Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on July 22, 2015

The Khazars (Turkish: Hazarlar, Tatar: Xzrlr, Hebrew: (Kuzarim),[7]Arabic: (khazar), Russian: , Persian: , Greek: , Latin: Gazari[8][9]/Cosri[10]/Gasani[11][12]) were a semi-nomadic Turkic people who created what for its duration was the most powerful polity to emerge from the breakup of the western Turkish steppe empire, known as the Khazar Khanate or Khazaria.[13] Astride a major artery of commerce between northern Europe and southwestern Asia, Khazaria became one of the foremost trading emporia of the medieval world, commanding the western marches of the Silk Road and played a key commercial role as a crossroad between China, the Middle East, and Kievan Rus'.[14][15] For some three centuries (c. 650965) the Khazars dominated the vast area extending from the Volga-Don steppes to the eastern Crimea and the northern Caucasus.[16]

Khazaria long served as a buffer state between the Byzantine empire and both the nomads of the northern steppes and the Umayyad empire, after serving as Byzantium's proxy against the Sasanian Persian empire. The alliance was dropped around 900. Byzantium began to encourage the Alans to attack Khazaria and weaken its hold on Crimea and the Caucasus, while seeking to obtain an entente with the rising Rus' power to the north, which it aspired to convert to Christianity.[17] Between 965 and 969, the Kievan Rus ruler Sviatoslav I of Kiev conquered the capital Atil and destroyed the Khazar state.

Beginning in the 8th century, Khazar royalty and notable segments of the aristocracy converted to Judaism; the populace appears to have been multi-confessionala mosaic of pagan, Tengrist, Jewish, Christian and Muslim worshippersand polyethnic.[18] Khazar origins for, or suggestions Khazars were absorbed by many peoples, have been made regarding the Slavic Judaising Subbotniks, the Bukharan Jews, the Muslim Kumyks, Kazakhs, the Cossacks of the Don region, the Turkic-speaking Krymchaks and their Crimean neighbours the Karaites to the Moldavian Csngs, the Mountain Jews and others.[19][20][21] A modern theory, that the core of Ashkenazi Jewry emerged from a hypothetical Khazarian Jewish diaspora, is now viewed with scepticism by most scholars,[22] but occasionally supported by others.[23] This Khazarian hypothesis is sometimes associated with antisemitism[24] and anti-Zionism.[25]

Gyula Nmeth, following Zoltn Gombocz, derived Xazar from a hypothetical *Qasar reflecting a Turkic root qaz- ("to ramble, to roam") being an hypothetical velar variant of Common Turkic kez-.[26] With the publication of the fragmentary Tes and Terkhin inscriptions of the Uyur empire (744-840) where the form 'Qasar' is attested, though uncertainty remains whether this represents a personal or tribal name, gradually other hypotheses emerged. Louis Bazin derived it from Turkic qas- ("tyrannize, oppress, terrorize") on the basis of its phonetic similarity to the Uyur tribal name, Qasar.[27]Andrs Rna-Tas connects it with Kesar, the Pahlavi transcription of the Roman title Caesar.[28]

D.M.Dunlop tried to link the Chinese term for "Khazars" to one of the tribal names of the Uyur Toquz Ouz, namely the Gs.[29][30] The objections are that Uyur Gesa/Qasar was not a tribal name but rather the surname of the chief of the Sikari tribe of the Toquz Ouz, and that in Middle Chinese the ethnonym "Khazars", always prefaced with the word Tju signifying 'Trk' (Tju Ks b:; Tju Hs:), is transcribed with characters different from those used to render the Qa- in the Uyur word 'Qasar'.[31][32][33]

After their conversion it is reported that they adopted the Hebrew script,[34] and it is likely that, though speaking a Trkic language, the Khazar chancellery under Judaism probably corresponded in Hebrew.[35] In Expositio in Matthaeum Evangelistam, Gazari, presumably Khazars, are referred to as the Hunnic people living in the lands of Gog and Magog and said to be circumcised and omnem Judaismum observat observing all the laws of Judaism.

Determining the origins and nature of the Khazars is closely bound with theories of their languages, but it is a matter of intricate difficulty since no indigenous records in the Khazar language survive, and the state itself was polyglot and polyethnic.[36] Whereas the royal or ruling elite probably spoke an eastern variety of Shaz Turkic, the subject tribes appear to have spoken varieties of Lir Turkic, such as Ouric, a language variously identified with Bularic, Chuvash, and Hungarian (the latter based upon the assertion of the Persian historian al-Iakhr that the Khazar language was different from any other known tongue).[37][38] One method for tracing their origins consists in analysis of the possible etymologies behind the ethnonym Khazar itself.

The tribes[39] that were to comprise the Khazar empire were not an ethnic union, but a congeries of steppe nomads and peoples who came to be subordinated, and subscribed to a core Trkic leadership.[40] Many Trkic groups, such as the Ouric peoples, including araurs, Ours, Onours, and Bulars who earlier formed part of the Til () confederation, are attested quite early, having been driven West by the Sabirs, who in turn fled the Asian Avars, and began to flow into the Volga-Caspian-Pontic zone from as early as the 4th century CE and are recorded by Priscus to reside in the Western Eurasian steppelands as early as 463.[41][42] They appear to stem from Mongolia and South Siberia in the aftermath of the fall of the Hunnic/Xingn nomadic polities. A variegated tribal federation led by these Trks, probably comprising a complex assortment of Iranian,[43]proto-Mongolic, Uralic, and Palaeo-Siberian clans, vanquished the Rouran Khaganate of the hegemonic central Asian Avars in 552 and swept westwards, taking in their train other steppe nomads and peoples from Sogdiana.[44]

The ruling family of this confederation may have hailed from the shn () clan of the West Trkic tribes,[45] though Constantine Zuckerman regards shn and their pivotal role in the formation of the Khazars with scepticism.[46] Golden notes that Chinese and Arabic reports are almost identical, making the connection a strong one, and conjectures that their leader may have been Ypshku (Chinese:), who lost power or was killed around 651.[47] Moving west, the confederation reached the land of the Akat(z)ir,[48] who had been important allies of Byzantium in fighting off Attila's army.

An embryonic state of Khazaria began to form sometime after 630,[49] when it emerged from the breakdown of the larger Gktrk Qaanate. Gktrk armies had penetrated the Volga by 549, ejecting the Avars, who were then forced to flee to the sanctuary of the Hungarian plain. The shn clan whose tribal name was 'Trk' (the strong one) appear on the scene by 552, when they overthrew the Rourans and established the Gktrk Qaanate.[50] By 568, these Gktrks were probing for an alliance with Byzantium to attack Persia. An internecine war broke out between the senior eastern Gktrks and the junior West Turkic Qaanate some decades later, when on the death of Taspar Qaan, a succession dispute led to a dynastic crisis between Taspar's chosen heir, the Apa Qaan, and the ruler appointed by the tribal high council, shn Sht (), the Ishbara Qaan.

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Khazars - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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