It is our wish and will that this State and this Reich last for a thousand years. We can be happy to know that this future belongs entirely to us!
-- Triumph of the Will, directed by Leni Riefenstahl

Prince of Persia draws very heavily from the Zoroastrian faith, one of the world’s oldest monotheistic religions. It was founded in ancient Iran (Persia) about 3,500 years ago. At the start of the game, the Prince’s beautiful companion, Elika, mentions that her people, the Ahura, have been keeping the evil Ahriman sealed in a “tree of life” for 1,000 years. A thousand years is an interesting number to note because for 1,000 years, Zoroastrianism was one of the most powerful religions in the world. It was the official religion of Persia from 600 BCE to 620 CE.
-- An Appreciation of Attention to Detail, by Erika Haase

The Khazars (Chazars or Khozars) were a nation of Finnish origin, related to the Bulgars, the Avars, and the Ugars or Hungarians. They had settled after the dissolution of the empire of the Hungs on the frontier between Europe and Asia, founding a kingdom on the Volga (which they called the River Itil, or Atel.) near its mouth in the Caspian Sea, in the neighborhood of Astrakhan. Their Kings, known by the title of "Chakan," or "Khagan," led these warlike sons of the steppe from war to war and victory to victory....

Like their neighbors, the Bulgarians and the Russians, the Khazars professed a coarse religion, which combined sensuality with lewdness. Gradually they became acquainted with Christianity and Mohammedanism, through the Greeks and Arabs who came to the capital, Balanyiar, to trade their wares for fine furs. From the Jews who fled to Khazaria from the religious persecution of the Byzantine Emperior Leo in the year 723, and settled in communities throughout that hospitable land, the Khazars became acquainted also with Judaism; and it was through these Jews, who mingled among them as interpreters, merchants, physicians, or counselors, that a love of Judaism was instilled into one of the warlike Khazar Kings, known to history as Bulan....

Bulan was finally led to adopt Judaism, according to this account, by the fact that while all three disputants adhered to their religious difference and championed their particular creed, both the Christian and the Mohammedan champions were obliged to admit that the religion of their Jewish opponent was the foundation of their own and that it was admittedly an excellent religion, aside from what they considered the superiority of their own. That was good enough for the King of the Khazars, and he decided in favor of Judiasm, which the nobles of his kingdom, numbering nearly 4,000, thereupon adopted with him. Little by little it made its way among the people, so that most of the inhabitants of the towns of the Khazar kingdom presently became Jews....

After Obadiah came a long series of Jewish Khazars, for, according to a fundamental law of the State, only Jewish rulers were permitted to ascend the throne.

For a long time the Jews, dispersed among other countries of the world, knew nothing of this powerful nation to Judaism, and when at last vague rumors reached them it created among them a belief that Khazaria was a land peopled by a remnant of the lost ten tribes...

In the middle of the tenth century of the Christian era there lived at Cordova a noted and influential Jew, Abu-Yussuf Chasdal ben Isaac Ibn-Shaprut, a member of the noble family of Ibn-Ezra, who was a powerful and trusted Minister of the Court of Abdulrahman III., Caliph of Cordova, and who, despite his elevation at the hands of the Moslem ruler, had not forgotten to hold most dear his own faith and people and to make the task of protecting and furthering Judaism the chief purpose of his life....

The vague rumor of the existence of an independent kingdom of Jews in the land of the Khazars penetrating to Spain, roused his deep interest, and he never failed to inquire about such a Jewish kingdom from embassies that came to him from near or far. Once Ambassadors from Khorasan brought him news that there was indeed such a community and that a Jewish King was on the throne there. Thereafter he was all the more eager to enter into communication with this Jewish kingdom and its ruler.

-- "Old Manuscripts Reveal a Lost Jewish Kingdom," by The New York Times, 1912

In contrast to the new, growing, Anglo-Saxon race, look, for instance, at the Sephardim, the so-called "Spanish Jews"; here we find how a genuine race can by purity keep itself noble for centuries and tens of centuries, but at the same time how very necessary it is to distinguish between the nobly reared portions of a nation and the rest. In England, Holland and Italy there are still genuine Sephardim but very few, since they can scarcely any longer avoid crossing with the Ashkenazim (the so-called "German Jews"). Thus, for example, the Montefiores of the present generation have all without exception married German Jewesses. But every one who has travelled in the East of Europe, where the genuine Sephardim still as far as possible avoid all intercourse with German Jews, for whom they have an almost comical repugnance, will agree with me when I say that it is only when one sees these men and has intercourse with them that one begins to comprehend the significance of Judaism in the history of the word. This is nobility in the fullest sense of the word, genuine nobility of race! Beautiful figures, noble heads, dignity in speech and bearing. The type is Semitic in the same sense as that of certain noble Syrians and Arabs. That out of the midst of such people Prophets and Psalmists could arise -- that I understood at the first glance, which I honestly confess that I had never succeeded in doing when I gazed, however carefully, on the many hundred young Jews -- "Bochers " -- of the Friedrichstrasse in Berlin. When we study the Sacred Books of the Jews we see further that the conversion of this monopolytheistic people to the ever sublime (though according to our Ideas mechanical and materialistic) conception of a true cosmic monotheism was not the work of the community, but of a mere fraction of the people; indeed this minority had to wage a continuous warfare against the majority, and was compelled to enforce the acceptance of its more exalted view of life by means of the highest Power to which man is heir, the might of personality. As for the rest of the people, unless the Prophets were guilty of gross exaggeration, they convey the impression of a singularly vulgar crowd, devoid of every higher aim, the rich hard and unbelieving, the poor fickle and ever possessed by the longing to throw themselves into the arms of the wretchedest and filthiest idolatry. The course of Jewish history has provided for a peculiar artificial selection of the morally higher section: by banishments, by continual withdrawals to the Diaspora -- a result of the poverty and oppressed condition of the land -- only the most faithful (of the better classes) remained behind, and these abhorred every marriage contract -- even with Jews! -- in which both parties could not show an absolutely pure descent from one of the tribes of Israel and prove their strict orthodoxy beyond all doubt. There remained then no great choice; for the nearest neighbours, the Samaritans, were heterodox, and in the remoter parts of the land, except in the case of the Levites who kept apart, the population was to a large extent much mixed. In this way race was here produced. And when at last the final dispersion of the Jews came, all or almost all of these sole genuine Jews were taken to Spain. The shrewd Romans in fact knew well how to draw distinctions, and so they removed these dangerous fanatics, these proud men, whose very glance made the masses obey, from their Eastern home to the farthest West, while, on the other hand, they did not disturb the Jewish people outside of the narrower Judea more than the Jews of the Diaspora. -- Here, again, we have a most interesting object-lesson on the origin and worth of "race"! For of all the men whom we are wont to characterise as Jews, relatively few are descended from these great genuine Hebrews, they are rather the descendants of the Jews of the Diaspora, Jews who did not take part in the last great struggles; who, indeed, to some extent did not even live through the Maccabean age; these and the poor country people who were left behind in Palestine, and who later in Christian ages were banished or fled, are the ancestors of "our Jews" of to-day. Now whoever wishes to see with his own eyes what noble race is, and what it is not, should send for the poorest of the Sephardim from Salonici or Sarajevo (great wealth is very rare among them, for they are men of stainless honour) and put him side by side with any Ashkenazim financier; then will he perceive the difference between the nobility which race bestows and that conferred by a monarch.

-- The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, by Houston Stewart Chamberlain

The Khazars' tribal structure is not well understood. They were divided between Ak-Khazars ("White Khazars") and Kara-Khazars ("Black Khazars"). The 10th-century Muslim geographer al-Istakhri claimed that the White Khazars were strikingly handsome with reddish hair, white skin and blue eyes while the Black Khazars were swarthy verging on deep black as if they were "some kind of Indian". Many Turkic nations had a similar (political, not racial) division between a "white" ruling warrior caste and a "black" class of commoners; the consensus among mainstream scholars is that Istakhri was confused by the names given to the two groups. However, Khazars are described by the generality of early Arab sources as having a white complexion, blue eyes, and reddish hair. The Turkic affinities of the Khazars are confirmed by modern anthropological studies....

In 529, Prince Khosrau I of the Persian Empire fought the social movement led by the Zoroastrian priest Mazdak. Numerous Jewish families who supported the movement had to flee the country north of Caucasus Mountains....

Originally, the Khazars practiced traditional Turkic Tengriism, focused on the sky god Tengri, but were heavily influenced by Confucian ideas imported from China, notably that of the Mandate of Heaven. ...

The Khazars revered a number of traditional divinities subordinate to Tengri, including the fertility divinity Umay, Kuara, a thunder divinity, and Erlik, the divinity of underworld....

Jews fled from Byzantium to Khazaria as a consequence of persecution under Heraclius, Justinian II, Leo III, and Romanos I. These were joined by other Jews fleeing from Sassanid Persia (particularly during the Mazdak revolts), and, later, the Islamic world. Jewish merchants such as the Radhanites regularly traded in Khazar territory, and may have wielded significant economic and political influence. Though their origins and history are somewhat unclear, the Mountain Jews also lived in or near Khazar territory and may have been allied with the Khazars, or subject to them; it is conceivable that they, too, played a role in Khazar conversion....

At some point in the last decades of the 8th century or the early 9th century, the Khazar royalty and nobility converted to Judaism, and part of the general population may have followed. The extent of the conversion is debated. The 10th century Persian historian Ibn al-Faqih reported that "all the Khazars are Jews." Notwithstanding this statement, most scholars believe that only the upper classes converted to Judaism; there is some support for this in contemporary Muslim texts....

Essays in the Kuzari, written by Yehuda Halevi, detail a moral liturgical reason for the conversion which some consider a moral tale. Some researchers have suggested part of the reason for conversion was political expediency to maintain a degree of neutrality: the Khazar empire was between growing populations, Muslims to the east and Christians to the west. Both religions recognized Judaism as a forebearer and worthy of some respect. The exact date of the conversion is hotly contested. It may have occurred as early as 740 or as late as the mid-9th century. Recently discovered numismatic evidence suggests that Judaism was the established state religion by c. 830, and though St. Cyril (who visited Khazaria in 861) did not identify the Khazars as Jews, the khagan of that period, Zachariah, had a biblical Hebrew name....

The Khazars enjoyed close relations with the Jews of the Levant and Persia. The Persian Jews, for example, hoped that the Khazars might succeed in conquering the Caliphate. The high esteem in which the Khazars were held among the Jews of the Orient may be seen in the application to them, in an Arabic commentary on Isaiah ascribed by some to Saadia Gaon, and by others to Benjamin Nahawandi, of Isaiah 48:14: "The Lord hath loved him." "This", says the commentary, "refers to the Khazars, who will go and destroy Babel" (i.e., Babylonia), a name used to designate the country of the Arabs. From the Khazar Correspondence it is apparent that two Spanish Jews, Judah ben Meir ben Nathan and Joseph Gagris, had succeeded in settling in the land of the Khazars....

Besides Judaism, other religions probably practiced in areas ruled by the Khazars included Greek Orthodox, Nestorian, and Monophysite Christianity, Zoroastrianism as well as Norse, Finnic, and Slavic cults....

The number of Khazars who converted to Judaism is also hotly contested, with historical accounts ranging from claims that only the King and his retainers had embraced Judaism, to the claim that the majority of the lay population had converted. D.M. Dunlop was of the opinion that only the upper class converted; this was the majority view until relatively recently. Analysis of recent archaeological grave evidence by such scholars as Kevin A. Brook asserts that the sudden shift in burial customs, with the abandonment of pagan-style burial with grave goods and the adoption of simple shroud burials during the mid-9th century suggests a more widespread conversion....

The Kuzari is one of most famous works of the medieval Spanish Jewish philosopher and poet Rabbi Yehuda Halevi. Divided into five essays ("ma'amarim" (namely, Articles)), it takes the form of a dialogue between the pagan king of the Khazars and a Jew who was invited to instruct him in the tenets of the Jewish religion.

-- Khazars, by Wikipedia

And if Zoroaster were either Cham, Chus, or Mizraim ...

-- Zoroaster, by Wikipedia