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The Khazars
Leslie Rübner
[Written in 2011]
I remember a street in Budapest called Khazar Street (Kazár utca). The plaque on the wall informed one that towards the end of the 10th century, when the Magyars entered the Carpathian Basin, other peoples joined them, including the Khazars. I also heard from my Rebbe in Cheder (traditional Hebrew school) that there were a people called the Kuzarim who, after consulting St Cyril (860 CE) and an Imam, became Jewish. They both referred to Judaism as the basis of their beliefs. (Saints Cyril, b. c.826, d. 14 Feb 869 CE, and Methodius, b. c.815, d.6 Apr 884 CE - the “Apostles to the Slavs” also managed to convert a large number of Slavs to Orthodox Christianity!) Therefore, I came to the conclusion that Hungarian Jews were somehow different from the others. Only when I grew up did I realise that this was not so.
‘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.’ [Source: imninalu.net]
Recently, surfing the net, I came across some websites trying to prove that Ashkenazim (maybe more than 80% of World Jewry) are not the descendants of the ancient Hebrews, but of the Khazars. The proof according to these websites is in a book by Arthur Koestler, “The Thirteenth Tribe”. The fact that Ashkenazim seemingly have a lighter complexion than the Arabs, the “undisputed Semites”, adds weight to this (apparently the Khazars were of fair appearance). These websites say that the sheer number of Jews found in Eastern Europe do not support the fact that they are the descendants of the very few German Jews who managed to escape with their lives from those murderous fanatics, the Crusaders, from the Rhine Valley (what a cheek!). Needless to say, reading this, I had to find out more.
The Khazars were a pastoral, semi-nomadic Turkic people. They lived in Central Asia between the Aral Sea & the River Dniepr and had a well developed governing and commercial structure. Their dual-monarchy was a Turkic system under which the kagan was the supreme king and the bek was the civilian army leader (something like a Defence Minister, but with more power). All the kagans tolerated those who had different religions to theirs, so that even when these kings adopted Judaism, they still let Christians, Pagans and Muslims live and practice their faiths in peace. In the capital city, the Khazars established a supreme court composed of seven members, and every religion was represented on this judicial panel (according to one contemporary Arab chronicle, the Jews were judged according to Jewish Law, while the others according to theirs.). Since they would not deal with each other, the Khazars served as a link between the Byzantine Empire and the new powers of Islam.
"By acting as a buffer state between the Islamic world and the Christian world, Khazaria prevented Islam from significantly spreading north of the Caucasus Mountains. This was accomplished thru a series of wars known as the Arab-Khazar Wars, which took place in the late 7th and early 8th centuries. The wars established the Caucasus and the city of Derbent as the boundary between the Khazars and the Arabs." [Source: khazaria.com]
Being situated in Central Asia, Rus (later to become Russia) to the North, the Byzantine Empire to the South West, Islamic people directly to the South and China to the East, they were in a vulnerable situation, standing as a barrier between Northern Europe and Islam.
"Khazaria had an important Jewish community long before the conversion of the Kagan, or Khazar ruler, and nobles to Judaism. Not committed to any militant religious ideology, it became a haven for Jewish refugees from Byzantium and the Muslim lands fleeing persecution, forced conversion and other threats." [Source: econc10.bu.edu]
Following a dialogue in 861 CE between King Bulan of the Khazars and Rabbi Yitzhak ha-Sangari, the King and some of the ruling classes converted to Judaism. However, the bulk of the people mainly chose Islam or Christianity. The Ukrainian professor, Omeljan Pritsak, estimated that there were about 30,000 Jews in Khazaria (mostly non-converts) at the end of the 10th century. The idea, branded about, that all of them became Jews is a fallacy. If Ashkenazim were all Khazars, there would not be a single Kohen or Levi, nor the Yiddish language or culture.
The historian J.B. Bury, suggests that by accepting a monotheistic religion and one which was the root of both Islam and Christianity, the Khazars would no longer be resented as heathen barbarians. More importantly, under Judaism, the sovereignty of the Khazar Kagan would not be compromised by influence from the Emperor of Byzantium or the Caliph. Unfortunately, there is little written evidence about the Khazars, but we have some archaeological ones. Some of the Jewish-Turkic graves at Chelarevo, in what used to be Hungary (but today Serbia), contain engravings of the Star of David. The same were unearthed at two Khazar sites, one along the Donets River in eastern Ukraine and the other along the Don River in southern Russia. The few references we have in literature, apart from the Kuzari by Yehuda Ha-Levi of Toledo, are found in Arab writings. The geographer and traveller, Ibn Khordadbeh, wrote in 850 CE, concerning the unusual linguistic abilities of the Jewish merchants of Khazaria, “they speak Persian, Roumanian, Arabic, Frankish, Spanish, and Slavonic, and that they travel from the west to the east and from the east to the west, sometimes by land, sometimes by sea. The great overland trade route from Persia led over the mountains of the Caucasus through the country of the Slavs, near the capital of the Khazars…”
The traveller, Ibn Masudi, gave the following report in 954 CE, “the population of the Khazar capital consists of Moslems, Christians, Jews, and pagans. The king, his court professes the Jewish religion since the time of the Caliph Haroun-al-Rashid. Many Jews who settled among the Khazars came from all the cities of the Moslems and the lands of Byzantium, the reason being that the king of Byzantium persecuted the Jews of his empire in order to force them to adopt Christianity…”
There were a lot of different nomadic people being pushed eastwards when the Byzantine Empire was expanding, but they were halted by Great Wall of China. However, towards the end of the first millennium, the Chinese had the upper hand and these same hordes were being forced westwards. With no Wall to stop them, these nomads were invading Europe in waves. Among the first ones were the Huns, under the leadership of Attila. He managed to push as far west as Rome, besieging it. One of the last of these invaders was the Magyars, under the rule of Árpád (this migration ended with the Mongols of Genghis Khan). The Magyars were a loose federation of seven tribes living in Central Asia. In those times, the Magyars’ “neighbours” were the Khazars. The Magyars and Khazars formed a temporally alliance. Lebedias, the Magyar chief, even married a Khazar woman to strengthen this. The kagan of the Khazars summoned Lebedias to offer him the Magyar throne, but he refused it and proposed Álmos (another Tribal leader) and his son, Árpád, for the honour. The seven chiefs chose Árpád.
On account of ongoing Bulgarian (who also lived in the area at this time, but later were also forced west and settled on the western shores of the Black Sea) and Petcheneg attacks, the Magyars could not stay in their home and moved further, to Transylvania. In 895 CE, they conquered part of the Carpathian basin, east of the Danube, and after some smaller battles, Pannonia (west of the Danube) was theirs by c. 900. After settling, most of them led a raiding-looting lifestyle. The Magyars instilled fear with their arrows. They were excellent marksmen. Chronicles tell, “They kill a few with the sword, but many thousands with arrows. They shoot them from their horn bows so skilfully, that there is hardly any protection against them.” In those years, in Christian churches all across Europe, people prayed, “Lord, save us from the arrows of the Magyars!” They reached Rhiems and Burgundy in France, and then crossing the Alps, pillaged Lombardy in Italy. Eventually the Germans, united under Otto the Great, the 'Holy Roman Emperor', beat the Magyars at the Battle of Lechfeld in Bavaria in 954 CE, converting them to the Roman Catholicism and forcing them back to the Carpathian Basin.
In 965 CE, the Rus army under Svyatoslav, crashed through the Khazar borders. This marked an end to the Khazar Empire, but not the nation. Eventually, Christianity played a hand in the fall of Khazaria. Prince Svyatoslav’s youngest son, Vladimir, converted to Greek Orthodoxy, much the same way the Khazars became Jews, talking to all three faiths, then choosing the Eastern Christianity. Rus and the Byzantines joined forces, attacking the Khazars, raiding the capital, and eventually subduing the country in 1016, scattering its people all over Eastern Europe, with large numbers joining the retreating Magyars. After the attack on the Jewry of Mainz in May 1096, during the First Crusade mounted by Pope Urban II, the Jews of the Rhine Valley found refuge among their co-religionists in Eastern Europe, who were there since Roman times, bringing their language with them.
I then found that website after website claimed that the original Hebrew people were of dark complexion. However, there are examples of Jewish people in the past that were light skinned, for example King David. The ancient Middle East was inhabited by people like the Edomites (comes from the Hebrew word ‘adom’, meaning red). They were not exactly of a dark complexion. Esau was described as a ginger and hairy person.
Jews had a deplorable history in Europe. With no legal protection, they were robbed and murdered for two thousand years. Despite this, there were some conversions to Judaism from the host nations, however genetic tests and DNA confirms that Jews are direct descendants of the Ancient Hebrews.
"Genetic tests indicate that Ashkenazim Jews are also the direct descendants of the Israelites, and their DNA confirms their ancestry from the ancient Middle East. Genetics studies show that Ashkenazim Jews are more closely related to Yemenite Jews, Assyrian Jews, Sephardic Jews, Kurdish Jews, and Arabs, than they are to European peoples, and that hardly any intermarriage or conversion has occurred to affect the Jewish groups over the centuries." [Source: khazaria.com]
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