Seraya Shapshal or His Excellency Hajji Seraya Khan Shapshal (Karaim: Серая Бен Мордехай Шапшал; ; ; ) (1873–1961) was a hakham and leader of the Crimean and then the Polish and Lithuanian Crimean Karaites (Karaim) community. Biography Shapshal was born in Bahçesaray, Crimea and studied at St. Petersburg University, where he was graduated in philology and oriental languages. During his studies he became a strong adopter of Russian orientalist V. Grigorjev's theory about the Khazarian origin of the Crimean Karaites. Immediately after his graduation at 1901 he was invited to serve as the personal tutor of the Iranian crown prince, Mohammad Ali Shah, and became a minister in the Persian government in 1907 (actually he was a Russian spy). In 1911 he returned to Crimea and became Chief Hakham of the Crimean Karaites communities in Crimea. From 1920 to 1927 he lived in Istanbul. Here he was active in the pan-Turkic movement. In 1927 while living in Turkey he was elected the head of the Karaims in Poland and in 1928 moved to Wilno. He denied any connection between Crimean Karaites and Rabbinic Jews. Shapshal is the founder of the Crimean Karaite religion and historical doctrine of Dejudaization. Under this doctrine, he changed the traditional title of "Hacham" to "Gahan" ("Ḥakhan"), which in his opinion goes back to the Khazarian word "Khagan". In the mid 1930s, he began to create a theory of the Altai-Turkic origin of the Karaims and the pagan roots of the Karaite religious teaching (worship of sacred oaks, polytheism, led by the god Tengri, the Sacrifice). Shapshal's doctrine is still a topic of critical research and public debate. He made a number of reforms aimed at the Turkification of the Karaims and the eradication of Jewish elements from their culture and language. He issued an order abolishing the teaching of Hebrew in Karaite schools, replaced names of Jewish holidays and months with the Turkic ones, renamed "Gahan" the position of "Hacham" in consonance with the word "khan". According to Shapshal, the doctrine of Anan ben David was close to early Christianity, and Karaites had believed for centuries in Jesus and Mohammed as prophets. Crimean Karaites adopted the law of Moses, but continued to adhere to the ancient Turkic pagan beliefs. Between the efforts to impose a Khazarian origin for the Crimean Karaites was the "militarization" process of their history originated in the 20th century's inter-war Poland: