The Thirteenth Tribe: tracing the Ashkenazi Jews to the Khazars - a Turkic people
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In this book, Arthur Koestler - proud himself of being an Ashkenazi Jew descendant of Khazars - describes the history of a long-vanished, Turkic people called the Khazars, whose ruler, faced with pressure from both Muslim and Christian nations around them, took the radical step of converting to Judaism.
It is the contention of this book that these Khazar Jews are the ancestors of the Jews of Eastern Europe who were persecuted by Hitler and who eventually founded the modern state of Israel. These Ashkenazi Jews, according to this theory, are not a Semitic people, as are the Sephardic Jews. They do not descend from "God's chosen people," but rather from the nomadic tribes of the Caucasus. The Khazar empire disappeared in the years following the first millennium, wiped out by the Mongol tribes, who formed an alliance with Byzantium. The Khazars and their control of trade routes became irrelevant after that and many migrated to what is now Poland, Hungary and Germany and founded "shetls" - small villages, where they continued to practice the Jewish religion and contributed to the culture of Eastern Europe.
Arthur Koestler was not the first to have written about the Khazars: D.M. Dunlop of Columbia University wrote before him "The History of The Jewish Khazars". But Arthur Koestler was already much famous author and above all a jew himself. That's the reason maybe his book stirred much controversy: at the height of the controversy in 1983, the lifeless bodies of Arthur Koestler and his wife were found in their London home. Despite significant inconsistencies, the police ruled their death a suicide.
Will do. We have a copy of "The History of the Jewish People" at home, too, which is a HUGE book of about 1000 pages. Too intimidating to crack. I have a much shorter book about diasporas that shows maps of migrations and naturally the Jewish diaspora was discussed in full. A truly incredible (but also sad) history...
As much as I enjoyed reading Koestler's book, I must admit that I totally disagreed with most of his conclusions. The likelihood of Khazarim becoming the forerunners of the Ashkenazi Jews in eastern Europe as he postulated would be difficult as they were a patriarchal society, not matriarchal. The greater likelihood was that they became embodied into the Karaite population which would explain the sudden explosion of numbers of Kararim around the Black Sea in the tenth century. And since Karaite Judaism was also a patriarchal hereditary society it would have meshed quite well with the Khazar beleifs. I actually have a book passed down through the family from the Seventeenth century on the Khazars which I think I might just put up as one of my future hubs. It's one of the books Koestler didn't have avaialable when he was doing his research. But thank you for putting up your hub on the Khazars. They are a fascinating story and as many Muslims will tell you, they were also their greatest enemies, putting a stop to the spread of Islam into Eastern Europe by defeating the Caliph's armies.
just great
Wonderfully interesting blog post thanks for writing it
i just added your blog to my bookmarks and will check back often.
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livelonger Level 6 Commenter 5 years ago
Although I am not Jewish, I've always been fascinated with the rich history of the Jewish people. What an interesting story! Thank you for contributing this.