You can be forgiven if you have never heard of the Khazars. I admit they were new to me before researching them for this article. They were a people who lived in Eurasia. This was an area from the Black Sea in the west along the southern steppes of Russia until it reached the Aral Sea in the east. The region also stretched south to where we now have Turkey and Iran. The Khazars, as a people came about due to the amalgamation of many of the local nomadic tribes in the area.
They existed between the sixth and eleventh centuries. But after that, they appeared to disappear quickly from the scene. The reason or reason for this has been debated over the years. This is slightly strange as the Khazars had built up quite an empire. However, it seems that their disappearance was not “overnight.” Instead, it would appear that they came under attack from a number of sources.
These included Svyatoslav of Kyiv, which is now the capital of Ukraine. This was followed by battles with the Mongols known for their ferocity and propensity to invade other countries. Slowly but surely, the Khazar Empire declined. Within two centuries, it was gone. All that remained were separate communities.
It may seem unusual to focus on this particular empire when many others also declined over the past millennia. This is because they may have played a larger part in history than we first thought. It is believed that the majority of the Khazarian aristocracy in the eighth century, converted to Judaism. This leads some historians to speculate that the Khazarians may have been the ancestors of the Jewish communities that sprang up in both Russia and Poland. As far as I can find out, a full DNA investigation has not yet found conclusive proof of this.
John Pullen 