Bibliography of Khazar Studies, 1901-Present
Compiled by Kevin Alan Brook

Section 13: Proposed Descendants of the Khazars

See also Chapters 9 and 10 of The Jews of Khazaria (Third Edition) and the Web essays "Are Russian Jews Descended from the Khazars?" and "Are Mountain Jews Descended from the Khazars?"

In English:
        Behar, Doron M.; Metspalu, Mait; et al. "No Evidence from Genome-Wide Data of a Khazar Origin for the Ashkenazi Jews." Human Biology 85:6 (December 2013): 859-900. Autosomal DNA shows that Ashkenazim are not at all closely related to non-Jews of the North Caucasus, Volga-Ural region, Central Asian Turkistan, or Southern Siberia, but do have a small amount of East Asian ancestry.
        Brook, Kevin Alan. "The Origins of East European Jews." Russian History/Histoire Russe 30:1-2 (Spring-Summer 2003): 1-22. Examines historical, onomastic, archaeological, architectural, genetic, and linguistic evidence for and against Khazar contributions to the population of East European Jews and concludes that a Khazar component probably exists but is minor.
        Brook, Kevin Alan. The Maternal Genetic Lineages of Ashkenazic Jews. Boston, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2022. Suggests that Ashkenazim may have inherited mtDNA haplogroups A12'23 and N9a3 from Khazar women and Y-DNA haplogroup G2a-FGC1093 from an Alan man.
        Brook, Kevin Alan. "Matching a Medieval Erfurt Jew to Modern Ashkenazic Jews." ZichronNote, Journal of the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society 43:2 (September 2023: 16-19. Argues in favor of a minor Ashkenazic-Khazar connection.
        Evans, Philip. "Some of My Best Friends are Khazars." World Medicine 12 (June 15, 1977): 85-86. Argues that certain Jewish diseases like Tay-Sachs may have come from the Khazars and that most Jews are not Israelite.
        Feldman, Alex Mesibov. The Monotheisation of Pontic-Caspian Eurasia: From the Eighth to the Thirteenth Century. Edinburgh, Scotland, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2022. Appendix 3: The Khazar-Ashkenazi Descent Theory.
        Konrád, Miklós. "Narrating the Hungarian–Jewish National Past: The 'Khazar Theory' and the Integrationist Jewish Scientific Discourse." In Cultural Nationalism in a Finnish-Hungarian Historical Context, ed. Gábor Gyáni and Anssi Halmesvirta, pp. 49-61. Budapest: MTA Bölcsészettudományi Kutatóközpont Történettudományi Intézet, 2018.
        Litman, Jacob. The Economic Role of Jews in Medieval Poland: The Contribution of Yitzhak Schipper. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984. Summary and discussion of Yitzhak Schipper's theory that Khazars settled in Poland.
        Nebel, Almut; Oppenheim, Ariella; et al. "The Y Chromosome Pool of Jews as Part of the Genetic Landscape of the Middle East." The American Journal of Human Genetics 69:5 (November 2001): 1095-1112. The geneticists Nebel et al. present evidence that a minority (12.7%) of Ashkenazic paternal lineages contain the Eu 19 chromosomes, which are found among a majority of eastern Europeans, and could originate from partial Khazar or East-European ancestry.
        Nebel, Almut; Filon, Dvora; et al. "Y chromosome evidence for a founder effect in Ashkenazi Jews." European Journal of Human Genetics 13:3 (March 2005): 388-391. Suggests that the Y-DNA haplogroup R-M17 (R1a1), found among about 11.5 percent of Ashkenazic Jewish men in their study, may come from intermarriage with the Khazars.
        Petersen, Gloria M.; Kaback, Michael M.; et al. "The Tay-Sachs Disease Gene in North American Jewish Populations: Geographic Variations and Origin." American Journal of Human Genetics 35 (1983): 1258-1269. Tay-Sachs disease is found in a high frequency among Hungarian Jews. The geneticists Petersen et al. mention the possibility that the Hungarian Jews are descended from the Khazars, and allege that their data support this contention.
        Poliak, Abraham Nahum. "Sources on the final stages of the Khazar Jews and their transformation into Ashkenazis." Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies 2 (1965): 171-172. Claims that Ashkenazic Jews and Mountain Jews partially descend from Khazar Jews.
        Pritsak, Omeljan Yósypovych. "The Pre-Ashkenazic Jews of Eastern Europe in Relation to the Khazars, the Rus' and the Lithuanians." In Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in Historical Perspective, ed. Howard Aster and Peter J. Potichnyj, pp. 3-21. Edmonton, Alberta, Canada: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, University of Alberta, 1990. Critical of an Ashkenazic-Khazar connection, but speculates that 8000 Khazarian Jews migrated to Kievan Rus.
        Réthelyi, Mari. "Hungarian Jewish Stories of Origin: Samuel Kohn, the Khazar Connection and the Conquest of Hungary." Hungarian Cultural Studies: e-Journal of the American Hungarian Educators Association 14 (2021): 52-64.
        Wade, Nicholas. "Geneticists Report Finding Central Asian Link to Levites." The New York Times (September 27, 2003): A2. Summarizes genetic study that may show that 52 percent of Ashkenazic Levites' Y DNA comes from Khazars.
        Wade, Nicholas. "Y Chromosome Bears Witness to Story of the Jewish Diaspora." The New York Times (May 9, 2000). Dr. Michael Hammer interprets recent genetic testing results to mean that most Jews around the world are related to each other and to Arabs, and are not to any significant extent descended from the Khazars or other convert groups.
        Weinryb, Bernard Dov. "The Beginnings of East European Jewry in Legend and Historiography." In Studies and Essays in Honor of Abraham A. Neuman, eds. Meir Ben-Horin, Bernard Dov Weinryb, and Solomon Zeitlin, pp. 445-502. Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1962. Critical of an Ashkenazic-Khazar connection.
        Weinryb, Bernard Dov. "Origins of East European Jewry: Myth and Fact." Commentary 24 (1957): 509-518. Critical of an Ashkenazic-Khazar connection.
        Wexler, Paul. Two-Tiered Relexification in Yiddish: Jews, Sorbs, Khazars, and the Kiev-Polessian Dialect. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2002. Argues that East European Jews descend from Khazars who adopted a form of East Slavic spoken in southern Belarus and northern Ukraine.
        Wexler, Paul. "What Yiddish Teaches Us about the Role of the Khazars in the Ashkenazic Ethnogenesis." Khazarskiy al'manax 2 (Kharkiv, 2004): 117-135.
        Wexler, Paul. "Yiddish Evidence for the Khazar Component in the Ashkenazic Ethnogenesis." In The World of the Khazars: New Perspectives - Selected Papers from the Jerusalem 1999 International Khazar Colloquium, eds. Peter Benjamin Golden, Haggai Ben-Shammai, and András Róna-Tas, pp. 387-398. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2007.
        Cross-referenced: Rosensweig, Bernard. "The Thirteenth Tribe, the Khazars and the Origins of East European Jewry." Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Thought 16:5 (Fall 1977): 139-162.
        Cross-referenced: Simonsohn, Shlomo. "The Thirteenth Tribe." In Una manna buona per Mantova - Man tov le-Man Tovah: studi in onore di Vittore Colorni per il suo 92o compleanno, ed. Mauro Perani, pp. 117-146. Firenze, Italy: Olschki, 2004.

In German:
        Diamant, Max, and Preiss, Artur. "Die Chazaren und die Ansiedlung der Ostjuden." In Jüdische Volkskunst by Max Diamant, pp. 62-81. Vienna, 1937. Claims some Khazar Jews arrived in Poland and that Eastern European Jewish art shows traces of Khazar culture.

In Hebrew:
        Altbauer, Moshe. "Mekhkaro shel Yitzhak Shiper al hayesod HaKuzari-Yehudi baMizrakh Eyropa." In Sefer Yitzhak Shiper: Ketavim nivkharim u-divre ha`arakha, ed. Shlomo Eidelberg, pp. 47-58. New York: `Ogen shele-yad ha-Histadrut ha-`Ivrit ba-Amerika, 1966. Critical of Yitzhak Schipper's toponymic arguments that place-names in Slavic lands sounding like Khazar were named after Khazars.
        Cross-referenced: Simonsohn, Shlomo. "Ha-shevet ha-shlosha asar." Michael: On the History of the Jews in the Diaspora 14 (1997): 51-76. Argues against studies (by Poliak, Koestler, and others) that claim Khazar ancestry for modern Jews.

In Hungarian:
        Konrád, Miklós. "Zsidók magyar nemzete. A nemzeti múlt és a zsidó múlt tudományos ábrázolása, különös tekintettel a kazárelméletre." Századok 3 (2016): 631-665. About scholars who supported the Khazar theory of Hungarian Jewish origins.

In Italian:
        Signorini, Alberto. "Dalla citta cazara allo shtetl polacco." Los Muestros: The Sephardic Voice No. 24 (September 24, 1996).

In Polish:
        Gumplowicz, Maksymilian Ernest. Początki religii żydowskiej w Polsce. Warsaw: E. Wende i S-ka, 1903. Argues that Polish Jews descend from Khazars and East Slavs.
        Schipper, Itzhak (Ignacy). "Rozwój ludności Żydowskiej na ziemiach Dawnej Rzeczypospolitej." In Żydzi w Polsce Odrodzonej, ed. Aleksander Hafftka, Itzhak Schipper, and Aryeh Tartakower, pp. 21-36. Warsaw, 1936.
        Schipper, Itzhak (Ignacy). "Dzieje gospodarcze Żydów Korony i Litwy w czasach przedrozbiorowych." In Żydzi w Polsce Odrodzonej, ed. Aleksander Hafftka, Itzhak Schipper, and Aryeh Tartakower, pp. 111-190. Warsaw, 1936.

In Russian:
        Brutzkus, Julius Davidovich. "Istoki russkogo evreystva." In Evreyskiy mir, Vol. 1: Ezhegodnik na 1939 g., pp. 17-32. Paris: Obyedinenie russko-evreyskoy intelligentsii, 1939.
        Sobolov, Denis. "Vozvrashchenie v Xazariyu." Dvadtsat' dva 108 (1998): 162-192. Argues in favor of an Ashkenazic-Khazar connection.

In Turkish:
        Brook, Kevin Alan. "Doğu Avrupa Yahudilerinin Kökeni." Karadeniz Araştırmaları No. 6 (Summer 2005): 1-23. Examines historical, onomastic, archaeological, architectural, genetic, and linguistic evidence for and against Khazar contributions to the population of East European Jews and concludes that a Khazar component probably exists but is minor.

In Yiddish:
        Brutzkus, Julius Davidovich. "Di ershte yedies vegn yidn in poyln." Historishe shriftn 1 (Yidisher visnshaftlekher institut, 1929): 55-72. Discusses early Jews in Poland; Doubts that the etymologies of certain Polish placenames derive from the Khazars.
        Hertz, Jacob Sholem. Di yidn in Ukraine fun di eltste tsaitn biz nukh 1648-49. New York: Farlag, 1949. Claims that Jews arrived in Poland and Ukraine from the Middle East and Khazaria.

In Russian:
        Kulchik, Yurii. Dagestan: Kumykskii etnos. Moscow: In-t Gumanitarno-polit. issledovanii programma "Novyi Vostok", 1993. Especially see page 6.
        Cross-referenced: Miziyev, Ismail Mussaevich. [The History of the Karachai-Balkarian People: from the ancient times to joining Russia.] Mingi-Tau (Elbrus) No. 1 (Nalchik, Russia: Mingi-Tau Publishing, 1994), pp. 7-104, 206-213. English translation by P. B. Ibanov, published in Moscow in 1997.

In Hebrew:
        Halter, Marek. [Title unavailable.] Yedioth Ahronot (October 8, 2001). Claims that the Mountain Jews of Krasnaya Sloboda, Azerbaijan descend from Khazars.

In Turkish:
        Editors. "7'nci yildizin esrari çözüldü." Sabah (Istanbul, Turkey, August 19, 2001): 1, 13.

In Russian:
        Miziyev, Ismail Mussaevich. [The History of the Karachai-Balkarian People: from the ancient times to joining Russia.] Mingi-Tau (Elbrus) No. 1 (Nalchik, Russia: Mingi-Tau Publishing, 1994), pp. 7-104, 206-213. English translation by P. B. Ibanov, published in Moscow in 1997.

In Russian:
        Achkinazi, Igor' Veniaminovich. Krymchaki: istoriko-etnograficheskii ocherk. Simferopol, Ukraine: Dar, 2000. Claims that Krymchaks are a mix of Khazars and Kipchaks with Judeans.

In English:
        Ankori, Zvi. Karaites in Byzantium: The Formative Years, 970-1100. New York: Ams Press, 1968. Argues against a Karaim-Khazar connection.
        Atmaca, Emine, Reshide Gözdaş, Ekin Kaynak Iltar, Rabia Akçoru, and Süleyman Ertan Tağman. "A Transition Period Ritual of the Karay Turks: Death." Religions 14:7 (July 4, 2023): article no. 870. Argues in favor of a Karaim-Khazar connection.
        Brook, Kevin Alan. "The Genetics of Crimean Karaites." Karadeniz Araştırmaları No. 42 (Summer 2014): 69-84. Presents genetic evidence against a Karaim-Khazar connection.
        Kefeli, Valentin Ilich. Karaites, Customs and Religion. Pushchino, Russia: Uch-Izd.L., Pushchinskogo nauchnogo tsentra RAN (Pushchino Research Centre), 1995. Argues in favor of a Karaim-Khazar connection.
        Kizilov, Mikhail Borisovich. Karaites Through the Travelers' Eyes. Troy, NY: The al-Qirqisani Center for the Promotion of Karaite Studies, 2003.
        Kizilov, Mikhail Borisovich. The Karaites of Galicia: An Ethnoreligious Minority Among the Ashkenazim, the Turks, and the Slavs, 1772-1945. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2009. Discusses how Seraja Szapszal invented a Khazar identity for the East European Karaites, and argues against there being any genuine Karaim-Khazar connection.
        Ross, Dan. Acts of Faith: A Journey to the Fringes of Jewish Identity. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1982 and New York: Schocken, 1984. Chapter 7 argues against a Karaim-Khazar connection.
        Schur, Nathan. "Khazars and Karaims." In The Karaite Encyclopedia. Frankfurt: Peter Lang Publishing, 1995.
        Shapira, Dan D. Y. "Khazars and Karaites, Again." Karadeniz Araştırmaları No. 13 (Spring 2007): 43-64. Argues against a Karaim-Khazar connection.
        Zajączkowski, Ananiasz. "Khazarian Culture and its Inheritors." Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 12 (1961): 299-307. Argues in favor of a Karaim-Khazar connection. The same arguments are presented in an essay in his book Karaims in Poland: History, Language, Folklore, Science (Warsaw: Panstwowe Wydawn. Naukowe, 1961).
        Zajaczkowski, Wlodzimierz. "The Karaites in Eastern Europe." In Encyclopedia of Islam, New Edition, vol. 4, ed. Emeri Johannes van Donzel, pp. 608-609. Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1993. Argues in favor of a Karaim-Khazar connection.
        Zholobov, Irina K. "The Role of the Religious Component in the History of the Formation of Crimean Karaim Ethnoculture." Nauchnyy al'manakh stran Prichernomor'ya 22:2 (2020): 21-27. Argues in favor of a Karaim-Khazar connection.

In French:
        Grégoire, Henri. "Les gens de la caverne: les Caraites et les Khazares." Le Flambeau 35:5 (Bruxelles, 1952): 477-485.

In Italian:
        Gini, Corrado. "I Caraimi di Polonia e Lituania." Genus 2:1-2 (Rome, 1936): 1-56. Argues that Polish-Lithuanian Karaites are anthropologically related to Chuvashes, and thus also to Khazars and Cumans.

In Polish:
        Zajączkowski, Ananiasz. "O kulturze chazarskiej i jej spadkobiercach." Myśl Karaimska, new series, vol. 1 (Breslau, 1946): 5-34. In favor of a Karaim-Khazar connection.

In Russian:
        Efetov, Konstantin Aleksandrovich, Kharlamov, Sergey Glebovich, and Efremov, Il'ya Alekseevich. "Polimorfizm mikrosatellitnykh lokusov Y-khromosomy u krymskikh karaimov i krymskikh tatar." Patogenez/Pathogenesis 21:3 (2023): 62-74. This partisan genetic study, with the lead author being a Crimean Karaite who hangs onto the false Khazar hypothesis of Crimean Karaite origins, collected new data for 26 Crimean Karaites' Y-chromosomal lineages, all of West Eurasian origin and none of East Eurasian origin, and uses flimsy reasoning to imagine that Crimean Karaites are descended from Turkic people and related to Crimean Tatars instead of to Jews, and imagines that the Karaites' Cohen Modal Haplogroup shows proof of origin from the Caucasus.
        Kefeli, Valentin Ilich. Karaimy. Pushchino, Russia: Pushchinskiy nauchniy tsentr RAN (Pushchino Research Centre), 1992. In favor of a Karaim-Khazar connection.
        Kefeli, Valentin Ilich, and Lebedeva, Emilia Isakovna. Karaimy - Drevniy Narod Kryma. Simferopol, Ukraine: Narodniy Institut Krymskix Karaimov, 2003. Considers Karaims representatives of indigenous Kipchak and Tatar language and culture on the Crimea.
        Kropotov, V. S. "Spetsifika formirovaniya etnicheskoy kul'tury krymskikh karaimov i osobennosti yeye proyavleniya na razlichnykh istoricheskikh etapakh razvitiya obshchestva." In Svyatyni i problemy sokhraneniya etnokul'tury krymskikh karaimov. Materialy nauchno-prakticheskoy konferentsii, pp. 109-149. Simferopol': Dolya, 2008. Argues in favor of a Karaim-Khazar connection.
        Mikhaylova, Diana. "Khazarskaya teoriya proiskhozhdeniya karaimov Rossiyskoy imperii v trudakh nekaraimskikh issledovateley serediny XIX - nachala XX vv." In Tirosh. Trudy po iudaike, vol. 8, ed. Motya Chlenov, pp. 176-184. Moscow, 2007. Non-Karaite researchers' opinions from the mid-19th to early 20th centuries concerning the Khazar theory of the origin of European Karaites.

In Turkish:
        Koçak, Murat. "Karayca Ağıtlardaki Teolojik Unsurlar (Theological Elements in Lamentations in Karaim Language)." Millî Folklor: An International and Quarterly Journal of Cultural Studies 18:139 (2023): 94-105. Argues in favor of a Karaim-Khazar connection.
        Kuzgun, Şaban. "Hazarlar ve Karaylar." Yeni Türkiye 16 (July-August 1997): 1713-1719.
        Zajączkowski, Ananiasz. "Hazar Kültürü ve Varisleri." Belleten 27:107 (July 1963): 477-483. In favor of a Karaim-Khazar connection. Reprinted in Hazarlar ve Musevilik, ed. Osman Karatay, pp. 123-133 (Çorum, Turkey: KaraM Yayınları, 2005).

In Yiddish:
        Nadel, Binyomen. "Karaimer un kazaren in frien mitalter." Folks-shtime (Warsaw, 1959): 136-141, 143-144.

In Ukrainian:
        Kononenko, V. P. "Khozars'kyy Kozats'kyy Mif." In Entsyklopediya istoriyi Ukrayiny, vol. 10, ed. V. A. Smoliy. Kyiv: Naukova dumka, 2013. Discusses disseminators of the false idea that Cossacks descend from Khazars.

In Polish:
        Halevy, M. A. "Do zagadnienia Chazarów i Chwalisów w XII wieku." Biuletyn Żydowskieg Instytutu Historycznego 21 (January-March 1957): 93-99. Discusses Khazars or Jewish Kaliz groups in the 12th century.
        Lewicki, Tadeusz. "Jeszcze o Chorezmijczykach na Wegrzech w XII w[ieku]." Biuletyn Żydowskieg Instytutu Historycznego 21 (January-March 1957): 100-103. Discusses Khorezmians in Hungary in the 12th century.
        Tolstov, Sergei Pavlovich. Po sledam drevnekhorezmiiskoy tsivilizatsii. Moscow: Izd-vo Akademii nauk USSR, 1948.

In English:
        Moskovich, Wolf. "Language Data and the Search for Possible Descendants of Khazars." In Xazary: Vtoroi Mezhdunarodnii kollokvium: tezisy, ed. Vladimir Iakovlevich Petrukhin and Artyom M. Fedorchuk, p. 73. Moscow: Tsentr nauchnyx rabotnikov i prepodavatelei iudaiki v vuzakh "Sefer", Evreiskii universitet v Moskve, and Institut Slavyanovedeniya Rossiiskoy akademii nauk, 2002.

In French:
        Kizilov, Mikhail Borisovich. "La Treizième Tribu: l'héritage fantasmatique des Khazars." In Juifs d'ailleurs. Diasporas oubliées, identités singulières, ed. Edith Bruder, pp. 180-190. Paris: Albin Michel, 2020. On researchers' suggestions of potential Khazar descendants among Cossacks, Crimean Karaites, Krymchaks, and Ashkenazim.
        Cross-referenced: Halter, Marek. "Prologue. Sur les traces des Khazars." In L'Empire khazar VIIe-XIe siècle: L'enigme d'un peuple cavalier, eds. Jacques Piatigorsky and Jacques Sapir, pp. 5-13. Paris: Autrement, 2005. Briefly discusses the possible descent of Ashkenazic Jews and Mountain Jews from the Khazars.

In German:
        Menzel, Theodor. "Über die Werke des russischen Turkologen A. Samojlovič: 'Zur Frage über die Erben der Chazaren und ihre Kultur.'" Archiv Orientální 1 (Prague, 1929): 230-231.

In Hungarian:
        Gumilev, Lev Nikolaevich. "A kazárok utódai." Történelmi Szemle 11 (1968): 11-18.

In Russian:
        Irmukhanov, Beimbet Babikteevich. Khazary i kazakhi: sviaz' vremen i narodov. Almaty, Kazakhstan: Nash Mir, 2003. Claims Khazars and Kazakhs are linked.
        Samoylovich, Alexander Nikolaevich. "K voprosu o naslyednikakh Khazar i ikh kul'tury." Yevreyskaya Starina 11 (Leningrad, 1924): 200-210. Considers the possible Khazar ancestry of various groups, including the Karachays and European Karaites.