serwad

Khazars and Karaims

Khazars were a Turkish group of tribes and nations, who ruled an empire
extending east and west of the Capian Sea, from the sixth or seventh to the
tenth or eleventh centuries. They engaged in the eighth century in a bloody
struggle with the last Umayyad khalif. Around 965 they were decisively
defeated by Russian settlers. Their enmity to their Muslim and Christian
neighbours caused their ruler, part of the nobility and apparently also of
the people, to adopt Judaism around 740. The Karaite version has usually
been that what they adopted was, in fact, Karaism. One of the main
propagandists of this theory was A. Firkovich, which has given it so bad a
name in academc circles that for a long time most scholars would not touch
it. But in recent years some have come around to a more affirmative view.
Some elements do exist which could indicate a linkage between Khazar and
Karaite history:

Karaism originated partly in Iran, near the borders of the Khazar empire at
the time (or very soon after) part of the Khazars converted to Judaism. Some
early contacts could have been established then.

Petahia of Regensburg described around 1180 Jewish sectarians who do not
lighten Sabbath candies, nor had heard of the Talmud in the "Land of Kedar",
apparently north of the Caucasus. This sounds already like Karaites, or
sinfilar sectarians.

What strikes any student of Judaism regarding the description of the
Karaites in the Crimea and (somewhat less so) in all of Eastern Europe, is
how "unjewish" they are made to appear. They were mostly farmers,
specializing in the growing of tobacco and cu***bers. They served as
soldiers and officers in pre-Zionist times, when this was an unheard-of
occupation for Jews. Their relations with their neighbours were mostly
excellent. They intermarried with them and many of them even had the Turkish
cast of face and the appearance of their neighbours. Their interest in
commerce and matters of the spirit was minimal. They were a conservative
lot, uninterested in innovation, be they political or religious. If they
were not ethnic Jews, were they perhaps descendants of the Khazars?

The Crimean Karaites did not speak any of the usual Jewish dialects, such as
Jiddish or Ladino, but such Turkish dialects as Karaim, similar to those of
their neighbours, which they later brought with them to Poland and
Lithuania.

Their ties to their neighbours in the Crimea were of the closest. They were
regarded sometimes as part of the local aristocracy. The Nazi attitude to
them in World War 11 stemmed, partly, from the wish of the Germans to
utilize the local Tartars for their political and military purposes. By
harming the Karaites they were afraid of losing the goodwill of the Tartars.
The situation elsewhere in Europe was usually the very opposite: by their
virulent antiseniitism the GerTnans usually gained the goodwill of the local
populations.

These points make out a strong case for a Khazar - Karaite linkage, but far
from a complete one. There are still several arguments against it:

A complete lack of interest in the Khazars in contemporary Karaite records.


dedected. Not even at the peak of messianic excitement was an attempt made
to equate the expected Khazar saviors with the forces of Karaism. Such a
situation would not only be inconceivable if there were any truth to the
allegation of the Khazars' affiliation with the Karaite synagogue, but it
actually stands in glaring contrast to the historic alliance of sectarianism
and messianism in the early centuries of Jewish experience under Islam.
Hence the relevant lesson which evolves from a survey of the early Karaite
literature with reference to Khazaria is this: tenth and eleventh century
Karaism in the East, and even more so in Byzantium, was completely unaware
of any special Karaite affinity with Khazaria ... Against this background
the derogatory remarks of some Karaite authors regarding the Khazars -
remarks whose defamatory nature has no peer in Rabbanite literature - gain
even more significance.

So far no archeological remains have been found to support a Karaite Khazar
linkage, but recent excavations have shown a wider Jewish diffusion among
the Khazars than previously assumed.

No final comparison has yet been made between the dialect of the Crimean
Karaites and what is known of the language of the Khazars.

The "unjewishness" of the Karaites of the Crimea and (to a lesser extent) of
Eastern Europe, can be explained not only by ethnic linkage, but by their
"ability to take on the colouring of the wider society. (It) was evident
when they described themselves as Jews if they lived among Jews, as Turks
when in Turkey, as Russians when in Russia and as Poles when in Poland" (E.
Trevisan-Semi, Nazi and Vichy, 82).

There remains thus a gray area, which is only slowly being penetrated by
present-day research. Still, an anthropologist like E. Trevisan-Senii does
not hesitate to regard the Karaites of Eastern Europe as of a different
ethnic background from the Karaites of the Middle East, who are clearly of
Jewish stock. Both sides were conscious enough of this gulf often not to
intermarry.

At present it seems that some sort of linkage between Khazars and Karaites
has much to recommend it, but has not been proven.

Bibliography: Petahia of Regensburg, Sibuv, Altona 1770, 2; T. Kowalski,
Karaimsche Texte im Dialekt von Troki, Krakow 1929, XI,. D.M. Dunlop, The
History of the Jewish Khazars, Princeton 1954 (with detailed bibliography);
E. Trevisan-Semi, Ebrei Caraiti, 60; idem, Nazi and Vichy, 82; Peter B.
Golden, Khazar Studies, Budapest 1980, 2 vols; N. Golb and 0. Pritsak,
Khazarian Hebrew Do***ents of the Tenth Century, Ithaca-London, 1982;
Vsevold L Vikhnovich, From the Jordan to the Dniepr, Jewish Studies, 31,
1991, 15-24; for support of the theory see also A. Zajaczkowsky, Karaism in
Poland, Warsay 1961; and S. Szysztnan, Le Karaisme; for opposition see Z
Ankori, Byzantium, 65-67, 79; and M. Balaban, On the History of the Karaites
in Poland, Hatekufa XVI, 192213, 294-297.

(The) Mandeglis (or Medgelis) Do***ent

This is an early manuscript which was allegedly discovered by Abraham
Firkovich in the wall of the synagogue of Mandeglis (or Medgelis) in the
Caucasus in 1840/1. The do***ent, 58 x 15,5 cm, was published by the
(proFirkovich) Orientalist D.A. Chwolson in 1863. It mentions a visit of the
Kievan ambassador to the Crimean Khazar ruler, to consult him about which
religion to adopt. A.Y. Harkavy claimed that it was a forgery, after it
disappeared conveniently in 1876 from the St Petersburg library of which
Harkavy himself was in charge. This event contributed to the bad name
Firkovich and his publications got in academic circles. But, surprisingly,
the Mandeglis do***ent was recently rediscovered (by V.V. Lebedev) in the
same St Petersburg library, from which it was supposed to have disappeared.

New archeological discoveries have caused Vsevold L. Vikhnovich and others
to assume that there is at least a nucleus of historical truth in the story
told in it. This episode raises, however, some interesting questions
regarding A.Y. Harkavy's reliability and trustworthiness.

Tarhan

This is the name of the upper social stratum, to which most of the Karaites
of the Crimea belonged since medieval times. As such they often did not have
to pay taxes, and had free access to the Khan's palace. This information is
also from Karaite Encyclopedia of Nathan Schur.

dr. lippschitz

Everyone in Europe knows where the jews and gypsies are from. It's only dumb
brainwashed poorly educated Americans who know nothing. An American thinks a
Mexican is "Spanish" lol A Sicilian is "Italian" lol A jew is a "Hebrew"
lol A Russian is a jew lol Most of them can't even find their home State on
a map and think WWII started because the US dropped a bomb on Hiroshima. lol
They think the Statue of Liberty was put there to welcome immigrants
hahaha And think that dumb poem tacked onto the base of the Statue and


descended from nobility and Tutankhamen lol They believe that all people
were black until an evil mad black scientist created the bleached out White
man and that before the evil White man destroyed their great "culture" they
were flying around the pyramids in flying saucers lol
"serwad" <serwad@bellsouth.net> wrote in message news:I8mXf.1180$68.1009@bignews7.bellsouth.net...

anonmoos

How seriously are we to take the claims of somebody who doesn't know
enough about Hebrew to tell apart a singular from a clear plural???
"Karaites" is the English plural word for members of this religious
group, while "Karaim" or "Qaraim" is the Hebrew plural, while
"Karaims"[sic] is neither one thing nor the other, but has an English
plural ending awkwardly tacked onto a Hebrew plural ending. It's just
like Gollum's "hobbitses", "feets", and "toeses"! This seems to be a
very weak point with all the racist hate-bigots that you copy-and-paste
from, StriderCabal: they seem to be very fond of things like "one
sayanim"[sic] and "the Karaims"[sic]. If they spent a fraction of the
time studying grammar that they spent indulging their hate, then maybe
they wouldn't humiliate themselves in such an embarrassingly public
manner!

As for the substance of the post, "Semitic" is actually a technical
linguistic term, which strictly-speaking applies only to purely
linguistic matters -- and is also found in the fixed expression
"anti-Semitic", which is a 19th-century genteel and ultra-polite
Victorian drawing-room euphemism for "Jew-hating" (invented in 1879 by
the non-Jewish Jew-hater Wilhelm Marr, by the way); this word has
always and only meant "Jew-hating". Outside of these two contexts,
"Semitic" basically has no meaning whatsoever, and should be completely
avoided (in modern sound scientifically-accurate usage, the term
"Semitic" is used to describe _languages_, but is never used to
describe peoples or ethnic groups, unless perhaps in a strictly
historical way to describe tribesmen of 1000 B.C.).

If you're trying to describe modern peoples as "Semites" and
"non-Semites" on any basis other than a strictly linguistic one (i.e.
what languages they speak), then you're trying to resurrect an
obsolete and outmoded kind of "racial science" which was pretty well
discredited 50 years ago -- in fact, the Nazis were the last prominent
proponents of the type of "racial science" which claimed to be able to
decide who was "racially" a "Semite". In any case, Israelis who speak
the Hebrew language speak a language which is every bit as "Semitic"
as the Arabic language is. To see that there are many Semitic
languages (not only Arabic), just go to http://www.bartleby.com/61/10.html
or http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=3

If you're trying to weasel around and manipulate some kind of
semantics in order to pretend that Arabs can't hate Jews, then that's
utterly lamely feebly pathetically ludicrous. If the word
"anti-Semitic" clouds your vision (for some idiosyncratic personal
reason), then just call yourself a "Jew-hater"; we won't insist on the
term "anti-Semitic", so that if you prefer to describe yourself as a
"Jew-hater", rather than as an "anti-Semite", then that will be fine
by us...

--
Hamas motto: لا إله لهم
إلا الموت،
«حماس» رسول
الموت (The death-worshipping cult)
Murderers are not martyrs! http://symbolictruth.fateback.com/

avenger

Not relevant as far as a person's credibility. People frequently take
foreign plural words and make them English sounding plurals. If you made a
double plural with English words like deers,fishes, feets, etc it would be
wrong but not with foreign words.

serwad

STICK YOUR LECTURES UPYOUR ARSE! NOBODY HERE WANTS TO LEARN A DEAD LANGUAGE!

anonmoos

Adding English plural endings onto foreign plurals happens _sometimes_
(as in "agendas" etc.), but not with any particularly great frequency.
The only instance in English where it happens with any frequency at all
with a Hebrew plural ending is "cherubims", and some people don't even
like that word. But if you want to be taken seriously as a writer on
topics of Jewish history or modern Israel, then it would help very
greatly to avoid making obvious basic stupid blunders in your use of
Hebrew...

--
Some Qur'an quotes: 5:20 qaala muusaa 5:21 "yaa qawmi ´dkhuluu ´l-'arDa
´l-muqaddasata ´llatii kataba ´llaahu lakum" 17:104 waqulnaa ... libanii
'israa'iila "´skunuu ´l-'arDa" || In English: Moses said, "My people,
go into the Holy Land which God has assigned to you!" And we said to the
Children of Israel, "Inhabit the land!" http://symbolictruth.fateback.com/

anonmoos

Yes, we know very well that you never have the slightest concern for
facts or truth...

--
المتبرجة خير
من الإرهابي
المنتحر
Murderers are not martyrs! http://symbolictruth.fateback.com/

scott nudds

AnonMoos asked:


How pedantically puerile of you.

Grammar and speling Nazis pompous fools are.

anonmoos

The matter may not have extreme significance in itself -- but if you
want to be taken seriously as a historian of Jewish populations
(instead of as a Usenet asshole cutting-and-pasting from random racist
web-sites), then it would be very advisable to avoid making such basic blunders...


The force is weak with you, and Yoda you are not...

--
المتبرجة خير
من الإرهابي
المنتحر
Murderers are not martyrs! http://symbolictruth.fateback.com/

flaviar

This was a little more complicated than that, but thanks for playing -
and showing that you have no defense for the things the bigots were saying.

Susan