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 pass. Benjamin and Marco Polo both record the
general belief currrent at the time that the Pass 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 pass 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
pass 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 Pass, 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 _Beiträge zur
Geographie und Ethnographie Babyloniens_; also Layard's
_Nineveh and Babylon_, p. 469. Cf. Berachot, 57 b.]
[Footnote 138: Bereshith Rabba, chap, xxxviii, 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 mass 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
masses, 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 passage 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, xxxv, 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 passages where this
epithet or other objectionable remarks were used excised by
the censor, and it will be seen that the passage 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 associated with Samuel.]
[Footnote 146: Asher, at this stage of Benjamin's narrative,
has the following note: "For the illustration 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 pass 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
title 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 Canal; 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. Grünhut, 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. xxxv, 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-Manasseh 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 Manasseh, whom Salmanesser, King of Assyria,
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. xxx, 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
passage-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 quantity 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 God 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 substitutes 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 tassels 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 illustrations of
Daniel's reputed tomb, of the ruins of Susa, and of Schuster
and its bridges in Mme. Dieulafoy's _La Perse, la Chaldée 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.
There are many legends connected with the reputed sepulchre,
one of which is to the effect that the men of Susa diverted
the river in order to bury Daniel's coffin in its bed. See
Guy Le Strange, p. 240.
E.N. Adler, in his recent work _Jews in many Lands_, Jewish
Historical Society of England, p. 224, in describing
Samarkand, writes as follows: "Tradition has it that
Tamerlane had seen the tomb at Susa in Persia, with a
warning inscribed thereon, that none should open its door;
and so he broke it open from behind, and found it written
that Nebi Daniel was there buried. The impetuous conqueror
had the sarcophagus removed with all reverence, and carried
it with him to his own capital to be its palladium. The
sarcophagus is over twenty yards long as beseems a prophet's
stature. It has been recently covered by a brick chapel with
three cupolas, but photographs of the ancient structure can
be had in Samarkand. It is grandly placed at the edge of a
cliff overhanging the rapid river Seop. The local Jews do
not believe the story, nor do they quite disbelieve it, for
I went with two who prayed there at the grave of the
righteous."]
[Footnote 155: The reader will recollect that reference to
this sect has already been made on page 16. See Guy Le
Strange, p. 220 and p. 354.]
[Footnote 156: Amadia (Imadiyah) is a city in Kurdistan in a
mountainous district, north of Mosul. Ben Virga and R.
Joseph Hacohen, the author of _Emek Habacha_, state that
1,000 Jewish families lived in the city at that time. It is
strange that in all the MSS., including Asher's text, this
city is called Amaria instead of Amadia. The mistake
doubtless arose from the fact that the copyists mistook the
[Hebrew letter 'resh'] for a [Hebrew letter 'daleth']. The
scribe of the British Museum MS. had made other errors of
this kind, writing [Hebrew:] for [Hebrew:], [Hebrew:] for
[Hebrew:], &c. See Guy Le Strange, p. 92.]
[Footnote 157: The author of _Emek Habacha_ gives the date
of the Alroy tragedy as 1163. It should, however, be
antedated by a few years. Benjamin must have passed through
Egypt on his return journey some time before Sept., 1171.
See note 2, p. 1. He here tells us that the Alroy
catastrophe took place just ten years before his visit to
Bagdad and the neighbourhood. It is clear therefore that
1160 is the latest date when this event could have taken
place.]
[Footnote 158: This Turkoman may have been the Prince of
Arbela who in 1167 joined Saladin in his successful invasion
of Egypt. He was remarkable for his great strength and
courage (see Bohadin's _Life of Saladin_, Palestine
Pilgrims' Text Society, p. 51).]