had read or heard about Abravanel’s messianic scenario and the role the ten
tribes play in it. This is not possible, however; the latter’s book was only printed
and spread outside Italy from 1526.^27 David, it seems, was still working only
with Benjamin of Tudela’s accounts of the tribes. But whether or not he knew
of Abravanel’s ideas, David did indeed embody what the great statesman had
articulated as the Jewish hope to see in the ten tribes an exhibit of Jewish
power. That is to say, for people familiar with Abravanel’s ideas, David must
have seemed like the right man from the right place. Indeed, David did not
leave anybody indifferent in Europe. As Rabbi Hayyim Vital’s recurring dream
shows, the military image of David was still evocative several decades after his
death, even in Palestine.^28 It is time then, to turn our gaze to the Africa and
Arabia of David’s time and reincorporate them into the story.
News from Africa: Arabian, Ethiopian, Italian Connections
As we have seen, Ethiopia was tagged as a mysterious location, the home of
different types ofeschatoi,as early as antiquity. In the Jewish context, Ethiopia
has been the putative location of the ten tribes, or some of them, at least from
the eighth century on. Ethiopia also became the presumed home of Prester
John. The process through which Prester John turned from a Central Asian
khan into an African ruler is beyond the scope of this chapter. It is important to
stress, however, that in this process Ethiopian and African rulers played a
decisive role, more important than the European geographical and messianic
imagination alone.^29
African attempts to make contact with Europe steered the European
imagination to look for Prester John in Africa and finally to fix on Ethiopia as
the rumored home of the legendary Christian king. It was the Ethiopians who
first initiated contact with Europe. In 1306 , an embassy of thirty Ethiopians on
their way to the king of “the Spains” was briefly detained in Genoa and
questioned by the priest and cartographer Giovanni da Carignano (fl. 1291 –
1321 ). Carignano’s report and map did not survive, but he is generally believed
to be the first European to locate the Prester in Africa and not in Asia—Prester
John’s original home. In 1339 , another mapmaker with ties to Genoa, Angelino
Dulcert, specifically mentioned Ethiopia as Prester John’s home in his nautical
charts. By the late fifteenth century, Ethiopia was firmly established as such.
The European tendency to confuse India—one of the original homes of Prester
John—and Ethiopia plus the latter’s fame for being the only Christian king-
dom in Africa were at work as well.^30 That is to say, shortly before David’s
arrival in Europe, Ethiopia had already attained a special place in Christian as