The Thirteenth Tribe: Original Edition

I like the way the book goes into detail about everything concerning Israel today.

I have known about the Khazar empire for some time, but it was about time to do some real investigation. Starting with Arthur Koestler was a good start--he meticulously researched available information. But also, he makes some speculations based on historical time periods regarding the origin of the Sephardim in the Diaspora, which was many centuries after the Khazar empire's decline. The Khazars moved into Poland from Ukraine and Russia, and in the Diaspora, many Jews moved east to the areas once inhabited by the Khazars, bringing a different Jewish culture with them (expulsion from Spain and Portugal in the late 1400s). This leads to the conclusion (speculative) that the Ashkenazim are descended from the Khazars, and the Sephardim are a completely different genetic strain of Jews descended from those who lived in the Iberian peninsula, occasionally intermarrying with Catholics and Muslims in Spain during a period that some describe as "convivencia" (conflict free), and others describe as a period of continual conflict between Catholics, Muslims, and Jews. I once read a series of historical accounts of this 700 year period of Catholics, Muslims, and Jews living peacefully together, yet Koestler describes the period as one of agitation and conflict. This could account for the expulsion of the Moors and Jews in 1492 by Queen Isabella, the main force behind the Inquisition. One has to wonder if in fact she was a sadist who enjoyed the torture machinery used on non-Catholics to get them to covert to Catholicism, or die. Yet so-called "conversos" were always suspected of practicing their original religions, and the language of the Jews, Ladino (a mix of Spanish and Hebrew, totally different from the Yiddish of the Khazars) survives today and is studied by linguists and spoken by some Sephardim.I can't think of a better place to start a journey into the less-known movements of large populations and their later effects in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries than Arthur Koestler's "Thirteenth Tribe." I think his scholarship speaks for itself....there are later works on the Khazars, yet this is a very well written and readable piece of historical research.

Very good read. History is not always what it seems.

Great book. Gives alot of information that leads me to believe that after the destruction of the 2nd temple in 70 A.D, the Jews that were expelled from the Middle East, North Africa, Spain, and Portugal migrated to West Africa --Ghana, Mali, and Songhai--which was called the Bilad as-Sudan meaning LAND OF THE BLACKS in Arabic. They also migrated to Senegal and Cape Verde. Some even went as far as South Africa where there is a large Lemba community today. The Lemba have been genetically determined through DNA to be of the priestly tribe of the Levites!....and yes, they are BLACK AFRICANS. They practice Hebrewism that has been their religion for thousands of years.I always wondered how white people became Jews and owners of Israel! They are proselytes...converts. Not of the bloodline of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.They stole the identity of the true Jews and hijacked the Hebrew language which was the language of the Canaanites. Hebrew is an AFRO-ASIATIC language close to Ugaritic.When they were in Europe, they spoke Yiddish and whatever language of the country they were from.

This is knowledge and history that is eye opening. A bit technical to read but understandable.

I like that it is offered on Amazon and at a reasonable price.

The truth is told

I have read about half of this book and find it very interesting and informative. It certainly clears up a mystery for me. I am a native New Yorker and had many acquaintances who were Jewish from European ancestry. But I could never understand how this assimilation took place, since the Jews were supposed to be from the middle east. This book explains other parallel historical developments concerning the Vikings, Russia, other Turkish tribes as well as the Khazars development and subsequent conversion. As one gets past the introductory information, the book reads as well as a non-fiction work, as opposed to a dry historical tome. There are plenty of footnotes and references to substantiate the research. The author is very careful to give the sources he relies on and in most cases tries to get more than one source to substantiate the information he relies on. This book is not a polemic or agenda driven, but rather one that tries to enlighten the reader as to historical occurrences. I suggest that this book will be informative to anyone interested in early European history and its alliances affect us today.

Awesome book!

Very good read gives a lot of knowledge xx

Esta parte de la historia es desconocida para la mayoría de las personas y debería fomentarse su difusión.

I liked the whole book. Five stars. Facts that need to be more widely spread.

A deep and insightful book that wiil stir the mind of the curious.