Kiev letter
The Kiev letter is a Hebrew text that probably dates from the 10th century. It is one of the oldest surviving texts from the Kievan Rus .
letter
content
The Jewish community in Kiev asks members of other communities for a certain sum of money. She wants to buy ransom a member of the community who has been sentenced to death for unpaid debt.
people
Nine personal names follow - some Turkish , one Slavic .
At the end there are 6 characters in a Turkic language , possibly Khazar .
Historical background
To the east of the Rus was the Khazars empire of Turkic origin . This had adopted the Jewish religion in the 8th or 9th century .
The Jewish community in Kiev apparently had Khazarian members.
meaning
The letter is noteworthy in several ways:
- It is the oldest reference to a Jewish community in Kiev and Russia.
- It is possibly the first surviving written mention of Kiev.
- The letter probably contains the only known writing in the Khazar language .
- The text contains information on legal practices in the early Kievan Rus.
manuscript
The parchment manuscript was discovered in 1962 in a collection of Hebrew texts in Cairo in the Ben Esra Synagogue at Fustāt by Norman Golb, professor at Chicago University.
Today it is in the Cambridge University Library , Sigle TS 12.122.
Web links
- The Kievan Letter facsimile of the letter
- V. Napolskikh, The “Kievan letter” and the alleged Khazarian rule in Kiev
literature
- Norman Golb, Omeljan Pritsak , Khazarian Hebrew Documents of the Tenth Century . Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1982, ISBN 0-8014-1221-8