La treizième tribu : l’empire khazar et son héritage

by Arthur Koestler, Georges Fradier (Translator), Gilles Lambert (Preface)

Dans ce livre magistral, Arthur Koestler s'interroge sur la double origine du peuple juif et s'attaque à l'histoire extraordinaire du peuple khazar. En historien novateur, Arthur Koestler retrace l'épopée des Khazars, de leurs origines à leur déclin. S'attardant sur la composition de la mosaïque ethnique de ce peuple guerrier et sur ses mythes, l'auteur dépeint un monde méconnu qui contribua à façonner la destinée de l'Europe médiévale. Aux confins des mondes occidentaux et orientaux, l'autorité khazare est le seul exemple concret d'un État juif avant la fondation de l'Israël contemporain.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Religion, Politics, Jewish, Historical, Judaism

315 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Darkness at Noon (1940), novel of Hungarian-born British writer Arthur Koestler, portrays his disillusionment with Communism; his nonfiction works include The Sleepwalkers (1959) and The Ghost in the Machine (1967).


Arthur Koestler CBE [*Kösztler Artúr] was a prolific writer of essays, novels and autobiographies.

He was born into a Hungarian Jewish family in Budapest but, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria. His early career was in journalism. In 1931 he joined the Communist Party of Germany but, disillusioned, he resigned from it in 1938 and in 1940 published a devastating anti-Communist novel, Darkness at Noon, which propelled him to instant international fame.

Over the next forty-three years he espoused many causes, wrote novels and biographies, and numerous essays. In 1968 he was awarded the prestigious and valuable Sonning Prize "For outstanding contribution to European culture", and in 1972 he was made a "Commander of the British Empire" (CBE).

In 1976 he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and three years later with leukaemia in its terminal stages. He committed suicide in 1983 in London.

Reviews

[فؤاد · Rating 3 out of 5]

خزرها یکی از مجموعه طوایف ترک بودن که قرن شش میلادی شمال دریای خزر و دریای سیاه ساکن شدن و دریای خزر اسمش رو از این قوم گرفته. دلیل این که سراغ این قوم اومدم، یه خصوصیت نادر و غیرمعمول این قوم ترک زبانه: این که در سال ۷۴۰ میلادی تصمیم گرفتن مذهبشون رو تغییر بدن و یهودی شدن.



یهودیت یه دین جهانی مثل مسیحیت و اسلام نیست، یه دین قومیتیه. یعنی فقط کسانی که از بدو تولد نژاد یهودی داشته باشن می تونن به این دین دربیان. به خاطر همین هم خیلی عجیبه که یک قوم غیراسرائیلی یهودی بشه، و در طول تاریخ فقط دو بار این اتفاق افتاده: یک بار در قرن چهارم که حمیری های یمن یهودی شدن، و یک بار در قرن هشتم که خزرها یهودی شدن. هر دوی این اقوام مقارن اسلام بودن، به خاطر همین تصمیم گرفتم یه کم راجع بهشون بخونم.

اولین بار که خزرها اهمیت پیدا می کنن جایی نیست جز جنگ تاریخی خسرو پرویز - هراکلیوس. ضمن این جنگ تاریخ ساز، هراکلیوس با قبایل خزر ساکن قفقاز پیمان می بنده که بهش کمک نظامی کنن و در عوض خواهر هراکلیوس به ازدواج پادشاه خزرها در بیاد. این زمان هنوز خزرها یهودی نیستن.

دفعۀ بعد که خزرها نقش اساسی پیدا می کنن، چند دهه بعده که سپاه اسلام از هر طرف پیشروی می کنه، اما وقتی به قفقاز می رسه، توسط خزرها متوقف می شه، و سرزمین های شمال قفقاز برای همیشه از نفوذ سپاه اسلام برکنار می مونن. این زمان هم هنوز خزرها یهودی نیستن.

سپاهیان مسلمان و خزرها در طول صد سال بعد متناوباً با هم برخوردهایی دارن و گاهی پیروزی با مسلمان هاست و گاهی با خزرها، اما در نهایت پیروزی قاطع نصیب مسلمان ها می شه: مروان حمار، آخرین خلیفۀ اموی، در فتحی بزرگ پادشاه خزرها رو مقهور می کنه، و مجبورش می کنه مسلمان بشه، و پادشاه خزرها می پذیره. خزرها مسلمان می شدن، اگه خیلی زود فروپاشی خلافت اموی توجه مروان حمار رو از خزر به سمت جنگ داخلی منصرف نمی کرد. خیلی زود، با فروپاشی خلافت اموی، پادشاه خزرها تغییر مذهب می ده و یهودیت رو به عنوان دین رسمی خزر انتخاب می کنه.



این که چرا بولخان، پادشاه خزر، یهودی شد، چندان روشن نیست. نامحتمل نیست که این انتخاب سیاسی بوده باشه. چون در اون روزگار مذهب و سیاست در هم گره خورده بودن. در جهان دو قطبی اون دوران، مسلمان شدن خزرها یعنی قرار گرفتن در زمرۀ دشمنان روم. و مسیحی شدنشون، یعنی قرار گرفتن در زمرۀ دشمنان مسلمان ها. شاید بولخان با انتخاب یه دین سوم که مورد قبول مسیحی ها و مسلمان ها بود، خواسته به نوعی بی طرفی خودش رو حفظ کنه تا بتونه با هر دو طرف ارتباط تجاری داشته باشه. چیزی که روشن نیست اینه که چرا یهودی ها تن به این امر بی سابقه دادن که یه قوم غیراسرائیلی یهودی بشه. بنا به گزارش ها، روحانی های یهودی بودن که یهودیت رو بر بولخان عرضه کردن. بولخان روحانی های مسلمان و مسیحی رو دعوت کرد تا با روحانی یهودی مناظره کنن، و وقتی مناظرات به نتیجه نرسید، روحانی مسیحی رو به تنهایی دعوت کرد و پرسید: بین یهودیت و اسلام کدوم به حقیقت نزدیک ترن؟ و روحانی مسیحی یهودیت رو ترجیح داد. بعد روحانی مسلمان رو تنها دعوت کرد و همین سؤال رو پرسید و اون هم یهودیت رو بر مسیحیت سه خدایی ترجیح داد. و بولخان این مذهب رو که مورد قبول هر دو دین دیگه بود به عنوان دین قلمروی خودش انتخاب کرد. بعد خیمه ای مثل خیمۀ عبادت موسی ساخت، با شمعدان هفت شاخه و صندوق عهد و قربانگاه. یهودیتی که در قلمروی خزرها برقرار بود، یهودیت قرائی بود، فرقه ای از یهودیت که فقط به تورات اعتقاد داره و تعالیم تلمود رو قبول نداره. اما چند نسل بعد، در دورۀ شاه عوبدیا طی اصلاحاتی مذهبی یهودیت تلمودی در قلمروی خزر برقرار شد.

دولت خزرها بیشتر از دویست سال دوام نیاورد. روس های وایکینگ از اسکاندیناوی به سمت جنوب هجوم آوردن و با قسطنطنیه هم پیمان شدن و خزرها رو برای همیشه نابود کردن. هر چند یهودی های خزر این جا و اون جا باقی موندن و حتی یه قیام منجیانه برای بازگشت به اورشلیم صورت دادن که شکست خورد. آرتور کوستلر در بخش دوم کتاب این نظریه رو مطرح می کنه که یهودی های اشکنازی (یهودی های شرق اروپا) که هشتاد درصد جمعیت امروزی یهودی ها رو تشکیل می دن، در حقیقت بازمانده از خزرهای یهودی هستن، و به عبارت دیگه، اصلاً یهودی نیستن. این نظریه هرچند خیلی جالبه، اما برای من که می خوام تاریخ اسلام بخونم، اهمیت ثانوی داشت، از طرف دیگه در سال های اخیر با آزمایش های ژنتیکی به طور قاطع رد شده و دیگه ارزش علمی نداره. به خاطر همین هم بخش دوم کتاب رو نخوندم.

[Issa Deerbany · Rating 4 out of 5]

دولة الخزر

دولة أقيمت في أوروبا الشرقية ولعبت دورا تاريخيا وخاصة مع الدولة الاسلامية والدولة البيزنطية ويعتبرها المؤرخين ان وجودها قد اخر فتح القسطنطينية مئات السنين.
كيف اعتنقت هذه القبائل البربرية الدين اليهودي ربما لا يجيب الكتاب على ذلك بصورة جازمة ولكن الرأي الاقوى انها لا تريد ان تتبع احدى الإمبراطوريات المعاصرة المسيحية أو الاسلامية.
وكما كان إنشاءها لغزا على المؤرخين كذلك سقوطها ولكن الثابت ان شعبها كان منتشرا في أوروبا الشرقية وخاصة بولندا.
ثم يكمل المؤلف في تتبع تاريخ الخزر اليهود في أوروبا ليثبت وجهة نظره ان اليهود الحاليين يعودون في اصولهم الى الخزر وليس الى الأسباط الاثني عشر الذين قسمهم سيدنا موسى عليه السلام بل هي القبيلة الثالثة عشر وهم الان اليهود الفعليين في العالم وهم الذين يستوطنون فلسطين الان.
كتاب مهم جدا وبذل مؤلفه جهدا كبيرا بتتبع مصادر ومؤرخين لإثبات وجهة نظره

وشكرا

[Ayse_ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Arthur Koestler is a magnificent journalist. He can reach a wide range of documents, and give comparative reports, thanks to his proficiency in many languages.

“The country of the Khazars, a people of Turkish stock, occupied a strategic key position at the vital gateway between the Black Sea and the Caspian, where the great eastern powers of the period confronted each other. It acted as a buffer protecting Byzantium against invasions by the lusty barbarian tribesmen of the northern steppes— Bulgars, Magyars, Pechenegs, etc.— and, later, the Vikings and the Russians. ”

“The wars of the Arabs and the Khazars, which lasted more than a hundred years, though little known, have thus considerable historical importance. The Franks of Charles Martel on the field of Tours turned the tide of Arab invasion. At about the same time the threat to Europe in the east was hardly less acute.... The victorious Muslims were met and held by the forces of the Khazar kingdom.... It can... scarcely be doubted that but for the existence of the Khazars in the region north of the Caucasus, Byzantium, the bulwark of European civilization in the east, would have found itself outflanked by the Arabs, and the history of Christendom and Islam might well have been very different from what we know.

It is perhaps not surprising, given these circumstances, that in 732— after a resounding Khazar victory over the Arabs— the future Emperor Constantine V married a Khazar princess. In due time their son became the Emperor Leo IV, known as Leo the Khazar.”

“A few years later, probably AD 740, the King, his court and the military ruling class embraced the Jewish faith, and Judaism became the state religion of the Khazars.”

Excerpt From: Arthur Koestler. “Thirteenth Tribe The Khazar Empire and its Heritage.” iBooks.

Thus begins the book about Khazar Turks.. It tells about the story of an old old Turkish tribe that converted to Jewish faith, and moved in to the Slavic regions of Europe first, but than in time in to all Europe. The hypothesis is stated as; most Jews in the world today are of Khazar origin.

“ The mainstream of Jewish migrations did not flow from the Mediterranean across France and Germany to the east and then back again. The stream moved in a consistently westerly direction, from the Caucasus through the Ukraine into Poland and thence into Central Europe. When that unprecedented mass-settlement in Poland came into beng, there were simply not enough Jews around in the west to account for it; while in the east a whole nation was on the move to new frontiers.

It would of course be foolish to deny that Jews of different origin also contributed to the existing Jewish world-community. The numerical ratio of the Khazar to the Semitic and other contributions is impossible to establish. But the cumulative evidence makes one inclined to agree with the concensus of Polish historians that "in earlier times the main bulk originated from the Khazar country"; and that, accordingly, the Khazar contribution to the genetic make-up of the Jews must be substantial, and in all likelihood dominant.”

Excerpt From: Arthur Koestler. “Thirteenth Tribe The Khazar Empire and its Heritage.” iBooks.

In addition to the information on history of religious faiths, I learned very interesting facts about my ancestors (well at least a section of them); such as being ruled by a Kagan (Hakan) (a spiritual-wise leader) and Beg (a governor-leader) at the same time (names still used prominently at those European geographic areas). Why very smart people are not liked and tortured to death. The origin of the belief in Europe `that Turks are dirty and barbaric` (it actually dates back to Kkazars). Why there are still so many cultural similarities between Jewish people and us. The actual meaning of black Turks and white Turks.And many more.

Although it is a small book, it took me a while to read, going back and forth between sources for verification and history brush-up, however it was very much worth all the effort.

[Bob Newman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hold the Strudel and Pass the Baklava

Back in the 1970s, Arthur Koestler, author of "Darkness at Noon", wrote this amazing innovative book. I read it in Rarotonga in 1980---a suitably exotic place to read a serious book on a rather exotic topic. I returned to it 24 years later, though I long ago disagreed with the author's main conclusions.

In the first 121 pages, Koestler 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. As this is one of the very few instances (if not the single one) in history of such a royal move, the Khazars have attracted scholarly attention ever since, particularly, but not only, from Jews. Indeed, you can log on to a Khazar Studies website today. For another, less factual view of this interesting tribe, you can read Milorad Pavic's poetic, absurdist novel "Dictionary of the Khazars". In any case, Koestler's history makes fascinating reading, containing accounts by ancient Arab travelers, stories of Jewish crusaders in northern Iraq and descriptions of Khazar links to Vikings, Byzantium, Islam, and the Magyars. I have no professional historical knowledge of how accurate it all is, but if I were awarding stars for good writing in the field of history, I'd give five here.

HOWEVER, "The Thirteenth Tribe" is not just a history. In the remainder of the book, Koestler constructs an argument for the Eastern European Jews being the descendants of those Khazars. He asks where the Khazars all disappeared to. He says population statistics from the period 1300-1500 bear evidence that there could not have been so many Jews to be killed by the brutal Bogdan Khmielnitsky in the great massacres of 1648-49 in Ukraine unless the Khazars had become the Polish-Ukrainian Jews by then. He deals in some dubious racial theorizing, throws in a few arguments based on place names, and concludes that the "original stock" of the Jews was predominately Turkish. This theorizing turned me off back in 1980 and it still does. As an anthropologist, I have to ask: in all cases known to history, when a people converts en masse to another religion, particularly if the conversion is not by force, a large body of pre-existing language and culture always remains. Why not with the supposed Khazar-Jews? Is there an element of Turkish in Yiddish? No. Are there any kinds of nomadic or Turkish cultural behavior patterns among the Eastern European Jews? The answer is no. This would be just about impossible if Koestler's theory were correct. Secondly, to rely on statistics gleaned from medieval records is extremely dubious especially when Jews were hardly deemed members of European society and may never have been counted. Numbers of people killed or born were routinely exaggerated or ignored all over Europe. I rejected Koestler's theory 24 years ago. Since then, DNA research, unknown at the time, has shown that most Eastern European Jews have a mixed Semitic and European heritage. Despite the passage of many centuries, genetically the closest people to them remain the Palestinians, Lebanese, and Syrians. Koestler's theory remains only an interesting thought. It is worth reading for the historical part and to see how convincing incorrect theories can still be

[Jacob Sebæk · Rating 3 out of 5]

It has been a long and bumpy ride.
Even with a basic knowledge of the great migrations you are left hung out to dry when Koestler takes you through Central Europe, The Great Steppes and Asia in the pursuit of the origins of the Khazars and how they influenced their part of the world for nearly 400 years.

Looking out the window from the Koestler carriage while traveling through time and space is certainly interesting, a lot of effort and scholarship has been put into the work. The number of sources cited is immense, a thoroughbred and comprehensive set of appendixes on linguistics and explanations of why the sources are credible is included.
The talent and the works of Koestler in his lifetime is extraordinary, but also his controversial views and here we see one of these.

By and large the case is built on the fact that a loosely connected tribal empire, The Khazars, converted to Judaism for sociopolitical reasons – being hammered on from the southeast by Islam and from the west by the Roman Catholic empires, and not willing to chose either side, they picked a wildcard and went with Judaism. Thus, they became “The Lost 13th Tribe of Israel”.

The aim is, to serve a higher cause, by proving that Ashkenazi Jews are not Jewish by ancestry but by “choice” and thus should not be exposed to racially motivated antisemitism.
Depending on school of Judaism, you may become a Jew by proper conversion or by matrilineal and patrilineal descent, which leaves the question of why it would be so important to determine an alternative origin of the Ashkenazi Jews open.

However, it remains a thesis, and a thesis which is disputed wildly from all sides of the arena.
The discussion is interesting from an academic point of view but bears no significance to anything out there in the real world.

For further reading, maybe a little more unbiased, you may read the wiki articles:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazars

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazar_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_is_...

[Dr. Ahmed Elhag · Rating 5 out of 5]

****هناك كتبٌ تبحر بك في رحلة نيلية وادعة، حيث الصفحات كالموج الرقيق والزمن ينساب بلا عَجَلة، وأخرى تمضي بك على سكة قطارٍ لاهث، تتوالى محطاته حتى تفاجأَ بأنك قد بلغت النهاية. لكن "القبيلة الثالثة عشر"… شأنٌ آخر، فهي أشبه بتسلّق جبلٍ مهيب؛ مسارٌ وعرٌ يرهق الجسد ويستنزف الأنفاس، غير أنّ كل خطوة فيه تنسج متعةً خفيّة، لا تنكشف إلا حين تبلغ القمّة وتنظر خلفك فتبتسم.

**** لقائي الأول مع هذا الجبل، أعني كتاب "القبيلة الثالثة عشر ويهود اليوم" للكاتب "آرثر كويستلر"، بترجمة "أحمد نجيب هاشم". أول عهدي بعالَم هذا الكاتب مجري الأب، نمساوي الأم، يهودي الديانة، وربما أيضًا أول احتكاك لي بتلك الفئة الوعرة من الكتب التي تتطلّب من قارئها صبرًا وجهدًا، لكنها تمنحه في المقابل معرفة لا تُنسى.

**** لم يكن هذا الكتاب مجرّد سردٍ تاريخي بارد، ولا دراسة أكاديمية جامدة ، بل كان رحلة فكرية محفوفة بالدهشة، تكشف عن زاوية مغايرة تمامًا لتاريخ اليهود وأصولهم، وتفتح أمام القارئ أبوابًا من الأسئلة أكثر مما تمنحه من الإجابات.

** في البداية وجبَ توضيح أن الكتاب يطعن في الأصل السامي لليهود الحاليين و خاصة "الأشكيناز" منهم والذين يمثلون بطبيعة الحال الغالبية العظمي من يهود الكيان الحالي أو بالأحرى اليهود المهاجرين إلى فلسطين.... و لكنه لا يضرب كما يتوقع البعض في حق قيام دولة إسرائيل و هذا ما وضحه بنفسه الكاتب في صفحة (١٧) حيث صرح بأن حق قيام كيان دولة "إسرائيل" لا يستند إلى أصول اليهود العرقية و لا إلى ركائزهم الدينية و إنما يقوم بمقتضي القانون الدولي وقرار الأمم المتحدة عام (١٩٤٧).

** هو عمل تفجيري فكري فيه جوانب تاريخية، دينية، سياسية، إنسانية، نقدية متشابكة مع بعضها البعض... مما يستلزم لمراجعته أن تُحبَك بعمق وهدوء وتحليل منظم يليق بقوة هذا العمل البحثي.


****التصنيف :

-الكتاب ليس مجرد كتاب تاريخ بطريقة السرد الزمني المعهودة ، بل قنبلة فكرية تُلقى في قلب السردية الصهيونية، فتبعثر ثوابتها وتكشف ما حاولت طمسه لقرون. يطرح القبيلة الثالثة عشر فرضية جريئة صادمة قد تعيد رسم خريطة أصول يهود أوروبا.

- الكتاب يصعب حبسه في خانة واحدة فهو عمل متعدد الأوجه، يمكن تصنيفه في أكثر من إطار:

١- تاريخ جدلي:

يواجه السرديات الراسخة بفرضيات صادمة مثيرة للجدل ، ويضع القارئ أمام أسئلة لم تُطرح من قبل عن أصول يهود أوروبا.

٢- بحث في تاريخ الأفكار والهويات:

يتتبع جذور شعب الخزر وتحولاته من قوة إقليمية إلى عنصر خفي في النسيج الأوروبي، مبرزًا كيف تتشكل الهويات عبر السياسة والتحالفات في شكل بحثي أكاديمي بحت يعج بالمصادر و الاقتباسات.

٣- كتاب سياسي مقنّع بعباءة التاريخ:

إذ يوجه سهامه بين السطور نحو الأساس العرقي الذي تدّعيه الصهيونية، ويعيد صياغة القصة الرسمية لتاريخها.

٤- مسحة أنثروبولوجية:

يضيف "كويستلر" بعدًا إنسانيًا من خلال وصف الملامح الجسدية، والعادات القبلية، ونظم الحكم، والتحول الديني الجماعي لليهودية. هذه اللمسات "الأنثروبولوجية" لا تأتي كتفصيل أكاديمي بارد، بل كخيوط لونية تمنح لوحة التاريخ حياة وعمقًا.

٥- أدب الرحلة البحثية:

أسلوب المؤلف يمزج بين دقة الباحث وفضول الرحالة، فينقلك بين خرائط ومخطوطات ووثائق و رسائل كما لو كنت ترافقه في جولة عبر قرون مضت.

** رغم كثافة محتوى الكتاب وتشعب مساراته، إلا أن قوته تكمن في قدرته على مخاطبة أكثر من مستوى من القراء كما يلي :

١- القارئ العادي أو متوسط الاطلاع سيجد أمامه رواية تاريخية متماسكة، تقدم المعلومة كاملة من دون أن تلزمه بالغوص في تفاصيل المصادر.

٢- الباحث المتمكن فسيجد في الكتاب خيوطًا موثقة يمكن تتبعها، ومراجع تفتح أمامه مسارات بحثية أوسع.

٣- المؤرخ المحترف سيجد فيه مادة خام، يمكن أن يستنبط منها رؤى أعمق عن التفاعل بين الجغرافيا والسياسة، وعن كيفية صناعة الهوية عبر القرون من خلال المقارنات بين المصادر.

-بهذا يتحول الكتاب من مجرد عمل تاريخي إلى منصة فكرية مفتوحة، تمنح كل قارئ بوصلة تناسب مستواه وخلفيته المعرفية.



**** العنوان :

- العنوان نفسه "القبيلة الثالثة عشر" هو أول سهم يطلقه "كويستلر" نحو الرواية التقليدية في الموروث اليهودي، فالقبائل الأصلية لإسرائيل هي اثنتا عشرة قبيلة أو سبطاً تمثل الجذور التاريخية والدينية للشعب اليهودي... -بإضافة "قبيلة ثالثة عشر"، يلمّح المؤلف إلى أن هناك عنصرًا دخيلًا أو فرعًا غير معترف به في السردية المقدسة، وهو شعب "الخزر" الذي اعتنق اليهودية في العصور الوسطى.

- لذا العنوان يحمل إيحاءً مزدوجًا: من جهة يوحي بوجود حلقة مفقودة أو غامضة في السلسلة التاريخية، ومن جهة أخرى يثير الشك في نقاء الأصل العرقي الذي تتبناه الصهيونية. فهو عنوان صادم، ذكي، وذو قيمة دعائية، لأنه يجذب القارئ حتى قبل أن يفتح الصفحة الأولى، ويضعه مباشرة في قلب الجدل.


****اللغة و الأسلوب :

- لغة وعرة ولكن فيها نَفَس سردي وتشويقي يجعلها سلسة و مستساغة بعض الشئ للقارئ و خصوصاً مع دعمها بالهوامش .

- أسلوب "كويستلر" في هذا الكتاب يجمع بين حدة الجدل ورشاقة السرد.... فهو لا يكتب كالمؤرخ الأكاديمي المحايد، بل كمحامٍ بارع يقدم مرافعة مدعومة بالأدلة والوثائق، مع حرصه على إبقاء القارئ في حالة ترقب دائم. يستخدم لغة تتراوح بين الدقة العلمية الدسمة والإيقاع الأدبي السلس ، فيستطيع أن ينسج من الأسماء الجغرافية الجافة مشاهد حية، ومن الجداول التاريخية سردًا مثيرًا. هذا المزج بين الصرامة البحثية والنَفَس القصصي يجعل الكتاب أقرب إلى رحلة فكرية منه إلى سرد تاريخي تقليدي.


****أهم نقاط القوة:

١- شجاعة الطرح:

-"كويستلر" لم يكتفِ بمراجعة التاريخ، بل تحدّى رواية متجذرة في الخطاب الصهيوني عن الأصل السامي لهم ، وفتح بابًا للنقاش في موضوع يراه كثيرون في العالم “منطقة محرّمة”.

٢-الربط بين التاريخ والسياسة:

-الكتاب ينجح في إظهار كيف يمكن لأحداث في العصور الوسطى أن تلقي بظلالها على قضايا معاصرة، خصوصًا في الشرق الأوسط وأوروبا.

٣- تنوع المصادر:

-اعتمد على مزيج هائل من الوثائق التاريخية، والمراجع الأكاديمية، والشهادات الجغرافية، مما يعزز مصداقية السرد.

٤- المسحة الأنثروبولوجية

إضافة البعد الإنساني من خلال وصف العادات، والتحولات الاجتماعية، والنظم القبلية، مما يجعل التاريخ أكثر واقعية وأقرب للفهم.

٥- الأسلوب الجذاب

-المزج بين دقة البحث وسلاسة السرد جعل القراءة ممتعة في أغلب الفصول حتى في بعض الفصول المليئة بالتفاصيل.

٦- تناسُب المحتوى مع مختلف فئات القراء

-من القارئ العادي الذي يبحث عن قصة تاريخية متماسكة، إلى الباحث المتعمق الذي يريد الغوص في المراجع، وحتى المؤرخ الذي يمكنه استنباط رؤى أعمق.


**** أهم نقاط الضعف:

١- الاعتماد على الاستنتاج أكثر من الدليل القاطع

رغم أن الفرضية التي يطرحها كويستلر مثيرة، إلا أن بعض الروابط — مثل نسبة معظم يهود أوروبا المعاصرين إلى الخزر — لا تستند إلى أدلة حاسمة و لعل صعوبة الحسم من خلال تلك المصادر هو السبب.

٢- الانتقائية في السرد

ركّز المؤلف على الجوانب السياسية والعسكرية لتاريخ الخزر، لكنه مرّ سريعًا على الأبعاد الثقافية والدينية وتفاعلاتهم مع الشعوب المجاورة، مما جعل الصورة التاريخية أقل اكتمالًا.

٣- غياب التحليل العميق لبعض المصادر

بعض المصادر التي اعتمد الكاتب عليها لا يمكن البناء عليها بمفردها

مثال: اعتمد "كويستلر" بكثافة على رسالة "ابن فضلان" في وصف الخزر،دون النظر إلى خلفية و ايديولوجية المصدر وقد أشار المؤلف نفسه لاحتمالية خضوعه لـ«الهوى». كان من الأجدر تفكيك هذه الشهادة ومقارنتها بمصادر أخرى.

أيضاً رسالة "حسداي بن شبروط" إلى الملك الخزري "يوسف" — تعامل معها "كويستلر" كمصدر وصفي مباشر، رغم كونها وثيقة دبلوماسية ذات أهداف سياسية واضحة، مما يتطلب قراءة نقدية تكشف عن دوافعها وخلفياتها.

٤- النبرة الجدلية التي تميل للتحيز:

رغم أنني لا أراها نقطة ضعف فالحدة في مهاجمة الرواية الصهيونية — رغم كونها عنصر جذب — قد تجعل بعض القراء يشككون في حياد المؤلف، ويعتبرون العمل أقرب إلى المرافعة السياسية منه إلى البحث التاريخي البحت.

٥- أخطاء جانبية مثيرة للجدل :

- يورد المؤلف أحيانًا عبارات خارجة عن سياق الموضوع أو مبنية على تعميمات مثيرة للجدل، مثل ملاحظته في سياق الحديث عن الأتراك أن الزنا كان محرّمًا لديهم، لكنه أضاف أن "اللواط كان منتشرًا بين العرب بينما هو مجرّم عند الأتراك"، وهي جملة تحمل حكمًا تعميميًا مثيرًا للجدل ولا يضيف قيمة حقيقية للتحليل التاريخي بالإضافة إلى أنه خطأ بالطبع .

و أيضًا صفحة (١١٩) يورد الكاتب ما نصه "أن فالديمير كان فاسقاً مثل سليمان " و هو ما يوضح فساد عقيدة اليهود و توراتهم المحرفة.

٦- أخطاء معلوماتية أو التباس في الحقائق:

مثال واضح في صفحة (١٦١)، حيث كتب المؤلف عن "استعداد إبراهيم عليه السلام التضحية بابنه إسحاق عليه السلام (إسماعيل عليه السلام)" وكأنهما شخص واحد، بينما هما ابنان مختلفان في الرواية الدينية، مما يعكس التباسًا أو خطأً في الصياغة التاريخية أو ربما في الترجمة .


**** نظرة عامة على الكتاب:

-يحوي "القبيلة الثالثة عشرة" بين دفتيه ثلاثة فروع رئيسية، ينبثق من كل منها عدد من الفروع الفرعية، على النحو التالي:

أولاً: المقدمة:

-يعرض المؤلف في هذا القسم خلفية فرضيته الأساسية، والتي تقوم على ركيزتين:

١- أن غالبية يهود أوروبا ليسوا من نسل بني إسرائيل القدماء، بل من شعب الخزر الذي اعتنق اليهودية في العصور الوسطى.

٢- أن مملكة "الخزر" كانت أشبه برمانة ميزان العالم في عصرها، إذ شكّلت الحاجز الجغرافي والسياسي الذي أوقف التمدد العربي من جهة، وقيّد الهيمنة البيزنطية من جهة أخرى.

- راقني ما أورده الدكتور "حسين فوزي النجار" حين قال: "إذا كان بنو إسرائيل هم شعب الله المختار، فهذا يعود لاختيارهم للرسالات السماوية، وليس تمييزًا لهم عن باقي البشر، وقد انتفت عنهم تلك الصفة بعد نزول رسالة الإسلام إلى العالمين."

- أما المترجم فقد أفاض في عرض المصادر والمراجع وأصحابها، سواء العربية — مثل رسالة "ابن فضلان"، وأعمال "ابن حوقل"، و"المسعودي" — أو البيزنطية مثل مؤلفات المؤرخ "قنسطنطين السابع"، أو الروسية كـ"الحولية الروسية"، فضلًا عن الرسائل "الخزرية"، بالإضافة إلى المصادر الحديثة، وعلى رأسها كتابات "دوجلاس دانلوب".

ثانياً :قيام دولة الخزر و سقوطها :

- يتناول المؤلف في حوالي (١١٠) صفحة نشأة الخزر من قبائل تركية الأصل استقرت في منطقة إستراتيجية بين البحر الأسود وبحر قزوين، حتى تحولت إلى قوة إقليمية كبرى.

-برزت دولتهم ككيان سياسي قوي في القرن السابع الميلادي قامَ على أثر سقوط امبراطورية "الهون" ، واستطاعت بحكم موقعها الجغرافي أن تتحكم في طرق التجارة بين الشرق والغرب، وأن توازن بين القوى العظمى آنذاك؛ فكانت الحاجز أمام التوسع العربي الإسلامي في شمال القوقاز، وفي الوقت نفسه تحدّ من النفوذ البيزنطي في السهوب الأوراسية.

- تحدث الكاتب عن بعض العادات الخزرية الأقرب للأسطورية دون التحقق منها مثل عادة (الخنق) حيث أنه عند تنصيب الخاقان يقوم شعبه بلف حبل حول عنقه حتي يكاد يختنق و يُسأَل كم ينتوي الحكم من السنوات.!!! فإذا تخطى الرقم المحدد له قاموا بشنقه فعلاً.

- لحظة التحول المفصلية فكانت اعتناق النخبة الحاكمة — وعلى رأسهم الملك "بولان" — اليهودية، وهو قرار سياسي وديني معًا، منح الخزر هوية مميزة وسط محيط إسلامي ومسيحي.

- أوضحَ الكاتب وجود نظريتين في موضوع اعتناق الخزر اليهودية كما يلي :

١- على لسان "الدمشقي "هو بعد اضطهاد الإمبراطور البيزنطي لليهود هاجروا في جماعات إلى بلاد الخزر و هناك عرضوا عليهم الديانة فاعتنقوها.

٢- الرواية الثانية على لسان "البكري " وهي اعتناق الملك الخزري المسيحية أول الأمر ثم أدرك بهتانها فأشاروا عليه بعمل مناظرة بين ممثلي الديانات السماوية الثلاثة و انتهت مع اختلاف التفاصيل باقتناعه باليهودية.


- بدأ الضعف يدب في أوصال الدولة بفعل الضغوط العسكرية من جماعات الفايكنج "الروس" الصاعدة شمالًا من خلال الدخول بالسفن بشكل تجاري ثم التحول إلى الشكل العسكري ، وضربات السلاجقة، إضافة إلى الصراعات الداخلية، حتى سقطت الدولة نهائيًا في القرن العاشر الميلادي على يد حفيد "جنكيز خان "، تاركة إرثًا غامضًا ومثيرًا للجدل في التاريخ.

-فترة السقوط تنقسم إلى قسمين :

١- الاضمحلال

وهي تبدأ من سقوط كييف عام ٨٦٢ و تنتهي احتلال العاصمة "اتل " عام ٩٦٥.

٢- السقوط بسبب الحملات الصليبية و المغول إلى جانب ضعفهم في آخر قرنين من الزمان.


ثالثاً :التراث:

-يخصص المؤلف هذا القسم لتتبع ما يسميه بـ"الإرث الخزري" في أوروبا الشرقية، محاولًا ربط بقايا شعب الخزر باليهود "الأشكناز" في العصور اللاحقة. يوضح كيف أن اعتناق الخزر لليهودية جعلهم نواة لمجتمعات يهودية مزدهرة في مناطق الهجرة التالية، خاصة في أوكرانيا وبولندا وليتوانيا.

-يتناول المؤلف التأثيرات اللغوية والثقافية، مثل ارتباط اللغة "اليديشية" بالمفردات التركية والسلافية، ويعرض التحولات الديموغرافية التي أسهمت في تشكيل الشخصية اليهودية الأوروبية. كما يناقش الجدل الأكاديمي حول مدى صحة هذه الروابط، مشيرًا إلى غياب إجماع قاطع، لكنه يرى أن حجم التشابه التاريخي واللغوي يجعلها فرضية جديرة بالبحث.

- يظهر البعد "الأنثروبولوجي" بوضوح في فصل "السلالة والأسطورة"، حيث يطعن المؤلف في فكرة الأصل الموحد لليهود، مستندًا إلى الفروق في الملامح واللغة والثقافة، موضحًا أنهم جماعات جاءت من شتات دول أوروبا الشرقية ومن بقايا الخزر


****إجمالاً كتاب دسم و عمل فكري مكثف، يفيض بالمعرفة ويعتمد على طيف واسع من المصادر التاريخية والجغرافية والأدبية، مما يمنحه ثقلًا مرجعيًا يجعله حاضرًا في مكتبة كل مهتم بتاريخ الشعوب والديانات. دسمه المعرفي يفرض على القارئ يقظة ذهنية، فهو لا يقدّم المعلومات فحسب، بل يضعها في سياق جدلي يختبر المسلّمات ويستفز الفكر. تنوع مراجع المؤلف، ما بين النصوص البيزنطية والرحلات العربية والمخطوطات اليهودية، يثري العمل ويجعله أشبه بورشة بحثية مفتوحة، قابلة لأن يستفيد منها القارئ العادي، والباحث المتمرس، والمؤرخ المحترف على حد سواء. إنه كتاب مرجع، لكنه أيضًا دعوة لإعادة النظر في السرديات الكبرى التي طالما اعتُبرت ثابتة.




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[Cwn_annwn_13 · Rating 5 out of 5]

When this book came out it caused a big controversy although I'm not quite sure how anybody could rationally critique what Koestler put forth here. I don't think any sane human being that knows how to read could say that the good bulk of the European/Eastern European Jews are descended from the biblical Israelites. Koestler documents how these European Jews came out the Khazar tribe of southeast Russia/Khazakistan who even back then were a mixed race people mainly of Turko-Armenian type racial stock with some Asian, that later mixed with other various peoples. It really strikes me as odd when Jews like to refer to themselves as a race, which is a card they like to play when its to thier advantage, when there are Jews from literally every race on the planet. I mean you have the stereotypical Ashkenazi type Jew, the middle eastern/Sephardic type of Semitic Jew, but you also have Asian Jews, the African Jews who are an Ethiopian/Somolian racial type, many of the Jews with ancestry that came out of of Germany are indistingguishable from blonde haired blue eyed nothern Europeans (the Jewess actress Alicia Silverstone or the actor Kirk Douglas are good examples), there was even some South American Indian tribe that called themselves Jews that were allowed to immigrate to Israel a few ago. So my point being, to call the Jews a race, or to say that there is any chance that any but a tiny percentage of them have even the slighest chance that they have some lineage with the Jews of the old Testament is ludicrous. If they want to call themselves the chosen of the Yahweh demon thats their own business I suppose but when fables and historical falsehoods are used as justifications for global political maneuverings that more often than not have seriously negative ramifications for the majority of the people on this planet then I begin to have a problem with it.

Koestler also documents the whole process of conversion of the Khazars to Judaism, which from my research seems mainly to have been a political/economic move because of the Khazars land being right in the middle of a major trade route between the middle east and Europe. Because there was often crusades and warfare between the Muslims in the middle east and the Christians to the north the Khazars chose a religion that would allow them to play both sides of the card and not have to choose sides when problems arose. You also get a lot of interesting general history of the area that the Khazars came out of using various sources, in particular Ibn Fadlan who is best known for his writings on the Viking Rus that were in that area during the time he was. Overall this is one of the better books you can read if you are studying Ashkenazi Jews.

[J Bel · Rating 2 out of 5]

At the time it was written, the thesis of The Thirteenth Tribe was justified by the facts then available. The broad conclusions offered were never justified by the very small amount of real data presented. Since the publication of The Thirteenth Tribe, additional scholarship from anthropologists, historians, and geneticists have shown the conclusions of the author to be invalid.

The author’s thesis, that modern Eastern European Jews, the Ashkenazim, are largely descended from the Khazar people is refuted by three main arguments; one genetic, one linguistic, one cultural. A recent study of the human genome has shown the Eastern European Jews are descended from Middle-eastern ancestors and they are closely related to the Arab peoples of the Eastern Mediterranean region and the Jews of Yemen. Linguistically, the traditional secular language of Eastern European Jews is Yiddish which is a language derived from medieval German, Slavic (in its many early forms), Aramaic and Hebrew. The linguistic connection to the language family of the Khazars is extremely limited and less than the connection to other Eastern European languages. Culturally, Eastern European Jews are nearly devoid of Khazar cultural artifacts not only in language, but in costume, food, art, and cultural practices.

It should be noted that there are historically valid explanations for the presence of the Jews in Eastern Europe. For example, the depredations of the Crusaders as they marched to attack Jerusalem drove many Jews to the east. Likewise, the encouragement by the early Polish Kings for Jews to enter their kingdom after 1100AD is well documented. See especially the reigns of King Boleslaus III (1102–1139) and of King Casimir III (also called Casimir the Great) (1303–1370) as an introduction to this aspect of Eastern European history.

That Khazar Kingdom existed is an established fact. That a portion of the ruling class of that Kingdom converted to Judaism is very likely true. That there were Jews in the geographic area of Khazria is true. There were Jewish communities in Crimea that predate Khazaria. That is as far as the known facts can take one. The proof for mass conversion of the Khazar people to Judaism and their subsequent mass migration to the Polish Empire and then into the area of the Russian Empire after the Polish partitions of the 18th century lacks anything approaching conclusive evidence. In fact there is no evidence.

Were some Jews of Khazar origins present in the mix of the Jews of Eastern Europe? Very possibly but no more than it is likely that some Eastern European Jews have some Slavic or Hungarian ancestors or an ancestor from any number of other ethnic groups including the Mongols. This would be true for Jews as it is for any other ethnic group. Consider for a moment the history of European and Central Asian migration and warfare in the last 5,000 years. Can anyone claim to be of “pure blood” and why would that matter in any case?

The history of Khazaria is certainly going to attract the interest of some people as it is little known as is the history of this geographic area in general. The Scythian, Magyar, Saltovo, Bulgar, and Pecheneg
peoples also inhabited this area and their histories in this area are also relatively unknown. The late antiquity and early medieval periods are generally unknown to most people even when considering the geographic areas typically studied in high school i.e. Britain and France. Even for most of us who are insatiably curious about history, knowledge of the history of the Caspian basin in this historical epoch is rare.

Finally, the conversion of some Khazars to Judaism is an interesting and unusual historical event but its relevance to ongoing political controversies is nil. Unfortunately, some material from the book has been and continues to be used by anti-Semites and anti-Israel groups and individuals to further their arguments. Although interesting at the time it was written, subsequent research has disproved the thesis of the book. It is now little more than an invalid relic used by anti-Semites who claim that the presence of Khazar genes in modern Jews invalidates the Jewish claim to Israel as their historic homeland.

[Jan-Maat]

Sometimes you can find odd things in libraries, sometimes you wonder how some books even got published in the first place to get into those libraries. Well known controversialist and dead person Arthur Koester wrote this as a non-fiction account of the conversion of the Khazars to Judaism, which one of the many curious events which have occurred in history. He argued that these converts became the ancestors of East European Jews after the end of the Khazar hegemony on the steppe to the North of the Caspian and Black Seas. At the time of writing it was too early for the kinds of genetic analysis available today although how would you establish what a Khazar genetic heritage would look like when themselves very obscure, I don't know if there are many if any unambiguously Khazar gravesand archaeological evidence was not utilised in this book. On one level it is a fairly nice idea, the line from the Khazar steppe to the historical Pale from Ukraine to Poland and Lithuania is a far shorter one than the one from the eastern Mediterranean, On another we know very little about the Khazars - did they all become Jewish or just their chiefs or their Khan - and what did it mean to be a Jewish Khazar?

On a more significant level for readersthis book is far less interesting, clever or source aware than The Dictionary of the Khazars in either its male or female editions

[Mahdi Lotfi · Rating 3 out of 5]

کتاب "قبیله سیزدهم" (The Thirteenth Tribe) یا "خزران" (چاپ 1976) از معروفترین آثار کلستر است.خزران یا خزرها قومی ساکن در شمال و شمال غرب دریای خزر بودند. حوالی سال 740 میلادی آنها در برابر پیشروی لشکریان اسلام ایستادگی کردند و آنگاه که بسیاری از همنژادان ترکشان به اسلام گرویدند، خزران به دین یهود روی آوردند و کوشیدند به عنوان نیروی سومی در میان اسلام و مسیحت، استقبال خود را در رویارویی با خلافت بغداد از یکسو و با امپراتوری قسطنیه از سوی دیگر حفظ کنند.
دولت یهودی خزر تا حدود 500 سال بعد با افت و خیز موجودیت خود را حفظ کرد. پس از آنکه روس ها با امپراتوری بیزانس کنار آمدند و به مسیحیت گرویدند با پشتیبانی قسطنیه بر متصرفات خزران تاختند و دولت خزر در سراشیبی تلاشی قرار گرفت. یهودیان خزری در اثر ضربات اقوام مهاجم به سوی اوکراین و مجارستان و لهستان رانده می شدند تا سرانجام طوفان عظیم ایلغار تاتار برخاست و آخرین رمق زندگانی خزران در زیر ستم ستوران مغول به سرآمد

[Şahika · Rating 4 out of 5]

Avrupa Yahudilerinin İbrahim'in değil 740 yılında siyasi sebeplerle (Müslüman ya da Hristiyan devletlerin nüfuzuna girmemek için) Yahudilik dinini seçen Türk Hazar Devleti'nin soyundan geldiğine dair bir iddia var. Koestler bu iddiayı inandırıcı sayılabilecek kaynaklara ve kişilere dayandırarak savunmuş.

[Ahmed · Rating 4 out of 5]

وقع الكتاب في يدي صدفة أثناء البحث عن كتاب آخر
قرأت نبذته لى الغلاف الخلفي فقررت شراؤه فورا
يثبت بالأدلة التاريخية القاطعة أن اليهود الحاليين ليسوا من سلالة سيدنا إبراهيم ولا سيدنا إسحق
بل هم ينحدرون من مملكة الخزر التى بزغت قديما (مكان أوكرانيا وشبه جزيرة القرم حاليا)
وكيف تحولت هذة المملكة من وثنية ليهودية
(وهو ما تعجبت له أشد العجب فمن المعروف أن اليهود لا يدعون أحد لدينهم)
لكن في وقتها كان لأغراض سياسية بحتة
ثم يدحض علم الأنثروبولوجي حقيقة نقاء العنصر اليهودي المزعوم
كما أثبته عالمنا الجليل الدكتور جمال حمدان في كتابه اليهود أنثروبولوجيًا

[Marley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this over 20 years ago and re-discovered it my bookcase recently. It was well-worth a second read. A controversial book when it was published it is now backed-up with new scholarship. Koestler and new scholars make a very credible argument that a good part of European Jewry is in fact, Khazar-based. It must throw anti-Semites into a dizzy

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've generally enjoyed reading Koestler. He inhabited the fringes, whether it be in terms of his communism (Darkness at Noon etc.), his critique of scientific (Roots of Coincidence) or evolutionary orthodoxy (Midwife Toad), and I find it challenging to step beyond my habitual beliefs. Here, in his treatment of the Khazars, he challenges what I thought I knew about extra-biblical Judaism.

[كِـنزة بـاء سيـن · Rating 2 out of 5]

اليهود لا ينتمون لفلسطين ... إنما لشعب الخزر
هذا هو الكتاب باختصار

[Sincerae Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is obscure history and very much a must read in these times and in the upcoming time period. So much is kept hidden from the public on purpose.

[Ferda Nihat Koksoy · Rating 4 out of 5]

13.KABİLE (YAHUDİ HAZAR TÜRKLERİ)
***Kendisi Budapeşte Yahudisi olan ünlü düşünür Arthur Koestler’in bu araştırması üzerindeki tartışmalar ve DNA çalışmaları halen sürmektedir.

-Dinyeper nehri ile Hazar Gölü arasında yaşayan çok sayıda Türk kabilesi, HAZAR İMPARATORLUĞU (HAZARYA) etkisinde olup 740 yılında, etraflarındaki İslam (Emevi) ve Hıristiyan (Bizans) baskılarına karşı daha az asimile edici olan YAHUDİLİĞİ seçmiştir. Bunların günümüze uzanan orijinal kimlikli olanları ÇUVAŞ TÜRKÇESİ ile konuşan KARAİT TÜRKLERİDİR. Hazar İmparatorluğunun bu bölgedeki egemenliği 400 YIL, varlığı ise 500 YIL sürmüştür. Başkentleri İDİL (İtil), bugün baraj suları altındadır (kelime anlamıyla: Hazar(Khazar)= GEZER =KAZAN= Ketzer=HUSSER).

-Bizansın Rus-Vikinglerle anlaşmasına kadar, Asya kabilelerinin batıya, İslamın ise Kafkaslar ve Batıya gidişleri, Hazarlar tarafından durdurulmuştur. 11.yy. başında Hazarların Bizans-Kiev arası ticaretten vergi almış olması, imparatorluğun gücünü gösterecek niteliktedir.

-Hazarlar, kentler kurmuş, sanat ve moda geliştirmiş, zenginleşmiş ve kozmopolitleşmiştir. Hıristiyan ve İslam baskısından kaçan herkes için de sığınak olmuşlardır.

-Önce Rus-Vikinglerin, sonra (13.yy.da) Moğolların baskısı ile zayıflayan Hazarlar, batıya doğru göç etmişlerdir. Boşalttıkları yerlere, Oğuz boyları yerleşmiştir. Tarihte bilinen son HAZARYA kelimesi kaydı, 1245 yılına aittir.

-Selçukluların kurucusu Selçuk Bey’in babası, bir Hazar komutanıdır.

-Yahudi efsanelerinde Hazarların ismi KIZIL YAHUDİLER KRALLIĞI şeklinde geçmektedir.

-Batıya göç eden Hazarlar özellikle Polonya’ya yerleşmiş ve AŞKENAZİLERİN ÖNCÜLÜ olmuşlardır. 1600’lerde Polonya’daki sayıları 500.000 civarındadır.

-Polonya’daki egemen kültür olan Cermen (Alman) kültürünün etkisiyle dönüşen dilleri YİDDİŞ dilini doğurmuştur. Burada SHTETL isimli ticaret kasabaları oluşturmuşlardır. Araba yapımı, nakliye, hancılık ve kürk ticareti gibi, Sefarad Yahudilerinde hiç görülmeyen, Hazarlara özgü geleneksel işleri yapmışlardır.

-Bugün Dünya üzerinde var olan Yahudilerin %90’ı Aşkenazi, %10’u ise Sefarad kökenlidir.

[Hamza · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. I'm still not entirely convinced by the "Khazarian Hypothesis", but Mr. Koestler cites all of the relevant sources to beef up his argument. It should be noted that Mr. Koestler was actually a Zionist, and was not attempting to use this hypothesis to claim that Ashkenazi Jews didn't deserve Israel. On the contrary, this small appendix at the very end of the book is what made me almost down-rate the book due to my own staunch anti-Zionist worldview. For while I do agree that being descendants of converts instead of original Jews from Ancient Palestine doesn't bar Israelis from deserving the land, I do believe their violent theft of Palestinian land, freedom, and lives bars them from deserving it. That aside, Mr. Koestler's enumeration of a much older theory that Khazar converts formed some of the bulk of European Jewry is very interesting, if nothing else.

The real treat for me is the history of other different cultures that existed at the time of the Khazars, including the Magyars (Hungarians), Kievan Rus people, the Byzantine Empire, and the Islamic Caliphate. Their interactions with one another, as well as the role of both ethnicity and religion, are the real meat of the book. Even if you have no desire to read about the Khazarian Hypothesis as an origin of Ashkenazi Jews, this is a huge draw for any history buff.

All in all, it is an extremely readable book that I believe everyone should check out. Forget about the misguided attempts by anti-Semites to malign Ashkenazi Jews due to their not being "Palestinian" enough, and enjoy this book for what it is.

[Don Rea · Rating 4 out of 5]

I happened across this on a library shelf just a few months after I read The Dictionary Of the Khazars. Until that moment I had assumed that the whole basic story of Pavic's novel, the conscious adoption of Judasim by the Khazar Empire after a bake-off among Judaism, Chrisitanity and Islam, and the Khazars' subsequent complete fade from history, was made up. I was struck quite dumb for several minutes when I saw Koestler's book in the history section.

Most of the book is a competent but ordinary history, outlining the rise and fall of the Khazars' empire (including the bake-off). I found it interesting, but then I'm the type that reads scholarly history for fun. The real pay off came in the last part of the book, where Koestler spins a theory that irresistibly reminds me of the theory that birds are dinosaurs. Citing evidence that is by turns reasonable and ridiculous, he speculates that the Khazars did not fade away; rather, as their power faded, they were pushed into the Balkans and Poland, and are with us today as the Ashkenazim.

In any case, if you've read or plan to read The Dictionary Of the Khazars this is a great companion book. If you're interested in the the European middle ages, this will fill in some gaps in your education if it was anything like mine.

[Mario Brooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

I understand the controversy behind this book but if you actually read it how can one level a intelligent critique against the author? It's packed to the brim with references and with the advances in DNA technology now proving the current occupiers of the holy land are not bloodline descendants of the ancient israelites, coupled with Israeli Professor Shlomo Sand's books among others, it's irrefutable.

[zed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating.

[Vichta · Rating 4 out of 5]

W Internecie w ostatnich latach krąży wiele historii o Chazarii, niektóre bardzo szokujące. Sięgnęłam więc po ten tytuł, aby dowiedzieć się więcej. Na początku musiałam zaakceptować fakt, że książka nie ukazała się oficjalnie w języku polskim. Treści zawarte w niej, niestety, nie pozwoliłyby mi na zapoznanie się z nimi po angielsku, za cienka na to jestem. Finalnie w moje ręce trafiło dość nieudolne, amatorskie tłumaczenie w postaci ebooka. Nie pytajcie skąd... ;)

Co wynika z lektury? Chazaria istniała naprawdę i potwierdza to wiele źródeł. Znajdowała się na północ od Kaukazu aż po rzekę Wołgę i od Morza Czarnego do Kaspijskiego. Chazarzy to lud pochodzenia tureckiego. Biblia wywodzi ich rodowód od najmłodszego syna Noego, Jafeta. Nie są więc semitami. Jej sąsiedzi byli muzułmanami i chrześcijanami. Chazarzy nie mieli jednolitej państwowej religii. Kiedy pierwotne zlepki plemienne zaczęły kształtować się w państwa, Chazarzy podjęli niezrozumiałą przez ościennych władców decyzję o przyjęciu judaizmu.
Po jakimś czasie na zachodnich rubieżach kraju zaczęła rosnąć w siłę kolonia wikingów, przybyłych na tereny dzisiejszej Rosji i Ukrainy. Stopniowo Chazaria przestała istnieć, a jej mieszkańcy rozproszyli się po świecie, głównie jednak przybyli na tereny północno-środkowej Europy.

To jeden w wątków książki. Drugim są dociekania autora, jak ilościowo wyglądała i nadal wygląda obecność nowych żydów w Europie. Dochodzi do wniosku, że są to głównie żydzi aszkenazyjscy, czyli właśnie dawni Chazarzy, a nie żydzi sefardyjscy, czyli ci "prawdziwsi", przybyli przez Hiszpanię.

Kolejno autor skupia się na pytaniu, czy współcześni żydzi są narodem. Analizuje rożne czynniki, np. wygląd (rysy, kolor oczy, włosów), grupy krwi itp, aby dojść do wniosku, że... nie ma czegoś takiego, jak naród żydowski. Chazarzy (sefardyjczycy również) przez wieki mieszali się z innymi narodami (dobrowolnie lub siłą), dlatego ich przedstawiciele, pochodzący z różnych regionów mają skrajnie odmienny wygląd. Są czarni, żółci, ale też blondyni z niebieskimi oczami. Mit o narodzie został więc obalony.

Generalnie czytało mi się kiepsko. Przede wszystkim ze względu na tłumaczenie. Ale też ilość nazw geograficznych, nazw plemion, władców, kronikarzy, itp naprawdę nie ułatwiało sprawy. Trzecim czynnikiem jest skrupulatność autora do udokumentowania źródeł, na podstawie których wysnuł swoje wnioski. Niemniej jednak warto zapoznać się z treścią tego opracowania. Szczegółów nie da się zapamiętać, ale lektura daje ogólne pojęcie o temacie.

[Sonali V · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ever since reading The Dictionary of the Khazars, I had been intrigued about these people. I admire Koestler s writing having read 4 of his books previously. This book certainly did not disappoint. It is very well presented. All the details are given, the historians, the old writings that he has consulted everything is mentioned and the facts are presented chronologically. The writing flows easily. Whether we agree with his conclusion or not depends on later, more modern findings. What was amusing is that immigrants have received the same treatment in the countries they were invited to /migrated to, since ancient times, it seems. It is still going on.

[Ali · Rating 3 out of 5]

Koestler believed that most of now Jews are rooted from an old land north-west of Caspean Sea called Khazar. Because of Khazar Empire, Caspean Sea is still called "Darya-ye Khazar" (Khazar Sea) in Persian.
تا آنجا که می دانم کستلر دو کتاب یکی به نام “قبیله ی سیزدهم" و دیگری به نام امپراطوری خزران دارد. در سال های اخیر دو کتاب، یکی با نام "قبیله ی سیزدهم، امپراتوری خزران و میراث آن" با ترجمه ی جمشید ستاری(1361) و کتاب دیگری با نام “خزران" با ترجمه ی محمدعلی موحد(1361) منتشر شده است. من البته هیچ کدام را ندیده ام اما معرفی و نقد آنها را در مجلات فارسی خوانده ام. از همین رو تردید دارم کدام ترجمه ی کدام کتاب کستلر است. خزران، تحقیقی ست قابل اعتماد در مورد گذشته ی تاریخی یهودیان و امپراطوری مشهورشان که در اطراف دریای خزر فعلی تا جنوب اروپا و شبه جزیره ی بالکان ادامه داشته که در قرون اولیه ی اسلام، در مقابل سپاه خلفا مقاومت های سختی نشان داده و بارها اعراب را شکست داده است، تا بالاخره در دوران هارون الرشید، از سپاه خلیفه شکست خورده است. با این همه تا قرن دوازدهم میلادی که روس ها، خزران را بکلی تار و مار کرده اند، هم چنان در این منطقه ی وسیع می زیسته اند. مهاجرت آنان به نواحی اوکراین، لهستان و… سبب شده تا همین امروز هم اقلیت کلیمی در کشورهای منطقه، جمعیت بزرگی را تشکیل بدهند. بخشی از اینان نیز در طول سالیان از قرن دوازدهم به بعد و حتی در طول دو جنگ اول و دوم جهانی به ایران پناه آوردند. جالب توجه این که در بخش پادشاهی "لهراسب" در شاهنامه، هنگامی که گشتاسب برای بار دوم از نزد پدرش لهراسب، به قهر می رود، و به روم پناه می آورد، از سرزمین "خزران" و سرکرده ی آنها "الیاس" نام برده می شود که سال ها برای قیصر روم دردسر آفرین بوده اند. گشتاسب که با کتایون دختر قیصر ازدواج کرده و به خدمت قیصر درآمده، با سپاه روم به جنگ الیاس می رود و این دشمن دیرین و مزاحم قیصر روم را از میان بر می دارد. مشخصات این سرزمین در اطراف خزر، و حتی نام پادشاه آن الیاس، به آنچه کستلر در "خزران" تعریف کرده، بسیار نزدیک است.

[Jeffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

When it comes to controversial books, it seems to me there’s an inverse relationship between pages read and opinions held. That is, the more people that hold strong opinions about a controversial book, the smaller the share of people that have actually read it. In Israel, where books and the controversies surrounding them make the headlines far more often than in the United States, the Education Ministry recently decided to publicly announce that a certain controversial book – controversial because it depicted a romantic relationship between an Arab and a Jew – would not be included among the books suggested for classroom use across the country. No matter that hundreds of books by Israeli authors are published every year and not included on the list, a firestorm of outrage and counter-outrage ensued. Dorit Rabinyan, the book’s author, without a doubt profited from the very public debate. But had every Israeli who took umbrage at the book, or the political decision not to recommend it for curricular inclusion, actually purchased a copy and read it, Rabinyan surely would have been one of Israel’s top-selling authors ever!

Arthur Koestler’s book The Thirteenth Tribe aroused similar passions when it was published 40 years ago. And like Rabinyan’s book, I suspect it was as much unread as it was fervently debated. More interestingly, perhaps, is that Koestler’s Khazar theory continues to be a subject of debate four decades later. And for a book which is nominally about an obscure Turkic tribe in an out-of-the-way part of the world during an under-examined period of history (the Islamic golden age), that’s no small accomplishment. Now it should be stated that Koestler wasn’t the first or the last to advance most of the claims he makes in the book; scholars had debated the historical role of the Khazars since the first half of the 19th century, but what Koestler did, impressively, was to popularize the debate to an audience that would have never thought of approaching it in its more cossetted scholastic form. Whether or not this popularization of the debate was a good thing—for scholarship, for Jews, for Israelis, for Palestinians, for European politics—well that remains in my mind an open question.

To suggest such a plenitude of stakeholders is to reveal The Thirteenth Tribe for what it is, a book with political implications that potentially, though not automatically, reach far beyond the narrow focus of medieval history. Because of my suspicion that it is much discussed and little read, I want to thoroughly summarize the structure of the argument before I discuss Koestler’s more controversial claims. In fact, the most politically fraught of them are almost all concentrated in the second part of the book. The first part is divided into a rather straightforward sequence of four chronologically arranged chapters: Rise, Conversion, Decline, and Fall. The story of the Khazars, like that of many formerly nomadic peoples, is not an easy one to tell given the paucity of written materials that have survived into our own age. Furthermore, most of those that have are from decidedly hostile sources, the same settled people whose civilizations were, if not imperiled by these Eurasian warriors, at least impositioned by them.

What we do know with some degree of certainty is that the Khazars, like the Huns, Alans, Avars, Bulgars, Magyars, Bashkirs, Uigurs, and any number of other nomadic steppe tribes, to quote the literary-minded Koestler, “passed through the turnstiles of those migratory playgrounds” of Central Asia where they eventually bumped into the settled civilizations of the West. The collapse of the Hunnic Empire seems to have left a power vacuum that the Khazars moved to fill sometime around the turn of the 7th century. Their language, which survived into the early modern era in a few small Eastern European settlements, was a Turkic one. By 627, the Khazars were powerful enough that the Eastern Roman emperor allied with them in his fight against the Persian Empire. The Khazars were said to have supplied 40,000 warriors on horseback. By the same century’s mid-point, Arabian armies had defeated the Persians and sought to advance northward across the Caucus mountains. It was there in a series of battles with the Khazars that the latter were able to halt the Arab advance north and in the process consolidate the heartland of their own national territory, land stretching from the Caucasus in the south, the Black Sea in the west, and the Caspian Sea in the east to the near confluence of the rivers Don and Volga in the north.

Koestler makes the argument, though the evidence to support it seems rather thin, that the Khazars then built and enjoyed a more prosperous settled nation than any of the earlier steppe tribes had been able to do. He describes the kingdom, and later empire, as having occupied “an intermediary position in time, size, and degree of civilization between the Hun and Avar Empires which preceded, and the Mongol Empire that succeeded it.” From a geopolitical perspective, then, this new Eurasian power was bound to shake things up in the region, a situation roughly analogous to the way in which the consolidation of the German states shook up the European continent in the latter decades of the 19th century. Playing the role of France and Russia during the consolidation of the Khazarian kingdom were the Eastern Romans (aka the Byzantine Greeks) and the Arab caliphate based in Baghdad. Sensing opportunity, both appear to have lobbied heavily for the Khazar king to adopt, respectively, Christianity and Islam. The King, however, was not to be persuaded by the merits of either and, in a theoretically masterful stroke of triangulation, converted to the only other monotheistic alternative of scale at the time, Judaism.

This of course was not only an impactful decision for the immediate neighborhood, but also for the Jewish diaspora. Could it really be that there arose in faraway lands a Jewish kingdom capable of defeating Arab armies and negotiating on par with the mighty Byzantine Empire? When word of this possibility made its way via merchants to the Islamic caliphate based in Cordoba, Spain, the Jewish foreign minister there, Hasdai bar Isaac ibn Shaprut, could hardly believe it true. Amazingly, no small amount of what we know about the Khazars, and the only surviving source written of their own hand, is a series of letters exchanged between Hasdai in al-Andalus and Joseph, the Khazar kagan (king) in Itil, a city on the shore of the Caspian Sea that was, at the time, 15 days sail from Constantinople (via the Black Sea, the Don, and then the Volga Rivers). By the time of their 10th century correspondence, the Jewish identity of the Khazar state extended across at least six generations and was something Joseph almost appears to take for granted. Yet just how much the Jewish identity of the ruling class percolated down to the illiterate masses of tribesmen is an unanswerable question. Nor will we ever know how much of an indigenous Semitic Jewish presence might have been already established prior to Khazar reign over that large territory north of the Caucasus.

While it’s likely there was some agricultural base that allowed for the establishment of an urban merchant class, nowhere do the sources Koestler cites, nor does the archaeological evidence, point to the kind of definitively settled society that would have been likely to adopt, nurture, and further develop and enduring monotheistic practice among its diverse and widespread populace. In adjacent areas of Central Asia, Islam would not fully and finally take root for nearly three centuries after the Khazar conversion. So when Koestler writes, “the Judaization of the Khazars was a gradual process which, triggered off by political expediency, slowly penetrated into the deeper state of their minds and eventually produced the Messianism of their period of decline”, the understandable reaction is one of impuzzlement. He simply does not provide the evidence to make such an assertion. But that’s a momentary feeling because in the very next sentence the slippery slope of historical speculation gives way to a landslide of potential revisionism when he writes that, en masse, “[t]heir religious commitment survived the collapse of their state, and persisted, as we shall see, in the Khazar-Jewish settlements of Russia and Poland,” an argument I’ll return to below.

Koestler suggests that two factors were responsible for the failure of the Khazar state: first, an internal schism over the shape of Jewish practice—there seems to have been an evolution from a Karaitic practice centered on the Hebrew bible (the Torah) to a more modern form of Rabbinic Judaism (centered on the Talmud)—and second, more simply, the rise of the Russians. The former, while interesting to consider as a facet of intellectual and theological history is not treated at length, perhaps because there’s little evidence to support it. In my opinion, it’s a stretch to think that a fervent Messianism, or a religious schism, led to their downfall. The Russians, on the other hand, are more likely culprits and they left behind plenty of evidence. The historical record, including the Russian chronicles, gives us the broadest outlines of the story. Essentially, as Koestler tells it, the Scandinavian Rus (sometimes known as the eastern Vikings) were able to subdue the relatively peaceable Slavs and eventually integrate themselves into their ruling castes, just as the Normans did in England around the same time. Those same Slavic tribes, though, had been earlier vassals to the Khazar Empire. By severing that relationship, the proto-Russians undermined both the Khazar treasury and the Khazar Empire’s ability to serve as a buffer power between the differently civilized peoples pouring out of the north and the settled empires to the south.

The second part of the book, divided into four chapters: Exodus, Where From?, Cross Currents, and Race and Myth, is where speculative history and modern mythology do battle. Exodus, of course, is a loaded word since in this case it’s referring to, putatively, hundreds of thousands of non-Semitic Jews leaving not Egypt, but rather the heart of Eurasia, and heading not to the promised land but instead to the heartland of the European continent. Despite their great genetic differences, Koestler writes, both the original Jews and the latter day Jews had “lived at a focal junction where the great trade routes connecting east and west, north and south intersect; a circumstance which predisposed them to become nations of traders, of enterprising travellers, or ‘rootless cosmopolitans’.” In other words, for Koestler, being Jewish is not so much about ethnic affinity, shared biblical lineages, or the return to a promised land, but instead is about a way in which one’s social group defines itself in relation to the larger society, in particular, via the wider economy. This is, too say the least, a contentious idea.

Contentious turns to controversial, though, when he makes the case that the migrating Khazars did much more than found a few villages that dotted the map of 12th century Eastern Europe, that they in fact made up the core of the group of European Jews that we would later know as the Ashkenazim, the group that to this day makes up the largest share of world Jewry. The more traditional explanation of the origins of the Ashkenazim, and the one that many historians still subscribe to, is that Jews in communities that had been established in late Roman times, began to emigrate from Germany, France, and England between the 11th and 14th centuries due to increasing persecution. In the east, so the story goes, they were welcomed by a nascent Polish-Lithuanian aristocracy that was concerned to both settle its vast territories and introduce market reforms into what was still an otherwise feudal economy. We know in fact that about 400,000 Germans, in the wake of the devastating Black Death, did exactly that in the 14th and 15th centuries. Were they preceded in kind by their former neighbors?

Two different stories of origin, that’s the crux of the historical controversy. Could the majority of Eastern European Jews really be descended from a Turkish-Mongolian people rather than from the ancient Hebrews that lived in the Fertile Crescent? It’s tempting to think that today modern science can tell us the answer. Indeed, it was just two years after the publication of The Thirteenth Tribe that Arthur Mourant and a team of researchers published The Genetics of the Jews and, with it, ushered in an entire generation of studies purporting to definitively trace the common, or in some cases, the not-so-common origins of diverse Jewish populations. Yet despite great strides in medical science over the past two generations, there’s still little in the way of satisfying scientific answers that can conclusively settle the debate. Unfortunately, though, that doesn’t stop commentators, rarely scientists themselves, from cherry picking among any number of studies and then holding the results aloft in an attempt to declare an objective, certifiable victory, a fact that sheds more light on the Pandora’s Box of politically-motivated science than it does on some ineffable biological makeup.

This embrace of the supposedly objective nature of hard science leads inevitably towards a science-led politics, as any social phenomenon with widespread authority is bound to do. Shlomo Sand in his 2009 book, The Invention of the Jewish People, a book as controversial as any mentioned above, attempts to show his readers how Zionist politics have used science, and scholarship for that matter, for political advantage. Sand contends that it’s no coincidence that very little of the research on the Khazars has been done by Israeli scholars. What’s more, he adds, from 1951 until his book’s publication in 2008 (originally in Hebrew), not a single academic study of the Khazars had been translated into Hebrew. The insinuation is a conspiratorial one that I find unnecessary; after all how many academic studies in any subject are translated into Hebrew in any given year? My guess is probably very few, not because of some political concern over the dissemination of controversial findings—The Thirteenth Tribe was translated into Hebrew soon after it was published—but instead because most Israeli scholars have the ability to work in other languages. Sand is more convincing, though, when he shows how various genetic studies seem to mirror the ups and downs of partisan Israeli politics at any given time. The last chapter of his book is a veritable fun house of questionable, even dubious, scientific findings that have much in common with the socio-biological myths that were fed to race-hungry publics in the early part of the 20th century.

The problem for someone reading Koestler’s book today, though, is that his own economic-determinism, while more interesting to contemplate than haplotypes and alleles, doesn’t read any more convincingly than do the conflicting studies of modern geneticists. The primary thrust of his argument in support of the Turkic origins of the Ashkenazim is two-fold: in Where From? he makes the negative argument that, while the evidence in support of the eastern origins thesis may be thinner than would be ideal, compared to the western origins (or German) thesis, it’s downright robust. The Rhineland Jews were never demographically stout enough, he contends, to have moved eastward in concentrations large enough to serve as the underpinning for the Eastern European Jewish culture that arose and so quickly thrived. The numbers related to the Jewish presence in Poland and Russia as early as the 12th century are simply too large. But what about Yiddish, you may ask? While it’s true that 80 percent of the Yiddish vocabulary is indeed German in origin, Koestler notes that modern philologists have convincingly shown that it’s mostly unrelated to the Middle German dialects of the Rhineland and more related to the German of the southeastern-most areas of German settlements; the Middle German that would have been spoken in what is today parts of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania. It likely took its form in response to the later eastward immigration of German-speakers.

Cross Currents, the penultimate chapter in The Thirteenth Tribe, uses a positive argument to make the case that much of the Ashkenazic settlement was more closely related to eastern civilizations. He notes that the Jews of the former Western Roman Empire had lived for centuries, both voluntarily and involuntarily, in ghettos. The Jews of Poland, Lithuania, and Russia, on the other hand, developed shtetls, networks of small towns and urban conglomerations that were completely unlike anything in the more western parts of the continent. On a more micro-spatial level, Koestler even notes that some of the earliest synagogue architecture in Eastern Europe evidenced a distinctively Central Asian vernacular. This argument rooted in spatial planning, while intriguing, is hardly cut and dried. Another direction in which Koestler takes his positive argument has to do with speculation on occupational structure. Many of the minor professional positions and small merchant occupations, especially those related to the timber and transportation industries, were filled by Jews. Koestler thinks it unlikely that Jews from the west would have chosen to, or even been able to, specialize in rural-oriented enterprises. For me as a lay reader it’s not a convincing argument. Jews migrating from the west, ghettos or no, would have enjoyed greater access to urban-based technologies and know-how than Koestler allows and thus been able to move into a diverse array of occupations.

For all the speculation, revisionism, and controversy of the first seven chapters, it’s the eighth and final chapter where things get downright wacky. When Tony Judt, in an otherwise fawning review of Koestler’s overall literary contributions, wrote that he found The Thirteenth Tribe “bizarre,” surely it’s the chapter Race and Myth that inspired such a judgement. (Interestingly, Judt called Shlomo Sand’s book “remarkable” in spite of the fact that Sand largely endorses Koestler’s arguments as well as the attendant historiography of Khazaria that made them possible.) In his last chapter Koestler is concerned solely with proving the impossibility of a Jewish race, writing that there is “a greater similarity between Jews and their Gentile host-nation than between Jews living in different countries.” Very quickly, then, he fills the pages of this last chapter with a gobbly-gook of nearly meaningless formulae that purport to sum up the “Hirtzfeld biochemical index.” One gets the sense here of man of an earlier generation that is beginning to see the way in which the ‘scientific’ can tyrannize these types of contemporary discussions and so rather than attempting to refute, or at least properly contextualize, its authority, he searches out a set of scientific findings that support his pre-existing perspective and spits it up, much as a newborn infant might spit up the milk of the ample maternal breast. From there he quickly moves on to those “promiscuous Israelites, intermarriage rates, nose dimensions, and eventually anecdotal evidence about how his Hungarian-Jewish peers that had spent many years in the United States took on the look of Americans, probably owing, Koestler asserts, to the widening of the jaw that naturally occurs with the prolonged annunciation of a grisly American English. Bizarre, indeed.

So what to make of all this? And what have others made of it? (see the rest in my comment)

[Joeji · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book researches such a minority strain of history and historical theory that it is almost hard to classify this as "nonfiction." However, it is a great, fascinating read on the alternate history of the origins of a good portion of today's Jews. The history of the c. 600-1200 AD makeup of the Caucauses is quite interesting, and Koestler teaches you a good deal about the origins of the Hungarians, the Russians, and other nations that were born of the Eastern European Steppes. The book begins to fray when Koestler playfully hypothesizes the period after the fall of the Khazar Empire, speaking about race and ethnicitity, and how that pertains to Eastern Europe's Jews.

A great read if you're comfortable with your Jewish identity, though this book can obviously be seen as heresy. Or maybe, it's just entertaining.

[Bayan Al hijjawi · Rating 5 out of 5]

قامت الدولة الاسرائيلية على اساس حق اليهود الابراهميين بالعودة الى وطنهم بعد الاف السنين، الا ان الاصل في يهوديتهم هو ان ملوك الخزر فد اعتنقوا الديانة اليهودية-الخر هم جنس تركي كان يعيش في المنطقة الواقعة قرب بحر قزوين - فحقهم المزعوم بفلسطين هو ليس الا حق باطل.
The creation of the state of Israel, is based on a lie, no semetic blood in those occupiers, they are European who converted to the judaism .

[Thomas Cox · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read

Very eye opening they are not who they say they are. Their claim as the biblical Jew is a lie

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is hands down one of the most fascinating books I’ve ever read. Many years ago I had merely heard of the Khazar origins hypothesis in passing, but had not given it a second thought. The only other time until recently, that it had been brought to mind was about 12 years ago when a coworker—a down to earth, thoughtful, and somewhat religious African-American man—remarked during a conversation on Israel, “You know, modern Jews aren’t from Israel. They’re from the Khazars. Look it up sometime.” I didn’t though. Not then anyway. But upon recently discovering some more recent data on Ashkenazi genetics, I regained an interest in Ashkenazi Jewish origins. As such, the further back I went in history, I started to find my own troublesome issues with the dominant Rhineland hypothesis. It’s then that my vague memory of the Khazar origin hypothesis really stepped back into the light. After a little reading online, and finding an eclectic mix of not always great sources, I decided to grab a copy of Arthur Koestler’s book, “The Thirteenth Tribe.” I was not disappointed.

As I mentioned, this book is one of the most fascinating I’ve ever read. Koestler presents a wonderful tapestry of history of the steppe region and the Khazars – which is no easy task given how little preserved tangible history we have of these people. But Koestler did an amazing detective-like undertaking with the information and expertise we have available, meticulously putting the pieces of evidence together in a coherent and cogent presentation, and is surprisingly thorough for a smaller book. He used plenty of primary sources and relied on the insight of numerous experts in the field, from historians and archaeologists, to linguists and anthropologists. Any assertions that Koestler made he solidly supported with unambiguous verifiable evidence. One of my favorite things about his writing on this topic, is that anywhere where an assumption may have been needed, or where an historical story or source may be questionable in reliability, he did not hesitate to say so and qualify any such claims, cautioning the reader. This is what helps create a trust in his presentation of the facts, the probables, the possibles, and the outright questionables. As such, most of what is presented in this book is supported by very sound evidence, and backed by the likes of historical, linguistic, and archaeological/geographical data that has been, and still can be, verified.

Ultimately, I find that Koestler made an incredibly solid case for the Khazar origin hypothesis, while also poking serious—and as to date, unresolved—holes in the Rhineland hypothesis. What I also find especially exciting and quite remarkable, is that more recent linguistic, and especially genetic data that has all but vindicated Koestler’s entire work, notably the 2013 study, “The Missing Link of Jewish European Ancestry: Contrasting the Rhineland and the Khazarian Hypotheses,” published in the prestigious journal, Genome Biology and Evolution 5(1):61–74, and the 2017 study, “The Origins of Ashkenaz, Ashkenazic Jews, and Yiddish,” published in the journal Frontiers in Genetics 2017, 8:87 (worth a mention also, is the 2010 study, “Signatures of founder effects, admixture, and selection in the Ashkenazi Jewish population." PNAS 107:37). Both of these studies combined with the historical, archaeological, and linguistic data—much of which is presented by Koestler here—creates such an extremely solid case for the Khazar hypothesis, that critics often simply resort to acrimony and vitriol rather than successfully refuting the data and/or hypothesis.

And yes, make no mistake, there are critics a-plenty. This hypothesis is not without some controversy, although all paradigm shifting hypotheses go through a sometimes long period of scorn before the consensus finally bends to the data. However, one cannot help but notice that almost all of the critics use flawed arguments, battle strawmen, or otherwise flippantly dismiss the data. And on top of that, those who strongly disagree and say their results refute the Khazar hypothesis, refuse to make their data public, and in the odd case of Harry Ostrer—a primary critic—his team listed as a criteria for other scientists to merely review their data; “Criteria for reviewing include novelty and strength of the proposal, non-overlap with current or planned activities, and non-defamatory nature toward the Jewish people.” That last criteria is a HUGE red flag—a giant flaming ball of evidence of blatant ethnic/racial bias in his team’s research. Can such biased, secretive research really be trusted? Does science thrive on hiding data behind agenda-biased criteria, or sharing it openly with colleagues to see if it can be challenged or replicated? Be wary of such critics of the Khazar hypothesis and their arguments. They love and defend the Rhineland hypothesis with fervor and despise the Khazar hypothesis and its stronger, more recent supporting data.

Anyway, this book has been an absolute delight, and quite the springboard for more study into the Jewish Khazar origins and history, as sparse and scattered as it is at times. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the Khazars and a brief history of the Eastern European steppes as they were a millennia ago. Next on my reading list, a couple of books by Dr. Schlomo Sand that sound as promising, if not more so, than this excellent work by Arthur Koestler.

[Onur · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hint kökenli İngiliz bir tanıdığımla sohbet ederken; The Thirteenth Tribe kitabından bahsettiğinde aklıma bu kitabı birkaç yıl önce satın aldığım ve kitabın Türkçe çevirisinin kütüphanemde bulunduğu geldi. Böylelikle okuma listemde öne aldım. Aşkenazi Yahudileri’nin büyük oranda Hazar Türkleri’nden geldiğini iddia eden enteresan bir eser.
Yine bu sohbet esnasında, yazar Arthur Koestler’in ve eşinin intiharının şüpheli bulunduğu, bu konuyu araştıran polis şefinin de yine şüpheli bir intihar vakası olarak hayatının sona erdiğinden bahsetmişti, bu tanıdığım. İlginç olduğu kadar ürkütücü...