From AN INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF KHAZARIA by Kevin Alan Brook, Copyright (C) 1996 Latest revision: July 2000.
We have the following:
The Khazars' dual-monarchy was a Turkic system under which the kagan was the supreme king and the bek was the civilian army leader. The kagans were part of the Turkic Asena ruling family that had provided kagans for other Central Asian nations in the early medieval period. The Khazar kagans had relations with the rulers of the Byzantines, Abkhazians, Hungarians, and Armenians. To some extent, the Khazarian kings influenced the religion of the Khazar people, but they tolerated those who had different religions than their own, so that even when these kings adopted Judaism they still let Greek Christians, pagan Slavs, and Muslim Iranians live in their domains. In the capital city, the Khazars established a supreme court composed of 7 members, and every religion was represented on this judicial panel (according to one contemporary Arab chronicle, the Khazars were judged according to the Torah, while the other tribes were judged according to other laws).
Ancient communities of Jews existed in the Crimean Peninsula, a fact proven by much archaeological evidence. It is significant that the Crimea came under the control of the Khazars. The Crimean Jewish communities were later supplemented by refugee Jews fleeing the Mazdaq rebellion in Persia, the persecutions of Byzantine emperors Leo III and Romanus I Lecapenus, and for a variety of other reasons. Jews came to Khazaria from modern-day Uzbekistan, Armenia, Hungary, Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and many other places, as documented by al-Masudi, the Schechter Letter, Saadiah Gaon, and other accounts. The Arabic writer Dimashqi wrote that these refugee Jews offered their religion to the Khazar Turks....
Me: Khazaria was filled with refugee Jews from "Uzbekistan, Armenia, Hungary, Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and many other places" and likely outnumbered any converts. The Khazar rulers didn't require conversion and tolerated anyone, even pagans. These refugees certainly included those who ancestors originated in ancient Israel.
More information here:
"Are Russian Jews descended from the Khazars?" http://www.khazaria.com/khazar-diaspora.html
From the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia ( http://www.newadvent.org )we have the following excerpt from "History of the Jews:"
It was during this period that the great Kingdom of the Chazars, which was situated west of the Caspian Sea, and had caused the Persians to tremble, embraced Judaism (c. 745); its rulers remained exclusively Jewish above two centuries and a half. After the caliphs of the Ommiad dynasty, one of whom had a Jew as his mint-master, those of the Abassides, till after Harun al-Rashid (d. 809), do not seem to have seriously disturbed their Jewish subjects; during that time, the Babylonian Talmudic schools were crowded with hearers, and had it not been for their internal dissension, religious (Karaites) and political (contests for the dignity of exilarch), the Jews of Babylon would have been as happy as they were renowned for their...
Note: "rulers remained exclusively Jewish" it says nothing about the whole population converting. This has been true on every dictionary I can actually find.
Copyright (c) 1996 P. F. Collier, L. P. All rights reserved.
KHAZARS
KHAZARS, a nomadic Turkic people who first appeared north of the Caucasus in the early part of the fourth century. In the seventh century the Khazars conquered the kingdom of the Bulgars. They built up a strong and prosperous state, which attained its greatest size in the ninth century, when it extended from the Crimea to the middle Volga and westward to the Dnepr River. The Khazars developed some important commercial cities and carried on trade with Russia and the Byzantine Empire. The ruler of the Khazars, called the qaqaan, was also the religious leader. Tolerant of other religions, the qaqaans welcomed thousands of Jews from Asia Minor and the Byzantine Empire, as well as many Muslims and Christians. These three religious groups vied with one another to convert the Khazars, who followed their traditional religion.
Around the middle of the eighth century the qacentury the qaan and his retinue adopted Islam, but at the turn of the ninth century Qaninth century Qaan Bulan declared Judaism the state religion, changing his name to Obadiah. However, the Khazar state continued religious tolerance. It was finally overthrown in A.D. 965 by a coalition of Russians and Byzantines. The Khazars soon disappeared, either fleeing westward or intermingling with other peoples in southern Russia. The last vestiges of the Khazars in the Crimea were destroyed by the Byzantines and Russians in 1016.
FRED C. HAMIL
This confirms the other Khazar articles above.
Me: There is no mention anywhere of all or even most of the people of this region converting to Judaism. Even if (not likely) every Jew in Eastern Europe came from Khazaria, they still would likely have originated from the Middle East and Asia Minor. All of these people and all Europeans are mixed anyway, and many Jews were converted or assimilated, so these Christian Identity arguments about the "exclusive Khazar" Jews have no merit and neither does these Adamite revelations.
This excerpt on Polish Jews from Copyright (c) 1996 P. F. Collier, L. P. All rights reserved.
The ultimate fate of the Khazars and the extent of their representation in the Polish Jewish population have been debated by historians to this day. The views on this matter range from the great 19th-century historian Heinrich Graetz's insistence that the Khazar conversion to Judaism had almost no effect on subsequent Jewish history to Arthur Koestler's book The Thirteenth Tribe , in which he argues that a majority of Ashkenazic Jewry is descended from the Khazars. Most modern scholars of Jewish history believe that, over the course of the 14th and 15th centuries, many Khazars were assimilated into Poland's already established Jewish community, which was overwhelmingly of Franco-German origin. -- Michael Pugliese