"In the eleventh century Jews from Germany settled in Kiev..."

I think this is conjecture, and doesn't fit with what else I know about medieval Europe. I checked the bibliography listed by Rosenthal, and find nothing that would indicate a reliable source for this information. Since the trade went down the river to the Black Sea and beyond, it makes more sense to assume Jews came from the Crimean area. Does anyone have any better evidence?

Paul Wexler speculated about this in his "Ashkenazic Jews" and "Two-tiered Relexification in Yiddish" (Google Books). IIRC, he didn't get any further than 'something Iranian possibly Turkic'. Simon Franklin's "Writing, society and culture in early Rus, c. 950-1300" (Google Books) quotes Golb and Pritsak suggesting that the Khazar Jews used Hebrew as a language of learning and perhaps trade and Turkic runes for internal administrative purposes. No Turkic runes, however, seem to have been found in Kievan Rus.

Nothing useful from me, except to note that there's a voluminous fantasy literature about the Khazars, and the most hilarious was a long anti-Semitic diatribe organized around the mistaken identification of the Khazars and the Kazakhs as the same people.

Kazakhs, anti-Semitic - you're not talking about Lev Gumilev, are you?

No, it was an internet crazy. He just indiscriminately mixed together information about the Khazars and information about the Kazakhs. There was a 600+ year / 1500+ mile discrepancy for him to ignore, but he easily met that challenge.

I have Gumilev in translation, and it's literature, very sketchily documented, with documentation only in Russian. I couldn't get far into it.

"Words On FIre: The Unfinished Story Of Yiddish" (an excellent book, with lots of great history) refers to the Khazars, on page 131, as "a confederation of Turkic-speaking tribes in the Caucasus, some of whose ruling class adopted a kind of Judaism around A.D. 740."

On the same page, it says "On December 6, 300, Jews joined with pagans in Tauris, on the northern shore of the Black Sea, to revolt against the ruling Christian bishops." Not terribly far from Kiev, and nearly 500 years earlier than your date. It seems possible.

Eight century? Eleventh century? In the ieghth century, I would think that Khazar Turkic would have predominated. Khazar was believed to be a dialect of Chuvash, related to Bulgar Turkic. WRT Yiddish, M. Mieses and a few others have demonstrated that the German elements in Yiddish are not from the western, Franco-German, reaches of Germany, but from Alpine Bavaria and further east. H. von Kutschera argued that the German element in Yiddish came when Khazar Jews emigrated into Poland and found German a lingua franca of sorts. So I'd speculate that in the 8th c., they probably spoke a Turkic dialect trending later towards Yiddish?

Interestingly (to me, at any rate) that around the time of the Khazar conversion to Judaism in the western reaches of Turkic tribal power, the Uygurs in the east, on China's borders converted to Manichaeism. Were these conversions political rather than religious? The Khazars to align neither with the Byzantine Christians nor the Islamic Arabs--the Uygurs to balance off the Chinese Confucians, and the Central Asian Buddhists?

As Rock says, I'm pretty sure that the Khazars' and Uighurs' religious choices had a political angle -- trying to maintain independence from either Christianity or Islam, while getting the advantages of literacy and a world religion, in the Khazar case the balance was between Islam, Tibetan Buddhism, and Chinses Cobficianism / Buddhism. Religion was often a diplomatic event and had an aspect of submission to and alliance with the civilized power.

Another case is the Lithuanians, who remained pagan for a long period while playing Islam, Catholicism and Orthodoxy off against one another. Jagiello (the convertee) was a younger contemporary of Jan Zizka, so European state paganism lasted almost to the Reformation. (Local pagan practice lasted into the sixteenth century, I've been told.

; in the Uighur case the balance was between Islam, Tibetan Buddhism, and Chinses Cobficianism / Buddhism.

I like the fact that you corrected Uighur but not Chinses Cobficianism. Good old Cobficius!

DeeExtrovert: something seems wrong with that date of the year 300. That's before the conversion of Constantine. Some of the rulers on the northern littoral of Asia Minor--and hence, on the south side of the Black See--were already Christian (Iberia and Armenia are the ones that spring to memory from reading Gibbon's account) but they weren't letting bishops do the ruling. I'm not sure there could have been any "ruling bishops" at that date. When the Kievan princes did abandon paganism, they went to Constantinople, which suggest that bishops weren't terribly abundant along their southern neighbors.

Doc Rock: your idea is a commonly held opinion, at leas as respects to the Khazars. And the conversion of Russia to Christianity was the result of a deliberate choice which had Islam as the other alternative (but apparently no one considered Judaism at that point).

LH: Generally, Jews spoke the language of the peoples they lived among. One factor to add into the mix is the Karaites who settled in the Crimea and converted some of the Mongols there to their form of Judaism, but this didn't take place until the fourteenth century CE at the earliest: Karaism itself didn't begin until the latter half of the eighth century CE

on the south side of the Black See

I had bishops on the brain at the point, obviously.

The Rus leader converted to Christianity because he was allowed to keep his 800 wives and continue to drink. At least that's what he said -- but perhaps it was just a pious fiction.

I'm sure the Vikings were in there somewhere; they were probably behind the whole thing.

DeeExtrovert: something seems wrong with that date of the year 300. That's before the conversion of Constantine.

It sounded oddly early to me too, but I was just quoting what's in the book.

Wexler's speculations are only speculations. Yiddish is not a two-times relexified turkic-slavic language (and what else? Pashto?) Nobody knows how many Khazars were converted to Judaism probably only the aristocracy (and what kind of Judaism - if Karaism, they can not be linked to Rabbanite Jews). When their kingdom was destroyed, why would they run to central Poland? The real question is not linguistic. To many people have the odd wish that Ashkenazic Jews would descend from Turkic tribes...

To many people have the odd wish that Ashkenazic Jews would descend from Turkic tribes...
and what's wrong with this hypothetical wish?
until proven wrong

it's literature, very sketchily documented, with documentation only in Russian
he studied nomads when was in gulags, it's a real knowledge i think, persevered and filtered, i'm glad it helped him to survive
his documentation in Russian is all legit, though all 30-40-50ies scholarly articles in Russian sound pretty biased pro-slavo-proletaro-communistically
you can't dismiss one's scholarship this easily

Wexler's speculations are only speculations.
Well, he does back them up with plenty of evidence. Where it's legit, that's another question.

Yiddish is not a two-times relexified turkic-slavic language
That's not what he says. According to Wexler, Yiddish is Sorbian relexified sing German stock and then partially relexified with something Eastern Slavic (Ukrainian-Bielorussian). No Turkic involved.
The theory may sound cuckoo for cocoapuffs, some of his etymologies are way off and some of his reasoning is weird (Yiddish speakers did not borrow the word "Gebäude" because the sound change au > äu is unattractive), but on the whole, you'd be unwise to dismiss him completely.
Same, by the way, goes for Gumilev. He may sometimes come dangerously close to Dänikenian territory, but he's spot on more than a few times.

Very strange. A "theory" exists when proved based on reliable sources and not "until proven wrong".

L Hat,

You gave me this book, it's good, all about the Khazarians, The Jews of Khazaria by Kevin A. Brook, published by Aronson.

"The Khazars emerged on the world scene as Turkic horsemen who believed in shamanism and lived a nomadic lifestyle. Over the course of many centuries, the Khazars adopted a more settled way of life and replaced their former Tengri beliefs with Judaism, Islam, and Christianity."

The Khazar coin I own resembles the coins of the Bulgars, another tribe from that region--"Syriac legends said that the ancestor of the Khazars was named 'Khazarig,' the brother of 'Bulgarios'." from Peter Golden's An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples.

I apologize if I've repeated what your other commenters have already cited...as a collector of Central Asian coins, I was around back in the 90s when the Soviet Union was dissolved and all the Russian numismatic and archaeological studies came to the attention of US, per the Russian Numismatic Ass'n here, coin collectors and historians--for a long while, Khazarian coins had only been rumored to exist--in fact, the Khazarian Jews (in Kiev) were only rumored to exist--Khazaria ran from the Black Sea in the south and from the west side of the Caspian up north to Volga Bulgaria on the east and East Slavs and Hungary on the west--Kiev on the far western border between Khazaria and East Slavs and Hungary--the farthest eastern Khazarian city was Gurgani, at the southern end of the Aral Sea.

Ur hysterical/historical fiend

thegrowlingwolf

all hypotheses are legitimate until proven wrong, prove it and then only say your biases

Wolf, about ten years ago I saw a Khwarizmian coin (minted under Genghis Khan's authority around 1220-1228) advertised for $300. Did you get one? I would have been a totally unreasonable purchase for me, but I almost got one anyway.

The Jewish Khazar topic gets very heated even when the Kazakhs are not dragged in. The last I heard there may have been a consensus that Khazarian Jews played some role in the early development of E. European Judaism, but not a dominant one. Sort of a mushy compromise I suppose, in lieu of a resulotion.

There is nothing odd about Khazars fleeing to Poland via Kiev, though. A group of Tatars ended up in Poland too, and their descendants still are there 600 years later, practicing Islam in their cute little forest mosques.

Almost 800 years ago.

The mosque is probably painted green for Muslim symbolic religious reasons, but that makes it look even more rustic.

Wolf, about ten years ago I saw a Khwarizmian coin (minted under Genghis Khan's authority around 1220-1228) advertised for $300. Did you get one? I would have been a totally unreasonable purchase for me, but I almost got one anyway.

Ah, a fellow Khwarezm fan! When I was living in NYC and hanging with the Wolf, I let him inveigle me into accompanying him to coin shows, and I found myself going nuts in the bargain bins (I'd never spend $300 for a coin, any more than for a book, which is why I've steered clear of book collecting in the antiquarian sense); I came away with coins from some of my favorite dynasties: a Sassanid dirham, an Abbasid dirham, a Zingid fals, an Ayyubid fals, a Buwayhid dirham, a Mamluk dirham, a fals from the Seljuk of Rum Kaykhusro I, a Bukharan tenga, a Georgian coin from the time of Queen Rusudan, a Timurid dirham from Samarkand, a chunky little Afghan coin from Timur Shah Durrani, and yes, a dirham of Ala ad-Din Muhammad, the last and greatest of the Kwarezmshahs. It cost me $35, and a very handsome thing it is, too. So keep looking; if you're not worried about superfine quality, you can probably find a bargain.

I did spend close to $300 for a book, de Rachewiltz's "Secret History of the Mongols", but that was the new price. Curse the Dutch publishing industry! (The book went into a second edition, though. Hurrah! A short popular edition will be published and everyone should buy it).

de Rachewiltz as one of the last of the line, a philological type who does his research in about 10-12 languages. Unlike Pelliot, though, he actually writes up his research instead of just publishing his notes. He works in Australia and I sometimes try to imagine what the cross of a hearty, bluff Australian and a decadent European aristocrat would be like. He's connected to the Ezra Pound de Rachewiltzes, I think, and is of Polish noble / Russian Tatar descent. He's been in Australia since his late 20s.

I should mention that de Rachewiltz relies extensively on research written in Mongol. Many Western scholars of steppe history (Lattimore, Buell, and tacitly at least, de Rachewiltz) have recognized the high quality of indigenous Mongol scholarship.

A group of Tatars ended up in Poland too
Not to mention Finland. Ben Zyskowicz (MP, Kokoomus) and his wife, Rahime Husnetdin-Zyskowicz, are one of the many reasons Finland rules :)

Bulbul, he's a teetotaller. Epic fail.

"To many people have the odd wish that Ashkenazic Jews would descend from Turkic tribes..."
and what's wrong with this hypothetical wish?
until proven wrong"

Nothing wrong with the hypthesis itself, but it has been put to bad uses, to deny that European Jews are descended from people who lived in the Roman province of Palestine and who therefore have no claim on the land of modern Israel. It's a reasonbale question put to an anti-Semitic use.

Some of the people who support the Khazar/Jewish story are Jews, e.g. Arthur Koestler. In any case it's a valid hypothesis.

Arthur Koestler reported in his _The Thirteenth Tribe_ (pp.176-7): "According to the first all-Russian census in 1897, there were 12 894 Karaite Jews living in the Tsarist Empire (which, of course, included Poland). Of these 9666 gave Turkish as their mother tongue (i.e., presumably their original Khazar dialect), 2632 spoke Russian, and only 383 spoke Yiddish." Judge for yourself, but this may have some relevance to the origins of the Ashkenazim.

Sorry about some of mytypos last evening, I can only plead advancing old age and throw myself on the mercy of the Cobficians!

I've also read, though, that the Khazars were not Karaites.

There are also "Mountain Jews" in the Caucasus who speak Tat, a Persian dialect. The Wiki is well worth reading but has the telltale signs of nationalism and maybe editing controversies.

I'm having a oneness-of-being day. The only "Mountain Jew" I recognize in the Wiki is Jacob Avshalomov, a great music teacher in Portland Oregon who taught my son and hundreds of others, and who I know personally. (He's also a Sino-Mountain-Jew who grew up in Beijing.) Many of his students have made their names in the world of classical music.

So fascinating how some tribal groups retain ancient connections and tribal names and others either disintegrate and merge into new tribal groups or fade into the sunset.[war, famine and disease]
Up to now it has been the linguistic connection that keeps track of these changes through the scribbles or marks, straight lines and arcs, but now we soon be able to track the changes via the genetic variations of four little chemicals to back up these interesting diversions of how informations has come to us through the eons.

John,

Bulbul, he's a teetotaller.
So am I. And?

There are also "Mountain Jews" in the Caucasus who speak Tat, a Persian dialect.
One of the names used for those Jews is "dag čufut/džufut". Aside from the meaning/etymology that escapes me, there's also the testimony of Armin Vámbery, who notes that "čufut" was a derrogatory name for Jews used all over the Ottoman Empire.

DocRock,
Of these 9666 gave Turkish as their mother tongue (i.e., presumably their original Khazar dialect)
I'd say what they meant was Karaim. Whether Karaim is related to whatever the Khazars spoke, that's a question for someone more knowledgeable.

I appreciate the enthusiasm evinced by the many comments, but I'm afraid I'm a stickler on this. It does not good to cite a book on an answer to this question (though Pritsak and Simon Franklin are admirable scholars) unless the book itself cites a verifiable primary source.

So in order to know what any putative Kievan Jews were speaking in the 10th c., we would need a contemporary reference, a gravestone inscription, a report from the merchants in Constantinople that they trade with the Jews of Kiev who speak X language, some rich and convincing toponyms -- something like that. Otherwise it's just conjecture.

As is, by the way, almost everything that has been written about the Khazars.

One of the names used for those Jews is "dag čufut/džufut". Aside from the meaning/etymology that escapes me, there's also the testimony of Armin Vámbery, who notes that "čufut" was a derrogatory name for Jews used all over the Ottoman Empire.

You don't have to take Vámbery's word for it; it's right there in Redhouse's English and Turkish Dictionary, p. 627 (right-hand column, near bottom): "chifut, s.t., A Jew; a mean, sordid fellow."

Bulbul, you're breaking my heart.

As is, by the way, almost everything that has been written about the Khazars.

This is not true. They're a historical people, playing a known role during a certain place and time. There's correspondence between Spanish Jews and Khazarian Jews. There are references of many kinds in many chronicles.

I'm not even sure that I know what you'r trying to say.

She's not saying it's doubtful whether the Khazars existed or played "a known role," she's saying most of the details are conjectural. To quote Simon Kraiz, "We know a lot about them, and yet we know almost nothing: Jews wrote about them, and so did Russians, Georgians, and Armenians, to name a few. But from the Khazars themselves we have nearly nothing." Compare what we know about Itil to what we know about contemporary Constantinople, Baghdad, or Ch'ang-an. And we don't even know what language they spoke, although there are, of course, conjectures.

What song the Sirens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture.

--Thomas Browne, Urn-Burial

Something like that is true of every Inner Asian people, the Khazars less than many. I spend much of my time studying peoples of that type (Xi-Xia, Yuezhi, Sogdians, Kushans, Bulgars, Khazars, Qaraqitai, Rus, Caucasian Albanians, Tokharians, etc.) In some cases the lack of knowledge is the simple result of lack of study; it's a slow-moving field where century-old books are still current.

In studying non-literate people, and even more so nun-urban peoples, there needs to be some "conjecture". (Archeology crippled itself, and made itself useless, for half a century by refusing to conjecture or to think-- you could learn as much as you wanted to about pots and kettles and brainpans and whorls, but they refused to go beyond that).

"As is, by the way, almost everything that has been written about the Khazars" is far too strong.

And then there's "Gentlemen of the Road" by Chabon !

"As is, by the way, almost everything that has been written about the Khazars" is far too strong.

I'd say your interpretation of Cherie's comment is far too strong. She wasn't insulting your beloved Central Asians, just pointing out that the kind of material that would take us beyond conjecture doesn't exist. And you yourself admit "Something like that is true of every Inner Asian people," so why the outrage?

Because, as I said of archeologists, that way of doing history deadends very quickly. If you're writing about an area of history where there's little or no documentary evidence and not too much documentary evidence, you'll end up reserving judgment about everything if you follow too strict a rule. You'll always be able to say "there's no solid evidence of X, so we won't say anything about it and tentatively conclude that probably X didn't happen." This is OK for legends about heroic deeds, divine visitations, heart-warming anecdotes, etc., but speculating about Khazars in Kiev strikes me as both plausible and necessary.

I wasn't really sure exactly what Cherie was objecting to, as I said. And given the pop status of the Khazar-Jewish connection, it's inevitable that most of the writing will be speculation or worse, since the small amount of real scholarship is inevitably drowned in the flood of ideology and wishful thinking.

To start all over, a lot of historians proudly object to conjecture, in principle, and they're just wrong.

"and not too much archeological evidence"

hat,
cool, thanks! I had no reason to doubt Vámbery, but it's always nice to have a confirmation. Now for that etymology...

Cherie,
I fully agree - one quote, even from a respectable scholar, doesn't a proof make. A gravestone inscription would be cool, but my money is on some newly discovered (preferrably by me :) long lost manuscript of an Arab traveller.

John,
yeah, I know. Imagine what my social life looks like. But then again, it's always preferrable to the alternative, which would probably involve me turning into something very much resembling Christopher Hitchens.

If I ever meet you, b-b. I'll have to drink for two.

But you don't drink either, Pete. I can drink for three. If you ask me that Ben Zyskowicz sounds like a bit of a wanker, hanging out at the Café Strindberg—a popular celebrity-spotting location on Pohjoisesplanadi. Nice that he married a tatar, though, I suppose that's what bulbul means.

Let's drink a beverage of our choice to the possibility of the three of us meeting someplace other than heaven or hell, and let's invite Hat and everyone else here, including the commentators infrequent and rare.

Turkish çıfıt < çifud < cuhūd < Persian جهود < Hebrew יהוד.

MMcM: You read Portuguese. Howe about translating "Menina e Moca" for the world? I've tried, and I'm not up to it.

I think we should definitely meet sometime. I'd suggest the Canaries over Iceland for obvious reasons (birds), but the Eastasians and Sig might prefer someplace more towards the poles. Farris would like someplace more towards the Poles. Oops, was that a pun? Sorry.

Turkish çıfıt < çifud < cuhūd < Persian جهود < Hebrew יהוד.

Good lord. MMcM, sometime we should have a language equivalent of Jeopardy; I'd be curious to see whether you or zaelic would win.

MMcM.

Thanks MMcM :) I'll be rooting for you, too.

John,
I'll drink* to that!

* Diet Coke. Sigh.

MMcM: I formally concede. Chewfoot, indeed.

the first ever book i bought all by me myself and when i was the second yr pupil, 8 yo, on the September 2, soo remember the day i went to the bookstore all by myself as if i'm a grownup, after school, so it was Pesn' o veshem Olege, "kak nune sbiraetsya veshii Oleg otmstit' nerazumnum khozaram ix sela i nivu za buinui nabeg obrek on mecham i pojaram...'
i remember, i was reading and couldn't understand almost all words, except sel and niv
so, feel, like, affinity to 'Khozaram', the verse i remember best from NG and LNG, i think i forget, cited it in his book "Drevnyaya Rus' i Velikaya step'" as an epi title "a gde-to struyatsya rodimue reki k kotorum mne put' navsegda vospreshen", my 'theory' is that they both felt perhaps affinity to us too, as if they were recalling from their long lost pre-memory
you, JE, are also like kin :), in Japan i had a friend whose three obsessions were Mongols, owls and Sibelius, a very charming deda, one of his rooms was full of owls' representations, all kinds of owl souvenirs from all over the world
he used to joke that he was either a Mongol or an owl in his previous life
just i think i made him once very uncomfortable and almost insulted him, so sorry
upon my departure, he was seeing me off and taking a lot of pictures as if i was a movie star or celebrity and i got kinda irritated and said i'm not in the zoo something, in Japanese, unconsciously, so oops

Could even have been Sibelius in previous life, but much less likely.

WRT Yiddish, M. Mieses and a few others have demonstrated that the German elements in Yiddish are not from the western, Franco-German, reaches of Germany, but from Alpine Bavaria and further east.

As a native speaker of "further east", I think I can reliably deny that.

So I'd speculate that in the 8th c., they probably spoke a Turkic dialect trending later towards Yiddish?

"A Turkic dialect trending towards Yiddish"? How does that work?

Turkish çıfıt

In case I've interpreted the יהו part correctly, this must be the ultimate case of pronouncing the Name in vain. :-)

BTW, I don't drink alcohol either. It stinks. I don't even drink Coke, because I can't stand the gas...

More tomorrow or so...

Oh. Just one thing. Basic science theory. Science cannot prove, only disprove! And then there's the principle of parsimony. The difference between a hypothesis and a theory is primarily one of size.

(And... bulbul turning into Hitchens... he'd surpass him and trigger a bloodbath. I'll stop contemplating this possibility and go to bed.)