was evidently a self-absorbed man, a proud “religious fanatic,” and a romantic.
HisTravels and Adventures of the Rev. Joseph Wolff,published two years before
his death, is riddled with self-aggrandizing stories of disease, suffering, cour-
age, and near-death. There was a good market for his stories, as they were read
both as missionary material and as travel and adventure literature. Wolff had
“Adventures in Abyssinia” and was “beaten by Wahabitics” in Mecca. In be-
tween adventures, Wolff told his readers about the ten tribes:
Some of the [Yemeni] Jews [in Bukhara] say, that the Ten Tribes are
beyond China, and one must cross the Sambatyon, in order to reach
them; but the river is stormy through the whole week, except on a
Sabbath day: on the Sabbath, Gentiles are allowed to cross it, but not
the Jews.... Though this [is] mixed with fiction, there is no doubt that
some of the tribes are in China; as I hope to prove when I come to the
narrative of my journey to Cashmere.Wolff was also convinced that the “Benee Israel of Bombay” were descendants of
the tribes.^44 Wolff concentrated his searches in Central Asia and India after
having first spent time in West Africa, Ethiopia, and Arabia. (This geographical
focus was clearly related to the decline of the Jewish Indian theory.)^45
Wolff’s love for adventure, his zeal for finding the ten tribes, and his
intimate familiarity with the Central Asian regions eventually made him useful
to the British government—at least, he thought so. When two British diplo-
mats (and spies), Arthur Connolly ( 1807 – 1842 ) and Charles Stoddard ( 1806 –
1842 ), were captured by Emir Nasrullah Khan of Bukhara (r. 1826 – 1860 ),
Wolff undertook to rescue them. At the time, Russian-British rivalry over
control of part of Central Asia was growing: the so-called Great Game was
becoming increasingly heated, attracting all sorts of adventurers and self-
appointed spies.^46 Wolff failed, the men were executed in 1842 , and he barely
escaped. The story he wrote about the mission became a bestseller in England.
Everybody read how Wolff, dressed in his “clergyman’s gown, doctor’s hood,
and shovel hat; with a Bible in Hebrew and English... in his hand” introduced
himself to the emir as “Joseph Wolff, the grand dervish of England, Scotland,
and Ireland, and of the whole of Europe and America.”^47 After him, Wolff’s
son Sir Henry Drummond Wolff made a great career as a diplomat in regions
where his father was active, and the younger Wolff raised funds for yet another
ten tribes expedition to Central Asia. Both Wolffs functioned in the broader
frames of empire, romantic adventure, and missionary zeal. But they also
marked the beginning of a transition back to a specifically Jewish interest in
finding the ten lost tribes, one that was soon to shift the interest in their
restoration to a desire to bring them “home.”