I remember when young my father talking of how unfortunate that so many early civilizations were being ignored by so-called historians, in favor of the more popular Greeks and Romans. Khazaria held sway for almost the whole of the first millenium CE and the astonishing thing to me is that, according to my 1910 Britannica, both the Romish Pope and the Carolingian monarchs (that Charlemagne's line) bowed before the Khakan of Khazaria. That's one powerful dude! Why a modern-day people would forsake such a heritage is beyond me. It just shows the power of religious thought-control, as that son of a Rabbi once said: "...the opiate of the people."
Best regards,.
Bob Taft
The Taft Ranch
Lander, Wyoming
(307) 332-2352
The Thirteenth Tribe
The Khazar Empire and its Heritage
Arthur Koestler
This book traces the history of the ancient Khazar Empire, a major but
almost forgotten power in Eastern Europe, which in A.D. 740 converted
to Judaism. Khazaria, a conglomerate of Aryan Turkish tribes, was finally
wiped out by the forces of Genghis Han, but evidence indicates that the
Khazars themselves migrated to Poland and formed the cradle of Western
(Ashkenazim) Jewry...
The Khazars' sway extended from the Black sea to the Caspian, from the
Caucasus to the Volga, and they were instrumental in stopping the Muslim
onslaught against Byzantium, the eastern jaw of the gigantic pincer movement
that in the West swept across northern Africa and into Spain.
Thereafter the Khazars found themselves in a precarious position between the two major world powers: the Eastern Roman Empire in Byzantium and the triumphant followers of Mohammed. As Arthur Koestler points out, the Khazars were the Third World of their day, and they chose a surprising method of resisting both the Western pressure to become Christian and the Eastern to adopt Islam. Rejecting both, they converted to Judaism.
The second part of Mr. Koestler's book deals with the Khazar migration
to Polish and Lithuanian territories, caused by the Mongol onslaught,
and their impact on the racial composition and social heritage of modern
Jewry. He produces a large body of meticulously detailed research in support
of a theory that sounds all the more convincing for the restraint with
which it is advanced.
Mr. Koestler concludes: "The evidence presented in the previous chapters
adds up to a strong case in favour of those modern historians - whether
Austrian, Israeli or Polish - who, independently from each other, have
argued that the bulk of modern Jewry is not of Palestinian, but of Caucasian
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 being, 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" ( page 179, page 180).
"The Jews of our times fall into two main divisions: Sephardim and Ashkenazim.
The Sephardim are descendants of the Jews who since antiquity had lived in Spain (in Hebrew Sepharad) until they were expelled at the end of the fifteenth century and settled in the countries bordering the Mediterranean, the Balkans, and to a lesser extent in Western Europe. They spoke a Spanish-Hebrew dialect, Ladino, and preserved their own traditions and religious rites. In the 1960s, the number of Sephardim was estimated at 500,000.
The Ashkenazim, at the same period, numbered about eleven million. Thus, in common parlance, Jew is practically synonymous with Ashkenazi Jew." ( page 181).
In Mr. Koestler's own words, "The story of the Khazar Empire, as it slowly emerges from the past, begins to look like the most cruel hoax which history has ever perpetrated."
Mr. Koestler was an Ashkenazi Jew and took pride in his Khazar ancestry.
He was also a very talented and successful writer who published over 25
novels and essays. His most successful book, Darkness at Noon, was translated
in thirty-three languages.
As expected, The Thirteenth Tribe caused a stir when published in 1976,
since it demolishes ancient racial and ethnic dogmas...At the height of
the controversy in 1983, the lifeless bodies of Arthur Koestler and his
wife were found in their London home. Despite significant inconsistencies,
the police ruled their death a suicide...
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Map of the Khazar Empire
The Lord's Prayer in the Khazar language
PART ONE: RISE AND FALL OF THE KHAZARS
I - RISE
II - CONVERSION
III - DECLINE
IV - FALL
PART II - THE HERITAGE
V - EXODUS
VI - WHERE FROM ?
VII - CROSS-CURRENTS
VIII - RACE AND MYTH
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APPENDICES
APPENDIX I - A NOTE ON SPELLING
APPENDIX II - A NOTE ON SOURCES
APPENDIX III - THE "KHAZAR CORRESPONDENCE"
APPENDIX IV - SOME IMPLICATIONS - ISRAEL AND THE DIASPORA
REFERENCES
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
