Editing Khazars (section)

== Claims of Khazar ancestry ==
Claims of Khazar origins of peoples, or suggestions that the Khazars were absorbed by them, have been made with regard to the [[Kazakhs]], the [[Hungarians]], the [[Judaizers|Judaizing]] [[Slavs|Slavic]] [[Subbotniks]], the Muslim [[Karachays]], the [[Kumyks]], the [[Avars (Caucasus)|Avars]], the [[Don Cossacks|Cossacks of the Don]] and the [[Ukrainian Cossacks]] (see [[Khazar hypothesis of Cossack ancestry]]), the Turkic-speaking [[Krymchaks]] and their Crimean neighbours the [[Crimean Karaites|Karaites]], [[Mishar Tatars]],{{sfn|Who are the Mishars?|2016}} the Moldavian [[Csángós]] and others.{{sfn|Kizilov|2009|p=335}}{{sfn|Brook|2018|pp=145, 149–151, 162–163, 164}}{{sfn|Patai|Patai|1989|p=73}}{{sfn|Wexler|1987|p=70}} [[Turkic languages|Turkic]]-speaking [[Crimean Karaites]] (known in the [[Crimean Tatar language]] as ''Qaraylar''), some of whom migrated in the 19th century from the [[Crimea]] to Poland and Lithuania have claimed Khazar origins. Specialists in Khazar history question the connection.{{sfn|Brook|2018|pp=210–216}}{{sfn|Golden|2007a|p=9}}{{efn|group=note|name=Rabinnic|Rabbinic Judaism rather than Qaraism was the form adopted. Small [[Karaite Judaism|Karaim]] communities may have existed, but the linguistic and historical evidence suggests that the [[Crimean Karaites|Turkic-speaking Karaim Jews]] in Poland and Lithuania, of which one branch also existed in the Crimea, descend from the Khazars. "At most, it is conceivable that the smaller Karaite community which lived in Khazaria gained the Kipchak type Turkic language, that they speak today, through an exchange of language." Khazars probably converted to [[Rabbinic Judaism]], whereas in [[Karaism]] only the [[Torah]] is accepted, the [[Talmud]] being ignored {{harv|Róna-Tas|1999|p=232}}.}} Scholarship is likewise sceptical of claims that the [[Crimean Tatar language|Tatar-speaking Krymchak Jews]] of the Crimea descend from Khazars.{{sfn|Brook|2018|pp=208–209}}

=== Crimean Karaites and Krymchaks ===
{{Main|Crimean Karaites|Krymchaks}}

In 1839, the [[Crimean Karaites|Karaim]] scholar [[Abraham Firkovich]] was appointed by the Russian government as a researcher into the origins of the Jewish sect known as the [[Karaite Judaism|Karaites]].{{sfn|Goldstein|2011|p=9}} In 1846, one of his acquaintances, the Russian orientalist Vasilii Vasil'evich Grigor'ev (1816–1881), theorised that the Crimean Karaites were of Khazar stock. Firkovich vehemently rejected the idea,{{sfn|Shapira|2006|p=166}} a position seconded by Firkovich,{{clarify inline|reason=He seconded his own position?|date=October 2024}} who hoped that by "proving" his people were of Turkic origin, he would secure them exception from Russian anti-Jewish laws, since they bore no responsibility for Christ's crucifixion.{{sfnp|Blady|2000|p=125}} This idea has a notable impact in Crimean Karaite circles.{{efn|group=note|"At a time when Russia masked imperialist goals by pretending to be the protector of Slavic peoples and the Orthodox faith, Crimean Karism was exercising its own version of cultural imperialism. It is clear that the Crimean Karaites intended to expand their dominion to include Cairo, Jerusalem, and Damascus, basing their pre-eminence on the claim that Karaism, an ancient, pre-Talmudic form of Judaism, had been brought to the Middle East by the Khazars. Such an allegation would, however, have been much more difficult, if not impossible, to maintain.{{pb}}To summarize the Khazar-Karaite nexus commonly accepted in the Russian Empire during the last century: the Khazars, who were of pagan Turkic origin, were supposedly brought to Judaism by Karaites, descendants of Jews who had lived in the Black Sea areas since biblical times and whose Judaism was, therefore, pre-Talmudic and nonrabbinic. As a result, the Khazars' Judaism was Karaite, and later Karaites, who spoken a Turkic language, must have descended from the Khazars, with whom the ancient Jews had assimilated. The circularity of the argument aside, modern historians have concluded that the Khazars were converted by Rabbanite Jews and that they and their descendants observed rabbinic law and traditions. Indeed, recent scholarship has demonstrated that Khazaria was altogether unrepresented in the Karaite literature of the ninth and early tenth centuries, as well as that written during its Golden Age – when Karaism had a militant and missionary influence."{{sfn|Miller|1993|pp=7–9}}}} It is now believed that he forged much of this material on Khazars and Karaites.{{sfn|Weinryb|1973a|pp=21–22}} Specialists in Khazar history also question the connection.{{sfn|Golden|2007a|p=9}}{{efn|group=note|name=Rabinnic}} A genetic study of European Karaites by [[Kevin Alan Brook]] found no evidence of a Khazar or Turkic origin for any uniparental lineage but did reveal the European Karaites' links to Egyptian Karaites and to Rabbinical Jewish communities.{{sfn|Brook|2018|pp=213–215}}{{sfn|Brook|2014|pp=69–84}}

Another Turkic Crimean group, the [[Krymchaks]] had retained very simple Jewish traditions, mostly devoid of [[halakha|halakhic content]], and very much taken with magical superstitions which, in the wake of the enduring educational efforts of the great Sephardi scholar [[Chaim Hezekiah Medini]], came to conform with traditional Judaism.{{sfnp|Blady|2000|p=122}}

Though the assertion they were not of Jewish stock enabled many Crimean Karaites to survive the Holocaust, which led to the murder of 6,000 Krymchaks, after the war, many of the latter, somewhat indifferent to their Jewish heritage, took a cue from the Crimean Karaites, and denied this connection in order to avoid the antisemitic effects of the stigma attached to Jews.{{sfnp|Blady|2000|p=126}}

=== Ashkenazi-Khazar theories ===
{{Main|Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi ancestry}}

Several scholars have suggested that instead of disappearing after the dissolution of their Empire, the Khazars migrated westward and eventually, they formed part of the core of the later [[Ashkenazi Jews|Ashkenazi Jewish]] population of Europe. This hypothesis is greeted with scepticism or caution by most scholars.{{efn|group=note|"Most scholars are skeptical of the hypothesis".{{sfn|Wexler|2002|p=536}} Wexler, who proposes a variation of the idea, argues that a combination of three reasons accounts for scholarly aversion to the concept: a desire not to get mixed up in controversy, ideological insecurities, and the incompetence of much earlier work in favor of that hypothesis.}}{{efn|group=note|"Methodologically, Wexler has opened up some new areas, taking elements of folk culture into account. I think that his conclusions have gone well beyond the evidence. Nonetheless, these are themes that should be pursued further." {{harv|Golden|2007a|p=56}}}}{{efn|group=note|"[[Arthur Koestler]]'s book ''[[The Thirteenth Tribe]]'' which claimed that the converted Khazars were the progenitors of today's [[Ashkenazi Jews]], has largely been rejected by serious scholars. However, the disputed theory that the stereotypical European Jew is descended from an [[Eastern Europe]]an nation of Jewish converts, has been sufficiently unwelcome as to render study of the Khazars an area of research largely off limits for Jewish as well as Russian archaeologists, the Russians being unhappy with the prospect that their empire was initially ruled by Jewish kings, and the Jews being unhappy with the prospect that the Ashkenazim might not have a genetic connection to the freed slaves who met with God at Sinai." {{harv|Mariner|1999|pp=95–96}}}}

The German Orientalist [[Karl Friedrich Neumann|Karl Neumann]], in the context of an earlier controversy about possible connections between the Khazars and the ancestors of the [[Slavs|Slavic peoples]], suggested as early as 1847 that emigrant Khazars might have influenced the core population of Eastern European Jews.{{efn|group=note|{{harvnb|Kizilov|2014|p=389}} citing [[Karl Friedrich Neumann|Karl Neumann]], [https://archive.org/details/dievlkerdessdli00neumgoog ''Die Völker des südlichen Russlands in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung,''] (1847) 2nd ed. Teubner 1855 pp. 125–126.}}

The theory was then taken up by [[Abraham Harkavy|Albert Harkavi]] in 1869, when he also claimed that a possible link existed between the Khazars and the Ashkenazim,{{efn|group=note|{{harvnb|Rossman|2002|p=98}}: Abraham Harkavy, ''O yazykye evreyev, zhivshikh v drevneye vremya na Rusi i o slavianskikh slovakh, vstrechaiuschikhsia u evreiskikh pisatelei,'' St. Petersburg.}} but the theory that Khazar converts formed a major proportion of the Ashkenazim was first proposed to the Western public in a lecture which was delivered by [[Ernest Renan]] in 1883.{{efn|group=note|{{harvnb|Barkun|1997|p=137}}: Ernest Renan, "Judaism as a Race and as Religion." Delivered on 27 January 1883.}}{{sfn|Rossman|2002|p=98}} Occasional suggestions that there was a small Khazar component in East European Jews emerged in works by [[Joseph Jacobs]] (1886), [[Henri Jean Baptiste Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu|Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu]], a critic of antisemitism (1893),<ref>{{harvnb|Singerman|2004|pp=3–4}}, ''Israël chez les nations'' (1893)</ref> [[Maksymilian Ernest Gumplowicz]],{{efn|group=note|The source is Maksymilian Ernest Gumplowicz, ''Początki religii żydowskiej w Polsce,'' Warsaw: E. Wende i S-ka, 1903 {{harv|Polonsky|Basista|Link-Lenczowski|1993|p=120}}}} and by the Russian-Jewish anthropologist [[Samuel Weissenberg]].{{efn|group=note|Goldstein writes "The theory that Eastern European Jews are descended from the Khazars was originally proposed by Samuel Weissenberg in an attempt to show that Jews were deeply rooted on Russian soil and the cradle of [[Jewish culture|Jewish civilization]] was the Caucasus".{{sfn|Goldstein|2006|p=131}} Weissenberg's book ''Die Südrussischen Juden'', was published in 1895.}} In 1909, [[Hugo von Kutschera]] developed the notion into a book-length study,{{sfn|Koestler|1977|pp=134, 150}}{{sfn|von Kutschera|1909}} arguing that the Khazars formed the foundational core of the modern Ashkenazim.{{sfn|Koestler|1977|pp=134, 150}} [[Maurice Fishberg]] introduced the notion to American audiences in 1911.{{sfn|Goldstein|2006|p=131}}{{sfn|Fishberg|1911}} The idea was also taken up by the Polish-Jewish economic historian and [[General Zionists|General Zionist]] [[Yitzhak Schipper]] in 1918.{{efn|group=note|Schipper's first monograph on this was published in the ''Almanach Žydowski'' (Vienna) in 1918. While in the [[Warsaw ghetto]] before falling victim to the Holocaust at [[Majdanek]], Schipper (1884–1943) was working on the Khazar hypothesis {{harv|Litman|1984|pp=85–110 [109]}}.}}{{sfn|Brook|2010|p=210}} [[Israel Bartal]] has suggested that from the [[Haskalah]] onwards, polemical pamphlets against the Khazars were inspired by [[Sephardi Jews|Sephardi]] organizations which opposed the Khazaro-Ashkenazim.{{sfn|Falk|2017|p=101, n.9}}

Scholarly anthropologists, such as [[Roland Burrage Dixon|Roland B. Dixon]] (1923), and writers such as [[H. G. Wells]] (1920) used it to argue that "The main part of Jewry never was in [[Judea]]",{{efn|group=note|"There were Arab tribes who were Jews in the time of Muhammad, and a Turkic people who were mainly Jews in South Russia in the ninth century. Judaism is indeed the reconstructed political ideal of many shattered peoples-mainly semitic. As a result of these coalescences and assimilations, almost everywhere in the towns throughout the [[Roman Empire]], and far beyond it in the east, Jewish communities traded and flourished, and they were kept in touch through the [[Bible]], and through a religious and educational organization. The main part of Jewry never was in Judea and it had never come out of Judea." {{harv|Wells|1920|p=570}}}}{{sfn|Singerman|2004|p=4}} a thesis that was to have a political echo in later opinion.{{efn|group=note|[[John Bagot Glubb]] held that Russian Jews "have considerably less Middle Eastern blood, consisting largely of pagan Slav proselytes or of Khazar Turks." For Glubb, they were not "descendants of the Judeans ...The Arabs of Palestine are probably more closely related to the Judeans (genetically) than are modern Russian or German Jews.... Of course, an anti-Zionist (as well as an anti-Semitic) point is being made here: The Palestinians have a greater political right to Palestine than the Jews do, as they, not the modern-day Jews, are the true descendants of the land's Jewish inhabitants/owners" {{harv|Morris|2003|p=22}}.}}{{sfn|Burrage Dixon|1923}}{{sfn|Wells|1920|p=?}}

In 1932, [[Samuel Krauss]] ventured the theory that the biblical Ashkenaz referred to northern [[Asia Minor]], and he identified it as the ancestral homeland of the Khazars, a position which was immediately disputed by Jacob Mann.{{sfn|Malkiel|2008|p=263, n.1}} Ten years later, in 1942, [[Abraham Polak|Abraham N. Polak]] (sometimes referred to as ''Poliak''), later professor for the history of the Middle Ages at [[Tel Aviv University]], published a Hebrew monograph in which he concluded that the East European Jews came from Khazaria.{{efn|group=note|First written as an article in 1941 – "The Khazars' Conversion to Judaism", then written as a monograph (1943), it was revised twice, first, it was revised in 1944, and in 1951, it was revised again and it was also retitled ''Kazariyah: Toldot mamlacha yehudit'' be'Eropa (Khazaria: History of a Jewish Kingdom in Europe) Mosad Bialik, Tel Aviv, 1951.}}{{efn|group=note|"Poliak sought the origins of Eastern European Jewry in Khazaria" {{harv|Golden|2007a|p=29}}.}}{{sfn|Sand|2010|p=234}} [[D.M. Dunlop]], writing in 1954, thought that very little evidence supported what he considered a mere assumption, and he also argued that the Ashkenazi-Khazar descent theory went far beyond what "our imperfect records" permit.{{sfn|Dunlop|1954|pp=261, 263}} In 1955, [[Léon Poliakov]], who assumed that the Jews of Western Europe resulted from a "panmixia" in the first millennium, asserted that it was widely assumed that Europe's Eastern Jews were descended from a mixture of Khazarian and German Jews.{{efn|group=note|"As for the Jews of Eastern Europe (Poles, Russians, etc.), it has always been assumed that they descended from an amalgamation of Jews of Khazar stock from southern Russia and German Jews (the latter having imposed their superior culture)." {{harv|Poliakov|2005|p=285}}}} Poliak's work found some support in [[Salo Wittmayer Baron]] and [[Ben-Zion Dinur]],{{efn|group=note|Sand{{sfn|Sand|2010|pp=241–242}} cites [[Salo Wittmayer Baron]], "before and after the Mongol upheaval the Khazars sent many offshoots into the unsubdued Slavonic lands, helping ultimately to build up the great Jewish center of Eastern Europe";{{sfn|Baron|1957|pp=196–206 [206]}} as well as [[Ben-Zion Dinur]]: "The Russian conquests did not destroy the Khazar kingdom entirely, but they broke it up and diminished it. And this kingdom, which had absorbed Jewish immigration and refugees from many exiles, must itself have become a diaspora mother, the mother of one of the greatest of the diasporas (''Em-galuyot, em akhat hagaluyot hagdolot'')-of Israel in Russia, Lithuania and Poland."{{sfn|Dinur|1961|pp=2, 5}}}}{{efn|group=note|"Salo Baron, who incorrectly viewed them as Finno-Ugrians, believed that the Khazars 'sent many offshoots into the unsubdued Slavonic lands, helping ultimately to build up the great Jewish centers of eastern Europe'" {{harv|Golden|2007a|p=55}}}} but was dismissed by Bernard Weinryb as a fiction (1962).{{efn|group=note|"dismissed&nbsp;... rather airily" {{harv|Golden|2007a|p=55}}.}} [[Bernard Lewis]] was of the opinion that the word in [[Cairo Geniza]] interpreted as Khazaria is actually [[Hakkari (historical region)|Hakkari]] and therefore it relates to the [[Kurds]] of the Hakkari mountains in southeast [[Turkey]].{{sfn|Brook|2006|p=192}}

The Khazar-Ashkenazi hypothesis came to the attention of a much wider public with the publication of [[Arthur Koestler]]'s ''[[The Thirteenth Tribe]]'' in 1976,{{sfn|Sand|2010|p=240}} which was both positively reviewed and dismissed as a fantasy, and a somewhat dangerous one. Israeli historian Zvi Ankori argued that Koestler had allowed his literary imagination to espouse Poliak's thesis, which most historians dismissed as speculative.{{sfn|Falk|2017|p=102}} Israel's ambassador to Britain branded it "an anti-Semitic action financed by the [[Palestinians]]", while [[Bernard Lewis]] claimed that the idea was not supported by any evidence whatsoever, and it had been abandoned by all serious scholars.{{sfn|Sand|2010|p=240}}{{efn|group=note|"Some limit this denial to European Jews and make use of the theory that the Jews of Europe are not of Israelite descent at all but are the offspring of a tribe of Central Asian Turks converted to Judaism, called the Khazars. This theory, first put forward by an Austrian anthropologist in the early years of this century, is supported by no evidence whatsoever. It has long since been abandoned by all serious scholars in the field, including those in Arab countries, where Khazar theory is little used except in occasional political polemics."{{sfn|Lewis|1987|p=48}} Assertions of this kind have been challenged by Paul Wexler{{sfn|Wexler|2002|p=538}} who also notes that the arguments on this issue are riven by contrasting ideological investments: "Most writers who have supported the Ashkenazi-Khazar hypothesis have not argued their claims in a convincing manner ... The opponents of the Khazar-Ashkenazi nexus are no less guilty of empty polemics and unconvincing arguments."{{sfn|Wexler|2002|p=537}}}} [[Raphael Patai]], however, registered some support for the idea that Khazar remnants had played a role in the growth of Eastern European Jewish communities,{{efn|group=note|"it is assumed by all historians that those Jewish Khazars who survived the last fateful decades sought and found refuge in the bosom of Jewish communities in the Christian countries to the west, and especially in Russia and Poland, on the one hand, and in the Muslim countries to the east and the south, on the other. Some historians and anthropologists go so far as to consider the modern Jews of East Europe, and more particularly of Poland, the descendants of the medieval Khazars." {{harv|Patai|Patai|1989|p=71}}}} and several amateur researchers, such as [[Boris Altschüler]] (1994),{{sfn|Golden|2007a|p=9}} kept the thesis in the public eye. The theory has been occasionally manipulated to deny Jewish nationhood.{{sfn|Sand|2010|p=240}}{{sfn|Toch|2012|p=155, n.4}} Recently, a variety of approaches, from linguistics ([[Paul Wexler (linguist)|Paul Wexler]]){{sfn|Wexler|2007|pp=387–398}} to historiography ([[Shlomo Sand]]){{sfn|Sand|2010|pp=190–249}} and [[population genetics]] ([[Eran Elhaik]], a geneticist from the [[University of Sheffield]]){{sfn|Elhaik|2012|pp=61–74}} have emerged to keep the theory alive.{{sfn|Spolsky|2014|pp=174–177}} In a broad academic perspective, both the idea that the Khazars converted ''en masse'' to Judaism and the suggestion they emigrated to form the core population of Ashkenazi Jewry, remain highly polemical issues.{{sfn|Golden|2007a|pp=9–10}} One thesis held that the Khazar Jewish population went into a northern diaspora and had a significant impact on the rise of [[Ashkenazi Jews]]. Connected to this thesis is the theory, expounded by Paul Wexler, dissenting from the majority of Yiddish linguists, that the grammar of [[Yiddish]] contains a Khazar substrate.{{sfn|Wexler|2002|pp=513–541}}

==== Use in antisemitic polemic ====
According to [[Michael Barkun]], while the Khazar hypothesis generally never played any major role in the development of [[Antisemitism|anti-Semitism]],{{sfn|Barkun|1997|pp=136–137}} it has exercised a noticeable influence on American antisemites since the [[Immigration Act of 1924|restrictions on immigration were imposed in the 1920s]].{{efn|group=note|"The Khazar theory never figured as a major component of antisemitism. The connection receives only scant attention in [[Léon Poliakov]]'s monumental history of the subject. It did however come to exercise a particular attraction for advocates of immigration restriction in America." {{harv|Barkun|1997|pp=136–137}}}}{{efn|group=note|"Although the Khazar theory gets surprisingly little attention in scholarly histories of anti-Semitism, it has been an influential theme among American anti-Semites since the immigration restrictionists of the 1920s" {{harv|Barkun|2012|p=165}}.}} Maurice Fishberg and Roland B. Dixon's works were later exploited in [[Racism|racist]] and religious polemical literature, particularly in literature which advocated [[British Israelism]], both in Britain and the United States.{{sfn|Goldstein|2006|p=131}}{{efn|group=note|"By the 1960s, when [[Christian identity]] was established as a force on the [[Radical right (United States)|extreme right]], the Khazar ancestry of the Jews was a firm article of faith. Two books, written in this milieu and widely read, came to exercise a strong influence in this regard. John Beaty's ''Iron Curtain over America'' (1951) and Wilmot Robertson's ''Dispossessed Majority'' (1972) repeated the Khazar thesis of Stoddard. Christian identity teachings readily seized on this negative reference to Russian Jewry, however, it backdated the history of intermarriage between Jews and Khazars to biblical times. In ''A Short History of Esau-Edom in Jewry'' (1948), the Vancouver-based writer C.F. Parker claimed that a tiny remnant of 'true Judah' was pitted against a large group of Idumean-Hittites who masqueraded as the true seed of Abraham and sought to expel the descendants of Jacob. These Esau-Hittites are the Ashkenazim, concentrated in Eastern and Central Europe and America." {{harv|Goodrick-Clarke|2003|p=237}}}} Particularly after the publication of [[Burton J. Hendrick]]'s ''The Jews in America'', (1923){{sfn|Singerman|2004|pp=4–5}} it began to enjoy a vogue among advocates of immigration restriction in the 1920s; racial theorists{{sfn|Goodrick-Clarke|2003|p=237}} such as [[Lothrop Stoddard]]; antisemitic conspiracy-theorists such as the [[Ku Klux Klan]]'s [[Hiram Wesley Evans]]; and some anti-communist polemicists such as [[John O. Beaty]]{{efn|group=note|Beaty was an antisemitic, [[McCarthyism|McCarthyite]] professor of Old English at [[Southern Methodist University|SMU]], author of ''The Iron Curtain over America'' (Dallas 1952). According to him, "the Khazar Jews ... were responsible for all of America's – and the world's ills, beginning with World War 1." The book "had little impact" until the former Wall Street broker and oil tycoon J. Russell Maguire promoted it ({{harvnb|Boller|1992|pp=2, 6–7}}; {{harvnb|Barkun|1997|pp=141–142}}).}} and [[Wilmot Robertson]], whose views influenced [[David Duke]].<ref>{{harvnb|Barkun|1997|pp=140–141}}. Cf. Wilmot Robertson ''Dispossessed Majority''(1972)</ref>
According to [[Yehoshafat Harkabi]] (1968) and others,{{efn|group=note|{{harvnb|Wexler|2002|p=514}} has a more detailed bibliography.}} it played a role in Arab [[Anti-Zionism|anti-Zionist]] polemics, and took on an antisemitic edge. [[Bernard Lewis]], noting in 1987 that Arab scholars had dropped it, remarked that it only occasionally emerged in Arab political discourse.{{efn|group=note|"Arab anti-Semitism might have been expected to be free from the idea of racial odium, since Jews and Arabs are both regarded by race theory as Semites, but the odium is directed, not against the Semitic race, but against the Jews as a historical group. The main idea is that the Jews, racially, are a mongrel community, most of them being not Semites, but of Khazar and European origin."{{sfn|Harkabi|1987|p=424}} This essay was translated from Harkabi Hebrew text "Arab Antisemitism" in Shmuel Ettinger, ''Continuity and Discontinuity in Antisemitism,'' (Hebrew) 1968 (p.50).}} It has also played some role in Soviet antisemitic [[chauvinism]]{{efn|group=note|"in the very late 1980s Russian nationalists were fixated on the 'Khazar episode.' For them the Khazar issue seemed to be a crucial one. They treated it as the first historically documented case of the imposition of a foreign yoke on the Slavs, ... In this context the term 'Khazars' became popular as a euphemism for the so-called 'Jewish occupation regime'." {{harv|Shnirelman|2007|pp=353–372}}}} and Slavic Eurasian historiography; particularly, in the works of scholars like [[Lev Gumilev]],{{sfn|Rossman|2007|pp=121–188}} it came to be exploited by the [[white supremacy|white supremacist]] [[Christian Identity|Christian Identity movement]]{{sfn|Barkun|1997|pp=142–144}} and even by terrorist esoteric cults like [[Aum Shinrikyo|Aum Shinrikyō]].{{sfn|Goodman|Miyazawa|2000|pp=263–264}} The Kazar hypothesis was further exploited by esoteric fascists such as [[Miguel Serrano]], referring to a lost ''[[Palestinabuch]]'' by the German Nazi-scholar [[Herman Wirth]], who claimed to have proven that the Jews descended from a prehistoric migrant group parasiting on the Great Civilizations.{{sfn|Serrano|2011|pp=79, 295}} The phrase "Khazar kaghanate" gained new traction in 2000s among antisemitic nationalists in Russia, such as [[Yan Petrovsky]].{{sfn|Meduza|2022}}

==== Genetic studies ====
{{See also|Ashkenazi Jews#Genetic origins|Genetic studies on Jews|Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi ancestry#Genetics and the Khazar theory}}

The hypothesis of Khazarian ancestry in Ashkenazi has also been a subject of vehement disagreements in the field of [[population genetics]],{{efn|group=note|"The Khazar king and part of his court allegedly adopted the Jewish religion ... The truth of such a conversion and its extent has been the topic of many discussions, and the topic of vehement disagreements in our age of genomic DNA analyses." {{harv|Falk|2017|p=100}}}} wherein claims have been made concerning evidence both for and against it. Eran Elhaik argued in 2012 for a significant Khazar component in the admixture of Ashkenazi Jews using Caucasian populations—Georgians, Armenians and [[Azerbaijani Jews]]—as proxies.{{efn|group=note|"Strong evidence for the Khazarian hypothesis is the clustering of European Jews with the populations that reside on opposite ends of ancient Khazaria: Armenians, Georgians, and Azerbaijani Jews" {{harv|Elhaik|2012|pp=61–74}}.}} The evidence from historians he used has been criticised by [[Shaul Stampfer]]{{sfn|Stampfer|2013}} and the technical response to such a position from geneticists is mostly dismissive, arguing that, if traces of descent from Khazars exist in the Ashkenazi gene pool, the contribution would be quite minor,{{sfn|Ostrer|2012|pp=24–27, 93–95, 124–125}}{{sfn|Nebel|Filon|Brinkmann|2001|pp=1095–1112}}{{sfn|Behar|Thomas|Skorecki|Hammer|2003|pp=769–779}}{{sfn|Nebel|Filon|Faerman|2005|pp=388–391}}{{efn|group=note|"During Greco-Roman times, recorded mass conversions led to 6&nbsp;million people practicing Judaism in Roman times or up to 10% of the population of the Roman Empire. Thus, the genetic proximity of these European/Syrian Jewish populations, including Ashkenazi Jews, to each other and to French, Northern Italian, and Sardinian populations favors the idea of non-Semitic Mediterranean ancestry in the formation of the European/Syrian Jewish groups and is incompatible with theories that Ashkenazi Jews are for the most part the direct lineal descendants of converted Khazars or Slavs. The genetic proximity of Ashkenazi Jews to southern European populations has been observed in several other recent studies.. Admixture with local populations, including Khazars and Slavs, may have occurred subsequently during the 1000 year (2nd millennium) history of the European Jews. Based on analysis of Y chromosomal polymorphisms, Hammer estimated that the rate might have been as high as 0.5% per generation or 12.5% cumulatively (a figure derived from Motulsky), although this calculation might have underestimated the influx of European Y chromosomes during the initial formation of European Jewry.15 Notably, up to 50% of Ashkenazi Jewish Y chromosomal haplogroups (E3b, G, J1, and Q) are of Middle Eastern origin, 15 whereas the other prevalent haplogroups (J2, R1a1, R1b) may be representative of the early European admixture.20 The 7.5% prevalence of the R1a1 haplogroup among Ashkenazi Jews has been interpreted as a possible marker for Slavic or Khazar admixture because this haplogroup is very common among Ukrainians (where it was thought to have originated), Russians, and Sorbs, as well as among Central Asian populations, although the admixture may have occurred with Ukrainians, Poles, or Russians, rather than Khazars." {{harv|Atzmon|Ostrer|2010|pp=850–859}}}} or insignificant.{{sfn|Costa|Pereira|Richards|2013|pp=1–10}}{{sfn|Behar|Metspalu|Baran|Kopelman|2013}} One geneticist, [[Raphael Falk (geneticist)|Raphael Falk]], has argued that "national and ethnic prejudices play a central role in the controversy."{{efn|group=note|"The extent to which the Khazars contributed to the Jewish gene-pool, and more specifically to the Ashkenazi ethnic-group(s), has become a charged issue among expert scientists as well as nonprofessionals. National and ethnic prejudices play a central role in the controversy." {{harv|Falk|2017|p=100}}}}
According to [[Nadia Abu El-Haj]], the issues of origins are generally complicated by the difficulties of writing history via genome studies and the biases of emotional investments in different narratives, depending on whether the emphasis lies on direct descent or on conversion within Jewish history. At the time of her writing, the lack of Khazar DNA samples that might allow verification also presented difficulties.{{efn|group=note|"if the genome does not prove Sand wrong, neither can it prove him right. It is the wrong kind of evidence and the wrong style of reasoning for the task at hand."{{sfn|Abu El-Haj|2012|p=28}} "They (researchers) will never be able to prove descent from Khazars: there are no 'verification' samples."{{sfn|Abu El-Haj|2012|p=133}}}}