The most direct continuations of Khazar Jewish culture are the Jewish communities of Crimea and the Caucasus. Three distinct communities show possible Khazar connections: (1) The Krymchaks — Crimean Jews following Rabbinic/Romaniote traditions who settled in Crimea and may incorporate Khazar descendants among earlier Jewish migrants; (2) The Karaim of Crimea — Turkic-speaking Karaite Jews whose language belongs to the Kipchak Turkic family of the Khazar steppe; and (3) The Mountain Jews (Juhuro) of Dagestan and Azerbaijan — ancient Iranian-speaking Jewish communities of the eastern Caucasus who predate the Khazar period but whose numbers may have been reinforced by Khazar Jewish migration. These communities maintained distinct halakhic traditions, community structures, and in the case of the Karaim a distinct theological identity (Karaite rejection of the oral Torah). The Crimean Jewish communities were severely affected by the Mongol invasions of the 13th century, the Ottoman conquest of Crimea (1475), and most devastatingly by the Holocaust (1941–42), in which Nazi Einsatzgruppen murdered the Krymchaks while controversially classifying some Karaim communities as non-Jewish.