tribes in one place, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher.”^37 So wrote the Jews of al-
Qayrawan to Rabbi Zemah Gaon (d. 895 ), head of the Yeshiva of Sura in
Babylonia, then the highest rabbinic authority in the Jewish world and still
widely regarded as such.^38 Turning to a legal authority for a ruling and
clarification was, and remains, a common practice in Jewish (and Islamic) law.
The reaction of the Jews of al-Qayrawan to Eldad’s fantastic tale had crucial
implications for the later stages of the ten tribes’ history since it tells us what
kind of questions were to be asked in the first encounter with any potential ten
tribers. The epistle that they prepared for the Gaon included a version of
Eldad’s story, a summary of its main elements, including the details of the
Sambatyon as relayed by him. The epistle’s authors noted that the tribes “use
the four methods of death penalty and dwell in tents and journey and encamp
from place to place.” They explained that four of the tribes fight the “kings of
Ethiopia” and that “the extent of their land is seven months’ journey.”
Concerning scripture, the Qayrawanis reported that the tribes “posses the
whole of the Bible [ve-yesh lahem ha-mikra kula]... and their Talmud is of a
simple Hebrew and no [Talmudic] sage is mentioned therein, either Rabbi of
the Mishnah or Rabbi of the Talmud, but in every Halacha [Jewish law] they
say, ‘Thus have we learnt from the mouth of Joshua, from the mouth of Moses,
from the mouth of God.’”
There is only the faintest indication that the Qayrawanis had any doubt as
to Eldad’s identity as a ten triber: “We would show an object to him and he
would tell us the name in the sacred language, and we wrote it down, and after
a time we again asked him each word and we found it the same as the first
word he had given.” Evidently, Eldad knew how to present a solid case to a
relentless interrogator and was not duped by the trap of repeatedly being asked
the same questions. What bothered the Qayrawanis—and what prompted
them to turn to the highest legal authority in the Jewish world at the time—
was the discovery of some “slight” discrepancies between the laws practiced by
the Jews and the laws practiced by the ten tribes according to Eldad: “We have
seen that it is the same law but slightly different.”^39 The Qayrawanis give as an
example a lengthy description of Eldad’s report on the ten tribes’ rules of
slaughtering;^40 slaughtering laws are one of the largest and most important
bodies of Jewish law.
Delving into its minutiae is beyond our purpose here, but the nature of the
exchanges between Eldad and the Qayrawanis and the questions that the latter
ask are important. What is at stake is the anthropology of the ten tribes—a
group of people that had supposedly existed in total isolation for over a
millennium. The Qayrawanis were not only interested in the fantastic stories
Eldad had to tell. They were more concerned about the life and conditions of a
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