Modern Jews Have a Strong Khazar Component in Their DNA

Arthur Koestler wrote a wonderful book which has been virtually suppressed called The Thirteenth Tribe. In it, Koestler recounts the history of the Two Khans of Khazaria who were pressed by Moslem and Christian theologians in the 8th century to convert to one of the two sides. Wisely seeing nothing but trouble if they made THAT choice, they asked instead for a rabbi to give his side of the story and, in the end, chose the Jewish religion in order to avoid unnecessary mayhem. Here is a recent scientific abstract on the matter:

The question of Jewish ancestry has been the subject of controversy for over two centuries and has yet to be resolved. The "Rhineland Hypothesis" proposes that Eastern European Jews emerged from a small group of German Jews who migrated eastward and expanded rapidly. Alternatively, the "Khazarian Hypothesis" suggests that Eastern European descended from Judean tribes who joined the Khazars, an amalgam of Turkic clans that settled the Caucasus in the early centuries CE and converted to Judaism in the 8th century. The Judaized Empire was continuously reinforced with Mesopotamian and Greco-Roman Jews until the 13th century. Following the collapse of their empire, the Judeo-Khazars fled to Eastern Europe. The rise of European Jewry is therefore explained by the contribution of the Judeo-Khazars. Thus far, however, their contribution has been estimated only empirically; the absence of genome-wide data from Caucasus populations precluded testing the Khazarian Hypothesis. Recent sequencing of modern Caucasus populations prompted us to revisit the Khazarian Hypothesis and compare it with the Rhineland Hypothesis. We applied a wide range of population genetic analyses - including principal component, biogeographical origin, admixture, identity by descent, allele sharing distance, and uniparental analyses - to compare these two hypotheses. Our findings support the Khazarian Hypothesis and portray the European Jewish genome as a mosaic of Caucasus, European, and Semitic ancestries, thereby consolidating previous contradictory reports of Jewish ancestry.

Of course, the Israelis maintain that a Khazarian admixture makes their claim to be restoring their ancient homeland to its rightful owners a bit dicey. So Koestler's valiant foray against another of his windmill exercises was for a long time ridiculed, even though the Jewish Encyclopedia kept the Khazar story alive until it "disappeared" into an Orwellian 'memory hole.'

Sooner or later, the truth will out and besides, as a Turkic tribe, the Khazars are not a bad pedigree in the Middle East, as seen from Ankara...!