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Bulan was a Khazar king who led the conversion of the Khazars to Judaism. His name means "elk" or "hart" in Old Turkic. The date of his reign is unknown, as the date of the conversion is hotly disputed, though it is certain that Bulan reigned some time between the mid-8th and the mid-9th centuries. Nor is it settled whether Bulan was the Bek or the Khagan of the Khazars.

The scholar D. M. Dunlop was certain that Bulan was a Khagan; however, more recent scholars, such as Dan Shapira and Kevin Brook, assume that he was the Bek due to references to him leading military campaigns. Khazar tradition held that before his own conversion, Bulan was religiously unaffiliated. In his quest to discover which of the three Abrahamic religions would shape his own religious beliefs, he invited representatives from each to explain their fundamental tenets. In the end, he chose Judaism.

In the Khazar Correspondence, King Joseph traces his lineage back to Bulan. He refers to the reforming Khazar ruler Obadiah as being one of "the sons of the sons of Bulan". While Brook assumes this makes Obadiah Bulan's grandson, the Hebrew phrase is less definitive and may allude to a more remote descent. The royal descendants of Bulan are referred to by Khazar researchers as Bulanids, though their self-designation is unknown.

The name Sabriel is given in the Schechter Letter (roughly contemporaneous with King Joseph's letter) for the Khazar king who led the conversion to Judaism. The Schechter Letter also gives Sabriel at least a partial Jewish/Israelite ancestry. Sabriel is described as having waged successful campaigns in the Caucasus and Iranian Azerbaijan, possibly as part of the Khazar-Arab wars.

His wife, Serakh, is described as a Jew and as encouraging him to study and adopt Judaism. The Schechter Letter is silent on the issue of whether Sabriel was Bulan; the name Bulan does not appear in that document.

Khazar scholars sometimes refer to the king who led the Khazar conversion to Judaism as "Bulan Sabriel", though it is conceivable that they may have been different people. In The History of the Jewish Khazars, for instance, D. M. Dunlop examined (and ultimately rejected) the theory of other scholars that Sabriel referred to Obadiah.

Stanford Mommaerts-Brown, a genealogist, historian and also a convert to Judaism, would point out that it is common for Jews, whether born among gentiles or converts, to have two names. One is of the nomenclature of the people among whom (s)he lives, (or was born), and a Hebrew name. Mr. Mommaerts-Brown's name is Yonathan Micah Hillel. 'Bulan' is clearly a Turkic name. After conversion he would have taken a Hebrew or Jewish name. 'Sabriel' looks very much to be a Turkic idiomatic variation of 'Gabriel'.

See also

• Khazars
• Khazar Correspondence
• Yitzhak ha-Sangari

References

1. Erdal, Marcel (2007). "The Khazar Language". In Golden, Peter B.; Ben-Shammai, Haggai; Róna-Tas, András (eds.). The World of the Khazars: New Perspectives - Selected Papers from the Jerusalem 1999 International Khazar Colloquium. Brill. p. 79.
2. Shapira, Dan (1998–1999). "Two Names of the First Khazar Jewish Beg". Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi. 10: 237. To sum up: under the names of Bulan and Sabriel the same person is meant, the legendary first Khazar Beg, and both names refer to his conversion to Judaism.
3. Brook, Kevin (2018). The Jews of Khazaria (3rd ed.). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. pp. 84–85.

Sources

• Kevin Alan Brook. The Jews of Khazaria. 3rd ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2018.
• Douglas M. Dunlop, The History of the Jewish Khazars, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1954.
• Norman Golb and Omeljan Pritsak, Khazarian Hebrew Documents of the Tenth Century. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982.
• Vladimir Petrukhin, "Sacral Kingship and the Judaism of the Khazars," in Conversions: Looking for Ideological Change in the Early Middle Ages, edited by Leszek P. Słupecki and Rudolf Simek, pp. 291–301. Vienna: Fassbaender, 2013.
• Dan Shapira, "Two Names of the First Khazar Jewish Beg," Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi vol. 10 (1998-1999), pp. 231–241.
• Boris Zhivkov, Khazaria in the 9th and 10th Centuries, Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2015.

v t e Khazaria
Byzantium Bulgaria Abbasids Arab–Khazar wars Kipchaks Meshchera Pax Khazarica Radhanites Rus' Volga trade route Dnieper trade route
Khazar rulers	Irbis Busir Bihar Parsbit Zachariah Bulan Obadiah Hezekiah Manasseh I Hanukkah Isaac Zebulun Manasseh II Nisi Aaron I Menahem Benjamin Aaron II Joseph David George
Other figures	Alp Iluetuer Alp Tarkhan Balgitzin Barjik Bulchan Hazer Tarkhan HLGW John of Gothia Leo IV Papatzys Pesakh Ras Tarkhan Serach Sfengus Sviatoslav Theodora Tzitzak Yitzhak ha-Sangari
Places	Atil Azaq Balanjar Bar Chersonesus Dagestan Güsliyev Golden Hills Kaffa Kavkaz Kazarki Kerch Kerem Khazaran Khumar Levedia Saltovo-Mayaki Samandar Sambalut Sambat Samiran Samosdelka Saqsin Sarkel Semikarakorsk Fortress Sudak Taman Tamatarkha
Tributaries	Abkhazians Alans Arsiyah Baranjars Barsils Bashkirs Black Klobuks Burtas Crimean Goths Cumans East Slavs Huns Juhuri Kabars Kipchaks Kumyks Kassogs Laz people Lezgins Magyars Mordvins Oghuz Onogurs Pechenegs Sabirs Sarir Uralics Volga Bulgaria
Scholars	Mikhail Artamonov Vasily Bartold D.M. Dunlop Norman Golb Peter B. Golden Lev Gumilev Alexander Harkavy Thomas S. Noonan Svetlana Pletnyova Omeljan Pritsak
Legacy	Khazar Correspondence Khazar language Khazar ancestry claims Ashkenazi Cossacks Crimean Karaites Subbotniks Jewish Cossacks Khazars in fiction Kuzari Kievan Letter Mandgelis Document Red Jews Schechter Letter
Category

• Converts to Judaism from paganism
• Khazar rulers
• 9th-century rulers in Europe
• Jewish monarchs
• 8th-century Jews
• 9th-century Jews