Khazars

Khazars: Turkic-speaking people who were the major power in the Black Sea steppes, with centres on the lowerVolga andDon, fromthe seventh to later tenth century, when their power was broken by the Rus; major allies of the Byzantines, the majority of Khazars converted to Judaism in the ninth century; their lands were known as Khazaria (in later medieval Italian texts, Gazaria)