Hebraeis Arabibus.David testified that he had come from the “Desert of Habor
in Arabia.”^3
David told the pope that his people were in the midst of a military struggle
against the Muslims in Arabia and that the latter were winning because of their
superior “artillery.” David’s people lacked knowledge in this type of warfare,
and he asked that “armaments against the Muslim Arabs and Turks” and “a
craftsman to make cannons and gun powder” be sent to help: “It could be done
easily with a Portuguese boat that will come through the Red Sea.” Valiantly,
David offered to lead the expedition personally and promised that, when his
people had the requested weapons, they would “overcome all Muslims in war
and subjugate Mecca.”^4 In his Hebrew journal, in which he detailed his
journeys, David also claims to have offered his help in mediating between
the pope and the various political powers in Western Europe.
David claimed to be many things, but the report of Giambattista Ramusio
( 1485 – 1557 ), an Orientalist who interviewed him several times in 1530 on
behalf of the Venetian government, shows that the most frequent identification
David used—and the one that was apparently universally received, at least
initially—was his ten tribes affiliation.^5 David used important details from
Benjamin of Tudela’sItineraryto help authenticate his identity as a member
of the tribe of Reuben.^6 And Habor, as we read in the biblical narrative, was one
of the locations to which the Assyrians had exiled the tribes. David, versed in
the sources, said that was where he came from.
David’s plan to redeem Israel by the might of the ten tribes represents
what Abraham Abulafia would have called a natural redemption. The idea of a
Christian alliance with a powerful non-European, non-Muslim force from
the east that was to crush the Muslims was an oft-entertained idea over the
centuries, and had been at least since Bishop Hugo of Jabala produced the story
of Prester John.
If the Jews of Italy and Portugal saw David as a member of the ten tribes,
the Christians were thinking of a possible link to the legendary Christian figure
Prester John. It was widely known that missions on behalf of the pope had
been made by merchants, monks, and all sorts of adventurers to the “Great
Khans” in the east. These schemes were similar, in their basic parameters, to
what David was now proposing to the pope—an alliance against the Muslims.
Ramusio, who shortly after the David affair for the first time published Marco
Polo’sTravels,was certainly aware of Polo’s mission to the Mongol great khan
Qubilai ( 1215 – 1294 ).^7 Marco Polo ( 1254 –c. 1324 ) also told a number of stories
about Prester John, his family, and his territories in Asia.^8
As we have seen, Ethiopia enjoyed a certain mystic glow among Eur-
opeans—either as the land of Prester John or, at the very least, as the imagined
lu
(lu)
#1