Khazar language in Ukrainian toponyms and in Bulgar(ian), Avar and Hunnic titles

When linguists, in the 21st century, tried to identify which Turkic subfamily the language of the Khazars belongs to, they constantly faced one scientific problem that cannot be solved in the manner they followed. This problem starts from the wrong guess that the "cognate" of the Khazar language, as some of the linguists believe, is Chuvash. And this guess is what has made the scholars get stuck, though the solution of the problem is much simpler than can be even imagined. It lies not in searching for the Khazar language's proper "cognate", but in properly identifying, from the very beginning, as in every such research, its language family.

The text narrated in the video (with minor differences; each new timestamp is a new slide on the screen):

(00:01) Hello Dear Viewers. We are continuing our investigation on the history of Ukraine. In this video, we will cover a couple of topics, one of which will be the language of the people called in history the Khazars. Their real name will also be a part of our investigation.

In front of you, a fragment of Pylyp Orlyk's Ukrainian Constitution which was composed in 1710. In the Latin version of this Constitution, Pylyp Orlyk derives the Cossacks from the Khazars and the Gets, and the former are mentioned as the Cosarica /ko'zarika/ and Cossarica /ko'sarika/ people or people from lands of such a name. In several languages, in which the Latin alphabet was adopted, the single "s" can be pronounced as /z/, whereas the double "s" ("ss") is usually guaranteed to be pronounced as /s/. The presence of both the spellings for one name in one text at once can be explained by the possible event that, if it's not an erratum, both of them co-existed and meant the same thing so Pylyp Orlyk didn't differentiate them. Or else, this text was edited later. The text we are observing now is available in the 14th volume of "Readings in the Imperial Society" published in the Russian Empire, referring to the session from 31st May 1847. The links to works that will be shown on the screen can be found in the description to this video.

Ukrainian historian Omeljan Pritsak (Омелян Пріцак) in his work "The First Constitution of Ukraine (5 April 1710)", with help of and cooperation of Elie Borschak (or Il'ko Borshchak) and other people mentioned there, provided a translation of Hryhor Orlyk's French Remarks to the Constitution (Hryhor is a son of Pylyp Orlyk), in which Hryhor Orlyk wrote that "the Cossack people is the immediate successor to the Khazar state". In the same remarks, Hryhor wrote that "his father learned it from the Old Latin authors, and one churchman, who is a friend of his father, and found the same proofs in the theological books". There is a myth that the word "Cossack", or "козак" in Ukrainian, is Turkic and means "free man" or "free warrior". Мутигулла Кувашевич Джусупов (Mutigulla Kuvashevich Dzhusupov), a history academic in Kazakhstan, in his work "The Origin of the Cossacks and Their Ethnic Status" (in the original Russian - "Происхождение казаков и этнический статус казачества"), by referring to the historians and cossackologists Михаил Иванович Крайсветный (Mikhail Ivanovich Kraisvetnyi) and Валерий Евгеньевич Шамбаров (Valerii Evgenevich Shambarov), wrote that, in any Turkic language, there is no root "каз/коз", which the word "казак/козак" in the sense of a "free or independent person", "free warrior" or sort of that could be derived from - that is the word "козак" is a loanword. But at the same time, in the same work, Мутигулла Джусупов, after having analysed the topic declared in the title, concluded that the word "козак" is of Khazar origin. That is Мутигулла contrasts Turkic languages and the Khazar language. I became aware of this work thanks to the author of the "История Руси" YouTube-channel I already mentioned in my previous video. The author of that channel provided a bit more information on the history of the word "козак", and I will leave a link to his video on this matter. But a possible meaning that this word bears is what will be covered in the video you are watching now.

What else do we know about the Khazars? (03:18) English Wiki reads that they were "a semi-nomadic Turkic people" plus "Turkic-speaking tribes that in the late 6th century CE established a major commercial empire". The appearance, in one sentence, of a "people" which was inclined to "semi-nomadic movements" and just "tribes" - not "people", just "tribes" - already living on their own lands, is something that I found amusing. For the sake of better creativity, I would split this sentence into two, but let's continue. This statement already contradicts what Movses Khorenatsi told in his "History of Armenia". Movses Khorenatsi in his "History" mentioned the Khazars (or Khaziri) attacking Armenia from the north, that is from the territory of the North Caucasus. Movses Khorenatsi was born in the 5th century CE and described the events which happened several centuries before. Based on opinions of Armenian historians and what Movses Khorenatsi wrote, the Khazar attack took place in about the 2nd century BCE, in the reign of Armenian king Vałaršak or Vagharshak (Valarsace, Վաղարշակ). (04:20) On the same Wiki page, we can read that skulls found in Sarkel are attributed to a mixture of Slavic, other European, and a few Mongolian types. (Wiki here quotes Kevin Alan Brook's book "The Jews of Khazaria".) Even if we assume that these Mongolian skulls were really found and if we assume that the Mongolians refer to Turkic peoples (which is doubtful), then, even in this case, if some Turkic peoples were present in Khazaria, they constituted the minority. The city of Sarkel is believed to be connected to a past fortress (which is still unfound) in some place near the Don River in Rostov Oblast in the Russian Federation, and that's what is called Sarkel in this Wiki article. There is an explanation of what actually happened to this fortress, but this topic will be covered in another video.

(05:04) Григорій Кониський/Hryhorii Konys'kyi, or Георгі Каніскі/Heorhi Kaniski, in his "History of the Russes" published in 1846 wrote that "Bulgarians", "Pechenegs", "Polans", "Polovtsi", "Drevlians", "Kozars" are names for Slavic tribes, and that the Bulgarians were called like that for the fact of living near the Volga River, Pechenegs for eating baked food, Polans and Polovtsi for living on fields, Drevlians for living in forests, and Kozars for riding horses and camels. Some scholars think the Polovtsi are the Cumans, which in turn are not considered to be Slavic. But I doubt that anyone even ever checked whether the real Polovtsi and the Cumans are really in some way connected. I think this topic requires a separate investigation. Another interesting piece in this fragment is a sentence reading that the Kozars often helped their allies, and especially Greeks, and, as the result, were renamed by Constantine Monomachos from "Kozars" (meaning "Khazars") to "Kozacks" (meaning "Cossacks").

(06:02) Bavarian Geographer mentions a tribe or people called "Caziri" (or "Catsiri"), which scholars think refer to the Khazars, and that they had one hundred towns. The number "one hundred" is translated into the Ukrainian word "сто", and another Ukrainian word that shares the same root is the word "сотник" ("sotnyk"). (06:20) Sotnyk was a Cossack military rank in Ukrainian armies of the previous centuries and literally means "a commander of a hundred men". The same Wiki page also tells us that the "sotnyks" also referred to "leaders of territorial administrative subdivisions called 'sotnyas' in the Cossack Hetmanate".

(06:37) As you already know, the Ruthenian Chronicle of Nestor reads, "To the Slavonic people, which I already mentioned as one living on the Danube river, from the Scythians, i.e. from the Kozars, those who have a name of the 'Bulgarians' came ... ," and you also remember that the "Kozars" here are the Khazars. In my previous video, which was mainly dedicated to the Scythian language, I showed that the Scythian language is Ancient Ukrainian, and, in addition to the investigation on the Khazar or Kozar language, we will decipher a set of words which cannot be directly referred to as the Khazar ones, but resemble some patterns in the Khazar language. At the beginning, I thought that one video would be enough to include all the necessary information I would like to share about the Khazar language, but it had turned out to be not. And for this reason, the next video will also be dedicated to the Khazar language. And not only.

In this video, we will start our investigation from referring to an article written by Turkologist Marcel Erdal titled "The Khazar Language". This article is very interesting for us because it shows, from the perspective of the Turkology, that the Khazar language is hard to call Turkic, although this author tried to prove it. Most Turkologists think that, if the Khazar language is Turkic, the closest language to it would be Chuvash. But from the article of Marcel Erdal, one can conclude that, if this language is really Turkic, the phonemic transitions that took place in this language are uncommon for any language in the Turkic group. (08:00) An interesting place in this article is a mention of a Khazar general whose name is spelt as Boluščï. And this name is an obvious Ukrainian word - "болющий", an adjective meaning "painful" or, in our case, "causing others pain". (You can find the links to the dictionaries I'm showing in the description. At the same time, the list of the Ukrainian words we will be gathering in the video will be available in my blog.) Main primary sources on the Khazar history left by the Khazars and not by foreigners were written in Hebrew. Marcel Erdal's representation of the name "Boluščï" is also composed based on its Hebrew spelling, which we will later face in one Khazar document. Marcel Erdal tried to connect this name with either a Polovtsian name or a Cuman name Boluš' (here, I should remind that whether the Polovtsi and the Cumans are the same people is a big separate question), and this attempt failed of course. As Marcel Erdal wrote, this word "can be considered as evidence against the Bolgar-Chuvash identity of this language". The term "Bolgar" mentioned in this context has nothing to do with today's Slavic Bulgarians, and, on this matter, I will say a couple of words too, but in the next video.

(09:08) In the same article, the same author provides a Hebrew spelling of the city of Sarkel ("שרכיל" ,"שרכל"). To identify the real name of Sarkel, we should definitely put an emphasis on documents written by the Khazars themselves. I don't understand those scholars who suggest relying, say, on Armenian documents, given the fact that Movses Khorenatsi himself, who is credited as the first author of the history of Armenia, explicitly wrote that he referred to foreign sources to tell us the history of his country. (09:36) Constantine VII Flavius Porphyrogenitus provided a meaning for the word "Sarkel". This meaning is expressed in the text in the form of the Medieval Greek "ἄσπρος ὁσπίτιον". The first word does mean "white", but the second one, for some unclear reason, is translated by some authors into English as "house". Before we move to the meaning of the second word, I will pay your attention to another word in the same text. It's spelt with Greek letters as "πέχ" ("Pech"). The word "Pech" is considered to be a title in Khazaria co-existing with the title "Khagan". Khagan is considered to be a nominal or sacred leader or a tsar of Khazaria, whereas Pech - as a secular and real leader, or a governor, or someone acting on behalf of the tsar being at once the second person in the country. For now, let's just keep in mind its spelling.

(10:24) The second word "ὁσπίτιον" is not precisely "house". It has several meanings. The most general meaning - that is the one covering other meanings or a bigger amount of possible options of what this word can mean - is "residence", as Google Translate suggests. And this translation is pretty correct. But we should also note that Constantine Porphyrogenitus didn't personally visit Khazaria. He sat in his cabinet and worked with the documents. The problem with the word "Sarkel" lies in interpreting what is actually written when it comes to the spelling of a word with Hebrew letters. (10:54) In the Hebrew alphabet, there are different pairs of letters which can be easily confused. On this table from Wiki, we can see that the letter "kaf" ("כ") can be confused with the letter "bet" ("ב"), "dalet" ("ד") with "resh" ("ר"), "he" ("ה") with "chet" ("ח"), and "samech" ("ס") with "mem" ("ם"/"מ") if "mem" ("ם") is the last letter in a word. This occurrence happens in various words, and the word "Sarkel" is just one of them. The same issue appears even in the Persian and Arabic languages. And authors working with texts written in these languages, say, "complain" about this fact because it periodically prevents from the correct interpretation of what these texts actually read. Besides the fact that the Hebrew language is written from right to left, in this language, as well as in Persian and Arabic, not all vowels are written and the letters which are read as vowels in one position within a word can be read as consonants or not read at all in the rest of cases. These letters are called "matres lectionis".

If we replace "kaf" with "bet" and "resh" with "dalet" in the longest version of the word "Sarkel" (as you remember, Marcel Erdal provided two spellings), we will get, without a reconstruction, another word - "S-d-bil" or "S-d-bel" ("שדביל"). (12:00) And after a reconstruction, we will get the Ukrainian word "Садибіль" ("Sadybil'") - "Садиба Біла", which can be translated as "Dwelling-the-White" - "White Dwelling": "садиба" for "dwelling" or "settlement" (that is "residence") and "біла" (feminine adjective) for "white". The word "садиба" in modern Ukrainian rather means "household". But, at the same time, Михайло Уманець/Mykhailo Umanets', or Михайло Комаров/Mykhailo Komarov, and Адеська Спілка/Ades'ka Spilka's Russian-Ukrainian dictionary from 1893-1898 links the word "оселя" (today's "dwelling") and "садиба" (today's "household") to one Russian counterpart of theirs, "усадьба" ("homestead" or "messuage"), which may suggest that both the Ukrainian "оселя" and the Ukrainian "садиба" previously were synonyms. The Polish "siedziba", a morphological counterpart of the Ukrainian "садиба", means "abode", which is closer, by meaning, to the sense "residence". But it's definitely not a "fortress" - Constantine Porphyrogenitus didn't mention any "fortress" in regard to the city's name.

The Hebrew letter "yod" can be transliterated either as "i" or as "e". So, in theory, we could receive a name ending with "-ель" ("-el'") instead of "-іль" ("-il'"). And there are, at least, two locations in Ukraine whose modern names end with "-ель" ("-el'"). But what do they mean? (13:11) A first location is a settlement of Koktebel. As English Wiki reads so far, this word is considered to mean "Land of the blue hills". I hardly imagine what these "hills" could even be. I would understand if, instead of "hills", the word "waves" appeared in the translation. What if the original and reasonable sense for this place name can be retrieved if we assume that the appellation "Koktebel" was derived from a word that emerged in the Khazar period and, thus, was initially spelt with Hebrew letters and then disfigured? Let's check it.

The Wiki article about the Hebrew language provides us with a table demonstrating which vowels can be represented by which Hebrew letters. One letter seems to be forgotten here: the letter "he" which behaves similarly to "aleph" and "ayin". Thus, the Hebrew "aleph", "ayin", and "he" each represent one of the following sounds: "a", "e", or "o"; "vav" represents either "u" or "o"; "yod" represents either "i" or "e". (We will be applying this knowledge to decipher the Khazar words.) If we spell the name "Koktebel" with the Hebrew letters in full (both with the consonants and with the vowels): "כוכטיביל", - we will be able to note that improper reading/spelling of just one letter changes a lot. Once "kaf" gets replaced with "bet", we get a completely different word - "Бухтибіль" ("Bukhtybil'", "בוכטיביל") - "Бухта Біла" - "Bay-the-White" - "White Bay". Today's spelling for Koktebel is different of course, but it doesn't mean that it was spelt the same way previously. Bays are commonly used as anchorages for ships. It was the first thought that came to my mind, and it was not mistaken. (14:38) Filip Jakob Bruun (or in Russian sources - Филипп Карлович Брун, a Russian Empire scientist), in his book about the "Black Sea region" (1879), mentions Koktebel as a bay. If we open a description of Koktebel provided by a French traveller and knight Edouard Taitbout De Marigny in his work "The Black Sea Pilot" (1855) (the right part of the slide), we will find the following passage:

"After rounding Cape Meganom, the last great rocks of the Krimea will be seen to the N.E., called Kara Dagh (Black Mountain). ... From Kara Dagh the coast again trends to the northward for 3 miles, and then runs to the eastward for nearly 6 miles to Kiatlama Point, forming the picturesque little bay of Koktebel at the foot of the valley of that name. It affords excellent anchorage, but it lies open to the S. and S.E. The eastern side of the bay is formed by a narrow point projecting out half a mile to the southward, to the eastward of which, at a little distance from the shore, will be seen two white rocks, like boats under sail."

The "narrow point" mentioned by Edouard Taitbout De Marigny is likely Cape Chameleon (Мис Хамелеон/Mys Khameleon) near Koktebel which looks like white mountains, and for them, there is one more description provided in a book titled "Memories of Crimea. Album of All the Best and Noteworthiest Views of the Southern Coast of Crimea":

(16:05) "Directly beyond Kara Dag, at some distance from the sea, the so-called Koktebel Mountains rise, and one of them, which is known as Mount Koktebel proper, has an extremely picturesque conical shape."

(16:18) These are the mountains as they depicted in the same book. Let's look now at the appearance of Cape Chameleon on some photos from the Internet. (16:26) This is the eastern side of Cape Chameleon or the so-called Koktebel Mountains. (16:32) This is the western side of the same cape. (16:35) And the same side again.

For these mountains and this cape, the bay next to them likely bore the original name "Bukhtybil'", that is "Бухта Біла" or "White Bay", before it got renamed "Koktebel". And "White Bay" sounds much more reasonable than "Land of the blue hills".

A second location in Ukraine ending with "-ель" ("-el'") is Bukovel, a ski resort near the Carpathian Mountains. (16:59) In the 2nd volume of the "History of wars and the military system in Poland" written by Tadeusz Korzon and published in 1923, in the notes at the bottom of a page, we can find a location called "Bukobil". The author of this work is trying to convince us that this Bukobil is the city of Bucov in Romania by transforming Bukobil to Bukovol and then to Bucov. When describing a series of battles between the Polish army and the army led by Moldavian ruler Mihai Viteazul (or Michael the Brave) in the so-called "Battle of Bucov" that occurred in 1600, Tadeusz Korzon writes that Polish historian Ambroży Grabowski, in his "Historical Antiquities", repeated careless mistakes committed by a copyist of another work and that Konstanty Górski, one more Polish author, failed to resolve a chronological tangle in the work of Ambroży Grabowski just mentioned. Tadeusz Korzon also says that the "main battle" (that is the so-called "Battle of Bucov") happened not on 18th October, but on October 20th, which is currently believed to be the date for the Battle of Bucov. According to Tadeusz Korzon, Chancellor of the Polish Crown Jan Zamoyski wrote the same in his letters from Bukobil to Italian general Giorgio Basta. Another interesting piece in this text reads that the place of the so-called "Battle of Bucov" was personally observed by Konstanty Górski, but on a plan he made, he put an army led by Jan Zamoyski in the location characterised by a pretty low height above the sea level to be related to any mountain.

(18:30) The Wiki article about the "Battle of Bucov" reads that, before this battle, Mihai Viteazul overthrew the previous Moldavian hospodar (or roughly - "lord") Ярема Могила and his brother, Wallachian hospodar, Симеон Могила (Simion and Ieremia Movilă) (Ukrainian word "могила" means "grave" or "tomb" by the way) both being sympathetic to the Polish-Lithuanian-Ruthenian Commonwealth (or simply - Rzeczpospolita), and this event provoked Jan Zamoyski into a campaign against Mihai. The same article reads that, in the spring of 1600, when Mihai already ruled over Moldavia and Wallachia, he attacked Покуття (Pokuttya/Pokuttia), historical region in Ukraine, in which Bukovel is located.

(19:08) According to the following paragraph, these two brothers took refuge in Poland, and Jan Zamoyski, as can be deduced from the text, instead of gaining back the control over Pokuttia, marched far into Moldavian or Wallachian inland areas. Quoting further, the army led by Jan Zamoyski, which consisted of about 20000 soldiers including Zaporozhian/Zaporizhian Cossacks, "in early September, crossed the frontier Dnister (or Dniester) and marched farther into Mihai's domains without wasting time conquering fortresses the Polish army was bypassing". Mihai's army, which consisted of 17000 soldiers only, "initially retreated and, at the same time, haunted the Polish army by raid actions, blocking the road on the Carpathian passes leading to Transylvania. Fearing that a further retreat might lead to the loss of power over Wallachia, Mihai decided to take the fight. For this reason, he detained his army in the forests on the southern high bank of the Teleajen river in order to block the road to Ploiești." (Today's Teleajen is a tributary of the river Prahova in the southern part of Romania. The city of Ploiești is located in the same part near the Teleajen river.)

(20:15) The most amusing thing is here. Wiki reads that, in the spring of the same 1600, when Mihai attacked Pokuttia, "he negotiated with Sweden and Russia about the possible partition of Poland". Some of you are already laughing. To invent the Russian Empire (not "Russia" even), Peter I was not born yet and, thus, didn't have a chance to lose the war to the Ottoman Empire in 1711, to be ransomed from the Turkish captivity, to wander Europe for several years, and, afterwards, to declare himself, for his so strong desire, the Emperor and rename Muscovy to the Russian Empire in 1721.

(20:50) A Hungarian historian Lajos Szádeczky Kardoss gathered some archive documents relating to the history of Transylvania and, in his "History of Transylvania and Mihai's voivodeship" published in 1893 and being an extension of one of his earlier works, provides us with a fragment that mentions Bukobil. As I understood this paragraph (my translation may be inaccurate), omitting unnecessary details, it conveys:

"Travelling from Ploiești to Bodzavásár (that is Buzău), in the north, or to the north, of the old road and/or the current railway, one can see beautiful sloping vineyards which precede strong mountains. Behind these mountains, close to the river Telega (now Teleajen), in a hard-to-reach place, there is a valley between mountains which is/was called Bukobil".

Today's river Teleajen is located in Romania far from Bukovel. Moreover, in the description we just referred to, some river Teleajen is located behind some strong mountains. If these strong mountains are the Carpathian Mountains, then today's river Teleajen, in contrast, is located before them, not behind. At the same time, the Bukobil in the context provided should also be located behind these mountains, while today's commune Bucov is situated within the route from Ploiești to Buzău before the Carpathian Mountains and itself is not a mountainous territory.

(22:07) In "Hungarian Historical Repository", "... Library", or "... Collection" (it's my translation of the original Hungarian title), as well as in the previous book, there is a letter (in Latin) which tells us about an intention of Jan Zamoyski to fine voivode Mihai, called here a vicious man, for devastations he caused. Amongst the devastated lands, the author of this letter, Jan Zamoyski, lists borders of the Kingdom of Ruthenia and Podilia ("Поділля"). Podilia, as well as Pokuttia, is located to the north of today's Moldova, and it completely contradicts what is currently written on Polish Wiki. If I understood it right, Jan Zamoyski mentions a "successful" battle that happened on October 15th ("die idibus Octobris"). Jan Zamoyski writes that his army tried to take the height and that they managed to achieve this goal. He places a location Bukobil near or beyond the river Telesinum: in other words, based on my understanding of the text, after crossing it. In this Battle of Bukobil, as Jan Zamoyski wrote, participated "Nizovian Cossacks" (in the text - "Cozaci Nisovienis"; the term "Nizovian Cossacks" denotes Cossacks of the Zaporozhian/Zaporizhian Host the Lower). The main part and the below part of the document seem to me inconsistent: first, because the below date (October 23rd), which is supposedly the date of writing the letter, co-exists with the date "November 11th", on which, according to Jan Zamoyski and my understanding, his army either already crossed or was already near the river Telesinum; second, because the word resembling "Bukobil" near the below date is spelt differently ("Bukobÿl"), contrary to the one in the main text.

(23:39) According to "Modern Austrian history from 1526 to 1860" written by Czech historian and knight Václav Vladivoj Tomek and published in 1887, based on my understanding of the text written, when describing events from 1600, Mihai Viteazul (the left part of the slide) ordered the Transilvanian gentry to defend against the Turkish army, which kept fighting against Europe, in a location called Šebiš (may be Romanian Sebiș). But this gentry thought that, in this way, Mihai wanted to get rid of them because Mihai, having taken power over Moldavia, after a coup in Transilvania, didn't receive enough power he expected to receive. So the gentry, instead of moving to Sebiș, met in Torda (may be Romanian Turda) to send the general Basta a request so that he would help them overthrow the voivode Mihai. At the same time, the Turkish army reached Torda, or Turda, and formed an alliance with the Transilvanian gentry that was already there. On the right part of the slide, the same source continues that Jan Zamoyski used this moment. He hastily mustered an army and, along with Ярема Могила, on October 15th, defeated Mihai near Bukobil on the river Seret and installed Ярема Могила again as a voivode. And from there, after Mihai's defeat, Ярема Могила invaded Wallachia and defeated Mihai in several battles. The river Seret, which was just mentioned, flows in Ukraine near today's Bukovel and is the left tributary of the Dnister. Thus, the real name of Bukovel is Bukobil. And the Battle of Bucov, most probably, is the Battle of Bukobil, which occurred not on October 20th, but on October 15th, in 1600. And not in Romania, but in Ukraine. What is now written on Polish Wiki contradicts what we have just read.

(25:22) "Bukobil" means "буки білі" (literally - "white beech-trees" or "white beech"). The word combination "бук білий" ("white beech-tree") can also denote a tree called "граб" ("hornbeam"). In Latin, the hornbeam tree is called "Carpinus betulus": "carpinus" for "hornbeam" and "betulus" for "birch" or "birch-like" (as well known, the birch-tree is white). And probably, for this tree, "Carpinus betulus", the Carpathian Mountains (or "Карпати" in Ukrainian) received their name: their appellation may mean "The Mountains of White Hornbeams" - similarly to Ukrainian ski resort Bukobil in the same location.

So what do we have now so far? We have three locations each having the Ukrainian etymology, and one of them is a Khazar city. Here they are: Садибіль (Sadybil'), Бухтибіль (Bukhtybil'), and Букобіль (Bukobil').

To determine (or to confirm) what language the Khazars spoke, we should refer to documents written by the Khazars themselves. An example of such documents is the Khazar Correspondence. It's a set of letters between Jewish diplomat and foreign secretary to the Caliph of Cordoba Hasdai and Khazar Khagan or Pech (which is not clear) Joseph (or Йосип). One of documents included in this set is the so-called "Schechter Letter" or "Cambridge Document" of an unknown Khazar author, which was found in the Cairo Geniza, by scholar Solomon Schechter. Solomon Schechter also provided an English translation of this document in his work "An Unknown Khazar Document". Briefly from his biography that you can find on the Internet: Solomon Schechter (שניאור זלמן הכהן שכטר) was born in the historical region of Moldavia, in today's Romania, to a rabbi; studied in universities of Vienna and Berlin; and, after living and working in England for some time, moved to the United States.

(26:59) Let's quote the following fragments from the document he found:

"... Armenia and our ancestors fled from them ... [for they could not] bear the yoke of the worshipers of idols. And [the princes of Khazaria] received them [for the men of] Khazaria were first without Torah. And [they too] remained without Torah and Scriptures and made marriage with the inhabitants of the land [and mingled with them.] And they learned their deeds and went out with them [to the war continually.] And they became [one] people. ... And there was no king in the land of Khazaria. Only him who won victories in the battle they would appoint over them as general of the army. Now (it happened) at one time when the Jews went forth into the battle with them as was their wont that on that day a Jew proved mighty with his sword and put to flight the enemies who came against Khazaria. Then the people of Khazaria appointed him over them as general of the army in accordance with their ancient custom."

For comparison, the Cossacks also used to elect a military leader called "гетьман" ("hetman") or "отаман" ("otaman", "ataman"). In the next lines, the document tells about the testimony to the so-called "work of their God" given by the "wise men of Israel, Greece, and Arabia" demanded by the great prince of Khazaria. (28:14) In this dispute, the Greeks and the Arabs confirmed that what was told by the wise men of Israel about the events "from the days of the creation, until the day when the children of Israel came up from Egypt, and until they arrived at an inhabited country" is true, but "there arose a dissension amongst them". The princes of Khazaria then asked them to "bring the books from a cave in the valley of Tizul (תיזול) and explain them", and wise men of Israel explained them in accordance with what they told before. The word "Tizul" - which is probably a Khazar word - is clearly spelt with "tav" ("ת"), "yod" ("י"), "zayin" ("ז"), "vav" ("ו"), and "lamed" ("ל") - let's keep in mind that. (28:50) A few lines below, the document mentions an event of Jews' arrival from "Bagdad", Khorasan, and from Greece. Solomon Schechter, inside his translation, provides us with the spelling of the word "Khorasan" ("כורסן"). Today's Khorasan is located in Iran. Some scholars suggest that the first letter is "bet", not "kaf", but for now, it's not that important for us. In the next lines, the text reads that the Khazars "appointed one of the wise men over them as a judge", which was called in the Khazar language "Khagan" ("כגן"). To be more precise, they called this person a word spelt with three Hebrew letters only: "kaf" ("כ"), "gimel" ("ג"), and "nun" ("ן"). Let's now investigate what the names "Khagan" and "Tizul" mean. (29:26) Юрий Иванович Венелин (Yuriy Ivanovich Venelin), in the first edition of the first volume of his historical research "The Ancient and Modern Bulgarians" published in 1829, looked for the etymology for the word "каган" ("khagan") amongst similarly-sounding words which, according to Yuriy Venelin, were attested by primary sources - such as "кохан", "кокан", and "кавкан". He doesn't say from which language these words come from, but he explicitly states in his book that the Khazars are Slavs. The word "коханий" (a supposed full form of the word "кохан") does exist in the Ukrainian language and means "loved" or "beloved", which, in theory, could be a title for the sacred leader of Khazaria, but here, Venelin wrongly picked up the word, although he probably thought in the right way. The word "khagan" is spelt in the Khazar Correspondence with the letter "gimel", and a Ukrainian word which is likely represented by this set of Hebrew letters is the word "ковган" ("Kovhan"). We remember, from the previous video, that the Ukrainian letter "в" is a fricative (correcting myself, it's either a fricative or an approximant), and we also remember that it could be a reason why this letter was not represented in the Ancient Greek spelling of the Scythian word "Παραλάται" or "Πραλάται" corresponding to the Ukrainian "правлячі". And for the same reason, the word "ковган" could be spelt without the Hebrew "vav". The word "ковган" has another Ukrainian synonym - "кабан". Both "ковган" and "кабан" denote a boar or a wild boar. The pig or the boar had a special, usually sacred or demonic, sense in different cultures. As Ukrainian author Олексій Кононенко (Oleksii Kononenko) writes in his book "Ukrainian mythology. Symbolics", for the Slavs, this animal was sacred.

The meaning of the word "Tizul" can be identified by several points that seem to be connected. (31:01) According to Venelin, the name of Hunnic leader Attila is disfigured and can be compared to the name of a Bulgarian knyaz' "Телан" ("Telan") which in turn can correspond to the name of a Bulgarian king "Телец" ("Telets"), which means "calf" or "bull". Venelin tries to connect every word to some Russian one, although the Russian language didn't exist yet in the period Venelin wrote about. As we remember from the previous video, according to Leo the Deacon, the names "Scythians" and "Huns" were interchangeable, and thus, rephrasing the words of Venelin about Attila's name, the latter should correspond to the Ukrainian word "теля" ("calf") or "телець" ("calf" or "bull"). (Please note that, in this video, we are not speaking of what his name really meant.) The interesting part lies in the connection between the names of some locations or historical regions inhabited by the Ukrainians (before or now) and, oddly enough, such animals. The Ancient Greek work "ταῦρος" either means "bull" or may mean "ox", and, as we know, either the Crimean Peninsula or its southern part bore the historical name of Taurica. At the same time, the Ukrainian word "тізю", which can be found in the 1909 Ukrainian dictionary of Borys Hrinchenko, is an interjection used to call a calf. The word "тізул" in turn could be a noun denoting a calf. We can also make a connection to another context, in which a calf appears. (32:14) Following Wiki's narration, "the golden calf, according to the Bible, was an idol made by the Israelites when Moses went up to Mount Sinai", and in general, "bull worship was common in many cultures". In the cave in the valley of Tizul, as was quoted before, there were books the wise men of Israel managed to explain to the princes of Khazaria. An interesting fact: the novel "The Little Golden Calf", in which the main hero was conman Ostap Bender (Ostap (Остап) is a Ukrainian name by the way), was written by two authors, one of which was Iehiel-Leyb Faynzilberg (Ієхієл-Лейб Файнзільберг, יחיאל לייב פַיינְזילברג), a Jew born in the Ukrainian city of Odesa.

There is almost the only today's place that can be, probably, connected to the name "Tizul". (32:53) This place is the Tuzla island located in the middle of the Strait of Kerch. English and Russian Wiki read that "Tuzla" means "salty" and is derived either from Turkish "tuzla" or Kipchak/Qypchaq "tuzlu". Either the name "Tuzla" was given by Turkic peoples that inhabited territories around this island later, after the Khazars left them or when the Khazars still stayed there, by reinterpreting to make it sound similar to a Turkic word present in their vocabulary, or "Tuzla" simply became a disfigured form of "Tizul" as a result of historical falsifications, or it's just a coincidence, but this option seems to me doubtful. Even if "Tuzla" is derived from "Tizul", it doesn't mean that they are in the same location. The Schechter Letter says that Tizul is a valley, in which there is a cave. There are caves in Crimea, but I doubt that there are caves on the Tuzla. In the next video, I will try to provide you with an answer where Tizul was likely situated just several centuries ago.

Tizul is not the only toponym of a related meaning which can be found on historical Ukrainian lands. One such example is Кубань (Kuban'). As well known, Kuban' was long inhabited by the Ukrainians. Holodomor 1932-1933 - initiated by the Soviet power and personally by Stalin and targeted against the Ukrainians as an ethnic group - led to numerous deaths on the territories, on which the Ukrainians constituted the vast majority, including the territory of today's Ukraine - except Галичина (Halychyna, Galicia) and Волинь (Volyn', Volhynia) - and including the territory of Kuban' outside today's Ukraine. (34:18) Robert Lyall in his book "The Character of the Russians, and a Detailed History of Moscow" names a place Kaban along with Crimea and Taman'. By the latter, we can understand, roughly speaking, the Taman' Peninsula. The top fragment is a translation into English of an inscription in one of Russian cathedrals which was dedicated to Catherine II. This piece contains words about "liberation" being a historical example of the Russian propaganda in the past that doesn't differ from its today's analogue. Today's Russian Federation, as well as the former Russian Empire and the Russian SFSR, tried and tries to convince everybody, starting from its own citizens, that they are so-called "liberators". Using one and the same narrative about the "Russian liberation of somebodies from somebodies", the only ones the so-called "Russian liberators" can liberate from are the indigenous peoples, though, even in achieving this goal, they periodically fail. In the same book, for some reason, in the "Errata" section, Robert Lyall points out that, instead of "Kaban", we should read "Kuban", as well as "Korch" should be interpreted as "Kertch". Some other replacements look even more strange - "the Taman" for "Taman" and "Moskow" with "k" for "Moscow" with "c". But they are not that suspicious if we look at the full context. (35:27) The "Dictionary of National Biography" you are observing now a bit tells us about Robert Lyall. He is a botanist and traveller born at Paisley in 1790. In 1815, he resided in Saint Petersburg and continued living and travelling in the Russian Empire till 1823. In 1823, he returned to London and published one of his books, the one we just saw, and, in 1825, he published another book. As he wrote in his book "The Character of the Russians ...", before getting his book published, Robert Lyall made some notes on his trips. What we saw in the "Errata" section can be either a result of someone's suggestion on how to interpret some words when he was in the Russian Empire or a result of information verification upon his arrival to London. The fact that he put the word "Kaban" in the main text may support a point that that was the way the word was originally spelt in the cathedral. Moreover, this source is not the only one that preserved this way of spelling. But before we switch to the next one - a couple of words out of the main topic. Two sentences from the article about Robert Lyall are definitely worth quoting.

"Both works, which freely exposed the corruption and immorality of the Russian nobles and officials, gave great offence at St. Petersburg. His dedication of the first book to the Emperor Alexander was disavowed by the czar through the consul in London."

But not even this thing is what makes these books valuable. In particular, Robert Lyall's first work among the two listed ones doesn't contain information only about the nobles or officials, it contains a description of the Russian society itself. Moreover, what is written in that book about the Muscovites is applied to them even today, as well as descriptions provided by other authors about their everyday life. And nothing has changed from that period, unfortunately. This knowledge is necessary to understand the reality. Because this knowledge can save lives. Proven by history.

(37:16) Another source, in which, instead of "Kuban", we can find "Kaban", is a work by engraver, publisher and librarian Edward Harding titled "Costume of the Russian Empire" and published in 1811. This book contains plates depicting peoples in their national costumes each followed by a textual description in English and French. This fragment describes the Nogais as a people wandering between so-called Berda and Moloshna, which are specified as rivulets in the English text, but are not in the French version. These rivulets may refer to today's Berda river and the Molochna river in south-eastern regions of today's Ukraine. As this description confirms, formerly, the Nogai Horde was located on the territory of today's Kuban'. That's why they are referred to as the Kuban' Tatars. But in the French text, they are called the Tatars of Kaban (the Kaban Tatars, that is). So it doesn't seem to be a coincidence or mistake that Kuban' was previously sometimes named "Kaban" given the fact that there are also other sources confirming the point that, formerly, there were toponyms called "Kaban" or "the Kaban" in or near today's Kuban'. But what could be and likely was a reason for such a name? (38:22) I will quote several lines from Модест Николаевич Богданов's (Modest Nikolaevich Bogdanov's) work "From the Life of the Russian Nature: Zoological Outlines and Stories" (1889):

"... However, in western Europe, the wild boar is already a rarity and is protected for hunting in the forests of wealthy owners only.

"Our wild boars are protected under the same right in our south-western provinces, Poland and Lithuania. It lives there in swampy areas of primeval reserved oak forests. ...

"... In the rest of European Russia, except for the Volga delta, there is no wild boar at all. But even here, it is rare and can be found on rushy islands of the delta that are edged with the sea, thinning year by year.

"The true kingdom of the wild boar is the Caucasus. From the valleys of the rivers Kuma, Terek, and Kuban', to the border of Turkey and Persia, the entire Caucasus, in abundance, is inhabited by wild boars. ...

"... The wild boar is not picky about the terrain. It feels good wherever there is abundant food, water, swampy soft soil and impassable thickets - these are the main conditions for its life, without which it cannot do. Therefore, you will not find it in dry steppes or fields."

This description supports an assumption that Kuban' was originally called "Кабань" (Kaban'), as a place, in which the wild boars live, because the wild boar is translated into Ukrainian as "кабан".

Kuban' or Kaban' is located near the Sea of Azov. Near the same sea, we can find another example of a toponym etymologically and/or historically related to such words as "ковган", "Тізул", and "Кабань" we have just analysed. (39:57) It's a port city of Taganrog (Таганрог) - also historically Ukrainian - in today's Russian Federation. Russian Wiki suggests that Taganrog received its name due to the bay Таганий Рог (Tagany Rog), on which it's located, and that "this name" is mentioned as "Тайган" in documents of the so-called "Embassy Office", namely - in an epistle from September 6th 1489 from Ivan III to Tamanian knyaz' Zacharias de Ghisolfi (Заккария Гизольфи). The part of what I just quoted seems to be a drivel because, as the same Russian Wiki tells, the "Embassy Office" ("Посольский приказ") was created under the rule of Ivan the Terrible, but not Ivan III, and existed (attention!) from 1549 to 1720: Ivan III was already dead. But the drivel doesn't end here. The fact that the Russian Wiki article about the "Embassy Office", instead of the word "Muscovy", has the word "Russia" written in the context of the period from 1549 to 1720, before Peter I renamed Muscovy to the Russian Empire in 1721, is not surprising. (I'm not even mentioning that after 1721 other countries didn't recognise this renaming for several decades, as they clearly understood that Muscovy had no right to do so.) What is written on today's Russian Wiki is just a reflection of the current state of the Russian historiography in the 21st century. But such an absurdity, in consequence, appears on Wiki pages in other languages. English Wiki is not an exception. The name "Тайган" can be a fiction too, because the etymology of "Таганрог" has nothing to do with any "Тайган". Moreover, the suggestion to interpret "Таганрог" as the composition of "таган" for "brazier or tripod for cooking over an open fire" or the Turkic "tоɣаn" for "falcon", and "рог" for "cape", is also wrong.

(41:36) A description about the name "de Ghisolfi" on English Wiki reads that this name belongs to a Genoese-Jewish family. Zacharias de Ghisolfi, mentioned as one of members of this family, was the "prince and ruler of the Taman' Peninsula from about 1480". His predecessor, Simeone de Ghisolfi also ruled on the Taman' Peninsula after he married a princess of so-called Tmutarakan'. What else? "The de Ghisolfi clan ruled this principality as a protectorate of the Genoese consulate of Gazaria for much of the 15th century." According to English Wiki, Gazaria is considered to be a "colony of the former Republic of Genoa in Crimea and around the Black Sea from the mid-13th century to the late 15th century". In the same article, we can read that the name of Gazaria is derived from the name of Khazaria, which is very interesting because, in the next video, we will see the word "Gazaria" in a very specific context, and this context is connected to the point (written on the same Wiki) that there were Jews, Greeks, and Slavs among the subjects of Zacharias.

If one, searching verbatim, googles the phrase "TaRganrog Chekhov" or "Chekhov TaRganrog" in Latin script, instead of putting the word "Taganrog" in it, Google will probably show you the results, among which there will be those about writer Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (Антон Павлович Чехов), which, as well known, was born in the city of Taganrog. (42:51) This name, in both its forms, "Taganrog" and "Targanrog", can be found in the New Zealand newspaper "Auckland Star" from September 1st 1943, in which, in the column ""Dunkirk" Tried. Taganrog Finale", this location is mentioned as a port. The name of this port or port city is spelt as "Targanrog" only once. On one hand, the word could be misrepresented by the Auckland Star's journalist for its pronunciation in English. On the other, such a mistake could come from the quoted Red Star article for the event that the Red Star's journalist, which constantly faced the old form of this name in their life before Targanrog was renamed to Taganrog for example, unconsciously made a mistake because of their habit to write, to speak, or to expect to see the old version of the word in the text. (43:33) Another source, in which the spelling "Targanrog" can be found is the newspaper "South Wales Daily News" from April 13th 1895 and "South Wales Echo" from the same day. In the column "Movements of Local Vessels", it's reported that the vessel "Woodfield" "passed Kertch for Targanrog". Also, we can find, in the same piece, the city of "Odessa" and "Nicolaieff". These names are transliterations from the Russian spelling of the Ukrainian cities of Odesa and Mykolaiv respectively (as Ukraine remained occupied by the Russian Empire in the 19th century). The list of works, in which one can find the spelling "Targanrog", is not limited to these newspapers. The same spelling appears in the book "Historical puzzles" (in the original French - "Enigmes historiques") written by Léon Treich and published in 1946. The same spelling appears in the list of victims of war and violence in Germany in the period from 1933 to 1945 known as "Dead complaints" (in the original German - "Totenklage") published in 2009. The same spelling, "Targanrog", again, appears in the Dutch translation of the work "History Of The Makhnovist Movement" published in 1983 based on the original Петр Андреевич Аршинов's (Piotr/Peter Andreyevich Arshinov's) book written in Russian, notwithstanding that in the Russian original published in 1923 - sixty years before the translation - the city was already spelt as "Таганрог" ("Taganrog"). And the list of such sources is still not complete. (44:56) The name "Тарганрог" ("Targanrog") is just a russified version of the Ukrainian name "Тарганріг" ("Tarhanrih"): "тарган" for "smoke-coloured ox or bullock" and "ріг" for "horn". "Тарганріг" means "таргановий ріг" or "ріг таргана" - "ox horn" or "horn of the ox" respectively. And a cape resembling a horn in its geometric shape can also bear the very same or very similar name as the city of Tarhanrih does - "Таргановий Ріг" ("Tarhanovyi Rih") for example.

But that's not the only reason why we should take a close look at the word "тарган" or "таркан" meaning the same. "тарган", or "таркан", is a title the Avars (meaning the Pannonian Avars) and the Bulgarians had. (45:33) As Polish historian Edward Romuald Bogusławski writes about the Bulgarian state in the second volume of his "History of the Slavs" (1899), the Bulgarians, which adopted the Avar state order, in the period from 679 to 850, had a dignitary called "tarchan", and the leader of the Bulgarians was called "chagan". The author writes that the Bulgarians were a Turkic people. But the titles "chagan" and "tarchan", or properly - "Kovhan" ("ковган") and "Tarhan" / "Tarkan" ("тарган" / "таркан") respectively, are Slavic or just Ukrainian. What is also important here to note is that the Bulgarians, according to the author, inhabited the lands near the Danube river as late as the second half of the 7th century CE. The same fragment before you in the top part of the slide reads that the Kovhan Council consisted of the six advisers called "boliades". One of sources Edward Bogusławski refers to is "De Cerimoniis" (in English - "On Ceremonies") supposedly written or commissioned by Constantine Porphyrogenitus. The bottom fragment of the slide is a piece from a compilation, along with a Latin translation, of the second book of this work; the compilation was made by German scholars Johann Jakob Reiske and Johann Heinrich Leich published in 1754. In one of sections "The Logothete's Question to Them" (a logothete was somewhat of a secretary of state in the Byzantine Empire), we can find what the Bulgarian embassy was traditionally asked by the logothete. Now is my translation of the underlined Greek and Latin texts (may be inaccurate):

"How is Her Grace the Princess? How is Kanarchykinos, and Tarcanian Vulias, the children of His Grace the Prince of Bulgaria and his other children? How are the Six Great Voliades?"

(47:10) I've consciously replaced the Medieval Greek "β" with the English "v" and the Medieval Greek "τ" with the English "ch". These replacements resemble the ones we already applied when deciphering some of the Scythian words. These six Voliades (Βολιάδες) are the Six Junior Oxes: a supposed word is "воляти" ("Volyaty") - a Ukrainian word having the ending "-яти" denoting the plural diminutive form of a noun. And a person bearing the title of Tarcanian Vulias was probably the main adviser to the Kovhan because his title could mean, roughly speaking, the same as does "тарган" or "таркан" - "Smoke-Coloured Ox", and, as the Smoke-Coloured Ox, he was likely superior to the Junior Oxes called "Volyaty". Tarcanian Vulias would have been translated into Ukrainian as "таркановий віл". Perhaps, to highlight the superiority of this Ox, the title was simply extended by the adjective "таркановий" just denoting the colour of the Ox instead of the ox of a particular colour proper. The word "віл", meaning "ox of any kind", corresponds to the Polish word "wół" and the Czech word "vůl" whose plural forms are "woły" and "voli" respectively. Maybe, "Vulias", originally spelt with the ligature "ου" ("Βουλίας"), was derived from a Slavic form of the root, but which, at the same time, is not Ukrainian, as the vowel interchange between /u/ and /o/ is rather natural for the Polish and Czech languages: "róg", "rogi" (Polish) - "horn", "horns". "sůl", "soli" (Czech) - "sól", "soli" (Polish) - "salt", "salts". "stůl", "stoly" (Czech) - "table", "tables". In the Ukrainian language, instead, the corresponding transition happens between /i/ and /o/: "ріг", "роги" - "horn", "horns"; "сіль", "солі" - "salt", "salts"; "стіл", "столи" - "table", "tables"; "сік", "соки" - "juice", "juices"; and so on.

The title "Kanarchykinos" ("Κανάρτικείνος"), presuming it's a title, can be interpreted in two ways. If "-είνος"/"-ίνος", pronounced as /'inos/, is a Greek adjective-forming suffix, the word contains one root only, which can be connected to the noun in Slavic languages denoting a "canary". In the Bulgarian language, it will be "канарче". In Slovene - "kanarček". As a surname, "Kanarczyk" is borne by some Poles. And its counterpart "Канарчик", also as a surname, some Ukrainians bear. If "Kanarchykinos" contains two roots, then a supposed word that was transliterated from the original language is "канарчикинець" from Ukrainian "канарок" (meaning "canary") and "чикати" (meaning "to twitter"), thereby leading us to think that the full meaning of the title is "канарок, що чикає" - "Twittering Canary".

(49:29) From the "History of the Slavs", we can learn more things about the Avars. One of them is that "the most numerous population in the Avar state was Slavic". Another thing narrated by Edward Bogusławski is that the Avars had the following titles: Kovhan, so-called Jugur, Tudun, Tarkan, and so-called Bokolabra (Βοκολαβρά). The author notes that Kovhan was their military leader, and so-called Jugur was their civil leader. Tuduns and Tarkans were inferior to Kovhan, and so-called Bokolabra, being the high priest, was, as the author thinks, inferior to Jugur. "Bokolabra" should be read as "Vocolavra" because of the letter "β" in the Medieval Greek spelling. And for the word "Vocolavra", there are two options I will provide now. The first one suggests that "Vocolavra" is a Latin word that was borrowed into a Slavic language and that itself consists of two parts: "voco" for the Latin "vox" meaning "voice" or for "vocare" meaning "to call on", and "lavra" for the Latin "laura" meaning "monastery". That is, Vocolavra, in this case, is the "one calling on from the monastery" or the "voice of the monastery". And the high priest could be named in this way. The second option suggests that the first part is the Ukrainian "воко" meaning "eye", and the second part is the Ukrainian "лавра" meaning the same as does its Latin counterpart "laura". In the second case, Vocolavra is the "eye of the monastery", which also seems possible.

As for the word "Jugur", the author of the book mentions its two spellings from two sources - "jugurrus" and "jugurgus". But to be more precise, the first letter in both the cases is not "j". (50:51) The first source is known as "Royal Frankish Annals" ascribed to Frankish scholar Einhard (on the left side before you is a compilation published in 1561), the second one (on the right side) is the second volume of "Historiae Francorum scriptores" compiled by French geographer and historian André Du Chesne (the work was published in 1636 - 75 years later). Both the sources name Kovhan and so-called "Iugurrus" or "Iugurgus" the Hunnic leaders. But what is more interesting is that, in both the cases, the events the authors relate happened in 782 - the end of the 8th century CE. It means that the Huns didn't become extinct and continued living on their lands. And Leo the Deacon, which was born much later, confirms that. The Ukrainians interested in knowing history and ones studying it are aware of the fact that several words attested in the Hunnic language by scholars are Slavic, and I'm planning to include these words in a separate video, but in this video, we will try to decipher the meaning of the Hunnic title "Iugurrus" or "Iugurgus". We know that the Scythian language is Ancient Ukrainian, we know that the Huns were Scythians, we are observing that the Khazar titles were called Ukrainian names and that the Huns had at least two of these titles. Therefore, to understand what "Iugurrus" or "Iugurgus" means, we should look into the Ukrainian dictionaries. The two different spellings of likely the same word can be a result either of a try to write it down in the way it originally sounded (in a minute, I will explain what I mean) or of interpreting "-urr" and "-urg" as interchangeable suffixes. A similar suffix existing in several languages at once, including Ukrainian, is "-ur", which is noun-forming. The original pronunciation depends much on one letter in this word. This letter is the Latin "u". In the Royal Frankish Annals in particular, this letter appears in places where the letter "v" is expected. Instead of the expected "Sclavi" for example, we can observe the word "Sclaui". Another thing, which is also noteworthy, is the event that, for a long period, in Medieval texts written with the use of the Latin alphabet (for instance, in Medieval French sources), there was no much difference between "u" and "v": "u" appeared in places where, in the same words in today's writing, the letter "v" is spelt, and, conversely, "v" also was a letter that used to signify "u" in the corresponding today's words. (53:00) If the letter "u" in the word "Iugurrus" should be read as the Ukrainian "в", having recalled the fact that the Ukrainian fricative or approximant "в", at the beginning of a word, may be missed in writing in a foreign language, we will get a Ukrainian word "вівгура" meaning "wolfman" - "a person resembling a wolf". Some Ukrainian dictionaries have preserved a word "вовгура" instead (such as the 1909 dictionary of Borys Hrinchenko), but the presence in the Ukrainian language of two words to denote the wolf - "вівк" and "вовк" - and the presence of the transition between /i/ and /o/ itself suggest that the word "вівгура" could also exist. And furthermore, it can explain why, according to Edward Bogusławski, he was the civil and not a military leader in the Avar state. People still perceive dogs as domesticated wolves. This perception, based on the visual similarity between these two species, perhaps existed among the ancient people too. (It doesn't matter whether there is a genetic connection between today's wolf and today's dog or the past wolf and the past dog. What is relevant is the idea itself.) The idea of domestication could serve as a basis for another idea - human beings and wolves can live together - as one society. A wolfman himself in turn, as a symbol, could incarnate the idea of this coexistence. That's likely why Vivhura (вівгура) was a title for the civil leader - he was responsible for making up a sole organism of the people living in one country. The word "Iugurrus" contains the double "r" which can signify a growl. And the growl could be also spelt as a letter combination "rg" if it was a way to write down a sound close to the French /ʁ/ ("r"). That's one version why the spelling "Iugurgus" appeared. Another version implies a distortion of the original text.

Borys Hrinchenko's dictionary provides a context for the word "вовгура": "І крівцею над Босфором червоніють мури, що річками розливали козаки-вовгури." - "And over the Bosporus, like precious blood, the walls are reddening, which, like rivers, the сossacks-wolfmen were shedding." So we again returned to the Cossacks. Borys Hrinchenko refers to the 1899 edition of the Ruthenian poem "Маруся Богуславка" ("Maria Boguslavka") recorded by Ukrainian writer Пантелеймон Куліш (Panteleimon Kulish). In later editions, these lines are replaced. The poem itself supposedly relates the 17th century's events.

Before moving forward to the Tudun, let's analyse the title "Pech" ("πέχ") we nearly forgot about. (55:10) We were so far observing an obvious occurrence that most of the deciphered Bulgarian, Avar, Khazar, and even Hunnic titles denoted Slavic (mainly - Ukrainian) names of different animals. We remember that Constantine Porphyrogenitus - who worked in his cabinet - to write down the city's name "Sarkel" (originally - "Sadybil'") in Medieval Greek, relied on the documents available to him, which likely led to the wrong spelling, and that the root cause of the wrong spelling probably came from the misinterpretation of what word was originally recorded through the Hebrew letters. From this point of view, the title "Pech" could also denote an animal and receive the wrong form in the text. If the title's name was directly derived from a Hebrew word, the two last letters ("ε" and "χ") can correspond to the original Hebrew "yod" ("י") and "kaf" ("כ") respectively. The Greek "π", as we remember from the previous video, can sometimes represent the sound /b/ instead of /p/ when it comes to foreign words, and thus can refer to the Hebrew "bet" ("ב"). By following this approach, we get another Ukrainian word "бик" meaning "bull" or "ox". Бик (Byk, ביכ) was a title of the person supposedly being the main governor and the secular co-leader to Kovhan (ковган) in Khazaria. The letter "kaf" can be read either as /k/ or as /x/. In Modern Hebrew, if there is a necessity to distinguish these two cases, a diacritical mark called "daggesh" is added to the letter. But in the documents relating to the Khazars, the diacritics are not used, meaning the pronunciation of this and some other Hebrew letters can vary word by word.

The title "Tudun", in contrast, seems to be unrelated to any animal. (56:36) As Edward Bogusławski writes, the Avars were not the only ones who had such an official. The Khazars also had their Tudun or Tuduns. The author, by referring to Theophanes the Confessor, describes Tudun as a vicegerent of Kovhan. In the notes below, the author provides a quote from Theophanes's "Chronographia" in Medieval Greek, in which Tudun is called a leader of Chersonesus and a representative of Kovhan. A word which seems suitable in this context is the Ukrainian "туди", an adverb meaning "there". The logic behind this idea lies in the following association: Tudun is sent "there" to represent Kovhan and/or his power in some city or district.

Another piece we can note on the slide conveys the point that another name for Chersonesus (contracted to Cherson) is "Korsun'" (it's in Crimea), and that Taman', formerly Phanagoria, was called by the Khazars either as Ταμάταρχα, by referring to Czech-Austrian author Wilhelm Tomaschek (Vilém Tomášek), or as Tmutorakan', by referring to August Bielowski's Polish translation of Nestor's chronicle. I have provided this extra piece of information to tell you that we will get back to Chersonesus and Tmutorakan' in the next video, so it should be interesting.

There is one more title that was in Khazaria. And this title is connected to the woman, namely - the wife of Kovhan. (57:47) This title is reported by Movses Khorenatsi in his "Geography". We will now read a fragment containing it, omitting some of names of tribes or peoples we can see on the screen:

"The second part of Sarmatia, by the eastern border of the first Sarmatia, the Riphean Mountain, the Tanais river, and the Maeotian Swamp (or the Azov Sea), is separated from the first Sarmatia, and extends from there through the Caucasus Mountains near Iberia and Albania (or Alvania, Աղուանիւք, following the Classical Armenian text) up to the Caspian Sea. Sarmatia includes the Ceraunian and Hippian Mountains (the text reads about mountains related to the Caucasus Albania), and other mountains, and many rivers, among which is the river Ethel (or Ethyl, Էթիլ, following the Armenian text), which has seventy river beds and near which the people of the Barsilii has consolidated. The following many peoples also inhabit Sarmatia: Khaziri (Խազիրք), ..., Barsilii (Բարսեղք), ..., Sarmatae (Սարմատք), ..., Amazones (Ամազունք), Albani (or Alvani, Աղուանք), ..., Hunni (Հոնք), ..., Tsanarii (Ծանարք), among which are Portae Albanae/Alvani (Աղուան դուռն) and Portae Tsakaniae (Ծաքան դուռն), ..., Anthropophagi (Մարդակերք), ..., Lekhi (or Leki, or Lei, Ղէք), ..., Cazbae (Կազբք), ..., Serovanii (or Shrvanii, Շրուանք),..., Izmalii (or Izhmalii, Իժմաղք), ..., Massagetae (or Mazkuthae, Մազքութք, following the Armenian text), which extend as far as the Caspian Sea, from which Caucasus spurs are slightly distant, where Darband's (or Derbent's) Wall (պարիսպն Դարբանդայ) is erected - the glorious tower at the sea is built; in the northern part of Sarmatia dwell the Hunni, which have the city (or walled town) of Varachan (Վառաչան) and other cities elsewhere. Besides, the northern king is called Khacanus (Խականն), who is Khaziri's ruler, and the queen is called Khathunia (Խաթունն), who is Khacanus's spouse, belonging to the people of the Barsilii."

If my translation is enough accurate, the first Sarmatia is European Sarmatia. Movses Khorenatsi, as was already said, referred to foreign sources. If these foreign sources were not penned by the Khazars themselves, the original names are expected to be distorted of course. As it seems that they really were not penned by them, that's perhaps the reason why, for instance, instead of "Կովգանն"/"Կուգանն" ("Covgann", "Covhanus"), or "Կագանն" ("Cagann", "Caganus") at least, we observe "Խականն" ("Khacann", "Khacanus") in the Classical Armenian text.

The word "Khathunia"/"Khatunia" can be the Ukrainian "хатуня" denoting a "woman responsible or representing the house", "female householder", as the word "хата" means "house". In the Ukrainian literature, it's common to face a word "домогосподиня" meaning the same as the supposed "хатуня", while the word "домогосподар", "male householder", is rare - as the Ukrainian woman was traditionally responsible for the order in the house, as this woman meets the guests, as the guests form an opinion about her based on their appraisal of the house, as the house is a place where the husband returns to after work and eats the food cooked by the woman, as the house is a place where the family gathers together, which implies that there are children in the family, which cannot exist without the woman, etc.; whereas the responsibility of the husband is to rule the country while, in the house (or in the palace), he conforms to the rules established by his wife. Another option for the "Խաթունն" ("Khathunn") in the Classical Armenian text is "качуня" - a hypocoristic or diminutive form of "кача", which itself means "young duck" or "duckling". This option is possible if the initial sound /ʧ/ was stored in some language as a letter that can be pronounced as both /t/ and /ʧ/ and transliterated into the Classical Armenian "թ" /tʰo/, and if the same "rule of storage" is applied to the sound /k/. If this storage were the Hebrew language, the respective letters, in theory, could be "tav" ("ת") and "kaf" ("כ").

The Anthropophagi mentioned in the fragment are likely the same as the Androphagi, a tribe of cannibals. As narrates the author of the "История Руси" channel in one of his videos, the latter is a Finno-Ugric tribe of the Mordvinians. And, as well known (at least, to the subscribers of that channel, and now - of this channel), the Androphagi is one of the historical ancestors of today's Russians whose roots belong to the Finno-Ugric peoples. As for the note at the bottom of the page suggesting the river Ethel/Ethyl (Etel/Etil) is Volga, I will just say in advance that this point is mistaken. This topic will be covered in the next video too.

(01:01:40) Now, we are returning to the Schechter Letter to uncover the etymology behind the words "Khazar" and "Khazaria". What is worth mentioning is what word denotes what. The second case is clear: "Khazaria" refers to an appellation of the country or land. While the first word is applied not just to the Khazars themselves, but is a name of one of Khazar cities, which is spelt the same as the name of the Khazar people, and which can be found in the same document. In the original text, these words and their derived forms are spelt with the first "kof" ("ק"), "zayin" ("ז"), and "resh" ("ר"). The remaining two letters for the word "Khazaria" only are "yod" ("י") and "aleph" ("א"). One of Ukrainian words containing all the three required Ukrainian letters to correspond to the Hebrew spelling of the name "Khazar" in the Schechter Letter is "козир". In one of its meanings, it can be translated as "lively man" or "sharp man" if we refer to its Russian definition "бойкий человек" provided in the dictionary of Андрій Ніковський (Andrii Nikovs'kyi) from 1927. A similar sense is stored, first, inside a derived term "козир-дівка" meaning "lively young woman" (according to the dictionary of Костянтин Генрі Андрусишин (Constantine Henry Andrusyshen) and James/Jacob (or Яків) Nicholas Krett from 1955) and, second, in the term "козир-баба" denoting a resolute woman (for its Russian counterpart "бой-баба" in the dictionary of Іван Вирган, or Вергун, (Ivan Vyrhan/Verhun) and Марія Пилипинська (Mariia Pylypyns'ka) from 1959). In theory, this word could previously relate to a sort of soldier, which the Cossack is, on one hand. But there is also another point. Α Ukrainian synonym for the "козир-баба" is "король-баба", literally translated as "king-woman". (To illustrate that "король" is "king", before you is the dictionary of Євгенія Іванівна Гороть/Yevheniia Ivanivna Horot', Світлана Вікторівна Гончарук/Svitlana Viktorivna Honcharuk, Леся Костянтинівна Малімон/Lesia Kostiantynivna Malimon, and Оксана Олексіївна Рогач/Oksana Oleksiivna Rohach from 2016.) At the same time, the word "козир" means "trump" or "trump suit". And now, you will ask, "What is the connection?" The connection is that this suit, in the card games, in the demotic, is called "royal" - the "royal" suite. The Ukrainian expression "козирне життя" - literally "royal life" - is used to say about a rich person, while the adjective "козирний" is used to denote something connected to the luxury: like a luxe hotel room. In either of the two cases mentioned, the Khazars could call themselves the Kozyrs: in Ukrainian, "козирі" ("Kozyri"). In the second case, they could call themselves "козирі" - in the sense "royal", that is - if they belonged to the Royal Scythians. (But if the Royal Scythians spoke Ukrainian and the Kozyrs were the Royal Scythians, then the Kozyrs were obviously Ukrainian native-speakers too.) For the same logic, the land of the Royal Scythians, similarly, could be called Козирія (Kozyriia, Kozyria), a name simply meaning "The Kingdom" in the Ukrainian language of that period of time. The only difference is that, instead of having a king to get their country called "The Kingdom", all the Kozyrs already belonged to a royal tribe. And yes, with high confidence, the Roman title Caesar likely shares the same root with the Ukrainian "козир". The option suggesting "козир" for "Royal Scythian" may perfectly explain why we saw such words as "Caziri"/"Catsiri" and "Khaziri" in Bavarian Geographer's text and in Movses Khorenatsi's "Geography", though that's not all options possible. The application of the term "козир" in the card games deserves our attention as this astonishing occurrence becomes more astonishing if we open the book "Researches into the History of Playing Cards" (1816) written by English author Samuel Weller Singer. (01:04:50) He provides us with a description of the card that is known today as Jack. Let's quote a first piece:

"Like the Italians and Germans, they (the Spaniards) have no Queen in the Pack; the figured cards are the Rey, Caballo, Sota, representing a King, Horseman, and Servant."

Here we should recall one thing - the fact that the Ukrainian Sotnyk was a commander in the Cossack army. And having recalled that, we are seamlessly switching now to the Spanish fragment partially unveiling the etymology for the word "Sota" in the notes:

"The Sota is one of the figures in the playing cards that represents an infant or a soldier, called Sota of Soto, because it's below the Rey, and the Caballo, and these are what we call the sota cómitre, and the sota cavallerico ..."

The term "cómitre" denotes a galley slave commander, and "sota cavallerico", I guess, is the same as "cavallero" or "caballero" which means either "horseman", or "knight", or "cavalier". So the Spanish insertion explicitly reads that the Sota is a low rank soldier. But what does Samuel Weller Singer write next?

"I have given this explanation of the name of the 'Sota', because it will be found to agree with the other European names in its import; the French 'Valet', the English 'Knave', the Italian 'Fante', the German 'Knecht', have the same signification in their respective languages. 'Fante', 'Infante', 'Valet', 'Knave', and 'Knecht', all formerly signified a male servant, or underling, among other significations."

The people having read this fragment, in most cases, will rather agree with the author than will bother to translate the Spanish text in order to see the contrast, much less will question the author's point afterwards. The thing is that all these words meant formerly or now not just "servant" or "menial", but also "footman" (for the French "valet"), "infantryman" (for the English "knave" and Italian "fante"), "knight" or "soldier" (for the German "Knecht"), and "noble youth" (for the Italian "infante"). The latter can be connected to the Slavic title "knesius", "knessius", or "knyaz''", meaning "prince" or "king" and resembling the German "Knecht" and the English "knave". Some other connections between the Slavic title "knyaz''" and such titles as "Knecht" and "knave" will be analysed in a broader context in the next video. But a couple of connections will be unveiled along with another name that could also be applied to the Kozyrs.

This alternative view suggests that the original word contained the phoneme /s/ instead of /z/. We should recall here that, in Pylyp Orlyk's Constitution, there are two names for the Khazars/Kozyrs: "Cosarica" and "Cossarica". And this example is not unique. There also exist other sources mentioning tribes whose names contain the only consonants /k/, /s/, /r/. And now, we will look into one indicative example. (01:07:19) The authorship of this book belongs to Василий Кириллович Тредиаковский (Vasily Kirillovich Trediakovsky); the book is titled simply as "Writings of Trediakovsky" and consists of three volumes; we are looking into the third censored volume that was published in the Russian Empire in 1849 - 80 years after the death of the original author who died either in 1768 or in 1769. Let's read the following passage:

"And did I say that the big river Arass (Арассъ) or Ros (Росъ) ... is our Volga; and I repeat that now and confirm: Agathemeros whom I recently mentioned, who describes rivers flowing into the Caspian Sea, assures us of that. The Median Arax (Мидскій Араксъ) is called Roos (Роосъ) in his work; and the river flowing into that sea from the north, and that last river flowing round in its circle, is the Arax (Араксъ), which must be both the Aras (Арасъ) and Ros (Росъ) too.

"Professor Bayer has insurmountably proved that this last Arax or Ros is Volga. I here copy out his exact words and provide a translation from Latin in our language. Here is what he says: 'Herodotus used to be told that the Scythians lived beyond this Arax near the Issedones and Massagetae: the Massagetae, after having driven away the Scythians, sat on the farther Araxian places east of the Caspian Sea where the land ran through very big steppes. He was told about this Arax that this river is not less large than the Istros (Danube), and that it flows, near its mouths, around many islands alike to Lesbos (Mytilene). None of the following can be connected to the Median Arax: neither the Massagetae's situation of the place, nor the size of the river, nor so multiple and so big islands. All this refers to the Volga. In the east are the Massagetae; the length of the river exceeds the Istros three times more; it has up to eighty and more mouths which surround the islands (these surrounding Воложки/Volozhki are called "Косы"/"Kosy" ...) ..."

(Agathemeros is an Ancient Greek geographer; and the "Professor Bayer" is a German historian Theophil (Gottlieb) Siegfried Bayer who was also a scholar in Petersburg Academy in the Russian Empire.) The author suggests that some Arass river is the same as some Arax river and some Ros river. Today's Aras/Araxes/Araks river may have nothing to do with any river listed by the author, but a river that can be related to the Arass and the Ros in the text is the one we remember from the previous video - the one mentioned in the Russian translation of Ibn Hawqal's work "The Face of the Earth", whose name is either ar-Rus (ар-Рус) or Atil (Атил), and which is a river belonging to the Kozyrs. And, in the next video, we will speak more of it.

In the note, the author provides the following comment:

"It's suggested that these "Kosy", in non-little likelihood, have the name left to them of the Косары (Kosary) sitting in the ancient days near the mouths of the Volga river. These Kosary were the ones who were the Low Bulgarians."

One of the senses of the Ukrainian noun "коса" is "spit" or "tongue of land". If the Kosary/Kosars lived next to some spits, it means that they inhabited lands near some sea. And if the Kosars are the same Kozyrs, then they resided near the Sea of Azov as did the Royal Scythians if the name "Kozyria" ("The Kingdom") still applies. The author suggests that the place the Kosars sat next to was derived from their name. If it really happened, it would mean that the initial meaning of the word was different. (01:10:28) And in the following passage, he confirms this point:

"The Kosars were a people of the Slavic tongue; as shows the name of them: because it meant either people mowing down their enemies in military battles, like with "косы" (in English - "scythes"), or people bearing their weapon which patterned on the scythe (sabre). I guess that our Косарь (Kosar'), domestic tool, known to everybody, received its name from the weapon similar to the scythe, and that today's гусары (hussars) are nothing but just a disfigured name of the Kosars. Not only the гусары from the Kosars, but the "козаки" (Kozaki, Cossacks) is derived from the same root and the same meaning - косаки (Kosaki): for their weapon was also the sabre resembling the scythe."

Surprisingly enough, the English words "scythe", "to scythe", and "scytheman", which likely has the same root with the word "Scythian", refers, respectively, to the Ukrainian "коса", "косити", аnd "косар". In some paradoxical way, the English language has preserved either something that can be treated as the connection between the Scythians and the Kozyrs or just the event that the Scythians were associated, probably by foreigners, with harvesters, reapers, farmers, and it was their peculiarity. The latter can be reflected in the known fact that Ukraine occupies a prominent position (at least, in Europe) in the wealth of чорнозем/czornozem on its lands (you call it "chernozem"). Moreover, what is interesting is that the related words sounding alike can be found even in the Hebrew language - they are "קָצַר" /katsaʀ/ and "קָצִיר" /katsiʀ/ referring to the verb "harvest" or "mow" and the noun "harvest" respectively.

(01:11:57) The Ukrainian "косак" means "large knife", which - as well as the scythe, the sword, and the sabre - is a tool that can be used to cut and kill. The word "косар" at the same time has one more sense - "death". Following the narration of the "History of the Russes", Constantine Monomachos renamed the Kozyrs or Kosars to the Cossacks. It could happen if, for example, Constantine Monomachos treated the Kozyrs or their soldiers as people who were very good with the knife as a cold weapon - so good that they had no equal, - and instead of calling them by their ancestral or tribal name or the name of their civil, non-military, profession, called them, at some stage, by a name of the tool they masterly used. The term "Cossack" - which, in the English language, for some reason, is spelt with the double "s" - denotes a sort of sabresman, while the term "Varangian" (as you remember, the Varangians are Ruthenians) denotes a swordsman. The latter is what I told in my previous video, and here is where it comes from. The top two fragments on the screen are taken from the work of Polish nobleman Jan Potocki, written in the original French, titled "A Journey into Some Parts of Lower Saxony in Search of the Antiquities of the Slavs or Wends" which he made in 1794 and that got published in 1795. In his book, Jan Potocki provides us with a small French-Wendian dictionary, in which we can find the Wendian word "Waro" being a translation for the French "Epée" meaning "sword" or "rapier", and the Wendian "Warang" for the French "Glaive" meaning "sword". (If you forgot, the Wendian language is a Slavic language.) Moreover, in the Russian-Ukrainian dictionary of Агатангел Юхимович Кримський/Ahatanhel Yukhymovych Kryms'kyi (Ahatanhel Yukhymovych Krymsky) and Сергій Олександрович Єфремов/Serhii Oleksandrovych Yefremov (Serhiy Yefremov) from 1924-1933, we can find the Russian word "косак" for the Ukrainian "косар" - "scytheman". So, Vasily Kirillovich Trediakovsky was probably right about the idea behind the etymology for the term "Cossack": the Ukrainian sabresman "козак" is like a knivesman or a scytheman - a person bearing a cold weapon or weapons each being or resembling the knife or the scythe. And here is the link to the English language. The English word "knave", which denotes the jack in the card pack, which in turn has an alternative name "Sota" that may be connected to the Ukrainian rank "сотник" ("Sotnyk") used in the Cossack army, probably shares the same root with the English "knife". The card figure "knave", at the beginning, probably didn't relate to any servant - it rather referred to a soldier which, as well as a Cossack one, bore a sabre that was similar to the Cossack knife or scythe. Moreover, the French "valet" ("jack") seems to also have its own connections. This word can be connected to the Polish words "walka" ("fight") and "walczyć" ("to fight"), and thus, to such a fighter as the Cossack for example. I think that several names - "козирі" ("Kozyri", "Kozyrs") for the Royal Scythians, "косари" ("Kosary", "Kosars") for the harvesters and/or sabresmen, and one more option I will say in a minute - co-existed together, but were applied depending on the context. "козирі" ("Kozyri", "Kozyrs") could be their tribal name, but when it came to their occupation or daily activities, they were probably called "косари" ("Kosary", "Kosars"). In the next video, we will get back to the term "косари" to find more connections with other language-related occurrences.

(01:14:51) When mentioning the so-called "Воложки" ("Volozhki"), Vasily Trediakovsky regarded his this word as something connected to the Volga river. He connected the name "Volga" to the Ukrainian feminine noun "волога" ("moisture") or feminine adjective "волога" ("moist"). It's hard to confirm right now whether this river was ever called "Волога" ("Voloha"). An expected language for today's river's name "Volga" rather belongs to the Finno-Ugric group. A suitable word that may be here close to the original word is the Hungarian "völgy" meaning "valley". And that's very interesting because the Hungarian "völgy" in turn may share the same root with the Ukrainian "волога".

We quoted that the wife or one of wives of Kovhan came from the Barsilii people. (01:15:27) In Theophanes Confessor's "Chronographia", in the edition published in 1729, we can find a piece with a name that resemble "Barsilii". This name is not necessarily related to the Barsilii people, but, in this video, we will consider it as an option.

"... the great nation of the Khazars emerged from the innermost depths of Verzilia, or the first Sarmatia, and ruled over all the land up to the Pontic Sea ..."

As you understood, I've replaced the Medieval Greek "β" with the English "v": you already know why. The place Verzilia refers to the Ukrainian "Верзилія", where "-илія" - consisting of the suffix "-ил-"/"-иль-" and the remaining ending "-ія" showing that it's a feminine noun - is added to the root "-верз-". The Ukrainian verb "верзти" can be translated into English as "to chat", "to talk nonsense", "to babble", "to prattle", "to chatter" or sort of that. The crucial thing is that this verb relates to the speech. And as we remember from the previous video, the Slav is the "one who speaks": it's a sense of the corresponding word in those Slavic languages, in which the translation of the word "Slav" is clearly derived from the noun /slovo/ meaning "word". Верзилія (Verzylia) is a location, region, land, whatever, of the "people who speak" - of those people who are Slavs. If the Kozyrs came from Verzylia - they are definitely Slavs. And the word "Verzylia" suggests one more option for the term "Khazar". The name "Khazar" could develop from the Ukrainian verb "казати" - "to say". The country of Kazaria (Казарія) could be soil for "those who speak" - for the Kazars (казари), who are Slavs, who are a Ukrainian-speaking people from every standpoint. Furthermore, this fragment narrates that the косари (Kosary), козирі (Kozyri) or казари (Kazary) ruled, at least, over some parts of Ukraine near the Black Sea - at least over the lands historically belonging to the Royal Scythians. Not surprising, actually, having the knowledge we've already collected.

We now have just one thing that remained - to look at the spelling of the name of the Kozyr/Kazar general Boluščï. (01:17:16) It can be found in the Schechter Letter. The name "Boluščï", which is improperly interpreted by Solomon Schechter as Bulshatsi (Bulshazi, בולשצי), consists of the following Hebrew letters: "bet" ("ב"), "vav" ("ו"), "lamed" ("ל"), "shin" ("ש"), "tsade" ("צ"), and "yod" ("י"). Here, the letter "tsade" represents the phoneme /ʧ/. The more clear understanding of what Hebrew letter corresponds to what Ukrainian letter or phoneme will come with the next video.

In the next video, we will continue analysing the Kozyr/Kazar language as well as investigating where it occurs. We will not just confirm but will put a final end to the question what language the Kozyrs/Kazars spoke. We will see in what way we can show that the Khazar language and the Scythian language are nothing but different variations of the same language each referring to its own time. And also, we will see a couple of things that will undermine and completely change our understanding of the history of the Slavs, but especially of course - the history of Ukraine and the Ukrainian language.

It was Daniel Haidachuk, also known as Daniel Poirot.

Links:

Dictionaries:

- English-Ukrainian Dictionaries on "e2u.org.ua"

- Russian-Ukrainian Dictionaries on "r2u.org.ua"

- Polish-, Czech-, Hebrew-English Dictionaries on "dict.com"

Google Books:

- Chtenīi︠a︡ v Imperatorskom obshchestvi︠e︡ istorīi i drevnosteĭ rossīĭskikh pri Moskovskom universiteti︠e︡, Issue 14 (1847) - Part III ("Матеріялы иностранные"), "Pacta et Constitutiones", pp. 1,6 (search for "Cossarica" and "Cosarica")

- Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus. De administrando imperio (1611) - p. 129

- Filip Jakob Bruun. Черноморье: Сборник изслѣдованій по исторической географіи южной Россіи (1879) - Part II, p. 399

- Edouard Taitbout De Marigny. The Black Sea Pilot: Translated from the French (1855) - pp. 53-54

- Al'bom vsěch lučšich i dostopriměčatel'nejšich vidov južnago berega Kryma (1868) - pp. 32,34

- Lajos Szádeczky Kardoss. Erdély és Mihály vajda története, 1595-1601: oklevéltárral (1893) - p. 213

- Magyar történelmi tár (1883) - pp. 121-122

- Václav Vladivoj Ritter von Tomek. Nowější dějepis rakauský (1887) - pp. 110-111

- Yury Ivanovich Venelin. Древніе и нынѣшніе Болгаре въ политическомъ, народописномъ, историческомъ и религіозномъ ихъ отношеніи къ Россіянамъ, Vol. 1 (1829) - pp. 50,94

- Robert Lyall. The Character of the Russians, and a Detailed History of Moscow (1823) - pp. 167,640

- Edward Harding. Costume of the Russian Empire (1811) - Plate LXX.

- Модест Николаевич Богданов. Из жизни русской природы: зоологические очерки и рассказы (1889) - pp. 111-112

- Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus. De Cerimoniis Aulae Byzantinae, Vol. 2 (1754) - p. 393

- Eginhard. Annales Regum Francorum (1562) - p. 91

- André Du Chesne. Historiae Francorum scriptores (1636) - p. 145

- Mosis Chorenensis. Historiae Armenicae libri III: accedit ejusdem scriptoris epitome Geographiae (1736) - pp. 355-356

- Samuel Weller Singer. Researches Into the History of Playing Cards (1816) - p. 39

- Jan Potocki. Voyage Dans Quelques Parties De La Basse-Saxe Pour La Recherche Des Antiquités Slaves Ou Vendes (1795) - pp. 52,54

- Theophanes (Confessor). Chronographia (1729) - p. 237

Works on the "История Руси" ("History of Rus'") channel:

- Настоящая история казаков - правильно кОзаков / True history of the cassacks - properly cOssacks

- АНДРОФАГИ это ПРЕДКИ РУССКИХ / ANDROPHAGI are ANCESTORS of the RUSSIANS

Wiki Articles (as of Nov 23rd/29th 2020):

- Wikipedia:

-- en: Khazars, Sotnik, Hebrew_alphabet, Koktebel, Golden_calf, Tuzla_Island, Ghisolfi, Gazaria_(Genoese_colonies)

-- pl: Bitwa_pod_Bukowem

-- ru: Тузла_(остров), Таганрог, Посольский_приказ

- Wiktionary:

-- el: ὁσπίτιον

-- en: carpinus, betulus, ταύρος, völgy

- Wikisource:

-- en: Dictionary_of_National_Biography,_1885-1900/Lyall,_Robert

Георгій Конискій / Георгий Конисский. Исторія Русовъ, или Малой Россіи (1846) - quoted page

Astronomische und mathematische Sammelhandschrift (sog. Geographus Bavarus) - BSB Clm 560 - p. 150r (0321)

Літопис руський за Іпатіївським списком (1908) - quoted page

Marcel Erdal. The Khazar Language (2007)

Koktebel (pictures):

- Вид на мыс Хамелеон с пляжа. Крым. Сентябрь 2012 (Wikimedia)

- Тиха бухта Мис Хамелеон (Wikimedia)

- Picture "p-11219001" (mapio.net)

Tadeusz Korzon. Dzieje wojen i wojskowości w Polsce, Vol. 2 (1923) - pp. 127-128 (pp. 66-67 on the site)

An Unknown Khazar Document

Auckland Star. The Sep 1st 1943 edition - p. 3

South Wales Daily News. The April 13th 1895 edition - p. 8

Historya Słowian, Vol. 2 (1899) (for p. 221) - pp. 221,275-276,383

Василий Кириллович Тредиаковский. Сочинения Тредьяковского, Т. 3 (1849) (for p. 388) - pp. 388-391,403

By Daniel Haidachuk, aka Daniel Poirot