Re: Lucus (was: Re: Judajca)

Peter Clark writes:
 > On Friday 23 August 2002 15:25, Steg Belsky wrote:
 > > > And there are Khazars in North Almarevia.  In the 18th century
 > > > they trekked all thru Siberia, Alaska and what is *here*
 > > > western Canada, to end up in what is *here* the Midwest.
 > > > Converting many western native tribes to Judaism in the
 > > > process.  BTW imagine the Hebrew-influenced version of the
 > > > Cherokee syllabary...
 > > >
 > > > /BP 8^)
 > > Wow... is that all the Khazars?  They just upped and left
 > > Khazaria in order to come to the 'New World'?  Somehow that
 > > reminds me of Fingolfin and his host crossing the Grinding Ice,
 > > in Tolkien's _The Silmarillion_...  Do you happen to have a
 > > website about Lucus?  With maps?
 >
 >         Missed this; BP, would you care to explain how the Khazars
 > *there* _survived_ until the 18th century? The last Khazarian
 > territories (in the Crimea) were conquered in 1016 *here* by the
 > Kievian Rus', and while there are some *possible* indications that
 > they remained an distinct people group in a small area near the
 > Caspian Sea, by and large they either assimilated with the French
 > and German Jews who were moving into Eastern Europe at that time,
 > or assimilated with the non-Jewish populations around them.

It's probably not applicable to this situation, but it's always struck
me that an interesting point of departure for a parallel conhistory
would be the adoption of orthodox Christianity by prince (and,
subsequently, saint) Volodymyr of Kiev in 987-88.

For one reason or another*, he felt the need for a modern,
monotheistic faith to replace paganism in his country.  To this end,
he is supposed to have sent envoys to the lands of Islam, Judaism, and
western and eastern Christianity**.  He ultimately chose eastern
Christianity, because the envoys were impressed by the religious
architecture of Constantinople (also his grandmother had been
converted some years previously).  Thereby, in a no-doubt-
rather-simplified version of history, we get the influence of the
orthodox church throughout the slavic world.

But he could have chosen differently.  He's supposed to have quite
liked Islam, apart from the prohibition of alcohol.  It's probably
naive to suppose that if he'd chosen differently, the Eastern European
world would necessarily have ended up dominated by religion X, but
it's a plausible basis for a conhistory.  Cyrillic was only ~100 years
old at this time, so I guess Russian might have ended up being written
in a script derived from Arabic or Hebrew.

(The reason I bring this up, of course, is that if the Rus had become
Jewish, the conquest of the Khazars might have gone rather
differently.)


*  I don't have the book I first read about this in, and what I can
   find online tends to be both brief and partisan, so this account is
   somewhat incomplete.


** I don't know where exactly, apart from Constantinople - I suspect
   Khazaria for Judaism and Rome is the obvious choice for
   Catholicism, but I can't find anything to back this up.

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