Are Russian Jews Descended from the Khazars?
- Thread starter Laura
- Start date
Hi folks, excellent topic, history is always interesting especially when put on the side like Khazar kingdom and their adverting to Judaism.
Here are some Ashkenazy=Khazar relations from many web pages:
An important Khazar community
remained in Kiev, and family oral traditions indicate the persistence
of Khazar Jewish communities in Hungary, Transylvania, Lithuania, and
central Ukraine. Some Jews have features that might be considered
almost Mongolian or Oriental. However, there is no remnant of Khazar
custom among Ashkenazi Jews, and there are only a few Ashkenazi
surnames (e.g., Balaban) that derive from Turkic. It is sometimes
suggested that the surname Kogan derives from Khaqan, but the more
likely derivation is from Kohen (meaning "Israelite priest"); the
Ukrainians and Belarusians use the letter h, but in Russian h becomes
g, as may be seen in such examples as Grodno-Hrodna and Girsch-Hirsch.
It seems that after the fall of their kingdom, the Khazars adopted the
Cyrillic script in place of Hebrew and began to speak East Slavic
(sometimes called "Canaanic" because Benjamin of Tudela called Kievan
Rus the "Land of Canaan"). These Slavic-speaking Jews are documented
to have lived in Kievan Rus during the 11th-13th centuries. However,
Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants from the west (especially Germany,
Bohemia, and other areas of Central Europe) soon began to flood into
Eastern Europe, and it is believed that these newer immigrants
eventually outnumbered the Khazars. Thus, Eastern European Jews
predominantly have ancestors who came from Central Europe rather than
from the Khazar kingdom. The two groups (eastern and western Jews)
intermarried over the centuries.
Read more: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/judaism/FAQ/07-Jews-As-Nation/section-5.html#ixzz0m2ytKu61
Read more: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/judaism/FAQ/07-Jews-As-Nation/section-5.html#ixzz0m2yfbm5U
khazar sub tribes today:
Some descendants of the Khazars still live in the north Caucasus
among the Kumuks and the Balkars. These descendents include Crimean
Jews called Krymchaks and Mountain Jews (a mix of Khazars and Iranian
Caucasian Jews). Many Muslim Khazars settled in Azerbaijan and
Kazakhstan and may have intermarried with Oghuz and Kipchak Turks.
Read more: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/judaism/FAQ/07-Jews-As-Nation/section-5.html#ixzz0m2zH88pt
1. What was the extent of Judaism in the Khazar Empire?
According to professors Bozena Werbart and Jonathan Shepard, the Tengri "sun-amulets" disappeared after the 830s from Khazarian graves, as did other shamanistic possessions, indicating a dramatic shift in religion in the Khazar kaganate.
There is also the opinion, most recently supported by Vladimir Petrukhin in his essay in Pletnyova's "Ocherki Khazarskoy Arkheologii" (1999), that the Chelarevo gravesite in present-day northern Serbia, with its broken bricks possessing images of the menorah, shofar, and Star of David, contains the bones of Judaized Khazarians.
These discoveries may turn out to be just as important as the Kievan Letter in terms of proving beyond all reasonable doubt that the Khazars converted to Judaism in large numbers.
2. When did the Khazars convert to Judaism: 8th or 9th century?
This is a highly controversial question, based upon contradictory information from various primary sources. The earliest possible date is Yehuda HaLevi's estimate of 740. Abd-al-Jabbar al-Hamdani and other Middle Eastern writers claim the conversion happened during the reign of the Abbasids. Al-Masudi would have us believe that the conversion took place sometime between 786 and 809.
But according to Constantine Zuckerman of the Collège de France (Paris), the Khazars' conversion to Judaism probably took place in the 9th century rather than in the 8th century. This argument has also been taken up by Jonathan Shepard and Kevin Brook, who state that the first record of Khazarian Judaism dates only to about the year 864, and that the Byzantine missionaries Cyril and Methodius upon their arrival in Khazaria in 860 approached and debated with a people whom had not yet adopted full Judaism. It used to be argued that the Khazars could not have sincerely adopted Judaism if they still had good relations with the Christian Byzantines even in the late 8th century. But historical analysis cancels this argument by showing that the decline in the Byzantine-Khazar relationship is tied directly to the time of the Khazar conversion to Judaism, and may be dated as occurring sometime during or after the 830s. A conversion date in the mid-to-late 830s is supported now also by the Moses coin (discussed below) which dates from 837-838, whereas just a few years earlier (around 834) the Khazars and Byzantines were cooperating on building Sarkel.
3. Did Khazarian coinage exist?
According to Omeljan Pritsak of Harvard University, the Khazars minted their own silver coins, called yarmaqs in Turkic and dirhams in Arabic, and their currency was based on international medieval standards governing weights and measures. See his "The Origins of the Old Rus' Weights and Monetary Systems: Two Studies in Western Eurasian Metrology and Numismatics in the Seventh to Eleventh Centuries" (1998), which has been reviewed by Thomas Noonan and Stephen Album. Another recent book is "Coins of the Khazar Empire" (2000) by Glen Shake. These authors support the notion that certain Arabic-lettered coins can be attributed to Khazar mints. Some numismatists, including Gert Rispling, and some historians, including Roman Kovalev, believe that the "Ard al-Khazar" (Land of the Khazars) coins, from the years 837-838, are authentic official Khazar coinage minted by the kaganate's Jewish kings. This contention is supported by the discovery of a related coin in the series (with a ficticious mintmark of "Madinat as-Salam 779-780", but actually dating from between about 830-839) which bears the inscription "Moses is the messenger of God", a Jewish version of the typical Islamic phrase "Muhammad is the messenger of God".
5. Where is the site of Atil, the capital of Khazaria?
For many decades, archaeologists have been trying to find the Khazar capital, Atil, also known as Itil. Some archaeologists (Lev Gumilev, Hoichi Hirokawa, and others) proposed that Atil (including its walls) was underwater. On the other hand, Atil was actually found under land. The Russian archaeologist Emma Zilivinskaya, who works with Gennadii Afanasyev, has been exploring a site near the city of Samosdelka, 60 kilometers to the southwest of Astrakhan, in the Volga delta. The Samosdelka team's website, Samosdelka.ru, was operated by Denis Logunov, but closed by the end of 2006. The Russian archaeologist Yevgenia Schneidstein has also proposed that a hill in Samosdelka, where red brick has been found, is Atil. After several years of excavations, Dmitry Vasiliev came to the conclusion that Samosdelka is the site of two cities: Saqsin in the upper layers and Atil in the lower layers. The layers which are thought to be from Atil were uncovered in 2005 and date to the 9th and 10th centuries and have Khazarian characteristics. As reported by AFP, the site has a brick fortress in a triangular shape, as well as yurt-like huts. This is consistent with descriptions of Atil.
Advanced genetic testing, including Y-DNA and mtDNA haplotyping, of modern Jewish communities around the world, has helped to determine which of the communities are likely to descend from the Israelites and which are not, as well as to establish the degrees of separation between the groups. Important studies archived here include the University College London study of 2002, Ariella Oppenheim's study of 2001, Ariella Oppenheim's study of 2000, Michael Hammer's study of 2000, Doron Behar's study of 2008, and others.
Key findings:
# The main ethnic element of Ashkenazim (German and Eastern European Jews), Sephardim (Spanish and Portuguese Jews), Mizrakhim (Middle Eastern Jews), Juhurim (Mountain Jews of the Caucasus), Italqim (Italian Jews), and most other modern Jewish populations of the world is Israelite. The Israelite haplotypes fall into Y-DNA haplogroups J and E.
# Ashkenazim also descend, in a smaller way, from European peoples such as Slavs and Khazars. The non-Israelite Y-DNA haplogroups include Q (typically Central Asian) and R1a1 (typically Eastern European).
# Dutch Jews from the Netherlands also descend from northwestern Europeans.
# Sephardim also descend, in a smaller way, from various non-Israelite peoples.
# Georgian Jews (Gruzinim) are a mix of Georgians and Israelites.
# Yemenite Jews (Temanim) are a mix of Yemenite Arabs and Israelites.
# Moroccan Jews, Algerian Jews, and Tunisian Jews are mainly Israelites.
# Libyan Jews are mainly Israelites who may have mixed somewhat with Berbers.
# Ethiopian Jews are almost exclusively Ethiopian, with little or no Israelite ancestry.
# Bene Israel Jews and Cochin Jews of India have much Indian ancestry in their mtDNA.
# This section has studies and commentaries related to Jewish genetic diseases such as Mediterranean Fever, Tay-Sachs, and pemphigus vulgaris. Learn about their geographical and ethnic diffusion, and what this often tells us about the degree of closeness between Jews and certain non-Jewish ethnic groups like Iranians, Anatolian Turks, and Palestinian Arabs.
Key findings:
# The 185delAG breast cancer mutation is found among both Ashkenazim and Moroccan Jews.
# A mutation causing Factor XI Deficiency is found among both Ashkenazim and Iraqi Jews.
# One form of the gene causing Familial Mediterranean Fever is found among Ashkenazim, Iraqi Jews, Druzes, and Armenians. Another form of the gene is found among Iraqi Jews, North African Jews, and Armenians. Some Sephardim, Arabs, and Anatolian Turks also have the gene.
# Gaucher Disease is found among both Ashkenazim and some Europeans.
# The mutation DFNB1, which causes deafness, is found among both Ashkenazim and Palestinian Arabs.
# The pemphigus MHC susceptibility gene is found among both Ashkenazim and Iranians.
# The protective CCR5-D32 allele may have been introduced into the Ashkenazic population by Khazars.
web: http://www.khazaria.com/genetics/abstracts.html
Khazars and Jews
The Khazar royalty was descended from the Ashina Turk dynasty. In the 9th century c.e., the Khazarian kings and nobility as well as a significant part of the Khazarian population embraced the Jewish belief and adopted the hallmarks of Judaism, including Torah and Talmud, the Hebrew script and the observance of Jewish holidays.* Anyway, most of the empire's population adopted either Christianity or Islam. The Jewish kings established a legal system that equally respected each religion, and the courts were ruled by Jewish, Christian, Muslim and also Slavic judges.
The Scythian-Turkic peoples, to which Khazars belong, were originally nomads and had an elementary Runic writing system, if any. In fact, when the Turks conquered the Arab Empire, they adopted Arabic script and began to keep records of their own history, which hardly existed before. In the same way, the Khazar Kahans observed the Jews dwelling in their kingdom and proved admiration for the Jews' culture and technical abilities, so that they appointed Jews as their counsellors and commercial advisors (Ottoman Turk Sultans did the same centuries later). The Jews taught them the art of writing, and since then, the Khazar language was written in Hebrew-Aramaic script.
King Bulan adopted Judaism in 4621 (861 c.e.), according to tradition, after having heard a debate between representatives of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim faiths. King Ovadiyah, his successor and the first of a series of kings with Hebrew names, established synagogues and Jewish schools in Khazaria. The Khazar nobility and many of the common people, as well as some of the Alan tribes, embraced Judaism. (see Khazar Kings list)
Yet, the association between Jews and Khazars begins many centuries earlier. The Jews encountered Scythian-Turkic tribes, including the Khazars, in the fifth century b.c.e. in Asia, when Israelite merchants from Assyria and Persia reached Kaifeng, then the capital of China. It is even possible that intermarriage occurred with Khazars and members of some of the Northern Israelite tribes, those considered "lost", which have dwelled in China and only now are being discovered and returning back to Israel. In this case, the Khazars' particular tendency towards Judaism would have a natural, genetic link. In fact, such idea was also spread among Khazar kings, who asserted that they did not convert, but returned back to Judaism. If this is true, the "Khazar Issue" supporters (see above) would lack any reason at all, but I would not fall into speculative theories as they do.
Jewish-Turk relationships were continuous since then, and Jews became an influent people in many Central Asian towns like Balkh, Bukhara, Samarkand, Tashkent, etc. Jews and the Turkic tribes dwelled together and had a peaceful exchange during centuries.
When the Khazars settled around the Caspian Sea, they found there some communities of Jews that were deported from Galil in 3409 (351 b.c.e.).
In the 10th century c.e., the political situation changed: the Sarmatic-Slavic tribes were organized under Scandinavian Russians, giving birth to a new rising power, the Kievan Rus'. On the other front, the Abbasid Empire was in decline, consequently, no longer threatening for Byzantium. This situation frustrated the importance of Khazaria as a safeguard for the Christian Europe. The Magyars consolidated their state in the Danubian Basin, and aimed at achieving the hegemony over the Balkans, where their kin-related Bulgars were still the leading nation.
The perfidious Byzantines, who have always taken advantage of the good relationships with the Khazarian Empire, first supported the Magyars against the Bulgarians (who were allies of the Khazars), by assailing them from the south while Magyars advanced in the north. Hungary became the new hegemonic state in the Balkans. Secondly, the Byzantines encouraged the Rus' (Varangian Scandinavians have supplied the Eastern Roman Empire with mercenary troops for centuries) to attack the Khazar Kingdom, that fell under the Viking armies in 4776 (1016 c.e.).
Nevertheless, the Khazar heritage was transferred to the two new powerful states: the Rus' and Hungary. The rather underdeveloped Rus tribes thus became heir to the industrial, technological and commercial development that took place under the Judaic/Khazar state over the course of three centuries. The presence of Jewish communities in Kiev and elsewhere in Southern Russia were essential for maintaining the industries they had established and for bringing wealth into the region with the commercial ties they had likewise established.
After the fall of their kingdom, the Khazars gradually intermixed mainly with the Kipchak (Kuman) populations and lost their character of being a distinct people. Several ethnic groups of the Caucasus such as Karachays, Kumyks and Daghestani tribes have Khazars among their ancestors. The Kabars (a rebel Khazar tribe of whom many were also Jewish) emigrated to Hungary and were assimilated by their very closely kin-related Magyars.
The Khazarian population in Hungary was in constant increase since the Hungarian Duke Taksony (4715-4730 / 955-970 c.e.) invited Khazar Jews to settle in his realm. On the other hand, Hungarian Jews promoted for a while the suggestion that they were themselves of Khazar rather than authentic Jewish origin, and hence legitimate Hungarians no less than the Magyars.** There were many converted Khazars among them, but the majority was of original Jewish stock. Undoubtedly, the most strongly Khazar element within Jews is present in Hungarian Jews, descendants of the last Khazars who fled into Hungary until the 14th century c.e., where they were received by their former vassals, the Magyar kings. The Hungarian Jews are definitely a fusion of Semitic German Jews, Khazars, Kabars and Sephardic immigrants who came to Hungary by way of Italy fleeing from the Spanish inquisition.
Concerning the Jewish communities that remained in the formerly Khazar territories, they were assimilated by the Slavic-speaking Jews, and in a later period, by the Yiddisch-speaking immigrants from Central Europe, that outnumbered the native Russian Jews. In this way, the Khazar origin within Jewry was reduced to a minority and furtherly disappeared by intermarriage.
Conclusion: There is a Khazar component in the ancestry of many Eastern European Jews, though it has been rendered irrelevant by intermarriage with the overwhelming majority of Semitic Ashkenazim. The most authentic descendants of the Khazars are today to be found among the modern Hungarians, including many Hungarian Jews, and in a lesser degree, also within Bulgarians and some peoples of the Caucasus area.
from: http://www.imninalu.net/Khazars.htm
Let me conclude with: Ibn al-Faqih, in fact, wrote "All of the Khazars are Jews." Christian of Stavelot wrote in 864 that "all of them profess the Jewish faith in its entirety."
Here are some Ashkenazy=Khazar relations from many web pages:
An important Khazar community
remained in Kiev, and family oral traditions indicate the persistence
of Khazar Jewish communities in Hungary, Transylvania, Lithuania, and
central Ukraine. Some Jews have features that might be considered
almost Mongolian or Oriental. However, there is no remnant of Khazar
custom among Ashkenazi Jews, and there are only a few Ashkenazi
surnames (e.g., Balaban) that derive from Turkic. It is sometimes
suggested that the surname Kogan derives from Khaqan, but the more
likely derivation is from Kohen (meaning "Israelite priest"); the
Ukrainians and Belarusians use the letter h, but in Russian h becomes
g, as may be seen in such examples as Grodno-Hrodna and Girsch-Hirsch.
It seems that after the fall of their kingdom, the Khazars adopted the
Cyrillic script in place of Hebrew and began to speak East Slavic
(sometimes called "Canaanic" because Benjamin of Tudela called Kievan
Rus the "Land of Canaan"). These Slavic-speaking Jews are documented
to have lived in Kievan Rus during the 11th-13th centuries. However,
Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants from the west (especially Germany,
Bohemia, and other areas of Central Europe) soon began to flood into
Eastern Europe, and it is believed that these newer immigrants
eventually outnumbered the Khazars. Thus, Eastern European Jews
predominantly have ancestors who came from Central Europe rather than
from the Khazar kingdom. The two groups (eastern and western Jews)
intermarried over the centuries.
Read more: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/judaism/FAQ/07-Jews-As-Nation/section-5.html#ixzz0m2ytKu61
Read more: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/judaism/FAQ/07-Jews-As-Nation/section-5.html#ixzz0m2yfbm5U
khazar sub tribes today:
Some descendants of the Khazars still live in the north Caucasus
among the Kumuks and the Balkars. These descendents include Crimean
Jews called Krymchaks and Mountain Jews (a mix of Khazars and Iranian
Caucasian Jews). Many Muslim Khazars settled in Azerbaijan and
Kazakhstan and may have intermarried with Oghuz and Kipchak Turks.
Read more: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/judaism/FAQ/07-Jews-As-Nation/section-5.html#ixzz0m2zH88pt
1. What was the extent of Judaism in the Khazar Empire?
According to professors Bozena Werbart and Jonathan Shepard, the Tengri "sun-amulets" disappeared after the 830s from Khazarian graves, as did other shamanistic possessions, indicating a dramatic shift in religion in the Khazar kaganate.
There is also the opinion, most recently supported by Vladimir Petrukhin in his essay in Pletnyova's "Ocherki Khazarskoy Arkheologii" (1999), that the Chelarevo gravesite in present-day northern Serbia, with its broken bricks possessing images of the menorah, shofar, and Star of David, contains the bones of Judaized Khazarians.
These discoveries may turn out to be just as important as the Kievan Letter in terms of proving beyond all reasonable doubt that the Khazars converted to Judaism in large numbers.
2. When did the Khazars convert to Judaism: 8th or 9th century?
This is a highly controversial question, based upon contradictory information from various primary sources. The earliest possible date is Yehuda HaLevi's estimate of 740. Abd-al-Jabbar al-Hamdani and other Middle Eastern writers claim the conversion happened during the reign of the Abbasids. Al-Masudi would have us believe that the conversion took place sometime between 786 and 809.
But according to Constantine Zuckerman of the Collège de France (Paris), the Khazars' conversion to Judaism probably took place in the 9th century rather than in the 8th century. This argument has also been taken up by Jonathan Shepard and Kevin Brook, who state that the first record of Khazarian Judaism dates only to about the year 864, and that the Byzantine missionaries Cyril and Methodius upon their arrival in Khazaria in 860 approached and debated with a people whom had not yet adopted full Judaism. It used to be argued that the Khazars could not have sincerely adopted Judaism if they still had good relations with the Christian Byzantines even in the late 8th century. But historical analysis cancels this argument by showing that the decline in the Byzantine-Khazar relationship is tied directly to the time of the Khazar conversion to Judaism, and may be dated as occurring sometime during or after the 830s. A conversion date in the mid-to-late 830s is supported now also by the Moses coin (discussed below) which dates from 837-838, whereas just a few years earlier (around 834) the Khazars and Byzantines were cooperating on building Sarkel.
3. Did Khazarian coinage exist?
According to Omeljan Pritsak of Harvard University, the Khazars minted their own silver coins, called yarmaqs in Turkic and dirhams in Arabic, and their currency was based on international medieval standards governing weights and measures. See his "The Origins of the Old Rus' Weights and Monetary Systems: Two Studies in Western Eurasian Metrology and Numismatics in the Seventh to Eleventh Centuries" (1998), which has been reviewed by Thomas Noonan and Stephen Album. Another recent book is "Coins of the Khazar Empire" (2000) by Glen Shake. These authors support the notion that certain Arabic-lettered coins can be attributed to Khazar mints. Some numismatists, including Gert Rispling, and some historians, including Roman Kovalev, believe that the "Ard al-Khazar" (Land of the Khazars) coins, from the years 837-838, are authentic official Khazar coinage minted by the kaganate's Jewish kings. This contention is supported by the discovery of a related coin in the series (with a ficticious mintmark of "Madinat as-Salam 779-780", but actually dating from between about 830-839) which bears the inscription "Moses is the messenger of God", a Jewish version of the typical Islamic phrase "Muhammad is the messenger of God".
5. Where is the site of Atil, the capital of Khazaria?
For many decades, archaeologists have been trying to find the Khazar capital, Atil, also known as Itil. Some archaeologists (Lev Gumilev, Hoichi Hirokawa, and others) proposed that Atil (including its walls) was underwater. On the other hand, Atil was actually found under land. The Russian archaeologist Emma Zilivinskaya, who works with Gennadii Afanasyev, has been exploring a site near the city of Samosdelka, 60 kilometers to the southwest of Astrakhan, in the Volga delta. The Samosdelka team's website, Samosdelka.ru, was operated by Denis Logunov, but closed by the end of 2006. The Russian archaeologist Yevgenia Schneidstein has also proposed that a hill in Samosdelka, where red brick has been found, is Atil. After several years of excavations, Dmitry Vasiliev came to the conclusion that Samosdelka is the site of two cities: Saqsin in the upper layers and Atil in the lower layers. The layers which are thought to be from Atil were uncovered in 2005 and date to the 9th and 10th centuries and have Khazarian characteristics. As reported by AFP, the site has a brick fortress in a triangular shape, as well as yurt-like huts. This is consistent with descriptions of Atil.
Advanced genetic testing, including Y-DNA and mtDNA haplotyping, of modern Jewish communities around the world, has helped to determine which of the communities are likely to descend from the Israelites and which are not, as well as to establish the degrees of separation between the groups. Important studies archived here include the University College London study of 2002, Ariella Oppenheim's study of 2001, Ariella Oppenheim's study of 2000, Michael Hammer's study of 2000, Doron Behar's study of 2008, and others.
Key findings:
# The main ethnic element of Ashkenazim (German and Eastern European Jews), Sephardim (Spanish and Portuguese Jews), Mizrakhim (Middle Eastern Jews), Juhurim (Mountain Jews of the Caucasus), Italqim (Italian Jews), and most other modern Jewish populations of the world is Israelite. The Israelite haplotypes fall into Y-DNA haplogroups J and E.
# Ashkenazim also descend, in a smaller way, from European peoples such as Slavs and Khazars. The non-Israelite Y-DNA haplogroups include Q (typically Central Asian) and R1a1 (typically Eastern European).
# Dutch Jews from the Netherlands also descend from northwestern Europeans.
# Sephardim also descend, in a smaller way, from various non-Israelite peoples.
# Georgian Jews (Gruzinim) are a mix of Georgians and Israelites.
# Yemenite Jews (Temanim) are a mix of Yemenite Arabs and Israelites.
# Moroccan Jews, Algerian Jews, and Tunisian Jews are mainly Israelites.
# Libyan Jews are mainly Israelites who may have mixed somewhat with Berbers.
# Ethiopian Jews are almost exclusively Ethiopian, with little or no Israelite ancestry.
# Bene Israel Jews and Cochin Jews of India have much Indian ancestry in their mtDNA.
# This section has studies and commentaries related to Jewish genetic diseases such as Mediterranean Fever, Tay-Sachs, and pemphigus vulgaris. Learn about their geographical and ethnic diffusion, and what this often tells us about the degree of closeness between Jews and certain non-Jewish ethnic groups like Iranians, Anatolian Turks, and Palestinian Arabs.
Key findings:
# The 185delAG breast cancer mutation is found among both Ashkenazim and Moroccan Jews.
# A mutation causing Factor XI Deficiency is found among both Ashkenazim and Iraqi Jews.
# One form of the gene causing Familial Mediterranean Fever is found among Ashkenazim, Iraqi Jews, Druzes, and Armenians. Another form of the gene is found among Iraqi Jews, North African Jews, and Armenians. Some Sephardim, Arabs, and Anatolian Turks also have the gene.
# Gaucher Disease is found among both Ashkenazim and some Europeans.
# The mutation DFNB1, which causes deafness, is found among both Ashkenazim and Palestinian Arabs.
# The pemphigus MHC susceptibility gene is found among both Ashkenazim and Iranians.
# The protective CCR5-D32 allele may have been introduced into the Ashkenazic population by Khazars.
web: http://www.khazaria.com/genetics/abstracts.html
Khazars and Jews
The Khazar royalty was descended from the Ashina Turk dynasty. In the 9th century c.e., the Khazarian kings and nobility as well as a significant part of the Khazarian population embraced the Jewish belief and adopted the hallmarks of Judaism, including Torah and Talmud, the Hebrew script and the observance of Jewish holidays.* Anyway, most of the empire's population adopted either Christianity or Islam. The Jewish kings established a legal system that equally respected each religion, and the courts were ruled by Jewish, Christian, Muslim and also Slavic judges.
The Scythian-Turkic peoples, to which Khazars belong, were originally nomads and had an elementary Runic writing system, if any. In fact, when the Turks conquered the Arab Empire, they adopted Arabic script and began to keep records of their own history, which hardly existed before. In the same way, the Khazar Kahans observed the Jews dwelling in their kingdom and proved admiration for the Jews' culture and technical abilities, so that they appointed Jews as their counsellors and commercial advisors (Ottoman Turk Sultans did the same centuries later). The Jews taught them the art of writing, and since then, the Khazar language was written in Hebrew-Aramaic script.
King Bulan adopted Judaism in 4621 (861 c.e.), according to tradition, after having heard a debate between representatives of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim faiths. King Ovadiyah, his successor and the first of a series of kings with Hebrew names, established synagogues and Jewish schools in Khazaria. The Khazar nobility and many of the common people, as well as some of the Alan tribes, embraced Judaism. (see Khazar Kings list)
Yet, the association between Jews and Khazars begins many centuries earlier. The Jews encountered Scythian-Turkic tribes, including the Khazars, in the fifth century b.c.e. in Asia, when Israelite merchants from Assyria and Persia reached Kaifeng, then the capital of China. It is even possible that intermarriage occurred with Khazars and members of some of the Northern Israelite tribes, those considered "lost", which have dwelled in China and only now are being discovered and returning back to Israel. In this case, the Khazars' particular tendency towards Judaism would have a natural, genetic link. In fact, such idea was also spread among Khazar kings, who asserted that they did not convert, but returned back to Judaism. If this is true, the "Khazar Issue" supporters (see above) would lack any reason at all, but I would not fall into speculative theories as they do.
Jewish-Turk relationships were continuous since then, and Jews became an influent people in many Central Asian towns like Balkh, Bukhara, Samarkand, Tashkent, etc. Jews and the Turkic tribes dwelled together and had a peaceful exchange during centuries.
When the Khazars settled around the Caspian Sea, they found there some communities of Jews that were deported from Galil in 3409 (351 b.c.e.).
In the 10th century c.e., the political situation changed: the Sarmatic-Slavic tribes were organized under Scandinavian Russians, giving birth to a new rising power, the Kievan Rus'. On the other front, the Abbasid Empire was in decline, consequently, no longer threatening for Byzantium. This situation frustrated the importance of Khazaria as a safeguard for the Christian Europe. The Magyars consolidated their state in the Danubian Basin, and aimed at achieving the hegemony over the Balkans, where their kin-related Bulgars were still the leading nation.
The perfidious Byzantines, who have always taken advantage of the good relationships with the Khazarian Empire, first supported the Magyars against the Bulgarians (who were allies of the Khazars), by assailing them from the south while Magyars advanced in the north. Hungary became the new hegemonic state in the Balkans. Secondly, the Byzantines encouraged the Rus' (Varangian Scandinavians have supplied the Eastern Roman Empire with mercenary troops for centuries) to attack the Khazar Kingdom, that fell under the Viking armies in 4776 (1016 c.e.).
Nevertheless, the Khazar heritage was transferred to the two new powerful states: the Rus' and Hungary. The rather underdeveloped Rus tribes thus became heir to the industrial, technological and commercial development that took place under the Judaic/Khazar state over the course of three centuries. The presence of Jewish communities in Kiev and elsewhere in Southern Russia were essential for maintaining the industries they had established and for bringing wealth into the region with the commercial ties they had likewise established.
After the fall of their kingdom, the Khazars gradually intermixed mainly with the Kipchak (Kuman) populations and lost their character of being a distinct people. Several ethnic groups of the Caucasus such as Karachays, Kumyks and Daghestani tribes have Khazars among their ancestors. The Kabars (a rebel Khazar tribe of whom many were also Jewish) emigrated to Hungary and were assimilated by their very closely kin-related Magyars.
The Khazarian population in Hungary was in constant increase since the Hungarian Duke Taksony (4715-4730 / 955-970 c.e.) invited Khazar Jews to settle in his realm. On the other hand, Hungarian Jews promoted for a while the suggestion that they were themselves of Khazar rather than authentic Jewish origin, and hence legitimate Hungarians no less than the Magyars.** There were many converted Khazars among them, but the majority was of original Jewish stock. Undoubtedly, the most strongly Khazar element within Jews is present in Hungarian Jews, descendants of the last Khazars who fled into Hungary until the 14th century c.e., where they were received by their former vassals, the Magyar kings. The Hungarian Jews are definitely a fusion of Semitic German Jews, Khazars, Kabars and Sephardic immigrants who came to Hungary by way of Italy fleeing from the Spanish inquisition.
Concerning the Jewish communities that remained in the formerly Khazar territories, they were assimilated by the Slavic-speaking Jews, and in a later period, by the Yiddisch-speaking immigrants from Central Europe, that outnumbered the native Russian Jews. In this way, the Khazar origin within Jewry was reduced to a minority and furtherly disappeared by intermarriage.
Conclusion: There is a Khazar component in the ancestry of many Eastern European Jews, though it has been rendered irrelevant by intermarriage with the overwhelming majority of Semitic Ashkenazim. The most authentic descendants of the Khazars are today to be found among the modern Hungarians, including many Hungarian Jews, and in a lesser degree, also within Bulgarians and some peoples of the Caucasus area.
from: http://www.imninalu.net/Khazars.htm
Let me conclude with: Ibn al-Faqih, in fact, wrote "All of the Khazars are Jews." Christian of Stavelot wrote in 864 that "all of them profess the Jewish faith in its entirety."
FWIW, Larry Romanoff has a lengthy article on the Khazar Empire.
EN — LARRY ROMANOFF — Jews and Revolutions — September 12, 2022
Jews and Revolutions By Larry Romanoff, September 12, 2022 Introduction Much of the so-called “history” we were taught in our schools has not been so accurate as …
www.bluemoonofshanghai.com
Thanks for that article Vulcan59.
As Deputy commissar for culture in Bela Kun's regime, Lukacs put his self-
described demonic ideas into action in what came to be known as cultural terrorism.” As part of this terrorism, he instituted a radical sex education program in Hungarian schools. Children were instructed in free love, sexual intercourse, the archaic nature of middle-class family codes, the outdatedness of monogamy and the irrelevance of religion, which deprives man of all pleasures. Women too were called to rebel against the sexual mores of the time by engaging in open promiscuity. Lucacs’ purpose in promoting licentiousness among women and children was to destroy the family, the core institution of Christianity and western culture”. These “Communists” knew if they could destroy the West’s traditional sexual morals, they would have taken a giant step toward destroying Western culture itself – and that would appear to have been the definite aim.
The more things change the more they stay the same. To think what we are seeing is exactly what they were doing 100 years ago. Their utter destain for humanity is jaw dropping. Instead of blaming the Jews we should stop using the word Zionist which connects them to the Jews, if only by default, and instead call them what they are KHAZARS. They would then know we are aware of them and their ilk. This makes me think about the actions of Hungary in the present day and their stance against the EU and Nato. They remember how they were treated.
Reminds me of Laura saying in the Wave series about the amount of Hungarian "Jews" that were born there in the 19th century that came to the west. This also explains why the leaders in the west show no loyalty to their own people, they are loyal, either through fear or bribery, only to the KAZARS.
