-Caveat Lector-
For one account, see (or download) 'the book' from:
http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/13trindx.htm
The Thirteenth Tribe - by Arthur Koestler
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THE KHAZAR EMPIRE AND ITS HERITAGE
Rise and Fall of the Khazars
ISBN 0-394-40284-7
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A Short History of the Khazars
The following material is from
PICTORIAL HISTORY OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE
by Nathan Ausubel
Crown Publishers, Inc.
New York, NY, 1953.
"There is abundant historical evidence that by the time of the
destruction of Jerusalem there were securely anchored Jewish
communities in the Hellenistic kingdom of Bosporus in the area where
the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov flow together... the ancient Jews
of the Crimea seem to have led a close community life centered in the
synagogue and in the practices of their religion. The population of
the Crimean Jewish communities increased greatly with the centuries
as a result of a long series of major and minor revolts by the Jews
against Roman rule, not only in Judea but in their far-flung
settlements in Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor. Thousands of Jewish
refugees from those parts sought haven in the Bosporus settlements of
Kerch, Theodosia, Taman, and Anapa. With the rise of the Christian
empire of Byzantium the Bosporus settlements, too, fell under its
sway. Because Constantinople, the capital of the empire, lay on the
opposite shore of the Black Sea, the Crimean Jews carried on a lively
trade with it. They prospered and attracted many other Jews to
Crimea from other parts of the empire." -- page 129
"The Khazars, during the Byzantine era, were an aggregation of
warlike tribes who, it is conjectured, must have sprung from Hun or
Turkish stock... With dramatic suddenness the Khazars entered the
orbit of Jewish life. One of their khagans (kings), called Bulan,
was converted to Judaism about the year 740 C.E. and with him went
the Khazar tribes. There was a tradition, believed by the Khazars
themselves, that Bulan decided to become a Jew after he had listened
to a disputation participated in by an Arab mullah, a Christian
priest, and a rabbi on the relative merits of Islam, Christianity,
and Judaism. A later khagan, Obadiah, who wanted to establish the
Jewish faith on firmer doctrinal foundation, imported rabbis and
Talmudic scholars from either Babylonia or the Crimea. These founded
synagogues and religious schools where they taught the Torah to the
Khazar people.
"The noted Arab geographer and traveller, Ibn Khordadbeh, wrote,
circa 850, concerning the unusual linguistic abilities of the Jewish
merchants of Khazaria, "that 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 thru the country of the Slavs,
near the capital of the Khazars... Practically all the little that is
known about the Khazars is derived from Arabic sources. The
indefatigable traveller, Ibn Masudi, gave the following report in
954: "The population of the Khazar capital consists of Moslems,
Christians, Jews, and pagans. The king, his court, and all members
of the Khazar tribe profess the Jewish religion, which has been the
dominant faith of the country 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."
"It was about Ibn Masudi's time that the power of this unique Jewish
kingdom began showing signs of crumbling. This fact is revealed in
the strange correspondence between the khagan Joseph, the last Jewish
king of Khazaria, and Hasdai Ibn Shaprut, the celebrated Jewish
vizier to the caliph in southern Spain. In his letter, Joseph
informed his fellow Jew in Spain: "...I live at the mouth of the
river [Volga] and with the help of the Almighty I guard its entrance
and prevent the Russians who arrive in vessels from passing into the
Caspian Sea for the purpose of making their way to the Ishmaelites
[Arabs]. In the same manner, I keep these enemies on land from
approaching the gates of Bab-al-Abwab. Because of this, I am at war
with them, and were I to let them pass but once, they would destroy
the whole land of the Ishmaelites as far as Bagdad." Apparently
nothing the Jews of Khazaria did was sufficient to restrain the
emerging power of the Russians. Only several years after the khagan
Joseph had written his letter, the Russian princes succeeded in
overrunning Ityl, the Khazar capital of the Volga. Under Prince
Svyatoslav of Kiev, the Russians raged thru all the Jewish towns and
cities on the Volga, ravaging and slaughtering their hated enemies
and overlords. In 969, the Khazars were driven out of the entire
Caspian Sea region and retreated into the Bosporus region of the
Black Sea where, in a smaller and more compact area, they were able
to stem the advance of the invaders. But even that limited power of
Khazaria was fated not to endure for long. The Russians, with the
help of Byzantium, finally crushed it in 1016 and thus the Jewish
kingdom of Khazaria came to an end.
"What happened to the Khazar Jews is an intriguing historic mystery.
It is, however, certian that of those who remained in Khazaria most
were baptized by force. The rest were dispersed: some of them fled
into northern Hungary where in time they, too, were absorbed by the
local Christian population. To this very day there are villages in
northern Hungary that bear such names as Kozar and Kozardie. It is
also widely believed that many Khazar Jews, escaping from baptism,
found their way into Poland. There, by inter-group blending, they
soon became indistinguishable from other Jews. It is also
significant that Tshagataish, the language of the Khazar Jews, a
Turkish dialect, is still spoken in Poland, Hungary, and Lithuania by
the Karaites, the Jewish sectarians whose homeland was originally in
the Crimea. Even more significant is the fact that Tshagataish is
spoken by the few surviving Jewish Krimtchaki of the Crimea."
-- pages 130 and 131
"...Since Jews were needed by the Russian princes as traders and as
intermediaries between East and West, they were tolerated in Kiev...
Obviously, some manner of segregation was also required for the
outcase Jews; by the middle of the twelfth century, the Slavonian
chroniclers of Kiev made passing note of a "Jewish Gate" in the
city... Under Tatar rule, the Jews of the Crimea found it possible to
make close contact with the Jews of Russia, an intercourse which was
culturally and religiously profitable to both regions. Together they
intiiated a brisk trade between Moscow, Kiev, and Theodosia. Toward
the end of the fourteenth century, the Jews of Crimea were invited by
Grand Duke Witovt of Lithuania to settle in his domain for the
explicit purpose of developing its commerce. Communities of Jews
were established in Lutzk and Troki, in the latter place by the
Karaite sectarians. And this is how the great Jewish community of
Lithuania first came into being." -- page 131
"The circumstances surrounding the beginnings of Jewish settlement in
Poland remain nebulous, tho it is more than a surmise that the first
Jews must have come from the Crimea. After the fall of the Jewish
kingdom of Khazaria, they continued to arrive, fleeing from the
Russian boyars of Kiev who after several centuries of vassalage to
the Jewish kings had finally risen in revolt and conquered them. In
time, these Khazar Jews blended with the other Jewish elements in
Poland and ultimately lost their ethnic group identity. After the
Crusades and the massacres which followed the Black Death, thousands
of Jewish refugees fleeing Germany and Bohemia settled principally in
the cities of Wroclaw (later named Breslau), Posen, Cracow, and
Kalisz... (caption says, "Polish coins, 12th century, with Hebrew
inscriptions. Believed to have been minted by Khazar Jews employed
by Polish rulers.") ...The religious animus against them among
Christians almost everywhere was relatively weak [in Poland and
Lithuania]. This was because, until the end of the 10th century,
Poland was still pagan and Lithuania had not accepted Christianity
until the time of King Yaghello (1386-1434), a pagan converted to
Christianity, who forced the new religion on his subjects...
"With the 'mass arrival' of Jews from Germany and Bohemia after the
middle of the fourteenth century, the hitherto Slavonic character of
Polish-Jewish culture was rapidly transformed into a Yiddish-speaking
one. Polish Jews adopted the Ashkenazic rites, liturgy, and
religious customs of the German Jews as well as their method of Torah
and Talmud study and the use of Yiddish as the language of oral
translation and discussion. By the 16th century, except for
inevitable regional variations, a homogeneous Jewish culture had
crystalized... {the Statute of Kalisz is mentioned as being issued by
the Polish king Boleslaw the Pious to invite Jews to settle in Poland
and protect their property and lives. Information on page 134
discusses the creation of ghettos and the "identifying Jewish badge"
on outer garments} -- page 133
"When, exactly, the Jews of Poland first began to build wooden
synagogues is unknown... There are many theories about the origins
and the architectural influences that entered into their building...
A third and more plausible conjecture is that the Middle Eastern
refugees from the Jewish kingdom of Khazaria introduced them during
the Middle Ages when they settled en masse in Poland. The Asiatic
characteristics are obvious in the wooden synagogues. Byzantine
elements are artfully mingled with Mongolian. The roofs, pagoda
style, arranged one upon another and surmounted by vaulted ceilings
and cupolas, sometimes create the illusion that one is in central
Asia rather than Poland." -- page 138
"It is thought that ever since the fall of the Jewish kingdom of
Khazaria in 970 C.E., when the Jews from that country sought refuge
in the north of Hungary, there has been an unbroken continuity of
Jewish life in Hungary... During the Crusades and after the Black
Death, there were [supposedly] many emigrants to Hungary from Germany
and Bohemia." -- page 178
"There are some historians who even assert that during the eighth
century C.E., Moldavia and Wallachia, which were then separate
kingdoms but which later constituted Roumania, were vassals of the
Jewish kingdom of Khazaria. The history of the Jews in Roumania is
indeed nebulous until the fifteenth century when the Turkish sultans
became their overlords." -- page 204
"Upon the collapse of the Jewish Kingdom of Khazaria during the tenth
century C.E., many Jews fled for refuge to Bulgaria. When the latter
country was absorbed by the Byzantine Empire in 967, there was an
additional influx of new Jewish arrivals from the other parts of the
empire... [by 1492, one of the 'strains' in Bulgaria was 'Khazarian',
along with Crimean, Austrian, German, Polish, Italian, French,
Turkish, Russian, Crimean, Roumanian, Spanish, Bohemian, and
Portuguese]. -- pages 205 and 206
.
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