Explanation/Reference:
A few different approaches are available to deal with iBGP and synchronization. We may turn on the synchronization option on our routers and wait for the IGP to have a route for the destination before it's advertised to peers. Another option is to simply use a full mesh, so that iBGP convergence isn't an issue.
Clearly that isn't going to happen when a network's core needs to scale: it will implement something like reflectors that cause iBGP's full mesh to be broken.
The real alternative, if you don't enable synchronization, is to use route recursion. A recursive route lookup uses the BGP next-hop attribute to actually make a different route lookup. The IGP can use the destination network instead of the AS-path to determine where it gets sent. Even if the iBGP hasn't converged, the routers will still know how to get to that network, since it will exist in the router it was advertised from, who will know the next-hop.