Can we have a non-/pol/ conspiracy thread about the khazars?
Pretty interesting people 2bh
For people who don't know:
>khaganate straddled between the Byzantines and the Umayyads in what we would now call the Caucasus and fringes of eastern europe
>acted as a bulwark against islamic forays into Europe
>gained extreme wealth in controlling trade along their expanse
>in the 8th century, khazar royalty and some nobility definitely converted to rabbinic Judaism
>it is unknown how far the conversion was felt throughout the khaganate, which has given rise to theories speculating that the khazars were the progenitors of AshkenaI Jewry.
Seems so odd to me that so few people have heard of this place.
>>490346
Were they Turkic? I mean they were a semi nomadic empire right? Or am I being stupid?
>>490346
Ashkenazi* Jewry
>>490350
Not the bulk of their population at least, because as you said, they were Nomads. They didn't genocide the Caucasians that were previously living there.
Inb4 the 'not true Jews' fallacy is used
>>490346
I don't remember where I read it, or how reliable the source was, but I do remember reading somewhere that the Khazar conversion to Judaism was an attempt to stay out of the hatchet fight that was the Byzantine-Muslim wars at the time.
Didn't really work, but oh well.
>>490355
So what would the Khazars be considered? Or is Khazar just a name slapped on whoever the fuck lived there at that time?
>>490359
Probably, the Muslims would've wanted to kill them for being pagans, but tengriism is pretty monotheistic in its base (from what I've read) so to become "people of the book" without pissing off the Byzantines was to become Jews.
>>490363
You could call the people living there khazars, yeah, but the "original" ones to come from somewhere in central Asia were certainly Turkic. Just like how most people in the mongol's army weren't actually mongols.
You have Krymchak and Karaote Jews, either of them are the dorect descendants of Khazars located in small communities in the Crimean steppe
Most Ashkenazi didn't get into Eastern Europe until much later in the Middle Ages, when they were pushed out by the Germans (hence German last names). They were all pushed into the Pale and Galicia before migrating to America, later being exterminated by the Nazis and immigrating from the Eastern oc or Soviet Union to Israel
Most Khazars would have converted to Islam by the Golden Horde Era and would form part of the core of the Crimean Khanate
>>490498
The karaim are more of a mystery, because khazar Judaism was definitely rabbinic.
>>490509
the crimean karaim didn't identify themselves as jews, even though most of the dna shows it is similar to jews originating from the middle east
looks like they felt like they didn't need to identify themselves as jews to spare themselves from the fate of the other jews
>>490536
I think it's reasonable that the mountain Jews from the Caucasus are descendants of khazars
