Boston Terrorists from Chechnya and Dagestan, Russia: Originally KHAZARIA

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                 

                                                                               

In pursuing my Jewish genealogy, there was thought that perhaps our rare Ydna; haplogroup Q1b1a ,  originated with Khazaria, but that thought has been dismissed.  It is thought that  another haplogroup, like an R1b  could have come from this 8th century state in what today is Russia.  Khazaria  was ruled by a king or kagan of which Kagan Bulan had converted to Judaism.

With the terrorist attack in Boston Monday, I now find the two Muslim brothers who are accused are from Chechnya, Russia.  This turns out to be the land from the Middle Ages of Khazaria!  The  Chechen Republic and Dagestan made up Khazaria.   Evidently after Khazaria was defeated, the Jewish Khazars and their leader may have had to renounce Judaism and accept Islam  or escape around 640 CE..  On a flat part of the Chechen Republic and Ingushetia, sites of  an ancient settlement  in which Khazaria cities were found.  The form and technology of the medieval Chechen ceramics is similar to ceramics of the Khazars that have been found.

For centuries Jewish refugees escaping persecution went to Khazaria, an open minded empire. The Kagan had decided to listen to 3 speakers; a Jew, a Christian and a Muslim to decide which religion he should follow. He and his people were shamanists and worshipped spirits and the sky, called Tengri shamanism.   The Jew won out and the royal house converted.  He was unique as he didn't make his subjects follow suit.  It was their choice to make.  So it came to pass that  about  between 786-809 CE, King Bulan of Khazaria and 4,000 of his nobles accepted Judaism.  Prince Obadiah was the organizer in their conversion. Khazaria had been made up of eastern Turks, commented the 9th century Greek historian, Theophanes.

Because Khazaria was situated as a link between Europe, Asia and the Middle East, it was important.  They were on the periphery of the Byzantine and Persian empires.  Sometimes they got along with the Byzantines, Alans and Oghuz, while other times  they were their fiercest enemies.  They could be an aggressive people.  Sometimes they got along with the Arabs, but warred against each other in the 7th and 8th centuries in the Arab-Khazar Wars.

Khazarians  were called the White Ugrians by the Russians.  This was in contrast to the Hungarians who were the Black Ugrians.    The Royal House or Western Turks (Blue)  ruled the Khazars for over 60 years as a Turk Kaganate, which was founded in 552 CE by Ishtemi, the Yabghu Kagan who was the brother of the supreme Turk kagan, Bumin.    Ishtemi and Bumin were part of the Turkic Asena (Ashina) dynastic clan.  Their headquarters were near Lake Balkash.  In 567, hordes of Western Turks had arrived in the Volga River region.  They were written about in 555, mentioned in a Syriac translation, listed among the nomadic tribes living in tents north of the Caucasus Mountains.  They would become Muslim sometime after Mohammad's death of 632 CE.

Some of the Turkic people believed that they descended from Noah through Togarmah, one of the 70 people listed in Genesis 10.  The country has been identified with Tagarmah on the Central Euphrates mentioned in Hittite inscriptions.  It was also listed in the Talmud as Germanike.  The Armenians and Georgians were traditionally descended from these people.  Later, the name was applied to Turkey.  One of the most important Khazar kings, Joseph (note the Jewish name), said he was descended from Kozar, the 7th of Togarmah's 10 sons.  Medieval Hebrew essays substantiated this claim.  There had to be one or more Jews, such as a Rabbi, to do the converting, and he may not have travelled alone, so besides the people who were converted, there had to be a few native Jews in the population.  

The steppes of present-day Chechnya were part of the Khazar Kaganate.  One would think that Jews share ancestors with modern Chechens, since Chechnya was on the Southern edge of Khazaria, the largest Jewish state ever to have existed after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE.  In the Chechen Republic there are place names such as, "Army of Jews," "Barrow where Jews were Lost," and legends about the Jewish princes, Jews and wars  conducted by Jews.  That must have been about entering Canaan back in about 1390 BCE.  The name of the Chechen tribe "Akkij" is from "Okachan" ("Akacirs"/Khazars)  Also, most of the Chechens are called shatojes, shabutayns.  According to linguists, it means, "celebrating Saturday."  Saturday in Hebrew is "Shabbat."  Many names in the Chechen Republic are connected with Khazars.  They feel they have a pretty strong relationship.

The dna of Chechens has been checked with Jews on the dermatoglifiki index which shows Ashkenazi Jews and the Tuaregs (people in North Africa that are Muslims are almost identical in dna.  The Chechens genes coincide with Jews  showing allele # as 14-13-30-23-10-11-12-13-16.  It also is similar with Armenians. Therefore, genes have revealed a relationship and coincidence of the genes of Chechens, Ingushs, Armenians and Jews.  The dna of the Ingushs have the closest match of those with the Jews.  It is thought that the Ingushs, according to legends, are descendants of Jews from Iran.

My question would be, which Jews?  We come in many different haplogroups.  Our Q1b1a happens to be only found in 5% of the Jewish population.  So I would love to know what the haplogroup is of the alleles the commentator speaks of in my resource*.

A study done in 2000 by Drs.  Harry Ostrer and Michael Hammer shows that dna of Ashkenazi Jews (European) match up most with Italian Jews.  Jews have not intermarried very often with non-Judeans, including converts to Judaism.  Our dna matches up with people from the Middle East also, such as Jews of North Africa, Iraq, Iran, Kurds and Yemenite Jews which are also found among Arabs, particularly the Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian Arabs.  Even our Q1b1a has matched remotely with a few Saudis that tested.  The most common haplogroup among Jews is the Cohen gene, J1, of which a branch is also found in Iraqi Arabs.

Some of the Chechen names are characteristically Jewish.  Khava,  is much the same as Chava, a common Jewish name.  Does anyone know any Muslim women named Chava?

Khazaria, actually in southern Russia and Ukraine, was a major center of commercial activity, especially in the 8th and 9th centuries.  Khazaria was described as a land of plenty with great riches. They even taxed goods according to their value.    The Radhanites, Russian Arabs, Chinese, Oghuz Turks and others traded with the Khazars.  They were on the Silk Road.

Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine which is in the Pale of Settlement;  the only area that  Jews were allowed to inhabit,  was founded in the 8th century by the Khazars, most likely.  Jewish merchants had visited the town in the 9th and 10th centuries.

Khazaria was politically independent until about 1016.  The last Khazar kagan was Geogius Tzul who wound up in a Russian prison.  The Russians took the land.   That's because Khazaria lacked natural frontiers for defense, for one. The Golden Horde Mongols controlled a large part of the former Khazar Empire around the Caspian Sea during the late Middle Ages.   The end of this empire also was the beginning of an unfortunate era for Jews, who left at the breakup.    The Jews of eastern Europe no longer had a nation to call a Jewish nation so had no refuge.

In 1096 the German Crusade massacred Jews in European towns.  In 1099 the Jewish community in Jerusalem was massacred by the Crusaders.  So began many expulsions and no place to go.  Even the Jews of  Vilna, Grodno and Kovno, Lithuania, 10,000 of them,  were expelled in 1495, after the 1492 Spanish Inquisition.  They were allowed to enter again in 1529.   I figure that my Goldfus family entered Lithuania then from Germany.   The distance to travel from Khazaria to Lithuania is about 541 miles if they went directly there. However, most people think that most Jews went from Rome to Germany and on up to Eastern Europe.   Those from Khazaria could have found refuge in Germany where Jews had been living since 321 CE.  In the 8th and 9th centuries Jews were settling there but were massacred in 1096, 1298,  1336, 1348/49 and were banished in the 16th century.  Life was precarious in Germany  It's a wonder how any Jew survived the upheavals.  No wonder they dashed to eastern Europe.

Today's Chechnyians are known for the terrorism which has been against Russia since 1991 when the USSR collapsed.  They say they want independence for their Muslim state.   So far, Russia has been able to put down their rebellions.  They have been found among the more radical Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria.

* Resource: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100315080836AAyibmV
The Jews of Khazaria,  2nd Edition by Kevin Alan Brook
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324763404578432653304233858.html
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://www.mapcrow.info/Distance_between_Kaunas_LH_and_Moscow_RS.html
http://www.khazaria.com/