Scholar claims to find medieval Jewish capital

BeachBoys · Post time 21-9-2008 09:50 PM

By MANSUR MIROVALEV, Associated Press Writer
Sat Sep 20,  2:13 PM ET


                                             MOSCOW - A Russian archaeologist says he has found the lost capital of the Khazars,a powerful nation that adopted Judaism as its official religion morethan 1,000 years ago, only to disappear leaving little trace of itsculture.

Dmitry Vasilyev, a professor at Astrakhan State University, said his nine-year excavation near the Caspian Seahas finally unearthed the foundations of a triangular fortress offlamed brick, along with modest yurt-shaped dwellings, and he believesthese are part of what was once Itil, the Khazar capital.

By law Khazars could use flamed bricks only in the capital, Vasilyevsaid. The general location of the city on the Silk Road was confirmedin medieval chronicles by Arab, Jewish and European authors.

"The discovery of the capital of Eastern Europe's first feudal stateis of great significance," he told The Associated Press. "We shouldview it as part of Russian history."

Kevin Brook, the American author of "The Jews of Khazaria," e-mailedWednesday that he has followed the Itil dig over the years, and eventhough it has yielded no Jewish artifacts, "Now I'm as confident as thearchaeological team is that they've truly found the long-lost city,

The Khazars were a Turkic tribe that roamed the steppes fromNorthern China to the Black Sea. Between the 7th and 10th centuriesthey conquered huge swaths of what is now southern Russia and Ukraine, the Caucasus Mountains and Central Asia as far as the Aral Sea.

Itil, about 800 miles south of Moscow, had a population of up to 60,000 and occupied 0.8 square miles of marshy plains southwest of the Russian Caspian Sea port of Astrakhan, Vasilyev said.

It lay at a major junction of the Silk Road, the trade route between Europe and China, which "helped Khazars amass giant profits," he said.

The Khazar empire was once a regional superpower, and Vasilyev saidhis team has found "luxurious collections" of well-preserved ceramicsthat help identify cultural ties of the Khazar state with Europe, theByzantine Empire and even Northern Africa. They also found armor,wooden kitchenware, glass lamps and cups, jewelry and vessels fortransporting precious balms dating back to the eighth and ninthcenturies, he said.

But a scholar in Israel, while calling the excavations interesting, said the challenge was to find Khazar inscriptions.
"If they found a few buildings, or remains of buildings, that'sinteresting but does not make a big difference," said Dr. Simon Kraiz,an expert on Eastern European Jewry at Haifa University. "If they found Khazar writings, that would be very important."

Vasilyev says no Jewish artifacts have been found at the site, andin general, most of what is known about the Khazars comes fromchroniclers from other, sometimes competing cultures and empires.

"We know a lot about them, and yet we know almost nothing: Jewswrote about them, and so did Russians, Georgians, and Armenians, toname a few," said Kraiz. "But from the Khazars themselves we havenearly nothing."

The Khazars' ruling dynasty and nobility converted to Judaismsometime in the 8th or 9th centuries. Vasilyev said the limited numberof Jewish religious artifacts such as mezuzas and Stars of David foundat other Khazar sites prove that ordinary Khazars preferred traditionalbeliefs such as shamanism, or newly introduced religions includingIslam.

Yevgeny Satanovsky, director of the Middle Eastern Institute in Moscow,said he believes the Khazar elite chose Judaism out of politicalexpediency