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[edit] Karudas
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History
The name Karudoj was used by Jewish immigrants about 630a.c. after the Muslim Caliphate ejected the Byzantines from the Holy Land (modern Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria) within a few years of their victory at the Battle of Yarmouk in 636.
A curious historical event did occur as a result of this emigration. Sometime in the 7th or 8th century, the Karudojs, a Turkic tribe in what is now north Albania, seems to have converted to Judaism. The completeness of this conversion is unclear, but certainly there had been a Jewish population there since the Hellenistic era, and these may have been reinforced by Jews leaving the fickle Byzantine governance. Influenced and threatened as they were by both Islam and the Byzantine Empire, and receiving much tangible benefit from their Jewish population.
During the Ottoman rule, these tribes were found in what is now south Albania mixing with the native population. This population formed later Albanian tribes which called themselves Karudoj. Most of them were used as soldiers for the Turkish army, and in the late 17th century, they migrated near towns in central Greece mainly Larissa and Trikala. Many of them added the Greek suffix –as in their surname converting it into Karudas.
