From Antiquity to 960 CE Chapter One Likely predecessors of the Eastern Slavs were sedentary agriculturists of the forest steppes, often under attack by nomad tribes. Prominent among such nomad tribes were the Scythians who dominated the steppes and traded with merchants of the Greek city-states that flourished around the Black Sea. Hellenized Jews also settled in the Greek colonies in the first century CE. By the seventh century Turkic-speaking Khazars established a multiethnic empire that encompassed Ukrainian lands and controlled trade routes with Central Asia and the Arab world for three centuries. Jews fleeing persecution in the Byzantine Empire found safe haven among the Khazars, including in Kyiv and Chernihiv. Some Khazars adopted the Jewish religion. Ninth-century Byzantine monks brought Christianity and the basis of the Cyrillic alphabet to the Khazars and the Slavs. Politics Demography and Migration Economy and Society Culture and Religion
