Word: byzantium
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...lords and ladies of Byzantium...
...Khazars chose Judaism, an odd historical fact that Koestler and others are at pains to explain satisfactorily. According to one ancient Jewish legend, the Khazar king, Bulan, was in the market for a monotheism to replace his old tribal idolatry. He asked the emissary from Christian Byzantium which faith he would choose if the only option was between Judaism and Islam. The Christian chose Judaism because the Jews -though sinners-at least worshiped the same...
...thesis. As in the past, he is a master of the conditional assertion ("This would be added evidence ..."). Unfortunately, the approximately four-century history of Khazaria is thin in primary source material. The kingdom seems to have flourished as a crossroads of East-West trade. Persecuted Jews from Byzantium are believed to have flocked to Khazaria, where they intermarried with their Caucasian coreligionists. When Genghis Khan's Mongols swept westward in the 13th century, Khazaria's Jews fled to Eastern and Central Europe. These fugitives, Koestler suggests, were part of a second Diaspora that became the Ashkenazim...
...woolgathering, the craft of needlepoint combines a meditative activity with the hard-core work ethic. Time is casually suspended stitch by stitch, but in the end something palpable gets done. Phyllis Kluger's stitches in time span nearly 5,000 years-from the arts of ancient Egypt and Byzantium to Renaissance Europe and early America. All are shown in full-color photos as well as instructional graph patterns. Kluger's historical commentary and analysis of her motifs provide an enriching dimension. One of the best needlepoint books of this or any other year...
...They were married that fall and set up housekeeping on his 80,000-acre estate in the Ukraine, but the idyl ended suddenly in 1917 when the Bolshevik revolution forced them to flee to the U.S.-she with her jewels, including the ring of an Empress of Byzantium, and five oil paintings concealed in her skirts. Back in her native Washington, the princess eventually divorced the prince, who died in 1955, and lived out her years as an outspoken champion of the G.O.P. and one of the capital's more spirited hostesses...