Books on Khazaria

[shijing]

Nomads and Their Neighbours in the Russian Steppe: Turks, Khazars and Qipchaqs by Peter B. Golden

The western steppelands of Central Eurasia, stretching from the Danube, through the modern Ukraine and southern Russia, to the Caspian, have historically been the meeting ground of Inner Asian pastoral nomads and the agrarian societies of Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. This volume deals, firstly, with the interaction of the nomads with their sedentary neighbours - the Kievan Rus' state and the mediaeval polities of Transcaucasia, Georgia in particular - in the period from the 6th century to the advent of the Mongols. Secondly, it looks at questions of nomadic ethnogenesis (Oghuz, Hungarian, Qipchaq) at the evolution of nomadic political traditions and the heritage of the Turk empire, and at aspects of indigenous nomadic religious traditions together with the impact of foreign religions on the nomads - notably the conversion of the Khazars to Judaism. A number of articles focus on the Qipchaqs, a powerful confederation of complex Inner Asian origins that played a crucial role in the history of Christian Eastern Europe and Transcaucasia and the Muslim world between the 11th and 13th centuries.

The World of the Khazars: Peter B. Golden (Editor), Haggai Ben-Shammai (Editor), Andras Rona-Tas (Editor)

The Khazar Empire was one of the major states of medieval Eurasia. Drawing on a variety of disciplines (history, linguistics, archaeology, literary studies), the papers in this volume shed new light on many of the disputed topics in Khazar history.

I wanted to make a quick mention of these books, since Khazar history seems to be intimately bound up with the genesis of the Ashkenazi Jews. As we know, there is a huge blank spot in history regarding this topic, but these books shed at least some light on this period. Peter Golden seems to the the authority on Khazar history, as far as I can tell.

One of the interesting topics that is covered here is the origin of the Hungarian confederacy -- the C's once said that the split between the Finns and the Hungarians occurred when one group "took the high road" and the other "took the low road". One of the things that happened when the Hungarians took the low road seems to be that they became intertwined with the Khazars (a Turkic group at that time, which later became admixed with a Slavic group -- there is an interesting article on Yiddish in regard to that in the second book above). The result seems to have been that they had a large influx of Turkic (Khazar) influence in all cultural spheres.

These books also complement the middle part of Stoyanov's The Other God, which deals with this part of Eurasian history and with many of the steppe peoples discussed in these books.

 

[dannybananny]

One of the interesting topics that is covered here is the origin of the Hungarian confederacy -- the C's once said that the split between the Finns and the Hungarians occurred when one group "took the high road" and the other "took the low road". One of the things that happened when the Hungarians took the low road seems to be that they became intertwined with the Khazars (a Turkic group at that time, which later became admixed with a Slavic group -- there is an interesting article on Yiddish in regard to that in the second book above). The result seems to have been that they had a large influx of Turkic (Khazar) influence in all cultural spheres.

But I wouldn't say only Khazar, that is Kabar influence(clan that revolted against Khazarian government and joined Hungarians), but there were also other Turkic nomads that settled in Hungary like Pechenegs and Cumans that assimilated with Hungarians, and later had privileges in Hungary to 19. century and were being used as auxiliary troops in Hungarian medieval army and were called by king Bela IV to help him against Mongol invasion. From Wikipedia :

In 15th-century Hungary, some people adopted the surname Besenyö, which is Hungarian for Pecheneg. They were most numerous in the county of Tolna. Abu Hamid al Garnathi in the late 12th century referred to Hungarian Pechenegs who were probably Muslims living disguised as Christians. Others survived within the ranks of the pastoral nomadic tribes of the Balkan Highlands as Yörüks, eventually adopting Islam

And there is also conquest of Ottoman Turks that conquered half of Hungary and Croatia in 16. century(and were under Ottoman rule almost for 2 century) and their influence is felt in all Eastern Europe today, This is basic stuff we learn in college, we have History of Hungary we learn in Croatia because these two countries because of their mutual history.

 

[shijing]

But I wouldn't say only Khazar, that is Kabar influence (clan that revolted against Khazarian government and joined Hungarians), but there were also other Turkic nomads that settled in Hungary like Pechenegs and Cumans that assimilated with Hungarians, and later had privileges in Hungary to 19. century and were being used as auxiliary troops in Hungarian medieval army and were called by king Bela IV to help him against Mongol invasion.

That's true, and thanks for the additional info, dannybananny. The Pechenegs come up in a lot of Golden's stuff, and they seem to have been quite a big player at the time as well. He makes a big point about the fact that "Turkic" can't be seen too rigidly as a purely ethnic or linguistic label, since there was so much interaction (alliances, absorption via conquering, etc) between various peoples on the steppes during this time, and most of the information about these peoples comes from second-hand sources (Byzantine, Arabic, and Slavic primarily) so that the various nomadic groups get confused quite easily.