Khazaria adopts Judaism: a Jewish kingdom between the Volga and the Don
The only state in history whose ruling house went over to Judaism. It held for more than two centuries and shielded Europe from the east.
The Khazar khaganate stood on the lower Volga and held the routes between Baghdad, Byzantium and the north. About 740 its ruling house adopted Judaism—a case without parallel: no state before or since has done the same.
The reasons are argued. Jewish sources transmit the account of a disputation between sages of the three faiths before the khagan; on that account Yehuda Halevi built the Kuzari. Historians also see calculation: between a caliphate and a Byzantium each demanding that its faith be taken together with its overlordship, a third way preserved independence.
The chief source is the correspondence of about 960: Hasdai ibn Shaprut, physician and minister to the caliph of Córdoba, wrote to King Joseph of the Khazars on hearing that a Jewish kingdom existed somewhere, and received a reply describing the country and the lineage of its conversion. The authenticity of the letters was long disputed; finds in the Cairo Geniza—the Cambridge Document and a tenth-century letter from the Kyiv community bearing both Hebrew and Turkic names—argue in their favour.
About 965 the khaganate was broken by Sviatoslav of Kyiv and the state fell apart. Where its Jews went is not known with certainty; attempts to derive all East European Jewry from the Khazars are rejected by scholarship—the linguistic and genetic evidence runs against it.
Sources
Documents of the period
- The correspondence of Hasdai ibn Shaprut with King Joseph, c. 960 — letter and reply: a description of the country and the lineage of conversion
- The Cambridge Document and the Kyiv letter from the Cairo Geniza — independent confirmation of a Jewish Khazaria
Basis: documents and evidence.