Were the Khazars Caucasoid or Mongoloid?

[7eleven]

Were the Khazars Caucasoid, Mongoloid, or both?

[Anglojew]

Obviously Eurasian like every other steppe group with Mongolian/Turkic origins.

[archangel]

they were Türkic,were our kin

[Legion]

We are mostly Caucasoid

[Vesuvian Sky]

We don't really have any depictions of them but they came from present day Kazakhstan and were essentially marauders during the time of the Western Gok Turk empire. Depictions of Gok Turks during that time shows them as not that Mongoloid looking interestingly enough.

Safe bet is probably Turanid but with prevailing Caucasoid and diminished Mongoloid features.

[Onur]

Arab travelers did some description of their physical appearance when they traveled to the Khazar empire to convert them as muslims.

This is from Arthur Koestler`s book;

The descriptions that have come down to us originate in hostile sources, and cannot be taken at face value. “As to the Khazars,” an Arab chronicler[11] writes, “they are to the north of the inhabited earth towards the 7th clime, having over their heads the constellation of the Plough. Their land is cold and wet. Accordingly their complexions are white, their eyes blue, their hair flowing and predominantly reddish, their bodies large and their natures cold. Their general aspect is wild.”

After a century of warfare, the Arab writer obviously had no great sympathy for the Khazars. Nor had the Georgian or Armenian scribes, whose countries, of a much older culture, had been repeatedly devastated by Khazar horsemen. A Georgian chronicle, echoing an ancient tradition, identifies them with the hosts of Gog and Magog — “wild men with hideous faces and the manners of wild beasts, eaters of blood”.[12] An Armenian writer refers to “the horrible multitude of Khazars with insolent, broad, lashless faces and long falling hair, like women”.[13] Lastly, the Arab geographer Istakhri, one of the main Arab sources, has this to say:[14] “The Khazars do not resemble the Turks. They are black-haired, and are of two kinds, one called the Kara-Khazars, [Black Khazars] who are swarthy verging on deep black as if they were a kind of Indian, and a white kind [Ak-Khazars], who are strikingly handsome.”

This is more flattering, but only adds to the confusion. For it was customary among Turkish peoples to refer to the ruling classes or clans as “white”, to the lower strata as “black”. Thus there is no reason to believe that the “White Bulgars” were whiter than the “Black Bulgars”, or that the “White Huns” (the Ephtalites) who invaded India and Persia in the fifth and sixth centuries were of fairer skin than the other Hun tribes which invaded Europe. Istakhri’s black-skinned Khazars — as much else in his and his colleagues’ writings — were based on hearsay and legend; and we are none the wiser regarding the Khazars’ physical appearance, or their ethnic Origins.

http://www.iamthewitness.com/books/A...13th.Tribe.htm

This is from Peter Golden;

Of the ferocity and warlike tendencies of the Khazars there is little doubt and much historical evidence, all of it pointing to a race of people so violent in their dealings with their fellow men that they were feared and abhorred above all peoples in that region of the world.

The Arab chronicler Ibn-Said al-Maghribi writes, "they are to the north of the inhabited earth towards the 7th clime, having over their heads the constellation of the Plough. Their land is cold and wet. Accordingly their complexions are white, their eyes blue, their hair flowing and predominantly reddish, their bodies large and their natures cold. Their general aspect is wild." 14

The ninth-century monk Druthmar of Aquitaine, in his commentary on Matthew 24:14 in Expositio in Matthaeum Evangelistam, stated that the Gazari, or Khazars, dwelt "in the lands of Gog and Magog." 15

Legends and stories abound, some of which are true according to the above quoted Aquitaine monk, that center around Alexander the Great and his attempt to enclose the Khazars and quarantine them, due to their violent and barbaric nature, from the rest of the civilized world. This endeavor apparently failed, Druthmar claimed, and they escaped. Some legends even claim they were cannibals. 16

After the kingdom's conversion to Judaism, the term "Red Jews" came into usage out of the superstition of medieval Germans, who equated their red hair and beards and their violent nature with deceit and dishonesty. It is also well documented that they heavily taxed those passing through their lands, for none dared refuse them. 17

http://www.apfn.org/thewinds/library/khazars.html

Btw, don't mind about the so-called evilness of Khazars described in Arab chronicles. Khazars nonstop fought vs Arabs for a century and they stopped islamic expansion to the Anatolia. Arabs hated them so much that they invented fake hadits about supposedly Turks being Gog&Magog, the evil on earth.

Imho, i believe Khazar elite was turanid, predominantly caucasoid. They were probably mostly Kypchak as known as Cumans, Bulgars, Tatars and some should be Oghuz aka Turks of Turkey and Azerbaijan because we know that the Turkish Seljuk empire`s founder was an elite commander in the Khazar empire`s army.

[kabeiros]

[Linet]

As far as i know they were a Turkic tribe

[Vesuvian Sky]

Depictions of Gok Turks c. 6th to 8th centuries BC:




Notice the hair is long and dress very Central Asian in character. Racial makeup though is rather ambiguous according to this somewhat schematic depiction.

[StonyArabia]

The Khazars spoke a language similar to Chuvash, they would be more Caucasoid, and especially West Asian Caucasoid mixed with Turkics.