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Hazar Yahudileri: Bir Türk İmparatorluğu
Hazar Yahudileri, günümüzde pek hatırlanmasalar da sadece Türk, Yahudi ve Kafkas tarihi açısından değil bir bütün olarak dünya tarihi için büyük öneme sahip bir halktır. 5. yüzyıldan itibaren devletlerini oluşturmaya başlayan ve farklı dönemlerde İsrail, Bizans ve İran'dan aldığı göçlerle bir Yahudi sığınağı haline gelen bu devlet, muazzam bir güce sahip olmuştu. Çevresindeki Bizans, Sasani, Arap ve Avar devletleri karşısında yüzlerce yıl varlığını sürdüren; kimi zaman onları vergiye bağlayan, kimi zaman Bizans İmparatorluğu'nu yöneten, kimi zamansa Oğuz Boyu ile omuz omuza savaşan; Kuzey Afrika, Ortadoğu ve Kafkasya coğrafyasında çığ gibi büyümekte olan İslam Halifeliği'nin engellenemeyen gücünü durdurabilen, böylece tarihin akışında büyük bir kırılma yaratan, destansı bir halkın hikayesidir bu. Günümüzde politik ve dini sebeplerden ötürü Türkiye, Rusya ve Doğu Avrupa ülkelerinde adının bile anılmasından çekinilecek kadar önemli bir tarih figürüdür Hazarlar. Türkler açısından ise Şamanizm'den tek tanrılı dinlere geçişin önemli halkalarından birisini oluşturmaktadırlar. Yine bir Türk boyu olan Bulgarlar Müslümanlığı ve Macarlar Hıristiyanlığı seçmişken Hazarlar neden Yahudiliği tercih etmişti? Bu kitap, bu ve benzeri birçok sorunun cevabını aramakta; bambaşka bir tarihi, tüm kanıtları ve cevaplarıyla ortaya koymaktadır.
474 pages, Paperback
First published April 16, 1999
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266 people want to read
About the author
Kevin Alan Brook
2 books8 followersKevin Brook is a population geneticist and historian who has authored books, book chapters, and articles published by such presses as Rowman and Littlefield, Feldheim, Brill, Macmillan, M.E. Sharpe, ABC-CLIO, Charles Scribner's Sons, and Oxford University Press beginning in 1998 on topics including Khazars, Ashkenazi Jews, Sephardi Jews, Karaite Jews, Armenian Jews, Volga Germans, and African-American music.
His history book The Jews of Khazaria has been published in three editions and two languages.
He studied Russian history at Bryant College under Professors James Estey and Glen Camp.
His history book The Jews of Khazaria has been published in three editions and two languages.
He studied Russian history at Bryant College under Professors James Estey and Glen Camp.
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March 12, 2019Unlike the run of the Khazarian Jew hypothesis enthusiasts, the author does not latch on to every dubious claim; indeed, he repudiates many of them, including the work of the dilettante polemicist Arthur Koestler.
The author has pored over the available scholarship in many languages, so the reader is given a sense of what writing is out there and a sense of the progress being made in this field, however meager this is.
The author explains that the cultures of the Russian Steppes, the hordes who rushed west from Central Asia indeed had civilizations as attested by rich material culture left behind.
The author gives the standard argument for the existence of a Jewish dynasty ruling Khazaria -- rulers' names, travelers' stories -- , but they don't add up to a mass conversion, or even a conversion to Judaism as such. Traveler's tales are probably unreliable, since they could well be a matter of wishful thinking or a desire to impress an audience.
The author is not a scholar. He disappointed me with unsubstantiated statements such as most Ukrainian Jews had Khazar background. Most surprisingly, he doesn't even touch the genetic research on the matter.
The author's strongest point is that many if not most modern Jews are not descendants of the tribes of Israel and that this fact should be embraced.
I came away from reading the book feeling that I had a general sense of the Khazar hypothesis. I think it is worth reading -- with caution.
The author has pored over the available scholarship in many languages, so the reader is given a sense of what writing is out there and a sense of the progress being made in this field, however meager this is.
The author explains that the cultures of the Russian Steppes, the hordes who rushed west from Central Asia indeed had civilizations as attested by rich material culture left behind.
The author gives the standard argument for the existence of a Jewish dynasty ruling Khazaria -- rulers' names, travelers' stories -- , but they don't add up to a mass conversion, or even a conversion to Judaism as such. Traveler's tales are probably unreliable, since they could well be a matter of wishful thinking or a desire to impress an audience.
The author is not a scholar. He disappointed me with unsubstantiated statements such as most Ukrainian Jews had Khazar background. Most surprisingly, he doesn't even touch the genetic research on the matter.
The author's strongest point is that many if not most modern Jews are not descendants of the tribes of Israel and that this fact should be embraced.
I came away from reading the book feeling that I had a general sense of the Khazar hypothesis. I think it is worth reading -- with caution.
August 16, 2013
Scholarly but readable. I found it fascinating.
April 11, 2015
Sheep Honey and Jews in Large Quantities
A review of The Jews of Khazaria by Kevin Alan Brook
Soon after the Persian Empire fell to the Companions of Prophet Muhammad ?, the armies of the Caliphate reached to the Door of Doors, the fortress of Durbent which closes the narrow gap between the Caucasus Mountains and the Caspian Sea, the fortress believed to have been built by Iskandar Dhul-Qarnayn to keep out the hordes of the Juj and Majuj. Crossing that threshold, they encountered the Khazars.
From the north side of the Caucasus stretching to Kiev in the West and the Volga River to the East they were a mighty nation of Turkic pagans who repulsed the muslim armies in a series of wars from 642 AD. This nation was pressed to the west by the Byzantine Christians, to the east by the Muslims, and to the north by pagan pre-Russian peoples who warred constantly with the Khazars. Then, somewhere in the early 800s, the kingdom converted to Judaism.
A Rabbi, a Priest and an Imam walk into a court...
According to legend, the Khazar King Bulan invited delegates from the Jews, Christians and Muslims to his court to make the pitch for their faith. Undecided after all three, King Bulan asked the Christian and Muslim privately which of the other two faiths was better. Without hesitation, the priest and the imam both answered: the Jews. With that, King Bulan converted to Judaism.
That story is apocryphal. But the conversion of the Khazar nation to Rabbinical Judaism is a historical fact. There are lots of things we don't know - they don't call it the Dark Ages for nothing - but what can be established is utterly fascinating.
1. There was a fair amount of existing Jewish presence in the region who were responsible for introducing the religion to the Khazars and who likely intermarried with them. The sources of those Jews are from all over: Greek Jews expelled by the Byzantines, Jews of the Muslim world who traveled north, and Radhanite Jews who ran the Silk Road trade since early Roman times. Brook casually mentions along the way that 10% of the Roman Empire was Jewish, which dropped my jaw to the floor, but considering how solid the rest of the book seems, I'll take that as the truth till I read otherwise.
2. Judaism was not just a court religion but was broadly adopted by the ethnic Khazar population although they were perhaps only a plurality of the multi-ethnic, multi-religious country.
3. Khazaria existed as a Jewish kingdom in some form for two hundred years, until they were overwhelmed by the proto-Russians.
Where did the Khazars go? The region was conquered by the proto-Russians, and then two hundred years later the region was crushed by the Mongols. The Jews of Khazaria were scattered, and over time adopted slavic languages. Those slavic-speaking, ethnically turkic Jews in turn were absorbed by the central European yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews who pushed east. The only real question is how large the turkic contribution to the population of present-day Ashkenazim is. Zionists would like it to be zero, anti-semites would like it be 100% but the only possible answer is it is somewhere in between. Brook provides a round-up of Jewish intermarriage, conversion and the emerging results from DNA testing to demonstrate that there have been intermittent conversions to Judaism at various times in history and that virtually all diaspora Jewish populations intermarried with local populations to some degree. The details all get a little dense but the upshot is Jewish diaspora men commonly took gentile wives.
The Personal Angle
On two of the very few occasions I met Mawlana Shaykh Muhammad Nazim Adil Al-Qubrusi Al-Haqqani (q), he struck my chest with the palm of his hand, spoke to me in Turkish and laughed. When I asked a murid of his what that was about (Mawlana Shaykh could speak English, after all), he shrugged and said, "maybe you're Khazar." My mother's side of the family is in fact Russian Jew, and the incident led me to read Arthur Koestler's The Thirteenth Tribe some 20 years ago. Koestler suggested a very large if not total Khazar contribution to European Jewry, and I must confess a bit of disappointment now that my ancestral roots are unlikely to be as exotic as all that. Still, when I look at some old photographs of my great-grandparents, I do still wonder. Maybe one day I'll take the Genographic Project test just for kicks.
The Malaysian Angle?
Surely not. Surely there is no way an obscure Turkic tribe from the last millennium touches not only the Russian Jewish side of the family but my Malay relatives right here in Sarawak. Folks, one bit of evidence of Khazar ancestry among eastern European Jews is the Turkic vocabulary found in Yiddish but not in German or Slavic languages, and one of those Turkic words is Laksa. One of Malaysia's more popular dishes, it is a sour fish soup served over noodles. The word laksa means noodle, from the Turkic laqsha which became loksh in Yiddish.
The Jews of Khazaria was not a thrilling book. It plodded through reams of very obscure academic work that I hardly had the background to keep up with. The author is also not a professional academic and seemed unable to synthesize some of the divergent opinions of the experts. But if in the end I learned less than I had hoped it is because Khazaria itself has dissolved into the unknowable past.
A review of The Jews of Khazaria by Kevin Alan Brook
Soon after the Persian Empire fell to the Companions of Prophet Muhammad ?, the armies of the Caliphate reached to the Door of Doors, the fortress of Durbent which closes the narrow gap between the Caucasus Mountains and the Caspian Sea, the fortress believed to have been built by Iskandar Dhul-Qarnayn to keep out the hordes of the Juj and Majuj. Crossing that threshold, they encountered the Khazars.
From the north side of the Caucasus stretching to Kiev in the West and the Volga River to the East they were a mighty nation of Turkic pagans who repulsed the muslim armies in a series of wars from 642 AD. This nation was pressed to the west by the Byzantine Christians, to the east by the Muslims, and to the north by pagan pre-Russian peoples who warred constantly with the Khazars. Then, somewhere in the early 800s, the kingdom converted to Judaism.
A Rabbi, a Priest and an Imam walk into a court...
According to legend, the Khazar King Bulan invited delegates from the Jews, Christians and Muslims to his court to make the pitch for their faith. Undecided after all three, King Bulan asked the Christian and Muslim privately which of the other two faiths was better. Without hesitation, the priest and the imam both answered: the Jews. With that, King Bulan converted to Judaism.
That story is apocryphal. But the conversion of the Khazar nation to Rabbinical Judaism is a historical fact. There are lots of things we don't know - they don't call it the Dark Ages for nothing - but what can be established is utterly fascinating.
1. There was a fair amount of existing Jewish presence in the region who were responsible for introducing the religion to the Khazars and who likely intermarried with them. The sources of those Jews are from all over: Greek Jews expelled by the Byzantines, Jews of the Muslim world who traveled north, and Radhanite Jews who ran the Silk Road trade since early Roman times. Brook casually mentions along the way that 10% of the Roman Empire was Jewish, which dropped my jaw to the floor, but considering how solid the rest of the book seems, I'll take that as the truth till I read otherwise.
2. Judaism was not just a court religion but was broadly adopted by the ethnic Khazar population although they were perhaps only a plurality of the multi-ethnic, multi-religious country.
3. Khazaria existed as a Jewish kingdom in some form for two hundred years, until they were overwhelmed by the proto-Russians.
Where did the Khazars go? The region was conquered by the proto-Russians, and then two hundred years later the region was crushed by the Mongols. The Jews of Khazaria were scattered, and over time adopted slavic languages. Those slavic-speaking, ethnically turkic Jews in turn were absorbed by the central European yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews who pushed east. The only real question is how large the turkic contribution to the population of present-day Ashkenazim is. Zionists would like it to be zero, anti-semites would like it be 100% but the only possible answer is it is somewhere in between. Brook provides a round-up of Jewish intermarriage, conversion and the emerging results from DNA testing to demonstrate that there have been intermittent conversions to Judaism at various times in history and that virtually all diaspora Jewish populations intermarried with local populations to some degree. The details all get a little dense but the upshot is Jewish diaspora men commonly took gentile wives.
The Personal Angle
On two of the very few occasions I met Mawlana Shaykh Muhammad Nazim Adil Al-Qubrusi Al-Haqqani (q), he struck my chest with the palm of his hand, spoke to me in Turkish and laughed. When I asked a murid of his what that was about (Mawlana Shaykh could speak English, after all), he shrugged and said, "maybe you're Khazar." My mother's side of the family is in fact Russian Jew, and the incident led me to read Arthur Koestler's The Thirteenth Tribe some 20 years ago. Koestler suggested a very large if not total Khazar contribution to European Jewry, and I must confess a bit of disappointment now that my ancestral roots are unlikely to be as exotic as all that. Still, when I look at some old photographs of my great-grandparents, I do still wonder. Maybe one day I'll take the Genographic Project test just for kicks.
The Malaysian Angle?
Surely not. Surely there is no way an obscure Turkic tribe from the last millennium touches not only the Russian Jewish side of the family but my Malay relatives right here in Sarawak. Folks, one bit of evidence of Khazar ancestry among eastern European Jews is the Turkic vocabulary found in Yiddish but not in German or Slavic languages, and one of those Turkic words is Laksa. One of Malaysia's more popular dishes, it is a sour fish soup served over noodles. The word laksa means noodle, from the Turkic laqsha which became loksh in Yiddish.
The Jews of Khazaria was not a thrilling book. It plodded through reams of very obscure academic work that I hardly had the background to keep up with. The author is also not a professional academic and seemed unable to synthesize some of the divergent opinions of the experts. But if in the end I learned less than I had hoped it is because Khazaria itself has dissolved into the unknowable past.
January 14, 2013
Nicely done and easy to follow history.
August 7, 2024
Overall, this is a great overview of the Khazars and what we know about them. The author has done some really meticulous research and pulled up very obscure sources. The book is broader than the title might suggest. It covers the Khazars before they became Jewish, and it covers the Jews of Eastern Europe after the fall of Khazaria. An appendix provides a short overview of other examples of mass conversion in Jewish history.
The book is not the most fun to read. He doesn’t try to force everything into a narrative or central argument, besides that Khazaria was an important medieval polity and its ruling population did become Jewish. Occasionally I wanted him to decide on a position instead of laying out all the opposing sides, but I appreciate that he’s not a professional historian and probably doesn’t feel comfortable taking sides on every dispute.
Definitely recommend if you’re interested in the Khazars, Eastern European Jewry, or even the early Middle Ages in general.
The book is not the most fun to read. He doesn’t try to force everything into a narrative or central argument, besides that Khazaria was an important medieval polity and its ruling population did become Jewish. Occasionally I wanted him to decide on a position instead of laying out all the opposing sides, but I appreciate that he’s not a professional historian and probably doesn’t feel comfortable taking sides on every dispute.
Definitely recommend if you’re interested in the Khazars, Eastern European Jewry, or even the early Middle Ages in general.
January 8, 2023
I had expected more a of big picture history than a textbook, so I'm stuck between 3 and 4 stars. Ultimately, it does what it says on the cover but not necessarily in the most readable of ways. For that reason, not worth it if you had no specific interest in the topic and wanted to read something a little random - but worth it if you want to know more about the topic at hand.
October 7, 2017
The first several chapters of this book seemed more like the author was throwing every fact known at random with no real plan. It was hard to follow, especially when he kept telling us to see other chapters for information in his current chapter. However it did get better as the book went on.
July 23, 2024
Sometimes an assemblage of facts (or beliefs) rather than a coherent argument. It isn't a polemic, though it's unifying theme--articulated in the introduction--seemed like it might have been. Many of the facts are interesting in themselves. The central argument isn't definitive but is plausible.
October 21, 2018
A lot of historical ethnic tribal detail used to explain migration during the first millennium.
March 9, 2020
God job!
January 3, 2021
Interesting but dry read. Still i learned from the book.
May 29, 2015
Well researched book that follows the history of the Jews of Khazar, and in particular, those Khazars who converted to Judaism. Far more factual and moderate in approach to both the Jews of Khazar, as well as to the possible interrelationship between the descendants of the Khazars and Ashkenazi Jewry. Very balanced approach.
September 25, 2013
Mjög áhugavert efni. Mjög miklu efni safnað saman. Ekki sérstaklega vel framsett. Sofnaði oft og fljótt yfir lestrinum. En vel lestursins virði.
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