The Thirteenth Tribe - The Khazar Empire and its Heritage - Koestler

1976 paperback with 255 pages in good condition.

Arthur Koestler (1905-1983) recounts the history of the ancient Khazar Empire, a major but almost forgotten power in Eastern Europe at about the time that Charlemagne was Emperor in the West. He advances the thesis that Ashkenazi Jews are not descended from the historical Israelites of antiquity, but from Khazars, a Turkic people, and argues that the Khazars (who may have converted to Judaism in the 8th century) migrated westwards into Eastern Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries when the Khazar Empire was collapsing.