At the peak of their empire it is believed that the Khazars had a permanent standing army that could have numbered as many as one hundred thousand and controlled or exacted tribute, astonishingly, from thirty different nations and tribes inhabiting the vast territories between the Caucasus, the Aral Sea, the Ural Mountains and the Ukrainian steppes
- Bury, J. B., A History of the Eastern Roman Empire (London, 1912).
"The story of the Khazar Empire, as it slowly emerges from the past, begins to look like the most cruel hoax which history has ever perpetrated."
- Koestler, Arthur, The Thirteenth Tribe: The Khazar Empire and Its Heritage, New York: Random House, 1976, p. 17
[Khazars were]"...tall, with red-hair, ruddy-faced and blue-eyed. Black hair is considered a bad omen."
- Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples, Wiesbaden, Germany, 1992
"they are to the north of the inhabited earth towards the 7th clime, having over their heads the constellation of the Plough. Their land is cold and wet. Accordingly their complexions are white, their eyes blue, their hair flowing and predominantly reddish, their bodies large and their natures cold. Their general aspect is wild."
- Ibn-Said al-Maghribi, quoted by Dunlop, p. II. Dunlop, D. M., The History of the Jewish Khazars (Princeton, 1954).
"the Gazari" [Khazars] dwelt "in the lands of Gog and Magog."
Druthmar of Aquitaine, commentary on Matthew 24:14 in
Expositio in
Matthaeum Evangelistam
- Andrew C. Gow, The Red Jews (Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1995), pp. 40-41.
After the kingdom's conversion to Judaism, the term "Red Jews" came into usage out of the superstition of medieval Germans, who equated their red hair and beards and their violent nature with deceit and dishonesty. It is also well documented that they heavily taxed those passing through their lands, for none dared refuse them.
- Brook, The Jews of Khazaria, p. 10. Andrew C. Gow, The Red Jews (Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1995), p. 191.
Legends and stories abound, some of which are true according to the above quoted Aquitaine monk, that center around Alexander the Great and his attempt to enclose the Khazars and quarantine them, due to their violent and barbaric nature, from the rest of the civilized world. This endeavor apparently failed, Druthmar claimed, and they escaped. Some legends even claim they were cannibals.
Druthmar of Aquitaine, commentary on Matthew 24:14 in
Expositio in
Matthaeum Evangelistam
- Andrew C. Gow, The Red Jews (Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1995), pp. 40-41.
Heinrich von Neustadt, around 1300, wrote of them as the "terrifying people of Gog and Magog.
- Brook, The Jews of Khazaria, pp. 10-11.
Muslim history recalls the Khazar raids and the terror of those inhabiting that land. To this day they call the Caspian, Bahr-ul-Khazar -- "the Khazar Sea."
- W. E. 0. Allen, A History of the Georgian People, London 1952.
"The evidence...adds up to a strong case in favour of those modern historians -- whether Austrian, Israeli or Polish -- who, independently from each other, have argued that the bulk of modern Jewry is not of Palestinian, but of Caucasian origin. The mainstream of Jewish migrations did not flow from the Mediterranean across France and Germany to the east and then back again. The stream moved in a consistently westerly direction, from the Caucasus through the Ukraine into Poland and thence into Central Europe. When that unprecedented mass-settlement in Poland came into being, there were simply not enough Jews around in the west to account for it; while in the east a whole nation was on the move to new frontiers."
- Koestler, The Thirteenth Tribe, p. 179-80.
"...how far we can go in regarding this [Khazar] Jewry as the nucleus of the large Jewish settlement in Eastern Europe. The descendants of this settlement...those who stayed where they were, those who emigrated to the United States and to other countries, and those who went to Israel -- constitute now the large majority of world Jewry.
- A. N. Poliak, Khazaria -- The History of a Jewish Kingdom in Europe (Mossad Bialik, Tel Aviv, 1951).
etc etc
“Edom is Modern Jewry”
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