# ancient music of Khazaria , is this a myth of an ancient jewish homeland



## deprofundis (Apr 25, 2014)

Ockay i dont know what to think of this subject.

But this mythos pop up once in a while askhenazi were from a region called kazharia capital Sarkel, wich is respectively present day chechnya and inghushetia territory...
king Bulan lead this empire among , what is said..

So i wonder bare whit me if this is a mythos or kazharia did exist was an empire and had music , since this is a classical forum.

So my odd querry is where there ancient music of kazharia , like ancient jewish music spared, museum have or kazharia is bogus... wikipedia is not necessarly an answer to this.

So im asking the jews themselve or a russian dude, someone to clarified this please.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

I've been interested in this for many years . Fact : Over a thousand years ago, a Turkic tribe which lived somewhere in what is now Russia, converted to Islam . At least their Khan and the families of the tribal leaders . 
The rank-and-file members of the Khazars, as they were called, did not convert . They retained their pagan/shamanistic religion . The Khazar people no longer exist ; they were absorbed into other nomad tribes on Eurasian Russia. A theory about the Khazars being the ancestors of todays Ashkenzic Jews has existed for a long time, but this is no longer widely believed by scholars and is pretty much discredited now. 
There is an interesting book by a Jewish writer and scholar named Arthur Koestler who died several years ago called "The 13th tribe " which supports the Khazar/Ashkenazic Jew theory , but scholars in general do not agree with it .
We know absolutely nothing about Khazar music , but I suppose it could have been similar to the folk music of today's Turkic peoples .
The Khazar language may have been related to the Chuvash language of the Volga region in Russia, spoken in the republic of Chuvashia, about 500 miles east of Moscow , close to the Volga Tatar republic .
But the Chuvash language is the only surviving branch of Turkic languages which may have been spoken by the Huns , and is the only Turkic language which is totally incomprehensible to other Turkic peoples . Interesting fact : Lenin was part Chuvash !


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

OOPS ! Finger slip ! The Khazars converted to Judaism, not Islam .


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## david johnson (Jun 25, 2007)

I thought "ashkenazy" simply meant the Jewish people who were living abroad rather than in the homeland. Interesting.


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## Biffo (Mar 7, 2016)

Modern DNA studies have completely discredited the Khazar origin of the Ashkenazim. This sort of information wasn't available when Koestler dug up the theory. He wrote his book with the best of intentions but probably shouldn't have bothered.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

If this interests anyone, you might want to look into the Bukhari Jews. Inspired by this thread, I wondered whether it would be easy to learn about their musical traditions... and it's trivially easy to do so!

Here you go to wikipedia:

Shashmaqam... and on to amazon: Music of the Bukharan Jewish Ensemble Shashmaqam.

I know. I'm awesome. It's hard being this awesome, though, let me tell you. Sometimes people don't appreciate how hard it is being this awesome. Trust me, it's hard sometimes. I make it look easy, I really do, but that's only because I'm so good at it.

Happy listening!


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

The Bukhara Jews speak Tajik, which is a Persian dialect of Central Asia . They are not Turkic but the Uzbeks , who are the majority in that region, are .


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

superhorn said:


> Arthur Koestler who died several years ago...


Thirty-five years ago, for the record. I like Koestler as a writer (apart from some of the mystical rubbish he wrote), but his motivations for pursuing this theory coloured his judgement.


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## bz3 (Oct 15, 2015)

eugeneonagain said:


> Thirty-five years ago, for the record. I like Koestler as a writer (apart from some of the mystical rubbish he wrote), but his motivations for pursuing this theory coloured his judgement.


What were his motivations?


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

bz3 said:


> What were his motivations?


An explanation of the mistaken origins of European anti-semitism by showing that the Ashkenazis are not descended from the Israelites. It's on the blurb of the back of the U.S. re-issue paperback copy I have, but it has it's own Wikipedia entry you can read about.

A lot of Koestler's non-fiction books (the ones that aren't essay collections) suffer from being quickly-written and having more literary merit than quality research. He even refers to this himself in some of his books. He also had a strange tendency to suspend reason in a way that makes him seem like several authors when you read different books.

_Darkness at Noon_ remains a classic, but his non-fiction is hit and miss.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

eugeneonagain said:


> A lot of Koestler's non-fiction books (the ones that aren't essay collections) suffer from being quickly-written and having more literary merit than quality research. He even refers to this himself in some of his books. He also had a strange tendency to suspend reason in a way that makes him seem like several authors when you read different books.
> 
> _Darkness at Noon_ remains a classic, but his non-fiction is hit and miss.


Very true. Koestler was an intellectual butterfly whose ventures into history and science often smacked of self-generated faddism, but always his name and reputation granted them a hearing. He once urged universal administration of a drug to reduce testosterone levels in males as the only reliable way to curb worldwide violence. Maybe not such a nutty idea .


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## Haydn man (Jan 25, 2014)

Some seriously impressive knowledge in this thread, I doff my cap :tiphat:


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## bz3 (Oct 15, 2015)

eugeneonagain said:


> An explanation of the mistaken origins of European anti-semitism by showing that the Ashkenazis are not descended from the Israelites. It's on the blurb of the back of the U.S. re-issue paperback copy I have, but it has it's own Wikipedia entry you can read about.
> 
> A lot of Koestler's non-fiction books (the ones that aren't essay collections) suffer from being quickly-written and having more literary merit than quality research. He even refers to this himself in some of his books. He also had a strange tendency to suspend reason in a way that makes him seem like several authors when you read different books.
> 
> _Darkness at Noon_ remains a classic, but his non-fiction is hit and miss.


I thought it had been proven that, at least, the Ashkenazim are genetically distinct from the Sephardim. Not an expert so I'm not making a claim, just throwing out what I thought to be generally accepted - that the Ashkenazim are more related to eastern Europeans than anything else.



Strange Magic said:


> Very true. Koestler was an intellectual butterfly whose ventures into history and science often smacked of self-generated faddism, but always his name and reputation granted them a hearing. He once urged universal administration of a drug to reduce testosterone levels in males as the only reliable way to curb worldwide violence. Maybe not such a nutty idea .


Nah it's nutty.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

bz3 said:


> I thought it had been proven that, at least, the Ashkenazim are genetically distinct from the Sephardim. Not an expert so I'm not making a claim, just throwing out what I thought to be generally accepted - that the Ashkenazim are more related to eastern Europeans than anything else.


That has not been proven. The reverse is the case according to DNA analysis. The Northern and Eastern European groups have simply absorbed some groups who were converts. I'm no expert on this so I can't make official judgements. What I would say is that it really doesn't matter either way since I don't think historical and current European anti-Semitism is likely to be overturned by its proponents deciding that "these" Jews are not related to "those" Jews. They'll just have an extra group to hate.

The 'genetic' dimension, though it holds true for obvious reasons of origin within an area where genetic material is shared, is meaningless really because Jewish communities already existed with cultural and geographical differences between them long before the Roman Empire was on the ascent. The absorptions and conversions and developments of groups in places as diverse as Poland, Yemen, Morocco, Greece, Uganda etc... speak of a religious lineage above anything of 'genetic' importance. No-one is working quite as hard or with as much zeal to make links between the world's Christian groups.

The talk of genetics in conjunction with religion is a miserable curse of culture.


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## bz3 (Oct 15, 2015)

eugeneonagain said:


> That has not been proven. The reverse is the case according to DNA analysis. The Northern and Eastern European groups have simply absorbed some groups who were converts. I'm no expert on this so I can't make official judgements. What I would say is that it really doesn't matter either way since I don't think historical and current European anti-Semitism is likely to be overturned by its proponents deciding that "these" Jews are not related to "those" Jews. They'll just have an extra group to hate.
> 
> The 'genetic' dimension, though it holds true for obvious reasons of origin within an area where genetic material is shared, is meaningless really because Jewish communities already existed with cultural and geographical differences between them long before the Roman Empire was on the ascent. The absorptions and conversions and developments of groups in places as diverse as Poland, Yemen, Morocco, Greece, Uganda etc... speak of a religious lineage above anything of 'genetic' importance. No-one is working quite as hard or with as much zeal to make links between the world's Christian groups.


Well I guess it's a worthy pursuit if you're interested in Jewish history - such as when the Ashkenazim did or did not leave the Middle East. It also has political importance for the state of Israel, which I assume is what you mean about the antisemitism.



eugeneonagain said:


> The talk of genetics in conjunction with religion is a miserable curse of culture.


Can't agree with that, or at least I'd say that if it's a "curse" and not a worthy pursuit then it is one entirely of the Jewish people's creation. For instance, the only US Senators in America that identify as atheist also identify as Jewish. If it were strictly a matter of religion this would confound logic.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Jews, Arabs: peas in a pod---

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2000/10/jews-and-arabs-share-recent-ancestry


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

bz3 said:


> Well I guess it's a worthy pursuit if you're interested in Jewish history - such as when the Ashkenazim did or did not leave the Middle East. It also has political importance for the state of Israel, which I assume is what you mean about the antisemitism.


No, the state of Israel is not what I have in mind when I think about the centuries of Anti-Semitism. I'm not sure why you would think that when the latter is a mid-20th century reality and the former is a centuries old issue.
The modern state of Israel as it was founded was always a mistake. My maternal grandmother was a refugee from Austria during the late 30s and after the war in the mid-fifties they went with a plan to be settlers in Israel, but soon returned. It was already problematic.



bz3 said:


> Can't agree with that, or at least I'd say that if it's a "curse" and not a worthy pursuit then it is one entirely of the Jewish people's creation. For instance, the only US Senators in America that identify as atheist also identify as Jewish. If it were strictly a matter of religion this would confound logic.


That idea of it being a 'race' is obviously a result of the low intermarriage in Jewish communities and the fact that the religion is considered to be inherited by the person, but they have absorbed many converts so it's evidently false. The fact of human genetic material and religious culture are not proper bedfellows. What do you mean when you say you don't agree with it? What is it you're disagreeing with?

I don't really follow the point about atheism among U.S. senators. Not a single person currently serving in congress is openly an atheist, but if they were and some said they were 'Jewish', well we'd know they meant they came from a Jewish background and still followed the general culture without actually being a believer. Intellectually it's tosh, but it happens all the time.


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## bz3 (Oct 15, 2015)

eugeneonagain said:


> No, the state of Israel is not what I have in mind when I think about the centuries of Anti-Semitism. I'm not sure why you would think that when the latter is a mid-20th century reality and the former is a centuries old issue.


Well then I guess I don't understand how the genetic lineage of the Ashkenazim is used by antisemites if it's not about the claim to Israeli land. I'm not European so perhaps this is well-known there but I am not aware of it. Most US Jews are Ashkenazi (including all the ones I know personally but one) and so I know more about their culture, as it is distinct from Jews elsewhere.



eugeneonagain said:


> That idea of it being a 'race' is obviously a result of the low intermarriage in Jewish communities and the fact that the religion is considered to be inherited by the person, but they have absorbed many converts so it's evidently false. The fact of human genetic material and religious culture are not proper bedfellows. What you mean when you say you don't agree with it? What it is you're disagreeing with?
> 
> I don't really follow the point about atheism among U.S. senators. Not a single person currently serving in congress is openly an atheist, but if they were and some said they were 'Jewish', well we'd know they meant they came from a Jewish background and still followed the general culture without actually being a believer. Intellectually it's tosh, but it happens all the time.


I was thinking of Michael Bennet and I know there are one or two more but I only used US Senators to avoid the "my friend is from a family of Russian Jews but she herself is an atheist and nevertheless sees herself as Jewish" - which is, in fact, true but you know how these internet things go when you start talking about personal experiences.

Another good public example of the point is Sam Harris, who has made his career as a critic of religion and avowed atheist but is himself Jewish.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

bz3 said:


> Well then I guess I don't understand how the genetic lineage of the Ashkenazim is used by antisemites if it's not about the claim to Israeli land. I'm not European so perhaps this is well-known there but I am not aware of it. Most US Jews are Ashkenazi (including all the ones I know personally but one) and so I know more about their culture, as it is distinct from Jews elsewhere.


Ashkenazis are the majority Jewish population everywhere. I think there are some crossed wires here. I agree that the anti-semites would think it a great coup if they could somehow prove that the Ashkenazi were not linked in any way to people from the Middle-East, but it's not going to happen anyway because the story of the Khazari as converts being the origin of the Ashkenazi is fiction.
When I am talking about anti-Semitism I am referring to its long presence all over Europe from the middle ages. It's not an obscure feature of history.



bz3 said:


> I was thinking of Michael Bennet and I know there are one or two more but I only used US Senators to avoid the "my friend is from a family of Russian Jews but she herself is an atheist and nevertheless sees herself as Jewish" - which is, in fact, true but you know how these internet things go when you start talking about personal experiences.
> 
> Another good public example of the point is Sam Harris, who has made his career as a critic of religion and avowed atheist but is himself Jewish.


There are clearly other people who have been senators and atheists (or agnostics) like e.g. Clarence Darrow, so I was not quite grasping what this had to do with being "culturally Jewish". There are plenty of people who identify as "Catholic" or of "Catholic upbringing", but who haven't seen the inside of a church in decades, and have no plan to any time soon. It doesn't seem to concern people quite so much.
Sam Harris isn't a believer, when he talks of 'the Jews' he's almost certainly referring to an historical community that has remained culturally defined throughout time.


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## bz3 (Oct 15, 2015)

eugeneonagain said:


> Ashkenazis are the majority Jewish population everywhere. I think there are some crossed wires here. I agree that the anti-semites would think it a great coup if they could somehow prove that the Ashkenazi were not linked in any way to people from the Middle-East, but it's not going to happen anyway because the story of the Khazari as converts being the origin of the Ashkenazi is fiction.
> When I am talking about anti-Semitism I am referring to its long presence all over Europe from the middle ages. It's not an obscure feature of history.


We were not talking about a general reference to European antisemitism. "An explanation of the mistaken origins of European anti-semitism by showing that the Ashkenazis are not descended from the Israelites." That was your response to my question on the last page. While that statement is not entirely clear, I took you to mean that that Koestler explained European antisemitism as having derived from the Ashkenazim's genetic apartness from the rest of world Jewry.

Perhaps you were talking about earlier Christian writers like Luther or something else since you say it has nothing to do with Israel - I was merely asking what you were referring to beyond "general antisemitism." But since Koestler was a Zionist and contemporary of modern Israel (via his Wiki, I have read nothing more about the man than what is there and in this thread) I assumed it had to do with the modern debate.

Also, I thought that Sephardis were still majority in Israel. A quick Google only makes things less clear. In any case, yes I was quite aware that the Ashkenazim dominates in the West.



eugeneonagain said:


> There are clearly other people who have been senators and atheists (or agnostics) like e.g. Clarence Darrow, so I was not quite grasping what this had to do with being "culturally Jewish". There are plenty of people who identify as "Catholic" or of "Catholic upbringing", but who haven't seen the inside of a church in decades, and have no plan to any time soon. It doesn't seem to concern people quite so much.
> Sam Harris isn't a believer, when he talks of 'the Jews' he's almost certainly referring to an historical community that has remained culturally defined throughout time.


Well that's kind of what we were talking about. Even the Wikipedia for the Ashkenazim parses the religious, ethnic, and cultural aspects of the Ashkenazi Jewish people. That's a whole lot more than "just a religion."


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

I'm not a spokesperson for the Jewish people of the world. My intention in this thread has been to make clear that there is no "modern debate", just another discredited quack theory.


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## deprofundis (Apr 25, 2014)

Please folks dont fight over racial origin or judaic stuff, this post was aim simply as music of the " hypotetic peoples'' that are khazars, i dont surf on stormfront if you know what i mean, my aim was to find khazarian music jewish or not since khazars apparently said not me, were not all jewish some were christian some were muslim, this ''highly hypotetic people'' wikipedia, there to be taken whit gloves since antisemitists of the world may highjack this.. my aim was antropological , and historic ,academic rare music of a people of forgotten lore, im somesort of nerd, dr pe body if yah all know what i mean, im stricly apolitical i even consider anarchism politicized, my beleif is nihilistic there fore seperation of the bubble world of politic , debate on race and racism, and whatever, but i would like to says has a nihilistic person and a strickly apolitic person, but a person that love jesus, worship Marie his mother she is pure and holy(like Jacobus Vaet worshp too) and beside jesus that is sacred and buddha that is his buddy(i know this), have a brave new year i welcome comment of any sort here no insult, no slur, no nothing, no censorship of the mentally skill, i got an i.q of 125, i score 135 for a test in mensa for 90-100 i.q test for dummies and score high for mensa test at 125 so here my beleif i dont feel superior , it just i respect true intellectualism ,good comment, contructiveness, postivism and rationality, im a rational man (im like data in startrek) im not emotional ( you can says im a genuine computer or a robot(no kidding, you all know i love you guys Brave new yeat Talk Classical, love, paradise for you if worthy i will open the gate and ask st peter to open the door, amen to this and let's focus on classical music of either european ancient lore jewish or islamic or pre islamic music pre christian pre everything what about atlantis and it music (lol i thus a joke here), good day remenber deprofundis not a bout hate but is merciless for his enemy, im a good christian but im not jesus..:tiphat:

Remenber the song of godflesh a non-classical classic bands of rock-metal indus duo the song merciless out of the E.p of the same name date back to 1994 listen to the lyric..

:angel: aman to Justin.k Broadrick , a heroic charimastic, a true accomplish artist of non classical music , pure artform well done well design well everything, mysole metal band wright now.

Enought said love you guys , always and evermore


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