The Wind of the Khazars

Rating:
Summary: A proper novel on Khazars, unlike Pavic's Dictionary
Review: "The Wind of the Khazars", a translation of Marek Halter's 2001 French bestseller "Le Vent des Khazars", is one of the finest novels about the Jewish kingdom of Khazaria. As it deals with the Caucasus region, including Azerbaijan, the title of the book is appropriate since "Khazri" is the name of the wind that blows across the Absheron peninsula, where the city of Baku is located. The storyline provides readers with a general background on Khazar history and weaves it into an interesting story set in two time periods (the 10th century and the year 2000). Early in the novel, a Mountain Jew gives the main character, Marc Sofer, a silver Jewish Khazar coin with an engraving of a menorah and strange writing that honored Khazar King Bulan. While a coin of this exact configuration does not exist, we can find an interesting parallel in the actual discovery by Swedish numismatist Gert Rispling in 2002 of a silver Khazar coin with the inscription "Moses is God's messenger" (in place of the usual Muslim phrase "Muhammad is God's messenger"). The real coin is part of the "Ard al-Khazar" series, some specimens of which have an undeciphered mintmark. So, in fact, the Khazars did mint their own coins. The historical accuracy in the novel is generally high, however there are some ideas which are either speculative or wrong. For instance, on page 72 we are told that Sarkel was on the banks of the "Varshan", but actually Varshan a.k.a. Warsan referred to the Sulak River and nearby mountains in the north Caucasus (as the map in the front of the novel correctly shows) where the cave of the novel is located. The assertion on page 74 that the Khazars manufactured paper after learning how from Chinese may be true but is hard to prove, since we do not possess the original copies of the King Joseph Reply and Schechter Letter, and the only paper from Khazaria that has been found comes from a burial in Sarkel and may have been imported from Central Asia (or, if made locally, learned from Central Asians rather than directly from Chinese). The circumstance where Joseph's father Aaron is dead but his grandfather Benjamin is still alive as late as 955 is questionable; Aaron and Benjamin were probably both dead by then, as Joseph was now the ruler, and it is unlikely that Benjamin had willingly given up the kaganship as is said on page 15. At the beginning of the story, Sofer encounters a mysterious woman named Sonja who has dark red hair, green eyes, fair skin, high cheekbones, and slightly slanted eyes. He continuously thinks about her, and catches up with her later. Halter tries to connect Sonja's appearance to the Khazars, but unfortunately we do not know exactly what the Khazars really looked like (due to contradictory reports), and only one Arabic chronicle refers to the Khazars as reddish-haired - though the suggestion about red-haired Khazars comes up repeatedly in both medieval and modern tales, from the old German stories about "Red Jews" to Joseph Roth's 1932 novel "Radetzky-Marsch". As readers will discover, Sonja is in fact compared to a fictional 10th-century Khazar-era character, Princess Attex, who also had red hair, and she is deeply involved in preserving the memory of the Khazars. But are Mountain Jews like Sonja really descended from Khazars, as Halter insists in his book and in an article of his? Genetic testing showed that most Mountain Jewish paternal lineages are shared in common with other Jewish communities, suggesting that they are primarily ethnic Judeans from Persia (though a small Khazar contribution can't be ruled out). The case for Khazars' integration with other Jews grew stronger with the recent discovery that Khazarian Jews married and lived with other Jews in Pera, near Constantinople, in the Byzantine Empire. So it is appropriate at the end of the novel when Sofer, an Ashkenazi Jew, wonders whether he has some Khazar ancestry himself. The story is fascinating and the English translation by Michael Bernard reads very well. I recommend it to all fans of historical fiction.

Rating:
Summary: A proper novel on Khazars, unlike Pavic's Dictionary
Review: "The Wind of the Khazars", a translation of Marek Halter's 2001 French bestseller "Le Vent des Khazars", is one of the finest novels about the Jewish kingdom of Khazaria. As it deals with the Caucasus region, including Azerbaijan, the title of the book is appropriate since "Khazri" is the name of the wind that blows across the Absheron peninsula, where the city of Baku is located. The storyline provides readers with a general background on Khazar history and weaves it into an interesting story set in two time periods (the 10th century and the year 2000). Early in the novel, a Mountain Jew gives the main character, Marc Sofer, a silver Jewish Khazar coin with an engraving of a menorah and strange writing that honored Khazar King Bulan. While a coin of this exact configuration does not exist, we can find an interesting parallel in the actual discovery by Swedish numismatist Gert Rispling in 2002 of a silver Khazar coin with the inscription "Moses is God's messenger" (in place of the usual Muslim phrase "Muhammad is God's messenger"). The real coin is part of the "Ard al-Khazar" series, some specimens of which have an undeciphered mintmark. So, in fact, the Khazars did mint their own coins. The historical accuracy in the novel is generally high, however there are some ideas which are either speculative or wrong. For instance, on page 72 we are told that Sarkel was on the banks of the "Varshan", but actually Varshan a.k.a. Warsan referred to the Sulak River and nearby mountains in the north Caucasus (as the map in the front of the novel correctly shows) where the cave of the novel is located. The assertion on page 74 that the Khazars manufactured paper after learning how from Chinese may be true but is hard to prove, since we do not possess the original copies of the King Joseph Reply and Schechter Letter, and the only paper from Khazaria that has been found comes from a burial in Sarkel and may have been imported from Central Asia (or, if made locally, learned from Central Asians rather than directly from Chinese). The circumstance where Joseph's father Aaron is dead but his grandfather Benjamin is still alive as late as 955 is questionable; Aaron and Benjamin were probably both dead by then, as Joseph was now the ruler, and it is unlikely that Benjamin had willingly given up the kaganship as is said on page 15. At the beginning of the story, Sofer encounters a mysterious woman named Sonja who has dark red hair, green eyes, fair skin, high cheekbones, and slightly slanted eyes. He continuously thinks about her, and catches up with her later. Halter tries to connect Sonja's appearance to the Khazars, but unfortunately we do not know exactly what the Khazars really looked like (due to contradictory reports), and only one Arabic chronicle refers to the Khazars as reddish-haired - though the suggestion about red-haired Khazars comes up repeatedly in both medieval and modern tales, from the old German stories about "Red Jews" to Joseph Roth's 1932 novel "Radetzky-Marsch". As readers will discover, Sonja is in fact compared to a fictional 10th-century Khazar-era character, Princess Attex, who also had red hair, and she is deeply involved in preserving the memory of the Khazars. But are Mountain Jews like Sonja really descended from Khazars, as Halter insists in his book and in an article of his? Genetic testing showed that most Mountain Jewish paternal lineages are shared in common with other Jewish communities, suggesting that they are primarily ethnic Judeans from Persia (though a small Khazar contribution can't be ruled out). The case for Khazars' integration with other Jews grew stronger with the recent discovery that Khazarian Jews married and lived with other Jews in Pera, near Constantinople, in the Byzantine Empire. So it is appropriate at the end of the novel when Sofer, an Ashkenazi Jew, wonders whether he has some Khazar ancestry himself. The story is fascinating and the English translation by Michael Bernard reads very well. I recommend it to all fans of historical fiction.