Gunnar Heinsohn: Sarmatians, Huns and Khazars
were they one and the same Confederation?
The origin of the 8th-10th c. Khazars is hidden in obscurity, though they are also called “Huns“ (by Theophanes the Confessor [758/60-817/818 CE] or by Moses of Kalankatuk [10th c.]). The ancestors of this ubiquituously tribute-collecting power are even believed to “have belonged to the empire of the Huns“ (JVB 2008), although they had to wait another mysterious 300 years before they could actually rule the Hunnic realm: “Very little [was known] about the Khazars – about their traditions, their funerary rites, their culture" until, in one of their fortresses, Atil, the excavators have found Hunnic-like “huts similar to yurts, which are characteristic of Khazar cities“.
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