View source for Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi ancestry

The '''Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi ancestry''', often called the "'''Khazar myth'''" by its critics,<ref name ="Papers">{{cite book |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=yO-vCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA444&lpg=PA444&dq=The+Khazars+and+Intellectual+Antisemitism+in+Russia&source=bl&ots=V9JSFaKdPO&sig=oOWWhhX4EsJ-C5eeoQ2KwodVm7A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi7xKj63tzMAhXCcz4KHcIpDrgQ6AEIQzAJ#v=onepage&q=Myth&f=false| title = The World of the Khazars: New Perspectives. Selected Papers from the Jerusalem 1999 International Khazar Colloquium |editor= Peter Golden |editor2=Haggai Ben-Shammai |editor3=András Roná-Tas | publisher = BRILL | year = 2007}}</ref>{{rp| 369}}<ref name ="Zhivkov">{{cite book |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=7Du2CAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Khazaria+in+the+Ninth+and+Tenth+Centuries&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiJm9zT0trMAhWGVh4KHRkeDnEQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=myth&f=false | title = Khazaria in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries | author= Boris Zhivkov| publisher = BRILL | year = 2015}}</ref>{{rp| VIII}}<ref>{{cite news|title=Terra Incognita: The return of the Khazar myth|url=http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Terra-Incognita-The-return-of-the-Khazar-myth|accessdate=2 May 2016|work=The Jerusalem Post {{!}} JPost.com}}</ref><ref name="Entine">{{cite news|last1=Entine|first1=Jon|title=Israeli Researcher Challenges Jewish DNA links to Israel, Calls Those Who Disagree 'Nazi Sympathizers'|url=http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonentine/2013/05/16/israeli-researcher-challenges-jewish-dna-links-to-israel-calls-those-who-disagree-nazi-sympathizers/#7762a8abdb23|accessdate=2 May 2016|work=Forbes}}</ref> is the hypothesis that [[Ashkenazi Jews]] are descended from the [[Khazars]], a multi-ethnic conglomerate of [[Turkic peoples]] who formed a semi-nomadic [[Khanate]] in the area extending from [[Eastern Europe]] to [[Central Asia]]. The hypothesis draws on some [[Middle Ages|medieval]] sources such as the [[Khazar Correspondence]], according to which at some point in the 8th–9th centuries, the ruling elite of the Khazars was said by [[Judah Halevi]] and [[Abraham ibn Daud]] to have converted to [[Rabbinic Judaism]].<ref>{{harvnb|Golden|2007a|p=149}}</ref> The scope of the [[Conversion to Judaism|conversion]] within the [[Khazar Khanate]] remains uncertain: the evidence used to tie the Ashkenazi communities to the Khazars is exiguous and subject to conflicting interpretations.<ref name=Aderet /><ref name = "WayneState2013"/>

This hypothesis has had a complex history within academia. While most contemporary scholars dismiss it, the hypothesis has often been argued in the past, and still finds occasional defenders of its plausibility. In the late 19th century, [[Ernest Renan]] and other scholars speculated that the Ashkenazi Jews of Europe [[ethnogenesis|originated]] among Turkic refugees who had migrated from the collapsed Khazarian Khanate westward into Europe, and [[language shift|exchanged]] their native [[Khazar language]] for [[Yiddish]] while continuing to practice [[Judaism]]. Though intermittently evoked by several scholars since that time, 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.<ref name="Sand 2010 240">{{harvnb|Sand|2010|p=240.}}</ref> It has been revived recently by [[Eran Elhaik]], who in 2012 conducted a study aiming to vindicate it.<ref name=rubin />  Despite skepticism, he reformulated the concept in 2016 by developing a novel method of genetic analysis that uses the fringe [[linguistics|linguistic theories]] of the Yiddish expert [[Paul Wexler (linguist)|Paul Wexler]].<ref>Batya Ungar-Sargon [http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/176580/yiddishland 'The Mystery of the Origins of Yiddish Will Never Be Solved,'] [[Tablet (magazine)|Tablet]] 23 June 2014</ref>

[[Genetic studies on Jews]] have found no substantive evidence of a Khazar origin among Ashkenazi Jews, as opposed to evidence they have mixed [[Near East]]ern/Mediterranean and Southern European origins.<ref>{{cite journal | pmc = 3032072 | pmid=20560205 | volume=86 | title=Abraham's children in the genome era: major Jewish diaspora populations comprise distinct genetic clusters with shared Middle Eastern Ancestry | date=June 2010 | journal=Am. J. Hum. Genet. | pages=850–9 | last1 = Atzmon | first1 = G | last2 = Hao | first2 = L | last3 = Pe'er | first3 = I | display-authors = 3 | last4 = et al | doi=10.1016/j.ajhg.2010.04.015}}</ref>

The hypothesis has been used at times by [[anti-Zionism|anti-Zionists]] to challenge the idea Jews have ancestral ties to ancient Israel, and has also played a role in [[antisemitism|antisemitic]] attitudes.

==History==

===1806–1918===
Some sources attribute to the Ukrainian Rabbi [[Isaac Baer Levinsohn]] (1788–1860) the first reference to a connection between the Ashkenazi Jews and the Khazars.<ref>[[Lawrence J. Epstein]], [https://books.google.com/books?id=veJdBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA72 ''Converts to Judaism: Stories from Biblical Times to Today,''] Rowman & Littlefield, 2015 p.72</ref> Levinsohn also recorded that the tradition of their forefathers was that Ashkenazi Jews had earlier spoken Russian before acquiring [[Yiddish]].<ref>Bernard Spolsky, [https://books.google.com/books?id=5Xk9AwAAQBAJ&pg=PA297  ''The Languages of the Jews;A Sociolinguistic History,''] Cambridge University Press 2014 p.297 n.3.</ref><ref name="books.google.it">[[Shlomo Sand]], [https://books.google.com/books?id=pgsP0DFkmp0C&pg=PA243  ''The Invention of the Jewish People,''] Verso p.243.</ref> The hypothesis was advanced in 1808 by [[Gustav von Ewers|Johann Ewers]],<ref>''Vom Ursprung des Russischen Staats, ''. 1808</ref> in the context of an early controversy over the foundations of the Russian state, which pitted scholars espousing a Norman origin for the [[Varangians]] against those who argued that these founders of the [[Kievan Rus']] were Slavic and indigenous. Ewers proposed the idea that the Viking/Varangian founders were in fact Khazars.<ref>Alexander Vucinich, [https://books.google.com/books?id=czysAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA213 ''Science in Russian Culture: A History to 1860,]'' Stanford University Press, vol.1 1963 p.213.</ref><ref>Birgit Scholz, [https://books.google.com/books?id=QPUrwrAABvEC&pg=PA14 ''Von der Chronistik zur modernen Geschichtswissenschaft: die Warägerfrage in der russischen, deutschen und schwedischen Historiographie,''] Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 2000 pp.13-14.</ref><ref>Vilhelm Thomsen|Vilhelm Ludvig Peter Thomsen, [https://books.google.com/books?id=Z6CMcqGmzuYC&pg=PA16 ''The Relations Between Ancient Russia and Scandinavia, and the Origin of the Russian State: Three Lectures Delivered at the Taylor Institution. Oxford, in May, 1876,''] Cambridge University Press, reprint 2010 p.16.</ref> The Russian historian  [[Nikolay Karamzin]] advanced the claim, asserting that considerable numbers of Khazars had left Khazaria for Kievan Rus' in the time of [[Vladimir the Great|Vladimir 1]] (980–1015).<ref name = "Straten">Jits van Straten, [https://books.google.com/books?id=2Sy4ZuWw8TgC&pg=PA2 ''The Origin of  Ashkenazi Jewry:The Controversy Unravelled,''] Walter de Gruyter 2011 pp.2-3.</ref> The German Orientalist [[Karl Friedrich Neumann|Karl Neumann]] suggested as early as 1847 that the migration of Khazars might have contributed to the formation of the core population of the Jews of Eastern Europe, without however specifying whether he was referring to Judaizing Turks or ethnic Jewish residents of Khazaria.<ref>Mikhail Kizilov, [https://books.google.com/books?id=36t_CwAAQBAJ&pg=PA388 'National Inventions:The Imperial Emancipation of the Karaites from Jewishness,'] in Roland Cvetkovski, Alexis Hofmeister (eds.),''An Empire of Others: Creating Ethnographic Knowledge in Imperial Russia and the USSR,'' Central European University Press, 2014 pp.369-393 p.399, 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.125-6:'Die Chasaren verschwinden nun als gebietende Horde aus der Geschichte, aber ihr Name hat sich, wie bekannt, in den Ländern und an den Meeren, wo sie ehemals herrschten, noch Jahrhunderte lang und zum Theil bis auf den heutigen Tag erhalten. Auch ist ja die Masse des Volkes von dem Jaik bis zur Donau immerdar dieselbe geblieben; es haben die Chasaren nur die Herrschaft verloren, welche auf andere Türken überging, auf Petschenegen, Usen und Komanen. Reste dieses Volkes, namentlich der zum Mosaismus sich bekennenden Abtheilung, sind die Karaim im südlichen Russland und den ehemaligen polnischen Ländern, welche türkisch sprechen  undauch in Körpergestalt und Gesichtszügen den Türken gleichen. Von der Krim aus mögen auch zuerst die Juden, welche, wie wir wissen, so zahlreich waren im Reiche der Chasaren, nach Russland und Polen gewandert sein.'</ref>

Subsequently, [[Abraham Harkavy|Abraham Eliyahu Harkavi]] suggested in 1869 that there might be a link between the Khazars and European Jews.<ref>{{harvnb|Rossman|2002|p=98}}: Abraham Harkavy, ''O iazike evreev, zhivshikh v drevnee vremia na Rusi i o slavianskikh slovakh, vstrechaiuschikhsia u evreiskikh pisatelei,'' St. Petersburg.</ref> Three years later, however, in 1872, a [[Crimean Karaite]], [[Abraham Firkovich]], alternatively proclaimed that the members of his Turkic-speaking sect were descended from Turkic converts to Judaism.<ref>{{harvnb|Nathans|1999|p=409}}.</ref> This hypothesis, that the descendents of Khazar converts to Judaism formed a major proportion of [[Ashkenazi Jews|Ashkenazim]], was first proposed to a Western public by [[Ernest Renan]] in 1883.<ref>{{harvnb|Barkun|1997|p=137}}: Ernest Renan, "Judaism as a Race and as Religion." Delivered on the January 27, 1883.</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Rossman|2002|p=98}}.</ref> In a lecture delivered in Paris before the [[Saint-Simon Foundation|''Cercle du Saint-Simon'']] on 27 January 1883, Renan argued that conversion played a significant role in the formation of the Jewish people, stating that:
<blockquote>This conversion of the kingdom of the Khazars has a considerable importance regarding the origin of those Jews who dwell in the countries along the Danube and southern Russia. These regions enclose great masses of Jewish populations which have in all probability nothing or almost nothing that is anthropologically Jewish in them.<ref>{{harvnb|Renan|1883}}:Cette conversion du royaume des Khozars a une importance considérable dans la question de l’origine des juifs qui habitent les pays danubiens et le midi de la Russie. Ces régions renferment de grandes masses de populations juives qui n’ont probablement rien ou presque rien d’ethnographiquement juif.'</ref></blockquote>

Renan's thesis found an echo soon after, in 1885, when [[Isidore Loeb]], a rabbi, historian and secretary of the [[Alliance Israélite Universelle]], in arguing for the cause of [[Jewish emancipation]], challenged the notion that nations were based on races, and the Jews therefore could be excluded as alien. To the contrary, he argued, they were no different from other  peoples and nations, all of which arose from miscegenation: the Jews were no exception, and one could assume, he added, that many German and Russian Jews descended from the Khazars.<ref>[[Isidore Loeb]] ‘Reflections on the Jews,’  in Mitchell Bryan Hart (ed.) [https://books.google.com/books?id=556jcvWbwrcC&pg=PA17 ''Jews and Race: Writings on Identity and Difference, 1880-1940,''] UPNE, 2011 pp.12-20  p.17. Cf. Isidore Loeb, ''Réflexions sur les Juifs,' [[Revue des Études Juives]], 27 (1893) pp.1-31). This was published posthumously.</ref>

Occasional suggestions emerged that there was a small Khazar component in East European Jews in works by [[Joseph Jacobs]] (1886), [[Henri Jean Baptiste Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu|Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu]] (1893),<ref>{{harvnb|Singerman|2004|pp=3–4}}, ''Israël chez les nations'' (1893):Eng.''Israel Among the Nations'' (1895).</ref> Maksymilian Ernest Gumplowicz,<ref>{{harvnb|Polonsky|Basista|Link-Lenczowski|1993|p=120}}. In the book ''Początki religii żydowskiej w Polsce,'' Warsaw: E. Wende i S-ka, 1903.</ref> and by the Russian-Jewish anthropologist Samuel Weissenberg.<ref>{{harvnb|Goldstein|2006|p=131}}.Goldstein writes: ‘The theory that Eastern European Jews descended from the Khazars was originally proposed by . .Samuel Weissenberg in an attempt to show that Jews were deeply rooted on Russian soil and that the cradle of Jewish civilization was the Caucasus’. Weissenberg’s book ''Die Südrussischen Juden'', was published in 1895.</ref>

Leroy-Beaulieu, a critic of anti-Semitism who perhaps drew on Renan, queried whether or not thousands of [[Polish Jews|Polish]] and [[Russian Jews]] might have their origins traced back to the "old nomads of the steppes."<ref>{{harvnb|Singerman|1998|p=347}}</ref>

In 1909 Hugo von Kutschera developed the notion into a book-length study,<ref>{{harvnb|Koestler|1976|pp=134,150}}. ''Die Chasaren; historische Studie,'' A. Holzhauen,Vienna 1909.2nd ed., 1910.</ref> arguing that Khazars formed the foundational core of the modern Ashkenazi.<ref>{{harvnb|Koestler|1976|pp=134,150}}.</ref> [[Maurice Fishberg]] introduced the notion to an [[United States|American]] audience in 1911 in his book, ''The Jews: A Study of Race and Environment''.<ref>{{harvnb|Goldstein|2006|p=131}}. Maurice Fishberg, ''The Jews: A Study of Race and Environment.''</ref>

When at the [[Versailles Peace Conference]], a Jewish [[Zionist]] called [[Palestine (region)|Palestine]] the land of the Jewish people's ancestors, [[Joseph Reinach]], a [[French Jews|French Jewish]] [[member of parliament]] who was opposed to Zionism, dismissed the idea, arguing that Jews descended from Israelites were a tiny minority. In his view, conversion had played a major role in the expansion of the Jewish people, and, in addition, he claimed, the majority of "Russian, Polish and [[Galician Jews]] descend from the Khazars, a Tatar people from the south of Russia who converted to Judaism in mass at the time of [[Charlemagne]]."<ref>John Quigley, [https://books.google.com/books?id=GX8jX9dJXIAC&pg=PA71 ''Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice,''] Duke University Press, 1990 p.71</ref>

===Interwar years, 1918–1939===
The idea was also taken up by the Polish-Jewish economic historian and [[General Zionists|General Zionist]] Yitzhak Schipper in 1918,<ref>{{harvnb|Litman|1984|pp=85–110,109}}. 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.</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Brook|2009|p=210}}.</ref> by scholarly anthropologists, such as [[Roland Burrage Dixon|Roland B. Dixon]] (1923), and by writers like [[H. G. Wells]] (1921) who used it to argue that "The main part of Jewry never was in Judea",<ref>{{harvnb|Wells|2004|p=2}}:"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 were kept in touch through the Bible, and through a religious and educational organization. The main part of Jewry never was in Judea and had never come out of Judea."</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Singerman|2004|p=4}}.</ref> a thesis that was to have a political echo in later opinion.<ref>{{harvnb|Morris|2003|p=22}}: [[John Bagot Glubb|Pasha 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'.</ref><ref>Roland Burrage Dixon ''The Racial History of Man,'' 1923; [[H. G. Wells]], [[The Outline of History]] (1921)</ref> In 1931 [[Sigmund Freud]] wrote to [[Max Eitingon]] that the sculptor [[Oscar Nemon]], for whom he was sitting, showed the lineaments of a "Slavic Eastern Jew, Khazar or [[Kalmuck]] or something like that".<ref>{{harvnb|Gilman|1995|p=30|}}.</ref>

In 1932, [[Samuel Krauss]] ventured the theory that the biblical [[Ashkenazi Jews|Ashkenaz]] referred to northern [[Asia Minor]], and he identified it with the Khazars, a position immediately disputed by Jacob Mann.<ref>{{harvnb|Malkiel|2008|p=263,n.1}}.</ref>

This interwar period consolidated also a belief, originally developed by the Russian Orientalists V.V. Grigor’iev and V.D. Smirnov, that the East European congregations of the [[Karaite Judaism|Karaite sect]] of Judaism were descendants of Turkic Khazars.<ref>Mikhail Kizilov, [https://books.google.com/books?id=i6SlCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA450 ''The Sons of Scripture: The Karaites in Poland and Lithuania in the Twentieth Century,''] Walter de Gruyter 2015 pp.109ff., p.450.</ref> The idea of a Khazarian origin of the Karaites was then adopted as their official viewpoint.<ref>Barry Dov Walfish  (ed.), [https://books.google.com/books?id=7M0_Ba0lDjwC&pg=PA146  ''Библиография Караитика: Аннотированная Библиография Караимов И Караимизма,''] BRILL, 2011 p.146.</ref> [[Seraya Shapshal|Seraja Szapszal]] (1873–1961), from 1927, the [[Hakham|ḥakham]] of the Polish-Lithuanian Karaite community had begun to implement a thorough-going reform policy of dejudaizing Karaite culture and traditions and transforming along Turkic lines. As a secular Jew and orientalist he was influenced by [[Mustafa Kemal Atatürk|Atatürk's reforms]], and his policy was dictated by several considerations: Jews were suffering from harassment in public and private in Eastern Europe; he wished to forestall the threat he had intuited was imminent in both Fascism and Nazism, which were beginning to gain a foothold; he was passionate about the Karaites' language, [[Karaim language|Karaim]], and its Turkish tradition, and somewhat insouciant of the Judaic heritage of his people.  In 1934 [[Corrado Gini]], a distinguished  statistician, interested also in demography and anthropology, with close ties to the fascist elite, led an expedition in August–October 1934 to survey the  [[Karaite Judaism|Karaites]]. He concluded that Karaites were  ethnically mixed, predominantly [[Chuvash people|Chuvash]] which he mistook to be [[Finno-Ugric]] descendants of the [[Cimmerians|Tauro-Cimmerians]] who at one point had been absorbed into the Khazars who for Gini however were not Turkic. A further conclusion was that the Ashkenazi arose from ‘Turko-Tatar converts to Judaism.’<ref name ="Kizilov">Mikhail Kizilov,  [https://books.google.com/books?id=hGILHIgEl7cC&pg=PA281&lpg=PA281 ''The Karaites of Galicia: An Ethnoreligious Minority Among the Ashkenazim, the Turks, and the Slavs, 1772-1945,''] BRILL, 2009 pp.266,269-271,277ff.282, 335.</ref><ref>Riccardo Calimani, [https://books.google.com/books?id=kMb_CAAAQBAJ&pg=PT583  ''Storia degli ebrei italiani,''] vol.3, Mondadori 2015 p.583.</ref> Though the Khazar-Karaite theory is unsubstantiated by any historical evidence, - the early Karaite literature speaks of Khazars as [[mamzer]]im, 'bastards' or 'strangers' within Judaism - this  myth served a political purpose, of taking that community out of the stranglehold of anti-Semitic regulations and prejudices directed generally against Jews in Eastern Europe.<ref name="Kizilov" />

===1939–1945===
In 1943, [[Abraham Polak|Abraham N. Polak]] (sometimes referred to as ''Poliak''), later professor of the history of the Middle Ages at [[Tel Aviv University]], published a [[Hebrew language|Hebrew]] [[monograph]] in which he concluded that the East European Jews came from Khazaria.<ref>{{harvnb|Golden|2007a|p=29}}. 'Poliak sought the origins of Eastern European Jewry in Khazaria'.</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Sand |2010|p=234}}.</ref><ref>First written as an article in 1941, then as a monograph (1943), it was twice revised in 1944, and 1951 as ''Kazariyah: Toldot mamlacha yehudit be'Eropa'' (Khazaria: History of a Jewish Kingdom in Europe) Mosad Bialik, Tel Aviv, 1951.</ref>

In Nazi Germany, unlike most race theorists in Germany down to his time [[Hans F. K. Günther]] argued that the Jews were not a pure race, although he nevertheless considered them to be highly inbred.  He argued that the Ashkenazi were a mix of Near Eastern, Oriental, East Baltic, Eastern, Inner-Asian, Nordic, Hamite, and Negro peoples and separate from the Sephardim. Günther believed that the conversion of the Khazars, whom he took to have been a Near Eastern race  constituted a further external element in the  racial makeup of the Ashkenazi Jews, strengthening its Near Eastern component.<ref name ="Steinweis">{{cite book | title = Studying the Jew: Scholarly Antisemitism in Nazi Germany | author = Alan E. Steinweis | publisher = Harvard University Press| year = 2006|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yMlcJ7QkM_QC&pg=PA32}}</ref>{{rp| 32–33}} Günther’s theorizing about racial consequences flowing from the conversion of the Khazars was embraced by [[Gerhard Kittel]].<ref name ="Steinweis"/>{{ rp| 175 }}

The Karaite claim to not be ethnic Jews, but descendants of the Khazars, was eventually accepted by the Nazis who exempted them, unlike the Crimean [[Krymchak]]s with whom they had historic ties, from the policy of genocidal extermination on these grounds.<ref>Steven Bayme [https://books.google.com/books?id=56QJ9O7MFJ4C&pg=PA148 ''Understanding Jewish History: Texts and Commentaries,''] KTAV Publishers 1997 p.148.</ref><ref>[[Raul Hilberg]], ''[[The Destruction of the European Jews]],'' (1961) New Viewpoints 1973 p.241.</ref>

===1946–1949===
In debates leading up to the [[United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine|UN plan in 1947 to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states]], the British politicians [[John Hope Simpson]] and [[Edward Spears]], intent on denying Zionism that part of its claim that drew on biblical arguments, asserted that Jewish immigrants to [[Mandatory Palestine]] were the descendants of pagan converts and not of the Israelites. The approach was one shared by both gentile and Jewish anti-Zionists.Rory Miller claims that their denial of a lineal descent from Israelites drew on the Khazar theory.<ref name ="Miller">{{cite book | title = Divided Against Zion: Anti-Zionist Opposition to the Creation of a Jewish State in Palestine, 1945-1948 |author = Rory Miller| publisher = Routledge| year = 2013}}</ref>{{rp| 128}}

In anti-Zionist argumentation delivered at the UN during 1947 [[Faris al-Khoury]] and [[Jamal Al-Husseini]] used the theory to oppose the creation of a Jewish state on racial and historic grounds. [[Albert Hourani|Cecil Hourani]] claimed that the Arab leaders had been convinced of the value of the argument by [[Benjamin H. Freedman]]. Internal British documents seem to support the claim.<ref name ="Miller"/>{{rp| 129}} It would later play a role in [[Arab]] [[Anti-Zionism|anti-Zionist]] polemics, taking on an antisemitic edge,<ref>{{harvnb|Harkabi|1987|p=424}}:"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." This essay was translated from Harkabi Hebrew text 'Arab Antisemitism' in Shmuel Ettinger, ''Continuity and Discontinuity in Antisemitism,'' (Hebrew) 1968 (p.50).</ref> though Bernard Lewis, noted in 1987 that serious Arab scholars had dropped it, remarked that it only occasionally emerged in Arab political polemics.<ref name ="Lewis">{{cite book |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=zjkiAwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Semites+and+Anti-Semites:+An+Inquiry+into+Conflict+and+Prejudice&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwihpsykvO_MAhUGWh4KHTvFDnMQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=khazars&f=false | title = Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry Into Conflict and Prejudice | author= Bernard Lewis | publisher = W. W. Norton & Company| year = 1999}}</ref>{{rp| 48}}

===1950–1976===
[[D.M. Dunlop]], writing in 1954, thought very little evidence backed what he regarded as a mere assumption, and argued that the Ashkenazi-Khazar descent hypothesis went far beyond what "our imperfect records" permit.<ref>{{harvnb|Dunlop|1954|pp=261,263}}:'.'</ref>

[[Léon Poliakov]], while assuming the Jews of Western Europe resulted from a "panmixia" in the first millennium, asserted in 1955 that it was widely assumed that Europe's Eastern Jews descended from a mixture of Khazarian and [[German Jews]].<ref>{{harvnb|Poliakov|2005|p=285}}:'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).'</ref> [[Abraham Polak|Polak]]'s work found some support from [[Salo Wittmayer Baron]] and [[Ben-Zion Dinur]],<ref>{{harvnb|Sand|2010|pp=241–2}}. Sand cites [[Salo Wittmayer Baron]],{{harvnb|Baron|1957|pp=196–206, p.206}}:'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'; and [[Ben-Zion Dinur]], ''Yisrael ba-gola'' 5 vols., 3rd ed. (1961-1966)Tel-Aviv: Jerusalem:Dvir;Bialik Institute, 1961. (OCLC:492532282) vol.1 p.2,5:'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.'</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Golden|2007a|p=55}}:’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’</ref> but was dismissed by Bernard Weinryb as a fiction (1962).<ref>{{harvnb|Golden|2007a|p=55}}:’dismissed. . .rather airily’.</ref>

In 1957 [[Salo Wittmayer Baron]], called by his biographer an "architect of Jewish history",<ref>{{harvnb|Liberles|1995}}.</ref> devoted a large part of a chapter in his ''Social and Religious History of the Jews'' to the Khazarian Jewish state, and the impact he believed that community exercised on the formation of East European Jewries in his ''Social and Religious History of the Jews'' (1957).<ref>{{harvnb|Baron|1957|pp=196–222}}.</ref> The scarcity of direct Jewish testimonies did not disconcert Baron: this was to be expected since medieval Jews were "generally inarticulate outside their main centers of learning".<ref>{{harvnb|Baron|1957|p=196}}.</ref> The Khazarian turn to Judaism was, he judged, the "largest and last mass conversion", involving both the royal house and large sectors of the population. Jews migrated there to flee the recurrent intolerance against Jews and the geopolitical upheavals of the region's chronic wars, which often proved devastating to northern [[Asia Minor]], between [[Byzantine Empire|Byzantium]], [[Sasanian Empire|Sassanid Persia]], and the [[Abbasid Caliphate|Abbasid]] and [[Ummayad Caliphate]]s.<ref>{{harvnb|Baron|1957|p=197}}.</ref>

For Baron, the fact of Jewish Khazaria played a lively role in stirring up among Western Jews an image of "[[red Jews]]", and among Jews in [[Islamic countries]] a beacon of hope. After the dissolution of Khazaria, Baron sees a diaspora drifting both north into Russia, Poland and the [[Ukraine]], and westwards into [[Pannonia]] and the [[Balkans]].<ref>{{harvnb|Baron|1957|pp=206–207}}</ref> where their cultivated presence both established Jewish communities and paved the way, ironically, for the Slavonic conversion to [[Christianity]].<ref>{{harvnb|Baron|1957|pp=208–210,221}}.</ref> By the 11th and 12th centuries, these Eastern Jews make their first appearance in the Jewish literature of France and Germany. [[Maimonides]], bemoaning the neglect of learning in the East, laid his hopes for the perpetuation of Jewish learning in the young struggling communities of Europe but would, Baron concludes, have been surprised to find that within centuries precisely in Eastern Europe would arise thriving communities that were to assume leadership of the Jewish people itself.<ref>{{harvnb|Bacon|1957|pp=173,222}}</ref>

===Koestler, ''The Thirteenth Tribe'' and contemporary views===
The Khazar-Ashkenazi hypothesis came to the attention of a much wider public with the publication of [[Arthur Koestler]]'s ''[[The Thirteenth Tribe]]'', which made sweeping claims for a Khazar legacy among the Ashkenazi in 1976.<ref name="Sand 2010 240"/><ref name="harvnb|Golden|2007a|p=9">{{harvnb|Golden|2007a|p=9}}</ref> Koestler's work was both positively and negatively reviewed. Israel’s ambassador to Britain branded the book "an anti-Semitic action financed by the Palestinians", while [[Bernard Lewis]] claimed that the idea was not supported by any evidence whatsoever, and had been "abandoned by all serious scholars".<ref name="Sand 2010 240"/><ref>{{harvnb|Lewis|1987|p=48}}:'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.' Assertions of this kind has been challenged by Paul Wexler{{harvnb|Wexler|2002|pp=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."(p.537).</ref> [[Raphael Patai]], however, registered some support for the idea that Khazar remnants had played a role in the growth of Eastern European Jewish communities,<ref>{{harvnb|Patai|Patai|1989|p=71}}: "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."</ref> and several amateur researchers, such as Boris Altschüler (1994)<ref name="harvnb|Golden|2007a|p=9"/> and Kevin Alan Brook,<ref>{{harvnb|Brook|2009}}</ref> kept the thesis in the public eye. Koestler argued that this theory would mitigate European racially-based antisemitism.<ref name ="Scammell">{{cite book |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=bO7ANkFkH0UC&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+Literary+and+Political+Odyssey+of+a+Twentieth-Century+Skeptic&hl=en&sa=X&ei=1uxPVbmgHpKYyATKhYDIBA&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA#v=snippet&q=Khazars%20&f=false | title = Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic| author= Michael Scammell | publisher = Random House Publishing Group | year = 2009| page = 546}}: "Every prayer and ritual observance proclaims membership of an ancient race, which automatically separates the Jew from the racial and historic past of the people in whose midst he lives. It sets the Jew apart and invites his being set apart. It automatically creates physical and cultural ghettoes."</ref>

The theory has been used to counter the concept of Jewish nationhood.<ref name="Sand 2010 240" /><ref>{{harvnb|Toch|2012|p=155,n.4}}.</ref> It has been revived recently in a variety of approaches, from linguistics ([[Paul Wexler (linguist)|Paul Wexler]])<ref>{{harvnb|Wexler|2007|pp=387–398}}.</ref> to historiography ([[Shlomo Sand]])<ref>{{harvnb|Sand|2010|pp=190–249}}.</ref> and [[population genetics]] (Eran Elhaik).<ref name="Elhaik 2012 61–74">{{harvnb|Elhaik|2012|pp=61–74}}.</ref> In broad academic perspective, both the idea that the Khazars converted ''en masse'' to Judaism, and the suggestion that they emigrated to form the core population of Ashkenazi Jewry, remain highly polemical issues.<ref>{{harvnb|Golden|2007 |pp=9–10}}.</ref>

==Antisemitism==

===United Kingdom and United States===
Maurice Fishberg and Roland B. Dixon's works were later exploited in racist and religious polemical literature, by advocates of [[British Israelism]], in both [[United Kingdom|Britain]] and the [[United States]].<ref>{{harvnb|Goldstein|2006|p=131}}.</ref> Particularly after the publication of [[Burton J. Hendrick]] ‘s ''The Jews in America'' (1923)<ref>{{harvnb|Singerman|2004|pp=4–5}}.</ref> it began to enjoy a vogue among advocates of immigration restrictions in the 1920s; racial theorists<ref>{{harvnb|Barkun|2012|p=165}}:'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,'.</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Goodrick-Clarke|2002|p=237}}.</ref> like [[Lothrop Stoddard]]; antisemitic [[conspiracy theory|conspiracy theorists]] like the [[Ku Klux Klan]]’s [[Hiram Wesley Evans]]; and [[Anti-communism|anti-communist]] polemicists like John O. Beaty<ref>{{harvnb|Boller |1992|pp=2,6–7}}; {{harvnb|Barkun |1997|pp=141–2}}.</ref>

In 1938, [[Ezra Pound]], then strongly identifying with the [[Italian Fascism|Fascist]] regime of [[Benito Mussolini]], sent a query to fellow poet [[Louis Zukofsky]] concerning the Khazars after someone had written to him claiming that the ancient Jews had died out and that modern Jews were of Khazar descent. He returned to the issue in 1955, apparently influenced by a book called ''Facts are Facts'', which pushed the Jewish-Khazar descent theory, and which for Pound had dug up "a few savoury morsels".<ref>{{harvnb|Pound|Zukovsky|1987|p=xxi}}, citing letterd of 10 July 1938 and 24/25 September 1955. Ahearn speculates that Pound may have thought:'If there were no such people as Jews, then the problem of indiscriminate anti-Semitism would disappear. On could focus one’s attention on usurers of whatever description.'</ref> The booklet in question, by a [[Roman Catholic]] convert from [[Rabbinic Judaism]] [[Benjamin H. Freedman]]<ref>{{harvnb|Freedman|1955}}</ref> was a rambling anti-Semitic tirade written to Dr. David Goldstein after the latter had converted to [[Catholicism]].<ref>{{harvnb|Kaplan|1997|p=191 n.3}}.</ref>

John O. 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 I]]. The book had little impact until the former Wall Street broker and oil tycoon J. Russell Maguire promoted it.<ref>{{harvnb|Boller|2013|p=14}}</ref> A similar position was adopted by Wilmot Robertson, whose views influenced [[David Duke]].<ref>{{harvnb|Barkun|1997|pp=140–141}}. His ''Dispossessed Majority''(1972)</ref> The British author [[Douglas Reed]] has also been influential. In his work the Ashkenazi are false Jews, descendants of the Khazars.<ref name ="Papers"/>{{rp| 355}}

A number of different variants of the theory came to be exploited by the [[Christian Identity]] movement.<ref>{{harvnb|Barkun |1997|pp=140–144}}.</ref> The Christian Identity movement, which took shape from the 1940s to the 1970s, had its roots in British Israelism which had been planted on American evangelical soil in the late 19th century.<ref>{{harvnb|Gardell|2002|p=165}}.'The formative period of Christian Identity could roughly be said to be the three decades between 1940 and 1970. Through missionaries like [[Wesley A. Swift|Wesley Swift]], Bertrand Comparet and William Potter Gale, it took on a white [[Racialism|racialist]], [[Antisemitism|anti-Semitic]], [[Anti-communism|anti-Communist]] and [[Far-right politics|far-right]] [[Conservatism|conservative]] political outlook. Combined with the teachings of early disciples [[Richard Girnt Butler|Richard G. Butler]], Colonel Jack Mohr and James K. Warner, a distinctly-[[Racism|racist]] [[theology]] was gradually formed. [[White people|Whites]] were said to be the Adamic people, created in His likeness. A notion of a pre-earthly existence is found in an important substratum, teaching that whites either had a spiritual or extraterrestrial pre-existence. Blacks were either [[Pre-Adamite|pre-Adamic]] soulless creatures or represented fallen, evil spirits, but they were not the chief target of fear and hatred. This position was reserved for Jews. The latent anti-Semitism found in British-Israelism rose to prominence. Jews were, at best, reduced to mongrelized imposters, not infrequently identified with Eurasian Khazars without any legitimate claim to a closeness with [[God]], and at worst denounced as the offspring of [[Satan]].'</ref> By the 1960s the Khazar ancestry theory was an article of faith in the Christian Identity movement.<ref name ="Clarke">{{cite book |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=xaiaM77s6N4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Black-Sun-Esoteric-Politics-Identity&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjlsuv1ge3MAhWJMj4KHTwZDUEQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=khazars%20&f=false| title = Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity |author= [[Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke]]|publisher = NYU Press| page = 237| year = 2003}}</ref> The [[Christian Identity]] movement has associated two verses from the [[New Testament]], [https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation+2%3A9&version=KJV Revelation 2:9] and [https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation+3%3A9&version=KJV 3:9] with the Khazars. The Jews are literally satanic in Identity theology: [[Jeffrey Kaplan (academic)|Jeffrey Kaplan]] calls these two passages the corner stone of Identity theology. He also reports that Christian Identity literature makes selective references to the [[Babylonian Talmud]], while the works of Francis Parker Yockey and Arthur Koestler work are raised almost to the status of Holy Writ.<ref name =" Kaplan ">{{cite book |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=qIilYBbxSbcC&pg=PA48&dq=khazars+revelation+2:9&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjR2OufwdXMAhVHOCYKHZfmA1U4FBDoAQgbMAA#v=onepage&q=identty&f=false | title = Radical Religion in America: Millenarian Movements from the Far Right to the Children of Noah | author= Jeffrey Kaplan | publisher = Syracuse University Press | year = 1997 | pages = 48–49}}</ref>

===Soviet Union and Russia===
The theory was prominent in Soviet antisemitism, gaining a place in Soviet historiography. The theory influenced Soviet historians including [[Boris Rybakov]], [[Mikhail Artamonov]] and [[Lev Gumilyov]] and was used to support soviet political theory.<ref name ="Zhivkov"/>{{rp| Vii-Viii }} Artamonov argued that the Khazars had played an important role in the development of Rus’. A view that Rybakov disputed instead regarding the Khazar state as parasitic.<ref name ="klejn">{{cite book | title = Soviet Archaeology: Trends, Schools, and History | author= Leo S. Klejn | publisher = OUP Oxford| year = 2012}}</ref>{{rp| 260–261}} Official Soviet views on the Khazars hardened after December 1951 when [[Pravda]] published a critical review of Artamonov's work under the pen name P. Ivanov.<ref name ="Tillett">{{cite book | title = The great friendship: Soviet historians on the non-Russian nationalities| author= Lowell Tillett| publisher = University of North Carolina Press | year = 1969 }}</ref>{{rp| 313–314}} Rybakov for his part denied that he was Ivanov.<ref name ="klejn"/>{{rp| 261}} It has been speculated that Ivanov was in fact Stalin. In Ivanov’s review the Khazars were regarded as parasites and enemies.<ref name ="sand">{{cite book | title = The Invention of the Jewish People| author= Shlomo Sand | publisher = Verso| year = 2010}}</ref>{{rp| 237 }} Ivanov’s views became the certified Soviet position.<ref name ="Tillett"/>{{rp| 314}}

Lev Gumilyov’s theory of ethnogenesis draws heavily on the Khazars theory. For Gumilyov ethnicity was defined by stereotypical behavior which was linked to adaption to the terrain.<ref name ="Rossman">{{cite book |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=EnsHyxPZfOIC&pg=PA134#v=onepage&q&f=false| title = Russia Between East and West: Scholarly Debates on Eurasianism | editor= Dmitry Shlapentokh | publisher = BRILL| year = 2007}}</ref>{{rp| 121–122}} Jews, he regarded as a parasitic, international urban class.<ref name ="Zubok">{{cite book |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=rZ-usH8e6AEC&pg=PA308&dq=Lev+Gumilyov+parasitic&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjVwbvLtt3MAhWCax4KHaIBAz0Q6AEIJTAB#v=onepage&q=Lev%20Gumilyov%20parasitic&f=false| title = Zhivago's Children | author= Vladislav Zubok|publisher = Harvard University Press| year = 2009| page = 308}}</ref> The Jews had dominated the Khazars creating a [[Chimera (genetics)|chimera]], subjecting Rus’ to the "Khazar Yoke."<ref name ="Papers"/>{{rp| 358–359, 368}}

Since the 1970s the term Khazars has entered the Russian nationalist lexicon, it is used as a euphemism for Jews.<ref>{{harvnb|Shnirelman|2007|p=369}}.</ref> Vadim V. Kozhinov theorized that the Khazar Yoke was more dangerous to Rus´ than the Tatar Yoke.<ref name ="Rossman2">{{cite book |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=pF-I25OC5ugC&pg=PA90&dq=Khazar+soviet&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjj8fOF_NzMAhWFph4KHcg4CE0Q6AEIJDAB#v=onepage&q=Khazar%20soviet&f=false | title = Russian Intellectual Antisemitism in the Post-Communist Era| author= Vadim Joseph Rossman | publisher = U of Nebraska Press| year = 2002}}</ref>{{rp| 90}} The Khazars were imagined as a persistent danger to Rus’.<ref name ="Papers"/>{{rp| 359}} After the [[dissolution of the Soviet Union]] the theory maintained a role in Russian antisemitism. Contemporary Russian anti-Semites continue to perpetuate the Khazar myth.<ref name ="Papers"/>{{rp| 355–356}} Gumilyov and his students work remain popular in Russia.<ref name ="Papers"/>{{rp| 356}} “Khazars” and “ethnic chimera” have become preferred terms for antisemitic Russian chauvinists.<ref name ="Papers"/>{{rp| 356}}

===Cults===
[[Aum Shinrikyo]] is a Japanese [[doomsday cult]]. The cult was active in Japan and Russia, with an estimated 10,000 and 30,000 followers respectively.<ref name ="Knox">{{cite book |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=jrWrbJAIyHQC&pg=PA88&dq=aum+shinrikyo+russia&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjhxP2yzd3MAhWD7SYKHclQAYwQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=aum%20shinrikyo%20russia&f=false| title = Russian Society and the Orthodox Church: Religion in Russia After Communism | author= Zoe Knox|publisher = Routledge| year = 2004| page = 88}}</ref> The groups “Manual of Fear” used the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in addition to other anti-Semitic material. The manual claimed that the Jews are really Khazars intent on world domination.<ref>{{harvnb|Goodman|Miyazawi |2000|pp=263–264}}</ref><ref name ="Dikötter">{{cite book |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=Ys5oy66VjisC&pg=PA196&dq=Aum+khazar&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjLg7eCzt3MAhVKSyYKHdC_AYcQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=Aum%20khazar&f=false| title = The Construction of Racial Identities in China and Japan: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives|editor= Frank Dikötter|publisher = University of Hawaii Press| year = 1997| page = 196}}</ref>
The Khazar theory has also become part of the [[Ascended Master Teachings|Ascended Masters]] theology. [[Master Jesus#Hatonn and the photon belt|Hatonn]] an extraterrestrial transmits messages including the complete text of [[The Protocols of the Elders of Zion]]. He identifies the authors of The Protocols as Khazars and speaks of false Zionist Jews who have usurped and controlled the true Jews.<ref name ="Katz">{{cite book |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=AQcUCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA165&dq=khazars+anti+semitism&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjSy7bgrN3MAhWHlR4KHV4iD7w4ChDoAQgsMAM#v=onepage&q=khazars%20anti%20semitism&f=false| title = The Paranoid Apocalypse: A Hundred-Year Retrospective on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion | editor = Richard Landes |editor2=Steven T. Katz | publisher = NYU Press| year = 2012| pages = 163–165}}</ref>

==Genetics and the Khazar theory==
{{See also|Genetic studies of Jewish origins}}
Before modern DNA population genetics entered the field, [[Raphael Patai]] described the Khazars in racial terms as being a Turkic people with some [[Mongoloid]] admixture.<ref name ="Patai">{{cite book |title=The Myth of the Jewish Race |authors= Raphael Patai, Jennifer Patai |publisher= Wayne State University Press |year= 1989 |page=70}}</ref> After major advances in DNA [[sequence analysis]] and computing technology in the late 20th and early 21st century, a plethora of [[genetic research]] on Jewish and other human populations has been conducted worldwide. The Yiddish scholar [[Alexander Beider]] regards genetic studies as often offering contradictory information, further complicated by the fact that some researchers' work is influenced by personal views.<ref>[[Alexander Beider]], [https://books.google.com/books?id=zWK8CgAAQBAJ&pg=PA553  ''Origins of Yiddish Dialects,''] Oxford University Press, 2015 p.553:’Unfortunately, genetic studies on Ashkenazi Jews, numerous since the 1990s, often provide contradictory information. Related methodological issues are huge: no access to the genetic pool of populations who lived centuries before us, the possibility of the genetic variation related to national selection, etc. To these objective problems one should add striking subjective elements: for certain authors, the way they proceed in their investigation and their interpretation of obtained results are clearly skewed by their political and/or religious feelings.'</ref> 

According to Martin B. Richards, presently available genetic studies, including his own study on Ashkenazi maternal lineages, all refute the Khazar theory.<ref name=jewishvoiceny-ashkenazi/> The claim that Ashkenazis as a whole take their origin from Khazars has been widely criticized as there is no direct evidence to support it.<ref name="Hogenboom">Melissa Hogenboom, [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24442352 'European link to Jewish maternal ancestry] [[BBC News]], 9 October 2013.</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=No indication of Khazar genetic ancestry among Ashkenazi Jews |url= http://www.ashg.org/2013meeting/abstracts/fulltext/f130123130.htm |publisher=[[American Society of Human Genetics|ASHG]] |accessdate=5 November 2013}}</ref> Using four Jewish groups, one being Ashkenazi, Kopelman ''et al'' found no evidence to the Khazar theory.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Kopelman |first1=NM |last2=Stone |first2=L |last3=Wang |first3=C |title=Genomic microsatellites identify shared Jewish ancestry intermediate between Middle Eastern and European populations |journal=BMC Genetics |volume=10 |page=80 |year=2009 |pmid=19995433 |pmc=2797531 |doi=10.1186/1471-2156-10-80|display-authors=etal}}</ref>

While the consensus in genetic research is that the world's Jewish populations (including the Ashkenazim) share substantial genetic ancestry derived from a common Ancient Middle Eastern founder population, and that Ashkenazi Jews have no genetic ancestry attributable to Khazars,<ref name = "WayneState2013">{{cite journal|last1 = Behar |first1 = Doron M. |last2 = Metspalu |first2 = Mait |last3  = Baran |first3 = Yael |last4 = Kopelman |first4 = Naama M. |last5 = Yunusbayev |first5 = Bayazit |last6 = Gladstein |first6 = Ariella |last7 = Tzur |first7 = Shay |last8 = Sahakyan |first8 = Havhannes |last9 = Bahmanimehr |first9 = Ardeshir |last10 = Yepiskoposyan |first10 = Levon |last11 = Tambets |first11 = Kristiina |last12 = Khusnutdinova |first12 = Elza K. |last13 = Kusniarevich |first13 = Aljona |last14 = Balanovsky |first14 = Oleg |first15 = Elena |last15 = Balanovsky |first16 = Lejla |last16 = Kovacevic |first17 = Damir |last17 = Marjanovic |first18 = Evelin |last18 = Mihailov |first19 = Anastasia |last19 = Kouvatsi |first20 = Costas |last20 = Traintaphyllidis |first21 = Roy J. |last21 = King |first22 = Ornella |last22 = Semino |first23 = Antonio |last23 = Torroni |first24 = Michael F. |last24 = Hammer |first25 = Ene |last25 = Metspalu |first26 = Karl |last26 = Skorecki |first27 = Saharon |last27 = Rosset |first28 = Eran |last28 = Halperin |first29 = Richard |last29 = Villems |first30 = Noah A. |last30 = Rosenberg|year = 2013 |title = No Evidence from Genome-Wide Data of a Khazar Origin for the Ashkenazi Jews|url = http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/humbiol_preprints/41/ |journal = Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints |publisher = [[Wayne State University]] |issue = 41 |accessdate = October 14, 2014 |quote = Final version at http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/humbiol/vol85/iss6/9/}}</ref> a few studies authored in this period diverge from the majority view in favor of the Khazar theory.

Counter-evidence exists to the Khazar hypothesis claiming that the male lineage of Ashkenazi Jews originates from an ancient (2000 BCE - 700 BCE) population of the Middle East who spread to Europe. -DNA studies of Ashkenazi Jews conclude that their male lineage was founded by ancestors from the Middle East.<ref name=pnas.org>{{cite journal |author1=M.F. Hammer |author2=A.J. Redd |author3=E.T. Wood |author4=M.R. Bonner |author5=H. Jarjanazi |author6=T. Karafet |author7=S. Santachiara-Benerecetti |author8=A. Oppenheim |author9=M.A. Jobling |author10=T. Jenkins‡‡ |author11=H. Ostrer |author12=B. Bonné-Tamir  |last-author-amp=yes |url= http://www.pnas.org/content/97/12/6769.full |title=Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations share a common pool of Y-chromosome biallelic haplotypes |journal=PNAS |volume=97 |number=12 |pages=6769–6774 |doi= 10.1073/pnas.100115997 |accessdate=11 October 2012 |pmid=10801975 |pmc=18733 |bibcode = 2000PNAS...97.6769H }}</ref><ref name=nytimes-chromosome-study>{{cite news |title=Y Chromosome Bears Witness to Story of the Jewish Diaspora|first=Nicholas|last=Wade|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2000/05/09/science/y-chromosome-bears-witness-to-story-of-the-jewish-diaspora.html|newspaper=[[The New York Times]]|date=9 May 2000|accessdate=10 October 2012}}</ref> and that they share this paternal ancestry with Sephardic Jewish populations.<ref>[http://www.cell.com/AJHG/abstract/S0002-9297%2807%2961325-1]</ref> Genetic studies show that the male lineage of Ashkenazi Jews bear a common genetic heritage which originates in the Near East, and that they bear their strongest resemblance to the peoples of the [[Fertile Crescent]]. A study of Ashkenazi [[mitochondrial DNA]] by a team led by Martin B. Richards of the [[University of Huddersfield]] found no maternal lineages attributable to the Caucasus. Richards summarized the findings on the female line as such: {{quote|"[N]one [of the mtDNA] came from the North Caucasus, located along the border between Europe and Asia between the Black and Caspian seas. All of our presently available studies including my own, should thoroughly debunk one of the most questionable, but still tenacious, hypotheses: that most Ashkenazi Jews can trace their roots to the mysterious Khazar Kingdom that flourished during the ninth century in the region between the Byzantine Empire and the Persian Empire."<ref name=jewishvoiceny-ashkenazi>{{cite news |author=Martin Gershowitz |url=http://jewishvoiceny.com/index.php?option=com_content&id=5546:new-study-finds-most-ashkenazi-jews-genetically-linked-to-europe&Itemid=325 |title=New Study Finds Most Ashkenazi Jews Genetically Linked to Europe |newspaper=[[Jewish Voice]] |date=2013-10-16 |accessdate=2013-10-31}}</ref>}}

===Wade study===

In 2000, the analysis of a report by [[Nicholas Wade]] named ''Y Chromosome Bears Witness to Story of the Jewish Diaspora'' {{quote|"provided genetic witness that these [Jewish] communities have, to a remarkable extent, retained their biological identity separate from their host populations, evidence of relatively little intermarriage or conversion into Judaism over the centuries.... The results accord with Jewish history and tradition and refute theories like those holding that Jewish communities consist mostly of converts from other faiths, or that they are descended from the Khazars, a medieval Turkish tribe that adopted Judaism."<ref name=many-scientific-papers-on-jews>{{cite web |title=Jewish Genetics: Abstracts and Summaries |url= http://www.khazaria.com/genetics/abstracts-jews.html |accessdate=9 November 2013}}</ref>}}

===Nebel study===

In 2001 Nebel et al., summarizing studies that reported a low-level European gene flow contributing to Ashkenazi paternal gene pool, suggested this influence might be reflected in the Eu 19 chromosomes common in Eastern Europe, or otherwise, that Ashkenazim with this component might descend from Khazars, an hypothesis the authors found "attractive".<ref>Almut Nebel, Dvora Filon, Bernd Brinkmann, Partha P. Majumder, Marina Faerman, and Ariella Oppenheim. " [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1274378/ 'The Y Chromosome Pool of Jews as Part of the Genetic Landscape of the Middle East.'] [[The American Journal of Human Genetics]] 69:5 (November 2001): 1095-1112.</ref>

===Behar study===

In 2003 Behar, remarking on the high frequency haplogroup R1a1 NRYs in that former Khazar sphere of influence and noting [[Paul Wexler (linguist)|Paul Wexler]]'s theory of relexification, raised the possibility that the Khazar  theory might offer an attractive source for an important eastern component of the Ashkenazim.<ref name="Behar2003">{{Cite journal |vauthors=Behar DM, Thomas MG, Skorecki K, etal |title=Multiple origins of Ashkenazi Levites: Y chromosome evidence for both Near Eastern and European ancestries |journal=American Journal of Human Genetics |volume=73 |issue=4 |pages=768–779 |date=October 2003 |pmid=13680527 |pmc=1180600 |doi=10.1086/378506}}</ref><ref name="Goldstein2008">{{Cite book |last=Goldstein |first=David B. |title=Jacob's legacy: A genetic view of Jewish history |publisher= Yale University Press |year=2008 |pages=location 873 (Kindle for PC) |chapter=3 |isbn=978-0-300-12583-2}}</ref> In 2008 [[David B. Goldstein (geneticist)|David Goldstein]] asserted that the Khazar theory "now seems to me plausible, if not likely".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Goldstein |first=David B. |title=Jacob's legacy: A genetic view of Jewish history |publisher= Yale University Press |year=2008 |page=74 |chapter=3 |isbn=978-0-300-12583-2}}</ref>

A 2013 study by Rootsi, Behar et al. of Ashkenazi Levites (4% of the Jewish male line) found a high frequency of haplogroup R1a-M582 among them (64.9% of Ashkenazi Levites) pointing to a founding event and paternal ancestor common to half of them. Since R1a shows high frequency in Eastern Europe generally, it was thought possible, that the evidence might indicate  the founder was a non-Jewish European. Testing the 3 hypotheses of a European, a Near Eastern or a Khazarian origin, their data excluded both the European and Khazarian origin of a Levite founder  since the found no evidence of R1a-M582 Y-chromosomes was found in either group, other than singletons, while it occurs with significant frequency in Near Eastern  regions [[Kerman|Iranian Kerman]], [[Iranian Azerbaijanis|Iranian Azeri]], the Kurds from Cilician Anatolia and Kazakhstan, and among Ashkenazi and non-Ashkenazi Jews. R1a-M582  was not detected among data from Iraqi, Bedouins, Druze and Palestinians sampled in Israel.<ref>Rootsi, Behar et al., [http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms3928  'Phylogenetic applications of whole Y-chromosome sequences and the Near Eastern origin of Ashkenazi Levites,'] Natures Communications  17 December 2013</ref>

===Elhaik study===

Eran Elhaik has argued, in two separate papers, the first in 2012 and the latest (2016) co-authored by Wexler, that his genetic analysis strengthens the Khazar hypothesis. Of the 2012 study Elhaik writes: "Strong evidence for the Khazarian hypothesis is the clustering of European Jews with the populations that i his opinion resided on opposite ends of ancient Khazaria: Armenians, Georgians, and [[Azerbaijani Jews]]. Because Caucasus populations remained relatively isolated in the Caucasus region and because there are no records of Caucasus populations mass-migrating to Eastern and Central Europe prior to the fall of Khazaria (Balanovsky et al. 2011), these findings imply a shared origin for European Jews and Caucasus populations."<ref>[http://gbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/5/1/61.full]</ref> 

In the 2016 study Wexler, Elhaik, et al. argued that the first Ashkenazi populations to speak the Yiddish language came from areas near four villages in Eastern Turkey along the Silk Road whose names derived from the word "Ashkenaz," rather than from Germanic lands as is the general consensus in scholarship. Elhaik and Wexler proposed a variant for the canonical Khazarian hypothesis, proposing that Iranians, Greeks, Turks, and Slavs converted to Judaism in Turkey prior to migrating to Khazaria where a small scale conversion had already occurred.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2016-04/20/yiddish-origin-turkey-dna-analysis|last=Burgess|first=Matt|date=20 April 2016|title=Yiddish may have originated in Turkey, not Germany|website=Wired.co.uk}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last1=Das|first1=R.|last2=Wexler|first2=P.|last3=Pirooznia|first3=M.|last4=Elhaik|first4=E.|year=2016|title=Localizing Ashkenazic Jews to primeval villages in the ancient Iranian lands of Ashkenaz|journal=Genome Biology and Evolution|volume=8|issue=4|pages=1132–1149|url=http://gbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/8/4/1132.full|doi=10.1093/gbe/evw046|pmid=26941229|pmc=4860683}}</ref> The historian Bernard Spolsky commenting on Elhaik’s earlier study wrote. “Recently, Elhaik (2013) claims to have found evidence supporting the Khazarian origin of Ashkenazim, but the whole issue of genetic evidence remains uncertain.”<ref>{{harvnb|Spolsky|2014|p=297 n.12}}.</ref>

====Criticism====

A controversy arose in which a number of geneticists called his work 'ridiculous. Elhaik is reported as dismissing them as “liars” and “frauds.”<ref>{{cite news|last1=Entine|first1=Jon|title=Israeli Researcher Challenges Jewish DNA links to Israel, Calls Those Who Disagree 'Nazi Sympathizers'|url=http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonentine/2013/05/16/israeli-researcher-challenges-jewish-dna-links-to-israel-calls-those-who-disagree-nazi-sympathizers/#3d6dc62ddb23|accessdate=7 May 2016|work=Forbes}}</ref> 

Elhaik's 2012 study was criticized for its use of Armenians and Azerbaijani Jews as proxies for Khazars and for using [[Bedouin]] and [[Jordan]]ian [[Hashemites]] as a proxy for the Ancient Israelites. The former decision was criticized because Armenians were assumed to have a monolithic Caucasian ancestry, when as an [[Anatolian people]] (rather than Turkic) they contain many genetically Middle Eastern elements. Azerbaijani Jews are also assumed for the purposes of the study to have Khazarian ancestry, when [[Mountain Jews]] are actually descended from [[Persian Jews]]. The decision to cast Bedouin/Hashemites as "proto-Jews" was especially seen as political in nature, considering that both have origins in [[Arab tribes]] from the [[Arabian Peninsula]] rather than from the Ancient Israelites, while the descent of the Jews from the Israelites is largely accepted.<ref>[http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Terra-Incognita-The-return-of-the-Khazar-myth Terra Incognita: Return of the Khazar Myth]</ref><ref>[http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1040&context=humbiol_preprints  No Evidence of Genome Wide Khazar Origin of Modern Jews]</ref> The study was also criticized as interpreting information selectively—The study found far more genetic similarity between the [[Druze]] and Ashkenazim than the Ashkenazim and Armenians, but Elhaik rejected this as indicating a common Semitic origin, instead interpreting it as evidence of Druze having Turkic origins when they are known to come from Syria.

Geneticists conducting studies in Jewish genetics have challenged Elhaik's methods in his first paper. Michael Hammer called Elhaik's premise "unrealistic," calling Elhaik and other Khazarian hypothesis proponents "outlier folks… who have a minority view that’s not supported scientifically. I think the arguments they make are pretty weak and stretching what we know." [[Marcus Feldman]], director of [[Stanford University]]'s Morrison Institute for Population and Resource Studies, echoes Hammer. "If you take all of the careful genetic population analysis that has been done over the last 15 years… there’s no doubt about the common Middle Eastern origin," he said. He added that Elhaik’s first paper "is sort of a one-off." Elhaik’s statistical analysis would not pass muster with most contemporary scholars, Feldman said: "He appears to be applying the statistics in a way that gives him different results from what everybody else has obtained from essentially similar data." <ref name=rubin>Rita Rubin, [http://forward.com/news/israel/175912/jews-a-race-genetic-theory-comes-under-fierce-atta/?p=all 'Jews a Race' Genetic Theory Comes Under Fierce Attack by DNA Expert,']. ''[[The Forward]]'', 7 May 2013.</ref>

Elhaik and Wexler's 2016 study was challenged by two prominent scholars of Jewish demography from the [[Hebrew University of Jerusalem]]. Shaul Stampfer, a professor of Soviet and East European Jewry, deemed it “basically nonsense.” Sergio DellaPergola, the primary demographer of the Jewish people at the university, called it a "falsification", criticizing its methodology, using a small population size and selectively removing population groups that refuted the findings they wanted, namely other Jewish groups such as the [[Italkim]] and [[Sephardic Jews]], to whom Ashkenazi Jews are closely related genetically. “Serious research would have factored in the glaring genetic similarity between Sephardim and Ashkenazim, which mean Polish Jews are more genetically similar to Iraqi Jews than to a non-Jewish Pole.”<ref name="jta"/> Elhaik replied that “studying the DNA of non-Ashkenazic Jews would not change the DNA of Ashkenazic Jews nor the predicted origin of their DNA.'.<ref name=jta>[http://www.timesofisrael.com/prominent-scholars-blast-theory-tracing-ashkenazi-jews-to-turkey/ Prominent scholars blast theory tracing Ashkenazi Jews to Turkey]</ref>

Recently, a study by a team of biologists and linguists, led by Pavel Flegontov, a specialist in genomics, published a response to Das, Elhaik and Wexler's 2016 study, criticizing their methodology and conclusions. They argue that GPS allows inferences works for the origins of modern populations with an unadmixed genome, but not for tracing ancestries back 1,000 years ago. In their view, the paper tried to fit Wexler's  'marginal and unsupported interpretation' of Yiddish into a model that only permits valid deductions for recent unadmixed populations.
<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Flegontov | first1 = Pavel | last2 = Kassian | first2 = Alexei | last3 = Thomas | first3 = Mark G. | last4 = Fedchenko | first4 = Valentina | last5 = Changmai | first5 = Piya | last6 = Starostin | first6 = George | year = 2016 | title = Pitfalls of the geographic population structure (GPS) approach applied to human genetic history: A case study of Ashkenazi Jews | url = | journal = [[Genome Biology and Evolution]] | volume =  | issue = | pages =  evw162| doi = 10.1093/gbe/evw162 }}</ref>

====Stampfer study====
In June 2014, [[Shaul Stampfer]] published a paper challenging the Khazar hypothesis as ungrounded in sources contemporary with the Khazar period, stating: "Such a conversion, even though it’s a wonderful story, never happened".<ref name=Aderet >{{cite news|last1=Aderet|first1=Ofer|title=Jews are not descended from Khazars, Hebrew University historian says|url=http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-features/1.601287|accessdate=1 October 2014|work=Haaretz|date=26 June 2014}}</ref><ref>[[Shaul Stampfer]], [http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/jewish_social_studies/v019/19.3.stampfer.pdf "Did the Khazars Convert to Judaism?,"] Jewish Social Studies: History, Culture, Society 19 (3) pp.1–72</ref>

==See also==
* [[Genetic history of Europe]]
* [[Genetic studies on Turkish people]]
* [[Genetic studies on Jews]]
* [[Japanese-Jewish common ancestry theory]]
* [[Japhetic theory]]
* [[Jewish ethnic divisions]]
* [[Jewish history]]
* [[Jews in Turkey]]
* [[Kuzari]]
* [[List of topics characterized as pseudoscience]]
* [[Rus' Khaganate]]
* [[Theory of Kashmiri descent from lost tribes of Israel]]
* [[Theories of Pashtun origin]]
* [[Timeline of the Turkic peoples (500–1300)]]
* [[Turkic migration]]
* [[Turkic peoples]]

==Notes==
{{Reflist|30em}}

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{{Refend}}

==External links==
*Kutschera, Hugo, Freiherr von, (1909): [https://archive.org/details/diechasarenhisto00kutsuoft  Die Chasaren; historische Studie]
*Fishberg, Maurice  (1911): [https://archive.org/details/jewsastudyracea00fishgoog The Jews: A Study of Race and Environment.]
* [http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/cgi-bin/GOLD/thumbs?class_mark=T-S_12.122 The Kievan Letter scan] in the [[Cambridge University Library]] collection.
* [http://www.khazaria.com Khazaria.com]
* [http://www.dinur.org/resources/resourceCategoryDisplay.aspx?categoryid=457&rsid=478 Resources - Medieval Jewish History - The Khazars] The Jewish History Resource Center, Project of the Dinur Center for Research in Jewish History, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20091026233731/http://geocities.com/ayatoles/ Khazar Historic Maps]
* [http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/khz/index.htm The Kitab al-Khazari of Judah Hallevi, full English translation at sacred-texts.com]
* [http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1023383.html Ancient lost capital of the Khazar kingdom found]

{{Jews and Judaism}}
{{History of the Jews in Europe}}
{{Khazaria}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Khazar}}
[[Category:Antisemitism]]
[[Category:Anti-Zionism]]
[[Category:Ashkenazi Jews]]
[[Category:Conspiracy theories involving Jews]]
[[Category:Fringe theories]]
[[Category:History of the Turkic peoples]]
[[Category:Jewish genetics]]
[[Category:Judaism-related controversies]]
[[Category:Khazars]]
[[Category:Origin hypotheses of ethnic groups]]
[[Category:Population genetics]]
[[Category:Pseudohistory]]
[[Category:Scientific controversies]]