The Khazar-Ashkenazi Connection: Another Attempt to Revive a Debunked Theory

By greywarden100
Published on May 27, 2025

For weeks, I’ve been engaged in an ongoing debate with @14Svyatoslav on X, tackling various historical claims, many of which push debunked narratives. In my recent post, Debunking the Khazarian-Yiddish Myth: Exposing a National Socialist’s Hypocrisy and Propagation of a Debunked Narrative, I addressed his attempt to link the Khazars to the Yiddish language and Ashkenazi identity, a myth rooted in discriminatory stereotypes. Now, he is doubling down with a new question:

“Who did the Khazarians become after they converted to Judaism? What other Jewish group is based from the same region as the Ashkenazi and Khazarians? You can’t honestly name a group that compares in the region.”

I'll dismantle this latest iteration of the Khazar myth with historical and scientific evidence.

The Khazar hypothesis, popularized by Arthur Koestler’s 1976 book The Thirteenth Tribe, claims that Ashkenazi Jews are descendants of the Khazars, a Turkic people whose elites converted to Judaism around the 8th or 9th century. @14Svyatoslav’s questions imply that the Khazars must have evolved into a major Jewish group like the Ashkenazi, or that another Jewish group in the region shares a Khazar origin. Both assertions are baseless.

Let’s first address the fate of the Khazars. The Khazar Khaganate, located in what is now southern Russia and Ukraine, collapsed by the late 10th century due to invasions by the Rus’ and other groups. Historical sources, such as the Russian Primary Chronicle, suggest that the Khazar population largely assimilated into neighboring cultures, including the Cumans, Slavs, and later Mongols. While some Khazar Jewish elites may have persisted in small, isolated communities, there’s no evidence they formed a significant Jewish group or migrated in mass to Central or Eastern Europe, where Ashkenazi communities later developed (Golden, 2007).

So, where do Ashkenazi Jews come from? As I’ve outlined before, their origins lie in Jewish communities in the Rhineland (modern-day Germany) by the 10th century, with roots in earlier migrations from the Middle East and Southern Europe. Medieval records, like those in the Cairo Geniza, document Jewish trade networks connecting these regions (Goitein, 1971). Over centuries, these communities moved eastward into Poland and Lithuania, forming the Ashkenazi population. Genetic studies, such as Behar et al. (2010), confirm Ashkenazi Jews share significant ancestry with Middle Eastern and Southern European populations, with negligible Turkic (Khazar) influence.

@14Svyatoslav’s second question about another Jewish group “from the same region” as the Ashkenazi and Khazars reveals a geographical misunderstanding. The Khazar region (southern Russia/Ukraine) is distinct from the Rhineland and Eastern Europe, where Ashkenazi culture took root. Other Jewish groups in the broader area, like the Mountain Jews of the Caucasus or the Crimean Karaites, have origins unrelated to the Khazars. Mountain Jews trace their roots to Persian Jewish communities, while Karaites emerged from a Rabbinic schism, not Khazar converts (Polak, 1951). No major Jewish group in the region derives from the Khazars.

Genetic evidence further buries this myth. Studies analyzing autosomal DNA, Y-chromosome, and mitochondrial DNA consistently show Ashkenazi Jews’ Middle Eastern and Southern European ancestry (Ostrer, 2012). A 2013 study by Elhaik, which @14Svyatoslav might lean on, claimed a Khazar connection but has been widely debunked for its flawed methodology (Behar et al., 2013).

The Khazar-Ashkenazi link is a persistent but baseless narrative. The Khazars assimilated into other groups after their empire’s fall, and no significant Jewish group in the region traces back to them. Ashkenazi Jews have a well-documented origin in the Rhineland, rooted in Middle Eastern and Southern European migrations.

References:

• Behar, D. M., et al. (2010). The genome-wide structure of the Jewish people. Nature, 466(7303), 238–242.
• Behar, D. M., et al. (2013). No evidence from genome-wide data of a Khazar origin for the Ashkenazi Jews. Human Biology, 85(6), 859–900.
• Goitein, S. D. (1971). A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, Vol. 1. University of California Press.
• Golden, P. B. (2007). The conversion of the Khazars to Judaism. In The World of the Khazars: New Perspectives (pp. 123–162). Brill.
• Koestler, A. (1976). The Thirteenth Tribe: The Khazar Empire and Its Heritage. Random House.
• Ostrer, H. (2012). Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People. Oxford University Press.
• Polak, A. N. (1951). The Karaites: A Sect of Judaism. Brill.
• Russian Primary Chronicle. (Translated by Cross, S. H., & Sherbowitz-Wetzor, O. P., 1953). Harvard University Press.

About the Author:
greywarden100 is a history enthusiast dedicated to uncovering the truth behind historical myths and sharing accurate, evidence-based insights with readers.