The Itinerary Of Benjamin Of Tudela Part 12

[Footnote 124: _Lebrecht_, p. 391, states that this was a scarf of black velvet, generally a portion of the hangings of the mosque of Mecca, which was suspended from a balcony of the Palace and was called the Sleeve of the Caliph.]

[Footnote 125: The statements here made are strangely contradictory; see a suggestive article by Dr. Goldziher in _Z.D.P.G._, 1905, p. 151.]

[Footnote 126: A valuable work, _Bagdad during the Abbaside Caliphate, from Contemporary Arabic and Persian Sources_, appeared in 1900, written by Mr. Guy Le Strange, which helps to explain Benjamin's account of the Moslem metropolis. The Caliph Mansur in 762 selected it as the Capital of the Empire. Numerous references in the Talmud prove that a Jewish settlement was there long before. Mansur built a double-walled Round City two miles in diameter on the western side of the Tigris. It formed the nucleus of suburbs, which spread over both banks of the Tigris. A very fair idea of the metropolis may be obtained if we imagine the Round City as situated on the Surrey side of the Thames, having the "Elephant and Castle" for its centre. At this spot stood the great Mosque of Mansur, where the Friday services were held, and where the Caliph took a prominent part in the service on the Bairam, at the close of the Ramazan fast. The Round City being subject to periodical inundations, the government buildings were gradually transferred to the eastern side of the river. The Royal Palaces, in the grounds called the Harim, which were fully three miles in extent, occupied the site similar to that from Westminster to the City. At one time there were as many as twenty-three palaces within the royal precincts. The Caliph, when visiting the Mosque in state, left the palace grounds, and proceeded over the main bridge, corresponding to Westminster Bridge, along a road which in Benjamin's time led to the Basrah Gate quarter. At the close of the ceremony in the Mosque, the Caliph returned, crossing the bridge of boats, and proceeded to his palace by a road corresponding to the Thames Embankment. The members of his court and the n.o.bles entered barges and escorted him alongside the river.

The Arab writers mention that certain palaces were used as state prisons, in which the Caliphs kept their nearer relations in honourable confinement. They were duly attended by numerous servants, and amply supplied with every luxury, but forbidden under pain of death to go beyond the walls.

Lebrecht, p. 381, explains the circ.u.mstances under which the Caliph Moktafi imprisoned his brother and several of his kinsmen. There were large hospitals in Bagdad: the one to which Benjamin alludes is the Birmaristan of the Mustansiriyah, in Western Bagdad, which for three centuries was a great school of medical science. Its ruins, close to the present bridge of boats, are still to be seen. The reader must bear in mind that at the time when Benjamin visited Bagdad, the Seljuk Sultans had been defeated, and the Caliphs stood higher than ever in power. They, however, took little interest in political affairs, which were left entirely in the hands of their viziers.]

[Footnote 127: Asher and the other printed editions give the Jewish population at 1,000. Pethachia makes the same estimate, which, however, is inconsistent with his statement, that the Head of the Academy had 2,000 disciples at one time, and that more than 500 surrounded him. The British Museum and Casanatense MSS. solve the difficulty; they have the reading _forty thousand_. It would be wearisome to specify in these notes all the places where a superior reading is presented by these MSS.; the student will, however, find that not a few anomalies which confronted Asher are now removed.]

[Footnote 128: The last or tenth Academy.]

[Footnote 129: This appellation is applied in the Talmud to scholars who uninterruptedly apply themselves to communal work.]

[Footnote 130: The first line of Exilarchs, which ended with Hezekiah in the year 1040, traced their descent from David through Zerubbabel. Hisdai's pedigree was through Hillel, who sprang from a female branch of the Royal line (see Graetz, vol. VI, note 10). Pethachia writes (p. 17) that a year before his arrival at Bagdad Daniel died. A nephew, David, became Exilarch jointly with R. Samuel, the Head of the great Academy, whose authority over all the communities in Asia became paramount. Samuel had an only daughter, who was learned in the Scriptures and the Talmud. She gave instruction through a window, remaining in the house, whilst the disciples were below, unable to see her.]

[Footnote 131: The office of Exilarch had but recently been revived, and the Mohammed here referred to may have been Mohammed El Moktafi, the Caliph Mostanshed's predecessor.]

[Footnote 132: The Alans throughout the Middle Ages occupied Georgia and the regions of the Caucasus. As to the Iron Gates which Alexander made, Yule in commenting on Marco Polo's text (_Travels of Ser Marco Polo:_ edited by Sir Henry Yule, 3rd edition, London, John Murray, chap, iii) says that Benjamin was the first European traveller to mention this pa.s.s. Benjamin and Marco Polo both record the general belief currrent at the time that the Pa.s.s of Derbend was traversed by Alexander. It is still called in Turkish "Demis-Kapi" or the Iron Gate, and the Persians designate it "Sadd-i-Iskandar"--the Rampart of Alexander. Lord Curzon, however, in his valuable work _Persia and the Persians_, vol. 1, p. 293, proves conclusively that the pa.s.s through which Alexander's army marched when pursuing Darius after the battle of Arbela could not have been at Derbend. Arrian, the historian of Alexander's expeditions, writes that the pa.s.s was one day's journey from Rages (the noted city mentioned in the Book of Tobit) for a man marching at the pace of Alexander's army. But Derbend is fully 500 miles from Rages. In Lord Curzon's opinion, confirmed by Spiegel, Droysen and Schindler, the Sirdara Pa.s.s, some forty miles from Teheran on the way to Meshed, must have been the defile which Alexander's army forced. I think it will be found that Marco Polo's geography is less reliable than that of Benjamin. In the third chapter referred to above, Marco Polo speaks of the Euphrates falling into the Caspian Sea.]

[Footnote 133: Probably the Oxus, called by the Arabs "Gaihun." Rabad I, a contemporary of Benjamin, speaks of the land of Gurgan in his Sefer Hakabalah. The Nestorian Christians are probably here referred to.]

[Footnote 134: It is interesting to compare this account with that of the Installation of the Egyptian Nagid (_J.Q.R._, IX, p. 717).]

[Footnote 135: This is a well-known sage, whose name often occurs in the Talmud.]

[Footnote 136: The Babel of Bible times was captured by Sennacherib; after stopping up a dam of the Euphrates, the country was placed under water and the city destroyed.

Nebuchadnezzar restored the city; he also erected a magnificent palace for himself--the Kasr--also the Temple of Bel. Herodotus, Book I, chaps. 178-89, fully describes these edifices, and dwells upon the huge extent of the metropolis, which was estimated to have a circuit of fifty miles. Xerxes destroyed the city. Alexander the Great contemplated the restoration of Bel's Temple, but as it would have taken two months for 10,000 men merely to remove the rubbish, he abandoned the attempt. The ruins have been recently explored by Germans. The embankments which regulated the flow of the Euphrates and Tigris have given way, and at the present time the whole region round Babylon is marshy and malarious. In the words of Jeremiah, li. 43, "Her cities are a desolation, a sterile land, and a wilderness, a place wherein no man dwelleth."]

[Footnote 137: The Valley of Dura mentioned in Daniel iii.

is here referred to. See Dr. Berliner's _Beitrage zur Geographie und Ethnographie Babyloniens_; also Layard's _Nineveh and Babylon_, p. 469. Cf. Berachot, 57 b.]

[Footnote 138: Beres.h.i.th Rabba, chap, x.x.xviii, says the tower was at Borsippa, and the ruins here spoken of are probably those of the Birs Nimroud, fully described by Layard, _Nineveh and Babylon_, chap, xxii, p. 496. He says: "The mound rises abruptly to the height of 198 feet, and has on its summit a compact ma.s.s of brickwork 37 feet high by 28 broad.... On one side of it, beneath the crowning masonry, lie huge fragments torn from the pile itself. The calcined and vitreous surface of the bricks, fused into rock-like ma.s.ses, show that their fall may have been caused by lightning. The ruin is rent almost from top to bottom. No traces whatever now remain of the spiral pa.s.sage spoken of by the Jewish traveller." Cf. Professor T.K. Cheyne's article, "The Tower of Babel," in the new _Biblical Cyclopaedia_. Nebuchadnezzar, in his Borsippa inscription, records that the tower, which had never originally been completed, had fallen into decay, and that the kiln-bricks had split. These are the Agur bricks mentioned by Benjamin; cf. Isaiah xxvii. 9. Al-ajur is the word still used by the Arabs for kiln-burnt bricks.]

[Footnote 139: Niebuhr, vol. II, 216, gives a full account of his visit to the tomb. Layard, speaking of Birs Nimroud, says: "To the south-west in the extreme distance rise the palm-trees of Kifil, casting their scanty shade over a small dome, the tomb of Ezekiel. To this spot occasionally flock in crowds, as their forefathers have done for centuries, the Jews of Bagdad, Hillah, and other cities of Chaldea.... It is now but a plain building, despoiled of the ornaments and MSS. which it once appears to have contained" (_Nineveh and Babylon_, p. 500). Alcharizi composed a beautiful ode when visiting this tomb (chap, x.x.xv, also chap. L).]

[Footnote 140: This Mohammed, as in the case referred to p.

40, must have been a predecessor of the reigning Caliph, as the Prophet was never in Babylonia, and in no case would he have granted favours to the Jews. It should be noted that the British Museum MS. on which our text is based, as well as the Casanatense MS., generally styles the Prophet [Hebrew]. The MS., on which the Constantinople _editio princeps_ is based, had probably all pa.s.sages where this epithet or other objectionable remarks were used excised by the censor, and it will be seen that the pa.s.sage before us, with reference to the grant of land by Mohammed, as well as that further on, referring to Ali, the son-in-law of Mohammed, do not appear in any of the printed editions. Dr.

Hirschfeld is of opinion that, on the one hand, the epithet is the translation of the Arabic _majn[=u]n_, a term against which Mohammed protested several times in the Koran, because it means he was possessed by a _jinn_, like a soothsayer. On the other hand, the word was chosen having regard to Hosea ix. 7. This was done long before Benjamin's time, by Jafeth and others.]

[Footnote 141: See picture of the traditional tomb of Ezekiel in the _Jewish Encyclopaedia_, vol. V, p. 315.]

[Footnote 142: The Talmud (Sabbath, II a) speaks of the destruction of Mata Mehasya. Sura took its place as a centre of learning.]

[Footnote 143: See Berliner, pp. 45, 47, 54, and 57, for particulars derived from the Talmud and Midrash as to the several centres of Jewish learning in Babylonia.]

[Footnote 144: This synagogue is repeatedly mentioned in the Talmud. Zunz (Note 255) omits mentioning Aboda Zarah, 43 b, where Rashi explains that Shafjathib was a place in the district of Nehardea, and that Jeconiah and his followers brought the holy earth thither, giving effect to the words of the Psalmist: "For thy servants take pleasure in her stones, and favour the dust thereof" (Ps. cii. 14).]

[Footnote 145: Benjamin visited the various seats of learning in the neighbourhood, and thus came again to Nehardea, which has been already mentioned on p. 34. Rab Jehuda, not Rab, is there a.s.sociated with Samuel.]

[Footnote 146: Asher, at this stage of Benjamin's narrative, has the following note: "For the ill.u.s.tration of that portion of our text which treats of Arabia, we refer the reader to the Rev. S.L. Rapoport's paper, 'Independent Jews of Arabia,' which will be found at the end of these notes."

No such account appeared in the work, but in the _Bikkure Haittim_ for the year 1824, p. 51, there appears an interesting essay in Hebrew on the subject by Rapoport, to which the reader is referred. It is a matter of history that the powerful independent Jewish communities which were settled at Yathrib, afterwards called Medina, and in the volcanic highlands of Kheibar and Teima called the Harrah, were crushed by Mohammed. Dr. Hirschfeld, in the _Jewish Quarterly Review_, vol. XV, p. 170, gives us the translation of a letter found in the Cairo _Genizah_, addressed by Mohammed to the people of Kheibar and Maqna, granting them certain privileges from which the Jews, who were allowed to remain in their homes, benefited. Omar, the second Caliph, broke the compact, but allowed them to settle at Kufa on the Euphrates. Although pilgrims pa.s.s annually up and down the caravan tracks to Mecca, the information respecting the old Jewish sites in the Harrah is most meagre. Edrisi and Abulfeda throw no light on Benjamin's account. In the year 1904 an able work by Mr. D.G. Hogarth appeared under the t.i.tle of _The Penetration of Arabia_, being a record of the development of Western knowledge concerning the Arabian Peninsula. He gives a full account of the European travellers who have described the country. Niebuhr, who visited Yemen in 1762, repeated the statement made by the Italian traveller Varthema that there were still wild Jews in Kheibar. The missionary Joseph Woolf visited Arabia in 1836, and he gives us an account of an interview he had with some of the Rechabites. No weight, however, can be attached to his fantastic stories. W.G. Palgrave, who resided for some years in Syria as a Jesuit, where he called himself Father Michael (Cohen), was entrusted in 1862 with a mission to Arabia by Napoleon III in connexion with the projected Suez Ca.n.a.l; he was one of the few visitors to the Harrah, but he makes no special reference to the Jews. Joseph Halevi made many valuable discoveries of inscriptions in South Arabia, which he traversed in 1869. He visited the oppressed Jewish community at Sanaa in Yemen; he further discovered traces of the ancient Minaean kingdom, and found that the Jews in the Nejran were treated with singular tolerance and even favour; but he was not able to tell us anything respecting the Jews of the Harrah.

C.M. Doughty was, however, more successful when visiting this district in 1875. Of Kheibar he says "that it is now a poor village whose inhabitants are a terrible kindred, Moslems outwardly, but, in secret, cruel Jews that will suffer no stranger to enter among them." See C.M. Doughty's _Arabia Deserta_, vol. II, p. 129. "Teima is a Nejd colony of Shammar; their fathers came to settle there not above 200 years past. Old Teima of the Jews, according to their tradition, had been (twice) destroyed by flood. From those times there remain some great rude stone buildings. It is now a prosperous open place" (vol. I, p. 286).

The only writer that casts any doubt upon Benjamin's record as to independent Jewish tribes in Arabia is R. Jacob Safir, who visited Yemen and other Arabian ports in the Red Sea in the year 1864. See chaps. xv and xliii of _Iben Safir_, Lyck, 1866. Dr. L. Grunhut, in his introduction, _Die Reisebeschreibungen des R. Benjamin von Tudela_, Jerusalem, 1903, p. 16, refutes Safir's statements.

In Hogarth's work, p. 282, is shown a print of the Teima stone, with its Aramaic inscription, considered to belong to the fourth or fifth century B.C., and on p. 285 will be found Doughty's interesting sketch of Kheibar.]

[Footnote 147: It is clear that, when speaking of the population of some of these places, the whole oasis or district is intended, and not a particular town.]

[Footnote 148: In reading through the foregoing account of the Jews in Arabia, it is quite clear that Benjamin never visited the country, nor did he pretend to have done so. In the words of Mr. C.E. Beazley (The Dawn of Modern Geography, p. 252), "It is no longer, for the most part, a record of personal travel; it is rather an attempt to supplement the first part 'of things seen' by a second 'of things heard.'" But Beazley is wrong when he characterizes as "wild" the account of the Jews of Southern Arabia "who were Rechabites." Does Benjamin say so? There is no such reading in the MS. of the British Museum. The student, it is thought, will by this time have come to the conclusion that it is the oldest and most trustworthy of our available authorities. The whole misconception has arisen from the fact that the unreliable MS. E and all the printed editions have transposed the letters of [Hebrew:] and made [Hebrew:]

of it. Rapoport, in the article already referred to, seems to suspect the faulty reading: to justify it, he connects the men of Kheibar with the Rechabites and the sons of Heber the Kenite, basing his argument upon Jer. x.x.xv, Judges i.

16, I Sam. xxvii. 10, and I Chron. ii. 55.

Neither Zunz nor Asher makes any comments upon this chapter of the itinerary. Graetz gives an abstract of Benjamin's account; he, as well as all other writers, is unable to identify Tilmas, but is of opinion that Tanai must be Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, which, however, is twenty-five days'

journey beyond Kheibar. It is well known that Yemen has, since Bible times, harboured a Jewish population, who--notwithstanding all oppression, intensified under Turkish rule--inhabit many of its towns and villages to the present day. It is comparatively accessible, owing to its proximity to the sea. We must cherish the hope that Great Britain, now that it claims the Hinterland of Aden, will extend its protection to the Jews.

The volcanic highlands (Harrah) of Kheibar were always inaccessible, owing to their being surrounded by waterless deserts and fanatic Bedouin tribes.

R. Abraham Farissol, who flourished at the beginning of the sixteenth century, writes that there was a large number of Jews in the district, who lived in tents and in wooden houses or huts. His contemporary, David Reubeni, who crossed from Arabia to Abyssinia and came to Europe in 1524, pretended to be brother of Joseph, king of the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and half-Mana.s.seh in the desert of Chabor (Kheibar). Benjamin takes care to qualify his statement as to the origin of the Jews of Kheibar by adding [Hebrew:]

"_people say_ they belong to the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Mana.s.seh, whom Salmanesser, King of a.s.syria, led hither into captivity."

I would here mention an interesting work of Dr. R. Dozy, Professor of History and Oriental Languages at Leyden, _Die Israeliten in Mecca_, 1864. By a series of ingenious inferences from Bible texts (1 Sam. x.x.x, 1 Chron. iv. 24-43, &c.) he essays to establish that the tribe of Simeon, after David had dispersed the Amalekites who had already been weakened by Saul, entered Arabia and settled all along in the land of the Minaeans and at Mecca, where they established the worship at the Kaaba and introduced practices which have not been altogether abandoned up to the present day. Dr. Dozy further contends that after Hezekiah's reign numerous Jewish exiles came to Arabia.

Hommel, in two articles in Ersch and Gruber's _Encyclopaedia_, under "Bedouins" and "Anzah," gives full particulars respecting the Anizeh, otherwise Anaessi, tribe--that they were in the habit of joining the Wahabees and other Bedouin tribes in attacking caravans and levying blackmail. The Turkish Pasha at Damascus had to pay annually pa.s.sage-money to ensure the safety of the pilgrims to Mecca.

On one occasion two of the Bedouin sheiks were decoyed by the Turks and killed; but the Anaessi, aided by other tribes to the number of 80,000, took ample revenge by pillaging the Mecca caravan on its return. They seized a quant.i.ty of pearls, and the women were said to have attempted boiling them with the rice. Seetzen (_Journey through Syria, &c._, I, ch. i, p. 356) says, "In Kheibar are no Jews now, only Anaessi." Layard and other modern writers often refer to the Anizeh Bedouins. Travellers go in dread of them in the Syrian desert and all along the Euphrates. Doughty mentions that they, more than any other tribe, resemble the Jews both in appearance and disposition.

Ritter (_Geographie_, vol. XII), in quoting Niebuhr, makes mention of the widespread Anizeh tribe of Bedouins who were anciently known to be Jews. He further states that the Jews of Damascus and Aleppo shun them as they are non-observant Jews, considered by some to be Karaites. Does all this give ground for any presumption that they are or were crypto-Jews, the descendants of the former Kheibar Jews, possibly also of those whom Omar allowed to settle at Kufa?

This lengthy note may be closed fitly with the following mysterious remark in Doughty's usual quaint style (vol. I, p. 127), in connexion with the murder of a Bagdad Jew who tried to reach Kheibar: "But let none any more jeopardy his life for Kheibar! I would that these leaves might save the blood of some: and G.o.d give me this reward of my labour! for who will, he may read in them all the tale of Kheibar."]

[Footnote 149: It will be seen further on (p. 67) that Benjamin speaks of Aden as being in India, "which is on the mainland." It is well known that Abyssinia and Arabia were in the Middle Ages spoken of as "Middle India." It has been ascertained that in ancient times the Arabs extensively colonized the western sea-coast of the East Indies. Cf. the article "Arabia," in the ninth edition of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ and Supplement.]

[Footnote 150: The Casanatense MS. here interpolates: "Thence it takes seven days to Lusis, where there are 2,000 Israelites." Asher subst.i.tutes for Lusis Wasit, a place near the Tigris. I am unable to identify the river Virae, and the words "which is in the land of Al Yemen" are evidently out of place.]

[Footnote 151: See Dr. Hartwig Hirschfeld's account of a Fragment of a Work by Judah Al-harizi, being a description of a pilgrimage through Mesopotamia with a view to visit Ezra's grave. The Arab geographer Yakut locates the grave in the village Maisan on the river Samara near the place where the Euphrates and Tigris unite (_J. Q.R._, vol. XV, 683).

Layard writes as follows:--"We stopped at the so-called tomb of the prophet Ezra, about twenty-five miles from the junction of the Tigris and Euphrates, at Korna. The building, which is of a comparatively modern date, consisted of two chambers, an outer one which was empty, and an inner one containing the tomb built of bricks, covered with white stucco and enclosed in a wooden case, over which was thrown a large blue cloth fringed with yellow ta.s.sels with the name of the donor embroidered on it in Hebrew characters. No trace of either the large synagogue or of the mosque mentioned by Benjamin now exists, and it may be doubted whether the present building covers the tomb which was seen by the Hebrew traveller. We could find no ancient remains near it, as the Tigris is constantly changing its course, and was still eating away the bank of alluvial soil, upon the edge of which the building stood. It is highly probable that the tomb seen by Benjamin of Tudela had long before been carried away by the river." Layard's _Early Adventures in Persia, Susiana, and Babylonia_, vol. II, p. 214. See also an elaborate note of Dr. Benisch, p. 91 of his edition of Pethachia's Travels, and I.J. Benjamin II, _Eight Years in Asia and Africa_, p. 167.]

[Footnote 152: As for the river Gozan see p. 33, n. 3, and p. 58, n. 4. The mountains of Chafton, referred to also in pp. 54, 55, would seem to include not only the Zagros range, but also the highlands of Kurdistan.]

[Footnote 153: _Marco Polo_, book II, chap, xlv, says of Tibet: "In this country there are many of the animals that produce musk. The Tartars have great numbers of large and fine dogs which are of great service in catching the musk-beasts, and so they procure a great abundance of musk."]

[Footnote 154: The reputed sepulchre of Daniel is situated between Schuster and Dizful in Persia, close by the river Shaour, an affluent of the Karun river, which is supposed to be the Ulai of the Bible, Dan. viii. 2. It is within sight of the vast mound which denotes the site of Susa, the ancient Shushan. Here Mme. Dieulafoy in 1881 made extensive excavations of the palace of the Persian kings, many relics of which are now on view at the Louvre in Paris.

The tomb of Daniel has been fully described by Layard--see _Early Adventures_, vol. II, p. 295. It is of comparatively recent date, not unlike the shrines of Mussulman saints, and is surmounted by a high conical dome of irregular brickwork, somewhat resembling in shape a pine cone. The reader is referred to the beautiful pictorial ill.u.s.trations of Daniel's reputed tomb, of the ruins of Susa, and of Schuster and its bridges in Mme. Dieulafoy's _La Perse, la Chaldee et la Susiane_, Paris, 1887.

There is nothing to connect the building on the banks of the Shaour with the tomb of Daniel save the Mussulman tradition.