Khazar
/kəˈzɑː
/noun
A member of a Turkic people who occupied a large part of southern Russia from the 6th to the 11th centuries and who converted to Judaism in the 8th century.Indeed, Jews from Germany and Russia may be descended from the Khazars who converted to Judaism in about 740AD, and hence not ‘racially’ Semitic at all....
- In his Commentary on Matthew's Gospel, Christian of Stablo shows awareness of the respective conversions of the Bulgars and the Khazars to Christianity and Judaism in the 860s.
- The Hungarian-born Jewish author Arthur Koestler theorised that today's Ashkenazi Jews are really descendants of the Khazars, who allegedly converted en masse in the eighth century in what is today modern Russia.
adjective
Relating to the Khazars.When Kubrat's state fell apart under the assaults of the Khazar tribes his sons separated and scattered....
- Further west and north, the European, mainly Christian empires of the Byzantines, the Carolingians, and the short-lived Bulgarian and Khazar polities seemed petty, almost provincial entities by comparison.
- For some mysterious reason the history of the Khazar kingdom is conspicuous by its absence from history courses in the schools and colleges.
Origin
Of unknown origin.