attempts to forcibly reincorporate the Beta Israel into Christian society.^36 After
Ya’ecop’s death, state pressure eased, and the balance tipped slightly in favor of
Beta Israel: “During the period from 1468 to 1632 the Beta Israel displayed
their most sophisticated political-military organization.” These new Jews
“were involved in some of the most dramatic conflicts with the Ethiopian
Emperors.”^37
This generally corresponds with the basic description of the happenings in
Ethiopia as told in Jerusalem by the Jews of Yemen. To Jews outside Ethiopia,
the Falasha must have seemed to appear out of nowhere—as indeed they did,
since they did not exist previously. The stories of Eldad and of Benjamin of
Tudela about the tribes’ military prowess must also have played a decisive role
in the Yemeni interpretation of the news of intrareligious violence involving a
military order of “Jews” and mighty Christian kings. With the newly added
dimension of Prester John’s residence in Ethiopia, news of the events in that
country led the Jews of Yemen to interpret the violence as the struggle between
Prester John and the ten tribes.
Already in the early 1400 s, the Iberian ha-Lorki had written with great
conviction about the ten tribes’ cycles of war and truce with Prester John in the
land of the Cushites. But while ha-Lorki was simply reelaborating the story of
the ten tribes in order to accommodate the legend of Prester John, the Yemenis
and their European interlocutors worked with real events, giving rise to news
about the ten tribes that was grounded in historical reality rather than elaborate
speculation. By the mid-fifteenth century, stories of Prester John and the ten
tribes provided an indispensable, ready-made tool with which Jews could
interpret the real events in Ethiopia. It may well be that Yemeni Jews were
reporting on wars between the ten tribes and Christian kings and that their
Italian, European, and Jewish interlocutors were adding another layer to this
interpretation by identifying the Christian kings with Prester John.
David Reuveni himself spent time in the Middle East just before coming to
Italy. Letters sent to Italy from Palestine and Syria during the 1520 s show that
David indeed visited various Middle Eastern communities—Alexandria, Gaza,
Safed, Jerusalem, Beirut, and Damascus—in the early 1520 s, leaving in each a
trail of stories and impressions. All tell more or less the same tale: a story about
a “dark man” who said that he was from the “tribe of Re’uven” and who told
stories about the ten tribes and their wonders somewhere in the area of
Ethiopia and Arabia. In one, he mentions an army of the tribes of Dan and
Re’uven composed of “ 600 , 000 ”(shishim ribo) men. Another recounts the
wonders of the River Sambatyon.^38 While Bertinoro’s Yemenis simply related
their stories of the ten tribes, David went further and invented a ten tribes
identity.
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