to have been allied with the Byzantine Empire during at least part of the 700s. In 704/705 Justinian II, exiled in Cherson, escaped into Khazar territory and married the sister of the Khagan, Busir. With the aid of his wife, he escaped from Busir, who was intriguing against him with the usurper Tiberius III, murdering two Khazar officials in the process. He fled to Bulgaria, whose Khan Tervel helped him regain the throne. The Khazars later provided aid to the rebel general Bardanes, who seized the throne in 711 as Emperor Bardanes. The Byzantine emperor Leo III married his son Constantine (later Constantine V Kopronymous) to the Khazar princess Tzitzak (daughter of the Khagan Bihar (Khazar)) as part of the alliance between the two empires. Tzitzak, who was baptized as Irene, became famous for her wedding gown, which started a fashion craze in Constantinople for a type of robe (for men) called ''tzitzakion''. Their son Leo (Leo IV) would be better known as "Leo the Khazar". ===Second Khazar-Arab war=== [[Image:Califate 750.jpg|thumb|320px|left|Expansion of the Caliphate to 750 CE.
From The Historical Atlas by William R. Shepherd, 1923
Courtesy of The General Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin]] Hostilities broke out again with the Caliphate in the 710s, with raids back and forth across the Caucasus but few decisive battles. The Khazars, led by a prince named Barjik, invaded northwestern Iran and defeated the Umayyad forces at Ardebil in 730, killing the Arab warlord al-Djarrah al-Hakami and briefly occupying the town. They were defeated the next year at Mosul, where Barjik directed Khazar forces from a throne mounted with al-Djarrah's severed head, and Barjik was killed. Arab armies led first by the Arab prince Maslamah ibn Abd al-Malik and then by Marwan ibn Muhammad (later Caliph Marwan II) poured across the Caucasus and eventually (in 737) defeated a Khazar army led by Hazer Tarkhan, briefly occupying Atil itself and possibly forcing the Khagan to convert to Islam. The instability of the Umayyad regime made a permanent occupation impossible; the Arab armies withdrew and Khazar independence was re-asserted. It has been speculated that the adoption of Judaism (which in this theory would have taken place around 740) was part of this re-assertion of independence. It is worth noting that around 739, Arab sources give the name of the ruler of the Khazars as Parsbit or Barsbek, a woman who appears to have directed military operations against them. This suggests that women could have very high positions within the Khazar state, possibly even as a stand-in for the khagan. Although they stopped the Arab expansion into Eastern Europe for some time after these wars, the Khazars were forced to withdraw behind the Caucasus. In the ensuing decades they extended their territories from the Caspian Sea in the east (Many cultures still call the Caspian Sea "Khazar Sea"; e.g. "Hazar Denizi" in Turkish, "Bahr ul-Khazar" in Arabic) to the steppe region north of Black Sea in the west, as far west at least as the Dnieper River. In 758, the Abbasid Caliph Abdullah al-Mansur ordered Yazid ibn Usayd al-Sulami, one of his nobles and military governor of Armenia, to take a royal Khazar bride and make peace. Yazid took home a daughter of Khagan Baghatur, the Khazar leader. Unfortunately, the girl died inexplicably, possibly in childbirth. Her attendants returned home, convinced that some Arab faction had poisoned her (not unreasonable, all things considered), and her father was enraged. A Khazar general named Ras Tarkhan invaded what is now northwestern Iran, plundering and raiding for several months. Thereafter relations between the Khazars and the Abbasid Caliphate (less expansionist than its Umayyad predecessors) became increasingly cordial. ==Khazar religion== ===Turkic shamanism=== Originally, the Khazars practiced traditional Turkic shamanism, focused on the sky god Tengri, but were heavily influenced by Confucian ideas imported from China, notably that of the Mandate of Heaven. The Ashina clan were considered to be the chosen of Tengri and the kaghan was the incarnation of the favor the sky-god bestowed on the Turks. A kaghan who failed had clearly lost the god's favor and was typically Human sacrifice. Historians have sometimes wondered, only half in jest, if the Khazar tendency to occasionally execute their rulers on religious grounds led those rulers to seek out other religions. The Khazars worshipped a number of deities subordinate to Tengri, including the fertility goddess Umay, Kuara, a thunder god, and Erlik, the god of death. ===Conversion to Judaism=== Jewish communities had existed in the Greek cities of the Black Sea coast since late classical times. Cherson, Sudak, Kerch and other Crimean cities possessed Jewish communities, as did Anapa, and Samkarsh / Tmutarakan was said to have had a Jewish majority as early as the 670s. The original Jewish settlers were joined by waves of immigration fleeing antisemitism in the Byzantine Empire, Sassanid Iran (particularly during the Mazdak revolts, and later within the Islamic world. Jewish merchants such as the Radhanites regularly traded in Khazar territory, and may have wielded significant economic and political influence. Though their origins and history are somewhat unclear, the Mountain Jews also lived in or near Khazar territory and may have been allied with or subject to Khazar overlordship; it is conceivable that they too played a role in the conversion. At some point in the last decades of the 8th century or the early 9th century, the Khazar royalty and nobility converted to Judaism, and part of the general population followed. The extent of the conversion is debated. Historically, most scholars believed that only the upper classes converted to Judaism; there is some support for this in contemporary Muslim texts. However, recent archeological excavations have uncovered widespread shifts in burial practices. Around the mid 800s burials in Khazaria began to take on a decidedly Jewish flavor. Grave goods disappeared almost altogether. Judging by interment evidence, by 950 Judaism had become widespread among all classes of Khazar society. Essays in the Kuzari, written by Yehuda Halevi, details a moral liturgical reason for the conversion which some consider a moral tale. Some researchers have suggested part of the reason for this mass conversion was political expediency to maintain a degree of neutrality: The Khazar empire was between growing populations; Muslims to the east and Christianitys to the west. Both religions recognized Judaism as a forebear and worthy of some respect. The exact date of the conversion is hotly contested. It may have occurred as early as 740 or as late as the mid 800s. Recently-discovered numismatic evidence suggests that Judaism was the established state religion by c. 830, and though St. Cyril (who visited Khazaria in 861) did not identify the Khazars as Jews, the khagan of that period, Zachariah, had a biblical Hebrew name. Some medieval sources give the name of the rabbi who oversaw the conversion of the Khazars as Isaac Sangari or Yitzhak ha-Sangari. The first Jewish Khazar king was named Bulan (Khazar) which means "elk", though some sources give him the Hebrew name Sabriel. A later king, Obadiah (Khazar), strengthened Judaism, inviting rabbis into the kingdom and building synagogues. Jewish figures such as Saadia Gaon made positive references to the Khazars, and they are excoriated in contemporary Karaite writings as "bastards"; it is therefore unlikely that they adopted Karaism as some (such as Abraham Firkovitch) have proposed. The Khazars enjoyed close relations with the Jews of the Levant and Iran. The Persian Jews, for example, hoped that the Khazars might succeed in conquering the Caliphate (Harkavy, in Kohut Memorial Volume, p. 244). The high esteem in which the Khazars were held among the Jews of the Orient may be seen in the application to them, in an Arabic commentary on Isaiah ascribed by some to Saadia Gaon, and by others to Benjamin Nahawandi, of Isaiah 48:14: "The Lord hath loved him." "This," says the commentary, "refers to the Khazars, who will go and destroy Babel" (i.e., Babylonia), a name used to designate the country of the Arabs (Harkavy in "Ha-Maggid." 1877, p. 357). Likewise, the Khazar rulers viewed themselves as the protectors of international Jewry. They were known to retaliate against Muslim or Christian interests in Khazaria for persecution of Jews abroad. Ibn Fadlan relates that around 920 the Khazar ruler received information that Muslims had destroyed a synagogue in the land of Babung, in Iran; he gave orders that the minaret of the mosque in his capital should be broken off, and the muezzin executed. He further declared that he would have destroyed all the mosques in the country had he not been afraid that the Muslims would in turn destroy all the synagogues in their lands. ===Other religions=== Besides Judaism, other religions probably practiced in areas ruled by the Khazars include Greek Orthodox, Nestorian, and Monophysite Christianity, Zoroastrianism as well as Norse, Finnic, and Slavic cults. Religious toleration was maintained for the kingdom's three hundred plus years. Many Khazars reportedly were converts to Christianity and Islam. (See "Judiciary", below.) ==Government== ===Khazar Kingship=== Khazar kingship was divided between the khagan and the Bek or Khagan Bek. Contemporary Arab historians related that the Khagan was purely a spiritual ruler or figurehead with limited powers, while the Bek was responsible for administration and military affairs. In the Khazar Correspondence, King Joseph identifies himself as the ruler of the Khazars and makes no reference to a colleague. It has been disputed whether Joseph was a Khagan or a Bek; his description of his military campaigns make the latter probable. A third option is that by the time of the Correspondence (c. 950-960) the Khazars had merged the two positions into a single ruler, or that the Beks had somehow supplanted the Khagans or vice versa. for all Khazar rulers see List of Khazar rulers. ===Army=== [[Image:Khazar_1.gif|right|thumb|300px|Khazar warrior with captive, based on reconstruction by Norman Finkelshteyn of image from an 8th-century ewer found in Romania (original at [http://www.geocities.com/normlaw/page2.html])]] Khazar armies were led by the Bek and commanded by subordinate officers known as tarkhans. A famous tarkhan referred to in Arab sources as Ras Tarkhan led an invasion of Armenia in 758. The army included regiments of Muslim auxiliaries known as Arsiyah, of Khwarezmian or Alan extraction, were quite influential and exempt from campaigning against their fellow Muslims. Early Russian sources called them Khazaran, their city, Khvalisy and the Khazar (Caspian) sea Khvaliskoye, possibly referring to these Khwarezmians. In addition to the Bek's standing army, the Khazars could call upon tribal levies in times of danger and were often joined by auxiliaries from subject nations. ===Other officials=== Settlements were governed by administrative officials 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 influence. Other officials in the Khazar government included dignitaries referred to by ibn Fadlan as ''Jawyshyghr'' and ''Kundur'', but their responsibilities are unknown. ===Judiciary=== Muslim sources report that the Khazar supreme court consisted of two Jews, two Christianity, two Muslims, and a "heathen" (whether this is a Turkic shaman or a priest of Slavic or Norse religion is unclear), and a citizen had the right to be judged according to the laws of his religion. Some have argued that this configuration is unlikely, as a Beit Din, or rabbinical court, requires three members. It is therefore possible that as practitioners of the state religion, the Jews had three judges on the Supreme Court rather than two, and that the Muslim sources were attempting to downplay their influence. A Muslim or Christian court can function with only one or two judges. ==Economic position== [[Image:Khazar coin.jpg|left|thumb|380px|Khazar coin minted in imitation of Caliphate dirhem and bearing the legend "Moses is the prophet of God", early 9th c. CE. Image from the website of the [http://www.myntkabinettet.se/notiser/spillings2.htm Swedish Economic Museum].]] ===Trade=== The Khazars occupied a prime trade nexus. Goods from western Europe travelled east to Central Asia and China and vice versa, and the Muslim world could only interact with northern Europe via Khazar intermediaries. The Radanites, a guild of medieval Jewish merchants, had a trade route that ran through Khazaria, and may have been instrumental in the Khazars' conversion to Judaism. No Khazar paid taxes to the central government. Revenue came from a 10% levy on goods transiting through the region, and from tribute paid by subject nations. The Khazars exported honey, furs, wool, millet and other grains, fish, and slaves. D.M. Dunlop and Artamanov asserted that the Khazars produced no material goods themselves, living solely off of trade. This theory has been refuted by discoveries over the last half-century, which include pottery and glass factories. ===Khazar coinage=== The Khazars are known to have minted silver coins, called Yarmaqs. Many of these were copies of Arab dinars, which were in widespread use due to their reliable silver content. Some surviving examples bear the legend "Ard al-Khazar" (Arabic for "land of the Khazars"); others the phrase "Moses is the Prophet of God" (a modification of the Muslim coin inscription "Muhammad is the Prophet of God"). ==Extent of influence== The Khazar Khaganate was, at its height, an immensely powerful state. The Khazar heartland was on the lower Volga and the Caspian coast as far south as Derbent. In addition, from the late 600s the Khazars controlled most of the Crimea and the northeast littoral of the Black Sea. By 800 Khazar holdings included most of the Pontic steppe as far west as the Dneiper and as far east as the Aral Sea (some Turkic history atlases show the Khazar sphere of influence extending well east of the Aral). During the Khazar-Arab war of the early 700s, some Khazars evacuated to the Ural foothills, and some settlements may have remained. ===Khazar towns=== Khazar towns included: *Along the Caspian coast and Volga delta: :Atil; Khazaran; Samandar *In the Caucasus: :Balanjar; Kazarki; Sambalut; Samiran *In the Crimea and Taman region: :Kerch (also called Bospor); Feodosia; Gusliyev (modern Yevpatoria); Samkarsh (also called Tmutarakan, Tamatarkha); Sudak (also called Sugdaia) *In the Don River, Russia valley: :Sarkel *Numerous Khazar settlements have been discovered in the Mayaki-Saltovo region. On the Dneiper, the Khazars founded a settlement called Sambat, which was part of what would become the city of Kiev. Chernigov is also thought to have started as a Khazar settlement. ===Tributary and subject nations=== Numerous nations were tributaries of the Khazars. A client-king subject to Khazar overlordship was called an "Elteber". At various times, Khazar vassals included: In the Pontic steppes, Crimea and Turkestan :The Pechenegs ; the Oghuz; the Crimean Goths; the Crimean Huns (Onogurs?); the early Magyars In the Caucasus :Georgia (country); Abkhazia; various Armenian principalities; Arran; the North Caucasian Huns; Adjaria; the Caucasian Avars; the Circassians; and the Lezgins. On the Upper Don and Dneiper :Various East Slavic tribes such as the Derevlians and the Vyatichs; various early Rus polities On the Volga :Volga Bulgaria; the Burtas; various Finno-Ugrian forest tribes such as the Mordvins and Ob-Ugrians; the Bashkir; the Barsils ==Decline and fall== ===Rise of Rus=== Originally the Khazars were probably allied with various Norse factions who controlled the region around Novgorod and regularly travelled through Khazar-held territory to attack territories around the Black and Caspian Seas. By 913, however, the Khazars were engaged in open hostilities with Norse marauders. The Khazar fortress of Sarkel, constructed with Byzantine aid around 830, may have been constructed as a defense against Rus incursions, as well as attacks by nomadic people such as the Pechenegs. In the 10th century the empire began to decline due to the attacks of both Vikings from Kievan Rus and various Turkic peoples. It enjoyed a brief revival under the strong rulers Aaron and Joseph, who subdued rebellious client states such as the Alans and led victorious wars against Rus invaders. ===Kabar rebellion and the departure of the Magyars=== At some point in the ninth century (as reported by Constantine Porphyrogenitus) a group of three Khazar clans called the Kabars revolted against the Khazar government. Omeljan Pritsak and others have speculated that the revolt had something to do with a rejection of rabbinic Judaism; this is unlikely as it is believed that both the Kabars and mainstream Khazars had pagan, Jewish (both rabbinic and Karaite), Christian, and Muslim members. Pritsak maintained that the Kabars were led by the Khagan Khan-Tuvan Dyggvi in a war against the Bek. In any event Pritsak cited no primary source for his propositions in this matter. The Kabars were defeated and joined a confederacy led by the Magyars. It has been speculated that "Hungarian" derives from the Turkic word "Onogur", or "Ten Arrows", referring to seven Finno-Ugric tribes and the three tribes of the Kabars. In the closing years of the ninth century the Khazars and Oghuz allied to attack the Pechenegs, who had been attacking both nations. The Pechenegs were driven westward, where they forced out the Magyars (Hungarians) who had previously inhabited the Don-Dnieper basin in vassalage to Khazaria. Under the leadership of the chieftain Lebedias and later Arpad, the Hungarians moved west into modern-day Hungary. The departure of the Hungarians led to an unstable power vacuum and the loss of Khazar control over the steppes north of the Black Sea. ===Rus and Byzantine hostility=== John_I_Tzimisces,_as_described_by_Leo_the_Deacon.''">Image:Lebedev meeting.jpg|thumb|Svyatoslav (seated in the boat), the destroyer of the Khazar Khaganate.
,_the_destroyer_of_the_Khazar_Khaganate._<br>From_Klavdiy_Lebedev_(1852-1916),_''Svyatoslav's_meeting_with_<a_href=\){kind=link}
From Klavdiy Lebedev (1852-1916), ''Svyatoslav's meeting with John I Tzimisces, as described by Leo the Deacon.'' The alliance with the Byzantines began to collapse in the early 900s, possibly as a result of the conversion to Judaism. Byzantine and Khazar forces may have clashed in the Crimea, and by the 940s Constantine VII Porphyrogentius 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. The Rus warlords Oleg and Sviatoslav I of Kiev launched several wars against the Khazar khaganate, often with Byzantine connivance. The Schechter Letter relates the story of a campaign against Khazaria by HLGW (Oleg) around 941; this calls into question the timeline of the Primary Russian Chronicle and other related works. Sviatoslav finally succeeded in destroying Khazar imperial power in the 960s. The Khazar fortresses of Sarkel and Tmutarakan fell to the Rus in 965, with the capital city of Atil following circa 967 or 969. ==Khazars outside of Khazaria== Khazar communities existed outside of those areas under Khazar overlordship. Many Khazar mercenaries served in the armies of the Caliphate and other Islamic states. Documents from medieval Constantinople attest to a Khazar community mingled with the Jews of the suburb of Pera. Christian Khazars also lived in Constantinople, and some served in its armies. The Patriarch Photius I of Constantinople was once angrily referred to by the Emperor as "Khazar-face", though whether this refers to his actual lineage or is a generic insult is unclear. Abraham ibn Daud reported Khazar rabbinical students, or rabbinical students who were the descendents of Khazars, in 12th century Spain. Jews from Kiev and elsewhere in Russia, who may or may not have been Khazars, were reported in France, Germany and England. The Kabars who settled in Hungary in the late ninth and early tenth centuries may have included Jews among their number. Many Khazar Jews probably fled foreign conquest into Hungary and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. There they likely merged with local Jews and ensuing waves of Jewish immigration from Germany and Western Europe. They most likely did not constitute the dominant group within Eastern European Jewry, as Arthur Koestler maintained (see below). Polish legends speak of Jews being present in Poland before the establishment of the Polish monarchy. Polish coins from the 12th and 13th centuries sometimes bore Slavic inscriptions written in the Hebrew alphabet [http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/images.jsp?artid=479&letter=R&imgid=1665] [http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/images.jsp?artid=479&letter=R&imgid=1666] though connecting these coins to Khazar influence is purely a matter of speculation. ==Late references to the Khazars== There is debate as to the temporal and geographic extent of Khazar polities following Sviatoslav I of Kiev's sack of Atil in 967/9, or even whether any such states existed. The Khazars may have retained control over some areas in the Caucasus for another two centuries, but sparse historical records make this difficult to confirm. The evidence of later Khazar polities includes: *Sviatoslav did not occupy the Volga basin after he destroyed Atil, and departed relatively quickly to embark on his campaign in Bulgaria. The permanent conquest of the Volga basin seems to have been left to later waves of steppe peoples like the Kipchaks. ===Jewish sources=== *A letter in Hebrew dated Jewish calendar (985/986) refers to "our lord David, the Khazar prince" who lived in Taman. The letter said that this David was visited by Russians to ask about religious matters- this could be connected to the Vladimir conversion which took place during the same time period. Taman was a Russian principality around 988, so this successor state (if that is what it was) may have been conquered altogether. However, it should be noted that the authenticity of this letter, the Mandgelis Document, was questioned by such scholars as D. M. Dunlop. *Abraham ibn Daud, a twelfth-century Spanish rabbi, reported meeting Khazar rabbinical students in Toledo, and that they informed him that the "remnant of them is of the rabbinic faith." This reference indicates that some Khazars maintained ethnic, if not political, autonomy at least two centuries after the sack of Atil. *Petachiah of Ratisbon, a thirteenth-century rabbi and traveler, reported traveling through "Khazaria", though he gave few details of its inhabitants except to say that they lived amidst desolation in perpetual mourning. :He further related: ::''Whilst at Baghdad [I] saw ambassadors from the kings of Meshech, for Magog'' (n.b.- medieval Christian writers said that the Khazars lived in the land of Gog and Magog) ''is about ten days' journey from thence. The land extends as far as the Mountains of Darkness'' (a term often used to describe the Caucasus). ''Beyond the Mountains of Darkness are the sons of Jonadab, son of Rechab'' (an official in the court of the Judahite king Josiah). ''To the seven kings of Meshech an angel appeared in a dream, bidding them to give up the laws and statutes, and to embrace the laws of Moses, son of Amram. If not, he threatened to lay waste their country. However, they delayed until the angel commenced to lay waste their country, when the kings of Meshech and all the inhabitants of their countries became proselytes, and they sent to the head of the academy'' (i.e., the Gaon of Sura or Pumbedita) ''a request to send them some disciples of the wise. Every disciple that is poor goes there to teach them the law and Babylonian Talmud. From the land of Egypt the disciples go there to study. He saw the ambassadors visit the grave of [the prophet] Ezekiel..."'' :The account of the conversion of the "seven kings of Meshech" is extremely similar to the accounts of the Khazar conversion given in the Kuzari, and in Khazar Correspondence. It is possible that Meshech refers to the Khazars, or to some Judaized polity influenced by them. Arguments against this possibility include the reference to "seven kings" (though this, in turn, could refer to seven successor tribes or state micropolities). ===Muslim sources=== *Ibn Hawqal and al-Muqaddasi refer to Atil after 969, indicating that it may have been rebuilt. Al-Biruni (mid-1000s) reported that Atil was in ruins, and did not mention the later city of Saqsin which was built nearby, so it is possible that this new Atil was only destroyed in the middle of the eleventh century. Even assuming al-Biruni's report was not an anachronism, there is no evidence that this "new" Atil was populated by Khazars rather than by Pechenegs or a different tribe. *Ibn al-Athir, who wrote around 13th century, described "the raid of Fadhlun the Kurd against the Khazars". Fadhlun the Kurd has been identified as al-Fadhl ibn Muhammad al-Shaddadi, who ruled Arran and other parts of Azerbaijan in the 1030's. According to the account he attacked the Khazars but had to flee when they ambushed his army and killed 10,000 of his men. Two of the great early 20th century scholars on Eurasian nomads, Marquart and Barthold, disagreed about this account. Marquart believed that this incident refers to some Khazar remnant that had reverted to paganism and nomadic life. Barthold, (and more recently, Kevin Brook), took a much more skeptical approach and said that ibn al-Athir must have been referring to Georgians or Abkhazians. There is no evidence to decide the issue one way or the other. ===Russian sources=== *In 986 Khazar Jews were present at Vladimir I of Kiev's disputation to decide on the prospective religion of the Kievian Rus. Whether these were Jews who had settled in Kiev or emissaries from some Jewish Khazar remnant state is unclear. The whole incident is regarded by some scholars as a fabrication, but the reference to Khazar Jews (after the destruction of the Khaganate) is still relevant. Heinrich Graetz alleged that these were Jewish missionaries from the Crimea, but provided no reference to primary sources for his allegation. *In 1023 the Russian Chronicle reports that Mstislav (one of Vladimir's sons) marched against his brother Yaroslav with an army that included "Khazars and Kasogs". Kasogs were an early Circassian people. "Khazars" in this reference is considered by most to be intended in the generic sense, but some have questioned why the reference reads "Khazars and Kasogs", when "Khazars" as a generic would have been sufficient. Even if the reference is to Khazars, of course, it does not follow that there was a Khazar state in this period. They could have been Khazars under the rule of the Rus. *A Kievian prince named Oleg (not to be confused with Oleg of Kiev) was reportedly kidnapped by "Khazars" in 1078 and shipped off to Constantinople, although most scholars believe that this is a reference to the Kipchaks. ===Byzantine, Georgian and Armenian sources=== *There is the joint attack on the Khazar state in Kerch, ruled by Georgius Tzul, by the Byzantines and Russians in 1016, documented by Kedrenos. Following 1016, there are more ambiguous references to Khazars that may or may not be using "Khazars" in a general sense (the Byzantines and Arabs, for example, called all steppe people "Turks"; before them the Ancient Rome had called them all "Scythians"). *The Jewish Khazars were also mentioned in a Georgian chronicle as a group that inhabited Derbent in the late 1100s. *At least one 12th-century Byzantine source refers to tribes practicing Moses law and living in the Balkans; see Khalyzians. ===Western sources=== *Giovanni di Plano Carpini, a thirteenth century Papal legate to the court of the Mongol Khan Guyuk, gave a list of the nations the Mongols had conquered in his account. One of them, listed among tribes of the Caucasus, Pontic steppe and the Caspian region, was the "Brutakhi, who are Jews." The identity of the Brutakhi is unclear. Giovanni later refers to the Brutakhi as shaving their heads. Though Giovanni refers to them as Kipchaks, they may have been a remnant of the Khazar people. Alternatively, they may have been Kipchak converts to Judaism (possibly connected to the Krymchaks or the Crimean Karaites). ==Debate== ===Date and extent of the conversion=== The date of the conversion, and whether it occurred as one event or as a sequence of events over time, is widely disputed. The issues surrounding this controversy are discussed above. The number of Khazars who converted to Judaism is also hotly contested. D.M. Dunlop was of the opinion that only the upper class converted; this was the majority view until relatively recently. The relatively sudden shift in burial customs during the mid 800s suggests a more widespread conversion, which hypothesis has been recently championed by Kevin A. Brook. ===Koestler's theory=== Some historians, and most famously the non-historian novelist Arthur Koestler (in a work, ''The Thirteenth Tribe'', containing unsubstantiated speculation and appropriated historical accounts), have proposed that Jewish Khazars are the ancestors of most or all Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jews, but the idea is the subject of much debate. Recent genetic studies have demonstrated that Middle Eastern elements dominate the Ashkenazi male line (see Y-chromosomal Aaron), but the female line appears to have a substantially different history. Some have argued this suggests Middle Eastern men marrying into local European communities [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F50C15F83F5D0C778DDDAC0894DA404482][http://www.khazaria.com/genetics/abstracts.html] meaning that Ashkenazim are either not related to Jewish Khazars or that Jewish Khazars represent only a small element of Ashkenazi ancestry rather than the dominant element suggested by Koestler. Others critics of the Khazar-Ashkenazi theory have suggested these ideas have become political and anti-Zionism in nature. The Khazar theory has been adopted by some anti-Zionists, especially in the Arab world; such proponents of the theory argue that if Ashkenazi Jews are primarily Khazar in origin, then they would be exempt from God the Father promise of Canaan to Jews as recorded in the Bible, were one to ignore that the promise also applies to converts, and the fact that over half of Israeli Jews are not Ashkenazi. Some have countered that such charges of a political motive are not relevant to the core of the argument; in any event, Koestler himself was emphatically pro-Zionist. At other times, the Khazar myth has served as a catalyst for state antisemitism in the Soviet Union and a justification for conquest by Russian nationalists. [http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/5425.html#10] Others have claimed Khazar origins for such groups as the Crimean Karaites, Krymchaks, Mountain Jews, and Gruzim. There is little evidence to support any of these theories, although it is likely that some Khazar descendants found their way into these communities. == See also == *Avraham Firkovitch *Bulan (Khazar) *Dictionary of the Khazars *Georgius Tzul *Hisdai ibn Shaprut *Khazar Correspondence *Khazar language *Khazars in fiction *Kiev *Kipchak *Kievian Letter *List of Khazar rulers *Saqsin *Schechter Letter *Soviet Union ==Resources== *Kevin Alan Brook, ''The Jews of Khazaria,'' 1st ed., Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 1999 *[http://www.khazaria.com/khazar-diaspora.html Essay: Are Russian Jews Descended from the Khazars?] *[http://www.sefarad.org/publication/lm/054/page27.html Kevin Alan Brook, "Tales about Jewish Khazars in the Byzantine Empire Resolve an Old Debate". ''Los Muestros'', No. 54, p. 27.] *Douglas M. Dunlop, ''The History of the Jewish Khazars,'' Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1954. *Norman Golb and Omeljan Pritsak, ''Khazarian Hebrew Documents of the Tenth Century.'' Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1982. ==External links== *[http://www.khazaria.com Khazaria.com] *[http://www.khazaria.com/khazar-biblio/toc.html Bibliography of Khazar Studies] *[http://www.khazaria.com/khazar-quotes.html Primary sources on the Conversion] *[http://www.hostkingdom.net/siberia.html Eurasian Nomads] *[http://www.geocities.com/ayatoles/ Khazar Historic Maps] *[http://www.geocities.com/jewishwarriors/khazar.html Norman Finkelshteyn's Jewish Warriors - The Khazar Khaganate] *[http://www.geocities.com/jewishwarriors/caution.html Caveats in Researching the Khazars] *[http://www.geocities.com/jewishwarriors/critkhaz.html Criticisms of Khazar Studies by Norman Finkelshteyn] Jewish history Russian history Eastern European history Euroasian history Turkic peoples Khazars Crimea Caucasus
Khazars
__TOC__ == Dictionary of the Khazars == Mention should be made of Pavic's book ''Dictionary of the Khazars.'' User:128.196.226.101 17:34, 2 May 2005 (UTC) :It is, in Khazars in fiction. --User:Briangotts 19:32, 2 May 2005 (UTC) == ... == How many of today's Jews are actually descended from the Khazars? -- :SJK : I am not sure if anyone knows. I do know that there were some interesting biological tests done which showed that there has been much less intermarriage and conversion than anyone had previously imagined. Some scientists compared some biological traits that were markers for certain genes, specifically the fingerprint whorls, and found that most of today's modern day Jews matched the patterns for biological descendents of middle-eastern semites. There is an article on this (explaining the test, and logic of the arguement) entitled "Who are the Jews" by Jared Diamon, in "Natural History", volume 102, No. 11, Nov. 1993. :RK If Khazars really converted to Judaism and took the apellation, "Son of Abraham," then they really were Jews -- and their descendents really are Jews. I am sure that in the long history of the Children of Israel, many many people have been adopted into the family -- and it would be wrong, both morally and legally, to consider them any less members of the family. There may be some scientific merit to asking hat percentage of Jewish ancesors today came from where. But as far as "Jewish" concerns, it doesn't matter whether a small or high percentage come from the land of the Khazars or elsewhere. As long as the mothers were Jewish, or they converted, they are all Jews. The notion of some pure bloodline smacks of racialist thinking, and may even be racist. But even were it benign, I just do not think it makes sense in the context of Jewish beliefs about being Jewish. An admitedly very hypothetical example will illustrate my point. My family could have a practice of marrying only non-Jewish men. My father, three of my grandparents, seven of my greatgrandparents, and so on could all be non-Jews. I would have a very low percentage of "Jewish blood." But by the law of my people I would be 100% Jewish. SR : Genetically, it is now known that between 70 and 80 percent of paternal Ashkenazi lineages are from the Middle East, and that these lineages are related to Palestinian Arabs, Kurds, Anatolian Turks, Armenians, Syrians, and Lebanese. This leaves only about 25 percent of lineages which come from other sources (like Slavic and Khazar). The Eu 19 chromosomes are among the markers for a East-European as opposed to Israelite paternal lineage, and it is found among about 13 percent of Ashkenazi Jewish men. See the study by the Israeli scientist Ariella Oppenheim and her colleagues, "The Y Chromosome Pool of Jews as Part of the Genetic Landscape of the Middle East", The American Journal of Human Genetics 69:5 (November 2001): 1095-1112. In maternal lineages the Slavic and/or Khazar components may be more significant than in the paternal lineages. Alexander Beider's book "A Dictionary of Ashkenazic Given Names" (2001) goes into a lot of detail about the Slavic-speaking Jews who lived in the Lithuanian Grand Duchy before the Yiddish-speaking Jews merged with them. They had East Slavic names like Kasper, Bogdan, Bogdana, Golosh, Ryzhko, Samodelka, Il'ya, and Domanya. Beider concluded that while we can't tell for sure, some of these East Slavic Jews could have been part-Khazar. But he also presents evidence that the Slavic Jews were numerically inferior to the Yiddish Jews. So historical and genetic evidence coincide. -- KAB The above interesting quote does not make it clear that the same genetic fact may be said for almost anyone with European ancestry since it has been proven Europeans have a near-eastern genetic origin. This is besides the only really interesting relevant results ironically being for male lines which are not recognised by predominant "Jewish" law as valid lines of descent. Maybe Khazars are in part perhaps a bit of red-herring but the Avar case seems -much to the disappointment of a few Hungarian nationalists- to hold some answers User:Zestauferov ---- in 10th century there were no Russians. Rusins. Not Russians. :Were Ruthenes subject to the Varangian Russ? == Khazars'descent == You quote two books: 1) The thirteenth tribe by Arthur Koestler 2) The Jews of Khazaria by Kevin Alan Brook Both are quite interesting but to make it short: A. Koestler tries to demonstrate that in the present day askhenaz communities, the Khazar influence is predominant with no interferences from western european Jewish communities who were nearly extinct at the time and just could not initiate any mass migration to eastern europe. K.A. Brook, on the other hand, does not try any demonstration but only states in just a few lines that the present days Askhenaz Jews may, to some extent, have some Khazars ancestors but that this ascendancy was greatly influenced by migrants coming from western europ. Why not? I know that the subject is so sensitive that it is nearly a taboo, but, nevertheless when you try to find out hard facts about populations history (with no interests in the present days political implications)this is far from satisfactory. After all you being an encyclopedia should you not try to sort the problem out and help your visitors? I am reverting Mikkalai's last deletion. It is always better to rephrase something which doesn't seem right rather than to completely censor the opinon just because it doesn't fit with our own. No hard feelings Mikkalai, but how can NPOV be achieved if people keep ommitting the POVs they don't like? Skillful editing involves taking two conflicting POVs and making them fit well together in the same article. Simply deleting them is the quick & easy way out.User:Zestauferov 05:25, 14 May 2004 (UTC) : Encyclopedia is about facts, not POVs. One cannot put into 'pedia every opinion on every subject. Go ahead, write an article in a magazine, with proofs and references, not just wild guesses. You may go ahead with obscure habiru, eberites, ets., but leave cossacks out of your wordplays, about which you seem to know much less. User:Mikkalai 05:51, 14 May 2004 (UTC) Nice to meet you too Mikkalai. Check the history, I had nothing to do with the cossack thing. In fact I consider it personally to be erroneous, however, just because I have never come accross that argument and it seems totally wrong according to what I know, it does not make me a master of the Khazar question and I am not in a position to correct it. I suspect neither are you. The best thing to do is make a request next to the suspect info for references. If you do not replace it in such a way I am sure someone else will. All the best User:Zestauferov 05:48, 16 May 2004 (UTC) You are right. My fault. The following section is removed from the body. :--Linguistics-- :''The word 'Khazar' is theorised to be the root of several other words, including cossack, hussar and 'ketzer' (an derogatory German term for a heretic), although the latter is more probably derived from the medieval Cathari gnostics. Some theories also consider Khazars to be ancestors of Terek cossack.'' First, it doesn't correspond to its title, second, it is not good to put each and every marginal theory in 'pedia, especially without refernces. It could be of encyclopedic value to know that such and such luminary thought this and that, but, I can think of quite a few "some theories" myself, basing on supereficial similarity of words only, without any historical traces of usage. User:Mikkalai 15:28, 16 May 2004 (UTC) : By the way, right here on by bookshelf sits a pretty serious article that endeavors to prove that Ilya Muromets was in fact a Jew (i.e., of Khazar descent). Very interesting, isn't it? But I have no desire to put it into wikipedia.User:Mikkalai 15:31, 16 May 2004 (UTC) == online version of Arthur Koestler - The Thirteenth Tribe == Dear friends, maybe you know already that there is an online version of [http://www.christusrex.org/www2/koestler/index.html Arthur Koestler - The Thirteenth Tribe] available. Regards User:Gangleri 11:38, 2004 Oct 9 (UTC) :It appears that that site may contravene copyright laws; perhaps it's best to avoid it. User:Jayjg 05:03, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC) However, we don't want to remove the book from the references section, as someone has just done. Whether or not one agrees with its conclusions, Koestler's book is one of only a handful of books on the Khazars available in English. Hence it should be listed here. User:Isomorphic 20:33, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC) :The issue I raised was aiding and abetting copyright violation, not the books contents or conclusions. User:JayjgUser_talk:Jayjg 20:51, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC) ::Right. I wasn't really responding to you, but to an edit made to the article by someone else. He made a bunch of edits at once, including removing Koestler's book from the References section. Sorry I wasn't clear. User:Isomorphic 21:03, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC) ::: Koestler's book was totally unscientific, and is not a valid source to cite. Its "theories", such as they are, have long since been disproven by genetic testing. His historical sections were plaigarized wholesale from Dunlop, whose work is cited here. --User:Briangotts 03:51, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC) ==Merge/redistribute== Incidentally, while some people are paying attention to this article I'd like to point out the Khazaria article. I'm not sure how material should be distributed between Khazars and Khazaria, but the two should be a bit better integrated, or maybe even merged. User:Isomorphic 21:05, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC) :Good point. User:JayjgUser_talk:Jayjg 21:06, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC) ::I was thinking that maybe the information on rulers should go into the Khazaria article. There's a lot there, and it's a ibt overwhelming where it is, but Khazaria is a shorter article and it might help flesh it out. User:Isomorphic 21:12, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC) :::Not a bad idea at all. User:JayjgUser_talk:Jayjg 21:22, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC) :::Actually, on second thought, now I'm thinking we should wait until Briangott finishes completely re-writing this article, and then re-visit the question. User:JayjgUser_talk:Jayjg 19:57, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC) :::: I have merged the articles in question. Thanks for bringing the Khazaria article to my attention. --User:Briangotts 03:52, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC) == Whither the Khazarische Jüden? == I'm going to be so bold as to propose something that is not only "New Research" but also not even mildly NPOV. I think the vast majority of Ashkenazim are of western European extraction, and that a very small minority of their number, especially prominent among the Litvaks, are descendants of the Khazarim. I also happen to believe that the fullest legitimate modern expression of Khazar Judaism is found, not among the Mizrachim of the Kurdish villages, but among the Tats and Gruzim of Azerbaijan and Kartveli Georgia. Another group (and this will perhaps draw criticism and create controversy) that I feel are closely connected with the Khazarim, are the Qara'im. Not only is their rise to prominence co-chronological with the conversion of the Khazarim, but their greatest descendancy is found among the Karaim of the Krimea and Lithuania. I think the historical rôle of the Khazars in Judaism, by Jews has been greatly underestimated, while its rôle by antisemites has been greatly overestimated, in completely different realms... User:TShilo12 10:52, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC) : I agree with you on some points, but as long as this new research is not backed by an authoritative source, we should keep it to the Talk page. User:Humus sapiens←User:Humus sapiens←User talk:Humus sapiens 11:09, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC) :: We are concerned here with facts, not beliefs. The claims that Mountain Jews, Georgian Jews, and/or Karaites are descended from Khazars have to be subjected to the same level of scrutiny as when this claim is applied to Ashkenazi Jews. So far the DNA evidence does not support the claim with regard to Mountain Jews, while to my knowledge no data has yet been released on the DNA of Crimean Karaites and Lithuanian Karaites, and Georgian Jews have DNA that apparently matches non-Jewish peoples of Georgia and environs. There is no reason to believe that Mountain Jews have any more, or any less, Khazar ancestry than Ashkenazi Jews. The Karaites' settlement in eastern Europe is not co-chronological with the era of the Khazar empire; Karaites first appear in historical sources geographically within eastern Europe only after Khazaria fell; the Karaite movement developed in the Middle East during Khazar times. -KAB == interwikiconflict == * Please see :en:Wikipedia:Template:Interwikiconflict#ru:.26.231061.3B.26.231072.3B.26.231079.3B.26.231072.3B.26.231088.3B.26.231099.3B_and_ru:.26.231061.3B.26.231072.3B.26.231079.3B.26.231072.3B.26.231088.3B.26.231089.3B.26.231082.3B.26.231080.3B.26.231081.3B_.26.231082.3B.26.231072.3B.26.231075.3B.26.231072.3B.26.231085.3B.26.231072.3B.26.231090.3B about :ru:Хазары and :ru:Хазарский каганат. Thanks in advance! Best regards User:Gangleri | [ Th] | :Gangleri 09:12, 2005 Mar 16 (UTC) == Foreign-language article links == How come they don't appear at the end of the article? Is there a way to make them appear? :They aren't supposed to appear at the bottom. Interlanguage links have their own behavior. I use a non-default Wikipedia skin where they appear at the top of the screen. I think the default skin has them appear on the left sidebar. User:Isomorphic 21:03, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC) ::Incidentally, where they are placed in the article's source code doesn't affect where they display. It's just Wikipedia convention to put them at the bottom to make them easy to find. User:Isomorphic 21:05, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC) ==Proper adjective== is "khazaric" the correct adjective to use in association with the khazars?User:Gringo300 22:04, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC) :From what I've read (which is actually pretty extensive), the four adjectival forms I've encountered are, in order of frequency, "Khazar", "Khazarian", "Khazari" and "Khazaric". The selection of which of these four as the "correct adjective" seems to be the preference of the individual author. Without actually polling the popularity of each of these adjectival forms, I'd say "Khazar" comprises about 60%, "Khazarian" about 25%, "Khazari" about 12% and "Khazaric" about 3%. As a cursory study of Google hits will demonstrate, "Khazaric" is a relatively rare form, and I'm guessing that it's likely that a study of the literature using that form will demonstrate a consistent viewpoint among its authors. User:TShilo12 User talk:TShilo12 08:52, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC) ::Most scholarly sources use "Khazar" as both a nown and an adjective. There is nothing grammatically incorrect about the other options. --User:Briangotts 13:41, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC) ==See also links== I removed a couple links from the "See also" section. That section is mostly intended to link related articles that aren't already linked elsewhere in the article. Some of the links there had originally been unique, but were now duplicated elsewhere due to the major expansion of this article (thanks Brian!) User:Isomorphic 19:06, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC) Thanks! That totally slipped my mind. --User:Briangotts 19:17, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC) ==Intro== I just rewrote the intro in an attempt to answer the "so what" question quickly and succinctly. If in doing so I've introduced any inaccuracy, please correct it. User:Isomorphic 03:21, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC) ==Khazar origin== Um, yes, there is controversy. Certainly some anti-Jewish groups use Khazar descent as a propaganda tool, but that doesn't mean it's ''false''. While the Khazars do not make up a majority of the Ashkhenazi bloodline as was once claimed, it is near certain that at least a few Khazars went to Europe. There's no historical record of genocide, and they didn't just vanish into thin air, so lots of Khazars went somewhere. The question is to what ''extent'' the Khazars mixed with the rest of the Jewish community. User:Isomorphic 05:17, 16 May 2005 (UTC) It doesnt matter how many. They do not make a substantial part of Ashkenazic Jewry and they are now a part of the Jewish people. If they do not make a majority, there should be no "controversy". It deserves a mention that they are a part of the Jewish nation and Ashkanazic Jewry, but it doesnt deserve the controversy title. User:Guy Montag 06:49, 16 May 2005 (UTC) :I didn't mean to imply that there is major controversy among scholars; rather, that there is a lot of politics and strong feelings around the issue. After all, you just finished calling the whole thing a myth propagated by neo-nazis. I wouldn't really call Arthur Koestler a neo-nazi, considering that he was Jewish and actually thought (for some reason) that if he could show that Ashkhenazi Jews were not actually Hebrews, it would reduce antisemitism. User:Isomorphic 14:40, 16 May 2005 (UTC) I understand. I hope you didnt take my edits as an attack on you. What I should have wrote is that neo nazis have hijacked this claim for themselves as an argument to cast doubt on Jewish claims to Israel by saying that the Jews who are there are not the descendants of the "real Jews" who vanished or as they like to claim, are White Anglo Saxons, or some other rubbish. Along with that there is an entire theological basis for who is Jewish which has little to do with genetics and more to do with the Jewish way of life. I hope you accept the modification to the claim. User:Guy Montag 19:45, 16 May 2005 (UTC) :Don't worry, I didn't take it as an attack. I'm still not completely satisfied; I want it to mention the politicized nature of the issue. I'll try another edit. Feel free to edit what I write. User:Isomorphic 19:55, 16 May 2005 (UTC) ::By the way, I'm not trying to endorse anything. I just think that the intro should mention the political aspects of the issue, since that's the context in which most people might see it. People rarely care about the finer points of the history of dead civilizations unless they're trying to use them for politics of one sort or another. User:Isomorphic 20:03, 16 May 2005 (UTC) I think that your additions are satisfactory. Do you happen to know among whom there is a heated discussion? The reason I ask is, that if it is only among fringe types it should be mentioned, if not, it is fine as it is. User:Guy Montag 20:42, 16 May 2005 (UTC) :Arthur Koestler's book was widely read, and is still one of only three books on the Khazars in my college library. So the Khazar-origin theory quite is well-known. Is that what you meant? User:Isomorphic 20:49, 16 May 2005 (UTC) Do mainstream professors hold his theories as legitimate or do only fringe types? i think this is a better way to phrase the question. User:Guy Montag 21:29, 16 May 2005 (UTC) ::I think Guy is pointing out that the only people who push Koestler's theory are non-scientists with an agenda. Which, now that I think of it, applies perfectly to Koestler himself. User:JayjgUser_talk:Jayjg 21:29, 16 May 2005 (UTC) Exactly what I was going for. Thanks Jayjg. User:Guy Montag 21:30, 16 May 2005 (UTC) :I don't think anybody mainstream thinks that the Khazars make up a majority of the Ashkhenazi bloodline. However, there is serious support for the Khazars being a non-trivial minority. Kevin Alan Brook believes this, for example. User:Isomorphic 21:40, 16 May 2005 (UTC) ::True enough, at least on the male side. The problem is it's really hard to figure out what percentage that "non-trivial minority" actually is, as we don't have any examples of Khazar DNA. User:JayjgUser_talk:Jayjg 22:06, 16 May 2005 (UTC) :::Yup. I was just clarifying that the issue isn't completely closed, that it's not ''just'' a fringe theory, and that it's appropriate to mention it. Even Koestler's theory wasn't ridiculous when he proposed it, it just doesn't appear to be true given modern research. User:Isomorphic 22:20, 16 May 2005 (UTC) ::::Koestler's book wasn't serious work. He had an agenda, and he mostly plagiarized actual historians. User:JayjgUser_talk:Jayjg 22:37, 16 May 2005 (UTC) :::::Never said his book was good. Just that the theory, at the time, wasn't ridiculous. Anyway, this is veering into side discussion. I think nobody objects to the current wording. User:Isomorphic 22:46, 16 May 2005 (UTC) Like I said, I dont object. I was further inquiring to see if any more additions are necessary. It seems that we came to the conclusion that they are not. User:Guy Montag 05:45, 17 May 2005 (UTC) == Formatting question == Is there a way to put an image next to the TOC, under the History of Russia box, to fill in that blank space? I think it would look better. I have a couple images I'd like to add. --User:Briangotts 21:36, 17 May 2005 (UTC) :Possibly. I usually just play with this stuff. Sometimes it even works. :-) User:JayjgUser_talk:Jayjg 22:31, 17 May 2005 (UTC) :Yes. I took a minute or so and played around with it. Check out this diff [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Khazars&diff=prev&oldid=13858942]. You'll notice the image appears ''under'' the template, which still leaves a bit of space, but at least it's not that huge gaping wound. Don't use that image, obviously, as it fits in much better down further in the text, from whence I ripped the wikiformatting for it. :-p User:TShilo12 User talk:TShilo12 00:28, May 18, 2005 (UTC) ::Cool, thanks! I will find something appropriate when I have a chance. --User:Briangotts 14:17, 18 May 2005 (UTC) :::How's that? --User:Briangotts 13:50, 20 May 2005 (UTC) ::::It looks a bit smallish, but it's probably good--I have my monitor set on pretty high resolution. Good work. User:TShilo12 User talk:TShilo12 15:04, May 20, 2005 (UTC) ::::Looks good to me. User:JayjgUser_talk:Jayjg 16:09, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
Khazars
Articles relating to Khazar history, literature, and culture. Turkic peoples Jewish history
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