Posted on 09/20/2008 9:14:49 PM PDT by Cinnamon Girl
MOSCOW — A Russian archaeologist says he has found the lost capital of the Khazars, a powerful nation that adopted Judaism as its official religion more than 1,000 years ago, only to disappear leaving little trace of its culture.
Dmitry Vasilyev, a professor at Astrakhan State University, said his nine-year excavation near the Caspian Sea has finally unearthed the foundations of a triangular fortress of flamed brick, along with modest yurt-shaped dwellings, and he believes these are part of what was once Itil, the Khazar capital. (edit) The Khazars were a Turkic tribe that roamed the steppes from Northern China to the Black Sea. Between the 7th and 10th centuries they conquered huge swaths of what is now southern Russia and Ukraine, the Caucasus Mountains and Central Asia as far as the Aral Sea. (edit) "We know a lot about them, and yet we know almost nothing: Jews wrote about them, and so did Russians, Georgians, and Armenians, to name a few," said Kraiz. "But from the Khazars themselves we have nearly nothing."
The Khazars' ruling dynasty and nobility converted to Judaism sometime in the 8th or 9th centuries. Vasilyev said the limited number of Jewish religious artifacts such as mezuzas and Stars of David found at other Khazar sites prove that ordinary Khazars preferred traditional beliefs such as shamanism, or newly introduced religions including Islam. (edit)
In particular, he said, the Khazars opposed the Arab advance into the Caucasus Mountains and were instrumental in containing a Muslim push toward eastern Europe. He compared their role in eastern Europe to that of the French knights who defeated Arab forces at the Battle of Tours in France in 732. (edit) The study of the Khazar empire was discouraged in the Soviet Union. (edit)
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
The area around the Black Sea is just action packed historically.
The Khazars have always fascinated me by their choice of religion and dominance of the region.
Here is something that may interest you.
Cool.
Arthur Koestler's book The Thirteenth Tribe follows up the implications of the Khazhar conversion, and claims that only a minority of Ashkenazim Jews are actually genetically related to Abraham. Judaism is a community of faith, whose primary defining tenet is a denial of history's most important event.
btt
Arthur Koestler’s book The Thirteenth Tribe follows up the implications of the Khazhar conversion, and claims that only a minority of Ashkenazim Jews are actually genetically related to Abraham.
Koestler’s expertise as a historian and scholar was zero. I give no weight to his views of medieval history.
. . . . .
Judaism is a community of faith . . . .
So if you believe Koestler, then naturally there is no historic or ethnic component to Judaism.
whose primary defining tenet is a denial of history’s most important event.
Gee, I thought its defining tenets were monotheism and the Ten Commandments.
In your view, what was history’s most important event—the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus?
Thanks
“
It’s amazing how much has occurred in the Caucasus.
“
The book “The Master Plan” about Himmler’s cadre includes an interesting
section on the one ethnic group that really screwed with their worldview.
As they drove eastward, they were baffled and confused about what
to make of bands of ride-hard and shoot-shooter Jews in the Caucases.
I guess it totally upset their conviction that Jews were just accountants,
doctors or cunning businessmen.
Instead these guys were close to being hard-living cowboys.
(I heartily recommend “The Master Plan”. It’s documented with footnotes
and references in a virtually scholarly manner, but it’s a good narrative
about the evil that can happen when a band of sadists, MDs, and PhDs
are given a bankroll and the freedom to be “as bad as they wanna’ be.)
The Master Plan: Himmler’s Scholars and the Holocaust
by Heather Pringle
http://www.amazon.com/Master-Plan-Himmlers-Scholars-Holocaust/dp/0786887737/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1222007580&sr=1-1
The giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai? It's a principle of Jewish faith.
Real Judaism recognizes the King of the Jews, the Messiah, the Memra, the second person of the Godhead, who is provided by the Father as the Perfect Sacrifice. They shall proclaim, ‘blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.”
Warning! This is a high-volume ping list.
I believe that modern studies of genetics have disproved this idea, no matter how much the Islamofascists love it. In any case, Jews who are Sephardic, or who lived in the Levant, clearly would be descended from the Jews of Judaea (as well as the people of the ancient state of Israel.
Please don’t turn this into a religious debate thread. Unless you want to give all the Jews on FR a heads up when there’s a post regarding your religion so we can chime in with what we think the “real” version is. I haven’t been on many religion threads so I don’t know if it’s general practice for people of different faiths to get on and tell other’s what the “real” version of a faith they don’t practice is.
Khazars are cool. The Mountain Jews in Azerbaijan take pride in being warriors too. I don’t know if they are descended from Khazars are not, but they say that they are descended from mercenaries who came with the Arab conquerers as allies & were given some land to settle in Azerbaijan as a prize.
Khazars are cool.
Unfortunately, there is so little evidence upon which to base historical research on them. The stuff that is written, and that is remotely reliable (IMHO) is all in specialized academic publications, which, even when in English, are often opaque and/or painful to read. (I used to be one of “them,” so I can say this with a straight face.)
About 40 years ago, a guy at Columbia wrote his dissertation on the derivation and meaning of the known words of the language of the Khazars. IIRC, he came up with about 50 words!
es
No debate involved in making a simple statement.
Thanks gleeaikin.
Russian archaeologists find long-lost Jewish capital
AFP | Sept. 3, 2008
Posted on 09/03/2008 9:26:26 AM PDT by Alouette
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2073813/posts
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