Those who Forget the Past
There is still the question hanging as to why our current culture has so little awareness of this vast and powerful Jewish Empire that dominated Eastern Europe and Western Asia for such a long period of time. The answer probably lies in the religious divisions and prejudices erected by the Catholic Church in Rome after the crusades in an effort to hide the perfidy of the destruction of their co-religionists, the Eastern Orthodox Church of Byzantium. So, let's back up just a bit back to the same point in time when the Magyars went across the Carpathians, thus depriving the Khazars of their protection in the buffer zone, taking many Jews with them. At that point, as noted above, the Rus took over Kiev in a bloodless coup. There is a reason that they were able to do this.
Three years earlier, the Byzantine emperor set out against the Saracens. He hadn't been gone long when a messenger came to tell him to turn around and return to Constantinople as soon as possible because 200 Russian ships had entered the Bosporus from the Black Sea and were sacking the suburbs of the city. This attack had been coordinated with a simultaneous attack of a western Viking fleet approaching Constantinople across the Mediterranean. The master mind behind this almost capture of Constantinople was Rurik of Novgorod, AKA Rorik of Jutland.
The Byzantines now realized what they were up against and, as Koestler notes, decided to play the double game. Treaties were signed in 860 and 866. Scandinavian sailors were recruited into the Byzantine fleet and the famous Varangian Guard was formed. Later treaties in 945 and 971, led to the Principality of Kiev supplying the Byzantine Emperor with troops on request. In 957, Princess Olga of Kiev was baptized on her state visit to Constantinople.
In 988, during the reign of St. Vladimir, the ruling dynasty of the Russians finally and definitively adopted Christianity via the Greek Orthodox Church.
At about the same time, the Hungarians, Poles and Scandinavians converted to Roman Catholicism. The lines of religious division were being drawn across the world.
With new alliances and new enemies, the Khazars were, it seems, no longer needed. Now the taxes they charged on all the commerce between Russia and Byzantine and the West and the East became a burden no longer to be borne. The Byzantines sacrificed the Khazar alliance in favor of a Russian d�tente.
The destruction of the capital city of Khazaria, Sarkel, by Svyatoslav of Kiev in 965, was the end of the Khazar empire, though the state continued to exist for a time.
In 1016, a combined Russian-Byzantine army invaded Khazaria, defeated its ruler and "subdued the country".
The Russians were unable to hold against the tide of nomad warriors from the Steppes. The constant pressure pushed the center of Russian power north and Kiev went into decline. Independent principalities arose and fell, creating chaos and endless war. Into this vacuum rode the Ghuzz, "pagan and godless foes" also known as Polovtsi, Kumans, Kun or Kipchaks. They ruled the steppes from the late eleventh to the thirteenth century when they were overrun by the Mongols.
The Eastern Steppes were plunged into darkness and the later history of the Khazars is shrouded in obscurity. Arab chroniclers speak of a temporary exodus of the population to the Caspian shore, but these apparently later returned with the aid of the Muslim Shah of Shirwan. More than one source speaks of this exodus, and eventual return, with the aid of the Muslims. The price of this Muslim help was conversion to Islam. So, ironically, it seems certain that many of the Muslims of that area of the world, now so reviled by the current Jewish state, are most likely their close kin. Again, we understand more about the chart of genetic kinship.
~~~
The first non-Arab mention of Khazaria after 965 is a travel report by Ibrahim Ibn Jakub, the Spanish-Jewish ambassador to Otto the Great. He described the Khazars as still flourishing in 973. The Russian Chronicles give an account of Jews from Khazaria arriving in Kiev in 986.
A later mention, in the Russian Chronicle for the year 1023, describes Prince Mtislav marching against his brother Prince Yaroslav with a force of Khazars and Kasogians. Seven years later, a Khazar army is reported to have defeated a Kurdish invading force.
In 1079, the Russian Chronicle says, "The Khazars of Tmutorakan took Oleg prisoner and shipped him overseas to Tsargrad (Constantinople)". Four years later, Oleg was allowed to return to Tmutorakan where, "he slaughtered the Khazars who had counseled the death of his brother and had plotted against himself".
Around A.D. 1100, the Christian saint, Eustratius was a prisoner in Cherson, in the Crimea, and was ill-treated by his "Jewish master", who forced ritual Passover food on him. Koestler emphasizes that the story is probably bunk, but what is important is that it takes a strong Jewish presence in the town for granted.
The last mention of the Khazars in the Russian chronicle is in 1106. About 50 years later, two Persian poets mention a joint Khazar-Rus invasion of Shirwan and speak of Dervent Khazars. At around the same time, there is a "short and grumpy" (Koestler's term) remark made by the Jewish traveler, Rabbi Petachia of Regensburg, who was scandalized at the lack of Talmudic learning among the Khazar Jews when he crossed Khazaria.
The last mention of the Khazars as a nation is dated around 1245, at which point in time, the Mongols had already established the greatest nomad empire in the world, extending from Hungary to China. Pope Innocent IV sent a mission to Batu Khan, grandson of Jinghiz Khan, ruler of the Western part of the Mongol Empire. Franciscan friar, Joannes de Plano Carpini visited the capital of Batu Khan: Sarai Batu, AKA Saksin, AKA Itil, the former city of the Khazars.
After his return, Plano Carpini wrote in his famous history a list of the regions he visited, as well as the occupants. He mentions, along with the Alans and Circassians, the "Khazars observing the Jewish religion".
Then, darkness.
Bar Hebraeus, one of the greatest Syriac scholars, relates that the father of Seljuk, (the founder of the Seljuk Turk dynasty), Tukak, was a commander in the army of the Khazar Kagan and that Seljuk himself was brought up at the Kagan's court. He was banned from the court for being too familiar with the Kagan.
Another source speaks of Seljuk's father as, "one of the notables of the Khazar Turks". Thus, there seems to have been an intimate relationship between the Khazars and the founders of the Seljuk dynasty. There was an obvious break, but whether it was because of conversion to Islam, or whether conversion to Islam came about because of the break in relations, we cannot know. What seems to be evident is that Khazars were absorbed into Hungarians, Turks, and "Mongols." Then, of course, there are the Ashkenazi Jews.
Russian epics and folk tales give us a few scattered bits to consider after the expiration of the official chronicles. They speak of the "country of the Jews" and "Jewish heroes" who fought against Russians and ruled the steppes. Legends from the Middle ages circulated among Western Jews tell of a "kingdom of the Red Jews".
Notice Koestler's report above about Rabbi Petachia of Regensburg, who was scandalized at the lack of Talmudic learning among the Khazar Jews when he crossed Khazaria around 1150. Even with the lack of learning, strange things were going on among the Khazarian Jews at this time.
Indeed it very well may have. Notice that "Solomon ben Duji, aided by his son Menahem and a Palestinian scribe wrote letters to all the Jews, near and far, in all the lands around them ... They said that the time had come in which God would gather Israel, His people from all lands to Jerusalem, the holy city..."
Prior to this time, apparently, there had been no such thing as a "messianic movement" among Jews that promoted the idea of "returning to Israel." It was an invention of an apparent lunatic who believed that they were all going to be raptured from their rooftops.
Nowadays, the "traditional Jewish understanding" of the messiah is non-supernatural, and is best elucidated by Maimonides in his commentary to tractate Sanhedrin, of the Babylonian Talmud. He writes:
This view is accepted by Orthodox Judaism today, but notice the similarity of the ideas to those promoted by the above mentioned Khazarian Jew Solomon ben Duji, and his son Menahem. As it happens, it is very likely that Maimonides was influenced by this pair since he would have been coming to adulthood at about the same time that these ideas were being promulgated and he moved in areas and circles where he would surely have heard the stories of the attempt by those Khazarian Jews to re-take Jerusalem and re-establish a Jewish kingdom on Earth.
Maimonides was born March 30, 1135 (died December 13, 1204) in C�rdoba, Spain, then under Muslim rule during what some scholars consider to be the end of the golden age of Jewish culture in Spain. Maimonides studied Torah under his father Maimon who had in turn studied under Rabbi Joseph ibn Migash.
The Almohades conquered C�rdoba in 1148, and offered the Jewish community the choice of conversion to Islam, death, or exile. Maimonides's family, along with most other Jews, chose exile. For the next ten years they moved about in southern Spain, avoiding the conquering Almohades, but eventually settled in Fes in Morocco, where Maimonides acquired most of his secular knowledge, studying at the University of Fes. During this time, he composed his acclaimed commentary on the Mishnah.
Following this sojourn in Morocco, he briefly lived in the Holy Land, spending time in Jerusalem, and finally settled in Fostat, Egypt; where he was doctor of the Grand Vizier Alfadhil and also possibly the doctor of Sultan Saladin of Egypt. In Egypt, he composed most of his oeuvre, including the Mishneh Torah. He died in Fostat, and was buried in Tiberias (today in Israel).
His son Avraham, recognized as a great scholar, succeeded him as Nagid (head of the Egyptian Jewish Community), as well as in the office of court physician, at the age of only eighteen. He greatly honored the memory of his father, and throughout his career defended his father's writings against all critics. The office of Nagid was held by the Maimonides family for four successive generations until the end of the 14th century.
Although his copious works on Jewish law and ethics was initially met with opposition during his lifetime, he was posthumously acknowledged to be one of the foremost rabbinical arbiters and philosophers in Jewish history. Today, his works and his views are considered a cornerstone of Orthodox Jewish thought and study.
Maimonides was by far the most influential figure in medieval Jewish philosophy. A popular medieval saying that also served as his epitaph states, From Moshe (of the Torah) to Moshe (Maimonides) there was none like Moshe.
Radical Jewish scholars in the centuries that followed can be characterised as "Maimonideans" or "anti-Maimonideans". Moderate scholars were eclectics who largely accepted Maimonides' Aristotelian world-view, but rejected those elements of it which they considered to contradict the religious tradition.
Notice the mention of the fact that Maimonides' ideas were met with opposition and were said to contradict the Jewish religious tradition. One suspects that Rabbi Petachia of Regensburg, who was scandalized at the lack of Talmudic learning among the Khazar Jews when he crossed Khazaria around 1150, would also have ben scandalized at the work of Maimonides as well since it was the lack of Talmudic learning among the Khazar Jews that undoubtedly led to the eruption of the idea of the re-gathering of the Jews to Israel. We notice that "Among the Jews of the Middle East, [the Khazarian Jew who claimed he was the messiah], David certainly aroused fervent Messianic hopes" and Maimonides was certainly a Jew in the Middle East at a time that was not long after this madness had taken hold and spread like a disease. It is most ironic that the idea of Zionism as it exists today, formulated and promoted by Ashkenazi Jews, was originally created by Khazarian Jews over 700 years earlier.
Here, then, we have the cradle of the numerically strongest and culturally dominant part of modern Jewry."
There is still the question hanging as to why our current culture has so little awareness of this vast and powerful Jewish Empire that dominated Eastern Europe and Western Asia for such a long period of time. The answer probably lies in the religious divisions and prejudices erected by the Catholic Church in Rome after the crusades in an effort to hide the perfidy of the destruction of their co-religionists, the Eastern Orthodox Church of Byzantium. So, let's back up just a bit back to the same point in time when the Magyars went across the Carpathians, thus depriving the Khazars of their protection in the buffer zone, taking many Jews with them. At that point, as noted above, the Rus took over Kiev in a bloodless coup. There is a reason that they were able to do this.
Three years earlier, the Byzantine emperor set out against the Saracens. He hadn't been gone long when a messenger came to tell him to turn around and return to Constantinople as soon as possible because 200 Russian ships had entered the Bosporus from the Black Sea and were sacking the suburbs of the city. This attack had been coordinated with a simultaneous attack of a western Viking fleet approaching Constantinople across the Mediterranean. The master mind behind this almost capture of Constantinople was Rurik of Novgorod, AKA Rorik of Jutland.
The Byzantines now realized what they were up against and, as Koestler notes, decided to play the double game. Treaties were signed in 860 and 866. Scandinavian sailors were recruited into the Byzantine fleet and the famous Varangian Guard was formed. Later treaties in 945 and 971, led to the Principality of Kiev supplying the Byzantine Emperor with troops on request. In 957, Princess Olga of Kiev was baptized on her state visit to Constantinople.
In 988, during the reign of St. Vladimir, the ruling dynasty of the Russians finally and definitively adopted Christianity via the Greek Orthodox Church.
At about the same time, the Hungarians, Poles and Scandinavians converted to Roman Catholicism. The lines of religious division were being drawn across the world.
With new alliances and new enemies, the Khazars were, it seems, no longer needed. Now the taxes they charged on all the commerce between Russia and Byzantine and the West and the East became a burden no longer to be borne. The Byzantines sacrificed the Khazar alliance in favor of a Russian d�tente.
The destruction of the capital city of Khazaria, Sarkel, by Svyatoslav of Kiev in 965, was the end of the Khazar empire, though the state continued to exist for a time.
In 1016, a combined Russian-Byzantine army invaded Khazaria, defeated its ruler and "subdued the country".
The Russians were unable to hold against the tide of nomad warriors from the Steppes. The constant pressure pushed the center of Russian power north and Kiev went into decline. Independent principalities arose and fell, creating chaos and endless war. Into this vacuum rode the Ghuzz, "pagan and godless foes" also known as Polovtsi, Kumans, Kun or Kipchaks. They ruled the steppes from the late eleventh to the thirteenth century when they were overrun by the Mongols.
The Eastern Steppes were plunged into darkness and the later history of the Khazars is shrouded in obscurity. Arab chroniclers speak of a temporary exodus of the population to the Caspian shore, but these apparently later returned with the aid of the Muslim Shah of Shirwan. More than one source speaks of this exodus, and eventual return, with the aid of the Muslims. The price of this Muslim help was conversion to Islam. So, ironically, it seems certain that many of the Muslims of that area of the world, now so reviled by the current Jewish state, are most likely their close kin. Again, we understand more about the chart of genetic kinship.
~~~
The first non-Arab mention of Khazaria after 965 is a travel report by Ibrahim Ibn Jakub, the Spanish-Jewish ambassador to Otto the Great. He described the Khazars as still flourishing in 973. The Russian Chronicles give an account of Jews from Khazaria arriving in Kiev in 986.
A later mention, in the Russian Chronicle for the year 1023, describes Prince Mtislav marching against his brother Prince Yaroslav with a force of Khazars and Kasogians. Seven years later, a Khazar army is reported to have defeated a Kurdish invading force.
In 1079, the Russian Chronicle says, "The Khazars of Tmutorakan took Oleg prisoner and shipped him overseas to Tsargrad (Constantinople)". Four years later, Oleg was allowed to return to Tmutorakan where, "he slaughtered the Khazars who had counseled the death of his brother and had plotted against himself".
Around A.D. 1100, the Christian saint, Eustratius was a prisoner in Cherson, in the Crimea, and was ill-treated by his "Jewish master", who forced ritual Passover food on him. Koestler emphasizes that the story is probably bunk, but what is important is that it takes a strong Jewish presence in the town for granted.
The last mention of the Khazars in the Russian chronicle is in 1106. About 50 years later, two Persian poets mention a joint Khazar-Rus invasion of Shirwan and speak of Dervent Khazars. At around the same time, there is a "short and grumpy" (Koestler's term) remark made by the Jewish traveler, Rabbi Petachia of Regensburg, who was scandalized at the lack of Talmudic learning among the Khazar Jews when he crossed Khazaria.
The last mention of the Khazars as a nation is dated around 1245, at which point in time, the Mongols had already established the greatest nomad empire in the world, extending from Hungary to China. Pope Innocent IV sent a mission to Batu Khan, grandson of Jinghiz Khan, ruler of the Western part of the Mongol Empire. Franciscan friar, Joannes de Plano Carpini visited the capital of Batu Khan: Sarai Batu, AKA Saksin, AKA Itil, the former city of the Khazars.
After his return, Plano Carpini wrote in his famous history a list of the regions he visited, as well as the occupants. He mentions, along with the Alans and Circassians, the "Khazars observing the Jewish religion".
Then, darkness.
Bar Hebraeus, one of the greatest Syriac scholars, relates that the father of Seljuk, (the founder of the Seljuk Turk dynasty), Tukak, was a commander in the army of the Khazar Kagan and that Seljuk himself was brought up at the Kagan's court. He was banned from the court for being too familiar with the Kagan.
Another source speaks of Seljuk's father as, "one of the notables of the Khazar Turks". Thus, there seems to have been an intimate relationship between the Khazars and the founders of the Seljuk dynasty. There was an obvious break, but whether it was because of conversion to Islam, or whether conversion to Islam came about because of the break in relations, we cannot know. What seems to be evident is that Khazars were absorbed into Hungarians, Turks, and "Mongols." Then, of course, there are the Ashkenazi Jews.
Russian epics and folk tales give us a few scattered bits to consider after the expiration of the official chronicles. They speak of the "country of the Jews" and "Jewish heroes" who fought against Russians and ruled the steppes. Legends from the Middle ages circulated among Western Jews tell of a "kingdom of the Red Jews".
"The Jews of other lands were flattered by the existence of an independent Jewish state. Popular imagination found here a particularly fertile field. Just as the biblically minded Slavonic epics speak of 'Jews' rather than Khazars, so did western Jews long after spin romantic tales around those 'red Jews', so styled perhaps because of the slight Mongolian pigmentation of many Khazars.
Notice Koestler's report above about Rabbi Petachia of Regensburg, who was scandalized at the lack of Talmudic learning among the Khazar Jews when he crossed Khazaria around 1150. Even with the lack of learning, strange things were going on among the Khazarian Jews at this time.
In the twelfth century there arose in Khazaria a Messianic movement, a rudimentary attempt at a Jewish crusade, aimed at the conquest of Palestine by force of arms. The initiator of the movement was a Khazar Jew, one Solomon ben Duji, aided by his son Menahem and a Palestinian scribe. They wrote letters to all the Jews, near and far, in all the lands around them ... They said that the time had come in which God would gather Israel, His people from all lands to Jerusalem, the holy city, and that Solomon Ben Duji was Elijah, and his son was the Messiah.
These appeals were apparently addressed to the Jewish communities in the Middle East, and seemed to have had little effect, for the next episode takes place only about twenty years later, when young Menahem assumed the name David al-Roy, and the title of Messiah. Though the movement originated in Khazaria, its centre soon shifted to Kurdistan. Here David assembled a substantial armed force - possibly of local Jews, reinforced by Khazars - and succeeded in taking possession of the strategic fortress of Amadie, northeast of Mosul. From here he may have hoped to lead his army to Edessa, and fight his way through Syria into the Holy Land. [...]
Among the Jews of the Middle East, David certainly aroused fervent Messianic hopes. One of his messages came to Baghdad and ... instructed its Jewish citizens to assemble on a certain night on their flat roofs, whence they would be flown on clouds to the Messiah's camp. A goodly number of Jews spent that night on their roofs awaiting the miraculous flight.
But the rabbinical hierarchy in Baghdad, fearing reprisals by the authorities, took a hostile attitude to the pseudo-Messiah and threatened him with a ban. Not surprisingly, David al-Roy was assassinated - apparently in his sleep, allegedly by his own father-in-law...
His memory was venerated, and when Benjamin of Tudela traveled through Persia twenty years after the event, 'they still spoke lovingly of their leader'. But the cult did not stop there. According to one theory, the six-pointed 'shield of David' which adorns the modern Israeli flag, started to become a national symbol with David a- Roy's crusade. [...]
During the half millennium of its existence and its aftermath in the East European communities, this noteworthy experiment in Jewish statecraft doubtless exerted a greater influence on Jewish history than we are as yet able to envisage.
Indeed it very well may have. Notice that "Solomon ben Duji, aided by his son Menahem and a Palestinian scribe wrote letters to all the Jews, near and far, in all the lands around them ... They said that the time had come in which God would gather Israel, His people from all lands to Jerusalem, the holy city..."
Prior to this time, apparently, there had been no such thing as a "messianic movement" among Jews that promoted the idea of "returning to Israel." It was an invention of an apparent lunatic who believed that they were all going to be raptured from their rooftops.
Nowadays, the "traditional Jewish understanding" of the messiah is non-supernatural, and is best elucidated by Maimonides in his commentary to tractate Sanhedrin, of the Babylonian Talmud. He writes:
The Messianic age is when the Jews will regain their independence and all return to the land of Israel. The Messiah will be a very great king, he will achieve great fame, and his reputation among the gentile nations will be even greater than that of King Solomon. His great righteousness and the wonders that he will bring about will cause all peoples to make peace with him and all lands to serve him....
Nothing will change in the Messianic age, however, except that Jews will regain their independence. Rich and poor, strong and weak, will still exist. However it will be very easy for people to make a living, and with very little effort they will be able to accomplish very much.... it will be a time when the number of wise men will increase...war shall not exist, and nation shall no longer lift up sword against nation....
The Messianic age will be highlighted by a community of the righteous and dominated by goodness and wisdom. It will be ruled by the Messiah, a righteous and honest king, outstanding in wisdom, and close to God. Do not think that the ways of the world or the laws of nature will change, this is not true. The world will continue as it is. The prophet Isaiah predicted "The wolf shall live with the sheep, the leopard shall lie down with the kid." This, however, is merely allegory, meaning that the Jews will live safely, even with the formerly wicked nations. All nations will return to the true religion and will no longer steal or oppress.
Note that all prophecies regarding the Messiah are allegorical - Only in the Messianic age will we know the meaning of each allegory and what it comes to teach us. Our sages and prophets did not long for the Messianic age in order that they might rule the world and dominate the gentiles, the only thing they wanted was to be free for Jews to involve themselves with the Torah and its wisdom.
This view is accepted by Orthodox Judaism today, but notice the similarity of the ideas to those promoted by the above mentioned Khazarian Jew Solomon ben Duji, and his son Menahem. As it happens, it is very likely that Maimonides was influenced by this pair since he would have been coming to adulthood at about the same time that these ideas were being promulgated and he moved in areas and circles where he would surely have heard the stories of the attempt by those Khazarian Jews to re-take Jerusalem and re-establish a Jewish kingdom on Earth.
Maimonides was born March 30, 1135 (died December 13, 1204) in C�rdoba, Spain, then under Muslim rule during what some scholars consider to be the end of the golden age of Jewish culture in Spain. Maimonides studied Torah under his father Maimon who had in turn studied under Rabbi Joseph ibn Migash.
The Almohades conquered C�rdoba in 1148, and offered the Jewish community the choice of conversion to Islam, death, or exile. Maimonides's family, along with most other Jews, chose exile. For the next ten years they moved about in southern Spain, avoiding the conquering Almohades, but eventually settled in Fes in Morocco, where Maimonides acquired most of his secular knowledge, studying at the University of Fes. During this time, he composed his acclaimed commentary on the Mishnah.
Following this sojourn in Morocco, he briefly lived in the Holy Land, spending time in Jerusalem, and finally settled in Fostat, Egypt; where he was doctor of the Grand Vizier Alfadhil and also possibly the doctor of Sultan Saladin of Egypt. In Egypt, he composed most of his oeuvre, including the Mishneh Torah. He died in Fostat, and was buried in Tiberias (today in Israel).
His son Avraham, recognized as a great scholar, succeeded him as Nagid (head of the Egyptian Jewish Community), as well as in the office of court physician, at the age of only eighteen. He greatly honored the memory of his father, and throughout his career defended his father's writings against all critics. The office of Nagid was held by the Maimonides family for four successive generations until the end of the 14th century.
Although his copious works on Jewish law and ethics was initially met with opposition during his lifetime, he was posthumously acknowledged to be one of the foremost rabbinical arbiters and philosophers in Jewish history. Today, his works and his views are considered a cornerstone of Orthodox Jewish thought and study.
Maimonides was by far the most influential figure in medieval Jewish philosophy. A popular medieval saying that also served as his epitaph states, From Moshe (of the Torah) to Moshe (Maimonides) there was none like Moshe.
Radical Jewish scholars in the centuries that followed can be characterised as "Maimonideans" or "anti-Maimonideans". Moderate scholars were eclectics who largely accepted Maimonides' Aristotelian world-view, but rejected those elements of it which they considered to contradict the religious tradition.
Notice the mention of the fact that Maimonides' ideas were met with opposition and were said to contradict the Jewish religious tradition. One suspects that Rabbi Petachia of Regensburg, who was scandalized at the lack of Talmudic learning among the Khazar Jews when he crossed Khazaria around 1150, would also have ben scandalized at the work of Maimonides as well since it was the lack of Talmudic learning among the Khazar Jews that undoubtedly led to the eruption of the idea of the re-gathering of the Jews to Israel. We notice that "Among the Jews of the Middle East, [the Khazarian Jew who claimed he was the messiah], David certainly aroused fervent Messianic hopes" and Maimonides was certainly a Jew in the Middle East at a time that was not long after this madness had taken hold and spread like a disease. It is most ironic that the idea of Zionism as it exists today, formulated and promoted by Ashkenazi Jews, was originally created by Khazarian Jews over 700 years earlier.
In general, the reduced Khazar kingdom persevered. It waged a more or less effective defence against all foes until the middle of the thirteenth century, when it fell victim to the great Mongol invasion... Even then it resisted stubbornly until the surrender of all its neighbors. Its population was largely absorbed by the Golden Horde which had established the centre of its empire in Khazar territory. But before and after the Mongol upheaval, the Khazars sent many offshoots into the unsubdued Slavonic lands, helping ultimately to build up the great Jewish centres of Eastern Europe.
Here, then, we have the cradle of the numerically strongest and culturally dominant part of modern Jewry."