Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi ancestry – Wikipedia
admin | December 20, 2022
Largely abandoned theory about Jewish descent The Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi ancestry, often called the Khazar myth by its critics,[1]:369[2]:VIII[3] is a largely abandoned historical hypothesis. The hypothesis postulated that Ashkenazi Jews were primarily, or to a large extent, descended from Khazars, a multi-ethnic conglomerate of mostly Turkic peoples who formed a semi-nomadic khanate in and around the northern and central Caucasus and the PonticCaspian steppe. The hypothesis also postulated that after collapse of the Khazar empire, the Khazars fled to Eastern Europe and made up a large part of the Jews there.[4] The hypothesis draws on some medieval sources such as the Khazar Correspondence, according to which at some point in the 8th9th centuries, a small number of Khazars were said by Judah Halevi and Abraham ibn Daud to have converted to Rabbinic Judaism.[5] The scope of the conversion within the Khazar Khanate remains uncertain, but the evidence used to tie the Ashkenazi communities to the Khazars is meager and subject to conflicting interpretations.[6][7][8][9] Genetic studies on Jews have found no substantive evidence of a Khazar origin among Ashkenazi Jews.
