ABSTRACT
By AD 1000, most polities in East-Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe were Christianized, and recipients either of the Western Latin or of the Byzantine Greek written tradition. 2 Moreover, the Byzantine tradition was the cradle of the Old Church Slavonic alphabet and literature which played an exclusive, cultural role in many lands of Slavic-speaking peoples. In Khazaria and Volga Bulgharia, elites adopted Judaism and Islam, respectively, and with that came the practice of maintaining historical memory on the basis of Hebrew and Arabic scripts and literatures.
