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I hope this fits the topic, I would like to talk about the Khazars and their relationship to the outside world, particularly the Jewish diaspora.

The Khazars were a semi-nomadic tribe that had entered Europe around the seventh century CE as part of the Gokturk Khaganate. They emerged from the breakup of the Gokturks as the most powerful successor tribe, quickly subduing, absorbing, or expelling rivals such as the Bolghars. The Khazars were allied with the Byzantines ever since the Gokturks had aided them in their wars against the Sassanids, and continued to help them fight the rapidly expanding Islamic Caliphate. The First Arab-Khazar War ended in a Khazar victory, with the powerful Umayyad governor of Armenia Al-Jarrah ibn Abdallah and his army killed outside of Ardabil in Persia. The Second Arab-Khazar War ended in defeat for the Khazars, with the Khazar capital of Balanjar captured and their army cornered and surrendered around the Volga River. The collapse of the Umayyads as part of the Abbasid Revolution ended the brief Islamic dominance of the Khazars.

By the eight and ninth centuries, the Khazars had become the dominant power in what is now Southern Russia. The Russian Primary Chronicle reported that by the 859 several East Slavic tribes were paying tribute to them, including the Polyanians, Severians, Radimichians, and Vyatichians. Additionally, we know from De Administrando Imperio by Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus that both the Hungarian tribes then living around what is now Southern Ukraine and the Alans of the North Caucasus were also tributaries to the Khazars.

Around this time, the leadership of the Khazars and perhaps some of the core tribe converted to Judaism. It is not known exactly why this happened, the mechanics of how it happened, or even the extent of the conversion, but there is a reasonable amount of textual and physical evidence suggesting that some conversion did happen. What we do know is that the Khazars were in control of large stretches of the Silk Road, which were frequented at the time by Jewish merchants called Radhanites. Additionally, when the Khazars began to control Crimea they inherited large, ancient Jewish communities. What is clear is that the Khazars were well acquainted with Jews and Judaism, and according to some historians like Douglas Dunlop may have converted to Judaism as a middle ground between or rejection of Arab Islam and the Byzantine Christianity.

Eventually, news of this Jewish led realm reached the diaspora. Hasdai ibn Shaprut, a Jewish vizier in Al-Andalus, learned about the Khazars from a Central Asian delegation. From ibn Shaprut's 950s CE letter to Khagan Joseph:

At length mercantile emissaries of Khorasan told me that there is a kingdom of Jews which is called Al-Khazar. But I did not believe these words for I thought that they told me such things to procure my goodwill and favor. I was therefore wondering, till the ambassadors of Constantinople came with presents and a letter from their king to our king, and I interrogated them concerning this matter, They answered me: ‘It is quite true, and the name of that kingdom is Al-Khazar,’... When I heard this report I was encouraged, my hands were strengthened, and my hope was confirmed. Thereupon I bowed down and adored the God of heaven.

The first letter of Hasdai ibn Shaprut failed to reach its destination, as the Byzantine Empire had become hostile to Khazaria since their conversion to Judaism and didn't allow the letter to pass Constantinople. His second attempt to get the letter to Khagan Joseph was through the diaspora, carried by a German Jew through Hungary and the Rus to Khazaria, possibly on the same trade routes used by Jewish Radhanite Merchants. Joseph responded with some information about Khazaria and his history, as well as a sort of chronology of Jewish Khagans descendant from the first to convert, Bulan.

Not long after the correspondence between Hasdai ibn Shaprut and Joseph, the Khazar Khaganate was destroyed by a Rus' invasion down the Volga River. The topic of what happened to the Khazar Jews is just as difficult to know as how they converted and how many of them there were. Since the Khazar tribe did not make up a majority in Khazaria to begin with and certainly not all of them were Jewish, the number of Khazars that entered the diaspora would have been very small. It is known that some Khazar Jews studied in Jewish schools in Al-Andalus as late as the 12th century. In the same century, the Jewish philosopher Judah Halevi published a famous work of Jewish philosophy called The Kuzari, which used the conversion of the Khazars as its basis.

The Khazars represent a unique and, today, very controversial point in the Jewish diaspora's history. Those Medieval Jews that learned about it seemed to be fascinated by it, even long after it was gone. Today, its relationship with Jews is a lot more tense. Conspiracy theorists have picked up on its existence and use it to justify their antisemitism, claiming that most modern Jewish are actually Khazars, not Hebrew. The difficulty of establishing the exact timing, nature, and extent of the conversion adds to the tension around its historicity. Regardless, their long and varied history, their wide influence on the history of Eastern Europe, and their place as possibly the only Jewish realm to ever exist in Europe has made them one of my favorite historical topics.

Sources:

Brook, Kevin Alan. 2010. The Jews of Khazaria. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield.

Constantine, Gyula Moravcsik, and Romilly James Heald Jenkins. 2016. De Administrando Imperio. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks.

Cross, Samuel Hazzard, and Olgerd P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor. n.d. The Russian Primary Chronicle. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Mediaeval Academy of America.

Jacob Marcus, The Jew in the Medieval World: A Sourcebook, 315-1791, (New York: JPS, 1938), 227-232