The Khazar Khaganate was a state based around modern day Ukraine from the 7th to 10th centuries AD. The state was formed from a Turkic tribe, but it had one very unique aspect – it adopted Judaism. Here, David Matsievich tells us the background to the Khazars, how the European Jewish state came into being, and how it ended.
Khazar "Moses coin" found in the Spillings Hoard. The coin is dated from circa 800 AD. Source: W.Carter, available here.
The Khazars were a telling and powerful yet very unsung Turkic tribe in modern Ukraine, originating from Asia. Their notoriety stems from their capability at thwarting Islamic groups from extending their reach past the Northern Caucasus, acting as a mediator of goods between the Silk Road and Europe, and as a counterbalance between the Byzantium and the Islamic empires. But perhaps there is one thing in particular that attracts and holds others rapt about this tribe: its state religion — Judaism.
Khazar Origins
Once there existed a Turkic tribe that, at their height in the beginning of the medieval period, controlled a huge chunk of southern Russia, all the way from Astrakhan to western Ukraine. Their presence carved a significant mark in history, being the mediator of goods between Europe and the Silk Road, and possessing a military so strong that their power was tantamount to that of the Byzantine and Islamic empires. Their strong forces stopped the Muslims from expanding their influence further north of the Caucasus, just as the Franks had done in northern Spain, so preventing the expansion of Islam into Europe. But above all, what marks this group out from all other nations is their alarming and almost unbelievable conversion to Judaism. They are known as the Khazars.
The Khazars’ origin is debated and very complicated: it’s unknown what specific Turkic group they had previously come from; even the Khazarian language is a mystery, as what is left of it is mostly names and titles that don’t exactly pinpoint what type of Turkic tongue was spoken. Upon becoming a polity, it was very diverse, composed of Turks, Slavs, Iranians, Finno-Ugrians, and a myriad of other ethnicities.
It is believed that the Khazars came to be from a varied constellation of Turkic tribes, perhaps originating from Central Asia, the Urals, or even the northern Caucasus. They were indeed very ethnically disparate, retaining different skin tones and physiognomy, which would be evident throughout Khazar history.
Khazaria was under the occupation of the Western Turkic Empire, an empire stretching from Astrakhan to contemporary East Turkestan, until it was reinstated by the son of Tong Yagbhu in the 630s. Yagbhu was a Buddhist Khagan of the Western Turkic Empire and was usurped and killed by his uncle in an insurgency against his rule. This led to a civil war that collapsed and dissolved the Western Turkic Empire, spewing out Khazaria as one of its breakaway lands in the chaos. This was probably the first time Khazaria was recreated as a polity rather than a semi-organized tribal chiefdom.
Khazarian Life, Culture, and Trade
The khaganate had a unique way of coronating their khagan, the ruler of the Khazars: the nobles of the realm would tie a silk cord around the soon-to-be khagan’s throat, choking him, and would ask him how long he expected to rule. Since the khagancouldn’t make out a clear message, the nobles had to interpret what he was choking out. Once they thought they understood how many years the khagan uttered through his strangled neck, that would be the maximum duration the khagan could rule until he either had to abdicate to his heir or risk being murdered by his own nobles.
However, an Arab scholar at the time avers that the Khazars had already a predefined set of time — 40 years — that the khagan was permitted to rule for. After this set amount of time, the khagan was no longer considered fit to reign because of old age, so he had to be quickly removed and replaced with a younger khagan for the good of the khaganate. This odd tradition came from the Western Turks, Khazaria’s former occupier.
Khazaria was located at the crossroads between the rich Asian lands of the Silk Road, and the resource-filled lands of the steppes. This made it a very important player in Euro-Asian trade. A Jewish merchant company, controlled by the Radanites, had a big role in the trade between Asia and Europe, going through Khazaria on their way to the Silk Road to deliver raw material and agricultural goods. Reportedly, the Khazars took 10 percent of the goods of merchants travelling through their lands, in return for protection of the vulnerable traders.
They procured prominence among the steppe people from their remarkable resistance against a series of Muslim military incursions in the Caucasus, seemingly gaining the Khazars respect of their neighboring tribes, which offered to become their tributaries for protection and periodical gifts. One historian estimated there to be between 25 to 28 tributaries of the khagan. He allegedly had 25 to 28 wives, each the daughter of a respective tributary. But other historians think that the 25, or 28, “wives” refer to the diverse plurality of the ethnicities of the Khazar khaganate, not to literal married women.
Although this is all fairly mundane and nothing extraordinary of a kingdom, or khaganate, at the time, what is unique and uncharacteristic about this tribe is their unprecedented proselytization to Judaism.
Emergence of the Jewish Khazars
Some authors fancifully speculate that the Jewish Khazars were actually part of one of the twelve lost tribes of Israel, however far-fetched that conclusion might be. Evidence of the first Khazarian Jews can be traced in early medieval legends: it’s possible that in medieval German stories about the “Red Jews” (Jews with ginger hair), were in fact referring to the Khazars. However, this has been met with shakiness from historian Hakon Stang. Still, into the later years, Khazaria was a major destination for Jews who wished to escape their prosecutors in Byzantium and the Islamic caliphate. Yet it wasn’t only Jews who fled to Khazaria; undesirable Christian sects, mainly the iconodules, in the Byzantium Empire also hurried into the Khazar lands for safe harbor. As a result of the Jewish emigration, the Jews expanded their influence onto Khazaria.
The khagan was obligated to choose from the three Abrahamic religions that populated the area — Christianity, Islam, and Judaism — owing to the fact that the native Khazar religion of Tengri had become a tiny minority in their empire. Kingdoms and empires who settled in Europe, the Middle East, or northern Africa tended to adopt one of the dominant religions of the area to enable flexible diplomacy, relations, royal marriages, trade, and above all to choose who was an ally and who was an enemy. So anyway, how did a western steppe tribe make its decision to accept this belief over Islam and Christianity, which were the dominant beliefs of the land near where the Khazars settled?
One of the khagan’s “wise” predecessors had organized a congregation between religious figures of the three Abrahamic faiths in order to choose one of them to become the official religion of Khazaria. This meeting was held at Atil, the capital and largest city of the Khazars (the location of this great trading city is unknown to this day, but it is proven to have been situated somewhere along the Volga river). The three envoys argued, debated, and preached each of their theological views. Even the historically venerated Cyril, creator of the Cyrillic alphabet, was sent as a delegate to Khazaria by Byzantium in the hope of evangelizing them to the Christian faith. On his way there, he “stopped… to spend the winter learning Hebrew and familiarizing himself with the Torah in order to debate with Jewish scholars also heading to the khagan’s court” (Francopan P., p. 107). Despite Cyril’s brilliance and words that no doubt appealed to the khagan, the latter did not espouse Christianity, as we already know. But why?
In a letter sent by the khagan to Hasdai b. Shaprut, an Andalusian scholar and personal physician of a Spanish caliph, he describes the determining incentive for such an unprecedented choice: a wise inquiry. Once the khagan had listened to the three groups, he organized all the facts and decided on validating them. He had an idea. He asked the Christians whether they considered Judaism or Islam more tolerable than the other; the Christians, who hated the Muslims, evidently said the Jews were the lesser despicable infidels of the two. When he asked the Muslims, who despised the Christians, whether Christianity or Judaism were preferable, they replied that Judaism was the better of the two heathen beliefs. And so, hearing that both preferred Judaism over the other, he declared his conversion to Judaism and encouraged his people to follow suit.
Despite this interesting and endearing story, it’s also plausible to believe that this strange conversion to Judaism was mainly to avoid kneeling down politically to the Byzantine emperor, the leader of the Christian world, or to the Islamic caliphate, the guardian of the Islamic world. State religions were not chosen by interesting stories, inspirational ethics and achievements, or genuine and passionate belief, but rather by which could reward and benefit the state with riches and protection.
News of this unique turn of events astonished Jews all over Europe and Asia; many couldn’t bring themselves to believe that this wasn’t blatant hearsay. Hasdai b. Shaprut himself refused to take this miracle seriously until much later.
From now on to become a khagan, one must profess the Jewish faith and it only. Nobles of the court consequently also adopted Judaism. Although the religions of the Khazarian peoples remained very diverse, a significant number of Khazars did indeed subsequently also embrace this new belief.
Fall of the Jewish Khazars
Khazaria retained a worthy degree of sovereignty until the khaganate’s destruction by the Kievan Rus’ in the year 965 with the sacking and utter demolition of Atil. Although it didn’t immediately cease to exist, the khaganate was pillaged to the very brim. One observer reported, “not a grape, not a raisin remains [in the Khazar khaganate]” (Frankopan P., p. 120). The mighty Khazars were defeated on the battlefield by Svyatoslav of the Rus’. Although the Khazars were famed for their performance on land, a combination of a lack of naval power, lack of natural geographical defenses, and lack of self-dependency on resources countered what the Khazars could benefit from.
They never recovered from this defeat, and some time after the war, the khagan was forced to adopt Islam in exchange for support from Khwarizm, a Muslim kingdom. Khwarezmian soldiers subsequently occupied Khazar cities and villages where their Jewish populaces refused to convert to Islam. Georgius Tzul, allegedly a Christian and the last Khazaraian khagan, collapsed along with his khaganate to the knees of a combined Byzantine and Rus’ian force in January 1016. Some scholars may claim that Khazaria survived in small remnants for two more centuries, but either way the khaganate had fallen and there was no return to the days of the unique and powerful Jewish nation of the steppes.
What happened to the Jews?
For the Jews this was a disaster: no longer was there a Jewish nation that they could call home — and be protected by — until the establishment of Israel almost a millennia later in 1948. Many fled to different lands: to Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, the Kievan Rus’, the Caucasus, Egypt, Bulgaria, Spain, and the Byzantine Empire. As a matter of fact, the Schechter Letter, a manuscript that includes a considerable amount of useful and invaluable information about the Khazars, was written by an unknown author in the Byzantine capital, Constantinople, a.k.a modern-day Istanbul.
These Jewish refugees espoused the cultures of their new homes and became integrated with their respective societies. Some stuck with chiefly Jewish communities while others mingled in with Christian and Muslim populations. Khazarian culture soon died out.
Today some hypothesize that a considerable proportion of Jews are descended from the Khazars, and others even believe the Ashkenazi Jews to be mainly descendent from them, but these claims are widely dismissed and retorted by modern historians and scholars.
Nonetheless, Khazaria continues to bear the epitaph of the last and only Jewish state in Europe, once a beacon of hope and elatedness to the Jews that God had truly not abandoned them. Seldom do we see such an event occurring. It’s unlikely we’ll ever again witness such a peculiar and extraordinary event where a kingdom willingly — and without precedent — embraces Judaism as its true faith in a world where doing so was once considered to be impossible except in whimsical tales and dreams.
What do you think of the Jewish Khazars? Let us know below.
Now, read about the man who proposed a Jewish state in the 19th century here.
References
Peter Frankopan. The Silk Roads: A New History of the World. Vintage Books, 2015.
Brook, Kevin Alan. The Jews of Khazaria. Second ed., Rowman & Littlefield, 2006.
Jacob Marcus, The Jew in the Medieval World: A Sourcebook, 315-1791, (New York: JPS, 1938), 227-232
