The '''Karimi''' (Crimeans) were once famous as merchants who controlled the trade routes through [[Crimea]] (Persian: Karima) where they were attracted to the religion of the [[Crimean Karaites]]. The Crimeans became the first [[Karaitizers]] with whom the name "Crimeans" (Karimi) became synonymous as Karimism (Karaitizing or Karaimism) was the indigenous religion of Crimea (Crimeanism). But as they became more educated they soon replaced the Crimean Karaites forming a recrudescent type of the Messianic Judaism described in al-Kuzari and guided by the self-claimed [[Zera Yisrael]] descendants of certain Persian Jews isolated by the Babylonian exile who rejected the Babylonian Talmud but accepted Jesus. This infuriated some of the less religious Crimean Karaites who united with the Nazis during the Holocaust to eradicate the Karimi-Subbotniks and their Karaimite-Subbotnik clerics.
