The Xiongnu have the same DNA as the Scottish & Finnish...U5a1a.
Reddish (auburn) haired Mongol woman. The Oirats are a Mongol people. There's a belief that they
Oiratia, officially known as Kalmukya
Apparently is more common to find natural Mongol redhaired people than it is among half Asians. Why? Because the peoples they invaded in the steppes were often Scythians, Sakas, Khazars & other Caucasian peoples. These peoples are considered to have been Israelites originally. Although a majority left, the Caucasian features, skin & hair colors are present in the Mongol peoples, including the Oirats. Because in the steppes some Caucasian Israelites stayed behind. Today many peoples in Caucasia claim & are considered as descendants of Jews or Khazars. Despite Oiratia (Kalmukia / Kalmykia) not being part of Caucasia, Kalmukia is next door to Caucasia.
The Khazar homeland roughly corresponded with today's Kalmukia as seen in the two maps above. Kalmykia & Oiratia are other names for Kalmukia.
Kohen & Priestly Or Related Last Names
Khagan or Qagan (Mongolian: хаан, Khaan, Mongolian Script: , Qaγan; Chinese: 可汗; pinyin: Kè hán or Chinese: 大汗; pinyin: Dà hán; Persian: خاقان, Khāqān, alternatively spelled Kağan, Kagan, Khaghan, Kha-khan, Xagahn, Qaghan, Chagan, Қан, or Kha'an) is a title in the Mongolian language equal to the status of emperor and used to refer to someone who rules a khaganate or empire. The title was adopted by Ögedei Khan from the Turkic title kaɣan. Unlike many other words that sound more similar, the word khagan can be pronounced in many different ways according to the language or dialect used. It can be pronounced as kagan, haan, kahan... Kahan is another form of the word Kohen.
It may also be translated as Khan of Khans, equivalent to King of Kings. As the Lost Israelites came from the Middle East so did the title King of Kings. In the book of Revelation, Jesus receives the title King of Kings. In modern Mongolian, the title became Khaan with the 'g' sound becoming almost silent or non-existent (i.e. a very light voiceless velar fricative); the ğ in modern Turkish Kağan is also silent. Since the division of the Mongol Empire, emperors of the Yuan dynasty held the title of Khagan and their successors in Mongolia continued to have the title. Kağan is a common Turkish name in Turkey.
In 741, the king of Tashkent, addressing Emperor Xuanzong of Tang as Tian Kehan (another form for khan) during the Umayyad expansion. Kehan is very similar phonetically to Kohan & Kohen, the Hebrew priest. If they were Hebrews the title of priest was as important (or even more than that of king. During righteous times the kings gave report to the High Priest-Prophet & the prophets reprimanded the kings.
Dayan Khan was one of the Mongol Khans. His name "Dayan" means "judge" in Hebrew, a proper name for a supreme leader. Before hia dwindling in umbelief, King Solomon was a fair judge to his subjects. Before the Israelite monarchy, the People of the Covenant were lead by judges. So judges must have been highly regarded by them. The title was also used by the Khazar Israelites as well.
Hakan is the Tukish equivalent of kaghan. Hakan is a common Turkish forename. The name is produced by using two Turkish titles for rulers: Han (Khan) and Kağan (Khagan). Therefore, by joining Han and Kağan, a new title which is higher than Kağan is achieved: Han Kağan. It has transformed into Hakan over time.
The name is also spelled Khakan or Khaqan in other parts of the world, with the same etymology.
Khan is a title for a ruler in Turkic and Mongolian languages and also used by Persians, Azeris, Afghans/Pashtuns. Kahn is another for khan.
Kahn-e Pain is a village in the Irani Baluchistan.
Khan (Urdu, Balochi, Pashto:خان) is a surname and title of Central Asian or Mongolian origin. It is also a Russian-Jewish surname, derived from Kahn.
The surname Khan originates with the Mongolian khan. Originally used in the Mongol Empire, and later more widely by Islamic chieftains in South Asia.
Khan is a surname, a family name. Khan is a widespread Islamic surname in most countries of Central and South Asia. Khan is the surname of over 80,000 Islamic Britons with roots from that area.
Kahn is a German surname. Kahn is the German word that means, in informal contexts, small boat. It is also a Germanized form of the Jewish surname Cohen, another variant of which is Cahn.
Kaan was a Maya State & toponym & it's a Turkish last name coming from Khan.
Caan is a Scotch last name. Kan is a Hungarian last name. Kann is a Jewish and Austrian family name. Cann & McCaan are English & Scottish last names respectively. Cann is also a village in Dorset, Britain.
Kahn or Kahan (Persian: كهن) in Iran, are different locations: Kahan, Isfahan Kahn, Anbarabad, Kerman Province Kahn, Kerman, Kerman Province Kahan, Kuhbanan, Kerman Province Kahn, Ravar, Kerman Province Kahn-e Biduri, Kerman Province Kahn-e Nowruz, Kerman Province Kahn-e Safar, Kerman Province Kahan, Razavi Khorasan Province Kahn-e Ezzat, Sistan and Baluchestan Province
There are tens of toponyms, including villages, with the name "khan" all over Iran, especially in Sistan, Azerbaijan & Balochistan. Sistan is the evolved name for Sakastan, an Israelite area.
Kun is a Hungarian: ethnic name for a member of a Turkic people known in English as the Cumanians (Hungarian kún). Jewish (from Hungary): adoption of 1, replacing the Jewish homophone Kuhn. Jewish (eastern Ashkenazic): variant of Kuhn.
Kun is also a Scotch last name. Koen is a Dutch name & last name. Coon is a Scottish & German last name.
Recorded in over fifty different spellings including Cohan, Cohen, Cohn, Cohane, Kohen, Kuehn, Kohn, Kun, Kagan, Keegan, Cagan, Cohansky, Cohen, Keehne, Keehn, Ken, Kain, Cain, McCaine, Kahan, Cowan, McGowan, Coyne, HaKohen, Kogen, O'Conney, Coony, Coonahan, Coonihan, Coonie, Coonan, Coumey, Coomey Cooihan, Cooney (there are two places in the States with this name: Cooney, New Mexico & Cooney, Ohio), O'Cuanao, Cuana, Coona, O Cuanaic, O'Cuanaich, Coonifer, Conifera, Conner, Connery, Connolly, Connor, Conroy, Conway, Conwy, Coogan, Cook, Cooke and others, and found in its different spellings throughout Europe.
Other Jewish last names that are for sure related: Kahna, Kahne, Kahner, Kahnsky, Kahnwormser, Coghene, Coghn, Couyghen, Coghan, Coggen, Coguen, Cokhen, Goghen, Koghen, Kogan, Cooghan, Kahanowitz (son of cohen), Caplan, Chaplain, Chapling, Chaplin, Caplen, Copland, Kapelaan, Kaplin & Kahny.
English, Welsh & Irish: Conn, Conway, Cohan, Chaplan, Quinn. German: Kihn, Kuhn, Cön, Gattel, Katz (name). Catalan: Gatell, Capellà. Dutch: Kon, Katten (translated as "Kohen"), Käin/Kaein. French: Cahen, Caen. Greek: Kots, Kotais, Kotatis. Italian: Coen, Sacerdote, Sacerdoti. Spanish: Cuen, Koen, Cannoh, Canno, Canoh, Cano, Capellán, Sanó, Guzmán. Euskera: Apeztegui "Priestly House", in Euskera "apaiz" (Priest) & "tegi"(place). Variants: Apéstegui, Apesteguia, Apaéstegui y Aphesteguy (France). Rumanian: Kagedan (in Hebrew is read: "kaf-shin-daled-nun" & its acronym of "Kohanei Shluchei DeShmaya Ninhu," being equivalent of the Aramean phrase: "Priests are Heavens' messengers". Serb: Koen, Kon. Polish: Kaplan (Foreign Pole loanword equivalent to "priest"). Portuguese: Cunha, Çano. Russian: Kogen, Kokhen (Kochen), Pop (priest) Brevda, Kagedan/Kagidan. Georgian: Kotais, Kotatis, Kutatisi, Kutaïssi. Turkish: Kohen. Arab: al-Kohen, Tawil. Hebrew: Hakohen, ben-Kohen, bar-Kohen. Others: Maze, Azoulai, Rappaport, Shapiro, Kahane, Kohanchi (Persian).
Kun: Recorded in over fifty different spellings including Cohan, Cohen, Cohn, Cohane, Kohen, Kohn, Kun, Kagan, Cagan, Cohansky, and many others, and found in its different spellings throughout Europe, this is a surname which has two quite distinct and separate origins. The first and most popular being a Jewish caste surname. This developed from the original Hewbrew word "kohen", meaning a priest. However not all Jews bearing this name belong to the priestly caste which descended from Aaron, the brother of Moses. In the 18th and 19th centuries many Russian members of the faith changed their name to Kogan or Cagan as examples, to avoid forced military service in the army, priests being the only males exempt from such service. The second possibility is that it is a form of either of two ancient pre 10th century Gaelic surnames originally O' Cadhain of the province of Connacht, or O' Comhdhain from Ulster. The prefix O' indicates male descendant of, plus the personal bynames "Cadhan" mean wild goose, that is to say a soldier of fortune or mercenary or from "Comhdan", meaning a shared gift. Examples of the surname recording taken from surviving early registers of birth, deaths and marriage include that of John Cohn who married Anne Barlow at the church of St Bartholomew the Less in the city of London in 1649, the birth of Levy Issoscher Cohen at the Mambro Synagogue, London, on November 24th 1772, whilst on August 20th 1864, Michael Cohen was born at Claremorris, in County Mayo, Ireland. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.
Hogan is an Irish surname. A hogan is a Navajo dwelling too. Hogan as a toponym is found in Australia & the USA.
The name has been further Anglicised to the form "Hagan" in Northern Ireland. Hagan is the name of several villages, cities...in the USA, Norway & Iran.
Hagan is an Irish, British & Ghanaian last name. The Ghanaians found in the wikipedia with that name come from the areas of that country that Israelite tribes are in the majority (Ashantis & Gadangmes). O'Hagan is an Irish last name.
Haakon, also spelled Håkon (in Norway), Hakon (in Denmark), Håkan (in Sweden), or Hákon, is an older spelling of the modern Norwegian form of the Old Norwegian masculine first name Hákon. Hagen is another Danish form of Håkon.
Håkan is a common Swedish given name. It has a common origin with the Norwegian given name Haakon in the Old Norse Hákon. The meaning of the name is disputed but a possible meaning is "high son" from Old Norse há- (Proto-Norse hauha-) (high) and konr (kin).
Peter Nicolai Arbo-Haakon den gode
On Swedish runestones the name is usually written Hakun and in medieval documents usually Haquon or in the Latinised versions Haqvin/Haqvinus. From the 16th century and onwards the name is usually written Håkan. Although in some western regions the name can be found as Håkon and Håka as late as in the 18th century.
In Old East Slavic the name was written Yakun (Cyrillic: Якун).
Hakon is a village in Hkamti Township in Hkamti District in the Sagaing Region of northwestern Burma. It is located to the north of Janhtang and east of Tekti in a heavily forested part of the country. Interestingly this village is in one of the regions were the Zomis (Lost Israelites) are more present.
Hagen is the 41st-largest city in Germany, located in the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It is located on the south eastern edge of the Ruhr area, 15 km south of Dortmund, where the rivers Lenne and Volme (met by the river Ennepe) meet the river Ruhr. As of 31 December 2010 the population was 188,529.
Hagen was first mentioned ca. 1200, presumably the name of a farm at the junction of the Volme and the Ennepe.
Toponyms "Hagen": Hagen, Ekenäs, a park in Ekenäs, Finland Hagen, Moselle, village in the French département of Moselle Hagen, Saskatchewan, hamlet in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan Hagen, Schleswig-Holstein, municipality in the district of Segeberg, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany Hagen, Luxembourg, small town in the commune of Steinfort, western Luxembourg Hagen (Bergen), village administered by the Lower Saxon town of Bergen Hagen (peak), in the canton of Schaffhausen, Switzerland Mount Hagen, major city in Papua New Guinea, simply referred to as Hagen in Tok Pisin Mount Hagen (volcano), volcanic mountain in the Western Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea Hagen (Randen), a mountain in the Swiss canton of Schaffhausen Hagen im Bremischen, municipality in the district of Cuxhaven, Lower Saxony Hagen, Osnabrück (Hagen am Teutoburger Wald), municipality in the district of Osnabrück, Lower Saxony Hagen, Schleswig-Holstein, municipality in the district of Segeberg, Schleswig-Holstein Hägen, village and a former municipality in the district of Dithmarschen, Schleswig-Holstein.
Tracing the Dispersion
'The apocryphal book of 4 Ezra (a continuation of the book of Ezra in the Old Testament) describes how Shalmaneser, King of Assyria, took northern Israel captive. It also indicates, as Isaiah prophesied (see Isa. 10:27), that at least some of the Israelites escaped their captors and fled north.
According to the account in 4 Ezra (referred to in some editions as 2 Esdras), the fleeing captives 'entered into Euphrates by the narrow passages of the river' and traveled a year and a half through a region called 'Arsareth.' (4 Ezra 13:43-45.) The narrow passage could refer to the Dariel Pass, also called the Caucasian Pass, which begins near the headwaters of the Euphrates River and leads north through the Caucasus Mountains.'
'At the turn of the century, Russian archaeologist Daniel Chwolson noted that a stone mountain ridge
running alongside this narrow passage bears the inscription Wrate Israila, which he interpreted to
mean 'the gates of Israel.''
Why would the Israelites fleeing the Captivity hundreds of years before Christ have written 'Wrate [Vrata] Israila' in Old Slavonic/Russian? This is clearly not a Hebrew or Aramaic expression at all, but is of much later date (the point is many people, including scholars, believe that the Israelites started to speak the Indoeuropean languages of the Persian conquerors).
'These narrow passages lead through a region called Ararat in Hebrew, and Urartu in Assyrian. Chwolson writes that Arsareth, mentioned in 4 Ezra, was another name for Ararat, a region extending to the northern shores of the Black Sea. A river at the northwest corner of the Black Sea was anciently named Sereth (now Siret), possibly preserving part of the name Arsareth. Since 'ar in Hebrew meant 'city,' it is probable that Arsareth was a city-the city of Sareth-located near the Sereth River northwest of the Black Sea.'
'According to Chwolson, one of these inscriptions refers to the Black Sea as the 'Sea of Israel.' On the Crimean Peninsula was a place referred to as the 'Valley of Jehoshaphat,' a Hebrew name, and another place was called 'Israel's Fortress.''
'It is difficult to date these inscriptions, but some of them contain information relating to the fall and captivity of Israel. Others appear to have been written about the time of Christ and even later, indicating that the area north of the Black Sea contained an Israelite population for many centuries.'
'The Russian archaeologists also found mounds, or heaps of earth, dotting the landscape. These mounds, stretching across the entire region north of the Black Sea where the Hebraic inscriptions were found, turned out to be elaborate burial chambers, often containing a leader of the people with some of his possessions. Although mound building was not a typical type of burial in the Middle East, 'high heaps' or 'great heaps' are described as a means of burial in several Old Testament passages. (See Josh. 7:26, Josh. 8:29; 2 Sam. 18:17.) Furthermore, the people of Ephraim were commanded in the Old Testament specifically to build up 'high heaps' as 'waymarks' as they traveled. (See Jer. 31:21.)'
'There are other peoples throughout Europe and Asia whose origins trace from this area and whose names seem to have a Hebrew root. Among these are the Galadi (the root word probably comes from the biblical Gilead, the region east of the Jordan River, pronounced Galaad in that region and in Assyria and the Celts (a Germanic pronunciation of Galadi); the Gallii (or Gali, root word probably from the biblical Galilee), also called Gals, Gaels, and Gauls; the Sacites, or Scythians (the word comes from Assyrian captives, Esak-ska and Saka, comparable to the Hebrew Isaac); the Goths, or Getai (the root probably from the biblical Gad, pronounced Gath); the Jutes of Jutland (from the tribe of Judah); and the Parsi (from Hebrew Paras, which means 'the dispersed ones'), who settled Paris and whose name in Germanic territory sound-shifted to Frisians.'
Karaites: Who Are They, and Where Do They Live?
Like the Samaritans, the Karaites accept only the Five Books of Moses (the Torah) and the Book of Joshua, and their identity as Jews has been questioned on a number of occasions. Unlike the Samaritans, the Karaites celebrate Passover on the standard date, though their observance of the holiday is quite distinctive. Because the Karaites believe in a strictly literal interpretation of the Torah, without any adherence to the Oral Law embodied in rabbinic-talmudic tradition, the Karaite Haggadah (i.e. the text that sets forth the order of the ceremonial Passover meal) contains only verses from the Torah describing the Exodus from Egypt and the ten plagues, but none of the Talmudic discussions. Curiously, the Karaites do not refer to the holiday as “Passover” because in the Torah uses that word only to describe the sacrifice on the night before, never to refer to the seven-day festival of unleavened bread. Their strict observance means that not only leavened bread but any food or drink that has fermentation potential—wine, cheese, yogurt—is forbidden to Karaites during Passover. However, they also traditionally use pickled lemons instead of horseradish to make “bitter herbs” (maror) for the Passover plate.
The roots of the Karaite Judaism go back to the so-called Heterodox Zone. Some scholars posited a connection between the Karaites as a remnant of the Sadducees, the 1st-century Jewish sect that followed the Hebrew Bible literally and rejected the Pharisees’ notion of an Oral Torah even before it was written. But most historians believe that Karaites emerged in the 8th century in Baghdad (then in the territory of the Abbasid caliphate) as a sect of followers of Anan ben David, who called themselves “Ananites”. Ben David prescribed following the Bible to the exclusion of rabbinic tradition and laws. In Hebrew, the term karaim, meaning “Readers (of the Hebrew Scriptures)”, emerged in the 9th-century works of Benjamin ben Moshe Nagavendi, who used it to describe various anti-Talmudic movements, including that of the Ananites. As a result of their denial of the Oral Torah, the Karaites differ from the followers of Rabbinical Judaism in their laws of kashrut and ritual purity, the rite of circumcision, marriage laws, rules of ritual slaughtering, their religious calendars, and the arrangement of synagogues.
The so-called “Golden Age” of the Karaite movement lasted from the end of the 10th to the beginning of the 11th century, when the Karaite communities appeared throughout the Middle East, the Byzantine Empire (Adrianople and Constantinople), the Caucasus (Tiflis and Gagry), and Northern Africa (Cairo). According to different estimates, around 30-40% of the Jewish population at the time times followed the Karaite movement. During this period, the Karaites developed strong contacts with Muslim scientists and as a result were the first Jewish authors to write important works on Hebrew grammar. A tiny Karaite presence in Jerusalem has existed since medieval times; the Karaite synagogue is the oldest synagogue in Jerusalem. However, most of the Karaites in Israel today—numbering about 40,000— arrived from Egypt with the wave of Egyptian Jews fleeing the country in the 20th century. The largest Karaite presence in Israel is found in Ashdod and Ramle. Though they do not recognize rabbinical authorities, Israeli rabbinical authorities recognize Karaites as Jews, allowing them the Right of Return under the Israeli law. The issue of whether Karaites are Jewish is further compounded by the fact that in their community, a person’s “Jewishness” is passed along the paternal line, whereas in mainstream, Rabbinical Judaism, maternal descent is what counts. Only the Cohen and Levite status and membership in the Ashkenazic or Sephardiс groups is passed on through paternal line in Rabbinical Judaism. Although Karaites are recognized as Jews in Israel, they have not always been granted this status in other parts of the world, sometimes fortunately for them, as we shall see below.
One particularly interesting group of Karaite Jews is the Crimean Karaim. They follow Karaite Judaism, yet speak a Turkic language (though they use Hebrew as their liturgical language, as well as for business correspondence, scientific works, liturgy, and tombstone epitaphs). Because of this unusual combination of religion and language, the Crimean Karaim raise the question of whether their ancestors were Jews who adopted a Turkic language, or speakers of a Turkic language who adopted Judaism. Both massive language shift and wholesale religious conversion are common features in world history. In the case of Crimean Karaim, one theory takes them to be descendants of Middle Eastern Karaite Jews who settled in Crimea and adopted a form of the Kipchak tongue. (Kipchak is a branch of Turkic languages that includes Kazakh, Karakalpak, and Kyrgyz in Central Asia, Tatar in the central Volga region, and Balkar in the northern Caucasus region.) But the language of Crimean Tatars belongs to the Oghuz rather than Kipchak branch of the Turkic family. This means that Crimean Karaim must have adopted a language of some other Turkic-speaking group.
It is likely that the Crimean Karaim descended from the Jews who came into contact with the Tatar-speaking Golden Horde, picked a Turkic language from them, and then resettled in Crimea in the 13th century. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that the first written mentions of the Karaim presence in Crimea is dated 1278 and comes not from the Byzantine or Italian colonies of Crimea but from Solkhat (today’s Old Crimea), the first Tatar capital of the peninsula. Moreover, the oldest Karaim artifacts in Crimea, the earliest authentic tombstone inscriptions, were found in Kyrk-Er (now called Chufut-Kaleh); they date from the 1360s, when the Tatars captured the city. Those early tombstones contain such Tatar names as Parlak, Manush, and Tokhtamysh, meaning that the first Karaim settlers there spoke a Kipchak language.
A different hypothesis takes the Crimean Karaim to be descendants of ethnic Kipchaks who converted to Karaite Judaism. One possibility is that Crimean Karaim stem from the storied Khazars, a group that converted to Judaism but most likely spoke a Turkic language—though scholars do not know what Turkic subfamily it belonged to. It is now widely believed, however, that the Khazar Khanate was multiethnic and multilingual state, with a population of not only Turkic-speakers, but also of speakers of Iranian, Finno-Ugric, Slavic, and Caucasian languages. Another reason to doubt the Khazar theory of the Crimean Karaim origins is that Khazars are most widely believed to be adherents of Rabbinical (or Talmudic) Judaism rather than Karaite Judaism.
Khazar Jewish empire encompasing southern Russia (next door to Caucasia) & Ukraine.
Kevin Alan Brook, the author of The Jews of Khazaria, concluded through genetic testing that the Crimean Karaim are indeed of Middle Eastern origin and hence related to other Jews. But Crimean Karaim themselves are divided as to whether they identify themselves as Jewish first and Turkic-speaking second, or vice versa. Since the 19th century, some leaders of Crimean Karaim have sought to distance themselves from a Jewish identity, emphasizing their Turkic heritage and claiming that they are “Turkic practitioners of a Mosaic religion”, separate and distinct from Judaism. Such a maneuver is possibly a response to anti-Semitic threats and repressions.
In the early period after Russia’s annexation of Crimea (1783), the repressive measures of the Russian government against the Jews (“the pale”, double taxation, mandatory military service) applied to the Karaim too. However, the Karaim community sent representatives to the tsar asking to separate the Karaim from the rest of the Jewish population of the Russian Empire. Their main arguments focused on the rejection of the authority of the Talmud (which in the opinion of the Russian authorities was the main enemy of Christianity), as well as on the privileges that the Karaim had been granted by previous authorities, Lithuanian princes and Crimean khans. As a result, the Russian administration granted a number of exemptions to the Karaim but not to the Rabbinical Jews, to whom the laws were applied in all strictness.
This legal distinction in status also helped save the Crimean Karaim from Nazi persecution. The Reich Agency for the Investigation of Families determined that the Karaites were not to be considered Jews, from the standpoint of German law. Despite the reservations that many Nazis had about Crimean Karaim, the official ruling on the matter stated:
“The Karaite sect should not be considered a Jewish religious community within the meaning of paragraph 2, point 2 of the First Regulation to the Reich Citizenship Law. However, it cannot be established that Karaites in their entirety are of blood-related stock, for the racial categorization of an individual cannot be determined without … his personal ancestry and racial biological characteristics…”
The Soviets too persecuted Crimean Karaim, many of whom were dispossessed and shot. After the Soviets recaptured Crimea from Nazi forces in 1944, the Soviet authorities counted just over 6,000 remaining Karaim. Like many other groups that survived Nazi occupation, the Crimean Karaim found themselves under the shadow of official Soviet suspicion. While they were not subject to mass deportation as a group, unlike the Crimean Tatars, Greeks, Chechens, and others, the Soviet authorities alleged that they had collaborated under the Nazi occupation, and some individual Crimean Karaim were deported.
Though deriving their name from the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine, today most Crimean Karaim live in Lithuania and Eastern Galicia (Western Ukraine) rather than in Crimea itself. These groups trace back to the original Karaite population in Crimea, some members of which resettled in Vilnius (Vilna), Trakai (Troki), and other smaller towns in Lithuania proper and in areas of modern Belarus and Ukraine that were once part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The term “Crimean Karaim” is still used for this community to distinguish it from historically Aramaic-, Hebrew-, and Arabic-speaking Karaites of the Levant, Anatolia, and the Middle East. According to Crimean Karaim tradition, in 1392 Grand Duke Vytautas of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania relocated one group of the Crimean Karaim to Lithuania, where the community continued to speak its Turkic language, but developed a particular Lithuanian dialect of it. Although Lithuanian authorities typically placed all Jews—those following Rabbinical Judaism and Karaites—under the same umbrella category, Karaites in Trakai refused to comply, citing differences in faith. Tensions between followers of Rabbinical Judaism, who considered the other group as apostates, and Karaites, who felt in a subordinate position, continued throughout 16th and 17th centuries. In 1646, Trakai Rabbinical Jews were expelled from the town by Karaites request. Only in the early 18th century did representatives of the two strands of Judaism agree to mutual respect and to resolve disputes without involving non-Jewish authorities. This concord was in part a result of the persecutions that both communities suffered in the 17th century during the Chmielnicki Uprising of 1648 and the wars between Russia and Poland in 1654-1667, when many towns were plundered and burnt, including Trakai. Catholic missionaries made serious attempts to convert the local Karaims to Christianity, but were ultimately unsuccessful.
Today, Crimean Karaim communities still exist in Lithuania (where they live mostly in Panevėžys and Trakai regions), Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, and Russia, though they are rapidly shrinking due to both assimilation and emigration. The 1979 Soviet census showed 3,300 Karaim, but the latest Russian census showed only 366 Karaites, more than half of them in Moscow and St. Petersburg. The 2002 Ukrainian census listed 834 Karaim in the country, most of them in Crimean cities such as Yevpatoria, Simferopol, Feodosia, Sevastopol, Yalta, and Bakhchisaray, formerly the capital of the Crimean Khanate. In Lithuania, not many Karaim remain either. The 1997 survey listed only 257 Karaim, 32 of which were children under 16. The largest Karaite community in the U.S. (though mostly of Egyptian rather than Crimean Karaim origin) resides not far from my homebase, in Daly City, California. According to the Wikipedia, the Congregation B’nai Israel in Daly City is the only Karaite synagogue in the United States.
Sayuna, a City of Zion in Yemen? Zion Mountains in Mongolia?
City of Sayun in Yemen
Zion (also Sion) is Tziyon in Hebrew. Say'ūn, Saywun, Seiyun, Ṣahyūn or Ṣihyūn are forms of the Arabic word for Zion. Sayuna is the Judeo-Arabic form of Zion. Sena (its name), the lost hometown long claimed by the Judeo-Lemba people, is considered to be an evolved form of Sayuna which in turn evolved from Sayun, which in turn evolved from Tziyon, or Zion.
Altay-Sayan mountains
If we take into account the previous word evolution & that in Semitic languages vowels don't really count, then it wouldn't be a remarkable linguistic difference (if at all) to conclude that Sayan could be a local form of the word Zion. Sayan is the name of the Sayan Mountains which are a mountain range in southern Siberia, Russia (the Tyva Republic specifically) and northern Mongolia. In the past, it used to serve as the border between Mongolia and Russia.
The Israelites of the steppes, of the high lands of Asia & their possible relatives
"Manasseh (and Ephraim) was born in Egypt and oral tradition states a Kyrgyz tribe came from Egypt".
Both Jews & Tajiks were active on the Silk Road about a thousand years ago.
Central Asia was part of the Iranian (Persian/Farsi) cultural/ethnic area, together with the Caucasian area & Persia proper/core area. The Jews & Israelites of the area are Bukharans, Mountain Jews, Gruzis, Tats, Armenians, Georgians, Tajikis, Azeris, Ossetians... respectively. Eventually part of Caucasia & most of Central Asia became Turkified except for the Jews & some of the Israelites.
Tartaria is were scythia was.
Righteous Israelites
In Turkestan children of Moses prefer being called Moussai.
The dromedary is also called Arabian camel or Indian camel. Bactrian Camels as distinct from Arabian camels that have only one hump.
As Joseph J. Williams puts it his Hebrewisms of West Africa: a strong influx of Hebrew culture may have traced well beyond the Dnieper (Tartaria...) into the very heart of Mongolia itself. Something that the Mongols, at least the Khalka tribes, have in common with the Israelites is that they had thirteen tribes. There were 12 Israelite tribes that inherited land. If you add Levi they are 13 tribes.
Kipchaks, their offspring & related ethnicities
Seems like there are connexions between Asia & Africa. Apart from the ones that I mentioned in other ocasions I would like to mention a few. Northeastern Nigeria has a language & people called KaNuri. KaNauri is a Tibetan language spoken in Himachal Pradesh, India. The CaNary Islands were called CaNarii in olden times. The Canary Islands are an archipelago of northafrican islands belonging to Spain & their ancestors, the Guanches, were Berbers. Coming back to the KaNuri Nigerians, their state is called Borno, which is almost the same as the Asiatic osland of Borneo. This island has clear connections with the Karens, another Israelite people. Keren is a very similar word in Hebrew meaning horn & a toponym of Manasseh, so the Karen might be Manassehites. Not by chance the Israelite neighbors Kukichins are mostly Manassehites & Ephraimites in a lesser number. The Kanuris Nigerian-Cameroonians are considered to be Israelites by some people. The KaNauri (KaNor, KiNnauri, KuNawur, KuNawar), languages are spoken in Himachal Pradesh, India. KaNor, an alternative name for KaNauri is very similar to KaNo, a northern Nigerian city. The prefix KaN might be a short way for CaNaan, the ancient name of the Holy Land, therefore the connexion might be their common Israelite origin. The KuNar language is spoken in the neighboring area by some Pashtuns. Kashmiri, another Israelite neighboring people, is also part of this group of langauges. KuNar is also an Afghan district relatively close to Himachal Pradesh, India & it's mainly populated by Pashtuns. The KuNara Khel or KaNera Khel are a Baloch tribe, sub tribe of Azam Khel clan. As I have said a zillionth times the Baluch might be Israelites, at least several of their clans that are clearly related to Pathans. KuNming, Yunnan, China, was the pass of some Israelites from Kaifeng to Indochina. It's noteworthy that KuNming starts with mentioned CaNaanite prefix.
KaNauj, the Indian district were many people consider the Gypsies (Also believed to be Israelites) to come from, is also close to the mentioned Indian areas & has the KaN prefix. There's an ethnic group also in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, a state disputed with China. They are 20,000 people, but only 11,000 speak the language known as Pattani (also known as Manchati, Manchad, Patni, Chamba, Chamba Lahuli, Lahuli, Swangla, Changsapa Boli. It's a Tibeto-Burman language (Sino-Tibetan stock) spoken in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. The language is spoken in the Lahul Valley, Pattan, Chamba-Lahul, and lower Mayar valleys. We will see later on that Chamba might be an Israelite name.). The Pathans or pashtuns are considered by most experts to be part of the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel. There are some isolated groups (Considered to be Lost Israelites, although not widely agreed upon) in Indonesia. There are several other Israelite groups (widely recognized as such) in India (Bagdadi Jews, Judeo-Telugus...), in the Indo-Myanmaran border (Chinkukis or Kukichins), Myanmar (Karens, Chinkukis & possibly Shans), Thailand (Karens)...
Once I theorized about Israelites, the Pathans going to Indonesia & leaving smaller groups of people on their way. I also suggested that the people of the Thai Pattani area would be the offspring of a group of Pathans that named Pattani after themselves. Now I add the speakers of Pattani language as offspring of Pashtuns, therefore Israelites. Pattani is a language related to the Chinkuki language whose speakers are Israelites so the Pattani speakers could be the link between the Pathans (Israelites) & the Chinkukis (Israelites as well). So the speakers of Pattani would be Israelites too. Another interesting detail is that the district of Chamba (in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. Weere the Pattanis & their related Chamba Lahulis live) ) is bordering the Israelite state of Kashmir, India.
There are a couple of cities called Chamba in western Iran, area of dwelling of the captive Israelites. It's also noteworthy that Chamba is the name of a people in Nigeria, not very far from the Igbos (a people widely as Israelites). There is another ethnic group which is Bedouin with the name Chaamba as well. They have been categorized at some moment as Berbers, but they are usually regarded as Arab Bedouins. Historically Berbers & Jews have intermingled highly. The Bedouins in the Sinai peninsula (They're not always regarded as Israelites.), Israel & surroundings are regarded as having Israelite origin. Nowadays there are many Berber ethnic groups with Jewish or Israelite origin (Iberogens, Iddaosahaks...), so it wouldn't be surprising to find that the Chamba Bedouins (neighbors of Berbers) inspite being Arab lost their Jewish identity. Yemenis are supposedly Arabs, but their genes say other wise (That they are Jews). I insist a lot on this topic because Yemen used to be a Jewish kingdom like Khazaria, that atracted lot of Israelites from then long but also before officialising Judaism. The thing doesn't end here because there's people living in southern Indochina (Vietnam & Cambodia mostly) called Cham, but their ancient kingdom (One of the most celebrated Kingdoms of Indochina) that they created was called Champa. So it's likely that the kingdom that they created was called after their name, something that happens usually. Champa is indeed the same as Chamba because p & b are letters with almost the same sounds. There's also an Albanian ethnic group with the name Chamba & as the scholars affirm, that area of the BaLCaNs (or their people) is related to the Pashtuns & the Albanians themselves are believed to have Israelite roots. The Cham language of Indochina is a Malayo-Polynesian language so it's connected to the Australasians of Indonesia, West Timor, Madagascar, Hawaii..., several of whom are considered to be Israelites. The names Himachal & Himalaya are very similar to Hima, an African tribe related to the Tutsis. Both of these Africaan Groups are considered to be Israelites. As I have pointed out in other chances, the Himalaya & surroundings have quite many Israelite or related names. Most Asian Israelites live close by or trace their history to the Himalaya. If there'ss a point on earth close to heaven in distance is the Himalayan Mountains. Was this why they went upthere? As I suggested once Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, could have been founded by Israelites after the ancient Israelite town of Lasha, also known as Laish. There's an Himalayan mountain called Jiuding (I suggested to derive from Judah) next to the Chiangs (Tibetan Israelites) considered to them as a sacred mountain likewise ancient Israel wit mount Horeb or other mountains. Another mountaain on the Himalaya is called Nun Kun. Obviously Nun Kun is named after its two peaks: Kun & Nun. Kun could come from Canaan. In Hebrew, Arabic & other languages vowels are not very important. These two peaks lye on the Indian Kashmir. There's a town closeby called Leh, almost Leah, one of Israel's main wives Many have pointed before the large amount of Israelite names in Kashmir. Nun is the very name of Joshua's (The prophet that brought Israel back to Canaan through the Jordan river. God worked again the miracle of separating the waters as the Israelites crossed.) father.
The Kipchaks were Turkic speakers related to the Cumans. They created the celebrated Golden Horde. They are said to have Caucasian features, albeit some had Mongoloid ones. They are also considered to have Scythian origin as some Afghans, Pakistanis & Indians. According to Two-Housers the Scythians were Israelites that lost their identity & were also ancestors of several western European nations. Part of the Ashkenazi Jews are considered to come from the Kipchaks & the Khazars. Karachays, Balkars, Kumyks, Karaims (Crimean Karaites), Krymchaks are peoples considered to have Jewish origin & they still speak Kipchak dialects. Because the Kipchaks spoke Turkish languages they have been bracketed as Turks as in the the case of part of the Ashkenazis. I believe they were really Israelites that spoke Turkish languages as the Pathans changed their native Aramaic for Indoeuropean Pashto. I also believe that the western Europeans speak Indo-European languages with Semitic traces of Hebrew & Aramean of their ancestors.
Nephtali or Naphtali was one of Israel's sons. His Children were the Nephtalites or Naphtalites. Centuries after their captivity by the Assyrians, a group of them formed an empire in Central Asia. They were known as Ephtalites, Hephtalites or Hephtalites. A group of them was known as Abdal or Abdali, both names being other deformed variants of the same name. Nepal was not far away from theese Israelite empire. Several Lost Israelites have been found not far from Nepal (Qiangs, Pashtuns, Kalash...), so the name "Nepal" or "Nepali" might be an Israelite one, but a deformed variant of "Nephtali". That doesn't necessarily mean Nepalis are Israelites, but that Nepal might have been after a group of them. In fact the name "Nepal" is supposed to have a meaning in Sanskrit, but it's obscure & not sure. There was a Lasha / Laish in olden Israel & there's a "Lhasa" in neigboring Tibet. There are several Israelite & possibly Israelite names in the area after all.
As other Israelites, they gave great importance to owning horses & sheep, they made mounds & they were great bowmen. It's interesting that the Cumans were called KuN in Hungarian, a name that I already related to CaNaan. They were called the "Blond Ones", a feature very among Turks in those days. They were saaid to haave desirable women. A group of Cumans went to Hungary & integrated in the Hungarian society & some of the Cumans became the Hungarian monarchy. Eventually the Cuman minority integrated in the Hungarian society inspite having such a different look from the rest of Hungarians. There's some Cuman offspring among Bulgarian & Romanian people. And the Cumans are related to the Finnish (Considered as part of the Israelite offspring by the British Israelites), Komis & Turks. The first dynasty of Mamluks in Egypt were Kipchaks/Cumans. There were Kipchaks also as mercenaries supporting the Europeans in the Crussades & the Georgians. Some of the descendents of the Kipchaks are considered to have Israelite origin, for example the Karachays, the Kumyks... The Kipchaks had some Hebrew influence through the Khazars. Kipchak was the lingua franca in the Eurasian Steppe, but this doesn't mean that it was their original language. The Kharchin Mongols are a group of about 600,000 people living mainly in Chinese controlled areas close to Mongolia, as well as in the Republic of Mongolia in a tiny amount. They are considered to be the offspring of Kipchaks that served under the northern Yuan, a Mongol dynasty in China. It's interesting that one of their dwelling areas is called Ju Uda city. Did they come from the Israelite tribe of Judah? Maybe part of them did. There was a Japanese emperor called Uda & the Japanese, or part, especially their monarchy are widely recognized as coming from Israelites. A Russian town in Siberia (inhabited by many Uralic-Altaic speakers), not far from China's People's Republic & Mongolia is also called Uda. The former Mongolian Josotu League (Joseph's League?) was divided in the three current Chinese provinces: Liaoning, Hebei & Inner Mongolia. In them there are about 700,000 Mongolians of which the majority are Kharchins.
I wonder if the great importance given by the Mongols to the flags was received by Israelites (The tribes of Israel were using flags, as commanded from the Lord, as early as in the time of Exodus. I'm not saying necessarily that they were, thru God's inspiration, inventors of flags, by they were a very flag loving people.) they encountered in the steppes, they Israelite pockets that were dwelling among themselves, or both. The Chiangs, a Tibetan people of Israelite origin, also givee a great importance to flags, planting 12 in remembrance of 12 ancestors which are clearly the patriarchs of the 12 tribes of Israel according to many scholars. There are several toponyms with the name Kipchak, Qipçaq, or Qepchaq in the following countries: Azerbaijan, Iran & Turkmenistan. The Kypchak empire, also known as Golden Horde, was very large after all. The Kipchaks were invaded by the Mongols to have the Kharchins (The Kipchaks that went to the China of the Yuan Mongols) counted as part of them in the future. Eventually they mingled with ethnic Mongols having as a result more Mongolian looking Kharchins. There's an ethnic group called kachin related to the Shinlungs.
They might be the descendants of Kharchins, because of the similitude of names, the relation with the Israelite Shinlungs, a people that was once was in China as well to move eventually to India. So I would say that kachins are Israelites. The Kachins are also known as Jingpo, Singpho... There's a lake in the Chinese province of Heilongjiang called Jingpo so I assume they named it. This reinforces the connections with the Mongols because this province was originally inhabited by them. The names kachin & Kharchin might be the origin of Kukichin. Some scholars believe that the Kharchins came, at least partly, from Khalaj, in the historical region of Khorasan. It's an interesting point 'cause Khorasan was anciently called Arachosia & it was one of the areas of captivity of the Israelites. The name Sharnuud, found among the Kharchins, is considered by scholars to have a non-Mongol origin but a Caucasian. Moreover the are said to have had "yellow eyes". The Kharchins were followed by the Alans & other Kipchaks to serve the Yuan Mongols in Peking. Certain excavations in Ukraine connect the Khazars with the Scythians, Sarmatians & Kipchaks.
Before in the text I have pointed at topnyms that might have the prefix KaN of CaNaan, pointing at an origin in the Holy Land, but I would like to add: KaNawha (River in the USA), KaNsas, arKaNsas, KaNpur (Northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh), KaNdahar (Pashtunistan), CaNada, KaNnada language (Indian state of Karnataka, but spoken in other parts of southern India by the KaNnadigas, also called KaNnadas. They are considered as related to Yadavas, a people that I suggested to come from Judah. SaKaleshpura is one of the regions of the KaNnadas & bear the name of the SaKas, considered to be Israelites. One of the martial arts is called Yuddha, similar to Judah.).
Xiongnu and the Wusun People
Xiongnu
"From the King and downward they all ate the meat of their livestock, and clothed themselves with their skins, which were their only dress. The strong ones ate the fat and choose the best pieces, while the old and weak ate and drank, what was left. The strong and robust were held in esteem, while the old and weak were treated with contempt."
That brings our thoughts to the household troops of the ancient Danish king Rolf Krake. They sat at the table after rank; the highest ranking took the best pieces of meat and threw the bones in the head of the frail looking newcomers accompanied by rude laughter.
Xiongnu had lived on the eastern plains - always.
The "Shi Ji" tells further about Xiongnu: "Early every morning the King, whom they called Shan-ju, went outside the camp in order to worship the sun at sunrise. In the evening he worshipped the moon."
Qilian Mountains - Xiongnu had a religious relation to the Qilian Mountain range.
Almost all the peoples of that time worshipped the Sun and the Moon in one way or another. The Chinese emperor went to special Temples for the Heaven or the Moon, asking for good year and good harvest for his people. Yuezhi worshipped the Moon and the later Sogdians worshipped their sun god, Mithra. It was the kings and the emperor's most important duty to secure the good relations to the mighty powers of Heaven.
If the gods did not live in heaven, then they at least lived up some high mountains. The Greek Gods, for example, dwelt on the mountain of Olympus. The Xiongnu people had a religious relationship to the Qilian Mountains, however we have no knowledge of any details concerning this part of their faith.
Xiongnu figure from Xian History Museum.
The historical museum in Xian exhibits some figures from Tang Dynasty graves. They represent Xiongnu,"the Huns", according the museum's sign. During Tang Dynasty, there were apparently still Xiongnu on the plains. We can see, how they looked like. (Tang Dynasty was from AC 626 to 907 AC).
Xiongnu figure from Xian History Museum
They have large round heads, often barrel-shaped bodies, sometimes a potbelly, and most often a strong skipper beard from one ear to another. A bit of paint is left on the head on one of the figures; the hair color is black. They are usually wearing some sort of cap, similar to the caps of traditional Danish Christmas goblins. They are "Hu" types, which means Caucasian types with sharp nose, deep eye sockets and strong beard. They are standing in somewhat challenging postures as very self-conscious people. This kind of figures was previously labelled as Western traders in China or the like, I remember, but they are really Xiongnu, says the sign behind the glas. The museum could be wrong; the Xianbei people as well played an important role in North China during the Tang Dynasty.
Sculpture representing mounted nomade - from Anpu and his wife's tomb in Longmen Luoyang - found 1981 - Tang dynasty.
The reminds about Loki in the norse mythologi, he was also dark because he descended from the Jotuns. He also had a type of personality, which made it difficult for him to stay in the background.
Unfortunately, the figures are not in natural size, so they give no direct indication of their absolute size.
However in the vicinity of Xi'an is located General Huo Qubing's tomb. He ronze figure found in the Ordos Area, which was Xiongnu Area. Many want to make Xiongnu to a kind of Mongols - but he does not look like that.
In the general's tomb is a figure of one of the "horses, who sweat blood", who is about to trample a Xiongnu to disintegration. We see clearly the characteristic skipper beard from one ear to another. Note, how big the Xiongnu man is in relation to the horse. Even if it is an artistic exaggeration, the Chinese of those days still may have thought, that Xiongnu men were very big.
Many will make the Xiongnu into a kind of Mongols. But a bronze figure found in the Ordos area, which was Xiongnu territory, does not look Mongolian; he has big eyes, powerful beard and big nose.
The Chinese wrote, that Xiongnu (Hsiung-nu) were never very numerous. Together they were not as many as the inhabitants of a single Chinese province. "Their advantage lay in their strength," they wrote.
They were not numerous enough for a real conquest of China or even parts of the Empire. Their favourite tactic was rapid raids into Chinese territory. They robbed cattle and abducted countless, women, children and young people as slaves. They withdrew to the steppe before a proper military force could be assembled against them.
Xiongnu head decoration with an eagle.
The original Chinese nations in "the warring states" period built walls and dykes at their northern borders to prevent the barbarians to access their territory, however apparently with little success. After the Qin had conquered all of China in 221 BC, they linked these local walls together and thus made, what we know as the Great Wall.
Xiongnu banner decoration - also an eagle.
Han Dynasty China was not the only nation, which suffered from the attacks of the Xiongnu. Many people in Asia were exposed to Xiongnu's aggressiveness, especially the city-states in the Tarim Basin. Xiongnu drove the Yuezhi people from their original homeland in northern Gansu.
The Jotuns were the age old enemies of the Aesirs. The god Thor was very often away from home to fight against Jotuns.
There can be no doubt, that the greatest threat to the peoples of Midgaard was the Xiongnu. They may be a possible bid for the Jotuns, or at least some of them.
The Chinese were not very analytical in their description of the surrounding peoples. Sometimes they called them all together for Qiang, other times they were all named Xianbei. They did not go very deep into how they looked like, their cultural habits and what language they spoke. During the Han Dynasty most of the Peoples on the steppe were grouped under the label Xiongnu.
It is obvious, that the Xianbei, Qiang, Di and Jin have been there all the time in one way or another; they have only been seen as a part of the Xiongnu, which was the dominant ethnic group.
Russian archaeologists have excavated many Xiongnu settlements in the Ulan-Ude region near Lake Baikal. Here have been Xiongnu settlements until well into the Middle Ages.
The Xiongnu fortress by Ivolga is located 16 km. from Ulan Ude by the Selanga River. It is square with dimensions of 350 x 200 m., and it has a moat all around. Within the ramparts many houses were half dug down in the surface, of which 54 have been excavated. Each house had a stone fireplace in its northeastern corner. This type of house, dug down in earth, is also well known from the time of the Danish Vikings. A large house in the centre of the fortress was the only one, which stood on the ground.
At Ivolga they buried their dead on flat terrain, they were not placed in burial mounds. Many graves were in groups. There was a central grave, with a probably high-ranking person in the middle; which was surrounded by smaller accompanying graves, which in general contained the bodies of women, children and young people.
Many of those in the accompanying graves showed signs of a violent death. It looks like that the Ivolga Xiongnu had the practice, that when a high ranking person died, all his wives, mistresses, slaves and apparently also some children had to follow him to the other world.
"Xiongnu" means literally according to the Chinese character something like "Slaves of the Peoples". However, there is no doubt, that this is not their real name, as they called themselves. It is a somewhat condescending name, which the Han Dynasty Chinese gave them, just in the same way as they gave names to many other peoples around their borders.
In "The Silk Road", edited by Susan Whitfield, Etienne de la Vaissiere explains the Xiongnu's real name.
There have been found a sogdian letter from the fourth century, which refers to the Xiongnu's looting in connection with the Jin Dynasty's collapse also in the fourth century. The letter mentions the Xiongnu with the term "Xwn", which is the sogdian spelling of the word "Hun". The author of the letter proves otherwise a first-hand knowledge of events. Therefore, he must be considered as a very reliable source.
The Kushan monk, Zhu Fahu from Dun Huang, translated "Tahagataguhya-sutra" from Sanskrit to Chinese in 280 AC. In this document he translated the Sanskrit word "Huna" to "Xiongnu". He did it again in 308 AC by the translation of "Lalivavistara". In a not very distant past, these "Huna" had driven away the Yuezhi people from their original land with their ancestors graves. Zhu Fahu was a Kushan and he descended directly from Yuezhi. He may not have been in doubt, as to who was these "Xiong Nu", and what was their real name. The writer of the Sogdian letter may of the same reasons also have had a clear idea of Xiongnu and their real name.
Indian sources also described the Xiongnu as "Huna". (Everything from "Silk Road" page 22).
Then it must be that the Xiongnu people became known in Europe under their real names, as they called themselves, which is "Hun".
"Wei-Shu" is the story of the Wei Dynasty. It was written about the years 437 AC - 457 AC. It says: "Earlier, Xiongnu killed the king (of Sogdiana) and took the land. "King Huni" is the third ruler in the line."
We remember Saxo's tale of King Frode and the war between the Danes and the Huns. Here he wrote: "Two years had "King Hun" devoted to preparations for his campaign against the countries around the Baltic Sea."
When you read this, it is hard not to feel, that it is too simple just to call the king of the Huns for "King Hun." It must be something, the old storytellers have added themselves, we are tempted to think.
Attila the king of the Huns on a contemporary European coin.
But, as one can see, Saxo Grammaticus was very well informed. Some of the Hun kings were actually named "Huni" or perhaps "Hun".
Mehmet II - the conquerer of Constantinopel. Attila on the coin and the turkish rulers actually look like each other.
We remember Priscus' description of Attila, King of the Huns, preserved to our time by Jordanes in his "Getica sive De Origine Actibusque Gothorum (The History of the Goths): "He was short of stature with a wide chest, a large head, thin beard with grey stains, stub nose, and he showed his ancestral traits (originis suae signa restiuens). His personality was such, that he always promoted himself with high self-confidence." ("Attila" page 144)
Mehmet II - the conquerer of Constantinople. Attila on the coin and the Turkish rulers actually look like each other.
In Priscus' own description in Greek this description does not occur, although it is very detailed.
The Hun king Attila, has beeen pictured on a contemporary European coin. He certainly does not have stub nose, but he looks actually like the turkish sultans Suleiman and Mehmet.
On Xiongnu's belt buckle ornaments, the depicted persons also seem to have rather big noses, they do not look like mongolid types.
On the Internet can be found an article that describes a genetic survey, which compares the genetic material of individuals from Mongolia's ancient past with modern European and Asian individuals. It is called the "Linzi" survey. (see link below).
Xiongnu ornament in drawing -notice that the person in the middle has a big nose - he cannot be a mongolid type.
Samples have been taken from a burial place at Egyen Gol in the north of Mongolia and from contemporary European and Asian individuals. The Burial ground was from about the time of the Han Dynasty (200 BC - 300 AC), which was the glorious time of the Xiongnu. Two thousand years ago the Xiongnu surely inhabited the Egyen Gol area. The Mongols had not yet migrated from Sirbiria and the concept of Turks did not yet exist.
The genetic material from Egyen Gol showed a good correlation with the genes of modern Asian peoples, especially in northern and central Asia, but a less good correlation with modern European peoples. Xiongnu genes also had many similarities with gene samples taken from a some thousand years younger definitely Turkish funeral ground, also located near Egyen Gol.
The Asian Turks have always claimed that they descended from the Xiongnu. The Linzi genetic study suggests that there is something about it.
The article also describes the genetic correlation between individuals who were buried at Linzi in the Chinese Shandong Province, and modern people in Europe and Asia. The graves at Linzi were from the period of "the Warring States" (500 BC -221 BC).
There appeared to be a good genetic correlation between ancient Shandong and the West. The ancient Chinese in Shandong seemed to be most related to Iranians and Europeans, especially Icelanders, Finns and Turks from Turkey. The Chinese genes
The Chinese genes showed a less good correlation with many modern Asian peoples.
Many think that the Ordos plateau is Xiongnu's original homeland.
The ancient populations in Shandong and in the northern part of, what today is known as Mongolia, do not appear to have been much related.
The viking figure, the London animal - the Skandinavian grib animal style seems to be an abstract and surrealistic development - Sct. Pauls churchyard in London.
The Yellow River makes a big turn against north into Mongolia. The contained area is called Ordos. It is assumed to be the original homeland of Xiongnu, especially by Chinese archaeologists. Here many Xiongnu animal ornaments have been found .
Scythian animal ornament.
They remind about Scythian animal ornaments, but they do not have the same artistic nervous touch. The ancient Scandinavian grip animal style seems to be a more abstract development.
Xiongnu animal ornament - full of fantasy, but it does not have the same nervous touch as the Scythians.
The Wusun people
On the plains at the Ili River and the salty Lake, Issyk-Kul, lived a people of Caucasian type. We don't know any of their language, but they may have been Indo-Europeans. The Chinese called them Wusun (Usun).
The salty lake with the Turkish name Issyk-Kul.
In the ancient book "Han Shu" the scolar Yan Shigu has added a comment about Wusun's appearance: "Wusun in the western areas is the same as the "Rong" people (old name for different tribes and peoples around China). Nowadays, these "Hu" people have green eyes, red beard, their appearance is like bearded monkeys, and they are originally of this kind."
Zhang Qian, travelled to the west on behalf of the Han Emperor in order to meet the Yuzhi and create an alliance against Xiongnu. He also met the Wusun and reported that: "The people have "pig heads", they are cunning as wolves and highly unreliable. They are very prone to pillaging, and they are as a nation typically violent."
Pigs have, as one knows, big noses and sometimes blue eyes, so most likely it is true, that Wusun had blue eyes.
Chinese archaeologists have informed, that Wusun was a Caucasian type of people with short skull. They cannot say anything about the colour of their eyes and hair.
Accurate, as always, Zhang Qian reported, that there were 120,000 Wusun families, and their army numbered 188,000 mounted men. The country was cold and rainy, but with extensive pastures. The mountains were covered with pine forest. Wusun raised horses. Rich men could own up to five thousand horses.
Wusun recognized Xiongnu's supremacy, but they had their own king, who bore the title kiun-mo. He named himself as Son of Heaven.
The Chinese sought to create an alliance with Wusun directed against Xiongnu, the Huns. To this end, the Chinese court in 107 BC sent a princess the long way from the imperial capital Xi'an to Wusun's cold rainy country.
The princess wrote a poem: My family has married me away Helpless I am, can do nothing In a distant exotic kingdom Married to the King of Wusun My home is simple The walls covered with felt and not with silk My daily food is pork Milk I drink to the food I am burdened by dark thoughts My heart is heavy with sorrow If only I were a yellow stork So I would fly back to my nest.
The shore of the salty Lake with the Turkish name Issyk-Kul.
The new queen was entitled kiun-di. For her pleasure a Chinese palace was built in the camp of the Wusun king. The royal residence was of the Chinese called "The Palace in the Red Valley." It was located in some distance from the salt lake.
The great traveller Zhang Qian was hold as a prisoner by Xiongnu for 10 years. There he heard the following story about Wusun:
"When your servant was a prisoner of Xiongnu, he heard, that the king of Wusun, who bore the title" Kun-mo", and that kun-mo's father was the head of a small state at Xiongnu's western border.
Xiongnu-attacked and killed his father and Kun-mo was at his birth thrown away in the wilderness, where a black bird (a raven?) Brought him meat, and a she-wolf nourished him with milk.
Shan-yu was the title of the king of Xiongnu. He considered this to be a wonder, and after he had brought up the boy, he made him a military leader, in which capacity he distinguished himself on several occasions. Shan-yu re-established his father's people, and made him a governor of the western fortified camp.
As he received tax from his people, the Kun-mo could attack the small neighbouring states with tens of thousands of arcxhers, he collected experience in warfare, and after the old Shan-yu's death, he withdrew to a distant place and refused to show up at the Xiongnu court.
Xiongnu ordered picked troops to attack him, but because they were unable to overcome him, they considered him as a spirit, to whom they did wise to keep a certain distance and not attack him seriously.
Xiongnu's Shan-yu continued to claim nominal supremacy over Kun-mo and his Wusun people."
Thus was the great traveler, Zhang Qian's report to his emperor.
Stone men on the plain at the Ili River.
The Chinese princess' grandson was called something like "Ud-zyty". Already in his reign the country has been divided into smaller and bigger areas, and the camp around the Palace in the Red Valley had been abandoned forever.
No one knows what since happened to the Wusun people. In 630 AC the Khan of the Western Turks could receive the Buddhist monk, Xuanzang, on the banks of the salty lake with the turkish name "Issyl Kul".
On the plains near the Salty Lake are the stone men. They can be found many places in Central Asia. Some of them are undoubtedly sat by the Western Turks. Some of them are probably also made by those who lived there before Wusun came. It was customary at some Indo-European peoples to erect stones over brave men and create gods and ancestors in stone - a practice which the ancient Greeks had perfected.
Tatar & Mongolian Israelites?
Tatars
The Tatars (Old Turkic tatar; modern Volga Tatar: Татарлар, Tatarlar تاتارلار ), historically Tartars, is an umbrella term for Turkic peoples in the territory of the former Russian Empire (and as such generally includes all Northwestern Turkic speaking peoples).
The Tatars were the Turkic-speaking population of Tartary, the lands ruled by Turco-Mongol elites from the 14th century until the conquests of the Russian Empire in the 18th to 19th centuries. During the early modern period, a distinction was made between the European and Asian Tatar territories, by referring to Lesser Tartary and Greater Tartary, respectively.
The largest group by far descending from the historical Tatars are the Volga Tatars, native to the Volga region (Tatarstan and Bashkortostan), who for this reason are often also simply known as "Tatars", and their language as Tatar language. Their number is estimated as close to 6 million (as of 2002). Besides the Volga Tatars, there are smaller groups also descended from the historical Tatars, the largest group of these being the Crimean Tatars, numbering close to half a million, whose Crimean Tatar language is not now intelligible with the Volga Tatar language.
As various nomadic groups became part of Genghis Khan's army in the early 13th century, a fusion of Mongol and Turkic elements took place, and the invaders of Rus and the Pannonian Basin became known to Europeans as Tatars or Tartars (see Tatar yoke). After the breakup of the Mongol Empire, the Tatars became especially identified with the western part of the empire, known as the Golden Horde.
The various Tatar khanates of the early modern period are the remnants after the breakup of the Golden Horde, and its successor, the Great Horde. These include: the Khanate of Kazan (1438), conquered by the Tsardom of Russia in 1552, but continued as a Russian vassal state, within the Qasim Khanate (established 1452), until 1681. the Nogai Horde (1440s), conquered by Russia in 1634.the Khanate of Crimea (1441), conquered by the Russian Empire in 1783. the Kazakh Khanate (1456), gradual Russian conquest in the 18th century, but finally absorbed into the Russian Empire only in 1847. the Khanate of Astrakhan (1466), conquered by Russia in 1556. the Tyumen Khanate (1468, later Khanate of Sibir), conquered by the Tsardom of Russia in 1598.
The Turco-Mongol dominance in Central Asia was absolute during the 14th and 15th centuries. The Crimean-Nogai raids into Russia were especially for the capture of slaves, most of whom were exported to the Ottoman Empire. The raids were an important drain of the human and economic resources of both countries. They largely prevented the settlement of the "Wild Fields" – the steppe and forest-steppe land that extends from a hundred or so miles south of Moscow to the Black Sea. The raids were also important in the development of the Cossacks.
The end of absolute Tatar dominance comes in the late 15th century, heralded by the Great stand on the Ugra river in 1480. The 16th to 18th centuries are characterized by the gradual expansion of Russia and absorption of the Tatar khanates into Russian territory. The Crimean Tatars attacked Russia in 1507, followed by two centuries of Russo-Crimean Wars for the Volga basin. Similarly, the Russo-Kazan Wars lasted for the best part of a century and ended with the Russian conquest of the Kazan khanate.
The name "Tatar" was first recorded on the Orkhon inscriptions.
It became a name for populations of the former Golden Horde in Europe, such as those of the former Kazan, Crimean, Astrakhan, Qasim, and Siberian Khanates.
All Turkic peoples living within the Russian Empire were named Tatar (as a Russian exonym). Some of these populations still use Tatar as a self-designation, others do not.
Kipchak groups
Kipchak–Bulgar branch, or "Tatar" in the narrow sense. Volga Tatars, the largest group which still uses the Tatar designation, although a minority adheres to "Bulgarism", preferring a self-designation of "Bulgar" over "Tatar". Astrakhan Tatars were formerly the Lipka Tatars, now mostly assimilated to Polish or Belarusians. Finnish Tatars. Chinese Tatars. Bashkirs. Kipchak–Cuman branch. Crimean Tatars (historically Kipchak–Cuman, but strongly assimilated to Oghuz Turkish). Karachays and Balkars - Mountain Tatars. Kumyks - Daghestan Tatars. Kipchak–Nogai branch: Nogais - Nogai. Tatars, includes the Karagash subgroup of Nogais - Kundrov. Tatars. Karakalpaks. Kazakhs. Kyrgyz. Siberian Turkic branch:
Siberian Tatars
Altay people - Altay Tatars, including the Tubalar or Chernevo Tatars Chulyms or Chulym Tatars, still use the Tatar designation. Khakas people - Yenisei Tatars (also Abakan Tatars or Achin Tatars), still use the Tatar designation. Shors - Kuznetsk Tatars
Oghuz branch
Azerbaijani people - Caucasus Tatars (also Transcaucasia Tatars or Azerbaijan Tatars)
The appellation Tatar was also extended to other, non Turkic peoples, especially the Tungusic peoples of Siberia. The descendants of Tatars in Eastern Europe have partly lost their Turkic languages due to cultural assimilation, but may still retain a "Tatar" identity.
Kipchak languages
Tatar language and Crimean Tatar language
The Tatar language together with the Bashkir language forms the Kypchak-Bolgar (also "Uralo-Caspian") group within the Kypchak languages, also known as Northwestern Turkic.
There are three Tatar dialects: Eastern, Central, Western. The Western dialect (Misher) is spoken mostly by Mishärs, the Central dialect is spoken by Kazan and Astrakhan Tatars, and the Eastern (Sibir) dialect is spoken by Siberian Tatars in western Siberia. All three dialects have subdialects. Central Tatar is the base of literary Tatar.
It's believed that the Tartar tribe named Chosan had Israelite origin. I pointed out the possibility that the Tatars could be Lost Israelites. They practiced circumcision & other Israelite traditions. Chosan is repeted as a toponym in North & South Korea. Is it a rest of the lost Israelites that thru Korea ended up in Japan?
Could the Mongols be Lost Israelites?
During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Jews emerged as economic rivals. This led to
blood-libels, fear and disgust, and imaginary tales about Jews poisoning wells. The Talmud was burned in Paris in 1242. In this atmosphere of constant insecurity and hatred the Jews in Europe looked for salvation. As the Jewish year 5000 approached some Jews in Europe hoped that the year of their redemption might be at hand.
What was the basis for their hope? In part, the symbolism of a millennial year had its attraction, but in addition they saw salvation in the approaching armies of the Mongol hords out of the steppes of Asia. These hords were vanquishing the armies of chrisendom to the east. A rumor had spread among Christians that the Mongols were Israelites, or had Israelite components. To the Jews in Europe, at this time, this rumor seemed like a blessing... Could it be that the great Genghis Khan, or his successor, could be their sought for redeemer, appearing on their millennium? Such a thought may sound absurd now - to us. Nevertheless, the events that time led Jews to hope that the Mongols might be their liberators.
The Book of Ezekiel – Gog from Magog
Perhaps the strangest and most apocalyptic verses in the Tanach are found in chapters 38 and 39 of the Book of Ezekiel. Gog is represented as a prince from the nation of Magog, and head of an alliance of nations who will one day descend from the far north on horses to invade Israel.Ezekiel 38:15.
Israel is portrayed as prosperous, peaceful --- but defenseless. The hords will seek to plunder the land, but their aims will be thwarted by a series of natural and human events that will completely destroy them without harm to Israel, and without any effort by Israel. Since this prophecy has not yet been fulfilled this passage in Ezekiel is considered Messianic.
For Jews living at the time of Ezekiel (about the 6th century B.C.E.), in Babylonia, and hoping for redemption to Israel this prophecy had an immediacy since it addressed the fears that the early Zionists had. The return to Israel was seen as dangerous, because they would be defenseless. Ezekiel was telling them that even their enemies would perish if they tried to harm Israel. Interestingly, a portion of this prophecy concerning Gog from Magog is read on an intermediary Shabbat during Sukkot. It is during Sukkot that Jews are most vulnerable to attack, because they are living outside their houses in a defenseless booth. At such a time it is comforting to think they need not worry about the forces of Gog.
These passages from the Book of Ezekiel have also attracted interest in Christianity. We find mention of Gog and Magog (now apparently interpreted as two separate nations) in the Book of Revelation, 20:7-10: When the thousand years are over, Satan will be let loose from his dungeon; And he will come out to seduce the nations, in the four quarters of the earth and to muster them for battle, yes the hosts of Gog and Magog…, But fire came down on them; and the Devil, their seducer, was flung into the lake of fire and sulphur, where the beast and the false prophet had been flung, there to be tormented day and night for ever.
In Christianity the evil forces of Gog and Magog would manifest themselves in the Armageddon, the last great battle, and the final uprising of evil, that clears the way for the final millennium (Haggith, 1999, p. 404). The evil nations of Gog and Magog were to play an important role in Christian thinking throughout the middle ages, perhaps because of the constant threat in the Middle-East and in Europe of invading forces from the far north, on horses, who would bring destruction in their path. Christians associated the description in Ezekiel with the nomads of the steppes of Asia. But who was Gog from Magog? Where exactly is Magog? Since the identification of Magog in Ezekiel is vague much is open to speculation. Throughout history, perhaps beginning with the writings of Josephus, an effort was made to identify Gog and Magog. The Writings of Josephus.
Zebulonites in Ukraine, Japan, China, Mongolia & Myanmar?
The last name Helon renders Gelon, sometimes Gelen in the Ukrainian language and Hoelun/Hulun in the Mongolian language. Helon is a Jewish last name. In the Bible Helon (or Elon) was an Israelite from the tribe of Zebulun.
Hulun may refer to:
Hulun Buir, city in Inner Mongolia, China
Lake Hulun, lake in Inner Mongolia, China
Hulun (alliance)
Hūlun (Chinese: 扈倫) was a powerful alliance of Jurchen (Manchu) tribes in the late 16th century, based primarily in what is today Jilin province of China.
The Hūlun alliance was formed by Wan (d. 1582), the leader of the Hada tribal federation, which had drawn its importance from the control of commerce included three other tribal federations, known as Ula, Yehe, and Hoifa (any relation with the Israelite, city of Haifa?). In the late 16th century, was based primarily in what is today Jilin province. of China.
The Hada tribe of Japan is believed to come originally from China. Hata is another form for Hada. In China, Manchuria is the closest area from Japan. Perhaps this Hata Manchurians were the ancestors of the Japanese Hatas. Interestingly the Israelite tribe of Zebulun is prominent in Japan.
The Scythian capital city was named Helon. Nowadays the remains are at Belsk: Kotelva district, Poltava, Ukraine. There was a Scythian clan called Helon Scythians. Interestingly the Scythians are considered Israelites by many scholars. In Bhamo District, Kachin State, Burma [Myanmar], there is a town called Helon.
The Mongols: Genghis Khan
Mongol Israelites?
The tents were made by means of poles set in a circle in the ground, and brought nearly together at the top, so as to form a frame similar to that of an Indian wigwam. It's interesting that the Mongol yurts were pulled by oxen, the animals representative of the 12 Israelite Tribes, the number 24 being the number of two oxen per tribe. Using two oxen is a prescribed law in the Torah. The Mongols were good archers as the Amerindians, Scythians & English were & good horsemen like the Spaniards, Arabs, American cowboys, Mexican charros, Argentinian gauchos...
These movable houses were sometimes very large. A certain traveler who visited the country not far from the time of Genghis Khan says that he saw one of these structures in motion which was thirty feet in diameter. It was drawn by twenty-two oxen. It was so large that it extended five feet on each side beyond the wheels. The oxen, in drawing it, were not attached, as with us, to the centre of the forward axle-tree, but to the ends of the axle-trees, which projected beyond the wheels on each side. There were eleven oxen on each side drawing upon the axle-trees. There were, of course, many drivers. The one who was chief in command stood in the door of the tent or house which looked forward, and there, with many loud shouts and flourishing gesticulations, issued his orders to the oxen and to the other men.
The Monguls, like the ancient Jews, were divided into tribes, and these were subdivided into families; a family meaning in this connection not one household, but a large congeries of households, including all those that were of known relationship to each other. These groups of relatives had each its head, and the tribe to which they pertained had also its general head. There were, it is said, three sets of these tribes, forming three grand divisions of the Mongul people, each of which was ruled by its own khan; and then, to complete the system, there was the grand khan, who ruled over all.
If they were repulsed, and compelled by a superior force to retreat, they would gallop at full speed over the plains, turning at the same time in their saddles, and shooting at their pursuers with their arrows as coolly, and with as correct an aim, almost, as if they were still. While thus retreating the trooper would guide and control his horse by his voice, and by the pressure of his heels upon his sides, so as to have both his arms free for fighting his pursuers.
These arrows were very formidable weapons, it is said. One of the travelers who visited the country in those days says that they could be shot with so much force as to pierce the body of a man entirely through.
Bokhara was a great and beautiful city. It was situated in the midst of a very fine and fertile country, in a position very favorable for the trade and commerce of those days. It was also a great seat of learning and of the arts and sciences. It contained many institutions in which were taught such arts and sciences as were then cultivated, and students resorted to it from all the portions of Western Asia.
The city proper was inclosed with a strong wall. Besides this there was an outer wall, thirty miles in circumference, which inclosed the suburbs of the town, and also a beautiful region of parks and gardens, which contained the public places of amusement and the villas of the wealthy inhabitants. It was this peaceful seat of industry and wealth that Genghis Khan, with his hordes of ruthless barbarians, was coming now to sack and plunder.
The first city which the Monguls reached on their march toward Bokhara was one named Zarnuk. In approaching it a large troop rode up toward the walls, uttering terrific shouts and outcries. The people shut the gates in great terror. Genghis Khan, however, sent an officer to them to say that it was useless for them to attempt to resist him, and to advise them to surrender at once. They must demolish their citadel, he said, and send out all the young and able-bodied men to Genghis Khan. The officer advised them, too, to send out presents to Genghis Khan as an additional means of propitiating him and inducing him to spare the town.
The inhabitants yielded to this advice. The gates were thrown open. All the young men who were capable of bearing arms were marshaled and marched out to the Mongul camp. They were accompanied by the older men among the inhabitants, who took with them the best that the town contained, for presents. Genghis Khan accepted the presents, ordered the young men to be enrolled in his army, and then, dismissing the older ones in peace, he resumed his march and went on his way.
Samarcand itself, as has already been said, was a great and splendid city. Like most of the other cities, it was inclosed in a double wall, though, in this case, the outer wall surrounded the whole city, while the inner one inclosed the mosque, the palace of the sultan, and some other public buildings. These walls were much better built and more strongly fortified than those of Bokhara. There were twelve iron gates, it is said, in the outer wall. These gates were a league apart from each other. At every two leagues along the wall was a fort capable of containing a large body of men. The walls were likewise strengthened with battlements and towers, in which the men could fight under shelter, and they were surrounded by a broad and deep ditch, to prevent an enemy from approaching too near to them, in order to undermine them or batter them down.
The city was abundantly supplied with water by means of hydraulic constructions as perfect and complete as could be made in those days. The water was brought by leaden pipes from a stream which came down from the mountains at some distance from the town. It was conveyed by these pipes to every part of the town, and was distributed freely, so that every great street had a little current of water running through it, and every house a fountain in the court or garden. Besides this, in a public square or park there was a mound where the water was made to spout up in the centre, and then flow down in little rivulets and cascades on every side.
The gates and towers which have been described were in the outer wall, and beyond them, in the environs, were a great many fields, gardens, orchards, and beautifully-cultivated grounds, which produced fruits of all sorts, that were sent by the merchants into all the neighboring countries. At a little distance the town was almost entirely concealed from view by these gardens and orchards, there being nothing to be seen but minarets, and some of the loftier roofs of the houses, rising above the tops of the trees.
The opinions which Genghis Khan entertained on religious subjects appear from a conversation which he held at one time during the course of his campaigns in Western Asia with some learned Mohammedan doctors at Bokhara, which was the great seat at that time of science and philosophy. He asked the doctors what were the principles of their religion. They replied that these principles consisted of five fundamental points: 1. In believing in one God, the creator of all things, and the supreme ruler and governor of the universe. 2. In giving one fortieth part of their yearly income or gains to the poor. 3. In praying to God five times every day. 4. In setting apart one month in each year for fasting. 5. In making a pilgrimage to the temple in Mecca, there to worship God.
Genghis Khan told them that he believed himself in the first of these articles, and he approved of the three succeeding ones. It was very well, he said, to give one fortieth of one's income to the poor, and to pray to God five times a day, and to set apart a month in the year for a fast. But as to the last article, he could not but dissent from it entirely, for the whole world was God's house, and it was ridiculous, he said, to imagine that one place could really be any more fitting than another as a place for worshiping him.
Who are the White Huns?
During the 5th century, the Gupta dynasty in India reigned in the Ganges basin with the Kushan empire occupied the area along the Indus. Huns invaded India. This is the saying that goes on in History, let us analyse the facts.
White Huns The paucity of record in Hephthalites or Ephthalites provides us fragmentary picture of their civilization and empire. Their background is uncertain. They probably stemmed from a combination of the Tarim basin peoples and the Yueh-chih. There is a striking resemblance in the deformed heads of the early Yueh-chih and Hephthalite kings on their coinage. According to Procopius's History of the Wars, written in the mid 6th century - the Hephthalites "are of the stock of the Huns in fact as well as in name: however they do not mingle with any of the Huns known to us. They are the only ones among the Huns who have white bodies...." Ephthalites was the name given by Byzantine historians and Hayathelaites by the Persian historian Mirkhond, and sometimes Ye-tai or Hua by Chinese historians. They are also known as the White Huns, different from the Hun who led by Attila invading the Roman Empire. They are described as a kindred steppe people originally occupied the pasture-lands in the Altai mountain of southwestern Mongolia.
Toward the middle of the 5th century, they expanded westward probably because of the pressure from the Juan-juan, a powerful nomadic tribe in Mongolia. Within decades, they became a great power in the Oxus basin and the most serious enemy of the Persian empire.
The Westward Expansion and War with Sassanian Empire At the time when the Hephthalites gained power, Kushan and Gandhara were ruled by the Kidarites, a local dynisty of Hun or Chionites tribe. The Hephthalites entered Kabul and overthrew Kushan. The last Kidarites fled to Gandhara and settled at Peshawar. Around 440 the Hephthalites further took Sogdian (Samarkand) and then Balkh and Bactria. The Hephthalites moved closer and closer toward Persian territory. In 484 the Hephthalite chief Akhshunwar led his army attacked the Sassanian King Peroz (459-484) and the king was defeated and killed in Khurasan. After the victory, the Hephthalite empire extended to Merv and Herat, which had been the regions of the Sassanid Empire.
The Hephthalites, at the time, became the superpower of the Middle Asia. They not only destroyed part of Sassanian Empire in Iran but also intervened in their dynastic struggles when the Sassanid royal, Kavad (488-496), was fighting for the throne with Balash, brother of Peroz. Kavad married the niece of the Hephthalites chief and the Hephthalites aided him to regain his crown in 498AD.
The Eastward Expansion to the Tarim Basin With the stabilization at the western border, the Hephthalites extended their influence to the northwest into the Tarim Basin. From 493 to 556 A.D., they invaded Khotan, Kashgar, Kocho, and Karashahr. The relationship with Juan-juan and China were tightened. The Chinese record indicated that between 507 and 531, the Hephthalites sent thirteen embassies to Northern Wei (439-534) by the king named Ye-dai-yi-li-tuo.
Invasion to India
During the 5th century, the Gupta dynasty in India reigned in the Ganges basin with the Kushan empire occupied the area along the Indus.
Huna in Sanskrit
India knew the Hephthalite as Huna by the Sanskrit name. The Hephthaltes or Hunas waited till 470 rigth after the death of Gupta ruler, Skandagupta (455-470), and entered the Inda from the Kabul valley after the conquest of Kushan. They kept on invading India until skandagupta repulsed them. After their defeat they assimilated into indian population without any trace, which show they are not very different from the local population.
Pahua, Hua , Hun?
Japanese researcher Kazuo Enoki takes on the theories of both the ancient and the modern writers, including the redoubtable Stein, knocking the legs out from one after another. Theories which are based on coincidence of name, e.g. Pahua and Hua, are unlikely in this part of the world which exhibits so many languages and so much linguistic adaptation and orthographic variation, he points out, and should not be upheld if other sorts of evidence do not support the reasoning. Stein's contention that the Ephthalites were of the Hunnish tribe and therefore of Turkish origin is dismissed largely on this basis. On the other hand, J. Marquart finds similarities between the terms for the Ephthalites in India and words in the Mongolian language, but this theory requires so many leaps between tongues that it remains quite unconvincing. Finally, there is a whole school of researchers attempting to prove this tribe a Turkish, albeit non-Hun, one. These too must rely only on flimsy name evidence. Instead, Enoki makes a convincing case that the Ephthalites are actually an Iranian group. His theory, it must be admitted, does not explain all, but there seems little against it. More importantly, it relies first on data which is generally agreed upon, namely, ancient observations of Ephthalite geographical movements and culture.
Himtala
Ephthalite origins may be determined by considering where they were not, as well as by where their conquests drove their enemies. They were not previously north of the Tien Shan, thus they did not stem from that region. They drove the Kidarites out of Balkh to the west, thus they came originally from the east. By such reasoning, the Ephthalites are thought to have originated at Hsi-mo-ta-lo (southwest of Badakhshan and near the Hindu Kush), which tantalizingly, stands for Himtala, "snow plain", which may be the Sanskritized form of Hephthal.
Chinese Account
To the Chinese, they were the Ye-ti-i-li-do or Yeda, even though the Chinese chroniclers seem to realize that the people called themselves the people of Hua (the similarity to Hun may help explain the origin of "White Hun") and that the Chinese terms came actually from the name of the Hua leader. Like Procopius, contemporary Chinese chroniclers had their own theories about Ephthalite origins. One thought that were related in some way to the Visha (Indo-Europeans known to the Chinese as the "Yueh Chih" (Yuezhi)), another, a branch of the Kao-ch`ê, a third, descendants of the general Pahua, a fourth descendants of Kang Chu and a fifth admits that he cannot make clear their origins at all.
Iranian Decent
Turning to the elements of Ephthalite culture, Enoki notes that Procopius' comments on their appearance while not decisive, are in favor of an Iranian theory. Similarly, the seventh century travels of Hsuan Chwang show that he found no physical difference between the descendants of the Ephthalites and their known Iranian neighbors. As for their language, commentators made clear that it was neither Turkish nor Mongol, which also seems to support an Iranian origin.
Iranian customs also are common in the Ephthalite world. For example, the practice of several husbands to one wife, or polyandry, was always the rule, which is agreed on by all commentators. That this was plain was evidenced by the custom among the women of wearing a hat containing a number of horns, one for each of the subsequent husbands, all of whom were also brothers to the husband. Indeed, if a husband had no natural brothers, he would adopt another man to be his brother so that he would be allowed to marry. Conjugal rights were traded off and children were assigned in turn with the oldest husband receiving the first and so on. Tellingly, polyandry has never been associated with any Hun tribe, but is known of several Central Asian ones.
In their religious beliefs, the Ephthalites are said to have worshipped fire and sun gods. While either one is not unusual in any early culture around the world, both together is likely to indicate a Persian origin. In Persia, such beliefs were later to culminate in Zoroastrianism.
As part of their religious observance, the Ephthalites did not cremate, but as is reported by all commentators including Procopius, always buried their dead, either by constructing a tomb or under the ground. This is not consistent with the Zoroastrian practice of leaving the body in the open, but is clearly at odds with Turkish nomadic groups. The practice of inhumation then may simply indicate an Iranian group which had been sundered from the main branch at an early date and had adopted local Central Asian burial customs.
Arabic persian Accounts
Arabic/Persian name for the Hephtalites/Ephtalites was Haytal or Hayatila, and they are so mentioned by Firdausi in his Shahnameh. In his commentary on the Hudud al Alam, the late Russian Professor Minorsky quotes two early passages from Arab chroniclers that link the Khalaj with the Hayatilas aka Ephtalites.
From the Mafatih al Ulum of Al-Khwarezmi written in 975 AD (H. 365): The Hayatila are a tribe of men who had enjoyed grandeur and possessed the country of Tukharistan; the Turks called Khalukh, or Khalaj, are their descendants.
From the Kitab al Masalik of Istakhri, written in 933 AD (H. 321): The Khalaj are a kind of Turks who in the days of old came to the country between Hind and the districts of Sijistan (Sakastan/Sistan) behind Ghor. They are catle-breeders of Turkish apperance, dress, language.
Takharistan is what is now north-eastern Afghansitan, around Baghlan. Takharistan was actually one of the major strongholds of the Hephtalites during their dominant period in history, so it correlates well to the 2 passages above. Both passages take the Khalaj back some five centuries before the Ghuzz migrations, making their ancestors the White Huns.
As their empire shows, the central focal spot of their empire is the Hindu Kush. Regardless of their origins, by the end of the 6th century AD, there emerges a group of tribes with an Iranian background and language, but not fire worshippers, rather sun worshippers, made up of successive hordes overlaid at the last by a Hunnish conquest, and with a centre of historical attraction towards the Gandhara Valley.
So white Huns are of Decendents of Iranian and Central Asian tribe ,and they are noway connected with Huns of Attila fame. Probably they are just Indian tribe on the periphery in Afghanisthan
Let us see other Huns
European Huns
In 370, nomads arrived nroth of the Black Sea. These nomads were given the name "Huns" by Greco-Roman historians. One theory for the origin of these people is that in 160, Fragments of the Xiong Nu settle around the Ural sea for 200 years, before moving west. However, association of the Xiong Nu and the Huns is now more of a "classic speculation" without enough evidence. Most realistically, the Huns in Europe could've contained some fragments of the Xiong Nu, but also fragments of other steppe groups, along with more local european barbarians. In any case, the Huns moved and destroyed the cultures north of the Pontus including the Sarmatians and the Goths. The Goths then migrated into the Eastern Roman empire, who after rebelling against the Empire, defeated the Romans at Adrianople. The Hun gradually expanded their realms incorporating many local barbarian groups. The height of the empire marked the Reign of Attila, who made repeated invasion against the Romans. Although the Huns did not penetrate very deeply compared to other barbarians, they were instrumental in causing migrations of other barbarians against Rome. After Attila died, the empire rapidly fell apart. Germanic tribes rebelled and defeated Attila's sons, forcing whatever was of the Huns to move back into the steppes, where they faced away.
Red Huns (Chionites)
In 350, the Chionites came to power in Sogdia and invaded the Sassanid Empire of Persia. Latin sources relate them to "Huns" but ethnical relations is far beyond what names can say. Most probable, they were driven out of the Mongolian Steppes by the Juan Juan. (this pattern of groups migrating away from strong nomadic empires is a constant theme in history) The Chionites declined with the Invasion of the White Huns. The last record of Chionites was in 558 AD, when their last remnant was destroyed by the Western Turks.
Xionites, Chionites, or Chionitae (Middle Persian: Xiyon; Avestan: Xiiaona; Sogdian: Xwn)
Zion (Hebrew: Ṣiyyôn), also transliterated Sion, Syon, Tzion or Tsion, is a place name often used as a synonym for Jerusalem. The word is first found in 2 Samuel 5:7 which dates from c.630–540 BCE according to modern scholarship. It commonly referred to a specific mountain near Jerusalem (Mount Zion), on which stood a Jebusite fortress of the same name that was conquered by David and was named the City of David.
David Gives Temple Plans To Solomon
As sewn above, the word Zion in Hebrew is Ṣiyyôn, & the word Xion in Persian is Xiyon. The phonetical resemblance is too big to be a coincidence.
The Turanian Karaites were ten tribes of Xion. The Kermichiones were in fact especially the tribe of Simeon.
It is difficult to determine the ethnic composition of the Xionites. Simocatta, Menander, and Priscus provide evidence that the Xionites were somewhat different from the Hephthalites although, Frye suggested that the Hepthalites may have been a prominent tribe or clan of the Xionites. They followed their versions of Buddhism and Shaivism mixed with animism.
In 1932 Sir Harold Walter Bailey wrote: “ Xyon. This name is familiar in Pahlavi and Avestan texts. From the Pahlavi book of Bahman Yasht the three divisions of this people Xyon with the Turks, the Karmir (Red) Xyon, and the White Xyon. ”
The Xiongnu became a dominant power on the steppes of central and eastern Asia. They were active in regions of what is now southern Siberia, Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, Gansu and Xinjiang. Relations between early adjacent Chinese dynasties to the south east and the Xiongnu were complex, with repeated periods of military conflict and intrigue, alternating with exchanges of tribute, trade, and marriage treaties.
Various attempts to identify them with groups known from further west across the Eurasian Steppe under different names remain highly controversial. The identity of the ethnic core of Xiongnu has been a subject of varied hypotheses, because only a few words, mainly titles and personal names, were preserved in the Chinese sources. Proposals by scholars include Turkic, Iranian, Mongolic, Tocharian, Uralic Yeniseian, or multi-ethnic. The name Xiongnu may be cognate with that of Huns (Hunni) and Huna, but the evidence for this is controversial.
They were in the same location as the Khazars. There is a place called Khazar in Azerbaijan. It's a beach touristic area.
I keep seeing over and over the Huns being the same people as the Xionists and Khazars. The Chinese dont claim them, Arabs dont claim them, People living in Iran during that time didnt claim them, Europe didnt claim them. Who were they? Looks like the Huns (at least part) and Khazars were the same people and it looks like we have two different kinds of Zionists/Xionists.
Painting depicting Zion.
According to history the Huns were a force in the late 4th and early 5th Centuries but then disappeared into thin air without a traceable clue.
If Hitler were going to kill all people of Jewish decent he have to kill most of Germany due to a whole lot of Germans had Jewish Genes...
The 10 tribes would never call themselves "Jews". Some Japhethites mixed in with them. Thats why they look the way they do.
Were Attila & Genghis Khan Israelite Leaders?
Attila was a leader of the Hunnic Empire, a tribal confederation consisting of Huns, Ostrogoths (Lost Israelites from Gad's tribe), and Alans (Lost Israelites from Zebulun's tribe) among others, on the territory of Central and Eastern Europe.
The Huns were a nomadic people, who lived in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia between the 1st century AD and the 7th century. They were first reported living east of the Volga River, in an area that was part of Scythia at the time; the Huns' arrival is associated with the migration westward of a Scythian people, the Alans. In 91 AD, the Huns were said to be living near the Caspian Sea and by about 150 had migrated southeast into the Caucasus.
By 370, the Huns had established a vast, if short-lived, dominion in Europe.
In the 18th century, the French scholar Joseph de Guignes became the first to propose a link between the Huns and the Xiongnu people, who were northern neighbours of China in the 3rd century BC. Since Guignes' time, considerable scholarly effort has been devoted to investigating such a connection. However, there is no scholarly consensus on a direct connection between the dominant element of the Xiongnu and that of the Huns. Priscus, a 5th-century Roman diplomat and Greek historian, mentions that the Huns had a language of their own; little of it has survived and its relationships have mainly been considered the Altaic languages. Numerous other ethnic groups were included under Attila's rule, including very many speakers of Gothic (Goths are regarded as the Lost Israelite tribe of Gad), which some modern scholars describe as a lingua franca of the Empire.
Their main military technique was mounted archery.
The Huns may have stimulated the Great Migration, a contributing factor in the col, the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. They formed a unified empire under Attila the Hun, who died in 453; their empire broke up the next year. Their descendants, or successors with similar names, are recorded by neighbouring populations to the south, east and west as having occupied parts of Eastern Europe and Central Asia approximately from the 4th century to the 6th century. Variants of the Hun name are recorded in the Caucasus until the early 8th century.
Other nomadic polities sometimes were called "Huns", including the Xiongnu, Kidarites, Hephthalite Empire, and Khazars. The Kidarites are virtually named the same as the Semitic Kedarites neighboring the Israelites in the Promised Land. The Hephthalites and Khazars are considered to be Lost Israelites. Even if the Huns were not Israelites, part of their hordes were composed of them.
The Huns were "a confederation of warrior bands", ready to integrate other groups to increase their military power, in the Eurasian Steppe in the 4th to 6th centuries AD. Most aspects of their ethnogenesis (including their language and their links to other peoples of the steppes) are uncertain.
Walter Pohl explicitly states: "All we can say safely is that the name Huns, in late antiquity, described prestigious ruling groups of steppe warriors."
The Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus, who completed his work of the history of the Roman Empire in the early 390s, recorded that the "people of the Huns ... dwell beyond the Sea of Azov near the frozen ocean".
Jerome associated them with the Scythians in a letter, written four years after the Huns invaded the empire's eastern provinces in 395. The equation of the Huns with the Scythians, together with a general fear of the coming of the Antichrist in the late 4th century, gave rise to their identification with Gog and Magog (whom Alexander the Great had shut off behind inaccessible mountains, according to a popular legend). This demonization of the Huns is also reflected in Jordanes's Getica, written in the 6th century, which portrayed them as a people descending from "unclean spirits" and expelled Gothic witches.
Since Joseph de Guignes in the 18th century, historians have associated the Huns who appeared on the borders of Europe in the 4th century AD with the Xiongnu ("howling slaves") who had invaded China from the territory of present-day Mongolia between the 3rd century BC and the 2nd century AD. Due to the devastating defeat by the Chinese Han dynasty, the northern branch of the Xiongnu had retreated north-westward; their descendants may have migrated through Eurasia and consequently they may have some degree of cultural and genetic continuity with the Huns. Otto J. Maenchen-Helfen was the first to challenge the traditional approach, based primarily on the study of written sources, and to emphasize the importance of archaeological research. Thereafter the identification of the Xiongnu as the Huns' ancestors became controversial.
The similarity of their ethnonyms is one of the most important links between the two peoples. The Buddhist monk Dharmarakṣa, who was an important translator of Indian religious texts in the 3rd century AD, applied the word Xiongnu when translating the references to the Huna people into Chinese. A Sogdian merchant described the invasion of northern China by the "Xwn" people in a letter, written in 313 AD.
Étienne de la Vaissière asserts both documents prove that Huna or Xwn were the "exact transcriptions" of the Chinese "Xiongnu" name. Christopher P. Atwood rejects that identification because of the "very poor phonological match" between the three words. For instance, Xiongnu begins with a voiceless velar fricative, Huna with a voiceless glottal fricative; Xiongnu is a two-syllable word, but Xwn only has one syllable. The Chinese Book of Wei contain references to "the remains of the descendants of the Xiongnu" who lived in the region of the Altai Mountains in the early 5th century AD. According to De la Vaissière, the Chinese source proves that nomadic groups preserved their Xiongnu identity for centuries after the fall of their empire.
Both the Xiongnu and Huns used bronze cauldrons, similarly to all peoples of the steppes. Based on the study and categorization of cauldrons from archaeological sites of the Eurasian Steppes, archaeologist Toshio Hayashi concludes that the spread of the cauldrons "may indicate the route of migration of the Hunnic tribes" from Mongolia to the northern region of Central Asia in the 2nd or 3rd century AD, and from Central Asia towards Europe in the second half of the 4th century, which also implies the Huns' association with the Xiongnu. The Huns practiced artificial cranial deformation, but there is no evidence of such practise among the Xiongnu. This custom had already been practiced in the Eurasian Steppes in the Bronze Age and in the early Iron Age, but it disappeared around 500 BC. It was also popular in ancient Egypt & among the ancient Tutsis. It again started to spread among the local inhabitants of the region of the Talas River and in the Pamir Mountains in the 1st century BC. In addition to the Huns, the custom is also evidenced among the Yuezhi and Alans. The lengthy pony-tail, which was a characteristic of the Xiongnu, was not documented among the Huns.
When writing of the relationship between the Xiongnu and Huns, historian Hyun Jin Kim concludes: "Thus to refer to Hun-Xiongnu links in terms of old racial theories or even ethnic affiliations simply makes a mockery of the actual historical reality of these extensive, multiethnic, polyglot steppe empires". He also emphasizes that "the ancestors of the Hunnic core tribes ... were part of the Xiongnu Empire and possessed a strong Xiongnu element, and the ruling elite of the Huns ... claimed to belong to the political tradition of this imperial entity."
Taking into account the historical gap between the Chinese reports of the Xiongnu and the European records of the Huns, Peter Heather states: "Even if we do make some connection between fourth-century Huns and first-century [Xiongnu], therefore, an awful lot of water had passed under an awful lot of bridges during 300 years worth of lost history."
Artificial cranial deformation was practiced by the Huns and sometimes by tribes with whom they influenced. Artificial cranial deformation of the circular type can be used to trace the route that the Huns took from north China to the Central Asian steppes and subsequently to the southern Russian steppes. The people who practiced annular type artificial cranial deformation in Central Asia were Yuezhi/Kushans.
Some artificially deformed crania from the 5th–6th Century AD have been found in Northeastern Hungary and elsewhere in Western Europe. None of them have any Mongoloid features and all the skulls appear Europid; these skulls may have belonged to Germanic or other subject groups whose parents wished to elevate their status by following a custom introduced by the Huns.
A variety of languages were spoken within the Hun Empire. It is considered that by the 440s, they were more Germanic-speaking allies than Huns themselves, and as such Gothic was the lingua franca of the Empire. Kim disputes the idea Gothic or Hunnic were lingua franca due to lack of historical indication. Among non-Hunnic subjects were also included Iranian-speaking Alans and Sarmatians. Based on some etymological interpretation of the words strava, medos, and kamos and subsequent historical appearance, the other languages have been taken to include a form of Proto-Slavic language.
Priscus differed Hunnic language from other languages spoken at Attila's court. He recounts how Zerco made Attila's guests laugh also by the "promiscuous jumble of words, Latin mixed with Hunnish and Gothic".
Priscus said that Attila's "Scythian" subjects spoke "besides their own barbarian tongues, either Hunnish, or Gothic, or, as many have dealings with the Western Romans, Latin; but not one of them easily speaks Greek, except captives from the Thracian or Illyrian frontier regions".
The ancient sources are clear that there was a Hunnic language. The literary sources preserve many names, and three Indo-European words (medos, kamos, strava), which have been studied for more than a century and a half.
Otto Maenchen-Helfen noted that the thesis Huns spoke a Turkic language has a long history behind it. Maenchen-Helfen held that by Turkic origin of Hunnic tribal and proper names, the Huns spoke a Turkic language. Denis Sinor argued that "at least part of the Hun leadership was Turkic speaking".
Traditionally notable studies of proper names chronologically include that of Gyula Németh, Gerhard Doerfer, Maenchen-Helfen, and Omeljan Pritsak. Pritsak in his study (1982),"The Hunnic Language of the Attila Clan", who analyzing the 33 survived personal names concluded: "It was not a Turkic language, but one between Turkic and Mongolian, probably closer to the former than the latter. The language had strong ties to Bulgar language and to modern Chuvash, but also had some important connections, especially lexical and morphological, to Ottoman Turkish and Yakut".
On the basis of the existing name records, a number of scholars suggest that the Huns spoke a Turkic language of the Oghur branch, which also includes Bulgar, Khazar and Chuvash languages. Peter Heather called the Huns "the first group of Turkic, as opposed to Iranian, nomads to have intruded into Europe". Many recent scholars agree that Hunnic was related to Turkic and Mongolian languages.
In 2013, Hyun Jin Kim concluded that "seems highly likely then from the names that we do know, most of which seem to be Turkic, that the Hunnic elite was predominantly Turkic-speaking".
He noted that as the sources recount, on the Attila's court was spoken beside Hunnic, also Gothic and Latin, and that in the western part of the Empire, where lived subjected Goths, Huns probably spoke both Hunnic and Gothic language. An example would be the Germanic or Germanized names of noted Huns like Laudaricus.
The Huns kept herds of cattle, horses, goats and sheep. According to Roman sources, their other sources of food consisted of wild game and the roots of wild plants. For clothes they had pointed caps, trousers or leggings made from ibex skin, and either linen or rodent skin tunics. Ammianus reports that they wore these clothes until the clothes fell to pieces. Priscus describes Attila's clothes as different from those of his men only in being clean. Women would embroider the edges of the garments and often stitch small colorful stone beads on them as well.
In warfare they used the bow and javelin. Early writers such as Ammianus (followed by Thompson) stated that they used primitive, bone-tipped arrowheads, but this claim has been contested by archaeological findings in Hunnic tombs, which have exclusively yielded iron arrowheads.
Maenchen-Helfen states: "Had the Huns been unable to forge their swords and cast their arrow-heads, they never could have crossed the Don. The idea that the Hun horsemen fought their way to the walls of Constantinople and to the Marne with bartered and captured swords is absurd." They also fought using iron swords and lassos in close combat. The Hun sword was a long, straight, double-edged sword of early Sassanian style. These swords were hung from a belt using the scabbard-slide method, which kept the weapon vertical. The Huns also employed a smaller short sword or large dagger which was hung horizontally across the belly. A symbol of status among the Huns was a gilded bow. Sword and dagger grips also were decorated with gold.
With the arrival of the Huns, a tradition of using more bone laths in composite bows arrived in Europe. Bone laths had long been used in the Levantine and Roman tradition, two to stiffen each of the two siyahs (the tips of the bow), for a total of four laths per bow. (The Scythian and Sarmatian bows, used for centuries on the European steppes until the arrival of the Huns, had no such laths.) A style that arrived in Europe with the Huns (after centuries of use on the borders of China), was stiffened by two laths on each siyah, and additionally reinforced on the grip by three laths, for a total of seven per bow.
Mongol Empire
The Mongol Empire (Mongolian: Mongolyn Ezent Güren listen ; Mongolian Cyrillic: Монголын эзэнт гүрэн; also Орда ("Horde") in Russian chronicles) existed during the 13th and 14th centuries and was the largest contiguous land empire in history.
Originating in the steppes of Central Asia, the Mongol Empire eventually stretched from Eastern Europe to the Sea of Japan, extending northwards into Siberia, eastwards and southwards into the Indian subcontinent, Indochina, and the Iranian plateau, and westwards as far as the Levant and Arabia.
The Mongol Empire emerged from the unification of nomadic tribes in the Mongolia homeland under the leadership of Genghis Khan, who was proclaimed ruler of all Mongols in 1206. The empire grew rapidly under his rule and then under his descendants, who sent invasions in every direction. The vast transcontinental empire connected the east with the west with an enforced Pax Mongolica allowing trade, technologies, commodities, and ideologies to be disseminated and exchanged across Eurasia.
They were free marketeers.
The empire began to split due to wars over succession, as the grandchildren of Genghis Khan disputed whether the royal line should follow from his son and initial heir Ögedei, or one of his other sons such as Tolui, Chagatai, or Jochi. The Toluids prevailed after a bloody purge of Ögedeid and Chagataid factions, but disputes continued even among the descendants of Tolui. After Möngke Khan died, rival kurultai councils simultaneously elected different successors, the brothers Ariq Böke and Kublai Khan, who then not only fought each other in the Toluid Civil War, but also dealt with challenges from descendants of other sons of Genghis. Kublai successfully took power, but civil war ensued as Kublai sought unsuccessfully to regain control of the Chagatayid and Ögedeid families.
The Battle of Ain Jalut in 1260 marked the high-water point of the Mongol conquests and was the first time a Mongol advance had ever been beaten back in direct combat on the battlefield. Though the Mongols launched many more invasions into the Levant, briefly occupying it and raiding as far as Gaza after a decisive victory at the Battle of Wadi al-Khazandar in 1299, they withdrew due to various geopolitical factors.
By the time of Kublai's death in 1294, the Mongol Empire had fractured into four separate khanates or empires, each pursuing its own separate interests and objectives: the Golden Horde khanate in the northwest; the Chagatai Khanate in the middle; the Ilkhanate in the southwest; and the Yuan dynasty in the east based in modern-day Beijing. In 1304, the three western khanates briefly accepted the nominal suzerainty of the Yuan dynasty, but it was later overthrown by the Han Chinese Ming dynasty in 1368. The Genghisid rulers of the Yuan retreated to the Mongolia homeland and continued to rule the Northern Yuan dynasty, while the Golden Horde and the Chagatai Khanate lasted in one form or another for some additional centuries after the fall of the Yuan dynasty and the Ilkhanate.
The Mongols gave freedom of religion & of trade to their subjects. Eventually the Mongols accepted the religion of their subjects, be that Islam, Christianism or Buddhism & mixed up genetically with them.
The Huns & Mongols had many Israelite subjects with a lost identity & many different new names like Scythian, Saka, Ephtalite, Cimmerian, Goth, Thracian, Sarmatian, Alan, Khazar, Parthian... The Israelite Scythians were long before the Huns & Mongols expert horsemen & bowmen. They were so good with bow & horse that they could ride the horse while throwing the arrows. From them the Mongols might have learned. The name Khagan & its role resembles that of the Israelite Kohen or Kahan. Moreover, there are many Jews nowadays that have last names very similar to Khagan, for example: Kagan, Keegan...
Among the Mongols there were subdivisions like the Keraites that could be part of the ancestors of the Israelite Karaites.
Attila is said to have sown his floor with salt as Genghis Khan did. The custom of purifying or consecrating a destroyed city with salt and cursing anyone who dared to rebuild it was widespread in the ancient Near East, but historical accounts are unclear as to what the sowing of salt meant in that process. The most logical response is found in the Old Testament: After Abimelech captured an enemy city, "he sowed it with salt" (Judges 9:45). "With all your offerings you shall offer salt." (Leviticus 2:13)
Then we can see why both, Attila & Genghis Khan, could have sown with salt enemies' soils.
Have the Kyrgyz people Israelite origin?
As explaned further we see the white origin of the original Kyrgyz people, but with Mongol & Chinese invasions the Semitic features almost vanished away. Nevertheless you can still find some people with Semitic features & DNA that confirms it. Part of their ancestry came from the Sakas, a people considered to have Israaelite origin.
Genetic origins of the Kyrgyz from various parts of Kyrgyzstan. East Asian (e.g. Mongol) ancestry forms half to 2/3 nationwide, Central/South Asian forms the 2nd largest at around 1/4, and European at around 1/8. Middle Eastern ancestry is minimal to non-existant depending on locality.
The Headscarf of the Kyrgys women is very similar to the one used by Orthodox Jewish women. It's remarkable as well their fire worshipping like other Israelites did anciently.
A Kyrgyz woman in national costume in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan
“Manasseh son of Jacob” and the Kyrgyz hero “Manas son of Jakyb.”
Kashmir, Pakistan, Afghanistan & the surrounding area have plenty of Israelite names. It's interesting that Tora Bora in Afghanistan is close to Safed Koh. Tora is similar to the Torah or the Jewish Law & Safed was an ancient Israelite city & capital of kabbalists.
Manas is an airport next to Bishkek, capital of Kyrgyzstan. Comparing Kyrgyzstan’s national epic Manas with ancient prophets reinforces such a bond; especially obvious is the similarity between “Manasseh son of Jacob” and the Kyrgyz hero “Manas son of Jakyb.” There is an ISSYK Kul (Isaac's Lake) in kirgyzstan. Have the Kyrgyz people Israelite origin?
The Epic of Manas is a traditional epic poem dating to the 18th century but claimed by the Kyrgyz people to be much older. This opens the possibility of Manas having spoken a dialect of Turki similar to that of the Kazakhs and Nogay people today. The plot of Manas revolves around a series of events that coincide with the history of the region in the 17th century, primarily the interaction of the Turki-speaking people from the mountains to the south of the Dasht-i Qipchaq and the Oirat Mongols from the bordering area of Jungaria.
The government of Kyrgyzstan celebrated the 1,000th anniversary of Manas in 1995. The eponymous hero of Manas and his Oirat enemy Joloy were first found written in a Persian manuscript dated to 1792-3. In one of its dozens of iterations, the epic poem consists of approximately 500,000 lines, and while Kyrgyz historians consider it to be the longest epic poem in history, the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata and the Tibetan Epic of King Gesar are both longer. The distinction is in number of verses. Manas has more verses, though they are much shorter.
In 2009, a parliament member suggested its nomination for the "longest epic story in the world" because “the great heritage of Kyrgyz people should find its place in the world history.” There have likewise been attempts to identify Manas as Mannasseh of the Old Testament.
The epic tells the story of Manas, his descendants and his followers. Battles against Khitan and Oirat enemies form a central theme in the epic. The epic is divided into three parts, each consisting of a loose collection of episodic heroic events.
The Epic of Manas is divided into 3 books. The first is entitled "Manas", the second episode describes the deeds of his son Semetei, and the third of his grandson Seitek. The epic begins with the destruction and difficulties caused by the invasion of the Oirats. Zhakyp reaches maturity in this time as an owner of many herds without a single heir. His prayers are eventually answered, and on the day of his son's birth, he dedicates a colt born the same day to his son's service. The son is unique among his peers for strength, mischief, and generosity. The Oirat learn of this young warrior and warn their leader. A plan is hatched to capture the young Manas. They fail in this task, and Manas is able to rally his people and is eventually elected and proclaimed as khan.
Manas expands his reach to include that of the Uyghurs of Moghulistan on the southern border of Jungaria. One of the defeated Uighur rulers gives his daughter to Manas in marriage. At this point, the Kyrgyz people chose, with Manas' help, to return from the Altai mountains to their "ancestral lands" in the mountains of modern-day Kyrgyzstan. Manas begins his successful campaigns against his neighbors accompanied by his forty companions. Manas turns eventually to face the Afghan people to the south in battle, where after defeat the Afghans enter into an alliance with Manas. Manas then comes into a relationship with the people of mā warā' an-nār through marriage to the daughter of the ruler of Bukhara. The epic continues in various forms, depending on the publication and whim of the manaschi, or reciter of the epic.
The epic poem's age is unknowable, as it was transmitted orally without being recorded. However, historians have doubted the age claimed for it since the turn of the 20th century. The primary reason is that the events portrayed occurred in the 16th and 17th centuries. Renowned Central Asian historian V. V. Bartol'd referred to Manas as an "absurd gallimaufry of pseudo-history," and Hatto remarks that Manas was "compiled to glorify the Sufi sheikhs of Shirkent and Kasan ... [and] circumstances make it highly probable that... [Manas] is a late eighteenth-century interpolation."
Changes were made in the delivery and textual representation of Manas in the 1920s and 1930s to represent the creation of the Kyrgyz nationality, particularly the replacement of the tribal background of Manas. In the 19th century versions, Manas is the leader of the Nogay people, while in versions dating after 1920, Manas is a Kyrgyz and a leader of the Kyrgyz.
Attempts have been made to connect modern Kyrgyz with the Yenisei Kirghiz, today claimed by Kyrgyzstan to be the ancestors of modern Kyrgyz. Kazakh ethnographer and historian Shokan Shinghisuly Walikhanuli was unable to find evidence of folk-memory during his extended research in 19th-century Kyrgyzstan (then part of the expanding Russian empire) nor has any been found since.
Manas is the classic centerpiece of Kyrgyz literature, and parts of it are often recited at Kyrgyz festivities by specialists in the epic, called Manaschi (Kyrgyz: Манасчы). Manaschis tell the tale in a melodic chant unaccompanied by musical instruments.
Kyrgyzstan has many Manaschis. Narrators who know all three episodes of the epic (the tales of Manas, of his son Semetei and of his grandson Seitek) can acquire the status of Great Manaschi. Great Manaschis of the 20th century are Sagimbai Orozbakov, Sayakbai Karalayev, Shaabai Azizov (pictured), Kaba Atabekov, Seidene Moldokova and Yusup Mamai. A revered Manaschi who recently visited the United Kingdom is Rysbek Jumabayev. Urkash Mambetaliev, the Manaschi of the Bishkek Philharmonic, also travels through Europe. Talantaaly Bakchiyev combines recitation with critical study.
There are more than 65 written versions of parts of the epic. An English translation of the version of Sagimbai Orozbakov by Walter May was published in 1995, in commemoration of the presumed 1000th anniversary of Manas' birth, and re-issued in two volumes in 2004. Arthur Hatto has made English translations of the Manas tales recorded by Shokan Valikhanov and Vasily Radlov in the 19th century.
Manas is said to have been buried in the Ala-Too mountains in Talas Province, in northwestern Kyrgyzstan. A mausoleum some 40 km east of the town of Talas is believed to house his remains and is a popular destination for Kyrgyz travellers. Traditional Kyrgyz horsemanship games are held there every summer since 1995. An inscription on the mausoleum states, however, that it is dedicated to "...the most famous of women, Kenizek-Khatun, the daughter of the emir Abuka". Legend has it that Kanikey, Manas' widow, ordered this inscription in an effort to confuse her husband's enemies and prevent a defiling of his grave. The name of the building is "Manastin Khumbuzu" or "The Dome of Manas", and the date of its erection is unknown. There is a museum dedicated to Manas and his legend nearby the tomb.
Kyrgyzs
A majority of modern researchers came to the conclusion that the ancestors of Kyrgyz tribes had their origin in the most ancient tribal unions of Sakas/Scythians, Wusun/Issedones, Dingling, Mongols and Huns.
Total population approx. 4.5 million Regions with significant populations Kyrgyzstan 3,804,800, Uzbekistan 250,000, China 143,500, Russia 103,422, Tajikistan 60,000, Kazakhstan 23,274, Afghanistan 1,130 & Ukraine 1,128.
The genetic makeup of the Kyrgyz is consistent with their origin as a mix of tribes. For instance, 63% of modern Kyrgyz men of Jumgal District share Haplogroup R1a1 (Y-DNA) with Ishkashimis (68%), Tajiks of Panjikent (64%, three times more than other Tajiks), Pashtuns (51%) and Bartangis (40%). Low diversity of Kyrgyz R1a1 indicates a founder effect within the historical period. Other groups of Kyrgyz show considerably lower haplogroup R frequencies and almost lack haplogroup N.
West Eurasian mtDNA ranges from 27% to 42.6% in the Kyrgyz. With Haplogroup mtDNA H being the most predominant marker at 21.3% among the Kyrgyz.
Because of the processes of migration, conquest, intermarriage, and assimilation, many of the Kyrgyz peoples who now inhabit Central and Southwest Asia are of mixed origins, often stemming from fragments of many different tribes, though they speak closely related languages. They are considered to be a people that were created by a combination of Mongol, Khitan, and Uyghur tribes. They generally have an East Asian appearance like their neighbors the Kazakhs, and in contrast to the mostly Caucasoid Tajiks and the mixed-looking Uzbeks.
Kyrgyz quickly moved as far as the Tian Shan range and maintained their dominance over this territory for about 200 years. In the 12th century, however, Kyrgyz domination had shrunk to the Altai and Sayan Mountains as a result of Mongol expansion. With the rise of the Mongol Empire in the 13th century, the Kyrgyz migrated south. In 1207, after the establishment of Yekhe Mongol Ulus (Mongol empire), Genghis Khan's oldest son Jochi occupied Kyrgyzstan without resistance. The state remained a Mongol vassal until the late 14th century.
The name Sayan is very similar to Sayun which is an Arabic form of Sion or Zion. Were this mountains named after Israel's holy mountain Zion?
Various Turkic peoples ruled them until 1685, when they came under the control of the Oirats (Dzungars).
The Chinese name for Tian Shan may be derived from the Xiongnu language name Qilian (Tsilien; Chinese: 祁连), which was described by Sima Qian in the Records of the Grand Historian as the homeland of the pre-Xiongnu peoples of the region, the Yuezhi, and has been said to refer to the Tian Shan rather than to the range 1,500 kilometres (930 mi) further east now known by this name.
For the very slanted eyed Chinese the less slanted Kyrgyzs are depicted as having big eyes as seen in this painting in Peking.
The Kyrgyz form one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China.
The Kirghiz of Xinjiang revolted in the 1932 Kirghiz rebellion, and also participated in the Battle of Kashgar (1933) and again in 1934.
As it was said above, the Ishkashimis are related genetically to the Kyrgyzs.
Ishkashimis & Ishkashim Area
Ishkashimi is an Iranian language. The Israelite Sakas, Sogdians...spoke Iranian languages & their modern descendants like the Bukharan Jews, Pattans, Tajiks...still do.
Ishkashim is in an area were Israelite peoples meet geographically: Pathans, Kashmiris, Kalashas, Kyrgyzes...
The name Ishkashim probably derives from Ishak, the Israelite patriarch, plus the suffix shim added. Vowels never really existed in Hebrew or Aramaic, so it wouldn't really be a difference writing one or another vowel. For example the name David is often transliterated as Dovid. In Arabic is Dawd. Sam is the Arabic form of Shem. Shimshon is another transliteration for Samson. So it would be pretty logical to assume that Shim is just another form of Shem, another patriarch of Israel. Then the name Ishkashim would be a combination of the names of two patriarchs of the Israelites.
Isaac carrying wood for his own sacrifice
This shouldn't be surprising because Issyk is a nearby lake which is said to be named after Isaac. In the also not far Kyrgyzstan the place name Manas & its famous epich are said to be named after the Israelite patriarch Manasseh. Nearby Pathanistan has several Israelite place names. But neighboring Kashmir is the area with most Israelite place names, outside the Holy Land, in the world, even more than Pattanistan.
Ishkashim Persian: اشکاشم, or Ashkasham, also transliterated Ishkashem or Eshkashem, is a town in Badakhshan Province in north-eastern Afghanistan, the capital of Ishkashim District. It lies on the Panj River, at a point where its direction turns sharply north. Ishkashim lies opposite a town of the same name in Tajikistan, although the Tajik town is normally transliterated Ishkoshim following Tajik practice. A bridge opened in 2006 links the two towns.
The town of Ishkashim lies in a fertile valley at an elevation of 3037 meters.
There are roughly 20 settlements in the valley, but, considering the cultivation in the valley is continuous, it could also be considered one single, larger settlement.
The people of the town are predominantly Nizārī Ismā'īlī, and are called Ishkashimi. Most of them speak the Ishkashimi language.
The valley lies in an important strategic area, as it commands the only route between Badakhshan, Shighnan, and Wakhan accessible during the winter. There had been a mud fort located in the central village.
Ishkashim was earlier a state of the Emir of Badakhshan on the Upper Oxus River. The lands of the state stretched some 16 miles north of the town of Ishkashim, on both sides of the river, to the border of Gharan. Together with Zebak, Eshkashem was under the direct rule of the naib of Zebak, thus also placing them indirectly under the governor of Badakhshan.
Kyrgyz people
In Kyrgyz tradition, the website explains, the term dzeet (Jew) is found for the first time in the Kyrgyz national epic poem “Manas,” which dates back to the 10th century CE and probably incorporates earlier traditions. Manas mentions several cities with sizeable Jewish communities, among them Samarqand, Bukhara and Baghdad, as well as various places in the Middle East, including Jerusalem which is described in the poem as a “Holy City for Jews.”
An entire section of the poem is dedicated to “King Solomon’s times” (Sulaimandyn Tushunda). Several popular Kyrgyz legends refer to a 130-meter high mountain near the city of Osh called “King Solomon’s throne.” Local Jews compared the mountain with Mount Zion.
According to the Kyrgyz tradition, Adam is considered the father of sewing and weaving, Noah – of architecture and carpentry, David – of metallurgy and tinwork, and Abraham – of barbers. In the Suzak region of Kyrgyzstan there is a village named Safar – possibly a variant of “Sephard” – for Jews of Sephardic origin.
There are several theories on the origin of ethnonym "Kyrgyz". The word "Kyrgyz" is derived from the Turkic word "kyrk"-meaning forty, with -"Iz" being an old plural suffix, referring to a collection of forty tribes.
Kyrgyz also means "imperishable", "inextinguishable", "immortal", "unconquerable" or "unbeatable", presumably referring to the epic hero Manas who, as legend has it, unified the forty tribes against the Khitans.
The Chinese transcription "Tse-gu" (Gekun, Jiankun) allows to restore the pronunciation of the ethnonym as Kirkut (Kirgut) and Kirkur (Kirgur). Both forms go back to the earliest variation Kirkün (Chinese Tszyan-kun) of the term "Kyrgyz" meaning "Field People", "Field Huns".
The early Kyrgyz people, known as Yenisei Kyrgyz, first appear in written records in the Chinese annals of the Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian (compiled 109 BC to 91 BC), as Gekun or Jiankun (鬲昆 or 隔昆). They were described in Tang Dynasty texts as having "red hair and green eyes", while those with dark hair and eyes were said to be descendants of a Chinese general Li Ling.
According to recent historical findings, Kyrgyz history dates back to 201 BC. The Yenisei Kyrgyz lived in the upper Yenisey River valley, central Siberia. In Late Antiquity the Yenisei Kyrgyz were a part of the Tiele people. Later, in the Early Middle Ages, the Yenisei Kyrgyz were a part of the confederations of the Göktürk and Uyghur Khaganates.
A majority of modern researchers came to the conclusion that the ancestors of Kyrgyz tribes had their origin in the most ancient tribal unions of Sakas and Usuns, Dinlins, Mongols and Huns.
The genetic makeup of the Kyrgyz is confirmed by various genetic studies. For instance, 63% of modern Kyrgyz men of Jumgal District share Haplogroup R1a1 (Y-DNA) with Ishkashimis (68%), Tajiks of Panjikent (64%, three times more than other Tajiks), Pashtuns (51%), and Bartangis (40%). Low diversity of Kyrgyz R1a1 indicates a founder effect within the historical period. Haplogroup R1a1 (Y-DNA) is often believed to be a marker of the Proto-Indo-European language speakers. Other groups of Kyrgyz show considerably lower haplogroup R frequencies and almost lack haplogroup N.
In a maternal mtDNA study, West Eurasian DNA ranges from 27% to 42.6% in the Kyrgyz.
Because of the processes of migration, conquest, intermarriage, and assimilation, many of the Kyrgyz peoples who now inhabit Central and Southwest Asia are of mixed origins, often stemming from fragments of many different tribes, though they speak closely related languages.
Then Kyrgyz quickly moved as far as the Tian Shan range and maintained their dominance over this territory for about 200 years. In the 12th century, however, the Kyrgyz domination had shrunk to the Altai Range and the Sayan Mountains as a result of the rising Mongol expansion. With the rise of the Mongol Empire in the 13th century, the Kyrgyz migrated south. In 1207, after the establishment of Yekhe Mongol Ulus (Mongol empire), Genghis Khan's oldest son Jochi occupied Kyrgyzstan without resistance. They remained a Mongol vassal until the late 14th century.
Various Turkic peoples ruled them until 1685, when they came under the control of the Oirats (Dzungars). Kyrgyz are predominantly Muslims of the Hanafi Sunni school. Islam was first introduced by Arab traders who travelled along the Silk Road in the seventh and eighth century. In the 8th century, orthodox Islam reached the Fergana valley with the Uzbeks. However, in the tenth century Persian text Hudud al-'alam, the Kyrgyz was still described as a people who "venerate the Fire and burn the dead".
Atheism has some following in the northern regions under Russian communist influence. As of today, few cultural rituals of Shamanism are still practiced alongside with Islam particularly in Central Kyrgyzstan. During a July 2007 interview, Bermet Akayeva, the daughter of Askar Akayev, the former President of Kyrgyzstan, stated that Islam is increasingly taking root even in the northern portion which came under communist influence. She emphasized that many mosques have been built and that the Kyrgyz are "increasingly devoting themselves to Islam."
Hazar-Susah in Biblical Hebrew חצרסוסה
The name Hazar-susah in the Bible
The graceful name Hazar-susah occurs once in the Bible. It's the name of a town in the area allotted to the tribe of Simeon (Joshua 19:5). By the time the Chronicler was writing, the town was known as חצר סוסים (Hazar-susim; 1 Chronicles 4:31).
Etymology of the name Hazar-susah
The name Hazar-susah obviously consists of two elements. The first part of our name is the same as the noun חצר (haser), meaning village: There are four or five different roots חצר (hsr), which officially have nothing to do with each other. But at second glance, they all seem to reflect enclosure, mostly of a form or shape that starts out small and grows larger, like a trumpet:
The unused root חצר (hsr I) occurs in cognate languages with meanings like to encompass, surround or enclose. It's the root of the masculine noun חצר (haser) meaning court or enclosure.
Courts were common in near eastern architecture. Houses were designed around them and the tabernacle and the temple had outer courts; enclosed area's around the actual sanctuary. Ezekiel's temple and probably Solomon's temple as well, also had inner courts. It's of those courts that the Psalmist sang: better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere (Psalm 84:10).
Israelites contemplating the Temple
The root חצר (hsr II) occurs in cognate languages with meanings such as to be present, settle or dwell. In the Bible, only the derived masculine noun חצר (haser) occurs. It means settled abode (Nehemiah 11:25), settlement (Genesis 25:16) or village without a wall (Leviticus 25:31).
Note that this word is identical to the previous noun, meaning that in Hebrew courts and villages were known by the exact same word. Then take in account that the temple represented the human collective it was central to, and these two words blend into a harmonious one.
The root חצר (hsr III) occurs in cognate language as to be green. Still, in Hebrew it might have less to do with being green and much more with the frailty of the individual versus the strength of the collective. This root's sole surviving derivative is the masculine noun חציר (hasir), meaning grass. This word is used to denote food for animals (1 Kings 18:5, Isaiah 15:6) but more often in metaphors that describe how short and perishable a human individual life is (Job 8:12, Isaiah 37:27).
The metaphor immediately also argues that although one tent makes no village, and one blade of grass makes no lush carpet, the village and the lush carpet called humanity is quite perennial.
HAW Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament counts an extra root חצר (hsr), where BDB Theological Dictionary doesn't. HAW says that the noun חציר (hasir), meaning leek (Numbers 11:5 only), comes from a root חצר (hsr IV) that means to be narrow. Note that this noun is identical to the previous one, and also note that the trumpet-like form of a leek is precisely like a centralized city, but in three dimensions in stead of two.
HAW Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament suggests that the final root חצר (hsr V) may also mean to be narrow (like the previous one). Its derivatives are:
The feminine noun חצצרה (hasosra), meaning trumpet (2 Kings 12:14, Hosea 5:8, Numbers 10:5). The denominative verb חצצר (hssr), meaning to sound the trumpet (2 Chronicles 5:13).
Associated Biblical names
Baal-hazor En-hazor Hazar-addar Hazar-enan Hazar-gaddah Hazar-hatticon ♂ Hazarmaveth Hazaroth ♞ Hazar-shual Hazar-susah Hazor Hazor-hadattah ♂ Hezro ♂ Hezron
Hazara could easily come from the Hebrew word Hazar too.
Remnant Khazar Tribe Lives in Afghanistan: Hazaras
A tribe in Central Afghanistan is direct descendency of the Khazars of history. Its name says it all: Hazara People.
The tribe's name - Hazara - is obviously Khazars in Farsi (the Russians/Ukrainians say 'Hasari'), moreover it is said in the article cited: people of Mongolian descent. The Uyghurs are cousins of the Khazars of history and are now Muslims and subjects of China in the Sinkiang (East Turkestan).
Connection Between the Hazara People and the Khazars
Both peoples are Turkic and some Turkic historians in Afghanistan strongly believe in direct connection between them. They say the name of the Khazar sea (Caspian) and Hazar city of Turkmenistan have been taken from the Hazara or the Khazar people.
When you look at the naming convention of the Hazaras before the Islamic names flourished through out the Hazara society, and compare our ancestral names with the remenants of what exist in today's Khazar areas, and those who have converted to Jewdism and Christianity, you do see similarities. I will name few as.
Hazara/Turkic Jewish/Christians (whose ancestors are from us).
Beg Berg/Beg/Beck/Burg. Freidun Freidman. Stan Stein. Jaan John. Ghulam Ghelman. Choly.
Several of the Jews's last names are similar to our ancestral Turkic names, some of which I've already mentioned above. Yes, of course with slight variations, but you can still link the two.
The very word "Jew" is derived from the famous saying of ours "Joo". When these people flourish throughout the eastern Europe, not speaking the language, and speaking in their own tongue among other ppl, and calling eachother by name, with a "Joo" at the end, such as "bacha joo, Rahmat joo", and so on, then that's how they were slowly being called "Joo or Jew" by the others, who used to hear that all the time. The word "Joo" is used alot among Hazaras calling each other's name, or at home by parents calling their children, "Bacha joo".
Many of the Russian, and all other eastern European languages are flourished with the Turkic words, many of which are still pretty commonly used among them, and the Turkics/Hazaras.
One of the inscriptions are Behsutun, which means "Belongs to Behsut". Behsut is a big tribe of Hazaras. So Cyrus (Dariush), had that inscription, and told many stories in that inscription about his wars and Persians.
Hebrew Name & Origin of haZara People
The determinant "the" in Hebrew is "ha" & it's attached to the noun as if the determinant was just one word with it. In order to show the difference between determinant & noun in a transliterated Hebrew, is necessary to write the determinant "ha" (the) in lower case letters, & the noun would start in capital letter. Nevertheless they still are two words. Despite that in some cases determinant & noun have fused & become a new noun with the fusion of the two. At times they completely become a word when the people dealing with it don't have enough knowledge of Hebrew.
Eventually this was the case with the Lost Tribes of Israel once they started to speaking the foreign languages of their conquerors or neighbors. This could have been the case with the haZara people.
The Hazaras are a combination of Mongols and Farsi speaking people. The Israelites spoke the Farsi language of their Persian captors, although some preserved Aramaic, as seen in Pathan documents.
Blond HaZara child
Their look is usually Mongolian, their ethnicity, name & language are clearly not. They speak Persian, yet they don't claim to be Persian. Persian is a language of the Israelites's conquerors that eventually was taken by the Israelites as their own.
After a while the Persian speaking haZara people of Israel, sojourning in the Central Asian steppes, were conquered by the Mongols with whom after they mixed up acquired their look. Despite it there are still haZaras with Caucasian features, blond hair, green eyes...
The Hebrew noun Zerah sometimes is Zera, Zara, Zarah... Zarah was a son of Judah. From him descended the Hebrew Royal House: The celebrated King David, King Solomon... & through Mary the very Jesus Christ haMashiah (the Mesiah). So if the HaZara have this Israelite origin they would be Zerahites.
Some witty Bible readers could wonder why the Zerahites, as Judah's descendants, would be Lost Tribers. The Kingdom of the North, Israel, was taken captive to not come back anymore. The Kingdom of the South was the Kingdom of Judah, the only survival Hebrew kingdom at the northern kingdom's demise. The Kingdom of the South, Judah, was also taken into captivity, but after several decades a remnant returned to the Promised Land.
The celebrated lost ten tribes are popularly identified as the descendants of the Israelite captives of the Kingdom of the North, hence the the term "lost". Because these children of Israel lost their identity as such & mostly the rest of the world lost their whereabouts.
The Jews maintained their Israelite identity & everybody recognized them as such & knew where they sojourned because they were among the gentiles (in some cases they were fellow Lost Israelites themselves).
However, as said above, the modern Jews are only a remnant of the Kingdom of Judah, not the whole of it. So what happened to the other Judahites that stayed behind in their lands of captivity? They were lost with the northern Israelites & shared fate with their kinsfolk becoming Lost Israelite Tribers themselves.
With these lost Judahites (or lost Jews) were the Zerahites. According to most experts (scholars) on the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel, the captive Israelites taken to Assyria, plus the Judahites taken to Babylon (the remnant that stayed, not the ones today known as Jews), these Lost Israelites mostly ended up in western Europe, but several stayed in Caucasia-Kurdistan & Central Asia.
Local tribal names & toponyms point to an Israelite origin.
The Pashtuns are next door to the HaZaras & they preserved many clearly Israelite traditions & most scholars & even many Pashtuns agree they agree in their Israelite identity. The Kashmiris live in the vicinity & they are also considered as descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, because of their traditions & Israelite toponyms. Some scholars include as Lost Israelites the also neighboring Tajiks & Kalashas.
Zerah is a place in the region of Lowgar (Logar) in Pathan area of Afghanistan. Lowgar's capital Pul-e`Alam (Pul-e 'Alam) is approximately 70 km / 44 mi away from Zerah. The distance from Zerah to Afghanistan's capital Kabul (Kabul) is approximately 65 km / 40 mi. In Pul - e`Alam the noun "Alam" has an Arabic meaning which is "world", but not the noun "Pul". Of course it doesn't either have a Persian or Pashto meaning. Nevertheless "Pul" appears in Scripture as the immediate predecessor of Tiglath Pileser. Pul was the Assyrian king that took the Israelites captive. With him the story of the Lost Tribes starts.
Zerah in Persian means depression. Because the many invasions the Afghans went through you can find many foreign terms & toponyms in Persian, Urdu, Arabic... & of course in the local Pashto.
Afghan (1) & Kashmiri (2) Names Related to the Holy Land or their Israelite Original Dwellers (sometimes altered):
(1) Kerak (Karak), Logar, Kabul (Cabul), Herat (Hara or Hala), Kash/Kish/Cush or Kesh, Dasht-e-Yahoodi (Yahudi), Killa Yahoodi (Yahudi), Koh-e-Suleiman, Takht-e-Suleiman, Afghanistan, Kohat, Zabul, Khyber, Peshawar... (2) Samaryah, Mamre, Pishgah, Nabudaal, Bushan, Gilgit, Heshba, Amunah, Gochan, Median-pura, Guzana...
The previous list shows how apparently local toponyms have really an Israelite origin even if in the local or invading languages they have another meaning. That's why the term "Zerah" might easily have a Hebrew origin. As we'll see below "Zerah" is a very Hebrew word whose meaning is explained below.
Apart from that meaning we shouldn't discard the strong possibility that actual word might be a corrupted form of the also Hebrew word "Zera" meaning seed, sowing, offspring. For this is one way from which the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel have been known.
The progeny of Zerah became known as the זרחי, the Zerahites (Numbers 26:20).
The root-verb זרע (zara' I) means to scatter seed (Jeremiah 12:13), sow a field (Exodus 23:10, Leviticus 25:3), produce seed (Genesis 1:29), fructify (Jeremiah 31:27), impregnate (Numbers 5:28), or bear a child (Leviticus 12:2). It's also used to describe the act of sowing a city with salt in order to thoroughly destroy it (Judges 9:45). Figuratively, this verb is used to describe God's planting of Israel in Palestine (Hosea 2:25), or His scattering of Israel among the nations (Zechariah 10:9). Our verb is also used to describe sowing justice (Proverbs 11:18), righteousness (Hosea 10:12), light (Psalm 97:11), wickedness (Proverbs 22:8), trouble (Job 4:8), and wind (Hosea 8:7).
Its derivatives are: The masculine noun זרע (zera'), meaning a sowing (Genesis 47:24, Ezekiel 17:5), seed (Numbers 24:7, Isaiah 55:10), sperm (Numbers 5:28, Leviticus 22:4), one child (Genesis 4:25), or broader: offspring (Genesis 3:15, Exodus 32:13) or even broader: posterity (Genesis 38:8, Exodus 28:43). It may mean family (Genesis 17:12), pedigree (Ezra 2:59), or a community (Ezra 9:2, Isaiah 1:4). The masculine noun זרוע (zerua'), denoting that what is sown (Leviticus 11:37, Isaiah 61:11 only). The masculine noun זרע (zeroa'), which occurs only in plural, זרעים (zeroa'im), meaning vegetables (Daniel 1:12 only). The masculine noun זרען (zer'on), which also occurs only in plural, זרענים (zer'onim), also meaning vegetables (Daniel 1:16 only). The difference between these two nouns is not clear. The masculine noun מזרע (mizra'), literally meaning a place of sowing (Isaiah 19:7 only). זרע
The root זרע (zara' II) isn't used as verb in the Bible but in Arabic it exists (spelled slightly different than the equivalent of zara' I) with the meaning of to extend or stretch out, especially of an arm or leg. Manually sowing seed is done by doing exactly that: stretching out the arm, and the connection with the previous root will not have escaped Hebrew poets. It may even be that the act of producing seed and sowing it, or producing offspring and sending it off into the world, may figuratively have been closely associated with the act of extending one's arm. In the Hebrew world, the arm was a symbol of strength (see below), and so was offspring (Genesis 49:3).
The derivatives of this root that exist in the Bible are:
The (mostly) feminine noun זרוע (zeroa') or זרע (zeroa'), meaning arm. This word is surprisingly infrequently used to denote the actual human arm (Judges 15:14, Isaiah 9:19, Psalm 18:35); most occurrences of this word are figurative: the arm as the seat of human strength (Job 26:2, 1 Samuel 2:31, Ezekiel 22:6), YHWH's arm as instrument of deliverance and judgment (Deuteronomy 4:34, Ezekiel 20:33) or support (Isaiah 40:11), the force of nations and armies (Daniel 11:13 and 31). On occasion this noun may also denote the shoulder of man (2 Kings 9:24) or animal (Numbers 6:19, Deuteronomy 18:3). The feminine noun אזרוע ('ezroa'), also meaning arm. This curious word appears only twice in the Bible, in Job 31:22 and Jeremiah 32:21. The letter ו (waw) often is inserted in a word without changing the essential meaning, but why in only these two cases the prosthetic א (aleph) became attached to the regular זרע (zr') is unclear.
Note that זרע (zara') occurs in the Septuagint and other Greek texts as σπειρω(speiro), from whence comes διασπειρω (diaspeiro), from whence comes the familiar noun διασπορα (diaspora), meaning a scattering, and ultimately the English verb to disperse.
The root-verb זרה (zara) means to scatter or winnow, and seems not that far removed from זרע (zara' I), except that the scattering done in זרע (zara') yields produce and offspring, whereas the scattering done in זרה (zara) removes debris. Our verb זרה (zara) is used to winnow barley (Ruth 3:2) or fodder (Isaiah 30:24). Isaiah even foretells how Israel will grind mountains and winnow them like chaff (Isaiah 40:16), but Jeremiah sees how Israel itself will be winnowed (Jeremiah 15:7).
The relation between the two verbs זרה (zara) and זרע (zara') is made strikingly clear by the prophets Ezekiel and Zechariah, who both record Israel being scattered among the nations. But Ezekiel saw Israel go into exile and uses זרה (zara; Ezekiel 36:19), whereas Zechariah saw Israel return and uses זרע (zara'; Zechariah 10:9).
Our verb זרה (zara) yields one derivative: the masculine noun מזרה (mizreh), meaning pitch-fork (Isaiah 30:24 and Jeremiah 15:7 only).
Although many people, out of prejudice, tend to consider the Khazars as gentile Turks that converted to the Israelite religion, some scholars think otherwise. These scholars believe that the Khazars were in reality Lost Ten Tribal Israelites that lost their tongue to the neighboring Turkish language & their Israelite identity & religion, but once in contact with fellow Jews that preserved both, identity & religion, then the Israelite Khazars reestablished their lost identity & religion.
Some people have related the word HaZara to the similar sounding Khazar. This could be the case indeed because its etymology is not clear for anybody, even though contradictory proposals have been suggested.
The Central Asian steppes have been a melting pot of different peoples: Caucasian Israelites with Mongoloid Turks & other peoples. So the actual origin if the noun "Khazar" might the same as "Hazara". Not only the name "Khazar" & "HaZara" could come from "Zerah". But the ethnicity of the Gujjars or Gurjars too, which said to be an altered form of "Khazar". There isn't a definitive agreement about the Gujjar's origin, but they are attributed to descend from Turks that came to India to areas near the Pashtuns as well. They are Muslims & the Indian state of Gujarat is named after them. Gujrat, in the neighboring Indian Punjab might have also been named after them.
Strong Jewish Fiber on the Silk Road
The Jews of Bukhara, Uzbekistan, say their ancestors originally arrived here shortly after the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E. By that time, Bukhara was already a thriving merchant city along the ancient Silk Road. The Bukharian Emir gave the Jewish immigrants the Mahalla, a neighborhood where they lived with relative autonomy for centuries and maintained Jewish religious traditions.
Jerusalem Temple dedication
Bukharian Jewish community president, Rafael Davydov's grandfather was the last Bukharian Emir's bookkeeper, which was a privileged and lucrative position. Rafael's prosperous grandparents were able to raise 21 children in a strictly Jewish environment. In those days, before the Communist Revolution, Bukhara had 18 synagogues.
The Communists closed all but one synagogue in the Mahalla and Stalin even closed this synagogue for five years. But unlike most other Jews in the Former Soviet Union, the Davydovs and many Bukharians never stopped practicing Judaism, though they were forced to adapt to the difficult circumstances.
"I couldn't learn Hebrew for my bar mitzvah because it was very dangerous," says Rafael Davydov. "My father paid for a rabbi, called him to our home. The rabbi taught me to read the Siddur, the prayers, but with the threat of prison. The rabbi wrote the prayers in the Cyrillic alphabet. We would study in a room without windows to the street, with only one door, which we locked. So we would not be caught, it was always the farthest room."
Despite the Communist repressions, Luba Davydov, Rafael’s wife, suggests that Bukharian Jews never forgot how to celebrate together. "Ev en during the Communist period, Shabbat for us was always a big holiday, with many guests. My mother would make a plov with rice, meat, carrots, raisins and onions. Then my parents would say Kiddush, light candles, eat, sing...."
Saying Hebrew blessings was dangerous during the Communist period for many Bukharian Jewish families who needed to maintain the Communist leadership's good graces to maintain work. Luba explains, "My father was not a Party man (a Communist), so it was not as dangerous. My uncle, who was a Party man, had his sons' brit milah and bar mitzvah secretly, at home."
Bukharian "Rabbi" Gabriel Matatov was able to maintain Jewish learning during the Communist period because he was a humble watch-maker. "No one noticed me," Rabbi Gabriel says. When the synagogue across the street from his home which Stalin converted into a clothing factory reverted to the Jewish community in 1991, Gabriel became its rabbi because he remembered the rules of Torah.
Today, Rabbi Gabriel's community is not threatened by Communism, but by emigration to Israel and America. Of 20,000 Jews who once filled Bukhara's Mahalla streets, only hundreds remain. "If everyone leaves and I am the last Jew," Rabbi Gabriel concludes, "then I will have to leave here. But for now, G-d decided I should stay, and as long as I am here, I will follow G-d's commandments." Such resolve has kept Bukharian Jewry intact for more than 2500 years.
Bryan Schwartz visited the Bukharian Jewish community of Uzbekistan in 2001 and presents its members in vivid text and photographs in his book with Jay Sand and Sandy Carter, Scattered Among the Nations.
Tzivia Inoyatova sits every day on her crumbling doorstep next door to the synagogue in the Old Mahalla (Jewish Quarter) asking passers-by where they are from and where they are going. Even at home she seems lost, but her concern is not misplaced. In her lifetime, more than 10,000 Jews crowded the narrow dirt passages between the high mud walls of her neighborhood. Today only hundreds remain, and they are leaving fast for Israel and North America. Most of those who will stay are those who have nowhere to go. After perhaps 2500 years of Bukharian Jewish history, this community may soon have only ancient Jewish doors and a handful of ancient Jewish faces as a reminder of its past.
Malkiel Ashurov Levy worked 55 years for a Communist government shoe factory. When the Communists lost power, Malkiel's pension lost its value. Now his clothes and his tubeteika (traditional Bukharian cap) are filthy and he gets his groceries from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. Not to suggest conditions were rosy during the Communist period: "We locked the doors to celebrate the Jewish holidays," Malkiel remembers. "The non-Jews said we made matzah with people's blood," he says, recalling the "Blood Libel" common throughout the Former Soviet Union and elsewhere. "The government took all my grandfather's things in 1929 -- 15 wagons of his belongings. He fled and my mother was taken to prison." After a pause, Malkiel asks, "Will you take me to prison because of this interview? Who will read this?"
Bukhara's Rabbi since 1974, Aaron Sianov dispassionately slaughters a chicken by cutting its throat in accordance with Jewish ritual --without breaking any bones. The rabbi's passion only reveals itself when he sings. Rabbi Sianov is Bukhara's finest remaining performer of the town's distinctive, traditional Tajik-Jewish melodies. "The best time to listen is on Shabbat, or maybe with a bottle of vodka," he says, finally admitting a smile.
Marina Borukhova operated the mikvah at Samarkand's new city synagogue. Her grandfather was a rabbi in the old Samarkand synagogue (the Gumbaz) and her family always kept Shabbat, Pesach and kashrut. "We were always proud to be Jewish," Marina recalls. Most of her friends and relatives have emigrated to America and Israel. Marina explains, "Life here is not bad, but there is no future." She asks, "One question: who will my children marry?"
Every morning, Rafael Davydov, the former President of the Bukharian Jewish community, wears tefillin as he rapidly recites the shacharit service in Hebrew, barefoot in his bedroom. "I only started to teach myself Hebrew… after I became the community President," Rafael confides. During the Soviet era, it was prohibited and impossible. "In spite of the fact that I didn't know Hebrew," Raphael says, "we always ate kosher food, fasted on Yom Kippur, observed Pesach, and quietly performed circumcisions and bar mitzvahs." Now the community has religious freedom, but the Jews are leaving en masse. "It's too bad all the Jewish people left to America, Israel, Germany -- before we all lived here together as neighbors," Raphael laments.
Lands of the Dispersion: Central Asia
The response to missionary work in Mongolia was remarkable, at least for the first few years. Evidence of the Blood of Israel will accumulate with regard to Kyrgyzstan in future years.
Some Jews of the Muslim ex Soviet countries
Who are the Tat speaking peoples, and from where did they come? They believe themselves to be descended from Jews taken during the Assyrian captivity and displaced to the cities of the Medes, who spoke a dialect of Old Persian. The Tat language is based on Persian, just like Iran's Farsi language. Interestingly enough, the Tat language is spoken today by Muslim and even Christian peoples, as well as Jewish ones.
Formerly many Tat speaking Jews lived in the Caucasus Mountains of the former Soviet Union (FSU). Today most of these people, also known as mountain Jews, have left the FSU. Many are still scattered in southern Russia's mountainous Daghestan region and neighboring Azerbaijan. Yet one fourth of them live in Brooklyn, New York, and about half now live in Israel.
Because of their unique history and culture, Jews have a strong sense of identity. Although they have much in common with other Jews around the world, the Jews of Asia have a very distinctive lifestyle. Most of the Jews in this part of Asia are Ashkenazim, or descendants of the Jews who inhabited the Germanic region of Europe. One of their most distinguishing features is their use of the Yiddish language (a German dialect that has some Hebrew elements). Most of the Ashkenazim came into Central Asia from other parts of the Soviet Union before and during World War II.
Bukharan Jews are an indigenous group within Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. They are known as "Bukharan" because they settled primarily in Bukhara, Uzbekistan; but, they prefer to be known as "Israel" or "Yahudi." They claim descent from the ten tribes of Israel who were exiled to Persia in the fifth century. They speak Bokhara, a Jewish dialect of Tajik. Some Jews also live in India, mainly in Bombay and the surrounding areas. They are known as Bene Israel ("the Children of Israel"). They speak an Indo-Aryan language called Marathi.
The Jews of Ashkenazic descent have lifestyles that are very much like those of other Jews in the former Soviet Union. However, they were allowed greater freedoms than the Jews in other parts of the Soviet Union, and they clung to their Judaism tenaciously. While some of them work as peddlers, shoemakers, or barbers, many have become factory laborers or workers on "collective (community) farms." Recently, large numbers of Jews have left Uzbekistan due to economic hardship and fear of a nationalistic trend in the government.
In past centuries, the Bukharan Jews have experienced much discrimination from the predominant Muslim population. They were forced to live in isolated parts of the cities, called mahallas; to wear special signs on their clothing, which marked them as Jews; and to pay special taxes. Only in the last ten years have Bukharan Jews been able to give cultural expression openly without fear of persecution. Today, a number of Hebrew study groups have been organized and are growing stronger.
During Soviet rule, both Bukharan men and women worked in factories that produced butter, bricks, or textiles. Recently, they have returned to many of their traditional crafts, such as shoemaking, hairdressing, tailoring, and photography. The women are particularly known for their dancing at both Jewish and Muslim weddings. There are also a large number of well-educated Bukharan Jews working as engineers, doctors, teachers, and musicians.
Bukharan Jewish males were the heads of their patrilineal (descent traced through the males) extended families. Now, a pattern of separate nuclear families is becoming predominant. Bukharan Jews nearly always marry other Bukharan Jews. The parents of the groom send a matchmaker to the parents of the bride, and both dowry and bride-price must be settled prior to the engagement. Divorce is permitted among Bukharan Jews and a law exists to regulate the marriages of widows.
In Bombay, the Jews are employed in numerous professions. Some of them work in the service industry, or as clerks, mechanics, white-collar workers, and skilled laborers. A significant number are professionals such as doctors, teachers, and lawyers.
Most Bombay Jewish families are typical nuclear families. That is, they are composed of a man, a woman, and their dependents. In order to keep wealth and prestige within the family, the Bombay Jews have traditionally preferred marriage between cousins. Divorce is completely disapproved of and is very uncommon.
The Ashkenazic Jews who live in cities have a weak religious lifestyle and many have intermarried with Muslims. However, the Bukharan and Bombay Jews adhere to all traditional Jewish beliefs. They follow the Law of Moses, observing strict dietary laws, circumcising all male children, and observing the Sabbath.
They also celebrate Jewish festivals like Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), and Passover.
Many of the Ashkenazic Jews have intermarried with the Muslim community. Because they are open to others outside the Jewish community, perhaps they will be open to the Gospel. The Bukharan Jews of Uzbekistan are uncertain about the direction of their nation. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Uzbekistan is going through rapid and drastic changes. Anti-Semitism (persecution of Jews) is a possible result of the rise in nationalism. The Bombay Jews are strongly influenced by tradition, making them unreceptive to change.
Types from Mogave Caves at Dun Huang - the Northern Wei period. Some tough men, were they kings?
Xianbei ring.
Xianbei cavalry
A blond steppe warrior displays his trained horse - cave painting from Dunhuang.
Column Foundations from the Tuoba capital Luoyang with two dwarfs indicating each corner of the world.
Small figure which represent a Xianbei soldier with deepset eyes and big nose. Treasures of ancient China Exhibition - Found in Jing County, Hebei Province, 1948.
