The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela throws a flash light upon one of the most interesting stages in the development of nations. The history of the civilized world from the downfall of the Roman Empire to the present day may be summarized as the struggle between Cross and Crescent. This struggle is characterized by a persistent ebb and flow. Mohammed in 622 A. D. transformed, as if by magic, a cluster of Bedouin tribes into a warlike people. An Arabian Empire was formed, which reached from the Ebro to the Indus. Its further advance was stemmed in the year 732, just a hundred years after Mohammed's death, by Charles Martel, in the seven days' battle of Tours. The progress of the culture of the Arabs was as rapid as had been that of their arms. Great cities such as Cairo and Bagdad were built. Commerce and manufactures flourished. The Jews, who enjoyed protection under the benign rule of the Caliphs, transmitted to the Arabs the learning and science of the Greeks. Schools and univer sities arose in all parts of the Empire. The dark age of Christendom proved to be the golden age of literature for Jew and Arab. .....
Table of Contents
Map showing Benjamin's route .... to face title page
Introduction I. Islam in the Middle Ages / vii II. The Object of Benjamin's Journey / xii III. Bibliography / xiii
The Itinerary Translation of Hebrew Introduction / 1
Asia Cyprus, Curicus, Malmistras, Antioch / 15 Antioch, Ladikiya, Gebela, the Hashishim / 16. Kadmus, Tarabulus (Tripolis), Gubail (Byblus) / 17 Beirut, Sidon, the Druses, Tyre / 18 Acre, Haifa, Carmel / 19 Caesarea, Ludd, Samaria, Nablous / 20 The Samaritans 20-1 Jerusalem / 22-5 Bethlehem, Hebron / 25-6 Beit Jibrin, Shiloh, Ramah 26 Gibeah, Nob, Ramleh, Jaffa / 27 Askelon, Jezreel, Sepphoris, Tiberias / 28 Meron, Kedesh Naphtali, Banias / 29 Damascus / 29-30 Galid, Salchah / 3 Baalbec, Tadmor, Emesa, Hamath / 31 Sheizar, Aleppo, Kalat Jabar, Rakka / 32 Harran, Ras-el-Ain, Geziret Ibn Omar / 33 Mosul / 33-4 Rahbah, Karkisiya, El-Anbar / 34 Hadara, Okbara / 35 Bagdad / 35-42 Gazigan, Babylon / 42 Hillah, Tower of Babel, Kaphri / 43 Sepulchre of Ezekiel / 44 Kotsonath, Kefar Al-Keram, Kufa, Sura / 45 Shafjathib, El-Anbar, Hillah 46 Kheibar, Teima, Tilmas and Tanai in Arabia / 47-50 Basra, Khuzistan, Shushan / 51 Sepulchre of Daniel / 52-3 Rudbar, Nihawand, Mulahid / 53 Amadia, History of David Alroy 54-6 Hamadan, Tabaristan / 57 Ispahan, Shiraz, Ghaznah / 58 Samarkand, Tibet, Naisabur / 59 Expedition of Sinjar against the Ghuz / 60-2 Khuzistan, Island of Kish / 62 Katifa, Khulam (Quilon), India / 63-4 Ibrig / 65-6 China, Sea of Nikpa / 66 Al-Gingaleh, Zebid, Aden / 67
Africa Abyssinia and Nubia, Egypt / 68 Gana, Desert of Sahara, Fayum, Heluan / 69 Cairo / 70-4 Alexandria ye-y Damietta, Sunbat, Mount Sinai, Tur Sinai, Tanis / 77-8
Europe Island of Sicily, Messina, Palermo, Italy / 78-9 Germany / 79-80 Bohemia, Slavonia / 80 Russia, France, Paris / 810 English index 82-94 Hebrew text, with prefatory note List of emendations of text Hebrew index
INTRODUCTION
I. Islam in the middle ages
The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela throws a flash light upon one of the most interesting stages in the development of nations.
The history of the civilized world from the downfall of the Roman Empire to the present day may be summarized as the struggle between Cross and Crescent. This struggle is characterized by a persistent ebb and flow. Mohammed in 622 A. D. transformed, as if by magic, a cluster of Bedouin tribes into a warlike people. An Arabian Empire was formed, which reached from the Ebro to the Indus. Its further advance was stemmed in the year 732, just a hundred years after Mohammed's death, by Charles Martel, in the seven days' battle of Tours.
The progress of the culture of the Arabs was as rapid as had been that of their arms. Great cities such as Cairo and Bagdad were built. Commerce and manufactures flourished. The Jews, who enjoyed protection under the benign rule of the Caliphs, transmitted to the Arabs the learning and science of the Greeks. Schools and univer sities arose in all parts of the Empire. The dark age of Christendom proved to be the golden age of literature for Jew and Arab.
By the eleventh century, however, the Arabs had lost much of their martial spirit. Islam might have lost its ascendancy in the East had not the warlike Seljuk Turks, coming from the highlands of Central Asia, possessed themselves of the countries which, in days of old, consti tuted the Persian Empire under Darius. The Seljuks became ready converts to Islam, and upheld the failing strength of the Arabs.
It was the ill-treatment by the Seljuks of the Christian pilgrims to Palestine which aroused Christian Europe and led to the First Crusade. The feudal system adopted by the Seljuks caused endless dissension among their petty sovereigns, called " Atabegs ", all of whom were nominally vassals of the Caliph at Bagdad. Thus it came about that Islamism, divided against itself, offered but a poor resistance to the advance of the Christians. The Crusaders had little difficulty in making their way to Palestine. They captured Jerusalem, and established the Latin kingdom there.
By the middle of the twelfth century Mohammedan power had shrunk to smallor dimensions. Not only did the Franks hold Palestine and all the important posts on the Syrian coast, but, by the capture of Lesser Armenia, Antioch, and Edessa, they had driven a wedge into Syria, and extended their conquests even beyond the Euphrates.
At length there came a pause in the decline of Islam. Zengi, a powerful Seljuk Atabeg, in 1144 captured Edessa, the outpost of Christendom, and the Second Crusade, led by the Emperor Conrad of Germany and by King Louis VII of France, failed to effect the recapture of the fortress. Nureddin, the far-sighted son and successor of Zengi, and later on Saladin, a Kurd, trained at his court, discovered how to restore the fallen might of Islam and expel the Franks from Asia. A necessary preliminary step was to put an end to the dissensions of the Atabeg rulers. Nureddin did this effectually by himself annexing their dominions. His next step was to gain possession of Egypt, and thereby isolate the Latin Kingdom. Genoa, Pisa, and Venice, the three Italian republics who between them had command of the sea, were too selfish and too intent upon their commercial interests to interfere with the designs of the Saracens. The Latin king Amalric had for some years sought to gain a foothold in Egypt. In November, 1168, he led the Christian army as far as the Nile, and was about to seize Fostat, the old unfortified Arab metropolis of Egypt. The inhabitants, however, preferred to set fire to the city rather than that it should fall into the hands of the Christians. To this very day many traces may be seen in the neighbourhood of Cairo of this conflagration. Nureddin's army, in which Saladin held a subordinate command, by a timely arrival on the scene forced the Franks to retreat, and the Saracens were acclaimed as deliverers.
The nominal ruler of Egypt at that time was El-Adid, the Fatimite Caliph, and he made Saladin his Vizier, little thinking that that modest officer would soon supplant him. So efficiently did Saladin administer the country that in a few months it had regained its prosperity, despite the five years' devastating war which had preceded.
At this juncture the traveller Rabbi Benjamin came to Egypt. Some three years earlier he had left his native place Tudela, on the Ebro in the north of Spain. After passing through the prosperous towns which lie on the Gulf of Lyons, he visited Rome and South Italy. From Otranto he crossed over to Corfu, traversed Greece, and then came to Constantinople, of which he gives an interesting account. Very telling, for example, are the words: “They hire from amongst all nations warriors called Barbarians to fight with the Sultan of the Seljuks; for the natives are not warlike, but are as women who have no strength to fight." After visiting the Islands of the Aegean, as well as Rhodes and Cyprus, he passed on to Antioch, and followed the wellknown southern route skirting the Mediterranean, visiting the important cities along the coast, all of which were then in the hands of the Franks.
Having regard to the strained relations between the Christians and Saracens, and to the fights and forays of the Latin knights, we can understand that Benjamin had to follow a very circuitous way to enable him to visit all the places of note in Palestine. From Damascus, which was then the capital of Nureddin's empire, he travelled along with safety until he reached Bagdad, the city of the Caliph, of whom he has much to tell.
It is unlikely that he went far into Persia, which at that time was in a chaotic state, and where the Jews were much oppressed. From Basra, at the mouth of the Tigris, he probably visited the island of Kish in the Persian Gulf, which in the Middle Ages was a great emporium of commerce, and thence proceeded to Egypt by way of Aden and Assuan.
Benjamin gives us a vivid sketch of the Egypt of hia day. Peace and plenty seemed to prevail in the country. This happy state of things was entirely due to the wise measures taken by Saladin, who, however, kept himself so studiously in the background, that not even his name is mentioned in the Itinerary. The deposition of the Fatimite Caliph on Friday, September 10, 1171, and his subsequent death, caused little stir. Saladin continued to govern Egypt as Nureddin's lieutenant. In due course he made himself master of Barca and Tripoli ; then he conquered Arabia Felix and the Soudan, and after Nureddin's death he had no difficulty in annexing his old master's dominions. The Christian nations viewed his rapidly growing power with natural alarm.
About that time news had reached Europe that a powerful Christian king named Prester John, who reigned over a people coming from Central Asia, had invaded Western Asia and inflicted a crushing defeat upon a Moslem army. Pope Alexander III conceived the hope that a useful ally could be found in this priest-king, who would support and uphold the Christian dominion in Asia. He accordingly dispatched his physician Philip on a mission to this mysterious potentate to secure his help against the Mohammedans. The envoy never returned.
Benjamin is one of the very few writers of the Middle Ages who gives us an account of these subjects of Prester John. They were no other than the infidels, the sons of Ghuz, or Kofar-al-Turak, the wild flat-nosed Mongol hordes from the Tartary Steppes, who, in Benjamin's quaint lan guage, " worship the wind and live in the wilderness, who eat no bread and drink no wine, but feed on uncooked meat. They have no noses in lieu thereof they have two small holes through which they breathe."
These were not men likely to help the Christians. On the contrary, as is so fully described in Benjamin's Itinerary, they broke the power of Sultan Sinjar, the mighty Shah of Persia, who, had he been spared by the men of Ghuz, would have proved a serious menace to Saladin. It took Saladin some years to consolidate his empire. In 1187 ne felt himself in a position to engage the Franks in a decisive conflict. At the battle of Tiberias, Guy, the Latin king, was defeated and taken prisoner. The Knights-Templars and Hospitalers, of whose doings at Jerusalem Benjamin gives us particulars, either shared the fate of the king or were slain in action. Jerusalem fell soon afterwards. Pope Alexander III roused the conscience of Europe, and induced the pick of chivalry to embark upon the Third Crusade in 1 1 89. But the prowess of the Emperor Frederic Barbarossa, the gallantry of Richard I of England, the astuteness of Philip Augustus of France, were of no avail. The Fourth and Fifth Crusades were equally unsuccessful, and the tide of Islam's success rose high.
After Saladin's death his empire gradually crumbled to pieces, and under Ghenghis Khan an invasion took place of hordes of Mongols and Tartars, of whom the Ghuz had been merely the precursors. They overran China and Russia, Persia, and parts of Western Asia. The effete Caliphate at Bagdad was overthrown, but to Islam itself fresh life was imparted. The rapid decline of the Mongol power at the end of the thirteenth century gave free scope to the rise of the Ottoman Turks, who had been driven from their haunts east of the Caspian Sea. Like their kinsmen the Seljuks they settled in Asia Minor, and em braced the Mohammedan faith, an example which many Mongols followed. The converts proved trusty warriors to fight the cause of Islam, which gradually attained the zenith of success. On May 29, 1453, Constantinople was captured by the Turks, and an end was made of the Byzantine Empire. Eastern Europe was subsequently overrun by them, and it was not until John Sobieski defeated the Turks under the walls of Vienna in 1683 that their victorious career was checked.
Then at last the tide of Islam turned, and its fortunes have been ebbing ever since. At the present day little territory remains to them in Europe. India and Egypt are now subject to England ; Russia has annexed Central Asia; France rules Algiers and Tunis. One wonders whether there will be a pause in this steady decline of Islam, and whether the prophetic words of Scripture will continue to hold good: " He will be a wild man, his hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him, and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren." This brief consideration of the struggle between Cross and Crescent may serve to indicate the importance of the revival of Islam, which took place between the Second and Third Crusades, at the time when Benjamin wrote his Itinerary.
II. The Object Of Benjamin's Journey
We may ask what induced Benjamin to undertake his travels'? What object or mission was he carrying out?
It must be explained that the Jew in the Middle Ages was much given to travel. He was the Wandering Jew, who kept up communications between one country and another. He had a natural aptitude for trade and travel. His people were scattered to the four corners of the earth. As we can see from Benjamin's Itinerary, there was scarcely a city of importance where Jews could not be found. In the sacred tongue they possessed a common language, and wherever they went they could rely upon a hospitable reception from their co-religionists. Travelling was, therefore, to them comparatively easy, and the bond of common interest always supplied a motive. Like Joseph, the traveller would be dispatched with the injunction: "I pray thee see whether it be well with thy brethren, and bring me word again."
If this was the case in times when toleration and protection were extended to the Jews, how much stronger must have grown the desire for intercommunication at the time of the Crusades. The most prosperous com munities in Germany and the Jewish congregations that lay along the route to Palestine had been exterminated or dispersed, and even in Spain, where the Jews had enjoyed complete security for centuries, they were being pitilessly persecuted in the Moorish kingdom of Cordova.
It is not unlikely, therefore, that Benjamin may have…
Marcus Nathan Adler
The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela Critical Text, Translation and Commentary By Marcus Nathan Adler, M.A.
London Henry Frowde Oxford University Press, Amen Corner, E.C. 1907
