Jewish Travellers in the Middle Ages: 19 Firsthand Accounts

Book Overview

This fascinating book vividly portrays the wandering Jew as a very real character in the great drama of history. In nineteen engaging narratives, some twelve centuries old, travelling Jewish scholars, merchants, pilgrims, ambassadors, and others are revealed to be men of many moods and missions. In these pages you will meet: Isaac, an interpreter in the service of the Emperor Charlemagne, who in the year 802 escorted an elephant named Abulabaz, a gift to the Emperor from the caliph Harun ar-Rashid, over the Alps to the Emperor's court. Eldad the Danite, who lived on the Gulf of Aden and in the late ninth century was shipwrecked and seized by cannibals, though he lived to tell the tale. Benjamin of Tudela, the great Hebrew satirical poet of the thirteenth century, whose masterpiece, the Tachkemoni, is filled with clever, sometimes bitter jibes at the notables encountered in his many travels. Elijah of Ferrara, who describes fifteenth-century life in Jerusalem and tells of the plague in Egypt and Palestine that carried away his sons and grandson. Rich in human experience and historic detail, their accounts and 14 more revealing narratives offer rare perspectives on the unfolding drama of life in Europe, the Near East, and North Africa in the Middle Ages. This is a volume that will appeal to a broad spectrum of readers, from those interested in travel and adventure to those interested in cultural history and Judaica.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 048625397X
• ISBN13: 9780486253978
• Release Date: November 2011
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 1.01 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.4" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

sometimes interesting, sometimes bizarre

The title of this book is self-explanatory: 19 travelogues, written by Jews between the 9th and 18th centuries (though a couple of them are of doubtful veracity). The most common refrain throughout this book is the sheer difficulty of travel in the Middle Ages: many places had constant plagues of various sorts (presumably due to bad sanitation) , highways were full of sometimes-murderous robbers, etc. I can't vouch for the translation, let alone the validity of the original sources- so I'm not sure how factually accurate any of the travelogues (as translated) are. But assuming that the translation is at least reasonably close to the authors' intent, a few other facts grabbed me: *As late as the 12th century, Egyptian Jews with roots in Israel still read Torah according to the triennial cycle (finishing every 3 years instead of every year). I had heard that the triennial cycle had ancient roots, but had never read "primary source" confirmation. *The level of obsession with graves. More than one essay had numerous tales of the graves of prophets and holy men, and miracles that allegedly happened in those places (though to be fair, some of the authors were skeptical of such stories). *The assimilation of Jews into Muslim societies. Some of the essays were by European travelers who visited Egypt or Iraq on the way to Israel, and remark on the similarities between Jewish and Muslim attitudes towards women (usually involving high degrees of sex segregation and low levels of financial support for wives).

Just Amazing...first hand accounts

Do not buy this book for the editorial content, it is minimal. The first hand accounts provided by the travellers provide more than enough reason to buy this book. There are not many other diaries similar to the ones presented here.

History of Geography

This book is a rare contribution to the history of Geography. Side by side, religious voyages and places description bring a lot of informations, impressions and pieces of old imaginary. Like Arabian and Cristian Middle Ages geographers, Jewish itineraires are an important source to understand simultaneous world conceptions and how nets of commerce and cultural relations were stablished around Mediterran Sea and Asia.