Seraya Shapshal Seraya Shapshal or " His Excellency Hajji Seraya Khan Shapshal " ( Karaim : Серая Бен Мордехай Шапшал ; ; ) ( 1873 - 1961 ) was a hakham and leader of the Crimean and then the Polish and Lithuanian Crimean Karaites ( Karaim ) community . Biography . Shapshal was born in Bahçesaray , Crimea and studied at St . Petersburg University , where he was graduated in philology and oriental languages . During his studies he became a strong adopter of Russian orientalist V . Grigorjev ' s theory about Crimean Karaites Khazarian origin . Immediately after his graduation at 1901 he was invited to serve as the personal tutor of the Iranian crown prince , Mohammad Ali Shah , and became a minister in the Persian government in 1907 ( actually he was a Russia n spy ) . In 1911 he returned to Crimea and became Chief Hakham of the Crimean Karaites communities in Crimea . From 1920 to 1927 he lived in Istanbul . Here he was active in the pan - Turkic movement . In 1927 while living in Turkey he was elected the head of the Karaims in Poland and in 1928 moved to Wilno . He denied any connection between Crimean Karaites and Rabbinic Jews . Shapshal is the founder of the Crimean Karaites religion and history Dejudaization Doctrine . Under this doctrine , he changed the traditional title of " Hacham " to " Gahan " , rising in his opinion to the Khazarian word " " Khagan " . In the mid 1930s , he began to create a theory of the Altai - Turkic origin of the Karaims and the pagan roots of the Karaite religious teaching ( worship of sacred oaks , polytheism , led by the god Tengri , the Sacrifice ) . Shapshal ' s doctrine is still a topic of critical research and public debate . He made a number of reforms aimed at Karaims Turkification and destruction Karaite Jewish elements of culture and language . He issued an order canceling the teaching of Hebrew in Karaite schools , replaced the name of the Jewish holidays and the months by the Turkic one , the position of " Hacham " renamed " Gahan " in consonance with the word " khan " , invented in this special custom taking office , allegedly accepted the Khazars . According Shapshal , the doctrine of Anan ben David was close to early Christianity , and Karaites believed for centuries in Jesus and Mohammed as prophets . Crimean Karaites adopted the law of Moses , but continued to adhere to the ancient Turkic ] ] pagan beliefs . [ [ File : 600th Anniversary of Karaims and Tatars in Lithuania Reversum . png | right | thumb | 100 | | " Karaim and Tatar warriors image on Lithuanian souvenir coin . The conception of Karaim warriors was introduced by Shapshal and his adopters . " Between efforts to approve [ [ Crimean Karaites ] ] Khazarian origin was their history " militarization " process originated in the 20th century inter - war Poland - the trend to represent for the Karaite population of Eastern Europe as a nation of warriors . Shapshal was one of this process initiators . In 1939 using his connections in Russian emigrants community in Germany , he appealed to the racial authorities in the Reich Biureau of the Ministry of Internal Affairs with a request to examine the issue of [ [ Crimean Karaites ] ] ethnicity . After German troops occupation of [ [ Crimean Karaites ] ] populated areas in Eastern Europe this appellation was considered by German administration . They involved three major historian specialist on the history of the Karaites - [ [ Zelig Kalmanovich ] ] , [ [ Meir Balaban ] ] and Yitzhak ( Ignacy ) Schiper . Despite the fact that all three had been before the war , a fierce opponents of the Crimean Karaites Turkic origin theory , they supported the Shapshal ' s theory to save European Karaites from the Holocaust . Shapshal was instrumental in the formulation of [ [ Nazis ] ] policy towards the Karaims . As [ [ Hakham ] ] of Vilnius he was infamous for his confrontations with such Jewish community figures as [ [ Zelig Kalmanovich ] ] . He was also known for having been forced ( under penalty of endangering his own community ) to give to the Nazis a detailed list of the members of the [ [ Crimean Karaites ] ] communities of [ [ Troki ] ] and Vilnius , allowing them to easily discover and arrest Jews who had forged papers stating that they were [ [ Crimean Karaites ] ] . In 1945 , formally abdicated from Karaite Gahan post , submitting a statement to the Commissioner for Religious Affairs , the Council of Ministers of the Lithuanian SSR and got the position as a researcher at the Institute of History of the [ [ Soviet Union | Soviet ] ] - dominated [ [ Lithuanian Academy of Sciences ] ] He co - authored of a [ [ Karaim language | Karaim ] ] - Russian - Polish [ [ dictionary ] ] ( published in 1974 ) and wrote a number of articles on the [ [ Crimean Karaites ] ] . Using his position he continued to promote his ideas including forgery of some evidences , regarding military past of [ [ Crimean Karaites ] ] , publishing the articles about his " discoveries " in the Soviet Union ' s leading academic journals . Shapshal ' s archive recent studies have shown that his drafts include several versions of the " original " documents texts evidencing forgery . In spite of that Shapshal ' s ideas about Karaim warriors were adopted widely in USSR and even abroad . Thus in modern Lithuania [ [ Trakai ] ] visitors are often guided that Karaim warriors were guards of [ [ Trakai Island Castle | Trakai Castles ] ] . In 1997 souvenir coin in denominations of 50 [ [ Lithuanian Litas | LTL ] ] was issued in honor of the 600th anniversary of the [ [ Lipka Tatars | Tatars ] ] and [ [ Crimean Karaites ] ] in Lithuania . The coin includes the image of Tatar and Karaim warriors . Some his works including " History of the Karaims " remains unpublished . Part of his collections and books are kept in [ [ Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania | National Library of _ Lithuania ] ] the other in a small museum in the old [ [ kenesa ] ] of Troki , where he died in 1961 . References . [ [ Category : Karaite rabbis ] ] [ [ Category : History of Crimea ] ] [ [ Category : Crimean Karaites ] ] [ [ Category : 1873 births ] ] [ [ Category : 1961 deaths ] ]