Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi ancestry
Largely abandoned fringe theory on Ashkenazi descent
Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi ancestry
A largely abandoned fringe hypothesis postulated that Ashkenazi Jews were primarily, or to a large extent, descended from converts to Judaism among the Khazars, a multi-ethnic conglomerate of mostly Turkic peoples who formed a semi-nomadic khanate in and around the northern and central Caucasus and the Pontic–Caspian steppe in the late 6th century CE. It is still sometimes used in antisemitic conspiracy theories and in various anti-Zionist approaches. Genetic studies on Jews have found no substantive evidence of a Khazar origin among Ashkenazi Jews. A 2023 American Society of Human Genetics Annual Meeting poster presentation reported that the Khazar myth of Ashkenazi Jewish origins had been "set to rest" and disproved, identifying a Western Turkic genetic profile in genomes from the core area of the Khazar Khaganate — and "no evidence at all" of recent shared ancestry with medieval or present-day Jewry. Virtually all contemporary historians and linguists reject any notion of Khazars directly...
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