Did the Khazars Convert to Judaism? New Research Says ‘No’
26/06/2014
Hebrew University professor cites lack of reliable source for conversion story
Did the Khazars convert to Judaism? The view that some or all Khazars, a central Asian people, became Jews during the ninth or tenth century is widely accepted. But following an exhaustive analysis of the evidence, Hebrew University of Jerusalem researcher Prof. Shaul Stampfer has concluded that such a conversion, “while a splendid story,” never took place.
Prof. Shaul Stampfer is the Rabbi Edward Sandrow Professor of Soviet and East European Jewry, in the department of the History of the Jewish People at the Hebrew University’s Mandel Institute of Jewish Studies. The research has just been published in the Jewish Social Studies journal, Vol. 19, No. 3 (online at http://bit.ly/khazars).
From roughly the seventh to tenth centuries, the Khazars ruled an empire spanning the steppes between the Caspian and Black Seas. Not much is known about Khazar culture and society: they did not leave a literary heritage and the archaeological finds have been meager. The Khazar Empire was overrun by Svyatoslav of Kiev around the year 969, and little was heard from the Khazars after. Yet a widely held belief that the Khazars or their leaders at some point converted to Judaism persists.
Reports about the Jewishness of the Khazars first appeared in Muslim works in the late ninth century and in two Hebrew accounts in the tenth century. The story reached a wider audience when the Jewish thinker and poet Yehudah Halevi used it as a frame for his book The Kuzari. Little attention was given to the issue in subsequent centuries, but a key collection of Hebrew sources on the Khazars appeared in 1932 followed by a little-known six-volume history of the Khazars written by the Ukrainian scholar Ahatanhel Krymskyi. Henri Gregoire published skeptical critiques of the sources, but in 1954 Douglas Morton Dunlop brought the topic into the mainstream of accepted historical scholarship with The History of the Jewish Khazars. Arthur Koestler’s best-selling The Thirteenth Tribe (1976) brought the tale to the attention of wider Western audiences, arguing that East European Ashkenazi Jewry was largely of Khazar origin. Many studies have followed, and the story has also garnered considerable non-academic attention; for example, Shlomo Sand’s 2009 bestseller, The Invention of the Jewish People, advanced the thesis that the Khazars became Jews and much of East European Jewry was descended from the Khazars. But despite all the interest, there was no systematic critique of the evidence for the conversion claim other than a stimulating but very brief and limited paper by Moshe Gil of Tel Aviv University.
Stampfer notes that scholars who have contributed to the subject based their arguments on a limited corpus of textual and numismatic evidence. Physical evidence is lacking: archaeologists excavating in Khazar lands have found almost no artifacts or grave stones displaying distinctly Jewish symbols.
Citing the lack of any reliable source for the conversion story, and the lack of credible explanations for sources that suggest otherwise or are inexplicably silent, Stampfer concludes that the simplest and most convincing answer is that the Khazar conversion is a legend with no factual basis. There never was a conversion of a Khazar king or of the Khazar elite, he says.
Years of research went into this paper, and Stampfer ruefully noted that "Most of my research until now has been to discover and clarify what happened in the past. I had no idea how difficult and challenging it would be to prove that something did not happen."
In terms of its historical implications, Stampfer says the lack of a credible basis for the conversion story means that many pages of Jewish, Russian and Khazar history have to be rewritten. If there never was a conversion, issues such as Jewish influence on early Russia and ethnic contact must be reconsidered.
Stampfer describes the persistence of the Khazar conversion legend as a fascinating application of Thomas Kuhn’s thesis on scientific revolution to historical research. Kuhn points out the reluctance of researchers to abandon familiar paradigms even in the face of anomalies, instead coming up with explanations that, though contrived, do not require abandoning familiar thought structures. It is only when “too many” anomalies accumulate that it is possible to develop a totally different paradigm—such as a claim that the Khazar conversion never took place.
Stampfer concludes, "We must admit that sober studies by historians do not always make for great reading, and that the story of a Khazar king who became a pious and believing Jew was a splendid story.” However, in his opinion, "There are many reasons why it is useful and necessary to distinguish between fact and fiction – and this is one more such case."
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quote:The origin of Eastern European Jews, (EEJ) by far the largest and most important Ashkenazi population, and their affinities to other Jewish and European populations are still not resolved.
Studies that compared them by genetic distance analysis of autosomal markers to European Mediterranean populations revealed that they are closer to Europeans than to other Jewish populations [1-3].
In contrast, according to the Y-chromosomal haplogroups EEJ are closest to the non-Jewish populations of the Eastern Mediterranean (table 3, figure 4).
"EEJ are the largest and most investigated Jewish community, yet their history as Franco-German Jewry is known to us only since their appearance in the 9th century, and their subsequent migration a few hundred years later to Eastern Europe [4,5]. Where did these Jews come from? It seems that they came to Germany and France from Italy [5-8].
It is also possible that some Jews migrated northward from the Italian colonies on the northern shore of the Black Sea [9]. All these Jews are likely the descendents of proselytes.
Conversion to Judaism was common in Rome in the first centuries BC and AD. Judaism gained many followers among all ranks of Roman Society [10-13]."
The autosomal genetic distance analysis presented here clearly demonstrates that the investigated Jewish populations do not share a common origin.
The resemblance of EEJ to Italians and other European populations portrays them as an autochthonous European population.
**The demographic histories of three Jewish populations exemplify how different demographic patterns make the uniparental markers more reliable for Iraqi (Babylonian) Jews and Yemenite Jews and less reliable for EEJ. Both Yemenite Jews and Iraqi Jews resemble populations from their regions of origin according to autosomal markers [1,3,30-32].
**Babylonian Jews numbered more than a million in the first century AD [35], and constituted the majority of the population in the area between the Euphrates and the Tigris in the 2nd-3rd centuries AD [36]. Gilbert [37] estimates that by 600 AD there were 806,000 Jews in Mesopotamia, and according to Sassoon [38] it was inhabited by about a million Jews in the 7th century. In the 14th century the estimates for Baghdad alone range from 70,000 to hundreds thousands [38].
*By comparing the structure of the STRs network among the various Ashkenazi populations and among the various European non-Jewish populations they reached the conclusion that a single male founder introduced this haplogroup into Ashkenazi Jews in the first millennium.
--Avshalom Zoossmann-Diskin1, 2, 3
The origin of Eastern European Jews revealed by autosomal, sex chromosomal and mtDNA polymorphisms
posted
What a stupid article and research; Khazar theory is still pretty much a fact, you have to explain the preponderance of European genes and traits like cystic fibrosis and red hair in Ash Jew populations in high numbers as well as Turkic and Eurasian genes in them that is foreign to the Levant and North Africa. Not to mention Ash Jews cluster much MUCH closer to OTHER WHITE POPULATIONS THEN LEVANTINE POPULATIONS!
The reason why they didn't find any "Jewish symbols" in this area, was because like other steppe tribes, THEY WERE ALL ILLITERATE, DID NOT WRITE AND NEVER CAME UPON WITH A BASIC ALPHABET SCRIPT OR WRITTEN SYSTEM!
It's the same situation that occurred with the illiterate Germanic, Gothic, Slavic and Latin and Dorian, Italic tribes who had to adopt an Egyptian/Assyrian/Phoenician alphabet and writing system; BECAUSE THEY TOO LIKE OTHER STEPPE TRIBES WERE ILLITERATE AND NEVER CREATED THEIR OWN SCRIPT OR ALPHABET!
so it makes no sense why the Khazars, being a typical steppe tribe of the day, would hold records and symbols when they were illiterate middlemen.
The other flawed logic is the fact that Ash Jews repeatedly insinuate that because they have "west Asian genes and Middle Eastern genes" that they must be direct descendants of the Ancient Israelites or Hebrews.
First of this is analogous to a predominantly Euro-Euro mestizo hispanic or Latin American, claiming that they are direct descendants and heirs of the same race and people that built the Incan, Mayan, Meso-American, Aztec civilizations etc etc and infact are the same people that made them and are entitled to these civs. Or White-Turkish-European admixed Syrian or Iraqi claiming the Ancient Sumerian civilizations and claiming they are the same people.
This is of course incredibly stupid logic and is debunked just reading basic history and using your brain. But this is the exact same situation and scenario that is being applied here, and applies to the Ash Jews claim to a Hebrew identity.
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posted
Its almost like the article is literally about nothing, a long winded version of saying "shut up about it and stop saying it".
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Tukuler
multidisciplinary Black Scholar
Member # 19944
posted
Not a legend at all.
Yehuda ha Lewi, a Sephardi, wrote the book Kuzari on the conversion and tenets particularly impressed upon the Khazars.
They probably got their intro to Judaism from Persian Jewry. They were also students in Spanish academies.
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Found: Ancient Capital of 'Jewish' Khazar Kingdom
The capital of the legendary "Jewish kingdom" has been found, says a team of Russian archeologists. If verified, the find is a major breakthrough.
A team of archaeologists claims to have discovered remnants of the legendary Khazar kingdom in southern Russia, according to a recent report. If the excavation site proves to be indeed the long-lost capital of the ancient 'Jewish Kingdom', the discovery would represent a major breakthrough for archaeologists and historians.
quote:Map of the Khazar kingdom and surrounding regions, including Israel
"This is a hugely important discovery," said the leader of the Russian expedition, Dmitry Vasilyev, in a report by the French agency AFP. Vasilyev, from Astrakhan State University, made the comments after returning from the excavation site, located near the Russian village of Samosdelka just north of the Caspian Sea. The location of the site corresponds roughly to the area in which historians believe the empire may have existed.
"We can now shed light on one of the most intriguing mysteries of that period - how the Khazars actually lived,” he added. “We know very little about the Khazars - about their traditions, their funerary rites, their culture.”
The Jewish University in Moscow and the Russian Jewish Congress helped finance the excavations, which took place during the summer in various locations throughout the region in which the discovery was made. The project, overseen by a number of university professors, included some 50 students who assisted in the digs.
The Khazars were known to be a semi-nomadic Turkic people who dominated the Pontic steppe and the North Caucasus regions from the 7th-10th centuries CE. The origin of the Khazars and their apparent conversion to Judaism is the subject of major dispute among modern historians.
In the 7th century CE, the Khazars founded an independent khaganate, or kingdom, in the Northern Caucasus along the Caspian Sea. It is believed that during the 8th or 9th century, around the height of their kingdom, the state religion became Judaism at the order of the king. At this point, the Khazar khaganate and its tributaries controlled much of what is today southern Russia, western Kazakhstan, eastern Ukraine, Azerbaijan, large portions of the Caucasus (including Circassia, Dagestan, Chechnya, and parts of Georgia), and the Crimea.
The first Jewish Khazar king was named Bulan, which means "elk", though some sources give him the Hebrew name Sabriel. A later king, Obadiah, strengthened Judaism, inviting rabbis into the kingdom and building synagogues.
References to a Jewish kingdom of Khazars are numerous in rabbinic literature from the Middle Ages and later. Among them is the famous tale by Rabbi Yehuda HaLevy, related in his celebrated 12th-century work The Kuzari. The book recounts a lengthy conversation between a certain Khazar king and an unnamed Jewish "wise man", where the latter's brilliant exposition on the essence of Torah compels the king to join the Jewish people.
Among other Jewish sources supporting the Jewish identity of the Khazars is a letter written by the medieval Jewish writer Avraham ibn Daud, who reported meeting rabbinical students from Khazar in Toledo, Spain in the mid-12th century. The well-renowned Schechter Letter recounts a different version of the conversion of the Khazar king, and mentions Benjamin ben Menachem as a Khazar king. Saadia Gaon, considered by many to be the greatest rabbi of his generation in the 10th century, also spoke favorably of the Khazars in his writings.
References to a Jewish Khazar kingdom appears in non-Jewish literature as well. Classical Muslim sources describing such a kingdom are often cited by modern Muslim scholars in their attempts to prove that the historical homeland of the Jews is not in present-day Israel.
The Khazar city that Prof. Vasileyev believes to have found was referred to as "Itil" in Arab chronicles. The archeologist said the name may actually be an Arabic reference to the Volga River, the great waterway on which the city was founded, to to the river's delta region.
Various sources describe Itil as a city of unusual ethnic and religious tolerance and diversity. Travelers to the city noted that there were separate houses of worship and judges for Christians, Jews, Muslims and pagans.
Until now, however, remains of the city had never been identified, and many believed that in the intervening millennium since the demise of the Khazar empire in the 10th century, all signs of the city were washed away into the Caspian Sea.
Although archaeologists have been excavating in the area of Samosdelka for the past nine years, only now has Vasileyev’s team been able to claim findings conclusive enough to identify the site of the capital. Among the discoveries his team has unearthed are the remains of an ancient brick fortress.
"Within the fortress, we have found huts similar to yurts, which are characteristics of Khazar cities,” said the researcher. “The fortress had a triangular shape and was made with bricks. It's another argument that this was no ordinary city."
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