I see this topic bandied about on this bulletin board quite often. Does anyone have any reference to scholarly work on this subject?

Possibly Arthur Koestler 's The Thirteenth Tribe

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0765762129/ref%3Dnosim/thekhazariainfoc/002-4211850-1055231

THE THIRTEENTH TRIBE
by ARTHUR KOESTLER
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0394402847/ref=pd_bxgy_text_1/002-0746183-4741623?

Koestler wrote an intriguing, popularized account, in this book, of the theory that many of today's Jews (mostly those of Eastern European descent) are of non-Semitic origin. Essentially the book recounts the tale of the Khazars, a middle Asian Turkic tribe, or tribal group, which settled in the southern steppes of what is today's Russia, during the seventh and eighth centuries, and adopted Judaism (in reaction to the conflicting demands of nearby 'great powers' espousing Christianity and Islam).

On this OD thread I have done some independent research on this issue - like comparing common Ashkenazi surnames to Turkish ones...


http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13415&highlight=khazars


"Thus, when average Westerner sees a name like Berman, he thinks that it is simply Germanic, even though I understand “Ber” doesn’t mean anything by itself in German.

Here, in a Turkish national football team, (I took a random pick from the Net), you can find players like “Ahmet Berman” and “Candemir Berkman”:

http://www.angelfire.com/nj/sivritepe/6162/znta.html

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"And have you seen “The Midnight Express”? There is one really repulsive Turkish prisoner named “Rifki”.

Rifki (or Rifkin, Rivkind) is a very common Ashkenazi surname.

Or let’s take names like Ralph Bakshi or Leon Bakst – they contain the Turkic title of “bek” (beg, bey), meaning chieftain.


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"Many Ashkenazim have simply "Turk" (or Turkel, Studs Terkel) as a surname, in spite of them or their ancestors never having lived in the Ottoman Turkey (that was a Sephardim-dominated area).

This website confirms this, and then pathetically denies the obvious implications:

"TURK is a very common surname among Ashkenazi Jews. This name first appeared in Germany in the 16th century. "A Historical Atlas of the Jewish People", editor Eli Barnavi, Schocken Books, NY: 1992, is the source of the following excerpts:

Legends trace the origins of Polish Jewry to a Turkic people – the Khazars; however, there is no historical evidence to corroborate such theories."

http://www.turkgenealogy.com/content/dna_results.htm

Then there is a grudging admission:

"While there is no historical evidence tying the Khazars into Polish Jewry, there is acceptance that something less than 10% of Eastern European Ashkenazim have a Khazarian ancestry. The R1a1 haplogroup, which is associated with 54-60% of Eastern Europeans is possibly the consequence of genetic influences from Central Asia. These could be the same influences that resulted in 12.7% of Ashkenazi Jews belonging to this same haplogroup. "

They are all related, you see.

God, I love linguistics!"


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And hey, speaking of names of Turanian origin, let's not forget an old friend of ours!

Has anyone seen the Akira Kurosawa film where Russian officer befriends a Mongolian hunter named DERSU UZALA in Siberia?

( http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/A...4953162-1308604 )

ALAN DERSHOWITZ = ALAN, SON OF DERSU


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"It is quite easy, really. Many of the most common Ashkenazi surnames are pure Turkish - not Hebrew, German, Slavic or any other origin.

I plan to make a really long list, but here you have some examples:

Arik

Alper

Kagan (Kaganovich)

Kaplan

Karluk

Karman

Kattan

Kurgan

Balaban

Bashe ("pasha," as in Isaac Bashevis Singer)

Balint

Berke (Berkowitz)

Balkan (The Balkan peninsula was named by Turks)

Baiker (Pauker, Peker)

Baskin (as in Baskin-Robbins)


Besides personal names, the word "yarmulka" is a Turkic word, and the skullcap itself is of Turkish origin - Uzbek Muslims wear the same kind of caps even today, and it is also noteworthy that Sephardic Jews didn't use yarmulka until last century, when they moved to Israel and came under Ashkenazi influence."



Petr

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0765762129/ref%3Dnosim/thekhazariainfoc/002-4211850-1055231


I'll examine this. From what I've heard the "13th tribe" isn't the most scholarly work ever written.

Given their phenotypes, it's safe to say 90% of Jews have very little biological ties remaining to the Middle East.

I'll examine this. From what I've heard the "13th tribe" isn't the most scholarly work ever written.

The best support for the Khazar hypothesis comes from the physiognomies of the Jews themselves.

Most Sephardic and Oriental Jews look like textbook Semites. They readily pass for Arabs, indeed, the Mossad often uses Arabic-speaking Sephardic/Oriental Jews as agents and spies in Arab countries and among the Palestinians.

In contrast, most Ashkenazi Jews look nothing at all like Arabs. They do resemble various Turkic peoples of the Caucausus (consistent with the Khazar theory), on the other hand. Georgians and especially Armenians "look Jewish" by many standards.

The genetic evidence seems ambiguous. While the Y-Chromosomes of Jews mark them as relatives of Palestinian Arabs and Lebanese, many mtDNA and autosomal markers place Jews as close relatives of Turks, consistent with the Khazar hypothesis.

The best support for the Khazar hypothesis comes from the physiognomies of the Jews themselves.

Most Sephardic and Oriental Jews look like textbook Semites. They readily pass for Arabs, indeed, the Mossad often uses Arabic-speaking Sephardic/Oriental Jews as agents and spies in Arab countries and among the Palestinians.

In contrast, most Ashkenazi Jews look nothing at all like Arabs. They do resemble various Turkic peoples of the Caucausus (consistent with the Khazar theory), on the other hand. Georgians and especially Armenians "look Jewish" by many standards.


Setting aside the rather vague classification of 'looking Jewish', plenty of Arabs 'look like' Turks, and vice versa. Of course variations between Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews can easily be explained by a slow but gradual absoprtion of European blood into Jewish communities.

In fact given the DOCUMENTED history of Jews in Europe, this is actually the likely explanation. Even in the theories regarding the Khazars that I've seen and find credible, the actual practicing of Judiasm was supposedly localized to the nobility and elites.

http://www.khazaria.com/

http://www.hunmagyar.org/

Welcome aboard Merovingian.