Obadiah was the name of a Khazar ruler of the late eighth or early ninth century. He is described as coming from among "the sons of the sons" of Bulan, but whether this should be taken literally to mean that he was Bulan's grandson, or figuratively to imply a more remote descent, is unclear.[1] King Joseph's Reply claimed that Obadiah strengthened Rabbinic Judaism and Hebrew proficiency in Khazaria by building synagogues and schools and inviting Jewish sages to the country.[2][3] In Sefer ha-Ittim, Judah ben Barzillai's list of Khazar Jewish kings lacked Obadiah's name, and several scholars have concluded from this that Obadiah was a fictional character.[4][5] He was succeeded by his son Hezekiah.
Dunlop, Douglas M. (1954). The History of the Jewish Khazars. Princeton University Press. p. 144.
Brook, Kevin Alan (2018). The Jews of Khazaria (3rd ed.). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 91. ISBN 978-1-5381-0342-5. Feldman, Alex Mesibov (2023). "Chapter 4: Khazaria: The Exception Which Proves the Rules". In Raffensperger, Christian (ed.). How Medieval Europe was Ruled. Routledge. p. 46. doi:10.4324/9781003213239-4. ISBN 978-1032100166. Zuckerman, Constantine (1995). "On the date of the Khazars' Conversion to Judaism and the Chronology of the Kings of the Rus' Oleg and Igor". Revue des études byzantines. 53: 248–249. doi:10.3406/rebyz.1995.1906. Olsson, Joshua T. (October 2013). "Coup d'état, Coronation and Conversion: Some Reflections on the Adoption of Judaism by the Khazar Khaganate". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. 23 (4): 523. doi:10.1017/S1356186313000266. S2CID 161833156.
- Kevin Alan Brook. The Jews of Khazaria. 3rd ed. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2018. ISBN 1538103427, 978-1538103425
- 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: Cornell University Press, 1982. ISBN 0801412218, 978-0801412219