Download the pdf of the book Book Reviews of The Thirteenth Tribe Review of Arthur Koestler's Book The Thirteenth Tribe by Grace Halsell The Jews of Khazaria by Kevin Alan Brook Khazaria.com: A Resource for Turkic and Jewish History in Russia and Ukraine Book Reviews of The Thirteenth Tribe by Arthur Koestler Extensive review of the book

Published material on the Khazars and the origins of the European Jewish people. Compiled by Willie Martin "It is highly  provable that the bulk of the Jew's  ancestors 'never' lived in Palestine at all, which  witnesses the power of historical assertion over fact."  Under  the heading of "A brief History of the Terms for  Jew" in the 1980 Jewish  Almanac we read: "Strictly speaking it is incorrect to call an  Ancient Israelite a'Jew' or to call a contemporary Jew  an Israelite or a Hebrew."  The World  Book omits any reference to the Jews, but under the word  Semite it states: "Semite . . . Semites are those who speak Semitic  languages. In this sense the ancient Hebrews, Assyrians, Phoenicians, and  Cartaginians were Semites. The Arabs and some Ethiopians are modern  Semitic-speaking people. Modern Jews are often called Semites, but this name  properly applies only to those who use the Hebrew Language. The Jews were  once a sub-type of the Mediterranean race, but they have mixed with other  peoples until the name 'Jew' has lost all racial  meaning."  There are hundreds of books, mainly Jewish  Encyclopedias and histories available for study, which prove that over 90%  of the Jews of the world are not a Semitic people, but few people other than  historians ever bother to read them. Following are just a  few:  The Jews are Not a Race! by Dr.  Alfred Lilienthal - Jewish historian, journalist, lecturer, and graduate of  Cornell University and Columbia Law School. During the Second World War, he  served with the US Army in the Middle East. He later served with the  Department of State, and as a consultant to the American delegation at the  organising meeting of the United Nations in San  Francisco.  Since 1947, he has been at the forefront in the  struggle for a balanced US policy in the Middle East. He is the author of  several acclaimed books on the Middle East, including The Zionist  Connection. He now lives in Washington, DC.  On  December 18, 1993 Dr. Lilienthal celebrated both his 80th birthday and the  40th anniversary of his first book, What Price Israel? Dr.  Lilienthal, who is a courageous anti-Zionist Jew, was joined by more than  200 guests who travelled from all over the United States to  attend.  The following excerpt is taken from this first  book, What Price Israel?  Today,  to trace anyone's descent to ancient Palestine would be a genealogical  impossibility; and to presume, axiomatically, such a descent for Jews, alone  among all human groups, is an assumption of purely fictional significance.  Most everybody in the Western world could stake out some claim of  Palestinian descent if genealogical records could be established for two  thousand years. And there are, indeed, people who, though not by the widest  stretch of imagination Jewish, proudly make that very claim: some of the  oldest of the South's aristocratic families play a game of comparing whose  lineage goes farther back into Israel. No one knows what happened to the Ten  Lost Tribes of Israel, but to speculate on who might be who is a favored  Anglo-Saxon pastime, and Queen Victoria belonged to an Israelite Society  that traced the ancestry of its membership back to those lost  tribes.  Twelve tribes started in Canaan about thirty-five  centuries ago; and not only that ten of them disappeared - more than half of  the members of the remaining two tribes never returned from their "exile" in  Babylon. How then, can anybody claim to descend directly from that  relatively small community which inhabited the Holy Land at the time of  Abraham's Covenant with God?  The Jewish racial myth flows from  the fact that the words Hebrew, Israelite, Jew, Judaism, and the Jewish  people have been used synonymously to suggest a historic continuity. But  this is a misuse. These words refer to different groups of people with  varying ways of life in different periods in history. Hebrew is a term  correctly applied to the period from the beginning of Biblical history to  the settling in Canaan. Israelite refers correctly to the members of the  twelve tribes of Israel. The name Yehudi or Jew is used in the Old Testament  to designate members of the tribe of Judah, descendants of the fourth son of  Jacob, as well as to denote citizens of the Kingdom of Judah, particularly  at the time of Jeremiah and under the Persian occupation. Centuries later,  the same word came to be applied to anyone, no matter of what origin, whose  religion was Judaism.  The descriptive name Judaism was never  heard by the Hebrews or Israelites; it appears only with Christianity.  Flavius Josephus was one of the first to use the name in his recital of the  war with the Romans to connote a totality of beliefs, moral commandments,  religious practices and ceremonial institutions of Galilee, which he  believed superior to rival Hellenism. When the word Judaism was born, there  was no longer a Hebrew-Israelite state. The people who embraced the creed of  Judaism were already mixed of many races and strains; and this  diversification was rapidly growing. . .  Perhaps the most  significant mass conversion to the Judaic faith occurred in Europe, in the  8th century A.D., and that story of the Khazars (Turko-Finnish people) is  quite pertinent to the establishment of the modern State of Israel. This  partly nomadic people, probably related to the Volga Bulgars, first appeared  in Trans-Caucasia in the second century. They settled in what is now  Southern Russia, between the Volga and the Don, and then spread to the  shores of the Black, Caspian and Azov seas. The Kingdom of Khazaria, ruled  by a khagan or khakan fell to Attila the Hun in 448, and to the Muslims in  737. In between, the Khazars ruled over part of the Bulgarians, conquered  the Crimea, and stretched their kingdom over the Caucasus farther to the  northwest to include Kiev, and eastwards to Derbend. Annual tributes were  levied on the Russian Slavonians of Kiev.  The city of Kiev was  probably built by the Khazars. There were Jews in the city and the  surrounding area before the Russian Empire was founded by the Varangians  whom the Scandinavian warriors sometimes called the Russ or Ross (circa  855-863).  The influence of the Khazars extended into what is  now Hungary and Roumania. Today, the villages of Kozarvar and Kozard in  Transylvania bear testimony to the penetration of the Khazars who, with the  Magyars, then proceeded into present-day Hungary. The size and power of the  Kingdom of Khazaria is indicated by the act that it sent an army of 40,000  soldiers (in 626-627) to help Heraclius of the Byzantines to conquer the  Persians.  The Jewish Encyclopaedia proudly refers to Khazaria  as having had a "well constituted and tolerant government, a flourishing  trade and a well disciplined army."  Jews who had been banished  from Constantinople by the Byzantine ruler, Leo III, found a home amongst  these heretofore pagan Khazars and, in competition with Mohammedan and  Christian missionaries, won them over to the Judaic faith. Bulan, the ruler  of Khazaria, became converted to Judaism around 740 A.D. His nobles and,  somewhat later, his people followed suit. Some details of these events are  contained in letters exchanged between Khagan Joseph of Khazaria and R.  Hasdai Ibn Shaprut of Cordova, doctor and quasi foreign minister to Sultan  Abd al-Rahman, the Caliph of Spain. This correspondence (around 936-950) was  first published in 1577 to prove that the Jews still had a country of their  own - namely, the Kingdom of Khazaria. Judah Halevi knew of the letters even  in 1140. Their authenticity has since been established beyond  doubt.  According to these Hasdai-Joseph letters, Khagan Bulan  decided one day: "Paganism is useless. It is shameful for us to be pagans.  Let us adopt one of the heavenly religions, Christianity, Judaism or Islam."  And Bulan summoned three priests representing the three religions and had  them dispute their creeds before him. But, no priest could convince the  others, or the sovereign, that his religion was the best. So the ruler spoke  to each of them separately. He asked the Christian priest: "If you were not  a Christian or had to give up Christianity, which would you prefer - Islam  or Judaism?" The priest said: "If I were to give up Christianity, I would  become a Jew." Bulan then asked the follower of Islam the same question, and  the Moslem also chose Judaism. This is how Bulan came to choose Judaism for  himself and the people of Khazaria in the seventh century A.D., and  thereafter the Khazars (sometimes spelled Chazars and Khozars) lived  according to Judaic laws.  Under the rule of Obadiah, Judaism  gained further strength in Khazaria. Synagogues and schools were built to  give instruction in the Bible and the Talmud. As Professor Graetz notes in  his History of the Jews, "A successor of Bulan who bore  the Hebrew name of Obadiah was the first to make serious efforts to further  the Jewish religion. He invited Jewish sages to settle in his dominions,  rewarded them royally. . . and introduced a divine service modelled on the  ancient communities. After Obadiah came a long series of Jewish Chagans  (Khagans), for according to a fundamental law of the state only Jewish  rulers were permitted to ascend the throne."  Khazar traders  brought not only silks and carpets of Persia and the Near East but also  their Judaic faith to the banks of the Vistula and the Volga. But the  Kingdom of Khazaria was invaded by the Russians, and Itil, its great  capital, fell to Sweatoslav of Kiev in 969.  The Byzantines had  become afraid and envious of the Khazars and, in a joint expedition with the  Russians, conquered the Crimean portion of Khazaria in 1016. (Crimea was  known as "Chazaria" until the 13th century). The Khazarian Jews were  scattered throughout what is now Russia and Eastern Europe. Some were taken  North where they joined the established Jewish community of  Kiev.  Others returned to the Caucasus. Many Khazars remarried  in the Crimea and in Hungary.  The Cagh Chafut, or "mountain  Jews," in the Caucasus and the Hebraile Jews of Georgia are their  descendants. These "Ashkenazim Jews" (as Jews of Eastern Europe are called),  whose numbers were swelled by Jews who fled from Germany at the time of the  Crusades and during the Black Death, have little or no trace of Semitic  blood.  That the Khazars are the lineal ancestors of Eastern  European Jewry is a historical fact. Jewish historians and religious  textbooks acknowledge the fact, though the propagandists of Jewish  nationalism belittle it as pro-Arab propaganda. Somewhat ironically, Volume  IV of the Jewish Encyclopaedia - because this publication  spells Khazars with a "C" instead of a "K" - is titled "Chazars to Dreyfus":  and it was the Dreyfus trial, as interpreted by Theodor Herzl, that made the  modern Jewish Khazars of Russia forget their descent from converts to  Judaism and accept anti-Semitism as proof of their Palestinian  origin.  For all that anthropologists know, Hitler's ancestry  might go back to one of the ten Lost Tribes of Israel; while Weizmann may be  a descendant of the Khazars, the converts to Judaism who were in no  anthropological respect related to Palestine. The home to which Weizmann,  Silver and so many other Ashkenazim Zionists have yearned to return has most  likely never been theirs. "Here's a paradox, a paradox, a most ingenious  paradox": in anthropological fact, many Christians may have much more  Hebrew-Israelite blood in their veins than most of their Jewish  neighbors. The History of The Jewish Khazars, by D.  M. Dunlop, pp. 4-15: ". . . Our first question here is, When did the Khazars  and the Khazar name appear? There has been considerable discussion as to the  relation of the Khazars to the Huns on the one hand and to the West Turks on  the other. The prevalent opinion has for some time been that the Khazars  emerged from the West Turkish empire. Early references to the Khazars appear  about the time when the West Turks cease to be mentioned. Thus they are  reported to have joined forces with the Greek Emperor Heraclius against the  Persians in A.D. 627 and to have materially assisted him in the siege of  Tiflis. It is a question whether the Khazars were at this time under West  Turk supremacy. The chronicler Theophanes (died circa A.D. 818) who tells  the story introduces them as "the Turks from the east whom they call  Khazars.". . .  A similar discussion on the merits of the  different races is reported from the days before Muhammad, in which the  speakers are the Arab Nu'man ibn-al-Mudhir of al-Hirah and Khusraw  Anushirwan. The Persian gives his opinion that the Greeks, Indians, and  Chinese are superior to the Arabs and so also, in spite of their low  material standards of life, the Turks and the Khazars, who at least possess  an organization under their kings. Here again the Khazars are juxtaposed  with the great nations of the east. It is consonant with this that tales  were told of how ambassadors from the Chinese, the Turks, and the Khazars  were constantly at Khusraw's gate, and even that he kept three thrones of  gold in his palace, which were never removed and on which none sat, reserved  for the kings of Byzantium, China and the Khazars. In general, the  material in the Arabic and Persian writers with regard to the Khazars in  early times falls roughly into three groups, centering respectively round  the names of (a) one or other of the Hebrew patriarchs, (b) Alexander the  Great, and (c) certain of the Sassanid kings, especially, Anushirwan and his  immediate successors. A typical story of the first group is given by Ya'qubi  in his History. After the confusion of tongues at Babel, the descendants of  Noah came to Peleg, son of Eber, and asked him to divide the earth among  them. He apportioned to the descendants of Japheth - China, Hind, Sind, the  country of the Turks and that of the Khazars, as well as Tibet, the country  of the (Volga) Bulgars, Daylam, and the country neighboring on Khurasan. In  another passage Ya'qubi gives a kind of sequel to this. Peleg having divided  the earth in this fashion, the descendants of 'Amur ibn-Tubal, a son of  Japheth, went out to the northeast. One group, the descendants of Togarmah,  proceeding farther north, were scattered in different countries and became a  number of kingdoms, among them the Burjan (Bulgars), Alans, Khazars  (Ashkenaz), and Armenians. Similarly, according to Tabari, there were born  to Japheth Jim-r (the Biblical Gomer), Maw'-' (read Mawgh-gh, Magog , Mawday  (Madai), Yawan (Javan), Thubal (Tubal), Mash-j (read Mash-kh, Meshech) and  Tir-sh (Tiras). Of the descendants of the last were the Turks and the  Khazars (Ashkenaz). There is possibly an association here with the Turgesh,  survivors of the West Turks, who were defeated by the Arabs in 119/737, and  disappeared as a ruling group in the same century. Tabari says curiously  that of the descendants of Mawgh-gh (Magog) were Yajuj and Majuj, adding  that these are to the east of the Turks and Khazars. This information would  invalidate Zeki Validi's attempt to identify Gog and Magog in the Arabic  writers with the Norwegians. The name Mash-kh (Meshech) is regarded by him  as probably a singular to the classical Massagetai  (Massag-et).  A. Bashmakov emphasizes the connection of  'Meshech' with the Khazars, to establish his theory of the Khazars, not as  Turks from inner Asia, but what he calls a Jephetic or Alarodian group from  south of the Caucasus. Evidently there is no stereotyped form of this  legendary relationship of the Khazars to Japheth. The Taj-al-Artis says that  according to some they are the descendants of Kash-h (? Mash-h or Mash-kh,  for Meshech), son of Japheth, and according to others both the Khazars and  the Saqalibah are sprung from Thubal (Tubal). Further, we read of Balanjar  ibn-Japheth in ibn-al-Faqih and abu-al-Fida' as the founder of the town of  Balanjar. Usage leads one to suppose that this is equivalent to giving  Balanjar a separate racial identity. In historical times Balanjar was a  well-known Khazar center, which is even mentioned by Masudi as their  capital.  It is hardly necessary to cite more of these Japheth  stories. Their Jewish origin is priori obvious, and Poliak has drawn  attention to one version of the division of the earth, where the Hebrew  words for 'north' and 'south' actually appear in the Arabic text. The  Iranian cycle of legend had a similar tradition, according to which the hero  Afridun divided the earth among his sons, Tuj (sometimes Tur, the eponym of  Turan), Salm, and Iraj. Here the Khazars appear with the Turks and the  Chinese in the portion assigned to Tuj, the eldest son. Some of the stories  connect the Khazars with Abraham. The tale of a meeting in Khurasan between  the sons of Keturah and the Khazars (Ashkenaz) where the Khaqan is mentioned  is quoted from the Sa'd and al-Tabari by Poliak. The tradition also appears  in the Meshed manuscript of ibn-al-Faqih, apparently as part of the account  of Tamim ibn-Babr's journey to the Uigurs, but it goes back to Hishim  al-Kalbi. Zeki Validi is inclined to lay some stress on it as a real  indication of the presence of the Khazars in this region at an early date.  Al-Jahiz similarly refers to the legend of the sons of Abraham and Keturah  settling in Khurasan but does not mention the Khazars. Al-Di-mashqi says  that according to one tradition the Turks were the children of Abraham by  Keturah, whose father belonged to the original Arab stock. Descendants of  other sons of Abraham, namely the Soghdians and the Kirgiz, were also said  to live beyond the Oxus. . ."    Encyclopedia Americana  (1985):  "Khazar, an ancient Turkic-speaking people who ruled a  large and powerful state in the steppes North of the Caucasus Mountains from  the 7th century to their demise in the mid-11th century A.D. . . In the 8th  Century it's political and religious head . . . as well as the greater part  of the Khazar nobility, abandoned paganism and converted to Judaism. .  ."  Encyclopedia Britannica (15th  edition):  "Khazars, confederation of Turkic and Iranian tribes  that established a major commercial empire in the second half of the 6th  century, covering the southeastern section of modern European Russia . . .  In the middle of the 8th century the ruling classes adopted Judaism as their  religion." Academic American Encyclopedia  (1985):  "Ashkenazim, the Ashkenazim are one of the two major  divisions of the Jews, the other being the  Shephardim."  Encyclopedia Americana  (1985):  "Ashkenazim, the Ashkenazim are the Jews whose  ancestors lived in German lands . . . it was among Ashkenazi Jews that the  idea of political Zionism emerged, leading ultimately to the establishment  of the state of Israel . . . In the late 1960s, Ashkenazi Jews numbered some  11 million, about 84 percent of the world Jewish  population."  The Jewish  Encyclopedia:  "Khazars, a non-Semitic, Asiatic, Mongolian  tribal nation who emigrated into Eastern Europe about the first century, who  were converted as an entire nation to Judaism in the seventh century by the  expanding Russian nation which absorbed the entire Khazar population, and  who account for the presence in Eastern Europe of the great numbers of  Yiddish-speaking Jews in Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Galatia, Besserabia and  Rumania."  The Encyclopedia Judaica  (1972):  "Khazars, a national group of general Turkic type,  independent and sovereign in Eastern Europe between the seventh and tenth  centuries C.E. during part of this time the leading Khazars professed  Judaism . . . In spite of the negligible information of an archaeological  nature, the presence of Jewish groups and the impact of Jewish ideas in  Eastern Europe are considerable during the Middle Ages. Groups have been  mentioned as migrating to Central Europe from the East often have been  referred to as Khazars, thus making it impossible to overlook the  possibility that they originated from within the former Khazar  Empire."  The Universal Jewish  Encyclopedia:  "Khazars, a medieval people, probably related to  the Volga Bulgars, whose ruling class adopted Judaism during the 8th cent.  The Khazars seem to have emerged during the 6th cent., from the vast nomadic  Hun (Turki) empire which stretched from the steppes of Eastern Europe and  the Volga basin to the Chinese frontier. Although it is often claimed that  allusions to the Khazars are found as early as 200 C.E., actually they are  not mentioned until 627 . . . most Jewish historians date the conversion of  the Khazar King to Judaism during the first half of this century [A.D.]. .  ."  The primary meaning of Ashkenaz and Ashkenazim in Hebrew is  Germany and Germans. This may be due to the fact that the home of the  ancient ancestors of the Germans is Media, which is the Biblical Ashkenaz .  . . Krauss is of the opinion that in the early medieval ages the Khazars  were sometimes referred to as Ashkenazim . . . About 92 percent of all Jews  or approximately 14,500,000 are Ashkenazim.  The Bible relates  that the Khazars (Ashkenaz) Jews were/are the sons of Japheth not  Shem: "Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem,  Ham, and Japheth: and unto them were sons born after the flood. The sons of  Japheth; . . . the sons of Gomer; Ashkenaz . . ." So the Bible  verifies that the Ashkenaz Jews [Khazars] are not the descendants of Shem  and cannot be Semitic.  The American People's  Encyclopedia for 1954 at 15-292 records the following in  reference to the Khazars: "In the year 740 A.D. the Khazars were officially  converted to Judaism. A century later they were crushed by the incoming  Slavic-speaking people and were scattered over central Europe where they  were known as Jews. It is from this grouping that most German, Polish and  Hungarian Jews are descended, and they likewise make up a considerable part  of that population now found in America. The term Aschenazim is applied to  this round-headed, dark-complexioned  division."  Academic American Encyclopedia Deluxe  Library Edition, Volume 12, page 66 states: "The Khazars, a turkic  people, created a commercial and political empire that dominated substantial  parts of South Russia during much of the 7th through 10th centuries. During  the 8th century the Khazar Aristocracy and the Kagan (King) were converted  to Judaism."  The New Encyclopedia Britannica,  Volume 6, page 836 relates: "Khazar, member of a confederation of  Turkic-speaking tribes that in the late 6th century A.D. established a major  commercial empire covering the southeastern section of modern European  Russia . . . but the most striking characteristic of the Khazars was the  apparent adoption of Judaism by the Khagan and the greater part of the  ruling class in about 740 . . . The fact itself, however, is undisputed and  unparalleled in the history of Central Eurasia. A few scholars have asserted  that the Judaized Khazars were the remote ancestors of many of the Jews of  Eastern Europe and Russia."  Collier's  Encyclopedia, Volume 14, page 65 states: "Khazars [kaza'rz], a  semi-nomadic tribe of Turkish or Tatar origin who first appeared north of  the Caucasus in the early part of the third century . . . In the eighth  century Khaghan Bulan decided in favor of the Jews and accepted Judaism for  himself and for his people..."  New Catholic  Encyclopedia, Volume VIII, page 173 relates: "The Khazars were an  ethnic group, belonging to the Turkish peoples, who, toward the end of the  2nd century of the Christian Era, had settled in the region between the  Caucasus and the lower Volga and Don Rivers . . . At the beginning of the  8th century, dynastic ties bound the Khazars more closely to Constantinople,  which led to a limited spread of Christianity among them. They also became  acquainted with Judaism from the numerous Jews who lived in the Crimea and  along the Bosphorus. When the Byzantine Emperor, Leo the Isaurian,  persecuted the Jews in A.D. 723, many Jews found refuge in the Khazar  kingdom, and their influence was so great that, around the middle of the 8th  century, the King of the Khazars and many of the Khazar nobility accepted  the Jewish faith."  The Cadillac Modern  Encyclopedia, page 822, states: "Khazars (khah'-zahrz), a S Russian  people of Turkic origin, who at the height of their power (during the  8th-10th cent., A.D.) controlled an empire which included Crimea, and  extended along the lower Volga, as far E as the Caspian Sea. The Khazar  Royal Family and Aristocracy converted to Judaism during the reign of King  Bulan (768-809 A.D.) and Judaism was thereafter regarded as the state  religion . . ."  There are many, many publications we could  quote but from the above, we can clearly see that the Jews fully understand  their Khazarian heritage as the third edition of The Jewish  Encyclopedia for 1925 records: "CHAZARS [Khazars]: A people of  Turkish origin whose life and history are interwoven with the very  beginnings of the history of the Jews of Russia. The kingdom of the Chazars  was firmly established in most of South Russia long before the foundation of  the Russian monarchy by the Varangians (855). Jews have lived on the shores  of the Black and Caspian seas since the first centuries of the common era  [after the death of Christ]. Historical evidence points to the region of the  Ural as the home of the Chazars. Among the classical writers of the Middle  Ages they were known as the 'Chozars,' 'Khazirs,' 'Akatzirs,' and 'Akatirs,'  and in the Russian chronicles as 'Khwalisses' and 'Ugry Byelyye.'. .  ."  The Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius  Josephus, XIII ix 1; XV vii 9 instructs us: John Hyrcanus forcibly  assimilated the Edomites as a national group and they became "Jews" in about  120BC. The Jewish historian Josephus, who lived just after the time of  Christ, wrote, "They [Edom] were hereafter no other than Jews'. The Jewish  scholar Cecil Roth in his Concise Jewish Encyclopedia  (1980) says on page 154, "John Hyrcanus forcibly converted [Edom] to  Judaism. From then on they were part of the Jewish people. In the Talmud the  name of Edom was applied to Christian Rome, and was then used for  Christianity in general".

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