THE GREAT MUSLIM SCHOLAR, Ibn Kathir, when discussing the origins of ‘Yajuj wa Ma’juj’ (Gog and Magog) – the people who traditionally inhabited the area between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, which is where the Khazar kingdom was originally situated – in his historical work, Al-Bidayah wa’l-Nihayah (The Beginning and the End), specifically states that “Gog and Magog are two groups of Turks, descended from Yafith (Japheth), the father of the Turks, one of the sons of Noah.”
It is interesting to note in passing that one of the questions which Hasdai ibn Shaprut [the treasurer, court physician and minister of (Caliph) Abdar-Rahman III (912-961 A.D.) in Spain] asked in his letter to [Khazar] King Joseph was whether the tribe of the Khazar Jews had any connection with the ‘lost’ ten tribes – that is, the ten tribes of the Tribe of Israel who, as we have already seen, became known as the Israelites (as opposed to the other two, who became known as the Judahites), and who were disowned by the Judahites, and who ‘disappeared’ after becoming conquered by the Assyrians [in 721 B.C.].
King Joseph categorically stated in his reply that there was no such connection whatsoever. In providing a genealogy of his people, King Joseph, writes Arthur Koestler in his book, The Thirteenth Tribe, “cannot, and does not, claim for them Semitic descent; he traces their ancestry not to Shem but to Noah’s third son, Japheth; or more precisely to Japheth’s grandson, Togarma, the ancestor of all Turkish tribes.”