THE
KHAZARS
The publication of an early translation into Ladino of
Yehudah (1) (ben Shemu'el) al-Levi's often cited book about the Khazars (2) suggests that a
summary statement of the question it raises may be of interest.
The Khazars, a tribe of uncertain race, first appear
in history shortly before A.D. 198, when they occupied a part of the Caucasus
and the northwestern shores of the Caspian Sea. Their `heartland' appears to
have been the delta of the Volga, which flows by many channels into the
Caspian. Their most important neighbors were the Alani, a Sarmatian people of
Iranian (Aryan) origin. Through this territory passed wave after wave of
peoples migrating westward from central Asia, Tatars, Bulgars, Slavs, and many
others, whom it would be tedious to enumerate. The Khazars and their neighbors
were conquered and subjugated by the Huns in 448 and by the Turks in 560, but
recovered their independence, and around 600 established a stable monarchy
that, from its capital, Itil, at the mouth of the Volga, ruled a territory
extending from the northern shore of the Caspian to Crimea, and flourished
until 884, after which it rapidly declined. The Khazars were finally conquered
by the tribes of southern Russia under the command of Verangian (Scandinavian)
rulers in 965, and disappeared from history.
If the Khazars had a literature, it has vanished
without a trace. We cannot even identify their language. Our information about
them comes almost entirely from Moslem travellers and historians, supplemented
by references (not always perspicuous) in Byzantine chronicles.
During the period of their great prosperity, the
Khazars' realm had a population that doubtless retained genetic elements from
all the diverse races and ethnic groups that had passed through the territory.
There was a much inferior race, the Kara Khazars, described as squat, ugly,
and having dark complexion; they may have been biological débris left behind
by the Huns. The ruling class is described as having white skin and black
hair; the men were of good stature, fine physique. and considered handsome;
the beauty of the women was celebrated.
The prosperity of the Khazars depended on their
geographical position athwart the trade routes between East and West, North
andSouth. Goods from many lands were imported, bought, sold, and exported.
When you know that, you need not be told that the race of international
parasites swarmed into Kazaria, not only battening on commerce but, like the
`court Jews' of Mediareview Europe, attaching themselves to the ruling dynasty
and the aristocracy as physicians, financial agents, and administrators. We
may be quite certain that from the rise of the Khazar kingdom to its decline,
the land was lousy with Jews. Our historical knowledge is so fragmentary that
there is no evidence that they contributed to the nation's decline and
downfall, in keeping with their racial habits.
It is certain that there never was a state religion in
Khazaria to which the rulers tried to convert their subjects by either
persuasion or coercion. A large part of the population doubtless retained
their native (`pagan') beliefs, and there were conversions to Christian and
Moslem cults, and doubtless also to the Jews' religion. It is hard to believe
that any member of the ruling class was actually converted to Judaism and
submitted to the barbaric rite of circumcision. Whether Jewish physicians,
like their fellow tribesmen in the United States, promoted the sexual
mutilation of male infants of other races is not known.
It is true that after the Arabic conquest of Persia
the Khazar kings professed Judaism, at least nominally. That was simply an act
of political prudence. Their policy was to remain, so far as possible, at
peace with both of their powerful neighbours, the Moslems and the Christians,
and to avoid alliances with either. Had they remained `pagan,' both powers
would have been eager to invade their realm and slaughter them ad maiorem
gloriam Dei, and if they had professed either Islam or Christianity, they
would have exposed themselves to godly incursions and perhaps conquest by the
other power. But the two fanatical religions that were irreconcilable
antagonists were both based on Jewish mythology and thus required to tolerate
and protect the insidious race that had upposedly been thesole concern and
cherished darlings of their God for millennia. For the Khazar kings, a
profession, perhaps hypocritical, of Judaism was politically necessary.
The history of Khazaria, so far as we can reconstruct
it from our few sources, would be no more interesting than the history of any
other of the many barbaric kingdoms that suddenly appeared and quickly
disintegrated in the course of the sad history of mankind, but for the
questions that were suggested by the description above. How extensive and
numerous were the conversions to Judaism among the Khazars? And when the
fortunes of the Khazars sharply declined, their numerous parasites would
naturally seek more prosperous hosts, so whither did they go?
The Khazars who migrated in large numbers into the
increasingly prosperous nations of northern Europe were either Khazars who had
been converted to Judaism or were `Khazars' only as most of the Jews who
swarmed into the United States in the Nineteenth Century were "Germans."
During the past century, many Christians who resented
the depredations of the Jews, chiefly Ashkenazim, but wanted to retain faith
in their favorite story-book elaborated the theory that their
parasites were not really God's People but only the descendants of Khazars who had been converted to Judaism.
parasites were not really God's People but only the descendants of Khazars who had been converted to Judaism.
The theoretical evasion was so attractive to them that
it became an article of Faith, and it was finally adopted by a prominent Jew,
Arthur Koestler, who expounded it in The Thirteenth Tribe: the Khazar Empire
and Its Heritage (New York, Random House, 1976). (3)
This brings us to Yehudah (Judah) ha-Levi. He was a
Jewish physician, born c. 1085, who, after the Christian conquest of Toledo,
moved to Cordova, then still Moslem territory, where he assumed an Arabic
name, Abu'l Hasan, much as Jews in our world assume English or Scotch names.
Probably in 1140, shortly before his death, he wrote, in passable Arabic, a
book with a formidable title, Kitab al-Hujjah wal-Dalil fi Nusr al-Din al-Dhalil.
This was translated from the Arabic into German by Hartweg Hirschfeld and
published at Breslau in 1885. (4)
A prolific Jewish writer, commonly known as Judah ben
Saul ibn Tibbon (1120-c. 1191), who was born in Spain but spent the greater
part of his life in southern France, translated ha-Levi's work into
Rabbinic Hebrew under the title Sefer ha-Kuzari ('Book of the Khazars'), and it is in this form that the work is generally known. The accuracy of the translation is problematical: ibn Tibbon is quoted as having confessed in another work that he knew Arabic, which he regarded as much the superior language, better than any kind of Hebrew, and as having said that his method was to make a literal translation of an Arabic original and then rewrite it in his Hebrew as though it were an original work of his own. So far as I know, however, this fact has given qualms to none of the many who cite ha-Levi from that translation with unqualified confidence. I cite it on the assumption that the translation preserves at least the principal substance of the original.
Rabbinic Hebrew under the title Sefer ha-Kuzari ('Book of the Khazars'), and it is in this form that the work is generally known. The accuracy of the translation is problematical: ibn Tibbon is quoted as having confessed in another work that he knew Arabic, which he regarded as much the superior language, better than any kind of Hebrew, and as having said that his method was to make a literal translation of an Arabic original and then rewrite it in his Hebrew as though it were an original work of his own. So far as I know, however, this fact has given qualms to none of the many who cite ha-Levi from that translation with unqualified confidence. I cite it on the assumption that the translation preserves at least the principal substance of the original.
The author, ha-Levi, wrote, as I have noted above,
long after the Khazars had disappeared, but he knew of them and had heard that
the rulers of the Khazars had adopted Judaism. His interest is theological,
not historical. He imagines a long dialogue between a learned Jew, a Khazar
king who is still a `pagan,' and exponents of Christianity, Islam, and human
reason. In five tedious chapters, the Jew `proves' that only a `revealed'
religion has validity, and he refutes not only the Christian and Moslem
doctrines, but mentions Neo-Platonism and produces an elaborate `refutation'
of rational philosophy as represented by Aristotle, whom he treats with some
respect, since he comes to the conclusion that if only Aristotle had lived at
the proper time to become acquainted with the miracles wrought by Yahweh for
his people, Aristotle would have been a convert to the True Religion of God's
Race.
The long dialogue ends, needless to say, with the
Khazar king's determination to become a Sheeny by adoption and to bestow on
all of his subjects the blessings of Salvation. I particularly call your
attention to one of ha-Levi's two principal arguments: that the divinity of
the Jews and their religion is proved by the fact that they alone possess a
history of the world from its creation by Yahweh, i.e., the farrago of tales
collected in what Christians call their `Old Testament.' It may be highly
significant in other contexts that the sequence of tales has an appearance of
historicity that can impose on uncritical readers. (5)
Ha-Levi could have known a curious document which
purports to be a letter from a Khazar King Joseph to a Jew of Cordova (Córdoba),
and it is likely that he did, although that cannot be demonstrated. This
letter is the only basis for the common story about the wholesale conversion
of Khazars to Judaism that seems so important to our contemporaries, including
Arthur Koestler. Hasdai (ben Isaac) ibn Shaprut (915-990?), whose Arabic name
was Abu Yusuf, was a Jewish physician famed for his suavity, his wisdom, his
cunning, and his `thousand tricks' (6)
who used his knowledge of medicine, as Jews often did, to become physician to
Moslem Caliph, `Abd al-Rahmán
III, the Omayyad Emir of Cordova, who had proclaimed himself the Caliph of Islam in 929 and was the dominant power in the Iberian Peninsula until his death in 961. The wily Jew so captured that monarch's confidence that he became his confidant, financial officer, and minister of foreign affairs.
III, the Omayyad Emir of Cordova, who had proclaimed himself the Caliph of Islam in 929 and was the dominant power in the Iberian Peninsula until his death in 961. The wily Jew so captured that monarch's confidence that he became his confidant, financial officer, and minister of foreign affairs.
There is extant the text of a letter purportedly
written by Hasdai in 960 or shortly before that date to the Jewish King of the
Khazars, and of a reply from that King, Joseph ben Aaron, who gives an
elaborate account of the Khazars' realm and the conversion of their king and
virtually all the Khazars to Judaism at a much earlier time, apparently c.
740, when Yahweh sent a dream to Bulan, the Khazar King at that time, and
inspired him to invite to his court `wise men of Israel,' who speedily
convinced him that he must worship the Jew's god. Bulan's successor, Obediah,
imported flocks of rabbis to instruct all his subjects `in the Bible, the
Mishnah, and the Talmud.' The King who wrote the letter, Joseph ben Aaron,
claimed to be a lineal descendant of the pious Obediah and to rule a
religiously Jewish nation.
Is this exchange of letters genuine? Although we would
expect it to have created something of a stir among the many Jews in Spain,
there is no trace of it until about a century and a half later. Probably in
the year 1100, a learned rabbi, Yehudah ben Barzillai, mentions the
correspondence and quotes from King Joseph's letter after explicitly warning
his readers that he in no way vouches for the authenticity of documents which
may be, partially or entirely, tissues of lies. Proponents of the authenticity
of the correspondence sweat as they try to explain away ben Barzillai's candid
and judicious scepticism.
There are obviously two distinct questions. Did Hasdai
write the letter purportedly addressed to the Khazar King (whether or not that
letter was actually dispatched)? He could have. The letter gives a glowing
description of Moslem Spain that would have gratified `Abd-al-Rahmán III. It
explains that the writer, having heard there was a kingdom of Jews in Asia,
wanted to confirm that report and particularly hoped to find the `Ten Lost
Tribes' (7) or obtain
news of them.
The obvious function of the letter is to introduce and
validate the reply by King Joseph. Clever Hasdai could have written it (and
the reply). So could any forger before 1100, if he took care to
introduce no anachronisms in a letter purportedly written in or before 960. The real question before us, then, is posed by the letter from King Joseph.
introduce no anachronisms in a letter purportedly written in or before 960. The real question before us, then, is posed by the letter from King Joseph.
To my mind, that letter is patently spurious. That is
sufficiently proved by chronological considerations. If Hasdai had his
inspiration to inquire in 960, that was just in time to get in before the
Verangian conquest of the Khazar state in 965. And King Joseph, standing on
the edge of the abyss, must have been a champion liar to give no hint of the
desperate plight of his kingdom at the time he wrote.
We know from Arabic sources that decades before 960
the Khazar capital, Itil, had become a dwindling city, existing precariously
on the customs-duties it could still collect from such trade as had not been
taken over by the Verangian states or diverted southward, while the Khazar
territory, instead of being the wide and peacefully prosperous realm that
Joseph describes, had been progressively invaded and appropriated by its
enemies and thus reducd to a fraction of what it had been a century before. In
other words, if King Joseph wrote the letter in 960, he described as his realm
the Khazar kingdom as it had existed in 800 or 850. It does not really matter
whether Joseph's letter was forged by Hasdai or both letters were forged by
some later hand. A still later forger, probably in the Thirteenth Century,
expanded Joseph's letter to produce what is called the Long Version, preserved
by a manuscript in Russia.
Jewish writers have labored hard to prove the
authenticity of the letter purportedly written by King Joseph, but all that
they have proved is that most of the information about the Khazars given in
that letter, except the mass conversion to Judaism, can be verified from Arabic sources that describe Khazaria at one or another time in its history, sources which, obviously, could have been consulted by any forger before 1100. Some even go so far as to claim that the "Long Version" is the authentic text, and that the version known in 1100 was a "condensation" of it! (8)
that letter, except the mass conversion to Judaism, can be verified from Arabic sources that describe Khazaria at one or another time in its history, sources which, obviously, could have been consulted by any forger before 1100. Some even go so far as to claim that the "Long Version" is the authentic text, and that the version known in 1100 was a "condensation" of it! (8)
The Jews' interest in making King Joseph's letter
authentic is explained by their pretense that they are a religion, not a race.
If they are a religion, like Christianity and Islam, they must seek converts
and what better proof than that they once converted a whole kingdom?
If the letter attributed to King Joseph is a forgery,
then there is no evidence whatsoever that any considerable number of Khazars
were ever converted to Judaism. It will follow, therefore, that the `Khazars'
who presumably became the Ashkenazim were simply parasites who flitted from
the declining Khazar kingdom to regions where there were more prosperous goyim
to be exploited. And if the swarms of Jews in Khazaria did not go north, what
happened to them? A real `Holocaust' about which the race failed to howl and
yammer? In short, we have no reason for doubting Professor Mourant's
conclusion from haematological data that the Ashkenazim do not differ racially
from other Jews. (9)
The fabulous conversion of the Khazars to Judaism is
only one of the innumerable hoaxes contrived by a predatory race that has
survived and surreptitiously conquered by its cohesion and virtual unanimity
in insolently massive deceit.
NOTES
1. The Hebrew name now vocalised as Yehudah is often
written in English as `Judas' or `Judah' on the basis of the forms found in
the Septuagint and `New Testament', which represent the pronunciation in the
two centuries divided by the beginning of the Christian Era. The name simply
means `Jew.' The Hebrew spelling may have been devised to create a religious
etymology by which the name could be interpreted as meaning `Yahweh leads' or
`is praised.'
2. Ladino is the mongrel language the Jews made out of
Spanish, as they made Yiddish out of German. Ladino was used by Jews
throughout the Mediterranean world, as Yiddish was used in Northern Europe
(cf. Liberty Bell, May 1985, pp. 11-17). The book in question is YEHUDAH
HALEVI, The Book of the Khazars a 12th Century Ladino translation, edited by
Moshe Lazar and Robert Dilligan, Culver City, California; Labyrinthos, 1990.
It is reviewed unfavourably by Dwayne E. Carpenter in Speculum, LXVIII (1993),
pp. 534 f. He does not raise the tactless question why compositors' time,
paper, ink, and space on library shelves should be wasted by this publication.
So far as I can judge from the review, no one seems to have made the
preliminary investigation that should have preceded publication. Was the
Ladino translation made from the Arabic original or from the translation into
Mediareview Hebrew? Is the Ladino translation accurate? If so, it is
worthless; if not, does it contain mistranslations that might have given rise
to some later writer's mistakes about the subject or contents of the original?
If not, it is worthless. Only if it explains some important misconceptions (I
do not know of any) was the publication justified.
3. Despite his odd claim that his book did not
invalidate his race's claim to the territory now called Israel, Koestler's
demolition of the `Chosen People'
myth was savagely denounced by many of his fellow Ashkenazim. Some speculate
that the hostility of his fellow tribesmen may have influenced the joint
suicide of Koestler and his wife not long thereafter.
4. I have not consulted this work, which is rather
rare, but fundamental to any throughgoing consideration of the question I am
cursorily presenting here. I do not know whether the
Arabic text has been published; if not, it certainly called for the effort
that was wasted on the paltry Ladino
version. I also do not know whether ha-Levi's Arabic differs substantially
from the translation, mentioned
below, from which it is commonly cited.
5. When speculating about what could have influenced
our not unintelligent Germanic ancestors to succumb to so unnatural a
religion as Christianity, I have often given weight to
the Bible's simulation of historicity, especially in the appendix to the Jew-
book called the `New Testament.'
6. This eulogy of the Mediæval Kissinger is quoted in
the Jewish Encyclopaedia (1903), s.h.n.; the occasion was his success in
inducing the Christian Queen of Navarre to recognize
the Moslem Caliph as her overlord and place herself and her son under his
protection.
7. If that subject interests you, consult the erudite,
comprehensive, and massive work by Professor Arthur Godbey, The Lost
Tribes, a Myth: Suggestions toward Rewriting Hebrew
History (Durham, North Carolina; Duke University, 1930; reprinted with a new
introduction, New York, Ktav Publishing House, 1974).
8. This is done by Koestler, op. cit., although he
honestly quotes the statistics that show the enormous differences in style and
language between the two versions. So powerful is the
will to believe what is patently false, which accounts for so large a part
of religious and other belief in the supernatural
today!
9. See Liberty Bell, July 1987, pp. 1-5; cf, May 1985,
15-17; December 1988, 2-4. The Jews' criterion of race (i.e., a real Jew must
be the child of a Jewess, the race of the father being irrelevant) was
explicable only in terms of mitochondrial heredity before the recent discovery
that genes inherited from a mother differ in their genetic effects from the
same genes inherited from a father.
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