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Article: Dictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel.
- Article from:
- The Nation
- Article date:
- December 5, 1988
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1988 The Nation Company L.P. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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There really were Khazars, of Turkish stock, between the Caucasus and the Volga, the Black
Sea and the Caspian. From the seventh century A.D. to the tenth, they got in the way of northern tribes of Bulgars, Magyars, Pechenegs and Vikings that nibbled at Byzantium, and they were also, in the south, very hard on Arabs. About the year 740, the king, his court and the military caste of these Khazars converted inexplicably to Judaism. Two hundred years and a Russian invasion later, they had vanished.
What little we know about them is passing reference -bits and pieces in the tenth century from the Arab geographer Muqaddasi and the Byzantine historian ...