THE HUMAN SPECIES. 325 



THE KHAZARS. 



The Khazars, already mentioned by Armenian writers of the 

 second century, were a nation both warlike and agricultural ; 

 and, being greatly intermixed with Jewish exiles, they changed 

 from Budhism to the Mosaic tenets in the seventh century, and 

 conferred the title of Hake (king priest) to a Hebrew family, 

 while the temporal authority continued in the hands of the 

 Khagan. In 85S they became Christians, but forsook the cross 

 to please the Chorasmians. They traded largely in peltry 

 from the north, and in other wares from the south-east of Asia. 

 Usually the allies of the Greek empire, their dominions ex- 

 tended from the Sea of Aral to the river Bogue. Their capital 

 was Baliangar, or Attel, at the mouth of the Volga, and they 

 having formed a portion of the Hunnic empire, and probably ab- 

 sorbed the Haiatili, appear to have built cities in Hungary, 

 doubtless by colonists, or by establishing ventas. 



THE HUNGARIANS.* 



The Hungarians, or Magyar Toorkees, seem to have issued 

 from the same Ouralian quarter, and were, with the last men- 

 tioned, formidable to the Khalifs of Persia, about the close of 

 the seventh century. By the end of the ninth, they found 



* The Byzantine writers view the Huns and Turks as the same ; and, 

 indeed, the names Huns, Hungarians, Unni Occidentales, Onoguri, Ugri, 

 Ungri, Ongri, are all the same, or tribes of the same people. The Avari or 

 Abares may have had a greater Caucasian element in their national 

 origin. In the whole of the high region west of the Caspian, to the 

 Euxine and eastern coast of the Mediterranean, as far as the Hellespont, 

 it is difficult, if not impossible, to separate distinctly the Finnic from the 

 pure Germanic and Celtic nations. Long before the historic age they 

 absorbed a Melanic nation, which Herodotus called the Colchian in his 

 time. The Pelasgi and Dorians were perhaps Lesghi, and tribes that, 

 went into Thynia, from the coast of Thrace, only completed a circle of 

 emigration round the Euxine. 

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