Today we will discuss the fascinating story of the Khazar Khaganate’s conversion to Judaism. The Khazars were a nomadic Turkic people that ruled the steppe north of the Caucasus from a city called Atil located on the mouth of the Volga (Itil) River. This khaganate formed an obstacle to Arab and Byzantine expansion into Transcaucasia and the Eurasian steppe. Originally, the Khazars were Tengri pagans who worshipped the sky. Around 740, while other Turkic rulers were embracing Islam or Byzantine Christianity, the Khazar Khagan Bulan broke with the trends and embraced Judaism instead.
Khazaria: The Medieval Israel
Byzantine and Arab sources provide the main attestations for the Khazars’ Judaism. Ahmad ibn Fadlan and al-Mas’udi note repeatedly that although the khaganate had large Christian and Muslim populations, the ruling class was Jewish. These facts eventually reached the large Jewish community in Andalusia, where they were initially treated as rumors and hearsay. However, one Rabbi Hasdai ibn Isaac, decided to discover the truth for himself. He wrote a letter (one of a pair) to the Khazar Khagan Joseph II asking if the rumors of his Jewish faith were true. Incredibly, if we are to accept the authenticity of the letters, the khagan responded.
Joseph’s letter recounts the “official” conversion story. The narrative states that Joseph’s ancestor, Khagan Bulan, had invited one Christian and one Muslim cleric to debate their respective religions. At the end of the debates Bulan asked each cleric if the “Israelite religion” (Judaism) was preferable to his opponent’s. Both answered in the affirmative. The khagan interpreted this as an admission that Judaism was superior to both Islam and Christianity, and embraced it. This account is highly stylized and typical of narratives of the era (see the conversion of St. Volodymyr), in which rulers held debates to judge religions on their merits. However, the letter also betrays another motive. By adopting Judaism, the Khazars maintained their independence from the Christian Byzantines, the Muslim Abbasids, and the pagan Rus’. This is supported in the response, in which Joseph writes that his realm served as a buffer and peacekeeper between Arabs, Byzantines, and Rus’, rather than being subject to any of them. Finally, there was a significant Jewish community living in Khazaria from the Caucasus and Byzantium, who may have exerted influence in the Khagan’s court.
Doubts and Forgeries
Although the conversion account is legendary, the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of a Khazar conversion to Judaism, despite attempts to write it out in the early 20th century and repeated denials from certain scholarly sources. Following Bulan’s death, his successors all carried Hebrew names, some of whom are attested in sources outside the Khagan’s letter. Among these include Khagans with names such as Aaron, Benjamin, Manasseh, Obadiah, Hezekiah, and of course, Joseph himself. Although some doubts have been raised about the authenticity of these letters, a 12th century Jewish sage named Yehuda of Barcelona cited Rabbi Hasdai’s letter, making it impossible that the letters were 16th century forgeries as some claimed. Another Jewish scholar named Abraham ibn Da’ud, also of the 12th century recorded that Khazars were still studying in Andalusia’s Jewish institutions, despite the khaganate’s disappearance two centuries earlier, suggesting that the tradition was a valid one.
Archaeologically, there is one crucial piece of evidence for the Khazar conversion from the Swedish island of Gotland. A coin from the Spilling Hoard, a Viking-era collection of silver coins, contains an exemplar decorated with Arabic script that reads Musa rasulullah (Moses messenger of God). This Khazar coin was minted in the style of Abbasid coinage, but where one would expect Muhammad, the minters instead inserted Moses. This would have been highly unlikely for a Muslim or Christian state, suggesting that at very minimum, the Khazar upper class had embraced Judaism.
Defender of the Faith
The Khazar Khaganate’s conversion turned it into a reference point for Jews in Europe and Asia. As we have seen from Rabbi Hasdai’s letter, the existence of the Khazar state gave the Jewish people a place to which they could migrate for protection, and the Khazar khagan did invite Jews from other areas to settle within his lands. Ibn Fadlan recorded that the khagan even played the role of protector of Jews in neighboring lands. He recounts that the khagan had the minaret of a mosque demolished in revenge for attacks against synagogues in Islamic lands. Despite the Khazar’s best efforts, however, this religious anomaly of the Middle Ages did not survive.
The Rus’ Invasion and the Fall of Khazaria
Around 965, the Grand Prince of Kiev, Sviatoslav the Great, invaded Khazaria, crushed the khaganate’s armies and captured its western lands. Shortly after, the Oghuz Turks invaded from the East. In a desperate bid to survive, the Khazars, according to ibn al-Athir, converted to Islam. Judaism, however, lingered there until the 12th century, casting some doubt on ibn al-Athir’s story and suggesting that Khazars maintained their religion despite persecution, and continued to send students to Andalusia for rabbinical training. By the 11th century, the old Khazar Khaganate had come under the rule of the Cumans, yet another group in the parade of Central Asian nomads that invaded Russia and Ukraine during the Middle Ages. The Khazars disappeared from history and were mostly assimilated into their neighbors. Despite the khaganate’s relatively short existence, the Khazar embrace of the “despised faith” secured its place in history for its uniqueness, differentiating its khagan from his fellow Turkic rulers, most of whom embraced Islam or Christianity and passed into history overlooked.
Sources and Further Reading
Our main source for the Khazars, Ahmad ibn Fadlan’s Land of Darkness recounts his travels through Eastern Europe and Central Asia and can be found in most bookstores. Hasdai ibn Shaprut’s letter to Khagan Joseph and the khagan’s response are both publicly available here. General information on Khazaria can be found here, with links to academic resources on religion, archaeology, and language compiled by scholars and enthusiasts in Russian, English, and French.