reverses, in a manner similar to Eldad’s, defeat into triumph and Jews into the
ten tribes. Here again is an instance of fantastic geography, this time connect-
ing Yemen with India—a testimony to the space-defying powers of the ten
tribes’ geography. Just as the “Asian” tribes reach Ethiopia, the land of the
remaining tribes in Arabia borders on India. Benjamin’s treatment of the
familiartoposof the tribes’ inaccessibility illustrates this surreal fluidity of
space. The desert makes the eighteen days’ journey to them impossible, he
says. But how do we know that an impossible journey takes eighteen days?
Benjamin of Tudela’s travelogue exposes the tensions between the biblical
text and its derivatives and the real geography and history to which they suppo-
sedly correspond. Contrary to what one might expect, these tensions do not
undermine the biblical text. Rather, the creative devices needed for reconciliation
enrich the story. Yet while it is clear that Benjamin of Tudela borrows a great deal
from Eldad Ha-Dani, there is a very basic difference between the two. Benjamin
does not pretend to have made contact with the tribes and is careful to place them
in distant, unreachable places. Rhetorically, too, they are distant, known of only
through hearsay: in the Asian case, he comments, “there are men of Israel in
Persia who say... ” and in the Arabian, he prefaces the account with “people
say... ” This rhetorical device further strengthens the authority of Benjamin’s text
as travelogue; Benjamin uses this wordingonlyconcerning the ten tribes. All
other things can be taken as authoritative fact.^76 His narrative carries the stamp of
the travelogue, the story of a person who went there himself. Benjamin’sItinerary
circulated widely and was known among learned Christians as well as Jews. In
1575 , during a period when interest in the ten tribes reached a new height, it was
translated into Latin.^77
Benjamin’sItinerarymakes significant contributions to the development
of the articulation of the location of the tribes. He clearly places them in two
different locations as opposed to one: the vast region in Central Asia between
China and Persia in the north and the huge swath of land between Ethiopia,
Arabia, and India in the south. The Talmudic idea of their unified exile, as
opposed to the scattered Jews, remains. But the territorial coherence assigned
to this exile is broken into two parts. Eldad had already suggested the same two
locations, but insisted that somehow the tribes communicated with one anoth-
er. Benjamin, more informed about the world and writing for a more informed
audience, cannot allow for this and concedes that the tribes’ locations of exile
are indeed wholly different places.
In this regard, Benjamin sets the geographical record straight in terms of the
possibility that the tribes are also in Africa. While Central Asia was from biblical
times the most apparent candidate, Africa (i.e., Ethiopia) was not. The only two
clues hitherto had been Talmudic comments that placed Ethiopia at one edge of
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