3

Tricksters and Travels

And there are men of Israel in the land of Persia who say that in the
mountains of Naisabur four of the tribes of Israel dwell... who were
included in the first captivity of Shalmaneser, King of Assyria.
—Benjamin of Tudela

China, Spain, and Ethiopia: The World of the Ten Tribes

As the twelfth-century globetrotter Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela covered
the enormous terrain stretching from the Iranian northeastern
mountain ranges to the straits between southern Arabia and Ethiopia,
he referred as he went to an array of people who had notices and news
about the ten lost tribes. The famous Iberian traveler went as far as
China and Persia, visiting 300 cities on the way. He did not, of course,
come into direct contact with the tribes, but he seems to have been
fairly knowledgeable about them and their great deeds. They are never
seen, but the ten tribes are always heard, ubiquitously present as
rumors about them roam the land. “Rumor” is perhaps the best way to
characterize the space in which the lost tribes dwell, and Benjamin of
Tudela was its quintessential consumer and conveyer. These rumors,
in turn, became an important part of the accumulating “knowledge”
about the tribes, bridging the textual traditions of the past and the
contemporary talk of the people to bear on a growing body of