Back القبيلة الثالثة عشرة Arabic On üçüncü qəbilə (Artur Kostler) Azerbaijani Тринадесетото племе Bulgarian Der dreizehnte Stamm German La Treizième Tribu French השבט השלושה עשר HE La tribu des-tre LFN Al treisprezecelea trib: Khazarii Romanian Onüçüncü Kabile Turkish
 First UK edition | |
| Author | Arthur Koestler |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Khazar Empire |
| Publisher | Hutchinson |
Publication date | 1976 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 244 (1977 Pan Books edition) |
| ISBN | 0-394-40284-7 |
The Thirteenth Tribe is a 1976 book by Arthur Koestler[1] advocating the Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi ancestry, the thesis that Ashkenazi Jews are not descended from the historical Israelites of antiquity, but from Khazars, a Turkic people. Koestler hypothesized that the Khazars (who converted to Judaism in the 8th century) migrated westwards into Eastern Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries when the Khazar Empire was collapsing.
Koestler used previous works by Douglas Morton Dunlop, Raphael Patai and Abraham Polak as sources. His stated intent was to make antisemitism disappear by disproving its racial basis.
Popular reviews of the book were mixed, academic critiques of its research were generally negative, and Koestler biographers David Cesarani and Michael Scammell panned it. In 2018, the New York Times described the book as "widely discredited."[2] Neither was it effective in disproving antisemitism, as antisemites merely adapted it — like prior work on the hypothesis — to argue the illegitimacy of present-day Jews.
- ^ Arthur Koestler (1976). The Thirteenth Tribe (1st ed.). London: Hutchinson. ISBN 978-0-09-125550-3. Retrieved 10 August 2023.
- ^ Kershner, Isabel (2 May 2018). "Palestinian Leader Incites Uproar With Speech Condemned as Anti-Semitic". New York Times. Retrieved 13 August 2023.