Jerusalem: The Biography

† The Khazars – shamanist Turkic nomads, ruling the steppes from the Black Sea to Central Asia – formed the last Jewish state before the creation of Israel. In about 805, their kings converted to Judaism, taking names such as Manasseh and Aaron. When the Jerusalemite writer Muqaddasi passed through Khazaria he laconically observed, ‘Sheep, honey and Jews exist [there] in large quantities.’ By the 960s, this Jewish empire was in decline. However, writers from Arthur Koestler to the recent Shlomo Sand have claimed that much of European Jewry are actually descended from these Turkic tribesmen. If true, this would undermine Zionism. But modern genetics refutes the theory: the two latest surveys suggest that modern Jews, both Sephardic and Ashkenazi, are around 70 per cent descended from Middle Eastern genes of 3,000 years ago and around 30 per cent from European stock.