Abstract
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.) Golden already has one Variorum volume to his credit (Nomads and Their Neighbours in the Russian Steppe: Turks, Khazars and Qipchaqs, 2003), and this fresh collection of eleven articles, first published between 2000 and 2007, will be warmly welcomed by scholars concerned with the pastoralist peoples of the Eurasian steppe and their interaction at so many different levels with the sedentary world. "The Türks: origins and expansion" (I), of which a shorter version appeared in Turkish in 2006, provides a panoramic view of the formation of Turkish peoples since the emergence of the Türk empire in sixth-century Central Asia, with a strong accent on the grafting-on of new, non-Turkish, ethnic elements and on cultural influences from outside the steppe. Pointing out in "The conversion of the Khazars to Judaism" (XI) that this was by no means as isolated a phenomenon as is often asserted (precedents include the first-century kingdom of Adiabene and the pre-Islamic Himyarite kingdom of the Yemen), Golden provides an in-depth survey of the dauntingly prolific literature on this topic and explores the chronology and possible political-diplomatic motives.