文档介绍：Arthur Koestler
The Thirteenth Tribe
THE KHAZAR EMPIRE AND ITS HERITAGE
This book traces the history of the ancient Khazar Empire, a major but almost forgotten power in Eastern Europe,
which in the Dark Ages became converted to Judaism. Khazaria was finally wiped out by the forces of Genghis Khan,
but evidence indicates that the Khazars themselves migrated to Poland and formed the cradle of Western 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.
In the second part of this book, “The Heritage,” Mr. Koestler speculates about the ultimate faith of the Khazars and
their impact on the position 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.
Yet should this theory be confirmed, the term “anti-Semitism” would e void of meaning, since, as Mr. Koestler
writes, it is based “on a misapprehension shared by both the killers and their victims. 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.”
ISBN 0-394-40284-7
The Thirtheenth Tribe: Rise
PART ONE
Rise and Fall of the Khazars
“In Khazaria, sheep, honey, and Jews exist in large quantities.”
Muqaddasi, Descriptio Imperii Moslemici (tenth century).
I
RISE
1
ABOUT the time when Charlemagne was crowned Emperor of the West, the eastern confines of Europe between the
Caucasus and the Volga were ruled by a Jewish state, known as the Khazar Empire. At the peak of its power, from the
seventh to the tenth centuries AD, it played a significant part in shaping the destinies of mediaeval, and consequently
of modern, Europe.