Benjamin of Tudela

(Benjamin ben-Jonah)

(12th century)

   Medieval Spanish traveller. Benjamin, who came from the town of Tudela in northern Spain, was the roving reporter of Jewish life in the Mediterranean and Near East in the 12 century. Nothing is known of his personal background, except what can be gleaned from his Sefer ha-Massa’ot (‘Book of Travels’, 1543), an outstanding work of its kind. The interest he showed in the trade in gems and coral suggests that he might have been connected with that occupation. The length of his journey is uncertain, but probably lasted about fourteen years. He set out from Tudela (?1159), and travelled slowly through Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, the Aegean, Cyprus and Asia Minor, until he reached the Holy Land (?1167). In all the Jewish communities he visited he made careful notes of the number of members, the communal leaders and scholars, the way they earned their livelihood, and the general conditions in their countries of residence. Of particular interest are the accounts of Jewish centres of learning in Provence, and of life in Constantinople. Palestine at that time was under the Crusader kingdom of Jerusalem. Benjamin visited not only the Holy City and its shrines, but all the other main towns - Acre, Haifa, Caesarea, Nablus (where he studied the customs of the Samaritans), Bethlehem, Hebron, Ashkelon and Tiberias. He then journeyed through Mesopotamia and Persia, giving a full account of the caliph’s court in Baghdad and of the extraordinary story of David ALROY, the false messiah. There is a good deal of information about China, India and Ceylon that was no doubt collected from sources other than first-hand observations. Benjamin travelled back to Spain through Egypt, Sicily and France. The ‘Book of Travels’ is on the whole sober, clear and factual, and was presumably distilled from a larger quantity of material collected by Benjamin. It was translated into a number of European languages, and remains an invaluable source work for the study of the medieval period, both Jewish and general.