Can anyone summarise what the Khazarian empire was?

>>879024
Jewish steppe people

>>879024
Didn't they convert to Islam at then end ?

Wikipedia says that the last Khazars that fought the Varangians were Muslim before being destroyed ...
Any proof of this?

>>879029

Any further background? I've heard about it apparently being very decadent and that the army was so large other empires often went to them to borrow soldiers?

>>879024

They were a steppe people, probably Turkic, who were a reasonably strong regional power. They converted their state religion to Judaism, probably in an attempt to stay out of the hatchet fight that was the Byzantine-Arab wars at the time. It's unclear as to how much this conversion actually filtered down to most people living there, it was probably only the nobility that actually switched faiths.

>>879053
They were pretty cosmopolitan in terms of religion as most steppe empires were, if I remember correctly. Ibn Fadlan mentions Muslims living in the Khazar kingdom, and the region itself wasn't predominantly one faith or the other until much later

Obscure shit tier barbarian slave trade state, conspiracy theorists are obsessed with it because of a legend that their elite converted to Judaism (and then later to Islam, but they leave that part out).

>>879024
Work horse of jewish conspiracy theories

>>879024
some turks that conquered old bulgaria and proclaimed themselves to be jewish so that they wouldnt get affected by the christian-muslim fight going on to the south of them

not actually in any way affiliated with jews or judaism

>>879024
They kept the Steppe stable, once they collpase they Altaics chimped out for the next 1000 years

>>881651
>a legend that their elite converted to Judaism
It wasn't a legend, or else they were trolling everyone with all those letters they sent.

The legend is that Ashkenazi are the modern descendants of those Khazars converts and thus not related to ancient Israelites and Jesus. It's mainly propagated by American antisemites who get cognitive dissonance from hating on God's Chosen people, so they claim all those Jews are just imposters and have no claim to Israel.

File: steppe warriors.jpg (374KB, 1056x680px) Image search: [Google]

374KB, 1056x680px

>>879024
Like other anons are saying, the nobles converted to Judaism in order to maintain a sense of neutrality between Byzantine and the Caliphate. It worked at first... but then they became targets of their neighbors for changing beliefs.
They could not call on their neighbors for help because good luck convincing a good Christian or Muslim to help a Jew back then.
They got picked at for a while before, as another anon said, they collapsed and caused a power vacuum in the steppes that gave way to tribes that pillaged their way around for a few centuries.
The actual Empire was not bad for trading. Rus vikings made their way through the territory to bring furs and honey to the Byzantine, Arabic, and Persian traders in Asia Minor.
Those same traders would bring goods through the stable Khazar lands using similar routes to the Rus - except rivers. Those were pretty much Rus viking territory then.
The Khazar Khan collected a lot of tariffs this way, but being a nation of nomads it was very tough to get any kind of big government going.
Their religious choice further alienated them from the populace, so I can imagine that any large scale conflict involving them saw great fractures emerge in Khazar societies