BRAMA, Feb. 23, 2000, 10:00am EST

New Achievements in Khazarian Studies
Kevin Alan Brook

THE JEWS OF KHAZARIA (ISBN 0765760320, 360 pages) by Kevin Alan Brook is published by Jason Aronson Inc. of Northvale, N.J. and is available from bookstores nationwide at the list price of $35.00, at the publisher's website http://www.judaicalibrary.com for a discounted price, or by calling the publisher at 1-800-782-0015.

Danbury, CT – The Turkic Khazar civilization of medieval Russia and Ukraine has long interested historians and laypersons alike, including prominent Ukrainian scholars like Mykhailo Hrushevsky and Omeljan Pritsak. Their vast empire held back the Arabs from invading Europe and Byzantium (similar to the role of the Franks in the West), hosted traders from all over Europe and Asia, and influenced the language and government of early Rus'-Ukraine and Hungary. Khazaria was the only country in its region with a permanent standing army and a supreme court consisting of representatives of multiple religions (paganism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity).

Several modern scholars -- including Omeljan Pritsak, Jonathan Shepard, Simon Franklin, and Robin Milner-Gulland -- assert that the trident symbol that adorns the official coat of arms of Ukraine was borrowed by the Kievan Rus' princes from the Khazars. Additionally, various words, ceremonial customs, and governmental structures (such as the early dual-kingship) of Rus' are alleged to be derived from the Khazars. The "Pax Khazarica" of the 9th century, a time of relative calm in the steppes due to the Khazars' ability to hold back warlike tribes such as the Pechenegs, is often regarded as a reason for the ability of East Slavs to extensively colonize during that period. Ukrainians therefore should take an interest in the history and culture of the Khazar kingdom.

Until the 1990s many aspects of the Khazar kingdom were obscured by (1) the effects of Communist ideology in the Soviet Union, which kept many artifacts hidden away and forced historians to deny the Khazars their role as a major influence on the development of Rus', (2) the difficulty scholars have in dealing with primary source materials in so many languages, (3) the unintentional neglect of archaeological data on Khazaria in the West, (4) a lack of funds for additional expeditions, and (5) the unfortunate encroachment of political and religious concerns into Khazar studies as a result of Arthur Koestler's 1976 book "The Thirteenth Tribe". Two new books, "The Jews of Khazaria" by Kevin Alan Brook and "Coins of the Khazar Empire" by Glen Shake, seek to fill the gap of scholarship into Khazaria and present the latest findings to the general public.

COINS OF THE KHAZAR EMPIRE (ISBN 0967898404, 91 pages) by Glen Shake is published by Trimillennium Publishers of Allen, Texas and is available at the list price of $15.00 by writing to ippk@ticnet.com or Trimillennium Publishers, Dept. KB, P.O. Box 560, Allen, TX 75013. For more information visit http://www.khazaria.com/shake.html.

In the 9th century, the Khazarian royalty and nobility as well as a significant portion of the Khazarian population embraced the Jewish religion. The existence of organized Jewish communities in Khazaria, as proposed in Brook's book, was verified at an international conference on the Khazars at the Ben-Zvi Institute in Israel in May 1999 when the Russian archaeologist Gennadii Afanasyev unveiled the discovery of Khazarian utensils containing four Hebrew inscriptions of the word "Israel". Brook also traces the development of early Jewish life in Kiev and details on Rus'-Khazar conflicts. The Khazars had a separate section in Kievan Podol called "Kozare", and in the 12th century a Khazar named Ivan son of Zechariah served in the Rus' military. Many ethnologists and historians now agree that part of the Ukrainian Jewish community derived from Khazarian roots.

One of the great modern controversies surrounding the Khazars is whether they minted coins. In "The Origins of the Old Rus' Weights and Monetary Systems" (1998), Pritsak argued that the Khazars did mint silver coins based upon international weight standards. Some Islamic coins appear to contain a Turkic tamga symbol resembling symbols from Khazaria. And some experts assert that coins with an Islamic mint reading "Ard al-Khayr" ("Land of the Good") actually should be read as "Ard al-Khazar" ("Land of the Khazars"). Using coins, numismatic books, and papers, Glen Shake establishes the locations, types of coins, and descriptions of coins minted by the Khazars that are in museums and collections in Europe.

These two publications are the first English books on the Khazars since 1982's monumental "Khazarian Hebrew Documents of the Tenth Century" by Golb and Pritsak, and they hopefully represent only the beginning of a continued resurgence of scholarship into an important yet mysterious kingdom that reached as far west as the Dnipro River.

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