A question occurs to our minds at this point. Why did the Hebrews accepted the Khazar people to their religion although they did not receive any person to their religion who was not descended from the ancient Israelites? The answer to this question will settle down the problem about the origin of Karay Turks. Since the ancient periods, the Hebrews are divided into two groups as the protagonists of Talmud and the antagonists against Talmud. Since the Middle Ages, the first group was called as Rabbanim (Rabbani people) and the second group was called as Kaim (Karai people). The Hebrews that did not accept any other person from the other races are the Hebrews that are the protagonists of Talmud constituting the first group of Rabbanim. Karai Hebrews had accepted the people from the other races to their religions in every period of the history. The Hebrews that had gone to the Khazar country and influenced the Khazar Khan and his relatives to convert to Hebraism were the Karaim Hebrews that believed in the Pentateuch but opposed to Talmud. The number of the people that adopted the Karaim Hebraism in the Khazar State was not so high as exaggerated by some historians such as Dunlop, etc. Therefore, it is not possible to state that all of the Hebrews in the Eastern Europe of today have come from the lineage of Khazar people. Maybe todays Hebrews in the Eastern Europe may have the blood of Khazar, but it is not to a high level as exaggerated. According to the news stated by the Islam historian, Mesudi, there were seven judges in Khazar Capital City of Etil. Two of them would hear the cases of Muslim, two of them would hear the cases of Christians and two of then would hear the cases of Hebrews. One of them would hear the cases of the members of the other religions. Therefore, there was not anybody in this country who were despised due to his beliefs and nobody would be subjected to any treatment in contradiction with his beliefs. Those who want to execute the secularism and the religious tolerance in Turkey and all over the world should investigate the religious history of Khazar people.
Karay people
Pursuant to the collapse of the Khazar State, numerous Muslim people that lived in Khazar country were lost among the other Muslim communities. The Khazar Muslims were especially assimilated within the Muslim Turkish tribes such as Kipchaks, Karacay, Karabarda, etc. In the course of the collapse of the state, some of the Christians that constituted the second biggest religious community were mixed with the Christian Slav tribes and they were assimilated among these people. The other group emigrated from the Khazar State to the Byzantine that was another Christian State. This migration took place from maritime lines and also from the main roads over the coasts of the Eastern Black Sea towards the North, East and Southeast Anatolian lands. The immigrants who came to this region were connected to the churches that had been founded in this region by the Greek and Armenians before. Although they attended the Greek and Armenian churches, these people did not speak the Greek and Armenian languages for a long time and they only spoke Turkish.
These people who came to Anatolia in the eleventh century did not learn to speak Greek and Armenian languages for exactly five centuries. They built a church in Anatolia in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and they wrote the inscriptions of this church in Turkish language using the Greek and Armenian alphabets. Although some of these people learned the Greek and Armenian languages as a result of the activities of Catholic missioners who had come to Anatolia since the seventeenth century, some of them insisted upon speaking only Turkish language. Of these people, Karaman group that was sent to Greece as a result of the intervention pursuant to the war of independence did not even know to speak Greek language. Among these Christian Khazar people who came to Anatolia over the coasts of the Black Sea, those who attended to the Greek churches lost their Khazar identity and became Greek people and those who attended to the Armenian churches also lost their Khazar identity and became Armenian people. Today, there are lots of traces pertaining to these Christian Khazar people in various regions of the East and Middle and Southeast Anatolia. Numerous names such as Khazar Mountain, Khazar Lake, Khazarshah, Hazri, Hazro, Hazriyan, Hazara, etc. show us the traces of Christian Khazar people in Anatolia.
Pursuant to the collapse of the Khazar State, the Kipchak people exiled some of the Hebrew Khazar people into the central regions of Russians. These Hebrew Khazar people that were mixed with the Russians converted to the Christianity as a result of the missioner propaganda. However, some of these people opposed to the conversion into Christianity and they were forced to become Christian by the pressure and torture of the Russians. These people pretended to be Christians in respect of their physical appearances, but they continued to follow their religion of Hebraism secretly. The Hebraic resources mention about these secret Hebrews in the Tsardom of Russia that celebrated Sabbath on Saturdays although they attended the church on Mondays. The Khazar Hebrews apart from those that were exiled immigrated to the Crimea for they considered it as a safer place for them. Those from the Kipchak and Kaliz people who had adopted the Hebraism joined to the community that gathered in the Crimea and they enlarged their society. There were some people from the tribes such as Khazars, Kipchaks, Kaliz people, etc. within the new community that came out in the Crimea. Since this new community that came out in the Crimea was a mixed community, they were called with the name of the sects that they followed instead of the names of Khazar and Kipchaks.
As it is known, the Hebrew sect adopted by Khazar people was Karaim. Therefore, the new community that came out was called as the Karaim community. The name of Karaim was frequently used after the century XV. The essence of this community was based on Khazar people and most of them were composed of Khazar Hebrews. However, due to the dominion of the Kipchak people in the region pursuant to the collapse of the Khazar State, the community started to speak with the Kipchak dialect instead of Khazar dialect. But the language that was spoken was not entirely the Kipchak language. It was a different Kipchak dialect including various words from the Khazar language with the domination of Kipchak language and this dialect was called as Karaim Turkish by some linguists. The word of Karaim was essentially a Hebrew word and it is the name of the Hebrew sect in the middle ages. There were some people descended from the Israelites in this sect in the beginning, but within a short period, the people from the other races converted to this region. These people descended from the other races got the majority in the following periods. After a while, those descended from the Israelites disappeared totally and those apart from Turkish people had the status of minorities. Towards the end of the century XIX, nearly all members of this sect were composed of Turkish people. Therefore, this word started to represent a Turkish tribe rather than a religion or sect.
The word of Karaim is a plural word in Hebrew language. Its singular form is Karai and the affix of im attached to the very end of the word is a plural affix. It has been sometimes observed that the word was misused as Karaimler (Karaims) with two plural affixes. The word was stated as Karayım, instead of Karaim in some ancient Crimean Resources written with the Arabic alphabet. We believe that it is more proper to use the word of Karaim when mentioning about the Hebrew sect in general and the word of Karay in singular form and the Karayım in plural form when mentioning about a specific Turkish tribe rather than a Sect. Therefore, we call the Turkish community that followed the Karaim sect of Hebraism with the name of Karay.
to be continued