The Forgotten Diaspora (2)

Postscript 1:

An interesting case-study is the lineage of one of the most infamous Ashkenazic dynasties: the Roth[en]schild family.  The famed patriarch of the family was Mayer ben Amschel ben Moses ben Kalman.  Of course, he came to be known by the familiar surname (meaning “Red Shield”).  His father (Amschel ben Moses ben Kalman) seems to have adopted the moniker from the name of a boardinghouse in Frankfurt where he–and perhaps even his father–had been raised. It was located on the Judengasse, which had purportedly existed since the 15th century. *  Little is known about the family’s background. What we do know is that Mayer’s father sent him to a “s[c]hul” in Frankonia (rather than to a Sephardic yeshiva).

But who was “Kalman” (a man who would have lived in the mid to late 17th century)?  As it turns out, the name is of TURKIC origin–meaning “Remnant”.  (To this day, it is a common Magyar name–including amongst Hungarian Jews.)  Remnant of WHAT? The term has Biblical significance, as it means: What remains of a community after it has undergone a catastrophe.  In other words: It is quite possible that the [k]Hazarian diaspora was known TO ITSELF as “Kalman”. (!)

Needless to say: Jewish people with a Semitic background would have never opted for a Turkic term in lieu of the Hebrew “She’ar”.  Interestingly, Kalman’s great-grandfather was ALSO named “Kalman”, and purportedly hailed from Bavaria.  (While some apocryphal tales exist, anything further back than that is purely speculative.)

It should be noted that “Kalman” is often erroneously associated with the Greco-Judaic “Kalonymos”, the medieval Irish Christian “Col[e]man”, and/or the Slavic “Koloman”.  The Magyar “Kalman” has been (misleadingly) translated as any one of these–either out of orthographic convenience (when rendered across languages) or in a deliberate attempt to elide its Turkic etymology.

Indeed, this misnomer is precisely what we find with the fluctuating appellation of (Christian) King Kalman “the learned” of Hungary. He is (erroneously) referenced as “Koloman” in various historical accounts. In fact, King Kalman was of the (Turkic) Arpad dynasty, which was founded in the 9th century by the (pagan) [k]Havar “kende” [ruler]: Almos of Ung-var (son of Ügyek)…who was, it just so happened, a vassal of the [k]Hazars.  HIS son was Arpad: namesake for the ensuing dynasty (the first with a distinctly Magyar pedigree). **

Legend has it that Almos [Turkic for “dreamed one”] had a preternatural birth in Ung-var (Magyar for “Fort on the Uzh River”; etymological basis for [h]Ung-varia, a.k.a. “Hungaria”).  He was conceived after his mother (princess Emese of Dentü-Mogyer) was impregnated by a divine gyr-falcon [“turul”] somewhere in Dentü-Mogyer, as the story goes.

But wait. Where was “Dentü-Mogyer” (rendered “Levedia” by some Europeans)?  Lo and behold: It was the Magyar name for [k]Hazaria! Almos seems to have been appointed by the khagan of the [k]Hazars; which means that Almos may well have been influenced by Judaism.  The name “Kalman” is a vestige of this legacy…as the name “stuck” even after Hungary converted to Christianity.  Hence the name of the Arpad king” Kalman “the Learned”.  The fantastical tale of Almos’ birth may have been concocted to obfuscate his [k]Hazarian ancestry. ***

The Magyars had broken from [k]Hazar dominion c. 862. They seem to have also shared ancestry with the Chuvash [alt. “Chavash”] and Suvars [alt. “Sabirs]…who, in turn, share an ethnicity with the Bulgars.  In Old Turkic, “suvar” meant horseman (a term that had been adopted from Sogdian).  Lo and behold: We find that “Suvar” is often used as a given name in the Baltic region to the present day.

Even as the Magyars were a Turkic people, they ended up speaking a rather novel variation of Old Turkic.  Their language (Old Hungarian) was a Uralic language, which seems to have originated in the Upper Volga region (just to the west of the Ural Mountains), and likely has Altaic / Tungusic origins.  The mother tongue eventually yielded a wider language family; which came to include Baltic variants like Mari, Sami, and Suomi (for those who migrated farther to the north), yielding Finnish, Karelian, and Estonian.  The Magyars, on the other hand, were a Turkic tribe who migrated to the Carpathian Basin (and into Transylvania) in the late 9th century–possibly as the “[k]Havars” [alt. “Khabars”; a.k.a. the “Khalyz” / “Khvalis” / “Khalyzians”].  (For documentation of this, see the “Novgorod First Chronicle”.)  The [k]Havars were a breakaway community that had been vassals of the [k]Hazar imperium; and was (also) largely Jewish.  They defected to the Magyars at some point in the 840’s or 850’s.

Note that it would be a mistake to conflate the Magyars with the aforementioned Baltic ethnicities due to their shared Uralic linguistic roots.  (Doing so would be like assuming that the Portuguese and Romanians have a shared ethnic heritage simply because they both speak a Latin-based language.)  Tellingly, the other major peoples who have Uralic linguistic roots are the Cher[e]mish[i] (who speak “Mari”) and the Udmurts (Turkic for “meadow people”).  These are Turkic peoples who live in Tatarstan to the present day—that is: in the region where the (Turkic) Bashkirs can also still be found (on the western bank of the Ural Mountains around the Kama River).  The ancestors of the Chirmesh and Udmurts were among those who boasted the ancient Turkic epic, “Ural Batyr”, which was grounded in Tengri-ist theology.  Hence the most notable Uralic intermediaries linking Baltic / Finnic peoples to Volga Turks are the Chermish and the Mordvins (spec. the Moksha and Erzya people).

The Komi people offer a (geographically and linguistically) intermediate case for those speaking a Uralic language, as they hail from the region near the upper Kama and upper Volga Rivers (especially between the Vetluga and Vyatka Rivers)–that is: between Tatarstan and the Baltic region. Thus we see how the language migrated northward, undergoing a metamorphosis from Old Turkic to a more distinctly Baltic tongue. ****

The fact that the Magyars migrated from the Ural region on a more southward route, to the Carpathian Basin, mustn’t throw us off.  To reiterate: the link between the Magyars and [k]Hazars if found with the Kabars / Khavars in the late 9th century. How many of THEM might have been Jewish at the time is anyone’s guess.

Bear in mind: the [k]Hazar language seems to have been most closely related to Avar, Bulgar, and Magyar, as well as the Chuvash and Suvar / Sabir languages—all of which are categorized as Tatar / Oghuric: the Oghurs / Onogurs being a vaguely-defined (nomadic) Turkic peoples of the Eurasian Steppes. (This stemmed from the Old Uyghur linguistic line of Old Turkic, which led to the Kipchak family of tongues.)

While modern Hungarian does not exhibit a plethora of lexemes from Old Turkic, it does share the syntactic structure found in other Turkic languages.  The original Magyar alphabet (Old Hungarian runes; a variant of Old Turkic runes) was, well, Turkic; as its roots were Old Uyghur (with Sogdian influences due to the influence of commerce along the Silk Road in the Eurasian Steppes).  This linguistic propagation involved Kipchak—replete with the variety of Tatar / Oghuric tongues (including that spoken by the [k]Hazars).  A variation on the Magyar tongue was likely Kumen—spoken by a Turkic peoples who practiced Tengri-ism and also ended up in the region (i.e. the Carpathian basin).  Ottoman Turkish, on the other hand, was based on the Oghuz line of Old Turkic, which was brought to Anatolia by the Seljuks (in the 11th century) via Persia and Mesopotamia.  (This is a reminder that Yiddish has nothing to do with Turk-ISH.)

The connection between the Uralic peoples and Turkic progenitors is also illustrated by the Moksha people, who’s ancestors were the Burtas—residing just north of the [k]Hazar / Caspian sea.  The Mokshas were an Oghuric (read: Tatar) people who were possibly related to the Alans, and—like the [k]Havars—were subjects of the [k]Hazars.

It comes as no surprise that, to this day, some Ashkenazi names have Magyar etymologies—as with, say, “Polgar” (tenant farmer; free peasant) and “Lantos” (minstrel; bard).  The Ashkenazi name “[k]Husyt” may have derived from the town of “Khust”, which was founded c. 1090 in Pannonia—at the confluence of the Tisa and Rika Rivers—by the Magyars (effectively the southwestern edge of Ruthenia).

Again, we encounter an obsession with bloodlines; and thus the positing of the so-called “yikhus” (noble descent), which requires Semitic ancestry…lest participants in the charade be deprived of the foundation for their desired historiography (and thus: of their ideology).

That Mayer Rothschild’s great-grandfather was named Kalman…and HIS great-grandfather was also named Kalman…makes perfect sense, in light of the present thesis; especially considering the term’s original meaning (“Remnant”) and the history of those who used it: Turkic people from the Pontic Steppes.

{*  Jewish people seem to have first settled in Frankfurt in the 13th century. (The earliest graves in the old cemetery date to c. 1270.)  There were two major pogroms [“Judenschlacht”] against the city’s Jewish population: the first in 1241, another in 1349.  The community grew in the 15th century in the advent of Jewish expulsions from Trier (1418), Vienna (1420), Cologne (1424), Augsburg (1438), and Breslau (1453); then two more expulsions in the last decade of the century: from Magdeburg (1493) and then from Nuremberg (1499).  In the midst of all this, the Judengasse [Jewish Lane] was established (c. 1462) at the behest of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III.  (Later, there would be an expulsion from Regensburg c. 1519.)  Thereafter, Frankfurt became a major center of commerce.}

{**  Reference the “Gesta Hungarorum”; the chronicles of Simon of Keza; and “De Administrando Imperio” by Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII Flavius Porphyrogenitus.}

{***  The tradition of surname-changing is a long one.  Recall that the current monarchic family of England, the “Windsors”, changed their dynastic name from “Sachsen-Coburg” during the First World War because the original surname–embraced throughout the Victorian era–was too Germanic.  So the dynasty went from being named after a Saxon Dutchy (stemming from the House of Wettin) to being named after a place in Berkshire (made famous by a Norman king).  The elision of ethnic backgrounds (viz. in the historical memory) is not uncommon.  Byzantine Emperor Heraclius was Armenian…as was Byzantine Emperor, Basil the Macedonian.  The famed Ottoman sultan, Saladin was Kurdish.  English King George I was German; while English King Richard “the Lion-heart” was French.  Russian Empress Catherine the Great was German; while Russian tyrant, Joseph Stalin was Georgian.  German tyrant, Adolph Hitler was Austrian (and an eighth Ashkenazi).  Spanish tyrant, Francisco Franco was Galician.  French ruler, Napoleon Bonaparte was Italian.  Italian King Victor Emmanuel II was Sardinian.  The Florentine patriarch, Alessandro de Medici was half Moorish (as was the German composer, Beethoven).  Often, the ethnicity of prominent figures / families does accord with their public image.  (How often to we think of Steve Jobs or Ralph Nader as Arab?)  Due to undesirable stigmas, Mulatto heritage has often been elided–as with Queen Charlotte of England and American icon, Alexander Hamilton (not to mention Alexander Pushkin, Alexander Dumas, Clark Gable, and J. Edgar Hoover).  Saint Nicholas of Myra (the man on whom Santa Claus is based) is typically considered white.  He was actually Lycian (Anatolian).  But don’t tell that to Europeans whilst they celebrate a resplendently Occidental Christmas.} 

{****  After the Sarmatians, it was primarily Turkic people’s who populated the lower Ural region (along the lower Volga)…until, that is, the Slavic take-over under Svyatoslav in the 10th century.  The potpourri of Eurasian peoples that populated the Steppes during the Middle Ages constituted a perpetually fluctuating mélange of cultures and languages—each impinging upon the other in myriad ways.  Rarely can a singular, linear relationship be traced from one ethnic group to the next.}