ON THE DATE
OF THE KHAZARS' CONVERSION
TO JUDAISM AND THE CHRONOLOGY
OF THE KINGS OF THE RUS OLEG
AND IGOR
A Study of the Anonymous Khazar Letter from the Genizah of Cairo
Constantine ZUCKERMAN
An anonymous Hebrew letter from the Genizah of Cairo, now in Cambridge, describes a recent raid by the Rus1 on the Byzantine territory which resembles in detail the well-known attack of 941. The writer presents himself as a subject of Joseph, the king of Khazars at the time of the raid, and thus as a contemporary of the event. He names the king of the Rus before and during the raid Helgo or Helgu — read Helgi — which is the original Scandinavian form of the name of the King of the Rus Oleg. Yet Oleg, according to the chronology of the Russian Primary Chronicle, had been dead in 941 for almost thirty years.
Since first edited by Solomon Schechter in 1912, 2 the Letter presented the students of ancient Russian history with a difficult challenge. Most simply chose to ignore its existence. Others claimed that the Letter is a modern fake and whatever evidence produced to support it had been faked as well; one did
1. The term Rus designates in this study the predominantly Scandinavian warriors and traders who subjugated eastern Slavic and Finno-Baltic tribes in the eighth-tenth centuries. The adjective Russian is applied to the state which emerged from the amalgamation of the Rus and the conquered tribes and which was, starting from the mid- tenth century, increasingly Slavic in character. It is also used to designate ancient Russian sources. In preferring the adjective form Russian to the neologism Rus'ian or alike, I obviously do not mean to exclude from the heritage of the Rus and of the ancient "Russian " state the modern-day Ukraine and Belarus.
'2. S. Schechter, An Unknown Khazar Document, Jewish Quarterly Review, N. S. 3. 1912/3, p. 182-219.
Revue des Études Byzantines 53. 1995, p. 237-270.
