The thirteenth tribe

About “The thirteenth tribe”

The Thirteenth Tribe is a 1976 book by Arthur Koestler that presents the Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi ancestry. The book argues that Ashkenazi Jews are not descended from the ancient Judeans and Israelites, but from the Khazars, a Turkic people who converted to Judaism. Koestler suggests that after their conversion in the 8th century, the Khazars migrated westward into Eastern Europe during the 12th and 13th centuries, as their empire was declining. The book offers this theory as an alternative explanation for the origins of Ashkenazi Jews. (Summary adapted from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.)