The Kievan Letter, or Kyivan letter is an early 10th-century (ca. 930) letter thought to be written by representatives of the Jewish community in Kiev. The letter, a Hebrew-language recommendation written on behalf of one member of their community, was part of an enormous collection brought to Cambridge by Solomon Schechter from the Cairo Geniza. It was discovered in 1962 during a survey of the Geniza documents by Norman Golb of the University of Chicago. The letter is dated by most scholars to around 930 CE. Some think (on the basis of the "pleading" nature of the text, mentioned below) that the letter dates from a time when Khazars were no longer a dominant force in the politics of the city. According to Marcel Erdal, the letter does not come from Kiev but was sent to Kiev.

Historical significance

Some scholars point to a district in Kievan Podil named after the Khazars (called "Kozare"), which indicates to some that Turkic Khazars lived in Kiev. The Khazars apparently played a significant role in the economic vitality of the city, importing caviar, fish and salt into Kiev. This may point to a Radhanite presence in the city, which was common in greater Khazaria. If so, it might at first glance suggest that Khazar control over Kiev, in some form or another, continued well into the 10th century, significantly later than the traditional date for conquest by Oleg, 882. On the other hand, the letter itself implies that the Khazar authorities could do little to help the Jewish community of Kiev. The letter itself had ended up in Egypt, and the beleaguered alms-seeker had presumably travelled thousands of miles in his search for relief. The identity and the status of the reviewing officer are, therefore, ambiguous. It would seem more likely that the letter was reviewed in Khazaria while Khazar Jewish power had waned not only in Kiev but also in the heartland itself (sometime in the 11th century).

Linguistic significance

The linguistic identity of the runic inscription is unclear. The implicit assumption that it genuinely is Khazarian is problematic as the letter would be the only written record of Khazrian extant today. Erdal argues against that hypothesis and favours Bolgar-Chuvash (hakurüm from the reconstructed verb *okï-, 'call out, recite, read') and suggests that it originated in the Danube-Bulgar region. (Similar inscriptions in Latin and Greek are found in Byzantine documents from roughly the same period.) Also notable are the unusual names of the community members, several of which have been controversially hypothesized to be of Slavic or Turkic origin.

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